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Legacy media outlets have rushed to revive the “Republicans pounce” trope in its coverage of murdered 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska.
Recently released video of Zarutska’s killing last month in Charlotte, North Carolina, spread across social media. The clip shows 34-year-old Decarlos Brown Jr. standing up behind her on a light rail train and repeatedly stabbing her in the neck with a pocketknife. Brown has been charged with first-degree murder and is now facing federal charges.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt addressed the attack Tuesday, criticizing the media’s coverage.
“Perhaps most shamefully of all, the majority of media – many outlets in this room – decided that her murder was not worth reporting on originally, because it does not fit a preferred narrative,” Leavitt said.
LEAVITT BLASTS ‘MANY OUTLETS IN THIS ROOM’ AT BRIEFING FOR FAILING TO COVER MURDER OF IRYNA ZARUTSKA
Much of the coverage has focused on the right’s reaction to the murder rather than the crime itself.
The New York Times covered the attack with the headline, “A Gruesome Murder in North Carolina Ignites a Firestorm on the Right.” The article called the killing an “accelerant for conservative arguments about crime, race and the perceived failings of big-city justice systems and mainstream news outlets in the Trump era.”
“The outrage over the Charlotte killing is a part of a pattern in which President Trump and his allies highlight horrific crimes to bolster their case that the country is plagued by ‘American carnage,’ as Mr. Trump put it in his first inaugural address, despite statistics that show crime is dropping,” the Times reported.
TRUMP CONDEMNS ‘LUNATIC’ IN CHARLOTTE STABBING: ‘IF WE DON’T HANDLE EVIL, WE DON’T HAVE A COUNTRY’
Politico followed similar framing with the headline, “Ukrainian refugee killed in North Carolina gets dragged into political messaging war.”
“A young refugee from Ukraine who was killed in an apparently random attack in North Carolina is being pulled into America’s culture war,” Politico began its report. Notably, Politico’s report does not include images of Zarutska or Brown nor does it note their races, but it does feature an image of President Donald Trump.
Axios went viral with its headline “Stabbing video fuels MAGA’s crime message,” telling readers that “The rising number of surveillance cameras in public spaces, including on Charlotte’s light rail, has become a big accelerant in these cases.”
“MAGA influencers are drawing repeated attention to violent attacks to elevate the issue of urban crime — and accuse mainstream media of under-covering shocking cases,” Axios wrote. The outlet added that surveillance footage “is easily shared or leaked, and can instantly pollinate across social media — a visual counterpoint to statistics showing crime decreases.”
The Associated Press ran the headline “Charlotte leaders criticized over killing of Ukrainian woman as Trump, MAGA target another Dem city,” noting that the attack “quickly drew the attention of President Donald Trump and MAGA allies who blame Democrats for what they say is out-of-control crime in blue cities.”
CNN media analyst Brian Stelter said the fatal stabbing is being used as a “political symbol” by “pro-Trump activists” and “MAGA media” in pushing for harsher punishments and more incarcerations, and condemned what he described as a racist reaction to the attack.
“Most murders in the U.S. never become national news. This one’s got our attention for a couple of reasons. Number one, first and foremost, the recent release of that gruesome video. Second, the energy from pro-Trump activists. They picked up on this video from local news and ran with it,” Stelter said Monday.
“I have to say, some of the replies to Musk, some of the comments around this story are baldly racist, stoking fear of African Americans because this man attacked a White woman,” Stelter later continued. “The open racism on sites like X today, it’s eye-popping. But there are also legitimate questions about this so-called career criminal, someone who had been a repeat offender. And those questions, I hope they’re not lost amid all of the cesspool kind of comments on social media.”
CNN’S BRIAN STELTER SAYS ‘PRO-TRUMP ACTIVISTS’ SEIZED ON CHARLOTTE STABBING, RIPS ‘BALDLY RACIST’ COMMENTS
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Rolling Stone also criticized what it called “racist propaganda” that has “flourished” on social media as a result of Zarutska’s murder in a report published Monday, saying “some on the far right disseminated the footage and still images from it in order to further a clearly racist agenda.”
“Reducing Zarutska’s cruel and untimely death to racist memes also erases the role that mental health — something that Republicans are happy to bring up whenever a white mass shooter guns down Americans in cold blood — likely played in the ghastly crime,” Rolling Stone wrote. “It’s very convenient, however, for extremists hoping that Trump continues to weaponize federal resources against the minorities they despise, since this spin validates their authoritarian impulses and the politics of resentment that propelled their leader to power in the first place. As more details trickle out, you can expect them to milk this heinous crime for all it’s worth.”
Zarutska came to the U.S. as a refugee fleeing war-torn Ukraine after Russia’s 2022 invasion. She had been working at a pizzeria in Charlotte and was still wearing her uniform the night she was attacked, just after 9:45 p.m. on Aug. 22.
Records obtained by Fox News Digital show Brown has had more than a dozen arrests over the past decade. His convictions include felony larceny and felony breaking and entering in 2013, and a 2015 conviction for robbery with a dangerous weapon that sent him to prison for more than six years. He was released in 2020 but remained on parole until 2021. More recent charges included communicating threats and misuse of the 911 system earlier this year.
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