If Lori Kaplan depended only on her employers at NPR for news, she was probably surprised at the black mob violence that almost killed her white husband.
Kaplan is the Senior Director of Audience Research at NPR in downtown Washington, D.C. That is where she regularly meets her husband at the end of his evening commute on the Metro Red Line.
That is what she was recently doing when she received a text message from him: An “idiot gang” was acting belligerently in his train car, so he was going to move.
That was the last she heard from him until he got off the train: bloody, beaten, and dazed. With a broken jaw and missing teeth.
The Washington Post writer who covers commuting — not crime — picked up the story:
one of the youths approached a man who appeared to be in his 30s and asked for his bag. The man remained calmly in his seat, she said, when one of the youths began throwing punches.
Smyth said the punching continued maybe “30 seconds or so” when the victim, who appeared dazed, started to walk away from the youth. That’s when “the second kid jumped in and punched him square in the jaw,” she said.
She said the man passed out and hit the floor of the train’s front car.
The reporter, a former NPR correspondent, either did not know or did not think it was important to include a description of the “idiot gang.”
Hundreds of readers of the story thought it was important — and many mentioned their own experiences with black on white violence on the D.C. Metro.
Continue reading “D.C. NPR Family Another Victim of Black Violence and Denial”
