BECKET ADAMS: Yet Another Terrible Media Analysis Of The Chicago Kidnapping.

There have been some really awful media reactions written in response to a story last week of a disabled white man who was kidnapped and tortured in Chicago by four African-Americans.

The Washington Post’s Callum Borchers responded by writing an article bemoaning the violent incident could embolden Trump supporters.

The New York Daily News’ senior justice writer Shaun King argued that he wouldn’t waste any time speaking on behalf of the kidnapping victim, because white men get justice.

Now we have a Time magazine op-ed arguing that the story is bad for several reasons, most notably that it distracts from the plight of abused African-Americans.

“[T]he unrelenting media focus on this random incident, is, to my mind, unbalanced and unwarranted,” PBS’ Tavis Smiley wrote. . . .

Smiley incorrectly suggests people who are genuinely concerned about equality are incapable of focusing on more than one injustice. It’s possible to raise hell for both the kidnapped white man and the unarmed African-American male gunned down by a police officer. It doesn’t have to be an either/or.

Sadly, the rest of Smiley’s column follows in the vein of thought that the kidnapping story is troubling, sure, but that there are more important things in the world.

The main thrust of his op-ed can be summed up as this: “Kidnapping and torture is bad, but what about these other bad things?”

Well, okay then.