The killers of the beautiful 7-year-old who was murdered in Houston, Jazmine Barnes, turned out to be two gang members and the white man initially blamed was an innocent bystander trying to escape the shooting. Here are the 2 men arrested for her death. 
All week the media insinuated that the death of Jazmine Barnes was a hate crime committed by a white man. Now that it’s proven not to be a white man who killed her I notice that suddenly the race of her killers is not in the headlines anymore. This is why so few trust the media.
It’s so dishonest it’s amazing they lack the self awareness to see it. You can’t say all week that a white man killed a 7-year-old black girl, say it was possibly a hate crime and then when discovered that black gang members killed her simply headline "man charged with murder".
The media refuses to be honest about stories, the narrative they want to spin is what really matters to them. Read with caution. They divide people, I’d prefer we use our minds and hearts to unite instead.
Some nuance to all of this: It’s perfectly appropriate to share preliminary suspect information that could lead to arrest of a suspect, what’s not okay is building a narrative before we establish the truth and then pretending nothing happened when the narrative you spun is false.
Some media is better than others at admitting when they’re wrong but as an institution the media has lost my trust and the majority of my fellow Americans on all sides of the political spectrum. We must carefully vet every story, we are our own arbiters of truth, not the media.
I’m relieved the killers of Jazmine Barnes are in jail but ultimately saddened that we live in a society that so thoroughly devalues life. Our culture is in a tailspin of immorality, death, hate and tribal defense. We must fix that. We must join together and value life.
It’s not just gun violence or racism, it’s not just hate or gangs, it’s deeper than that. Our entire culture is complicit. Look at your TV today and see how often you see love vs. how often you see violence. A lack of reverence for life permeates every facet of our culture.
One more thing about Jazmine Barnes. We need to see the media mobilize to help catch the killers of all children and not just when the killer might be a different race. Specifically the murders of black kids and missing black girls in liberal cities are ignored far too often.
Wouldn’t it be great if the outrage we saw over Jazmine Barnes death was standard for all missing or murdered children? Media only seems to push it when there’s a particularly divisive angle. Let’s unite to care about every child the way we care about Jazmine. We can be better.
I’ll be blunt about this. We need to stop the partisan bullshit when it comes to protecting children. Both sides need to stop keeping score with kids deaths. Think about every loving relationship in life, when does keeping score yield a positive result? Kids need us to be adults.
My wife @imatriarch always says that how we defend the defenseless defines us. Those seem like words to live by today and everyday going forward. There’s too much evil in the world that children are combatting alone far too often. We need to do what we can to protect them.
What do you think a casual reader believes happened if they only read these two headlines? They probably believe a white man in his 40’s killed a beautiful 7-year-old black girl. This is why we can’t trust media like @CNN. You must read and vet multiple sources to find the truth.
