IN JANUARY of 2007, 21 year-old Channon Christian and her boyfriend, 23 year-old Christopher Newsom, were the victims of an appalling crime in Knoxville, Tennessee. During what seems to have started as a carjacking, the criminals decided to kidnap the couple and set in motion an unbelievable series of events. The suspects allegedly tortured and raped the young woman for several days before killing her. Christopher’s life was terminated much sooner but his treatment can only be described as beyond the imagination. The amount of savagery that took place in this case is of such magnitude that internet users are asking, “Where’s the national media?” What happened to these two young people is equivalent to the butchery of Charles Manson.
It has become so apparent in recent years the media places little worth on their audience’s intelligence. They really do believe we all want to know every detail of Anna Nicole’s life and death or Britney Spears hottest imbroglio. But let’s be intellectually honest here: Had the perpetrators been white, and the victims’ black, this crime would be saturating the television and newspapers even today, three months after its occurrence. Many observant people refer to the globally publicized dragging death of ex-convict James Byrd, Jr. by three white ex-convicts in Texas. Just as noteworthy is the disparity between the national media coverage of the alleged Duke rape case and this one, with similarities involving this case and the Wichita Massacre, a black-on-white rape/torture/murder in 2000, not to mention other little-known cases as confirmation of a modern history of “memory holing” certain news stories.
European American United shares Channon’s and Christopher’s family’s sorrow on this Easter Holiday.
–Frank Roman