Biased coverage.

In Richmond, Virginia, an intended robbery victim shot and killed a teenager who had held him up at gunpoint. In reporting the story, a local paper, the Times-Dispatch, gave a very biased account of that incident in the obvious hope that the reporting would provoke an indignant response toward people who would defend themselves with guns.

The shooting occurred when Rodvon Daymetric Brown, a seventh grader, approached a 47-year-old man who was sitting in his car, and threatened him with a rifle in an attempt to rob him. In its coverage of the incident, the June 14 Times-Dispatch reported that the boy's mother and aunt, who helped raise him, said that Rodvon would not have had a gun and that they "just don't know why" anyone would shoot him. The story also quoted Alicia Rasin, a "crime-victim's advocate" who, acting as spokesperson for the family, said that Rodvon had "never been arrested, never been in trouble." Rasin went on to lament about all shooting incidents, saying, "I'm sick and tired of saying I'm tired. I'm tired of saying, 'When is this going to be enough?'"

The story in the Times-Dispatch emphasized the seeming randomness of the shooting incident, saying that the teen had just gone outside that night because it was hot, and he wanted to get on his bike and ride. In the same vein, the article built on the perception of the boy's innocence by relating the events of the shooting as they were given to the administration at the boy's school by the boy's mother. She reported to the school that Rodvon was simply "shot and killed as he walked home along Fairmount Avenue."

The following week, the Times-Dispatch did a follow-up story about this shooting, and though this article set the record straight about what actually happened on that fateful night, the story still emphasized that the boy never really intended to hurt anyone.

The follow-up story acknowledged that the boy was carrying a gun at the time of the shooting and that he had apparently tried to rob a man with it, but the story focused on the fact that the teen's gun was unloaded, making the boy harmless. Of course, the intended victim had no way of knowing that the gun was unloaded, but the Times-Dispatch had no interest in examining the attempted robbery from that perspective. The opening line of the story reflects the story's overall tone: "The teenage boy fatally shot June 12 in Richmond's East End apparently was not as dangerous as he looked to the man who killed him."

Interestingly, the second article even acknowledged that the boy's relatives had been lying when they said he had never been arrested, saying that "a law enforcement source said Brown did, in fact, have a record of arrests as a juvenile." However, this very relevant information did not appear until the last sentence of the article. And so a reader who merely scans articles for news is left with the impression that the wrongdoing in this case was on the part of the man who defended himself, not on the part of the teen who was well on his way to becoming an adult thug and a true menace to society.

The 47-year-old man is not expected to be charged for the shooting, but he may be charged for illegally possessing a gun.