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tw -
I agree with a lot of what you say, but I still find that many of these articles, wish just "raw facts", certainly do choose to emphasize certain ones.
They don't state what religion she was raised. They don't state whether or not her parents were very involved in her life. They don't state whether or not she likes titfucking. The writer very consciously picked certain facts to emphasize. Yes, it just so happens that those facts probably aren't very relevant to the murder, but the writer chose to include them anyway.
Someone in a state of such power (to have words published in a forum so widely read as the Washington Post) should recognize the awesome responsibility they have. Words need to be chosen carefully so as to not provoke the public into having racist attitudes against whatever it is at the moment. These people have a very real responsibility, to humankind, to not make the world a worse place. Was that the goal of the article? Probably not. But you shouldn't put someone in a position of power like that unless they're able to step back, look at their work, analyze it and honestly answer the question, "Does this provoke?" Or any of the other questions they should ask themselves before they publish a piece. Of course they're just words, and we fill in the blanks. But those blanks were irresponsibly created by the journalist in the first place.
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