The mainstream media in the United States has almost completely ignored the story of 24-year-old Jessica Doty-Whitaker, who was shot in the head and killed by Black Lives Matter supporters in Indianapolis on July 5. What had young Ms. Whitaker done to incur the wrath of the “largely peaceful” BLM supporters? Allegedly, she was heard uttering the phrase “All Lives Matter” to a group of BLM supporters who, apparently, disagreed with her.
On July 5, Doty-Whitaker and her fiancé, Jose Ramirez, were strolling with friends along the Indianapolis Canal Walk after a Fourth of July celebration when she and her friends ran into the BLM group. Allegedly, the BLM group heard someone in Doty-Whitaker’s group utter a racially-charged word — a slang term that supposedly means roughly the same as the “N-word.” The BLM supporters took umbrage and confronted Doty-Whitaker’s group. An argument ensued, and both sides drew firearms. When the two groups realized that the other was armed, the situation deescalated — seemingly. It was reported that the groups fist-bumped and separated.
But minutes later, Ramirez reported that a member of the BLM group opened fire from a nearby bridge, striking Doty-Whitaker in the head and killing her. Ramirez admitted to returning fire but says he didn’t hit anyone.
“[The situation] was squashed and they went up the hill and left, but they were sitting up on St. Clair waiting for us to come under the bridge and that’s when she got shot,” Ramirez said.
The victim leaves behind a three-year-old son who doesn’t understand where his mother is.
“She shouldn’t have lost her life. She’s got a three-year-old son she loved dearly,” Ramirez said. “It’s hard to tell him his mom is in heaven and if you want to talk to her you have to look up and say, ‘I love you mom.’”
The victim’s father, Robert Doty, said that the confrontation occurred when the BLM group said, “Black Lives Matter,” to Doty-Whitaker’s group and that the young mother responded, “All Lives Matter.”
“An argument started and guns came out, but they worked things out. Unfortunately, they didn’t drop it and waited for them to walk back through and she was shot in the head,” Doty told The Gateway Pundit.
Surveillance video shows a group running away from the bridge area at the exact time when Doty-Whitaker was shot.
The victim’s grandfather posted on Facebook that “multiple black assailants” shot his granddaughter in the head, then lamented, “Why isn’t anybody outraged about this?… Is it that BLM was involved or that it was young, white adults [who were] the victims?
Why, indeed. Local Indianapolis news has covered the story, of course, but national media has curiously ignored the incident. Fox News eventually reported on the shooting, but only after being called out as one of the mainstream media outlets ignoring the story by The Gateway Pundit.
Doty told The Gateway Pundit that neither CNN nor Fox News has reached out to him for any comment on the killing of his daughter.
On its surface, this story would seem to have everything the mainstream media could ask for: A racially-charged killing of an innocent young woman; grieving family to interview; the killer or killers still on the loose. They even have video of the aftermath of the incident, which they can run on a loop as a talking head blathers on about the senseless nature of such violence.
Everything is still under investigation, and portions of the story seem incomplete and a little sketchy, but since when has that stopped the media from breathlessly reporting on a killing involving race? If you want examples, look at the George Floyd death or the Rayshard Brooks death or the Trayvon Martin death or the Michael Brown death. Media set up camp in Minneapolis; Atlanta; Sanford, Florida; and Ferguson, Missouri, while those cases were being investigated.
So, why isn’t Anderson Cooper on the ground in Indianapolis giving us up-to-the-moment details of this case as it unfolds?
Obviously, because the victim was white and the perpetrators are black. That said, the mainstream media want no part of this story. It doesn’t fit the narrative that they’ve created, that BLM activists are always in the right and are “largely peaceful,” and that white people are the cause of these incidents — never the victim.
In 2020 America, national news outlets no longer report news — they manufacture it. As Project Veritas’ expose on CNN last year proved, network leaders such as Jeff Zucker set the narrative the network wishes to portray. Any incident that doesn’t fit with that narrative is brushed aside, ignored, and buried.
Image: screenshot from YouTube video
James Murphy is a freelance journalist who writes on a variety of subjects. He can be reached at [email protected].
