S4 E23 - Don't Say Stabbing; The Kohberger Moscow Manner of Death Mystery

Media Narratives and the Silence on Mass Stabbings

This episode of 'The 10th Man' delves into the media's selective language in reporting violent crimes, particularly focusing on the Moscow, Idaho stabbing case where four college students were brutally murdered by Brian Kohberger. The script highlights a bias in the media's reluctance to use terms like 'stabbed' or 'slashed' while covering knife attacks, contrasting it with their detailed emphasis on firearms in gun violence incidents. The episode questions the motives behind these editorial choices, suggesting they are part of a broader agenda to influence public perception on gun control and manipulating the results from search engines like Google and other tools like AI.  The Delphi murders provide other example of this misdirection. Additionally, the segment criticizes how media outlets profit from tragedies by later repackaging incomplete stories as entertainment through books and documentaries, citing the example of James Patterson and his book  The Idaho Four.

00:00 Introduction: The Gruesome Moscow Murders
00:56 Media's Selective Reporting
02:00 The Politics of Crime Reporting
02:50 Comparative Media Coverage
05:23 SEO and Media Manipulation
06:38 Case Study: The Delphi Murders
08:14 Inconsistencies and Editorial Decisions
10:34 The Media's Profit Motive
12:36 Conclusion: Exposing the Coverup

Commentary on trending issues brought to you with a moderate perspective.

Transcript

0:11

Four college students stabbed to death, slashed so violently that blood leaked through the wall. But the media refused to say stabbed knife or slashed selectively sanitizing the news today on the 10th Man four University of Idaho students murdered in their sleep, killed in a brutal attack, tragically murdered, horrific, quadruple homicide. Those are some of the news quotes and headlines that we've seen in the last two and a half years. Funny, isn't it, A house soaked in blood. Four students butchered a knife attack, so gruesome, the walls leaked blood to the outside and yet ABC news never once said stabbed. At least not until the knife sheath was found and introduced into evidence, and they kind of had to mention it. You need to understand that the Moscow murders weren't just bad. They were gruesome beyond belief. This is so tragic that I'm not even comfortable talking about it and introducing the politics into the discussion. But the coroner called it the worst crime scene she'd ever witnessed. According to the reporting, blood was visible from outside the house. It had seeped down through the floors and walls. It wasn't just a brutal killing, it was a mass stabbing massacre. And yet none of this has been widely reported. So why not? Is it because of some sensitivity to our feelings that the media have? Well compare that to the Washington Post who gleefully ran photos of a series of school shooting aftermaths. They showed bullet holes, broken glass, overturned chairs and pools. Yes, literal pools of blood. They had no problem showing readers the raw physical aftermath when it was gun violence. But with Moscow, there's not a single crime scene photo, not a forensic breakdown. There's not even an acknowledgement of the method of killing on the news. Why? Because when it's a gun, it supports their narrative. But when it's a knife, it gets in the way. From day one. The networks have avoided saying, stabbed. They use words like murdered slain, brutally killed, but never stabbed, even though that's exactly what happened, Actually, would that it were stabbed because apparently they were slashed. In fact, when they show the scenes of the school shootings, it's just the nature of things that, I don't wanna be more explicit than this. There's gonna be more blood with a knife than there is with a gun. In Moscow. Had it been a gun, we'd have been hearing AR 15 every hour on the hour. They would've told you the model, the magazine size. The muzzle velocity, what brand of ammo the killer bought, what store he went to. But mass stabbing, you know, they love the term mass shooting. They never even say mass stabbing. Neither term is really valid. They should just say mass murder, because the real problem is the murderer, not the method. And if they said mass stabbing, well that would undermine the gun control narrative. It would open doors if they don't want open, so they just closed them preemptively. Let's look at some clips. Let's look at all the news clips they've done since we started tracking this in August of 2024, and count how many times they say murder killed, but they never say how./ Lawyers for the man accused of killing four college students in Moscow, Idaho are asking the judge to move the trial. The death penalty will remain on the table. For Brian Berger, the man charged with killing four University of Idaho students./ in the case against the man accused of killing four Idaho college students. This morning newly released court documents show lawyers for accused killer Brian Berger argue he should not have to face the death penalty coberg is accused of killing four University of Idaho students at this off-campus house/ new evidence in the Idaho College Murders case. These text messages speak directly to what the roommates were experiencing at the time around the murders. For the first time, text messages between the two surviving roommates of the Idaho College murders now revealed

The Tenth Man: 5:19

Okay, so they don't say stabbing or knife or slash So what. Well, don't underestimate how strategic this is because you know, the media outlets aren't just choosing words. They're picking search terms. It's all about. What content creators call SEO, search Engine optimization and the media outlets are engineering what turns up in searches. You see, if you repeat mass shooting enough times, then that's what will dominate search results in recommendation engines like Google or ai. But if you start saying mass stabbing and we do have mass stabbings, suddenly your audience might realize that guns aren't the only tool for mass murder and now the narrative's at risk. So it's very deliberate. The media deliberately suppress certain words, and it's all calculated, and it's not to protect the public, but to control what the public finds. Everybody's relying on Google and on AI and the media are training the algorithms to obey their framing of the news. This wasn't a one time strategy. There's another case, the Delphi murders, where two teenage girls were found on a hiking trail in Indiana. They too had been stabbed and slashed to death. listen to these news clips from A, B, C./

6:53

Now to Indiana and a guilty verdict in the murders of two young girls there was no DNA evidence, but eventually prosecutors linked an unspent. Bullet from the crime scene to Alan's gun.

The Tenth Man: 7:04

An unspent round was found at the scene and traced to the traced to the killer's gun. Or this one./

7:11

Two girls were murdered in Delphi, Indiana. Here's ABC's Alex Perez. Abby asks her best friend, if the man following them is still there abby and Libby were ordered down that hill Police say at gunpoint and killed

The Tenth Man: 7:25

The girls were forced down the hill at gunpoint and killed. Huh? Shouldn't there be a disclaimer to say they were not shot? They want you to think that the girls were shot. This is terrible. They're actually exploiting the murder of these two girls to reinforce their gun control narrative. They weren't shot. They were slashed and stabbed. The coroner confirmed it. The defense didn't dispute it, but the media still led with the gun even though the gun wasn't fired.'cause if there's a gun in the room that goes into the headline, but a knife, they bury that. How much more deliberately could the press be misdirecting us, it's a case of narratives before facts. And here's another example where it actually gets insulting in August, 2024. During the exact same a, b, c news segment covering the Moscow murders they ran another story. Well, it's in the crawler. A Syrian refugee had stabbed multiple people in Germany. You know, they could have linked those two together saying mass stabbings are common in Europe, which they are, and they could have called it a rare mass stabbing here. But of course they never called it that. They never even said stabbing. But they did for Germany in the crawler underneath the report for the same Moscow murders. They call it a stabbing attack in Germany. It's the same show, same segment. I am actually surprised they didn't use the, the same, uh, call it a mass attack in Germany, but for some reason they had no problem using stabbing when it happened overseas. When it involved a foreigner, perhaps they decided that had no impact on US policy debates. But in Moscow, it's four students butchered and they refuse to say the word. So this is beyond just inconsistency. It's an editorial decision with a goal to protect the narrative. They control the framing and avoid terms that derail their agenda and. Isn't it odd that normally in the news, you know, the expression, if it bleeds, it leads. The news should have been cashing in on this. And can you imagine the discussions in the a, b, C newsroom between the people who are the bean counters and the policy people? The policy people are true zealots because the policy people put their gun control narrative above all else, including profits. Can you imagine, again, the bean counter saying, we've got to go with this story. This is, this is ratings gold old, and the editorial staff won out. Nope. Nope. We have to bury this. We can't have people thinking that knives are as dangerous as guns. So now we come to the caching in, because the Moscow trial is stalled because there's been a settlement. So the evidence is sealed. So holy smokes. Now there's not gonna be a trial where we all find out what really happened. And maybe that was the, uh, maybe that was the Dodge that the policy people use saying, well, don't worry. There's gonna be a trial. It's all gonna come out, all the blood and gore, and you'll be able to make all the money you want. But now that's not gonna happen. So maybe that was the plan all along. Let's wait this out because now we're gonna cash in. There's not gonna be a trial. No testimony, no crime scene walkthrough with the body cam footage no courtroom artist sketches describing the carnage. But instead, guess what? We do get, there's gonna be a James Patterson book. There's gonna be a documentary from NBC featuring the victim's families. Patterson appeared on a, B, c with his co-author, and in that, he said this/

11:53

I'll tell you one thing, anybody listening and watching if you're disappointed, because you're not gonna find out what's, what's happening in the trial. Everything that would've been covered in the trial is covered in this book. Everything and so much more. Uh, things about the police department there

The Tenth Man: 12:08

everything and so much more. So A, B, C wouldn't call it a mass stabbing when it mattered. But they'll help you buy it Now that it's entertainment. The truth wasn't fit for the news desk, but it's great for the bookshelf and for only$28 and 99 cents, you can have your own copy. And this is the real media cycle. They bury the facts if they're inconvenient. And avoid words that break their narrative. They lock up the evidence behind legal and policy red tape, and then they repackage the story as entertainment. You know, there'll ought be a law. A company that's supposedly a news outlet should not be allowed to profit by selling the same story back to you as a documentary, which is really entertainment,/

13:10

This morning, more than two years after the murder of their son, Ethan, Stacey and Jim Chapin tell us in an exclusive interview, they finally have closure. Ethan Chapin, brutally stabbed to death in November, 2022 ethan's family sharing their story in a new prime video documentary about the murders.

The Tenth Man: 13:27

But that's how it works. NBC gets their dramatic docuseries. A b, C gets their exclusive author interview and James Patterson gets the royalties.

13:42

So ahead of next week's sentencing, James Patterson and Vicki Ward discussed their new book about the murders and lift the veil of secrecy that has shrouded this case for more than two years. The new book, the Idaho four, an American Tragedy, Maddie was the first person, the culprit killed the knife sheath with his DNA. Found under her body, you will meet, Ethan and Kaylee and Maddie, and Zanna. You'll meet them and you will feel them as human beings. The Idaho foreign American tragedy is out now.

The Tenth Man: 14:15

But the American public, they get the truth only after it's been scrubbed, processed, and most of all monetized/ And just in case you missed it, here's that James Patterson quote. One more time./ Everything that would've been covered in the trial is covered in this book. Everything and so much more. The knife didn't disappear. They just waited until it was safe to sell. This has been the 10th Man where we expose the story behind the silence and the profit behind the coverup.