Every day, corporate media commit sins of omission and commission. In their current scramble to shine a spotlight on what many leftist journalists deem “systemic racism,” they have elevated the deaths of black Americans at the hands of white people, while turning a blind eye to black-on-black crime as well as white victims of black perpetrators. Today, their grave sin of omission involved the execution of an innocent 5-year-old boy.
On Sunday, 25-year-old Darius Sessoms, a black man, allegedly killed white 5-year-old Cannon Hinnant while the child’s two young sisters looked on. While Hinnant was riding his bike in the front yard of his father’s North Carolina home, Sessoms, his neighbor, reportedly ran across the yard and shot the child in the head point-blank. One neighbor witnessed the incident, as did the boy’s 7- and 8-year-old sisters.
“My first reaction was he’s playing with the kids,” said Doris Lybrand, the neighbor who saw Sessoms run across the lawn and shoot the boy. “For a second, I thought, ‘That couldn’t happen.’ People don’t run across the street and kill kids.”
“We were eating our dinner and heard a bang. We knew it was a gunshot,” Charlene Walburn, another of the boy’s neighbors, described the scene. “So I told him to call 911, and I ran to the door.”
The boy’s father dashed out to his son, screaming and holding his bleeding body. Hinnant was rushed to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
After the shooting, Sessoms fled in a black vehicle. The U.S. Marshals Service Carolinas Regional Fugitive Task Force, Goldsboro police, and Wayne County Sheriff’s Office arrested him nearly 24 hours later. Sessoms is being held in the Wilson County jail without bond and has been charged with first-degree murder.
“I just don’t understand why he did it,” Walburn continued. “How can you walk up to a little boy, point blank, and put a gun to his head and just shoot him? How could anyone do that?”
The same neighbor described Hinnant’s sweet demeanor. “He would come over, him and my husband would always talk back and forth and he would ask my husband to put air in his tire,” Walburn said. “If he saw me on the porch with a popsicle, he would always come over and ask me if he could have a popsicle.”
Sessoms reportedly had dinner with Hinnant’s father last week and was seen at the father’s residence earlier in the day Sunday.
Day in and day out, the national media has stoked the coals of racial tension in America, cultivating a blazing inferno of strife — both literally and figuratively. The world has watched as lawless rioters and looters desecrated America’s cities, setting businesses and churches ablaze, coaxed onward by an approving news media. Journalists have run cover for violent actors, lumping them in with peaceful protesters.
Over and over, the media have repeated the story of George Floyd and hurled blanket accusations of police brutality, which has encouraged violence against police officers, all while largely ignoring deaths that aren’t politically expedient. These deaths include that of black police officer David Dorn, who died while protecting a store from violent looters in St. Louis. Now the media is ignoring the death of Hinnant at the hands of a black man.
The media will continue their race framing, as if every act of man is the product of a racial consideration. It doesn’t apply only to crime, either. Everything in American culture and politics in 2020 must be viewed through a racial lens. Brands have been canceled, sports teams renamed, and Black Lives Matter scrawled across basketball courts and end zones. Former Vice President Joe Biden yesterday announced the selection of Sen. Kamala Harris as his running mate, after activists and party leaders pressured him to choose a woman of color.
As the blaze of manufactured conflict continues, be mindful of the media’s framing. Note not only their sins of commission as they intentionally divide Americans over the color of their skin, but also their sins of omission as they ignore victims that cut against the “America is racist” narrative, such as the many victims of black-on-black crime. Today, the victim they’ve ignored is Cannon Hinnant.
Will the mainstream media say his name?