Knoxville Horror: Trial Dates Set; MSM “Discovers” Case; Bloggers Continue Spreading Rumors

By Nicholas Stix The MSM is finally starting, ever so modestly, to report on Tennessee’s Knoxville Horror, even as far from the crime scene as Denver! (A tip o’ the hat to Modern Tribalist.) On May 17, Knox County Criminal Court Judge Richard Baumgartner announced that the four defendants charged with having kidnapped, robbed, gang-raped, murdered, desecrated the corpses of, and stolen from Channon Christian, 21, and Christopher Newsom, 23, will each have a separate trial, each of which Judge Baumgartner foresees – perhaps a tad optimistically – as lasting two weeks. The state indictments can all be read here. Newsom was anally gang-raped, and then murdered several hours after being kidnapped; Christian was vaginally, orally, and anally gang-raped, and murdered approximately 24 hours after the couple was kidnapped. At one point, one or more of the defendants allegedly also poured cleaning fluid down the presumably then still living Christian’s throat, but a false report by Michelle Malkin notwithstanding, none of the defendants has been charged with torture. (Speaking of false reporting, 99 percent of the bloggers and Web sites I have read on the case, even Court TV’s usually reliable Crime Library, have been content to uncritically regurgitate an unsourced rumor that I traced back to neo-Nazi New York State radio host Hal Turner, whereby the killers chopped off the living Christopher Newsom’s penis and at least one of the living Channon Christian’s breasts. The largely neoconservative bloggers in question, who claim to hate neo-Nazis, and who tar as a white supremacist anyone who is not racially correct, do not appreciate being told where they got their “facts” on the case. On May 18, after a four-month-long stonewalling campaign by law enforcement and justice officials, Knox County District Attorney Randy Nichols’ special assistant, John Gill, insisted that the Internet rumors of sexual mutilation are “absolutely not true.” Gill’s statement has so far had no effect on the bloggers, and authorities in Knoxville have still not released the autopsy reports on the victims.) George Geovonni Thomas, 24, is charged with having shot Newsom to death and set his corpse on fire. Christian may have been strangled. According to a February 1 report by Fox News’ Knoxville affiliate, WATE 6 News, at least one of the killers dismembered Christian, placing her body parts in five separate garbage bags and putting the bags in a garbage can in the kitchen of the apartment of defendant-brothers Letalvis Darnell Cobbins, 24, and Lemaricus Devall Davidson, 25, where police found the bags. Between the February 1 report and May 17, the dismemberment of Channon Christian was no longer included in any of the reports this reporter has seen; I only came into possession of the aforementioned report on May 17, thanks to a reader’s help. Coincidentally, that same day, a report on CBS’ Knoxville affiliate, WVLT, spoke vaguely of police “finding Channon Christian stuffed in garbage bags.” It is not known whether the killers first murdered Channon Christian, or began dismembering her while she was still alive, something for which there is ample precedent among black racist torture-killers of whites. (See also the black supremacist Yahweh ben Yahweh mass murder cult.) Ex-con Letalvis Cobbins, alias Letalvis Davidson, is scheduled for trial on May 12, 2008. Cobbins is indicted on 46 Tennessee state felony counts, including aggravated kidnapping, aggravated robbery, aggravated rape, felony murder, premeditated murder and theft. Cobbins was previously convicted of felony third-degree attempted robbery on May 19, 2003, in Queens, NY – he just celebrated his anniversary! Cobbins’ girlfriend, Vanessa Coleman, 18, was indicted on 40 state felony counts, including aggravated rape, felony murder, and premeditated murder. In a touching courtroom moment on May 17, according to WVLT reporter Gordon Boyd, Coleman “mouthed the words, ‘I love you’ as she was led out.” Coleman’s trial is set to begin on June 16, 2008. Coleman was referred to in initial reports in January as a “witness” rather than as a suspect, and was a source of much material that eventually went into the case against her and her fellow defendants. An able defense attorney would try and spin Coleman’s cooperation into a mitigating factor at trial, and if she is convicted, during the sentencing phase. (Although Tennessee is a death-penalty state, Knox County District Attorney Randy Nichols has inexplicably refused to reveal whether he will seek the death penalty.) How loving Cobbins is presently feeling about Coleman’s cooperation with federal agents and local police may be another matter entirely. Cobbins’ ex-con brother, Lemaricus Davidson, was charged with the same 46 counts as Cobbins, and is scheduled to go on trial for them on July 14, 2008. (According to published reports, Eric Dewayne Boyd, 34, told federal agents that Davidson had confessed to him that he had murdered – “choked” – Channon Christian.) Davidson, convicted in Tennessee in 2001 of federal carjacking charges, a death penalty-eligible crime, and in spite of being a problem prisoner – but who among us is perfect? – served but a token sentence of at most five years, and was released only shortly before his alleged crime spree. In addition to the initial 46-count indictment handed down against Davidson on February 1, earlier this month, he was indicted on six additional state felony counts in the January 8 armed robbery of an employee in a local Pizza Hut, the attempted armed robbery of a female customer in the restaurant, and weapons possession charges. (Not noticing that Davidson allegedly had a gun trained on her when he allegedly tried to grab the customer’s purse, she resisted, and the “bewildered” robber was allegedly left holding the ripped strap.) Davidson’s next court date in the Pizza Hut case is September 27. Thus, the allegations so far are that beginning in the wee hours, Davidson spent all of January 7 variously carjacking, kidnapping, robbing, torturing and gang-raping Christopher Newsom and Channon Christian, and murdering Christian, and then headed out the next day, to rob people at the Pizza Hut. Busy fellow, he. Ex-con George Thomas, likewise indicted on the same 46 counts, is scheduled for trial on August 11, 2008. Thomas is charged with having shot Newsom to death. Deputy U.S. Marshal Rich Knighten reportedly said that Davidson wept when he was arrested. Ex-con Eric Boyd has been charged federally, in U.S. District Court in Knoxville, with “being an accessory after the fact to carjacking,” for having allegedly helped Davidson flee apprehension. Boyd’s trial date has yet to be set. Boyd has not been charged with any of the state crimes. (Michelle Malkin also erroneously reported that Boyd was charged in the murders, kidnappings, and rapes of Christian and Newsom.) Cobbins, Davidson, and Thomas were also charged federally with carjacking and two counts of federal weapons felonies, but at the request of the U.S. Attorney’s Office, a federal judge dismissed the federal charges “without prejudice” (meaning that they may later be reinstated), so that the Tennessee state prosecutions could go forward first. Having separate, consecutive trials offers potential advantages to prosecutors. Earlier defendants may seek to impute all guilt for the crimes they are charged with to defendants who have yet to be tried, and may provide a wealth of information that can be used against their alleged accomplices. Or they could simply be fonts of misinformation and lies. For an example of such gamesmanship in the present case, when Letalvis Cobbins and George Thomas were initially apprehended in Lebanon, KY, they reportedly claimed in affidavits to federal agents that Eric Boyd was in fact the rapist-murderer. So much for loyalty or gratitude. It is not known whether Cobbins or Thomas has of late made any public expressions of love to Boyd. Some black supremacist activists have, however, publicly expressed their love for Davidson, Cobbins, and Thomas. On May 18, “Christopher Felon,” one of the contributors to the black supremacist Web site, Svengali Media, which celebrates all black-on-white racist atrocities, and has cheered the rapes, tortures, and murders of Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom, left the following comments to my last column on the Christian-Newsom case:

christopherfelon said,

Many blacks are pulling for Knoxville's 'SuperThug' & Carjacker Lemaricus Davidson to win the 2007 Sexiest & Hardest Ghetto Black Male Felon Bragging Rights competition for 2007. Others are still on the sideline as to whether it was appropriate for the competition editor, Kirkland Perkins, to waive the rapist disqualification rule and invoke the 'Emit Till' excuseable rape clause so Davidson and his brother could compete.

I soundly support Savannah's 'Slave Avenger' Michael 'Turtle' Thorpe. The family of Thorpe's victim, Jennifer Ross, owned slaves and never paid their reparations. This is keenly why Thorpe is Perkins *favorite* to win the 2007 Rights.

Voting online's been added. And it is exciting that Knoxville's George 'Detroit' Thomas received enough votes to qualify to compete! There's never been 3 competitors from the same city and for the same crime in the competition ever!

http://www.svengalimedia.com/race/sexiest_black_male_felon_2006.html

May 18, 2007 at 2:18 am · Edit

christopherfelon said,

Knoxville's George 'Detroit' Thomas DID QUALIFY TO COMPETE in this year's Bragging Rights Competition!

http://www.svengalimedia.com/race/sexiest_black_male_felon_2006.html

May 18, 2007 at 11:01 am · Edit

The more one learns about this case, the less justifiable the four-month-long national media blackout becomes. One could devote entire three-hour blocks of cable news time exclusively to this story, without ever having to use the endless loops or even partial repeat passages on which cable news relies for filler with big stories, while enjoying blockbuster ratings. How did the media suddenly develop an allergy to making money?

The Knoxville Horror: White Supremacy, Black Supremacy, and Censorship

By Nicholas Stix On May 22, the allegedly conservative New York Sun published a guest op-ed column by John Leo, “The Politics of News,” on the racial censorship imposed by the MSM on the Knoxville Horror story of the carjacking-robbery-kidnapping-torture-gang rape-murder-corpse desecrations of Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom. But in a move that may yet bite the Sun’s editors in the pants, they apparently forgot to take their irony supplements. Blogger Dave Lucas tried twice to post comments to Leo’s column. Both times – once with links, once without – he was censored. Leo’s column is much better than standard Republican MSM fare.

The mainstream press does not like to carry stories of black mayhem and white victims. First, there is the fear of stirring up more racism among Klansmen and neo-Nazis, as the Knoxville case has started to do. More importantly, the newsroom culture tends to view black-on-white crimes as responses to black oppression, and therefore not worth reporting. Whereas similar white-on-black crime is oppression itself, and thus crucially important to put before readers and viewers.

I think Leo’s first explanation is wrong in giving legitimacy to an MSM cover story. Media apologists may say they fear stirring up white racism by reporting on the Knoxville Horror, but first of all, Klansmen and neo-Nazis are politically impotent figures, as opposed to the black supremacists who have well-paying jobs at taxpayers’ expense, tenured professorships and school teacher sinecures, and positions running schools and even school systems, from which they spew lies and hatred and provoke violence (see the chapter on education in this report), and who have engaged in campaigns of mass murder against whites. Secondly, it was the suppression of the story that inspired the white supremacists and neo-Nazis to organize rallies in Knoxville, the first of which is scheduled to take place on May 26 at 3:00 p.m., on the steps of city’s old courthouse, and the second of which is scheduled to take place at the same location on June 16. Neo-Nazi leader Alex Linder of the Vanguard News Network, who organized the May 26 rally, told me in April that he refuses to apply for a permit, and said in so many words that he is daring the authorities to stop him. “Uh, we’re just going to, simply, uh, we’re going to use our rights.” (Oh, so, in other words, you might do it without a permit.) “[Chuckles] We’re going to do – yeah, we’re going to do it without a permit.” Linder’s explanation for the media suppression? “Well, it’s the Jewish media control. And the fact that any kind of non-white crime doesn’t fit their agenda, so they suppress it…. “The Jews are the ones who produce the policies that ensure that this stuff happens.” Among other things, Linder told me, “I was disappointed to find out you’re a Jew.” Typical for a neo-Nazi, he is more obsessed with Jews, with whom he sees “whites” in a defensive war of extermination, than he is with blacks or even “liberals.” (The scare quotes around whites are because Linder sees “whites” and “Jews” as two distinct races who cannot share the same planet.) The brilliance and courage of John Leo’s second point, however, more than make up for the wrongheadedness of the first.

[T]he newsroom culture tends to view black-on-white crimes as responses to black oppression, and therefore not worth reporting. Whereas similar white-on-black crime is oppression itself, and thus crucially important to put before readers and viewers.

So that the reader does not water down Leo’s meaning, Leo is saying that newsrooms are dominated by people who privately cheer on blacks who commit violent, even gruesome crimes against whites, while censoring those stories, and correspondingly exaggerating stories of white-on-black crime. On the May 22, 2007 O’Reilly Report, socialist columnist Ellis Henican from Long Island Newsday was the guest. Henican not only denied that the gang-rapes, tortures, murders, and corpse desecrations committed against Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom were racially motivated, he even went so far as to contradict guest host Michelle Malkin’s observation of her experience of the role race plays in newsrooms in suppressing stories. Henican acted as though Malkin were delusional. (See, I’ll give the Devil her due!) Such anti-white newsroom prejudices have been exhaustively detailed by Ruth Shalit, in her groundbreaking, 13,000-word 1995 New Republic exposé, “Race in the Newsroom—The Washington Post in Black and White,” and in William McGowan’s 2001 book, Coloring the News: How Crusading for Diversity Has Corrupted American Journalism. More recently, in 2005 and 2006 (also here, on September 21), building on work by the bloggers “ziel” of Your Lying Eyes and Eric Scheie at Classical Values, I wrote exposés on the campaign of massive journalistic fraud engineered by the New Orleans Times-Picayune. In early September 2005, the “Times-Pic” first reported on the savagery that pervaded post-Katrina New Orleans, and then, chagrined at having portrayed black folks behaving badly, its editors and reporters resolved to unreport the truth. The newspaper then assembled a team to discredit its own stories, but without admitting that it had published them. The newspaper acted as though someone else had published the stories. The irony of all this is that most or all of the original Times-Pic stories were true, while the story “discrediting” them was one of the biggest frauds in American journalism history. In one of the darkest moments in American journalism history (coming two years after the Jayson Blair scandal!), for the Times-Pic’s yeoman efforts at deceiving the public, it was awarded not one but two Pulitzer Prizes. (Regarding Jayson Blair, see here, here, and here.) More apropo, I bestowed on the newspaper a Duranty-Blair Award for Journalistic Infamy. But coming from the smirking Henican, such prevaricating was particularly shameless. Ellis Henican is a veteran staffer at Newsday, which has an over thirty-year tradition of anti-white racism, which until the New York Times caught up under Arthur “Pinch” Sulzberger Jr., was by far the most radical leftwing daily newspaper in New York, and which during the mid-1970s, in the middle of a nationwide campaign by black supremacists to systematically assassinate white policemen (see also here), sought through fraudulent reporting to get heroic white policemen murdered. As the friend who alerted me to the late-night re-run of Henican’s appearance quipped, “Of course not -- just some misguided, oppressed ‘yoots.’” Now, Dave Lucas has a sense of fairness and of what will entertain readers. On May 18, when he posted about Michelle Malkin’s Knoxville video, he posted links both to her video and to my column attacking her for stealing credit for the story. When Lucas emailed me Wednesday of his problems with the Sun, I tried posting a brief comment to Leo’s article – “Actually, Michelle Malkin is not leading the charge, though an awful lot of people feel the need to give her credit” — along with links to my original Knoxville story and my Malkin broadside, the paper’s blog censor permitted my comment – but censored the links, without which the comment was just so much unsupported blather. This wasn’t the Sun’s first problem with censorship and reporting on race. (One would be shocked, if it were.) Back in December 2002, when black supremacist kidnapper-murderer-extortionist Sonny Carson died, the Sun’s black columnist, Errol Louis, devoted a thoroughly dishonest column to Carson, whom Louis fondly referred to as a “trickster.” Louis spent not word on Carson’s history as a violent gangster. A reader who was unfamiliar with Carson would learn nothing about his history of murder, of his kidnapping conviction (the kidnapping victim was murdered during the kidnapping, and Carson was convicted of kidnapping, but somehow not convicted of murder), of his years-long violent campaign terrorizing, seeking to extort money from Korean produce store owners, and in one case, murdering them, or of his other campaign to run competent white teachers out of black-dominated schools, and even to violently run out black school principals who were not his allies. The Sun is supposedly a conservative newspaper, and so one would expect that it would hire a conservative to be its token black columnist. However, in the racially sycophantic way Republicans have of dealing with race, the newspapers editors were apparently happy just to have any black New Yorker on its masthead, and so hired Louis. I wrote a letter exposing the true Sonny Carson that Louis had hidden from readers, but the newspaper protected him – and left its readers in the lurch. The politics of news, indeed!

Knoxville Horror: Trial Dates Set; MSM “Discovers” Case; Bloggers Continue Spreading Rumors

By Nicholas Stix The MSM is finally starting, ever so modestly, to report on Tennessee’s Knoxville Horror, even as far from the crime scene as Denver! (A tip o’ the hat to Modern Tribalist.) On Thursday, Knox County Criminal Court Judge Richard Baumgartner announced that the four defendants charged with having kidnapped, robbed, gang-raped, murdered, desecrated the corpses of, and stolen from Channon Christian, 21, and Christopher Newsom, 23, will each have a separate trial, each of which Judge Baumgartner foresees – perhaps a tad optimistically – as lasting two weeks. The state indictments can all be read here. Newsom was anally gang-raped, and then murdered several hours after being kidnapped; Christian was vaginally, orally, and anally gang-raped, and murdered approximately 24 hours after the couple was kidnapped. At one point, one or more of the defendants allegedly also poured cleaning fluid down the presumably then still living Christian’s throat, but a false report by Michelle Malkin notwithstanding, none of the defendants has been charged with torture. (Speaking of false reporting, 99 percent of the bloggers and Web sites I have read on the case, even Court TV’s usually reliable Crime Library, have been content to uncritically regurgitate an unsourced rumor that I traced back to neo-Nazi New York State radio host Hal Turner, whereby the killers chopped off the living Christopher Newsom’s penis and at least one of the living Channon Christian’s breasts. The largely neoconservative bloggers in question, who claim to hate neo-Nazis, and who tar as a white supremacist anyone who is not racially correct, do not appreciate being told where they got their “facts” on the case. On May 18, after a four-month-long stonewalling campaign by law enforcement and justice officials, Knox County District Attorney General Randy Nichols’ special assistant, John Gill, insisted that the Internet rumors of sexual mutilation are “absolutely not true.” Gill’s statement has so far had no effect on the bloggers, and authorities in Knoxville have still not released the autopsy reports on the victims.) George Geovonni Thomas, 24, is charged with having shot Newsom to death and set his corpse on fire. Christian may have been strangled. According to a February 1 report by Fox News’ Knoxville affiliate, WATE 6 News, at least one of the killers dismembered Christian, placing her body parts in five separate garbage bags and putting the bags in a garbage can in the kitchen of the apartment of defendant-brothers Letalvis Darnell Cobbins, 24, and Lemaricus Devall Davidson, 25, where police found the bags. Between the February 1 report and May 17, the dismemberment of Channon Christian was no longer included in any of the reports this reporter has seen; I only came into possession of the aforementioned report on May 17, thanks to a reader’s help. Coincidentally, that same day, a report on Knoxville’s WVLT-TV 8 News spoke vaguely of police “finding Channon Christian stuffed in garbage bags.” It is not known whether the killers murdered Christian first, or began dismembering her while she was still alive, something for which there is a precedent among black racist torture-killers of whites. Ex-con Letalvis Cobbins, alias Letalvis Davidson (convicted of felony third-degree attempted robbery on May 19, 2003, in Queens, NY – he just celebrated his anniversary!), is scheduled for trial on May 12, 2008. Cobbins is indicted on 46 Tennessee state felony counts, including aggravated kidnapping, aggravated robbery, aggravated rape, felony murder, premeditated murder and theft. Cobbins’ girlfriend, Vanessa Coleman, 18, was indicted on 40 state felony counts, including aggravated rape, felony murder, and premeditated murder. In a touching courtroom moment on Thursday, according to WVLT-TV 8 reporter Gordon Boyd, Coleman “mouthed the words, ‘I love you’ as she was led out.” Coleman’s trial is set to begin on June 16, 2008. Coleman was referred to in initial reports in January as a “witness” rather than as a suspect, and was a source of much material that eventually went into the case against her and her fellow defendants. An able defense attorney would try and spin Coleman’s cooperation into a mitigating factor at trial, and if she is convicted, during the sentencing phase. (Although Tennessee is a death-penalty state, Knox County District Attorney General Randy Nichols has inexplicably refused to reveal whether he will seek the death penalty.) How loving Cobbins is presently feeling about Coleman’s cooperation with federal agents and local police may be another matter entirely. Cobbins’ ex-con brother, Lemaricus Davidson (convicted of federal carjacking charges in 2001, he served but a token sentence and released only shortly before his alleged crime spree), was charged with the same 46 counts as Cobbins, and is scheduled to go on trial for them on July 14, 2008. (According to published reports, Eric Dewayne Boyd, 34, told federal agents that Davidson had confessed to him that he had murdered – “choked” – Channon Christian.) In addition to the initial 46-count indictment handed down against Davidson on February 1, on May 18 he was indicted on six additional felony counts in the January 8 armed robbery of a local Pizza Hut, the attempted armed robbery of a female customer in the restaurant, and weapons possession charges. (Not noticing that Davidson allegedly had a gun trained on her when he allegedly tried to grab the customer’s purse, she resisted, and the “bewildered” robber was left holding the ripped strap.) Davidson’s next court date in the Pizza Hut case is September 27. Thus, the allegations so far are that beginning in the wee hours, Davidson spent all of January 7 variously carjacking, kidnapping, robbing, torturing and gang-raping Christopher Newsom and Channon Christian, and murdering Christian, and then headed out the next day, and robbed the Pizza Hut. Ex-con George Thomas, likewise indicted on the same 46 counts, is scheduled for trial on August 11, 2008. Thomas is charged with having shot Newsom to death. Deputy U.S. Marshal Rich Knighten said that Davidson wept when he was arrested. Ex-con Eric Boyd has been charged federally, in U.S. District Court in Knoxville, with “being an accessory after the fact to carjacking,” for having allegedly helped Cobbins and Thomas flee apprehension to neighboring Lebanon, KY, where Deputy U.S. Marshal Rich Knighten told me that a local-county-state-federal interagency task force of 25-30 law enforcement officers arrested the fugitives without a struggle. Boyd’s trial date has yet to be set. Boyd has not been charged with any of the state crimes. (Michelle Malkin also erroneously reported that Boyd was charged in the murders, kidnappings, and rapes of Christian and Newsom.) Cobbins, Davidson, and Thomas were also charged federally with carjacking and two counts of federal weapons felonies, but at the request of the U.S. Attorney’s office, a federal judge dismissed the federal charges “without prejudice” (meaning that they may later be reinstated), so that the Tennessee state prosecutions could go forward first. Having separate, consecutive trials offers potential advantages to prosecutors. Earlier defendants may seek to impute all guilt for the crimes they are charged with to defendants who have yet to be tried, and may provide a wealth of information that can be used against their alleged accomplices. Or they could simply be fonts of misinformation and lies. For an example of such gamesmanship in the present case, when Letalvis Cobbins and George Thomas were initially apprehended in Lebanon, KY, they reportedly claimed in affidavits to federal agents that Eric Boyd, the man who had allegedly helped them escape capture in Knoxville, was in fact the rapist-murderer. So much for loyalty or gratitude. It is not known whether Cobbins or Thomas has of late made any public expressions of love to Boyd. Some black supremacist activists have, however, publicly expressed their love for Davidson, Cobbins and Thomas. On May 18, “Christopher Felon,” one of the contributors to the black supremacist Web site, Svengali Media, which celebrates all black-on-white racist atrocities, and has cheered the rapes, tortures, and murders of Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom, left the following comments to my last column on the Christian-Newsom case:

christopherfelon said,

Many blacks are pulling for Knoxville's 'SuperThug' & Carjacker Lemaricus Davidson to win the 2007 Sexiest & Hardest Ghetto Black Male Felon Bragging Rights competition for 2007. Others are still on the sideline as to whether it was appropriate for the competition editor, Kirkland Perkins, to waive the rapist disqualification rule and invoke the 'Emit Till' excuseable rape clause so Davidson and his brother could compete.

I soundly support Savannah's 'Slave Avenger' Michael 'Turtle' Thorpe. The family of Thorpe's victim, Jennifer Ross, owned slaves and never paid their reparations. This is keenly why Thorpe is Perkins *favorite* to win the 2007 Rights.

Voting online's been added. And it is exciting that Knoxville's George 'Detroit' Thomas received enough votes to qualify to compete! There's never been 3 competitors from the same city and for the same crime in the competition ever!

http://www.svengalimedia.com/race/sexiest_black_male_felon_2006.html

May 18, 2007 at 2:18 am · Edit

christopherfelon said,

Knoxville's George 'Detroit' Thomas DID QUALIFY TO COMPETE in this year's Bragging Rights Competition!

http://www.svengalimedia.com/race/sexiest_black_male_felon_2006.html

May 18, 2007 at 11:01 am · Edit

The more one learns about this case, the less justifiable the four-month-long national media blackout becomes. One could devote entire three-hour blocks of cable news time exclusively to this story, without ever having to use the endless loops or even partial repeat passages on which cable news relies for filler with big stories, while enjoying blockbuster ratings. How did the media suddenly develop an allergy to making money?