Here’s a test of famous sayings by two powerful women on each side of the world and the political spectrum. First, American journalist Ann Coulter: “The longer we go without being told the race of the shooters, the less likely it is to be white men.” “Coulter’s Law”, a criticism of media bias, applies to crimes of violence across the board. Witness the spate of “random” attacks on women and Jews, in New York especially. It can also be broadened to “‘cis’ (to use that ridiculous term) heterosexual white men.”
Second is NZ Greens co-leader Marama Davidson: “I know who causes violence in the world, it is white cis men. That is white cis men who cause violence in the world.”
Consider both, as you read the following from the NZ Herald:
A 16-year-old boy schoolboy has been left with facial injuries after a brutal attack by a woman with a steel rod on an Auckland bus.
Only one person intervened in the racially motivated attack about 9am on Friday that resulted in the boy having three teeth knocked out and a further two teeth damaged […]
The woman started yelling racial slurs at the Chinese-New Zealand boy before attacking him with a metal rod, unprovoked.
NZ Herald
So, that’s strike one on at least one count for Davidson: here is a woman causing, not just violence, but racially motivated violence.
And for Coulter? Well, note that the perpetrator is described as just “a woman”. Now, the journalist might defend themselves on ethical grounds – Do not place unnecessary emphasis on personal characteristics, including race, ethnicity, nationality – yet, that didn’t stop them emphasising the victim’s race, ethnicity, nationality. Then there’s the key caveat: unnecessary emphasis. Too often, per Coulter, when the perpetrator is a white male, the media have no qualms about emphasising their identity.
There’s also the very first tenet of media ethics: Report and interpret honestly, striving for accuracy, fairness and disclosure of all essential facts. Do not suppress relevant available facts (emphasis added).
Were there any “relevant available facts” omitted? To find out, we have to, as we so often do these days, turn to social media to find what the mainstream media won’t tell us.
A citizen journalist on social media interviewed the good Samaritan (more on that later), who said this:
“Shortly after the bus started, one of the passengers was a Maori looking woman in her 40s who weighed over 200kg and was holding an iron bar about 12mm thick and a metre long. She got on the bus from time to time to hit the floor of the bus hard with the iron rod, originally sat next to her girl to hide to other seats. Unexpectedly, the woman suddenly stood up and hit a Chinese boy who was one row away from her with the iron bar, and the woman hit him continuously with the iron bar and stabbed the boy in the face.”
So much to unpack, here (why was the woman allowed to carry a fairly obvious weapon on a bus?), but the key takeaway: Maori.
Now, is it “unnecessary emphasis” to report that? That excuse might be made, except that, as the media have taken an almost ghoulish delight in reporting, there have been rising numbers of attacks on Asian New Zealanders in the last few years. No mention (per Coulter’s Law) though, of who might be doing much of it.
Once again, social media fills the void left by the mainstream media.
“Hate to say it but… ask any Asian what demographic they get the most racial abuse from. I can speak from experience.”
“Similar thing happened to my asian friend on an OUT bus too. Sat near a lady of a similar description and she started hurling verbal abuse at her, calling her a monkey, an animal, etc, until she got off the bus.”
“While on a OUT in the New Market, an asian looking man tried to sit next to a maori/pacifica looking woman and she got so upset, she started abusing him verbally calling him fat and other awful words. She then moved to the back and kept yelling at him. Awful.”
These comments are, of course, anecdotal. But one might think that even the most incurious mainstream journalist or “countering violent extremism expert” might start to wonder.
So, it looks like Ann Coulter is a clear winner.
And Marama Davidson? To paraphrase a (likely apocryphal) saying from Einstein: it would take only one counter-example to bust the theory. Here we have violence from a non-white woman.
Davidson is busted. Again.
As for what else there is to unpack from this incident:
Although there were more than 10 people on the bus, only one person intervened in the attack.
“A 75-year-old gentleman at the back helped me to control the woman and get in the middle of her.”
The woman jumped off the bus at the Williams Ave bus stop in Pakuranga and ran away.
NZ Herald
So, one person out of a whole busload, including the driver, stepped in to help. A 75 year-old.
This brave elderly Chinese gentleman is identified only by his social media name, “Penglai Qiuyue”.
