Yes, media covered shooting of white parking officer in Philadelphia | Fact check

Nate Trela, USA TODAY
·4 min read

The claim: No media coverage or protests after shooting death of a white man in Philadelphia

A Sept. 30 post on X, formerly Twitter, includes footage of a man walking up behind another man on a city street, shooting him in the head and running off.

"Another random cold blooded execution of a white man in Philadelphia, US," reads the post's caption. "No media coverage, no national outrage, no protests – you are not supposed to know."

The post was reposted more than 1,000 times in four days on X. It was also shared more than 100 times on Facebook, according to CrowdTangle, a social media analytics tool.

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Our rating: Partly false

There were indeed no protests in the wake of this incident, but the shooting was covered by national media as well as local media in New York and Philadelphia. And execution description is off the mark since the victim survived the attack.

Shooting received local, national coverage

The footage in the X post matches video shared by Philadelphia police on YouTube. The description of that video states the incident took place on Nov. 25, 2022, and the victim was a Philadelphia Parking Authority officer.

USA TODAY found no record of protests tied to this shooting. But weeks of coverage followed in local and national media.

Police first released the video on Nov. 30, 2022, and stories were run that day about the shooting by the New York Post and KYW-TV in Philadelphia. The reports state the man who was shot, 37-year-old Timothy McKenzie, survived the attack.

After police identified the suspect on Dec. 14 as Termaine Saulsbury and said he was also a suspect in another shooting in New York, KYW-TV and Fox News were among the outlets to cover it.

After Saulsbury was arrested on Dec. 21, 2022, coverage included stories by WABC-TV New York, the Philadelphia Inquirer, WPVI-TV Philadelphia, WPIX-TV New York and Fox News.

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The claim’s language also implies that crimes against white people do not receive the same media attention as those of other races, but multiple studies show otherwise.

A study looking at media coverage of murders in Chicago in 2016 found that, on average, more articles were written about white victims (3.8) compared to Black (2.8) and Hispanic (2.6) victims. That is a larger gap than noted in a study of coverage of murder victims in Indianapolis in 1995, which found an average of 2.7 articles on white victims versus 2.06 for Black victims.

USA TODAY could not reach the users who shared the post for comment.

Reuters also debunked the claim.

Our fact-check sources:

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Philadelphia parking officer's shooting covered by media | Fact check

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