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July 19, 2025 14 mins

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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

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Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:11):
Four college students stabbed todeath, slashed so violently that
blood leaked through the wall.
But the media refused to saystabbed knife or slashed
selectively sanitizing the newstoday on the 10th Man four

(00:33):
University of Idaho studentsmurdered in their sleep, killed
in a brutal attack, tragicallymurdered, horrific, quadruple
homicide.
Those are some of the newsquotes and headlines that we've
seen in the last two and a halfyears.
Funny, isn't it, A house soakedin blood.

(00:56):
Four students butchered a knifeattack, so gruesome, the walls
leaked blood to the outside andyet ABC news never once said
stabbed.
At least not until the knifesheath was found and introduced
into evidence, and they kind ofhad to mention it.

(01:18):
You need to understand that theMoscow murders weren't just bad.
They were gruesome beyondbelief.
This is so tragic that I'm noteven comfortable talking about
it and introducing the politicsinto the discussion.
But the coroner called it theworst crime scene she'd ever

(01:40):
witnessed.
According to the reporting,blood was visible from outside
the house.
It had seeped down through thefloors and walls.
It wasn't just a brutal killing,it was a mass stabbing massacre.
And yet none of this has beenwidely reported.
So why not?

(02:00):
Is it because of somesensitivity to our feelings that
the media have?
Well compare that to theWashington Post who gleefully
ran photos of a series of schoolshooting aftermaths.
They showed bullet holes, brokenglass, overturned chairs and

(02:21):
pools.
Yes, literal pools of blood.
They had no problem showingreaders the raw physical
aftermath when it was gunviolence.
But with Moscow, there's not asingle crime scene photo, not a
forensic breakdown.

(02:42):
There's not even anacknowledgement of the method of
killing on the news.
Why?
Because when it's a gun, itsupports their narrative.
But when it's a knife, it getsin the way.
From day one.
The networks have avoidedsaying, stabbed.
They use words like murderedslain, brutally killed, but

(03:05):
never stabbed, even thoughthat's exactly what happened,
Actually, would that it werestabbed because apparently they
were slashed.
In fact, when they show thescenes of the school shootings,
it's just the nature of thingsthat, I don't wanna be more

(03:28):
explicit than this.
There's gonna be more blood witha knife than there is with a
gun.
In Moscow.
Had it been a gun, we'd havebeen hearing AR 15 every hour on
the hour.
They would've told you themodel, the magazine size.
The muzzle velocity, what brandof ammo the killer bought, what

(03:50):
store he went to.
But mass stabbing, you know,they love the term mass
shooting.
They never even say massstabbing.
Neither term is really valid.
They should just say massmurder, because the real problem
is the murderer, not the method.
And if they said mass stabbing,well that would undermine the
gun control narrative.

(04:12):
It would open doors if theydon't want open, so they just
closed them preemptively.
Let's look at some clips.
Let's look at all the news clipsthey've done since we started
tracking this in August of 2024,and count how many times they
say murder killed, but theynever say how./ Lawyers for the

(04:34):
man accused of killing fourcollege students in Moscow,
Idaho are asking the judge tomove the trial.
The death penalty will remain onthe table.
For Brian Berger, the mancharged with killing four
University of Idaho students./in the case against the man
accused of killing four Idahocollege students.
This morning newly releasedcourt documents show lawyers for
accused killer Brian Bergerargue he should not have to face

(04:57):
the death penalty coberg isaccused of killing four
University of Idaho students atthis off-campus house/ new
evidence in the Idaho CollegeMurders case.
These text messages speakdirectly to what the roommates
were experiencing at the timearound the murders.
For the first time, textmessages between the two
surviving roommates of the IdahoCollege murders now revealed

The Tenth Man (05:19):
Okay, so they don't say stabbing or knife or
slash So what.
Well, don't underestimate howstrategic this is because you
know, the media outlets aren'tjust choosing words.
They're picking search terms.
It's all about.
What content creators call SEO,search Engine optimization and

(05:41):
the media outlets areengineering what turns up in
searches.
You see, if you repeat massshooting enough times, then
that's what will dominate searchresults in recommendation
engines like Google or ai.
But if you start saying massstabbing and we do have mass

(06:01):
stabbings, suddenly youraudience might realize that guns
aren't the only tool for massmurder and now the narrative's
at risk.
So it's very deliberate.
The media deliberately suppresscertain words, and it's all
calculated, and it's not toprotect the public, but to
control what the public finds.

(06:24):
Everybody's relying on Googleand on AI and the media are
training the algorithms to obeytheir framing of the news.
This wasn't a one time strategy.
There's another case, the Delphimurders, where two teenage girls
were found on a hiking trail inIndiana.

(06:45):
They too had been stabbed andslashed to death.
listen to these news clips fromA, B, C./
Now to Indiana and a guiltyverdict in the murders of two
young girls there was no DNAevidence, but eventually
prosecutors linked an unspent.
Bullet from the crime scene toAlan's gun.
An unspent round was found at the scene and

(07:07):
traced to the traced to thekiller's gun.
Or this one./
Two girls were murdered inDelphi, Indiana.
Here's ABC's Alex Perez.
Abby asks her best friend, ifthe man following them is still
there abby and Libby wereordered down that hill Police
say at gunpoint and killed
The girls were forced down the hill at gunpoint

(07:27):
and killed.
Huh?
Shouldn't there be a disclaimerto say they were not shot?
They want you to think that thegirls were shot.
This is terrible.
They're actually exploiting themurder of these two girls to
reinforce their gun controlnarrative.
They weren't shot.
They were slashed and stabbed.

(07:48):
The coroner confirmed it.
The defense didn't dispute it,but the media still led with the
gun even though the gun wasn'tfired.
'cause if there's a gun in theroom that goes into the
headline, but a knife, they burythat.
How much more deliberately couldthe press be misdirecting us,

(08:11):
it's a case of narratives beforefacts.
And here's another example whereit actually gets insulting in
August, 2024.
During the exact same a, b, cnews segment covering the Moscow
murders they ran another story.
Well, it's in the crawler.
A Syrian refugee had stabbedmultiple people in Germany.

(08:35):
You know, they could have linkedthose two together saying mass
stabbings are common in Europe,which they are, and they could
have called it a rare massstabbing here.
But of course they never calledit that.
They never even said stabbing.
But they did for Germany in thecrawler underneath the report
for the same Moscow murders.

(08:56):
They call it a stabbing attackin Germany.
It's the same show, samesegment.
I am actually surprised theydidn't use the, the same, uh,
call it a mass attack inGermany, but for some reason
they had no problem usingstabbing when it happened
overseas.
When it involved a foreigner,perhaps they decided that had no
impact on US policy debates.

(09:19):
But in Moscow, it's fourstudents butchered and they
refuse to say the word.
So this is beyond justinconsistency.
It's an editorial decision witha goal to protect the narrative.
They control the framing andavoid terms that derail their
agenda and.

(09:39):
Isn't it odd that normally inthe news, you know, the
expression, if it bleeds, itleads.
The news should have beencashing in on this.
And can you imagine thediscussions in the a, b, C
newsroom between the people whoare the bean counters and the
policy people?

(10:02):
The policy people are truezealots because the policy
people put their gun controlnarrative above all else,
including profits.
Can you imagine, again, the beancounter saying, we've got to go
with this story.
This is, this is ratings goldold, and the editorial staff won

(10:24):
out.
Nope.
Nope.
We have to bury this.
We can't have people thinkingthat knives are as dangerous as
guns.
So now we come to the cachingin, because the Moscow trial is
stalled because there's been asettlement.

(10:45):
So the evidence is sealed.
So holy smokes.
Now there's not gonna be a trialwhere 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 theblood and gore, and you'll be

(11:07):
able to make all the money youwant.
But now that's not gonna happen.
So maybe that was the plan allalong.
Let's wait this out because nowwe're gonna cash in.
There's not gonna be a trial.
No testimony, no crime scenewalkthrough with the body cam
footage no courtroom artistsketches describing the carnage.

(11:33):
But instead, guess what?
We do get, there's gonna be aJames Patterson book.
There's gonna be a documentaryfrom NBC featuring the victim's
families.
Patterson appeared on a, B, cwith his co-author, and in that,
he said this/

(11:53):
I'll tell you one thing, anybodylistening and watching if you're
disappointed, because you're notgonna find out what's, what's
happening in the trial.
Everything that would've beencovered in the trial is covered
in this book.
Everything and so much more.
Uh, things about the policedepartment there
everything and so much more.
So A, B, C wouldn't call it amass stabbing when it mattered.

(12:16):
But they'll help you buy it Nowthat it's entertainment.
The truth wasn't fit for thenews desk, but it's great for
the bookshelf and for only$28and 99 cents, you can have your
own copy.
And this is the real mediacycle.
They bury the facts if they'reinconvenient.

(12:39):
And avoid words that break theirnarrative.
They lock up the evidence behindlegal and policy red tape, and
then they repackage the story asentertainment.
You know, there'll ought be alaw.
A company that's supposedly anews outlet should not be

(13:00):
allowed to profit by selling thesame story back to you as a
documentary, which is reallyentertainment,/
This morning, more than twoyears after the murder of their
son, Ethan, Stacey and JimChapin tell us in an exclusive
interview, they finally haveclosure.
Ethan Chapin, brutally stabbedto death in November, 2022

(13:22):
ethan's family sharing theirstory in a new prime video
documentary about the murders.
But that's how it works.
NBC gets their dramaticdocuseries.
A b, C gets their exclusiveauthor interview and James
Patterson gets the royalties.
So ahead of next week'ssentencing, James Patterson and

(13:44):
Vicki Ward discussed their newbook about the murders and lift
the veil of secrecy that hasshrouded this case for more than
two years.
The new book, the Idaho four, anAmerican Tragedy, Maddie was the
first person, the culprit killedthe knife sheath with his DNA.
Found under her body, you willmeet, Ethan and Kaylee and

(14:07):
Maddie, and Zanna.
You'll meet them and you willfeel them as human beings.
The Idaho foreign Americantragedy is out now.
But the American public, they get the truth only
after it's been scrubbed,processed, and most of all
monetized/ And just in case youmissed it, here's that James
Patterson quote.
One more time./ Everything thatwould've been covered in the

(14:31):
trial is covered in this book.
Everything and so much more.
The knife didn't disappear.
They just waited until it wassafe to sell.
This has been the 10th Man wherewe expose the story behind the
silence and the profit behindthe coverup.
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