Ben Shapiro accuses media of ignoring horrific Charlotte murder as it doesn't fit 'preferred narrative'

CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA: Right-wing firebrand Ben Shapiro blasted the mainstream press for overlooking a story he says doesn’t square with their “preferred narrative.” 

According to the Daily Wire co-founder, the brutal stabbing of 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska on the Charlotte light rail last month, carried out by 34-year-old Decarlos Brown, never got the wall-to-wall coverage it deserved because it involved a white victim and a black suspect.

Ben Shapiro puts the media on blast

Ben Shapiro told Fox News’ Jesse Watters, “If this had been a Black victim and a White perpetrator, then it would have led the news nightly for months on end. You would have had riots in the streets."

"If it's the reverse situation, the media will completely ignore it because it doesn't match up with their preferred narrative of a white supremacist country that is cracking down on Black people, even though statistically speaking, obviously, the vast majority of crime is intra-racial, meaning White on White or Black on Black," he continued, "Black on White crime on a per capita basis is significantly higher than White on Black crime. That does not match up with the media narrative about white supremacy in the United States."

Watters asked, “Do you also feel like they're sensitive to being called racist by their friends, family, and colleagues for highlighting Black crime?”

“There's no question about that," Shapiro responded. "In the echo chamber that the legacy media live in, if you even mention Black on White crime, then you are immediately seen as racially discriminatory in some way. Because the basic idea on the left is that White against Black is really the story of America, as opposed to Blacks committing crimes against White people. To even mention that is to undermine the entire narrative of the 1619 Project, for example.”

The two also tore into soft-on-crime policies that let repeat offenders like Brown roam free. Watters asked why judges and DAs keep rereleasing suspects with lengthy rap sheets. 

“It's ideologically horrific," Shapiro answered. "I have a book called Lions and Scavengers about the mentality that suggests that if somebody is acting badly, they must be a victim. And that is the mentality that undergirds all of this. When you hear the mayor say that you can't incarcerate your way to safety, that is precisely wrong. You absolutely 100% can incarcerate your way to safety."

"We do not have an over-incarceration problem in America. We have an under-incarceration problem. We need these people locked up for longer periods of time. This particular person should have been involuntarily committed for mental illness. He had violent schizophrenia, or he should have been imprisoned," the commentator added.

The killing that shocked the nation

Iryna Zarutska had fled war-torn Ukraine and was carving out a new life in Charlotte, working in a local pizzeria. Surveillance footage from the Charlotte Area Transit System (CATS) captured her boarding a Lynx Blue Line train just before 10 pm, dressed in her work uniform and scrolling on her phone.

Seconds later, the nightmare unfolded. A man in a red hoodie seated behind her suddenly whipped out a knife and stabbed her three times, once in the neck. Zarutska died at the scene.

Police quickly arrested the suspect, 34-year-old Brown, and charged him with first-degree murder. Brown’s record is a laundry list of convictions for felony robbery, larceny, and breaking and entering, stretching back over a decade.

The case even caught the attention of President Donald Trump, who blasted the system for letting a “career criminal” walk free. On Monday, September 8, he posted on the official White House account on X (formerly Twitter) after watching the surveillance footage of the August 22 attack.

Calling the footage “horrific” and “not really watchable because it's so horrible,” Trump fumed, “The perpetrator was a well-known career criminal, who had been previously arrested and released on CASHLESS BAIL in January, a total of 14 TIMES. What the hell was he doing riding the train and walking the streets? Criminals like this need to be LOCKED UP.”