Vox Sentences: An on-air double homicide in Virginia

A reporter and videographer shot and killed on the air in Virginia; Donald Trump squares off against the most famous Latino journalist in America; and what is the Department of Homeland Security doing raiding a gay escort site?

Vox Sentences is written by Dylan Matthews and Dara Lind.

TOP NEWS

An on-air double homicide in Virginia

Alison Parker and Adam Ward, Virginia shooting victims. (Shawn Reynolds)

• Local news reporter Alison Parker and videographer Adam Ward of WDBJ-TV were shot and killed while filming a live broadcast in Moneta, VA this morning.

  [Vox / German Lopez and Alex Abad-Santos]

• Parker was interviewing a local Chamber of Commerce head (who was injured in the shooting but is in stable condition) about the 50th anniversary of Smith Mountain Lake in Moneta.

  [WXIA]

• A Facebook and Twitter user going by Bryce Williams posted videos of the shootings from the killer's perspective. Bryce Williams was the on-air name of former WDBJ employee Vester Lee Flanagan.

  [NBC News / Erin McClam]

• Flanagan tried to flee police (while still tweeting), then shot and killed himself.

  [Washington Post / Jenna Portnoy]

• A manifesto allegedly written by Flanagan and faxed to the station expressed sympathy for the victims of the Charleston church shooting earlier this summer (Flanagan is black). It also expressed sympathy for Virginia Tech shooter Seung Hui Cho and Columbine shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold.

  [ABC News / Pierre Thomas, Jack Cloherty, Jack Date and Mike Levine]

• Adam Ward, 27, was engaged to WDBJ producer Melissa Ott, whose last day working at the station was today. The two planned to move out of town and leave the news industry.

  [Newsweek / Michele Richnick]

• Alison Parker. 24, had just moved in with WDBJ anchor Chris Hurst — who revealed their relationship publicly while tweeting about her death this morning.

  [CNN / Todd Leopold and Emanuella Grinberg]

• 400 Americans were killed on the job in 2013. Homicide is the leading cause of death on the job for women.

  [Vox / Danielle Kurtzleben]

• America has an unusually high level of gun violence among rich countries. But it's worth remembering that most gun violence is not committed by the mentally ill.

  [Vox / Dylan Matthews]

• And as an overnight reporter with the Chicago Tribune pointed out in a Facebook post today (which should be read in full), "Kids in urban areas don't have the option to turn off social media if they don't want to see violence."

  [Peter Nickeas via Facebook]

It's about ethics in Donald Trump journalism

Scott Olson/Getty Images

• Univision anchor Jorge Ramos was physically bounced from a Donald Trump press conference in Dubuque last night for shouting questions out of turn.

  [Vox / Dara Lind]

• Ramos was eventually allowed back into the presser, but not before a Trump supporter in the hallway told Ramos, a US citizen, to "Get out of my country!"

  [YouTube via Univision]

• Jorge Ramos is a BFD in Latino media. Former Bush adviser Matthew Dowd compares him to Walter Cronkite, which is probably an overstatement but not by much.

  [New York Times / Jackie Calmes]

• Ramos has been trying to get Trump on his show for months; Trump responded to a letter requesting an interview by posting the letter, including Ramos' cell number, on Instagram.

  [Deadline Hollywood / Domenic Patten]

• Interestingly, a number of reporters said Ramos deserved some of the blame for last night's confrontation. A media critic at the Washington Post compared Ramos to Trump — saying they're both "conflict junkies."

  [Washington Post / Michael E. Miller]

• Poor Jeb Bush, who appeared to be hoping this would turn the media against Trump for good, is baffled by this development.

  [Mediaite / Josh Feldman]

• Ramos is an outspoken supporter of immigration reform, and sees Trump's rhetoric and positions as "personal" to himself and Latinos. Political journalists think that's bias; Ramos thinks it's sticking up for his community.

  [Vox / Dara Lind]

• (This is your semiregular reminder that journalistic objectivity is the product of the particular historical circumstances of the early 20th century.)

  [Slate / Matt Yglesias]

• Tonight at 9 pm ET, Ramos will appear on fellow Trump target Megyn Kelly's show, where one hopes they will make a lot of toupee jokes at each other.

  [Talking Points Memo / Katherine Krueger]

Rentboy.com, condemned

Rentboy's homepage as of August 8

• The Department of Homeland Security raided the New York offices of Rentboy.com (a gay escort directory website) on Tuesday and arrested seven current and former Rentboy.com staffers.

  [Vice / Melissa Gira Grant]

• Rentboy.com neither hired the escorts who used the site directly, nor recruited them. But it did make money by "facilitating" prostitution, wnich is illegal in the state of New York.

• What is the government doing enforcing New York law? The answer is something called the Federal Travel Act, which makes it illegal to use "the mail or any facility in interstate or foreign commerce" to do something that's illegal under the law of one of the states where the commerce takes place.

  [Reason / Scott Shackford]

• This does not, however, explain why the charges are being filed in the Eastern District of New York, instead of the district where Rentboy.com's headquarters actually were. (One attorney's alleged answer: "The Internet is everywhere." True, but unhelpful.)

  [Emptywheel / Marcy Wheeler]

• The raid is generating a tremendous amount of outrage among sex-worker rights advocates who don't feel sex work should be a crime at all. There are no allegations that Rentboy.com was involved in any sort of sex trafficking; to the contrary, its business model was putting prostitutes directly in touch with clients rather than forcing them to use pimps.

  [The Stranger / Dan Savage]

• Mark Joseph Stern, in Slate, throws out the suspicion that the government targeted Rentboy.com because investigators think gay sex is icky.

  [Slate / Mark Joseph Stern]

• And an anonymous escort and former Rentboy user filed a personal essay with Gawker about the site. It's a great essay despite/because of lines like "Why should I give up escorting?...If you’re in the 99th percentile of anything else, nobody faults you for using that. "

  [Gawker]

MISCELLANEOUS

This piece by Lisa Miller, on the Wisconsin "Slenderman" case in which two 12-year-old girls nearly stabbed their friend to death to please a fictional internet meme, is one of the best longform articles I've read in months. [NY Mag / Lisa Miller]

• Did you know that Hillary Clinton worked at a fish-processing plant in Alaska one summer during law school? I did not know that.

  [NYT / Maureen Dowd]

• Gucci Mane may be off the chain but he is on LinkedIn. I'm so sorry for that joke.

  [Grantland / Rembert Browne]

• When I (Dylan) was a senior in college, I applied to three jobs: one at the Washington Post, one at the Brookings Institution, and one as a conductor at Norfolk Southern Railway. So I'm pretty jealous of this German woman who's figured out how to live entirely on a train.

  [Washington Post / Rick Noack]

• If you want to be absolutely enraged, read Terrence McCoy's exposé on companies that dupe victims of lead poisoning into giving up hundreds of thousands of dollars in settlement money. This is a real industry and it is disgusting.

  [Washington Post / Terrence McCoy]

VERBATIM

"Human beings contain multitudes, y’all. And even sexual sadists eat cookies." [Elizabeth Nolan Brown]

• "What if the problem with the Soviet Union was that it was too early? What if our computer processing power and behavioral data are developed enough now that central planning could outperform the market when it comes to the distribution of goods and services?"

  [New Republic / Malcolm Harris]

• "As the hours count down to Christmas, an increasing number of Americans are heading into their wrapping rooms, spaces found mainly in large, upscale homes dedicated to gift-wrapping and other crafts. Real-estate listings are touting wrapping rooms more frequently, and organizational outfitters like the Container Store have created specialized products to trick them out."

  [WSJ / Miriam Gottfried]

• "People tend to think of not knowing as something to be wiped out or overcome, as if ignorance were simply the absence of knowledge. But answers don’t merely resolve questions; they provoke new ones."

  [NYT / Jamie Holmes]

• "Wittgenstein said that the limits of his language were the limits of his world, but that jerk definitely didn’t have children."

  [Slate / Rebecca Schuman]

WATCH THIS

Vox / Joss Fong, Johnny Harris

• Want faster wifi? Here are 5 weirdly easy tips.

  [YouTube / Joseph Stromberg, Joss Fong, Johnny Harris]

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