Kansas City Star reporter Matt Campbell said more than he intended when he wrote in a 2016 article, “The case of the ‘highway shooter’ drew national attention until Whitaker’s arrest in his Grandview apartment.” (italics added)

Yes, the shooter did draw national attention to what Campbell accurately calls, “a string of random highway shootings in 2014 that struck fear into the hearts of motorists”–until, that is, Whitaker was apprehended.

What was it that caused the Star and every other major media to lose interest in a man who terrorized an entire metropolitan area? It was his first name, “Mohammed.” In the three years after his apprehension, the Star has run a total of five articles on Whitaker, all perfunctory, e.g., “Two new charges added in highway shooting case.”

By contrast, the Star ran twelve articles on the Olathe shooting on Thursday alone. On Friday, the Star ran nine more including one that tied the shooting back to President Donald Trump, “Trump spokesman says it’s too early to say what motivated Olathe shooter.”

If Srinivas Kuchibhotla were one of a few homicide victims in the metro last year, one might understand the attention. Or if his death had been symptomatic of a trend, there would be cause for alarm. But it was neither. Based in a city that witnessed 127 murders in 2016, seven times the homicide rate of New York City’s, the attention the Star is paying to this case, tragic as it was, borders on the obscene.

After Whitaker’s arrest in 2014, the Star made no attempt to sort out his motives, talk to his family and friends, profile the victims, or even learn why he had renamed himself “Mohammed.” It was not the name he was born with.

The word “hate,” of course, was never attached to Whitaker. That is a word, and a crime, the media reserve almost exclusively for white people and conservatives of color. Indeed, the people who inhabit America’s newsrooms seem to have no greater joy than imputing “hate” to others. And they wonder why people no longer trust them.