A video of 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska being stabbed to death by 34-year-old Decarlos Brown Jr., on a train in Charlotte, NC has gone viral. While some, like Charlotte mayor Vi Lyles, called on the media to not repost it, others criticized liberal media outlets that either initially failed to cover the story when it happened, or still have issued no coverage.
As of this writing, the story has not been covered by the following major media outlets: The Associated Press (Left), USA Today (Lean Left), Washington Post (Lean Left), ABC News (Lean Left), Reuters (Center), and NBC News (Lean Left). Edit Sept. 15, 2025 12:35pm ET: NBC News and Washington Post covered the story on Sept. 9.
On Aug. 27, AllSides located coverage of the incident from Fox News (Right), The New York Post (Lean Right), Breitbart (Right), and The Independent (Lean Left), a week and a half before outlets like CNN (Lean Left), and Axios (Lean Left) picked up the story. Notably, the video footage of the incident was not released until Sept. 6, after which more outlets picked up the story.
On Sept. 7, Elon Musk reposted a tweet accusing the media of not covering the story, as did End Wokeness (Right bias) and other social media influencers, mostly on the right. The attention from influencers seems to have fueled the eventual coverage from outlets like Axios, The New York Times, CNN, which included conservative reactions as a major — or the largest, in NYT's case — part of their stories.
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While many outlets did not cover Zarutska’s death at all, others showed bias in how they covered it, highlighting the politicized nature of the incident and how it ties to left and right narratives on race and crime, as Zarutska was white and Brown Jr. is black.
CNN, for example, covered the story with some slant, a type of media bias in which journalists highlight or play up one particular angle or piece of information associated with a news story to curb readers’ impressions. The article, Video shows fatal stabbing of Ukrainian refugee on Charlotte light rail – stirring debate on crime in major US cities, highlighted a lengthy quote from the Mayor of Charlotte discussing lack of mental health care in the country and arguing against sharing the video (narratives not seen in right-wing coverage) and only briefly quoted/paraphrased Republicans’ critiques of her remarks. CNN also made brief mention of the critiques around the lack of mainstream media coverage, whereas right-wing coverage made this a primary part of the story; CNN also included the header, “Violent crime is down 25%, mid-year stats show,” seemingly to throw cold water on Republicans’ narrative that crime is an issue in US cities worth addressing.
Also on the left, Axios ran a slanted headline and article — Stabbing video fuels MAGA's crime message. Instead of covering the incident neutrally and describing the political response on both sides, Axios primarily highlighted the fact that right-wing influencers were posting about the story over the weekend — including Elon Musk (Lean Right) and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller. Axios implied the most important aspect of the story is not the stabbing itself, but the right-wing reaction to it.
The New York Times (Lean Left) had not issued coverage of the story when initial research was done for this piece; it did publish a piece on Sept. 8 that took a similar bent to Axios', highlighting right-wing reactions as the main part of the story, writing the killing "became an accelerant for conservative arguments about crime, race and the perceived failings of big-city justice systems and mainstream news outlets in the Trump era." New York Times also showed photo bias, as it included a photo of the victim walking onto the train alone but did not include a photo of the perpetrator.
Meanwhile, outlets on the right made the left-wing media’s lack of reaction to the story among their primary headlines: Establishment Media Outlets Criticized for Not Covering North Carolina Train Stabbing (Breitbart); Liberal media accused of covering up Ukrainian girl's brutal murder in Dem-led city as video explodes online (Daily Mail), Horrid video of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska’s slaughter on Charlotte train is met with deafening silence from Dem leaders, media (New York Post); Why is the media silent about Iryna Zarutska’s murder? (Mary Harrington, rated Lean Right, at Unherd, rated Center).
Outlets on the right also used more emotionalism via adjectives to describe the video and act — Fox described it as “haunting,” NY Post as “horrid,” and Breitbart called it a “brutal killing.”
Media outlets cannot cover every story, especially those related to crime; indeed, some of the outlets that initially covered the story have a tabloid bent and tend to cover crime incidents at a much higher rate than other outlets. Still, perhaps due to the egregious nature of the crime and lack of ambiguity as seen in the video (Zarutska was merely sitting down and did not interact with or in any way provoke her killer), conservatives accused the left media of story choice bias for refusing to cover this specific incident, with some taking over a week — and much right-wing influencer furor — to finally cover it, though some still haven't.
Mentions in the New York Times:
— The Rabbit Hole (@TheRabbitHole84) September 9, 2025
- George Floyd: 5313
- Trayvon Martin: 1149
- Daniel Penny: 91
- Michael Brown: 2652
Iryna Zarutska has only been mentioned 1 time and it’s in an article upset with the Right for caring. pic.twitter.com/G4BEw8Zr69
The victim was a person who would normally obtain sympathy from the left — a Ukrainian refugee. However, crime in cities is an issue that American conservatives have focused on more. President Trump, for instance, has authorized the National Guard in Los Angeles, Washington, DC, and Baltimore to address what he sees as crime problems in these cities. Meanwhile, liberal media outlets tend to push back on the idea that criminality in American cities is a new or increasing problem — consider NYT's graf above, or CBS highlighting “Baltimore’s historic crime decline” in its article announcing the troops, or AP’s recent headline: “Trump suggests more US cities need National Guard but crime stats tell a different story.” While the right finds the level of crime in US cities unacceptable, liberals celebrate the current numbers as a success or point to what they see as improvements.
In addition, the death of Zarutska has a racial angle: conservatives have long accused liberal media of reinforcing a biased narrative on crime and race; they argue the media downplays instances of crime committed by black people or fails to note a perpetrator’s race when crime is committed by a black person. For instance, conservatives (like Dave Rubin, Lean Right) argued the media was very apt to cover the case of Jordan Neely, a black man who died in 2023 while being restrained on an NYC subway by white military veteran Daniel Penny (Penny was tried for homicide and acquitted). Yet the death of white, 17-year-old high school athlete Austin Metcalf earlier this year at the hands of black student Karmelo Anthony, conservatives argued, was largely ignored (commentary from some left outlets did seem to downplay the case: Salon (Left) ran the headline, “Why MAGA media is fixated on a Texas teen murder case,” and an opinion piece by The Root (Lean Left) explicitly instructed readers to “ignore” MAGA on the issue.) Going back even further, conservatives argued riots and protests that occurred in the aftermath of the 2020 death of George Floyd, a black man, who was restrained by a white police officer, were fueled by ongoing, false media narratives that make it appear white police officers specifically target and brutalize black Americans.
The media coverage (or lack thereof) on the death of Iryna Zarutska highlights contentious issues in American politics. Both the left and right media highlight and play up stories that reinforce their narratives about the world and the issues facing the country, and downplay those that don’t. Only by reading across the political spectrum and understanding the political biases of social media influencers can you get the full story and think for yourself.
Julie Mastrine is the Director of Marketing and Media Bias Ratings at AllSides. She has a Lean Right bias.
This piece was edited and reviewed by Andy Gorel, News and Social Media Editor (Center), Emily Allen, News Editor and Bias Analyst (Left).
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