Occasionally when I am making my rounds around town during the week, I get a chance to see what kinds of stories and issues are on folks' minds.

Yesterday, I was talking to a Merced resident who said the media were being racially biased in the case of a 16-year-old Florida girl who was savagely beaten by group of her so-called "friends". Worst part about it all, the suspects videotaped the episode with the intention of putting it on YouTube.

click here [1]

All of the girls who participated in the alleged crime are now facing some serious charges -- although whether they will face any real punishment remains to be seen.

One Mercedian who approached me, however, felt the media would have played this story completely differently if the victim and the perpetrators of the crime had been Hispanic or black. She said the media are quick to label an incident "gang-related" when the perpetrators are people of color -- yet when the perpetrators are white, the incident is seen in a different light. She also wondered why the girls in this case are not facing gang charges, because the beat-down was, for all intents and purposes, a group of people who planned and conspired to commit a serious crime.

It's an interesting question. I remember when I was a teenager, you might have a group of black or Hispanic guys who hung out together and may not have had a gang name per se -- but in the eyes of society, once they commit a crime or commit some wrongdoing, the gang tag is automatically applied.

Still, I don't know whether it's fair to say that the media or law enforcement is biased when it comes to application of the "gang-related" tag. White Skinhead groups and Neo-Nazis are often classified and reported in the media as "gangs," just as are the Bloods, Nortenos, or whatever -- so I do not think the gang tag is necessarily racially biased.

Regardless, this issue was on someone's mind, so I cannot help but ponder the question. Would the reporting have been different in the Florida beating case if the perpetrators were black or Hispanic? I don't think so -- but then again, the idiosyncrasies of race are one of the things that we have yet to figure out for the past 200-plus years.

What do you think? Was there media racial bias in the Florida beating case?