Our Nation Failed Iryna

Submitted by QTR’s Fringe Finance

I try to play it down the middle and be a centrist most of the time—I really do. I can admit that it feels like conservatives have outrage over nearly everything nowadays, and it can feel excessive.

Every time conservatives blow up over something like Cracker Barrel making slight changes to its logo—an idea I’ll admit I’ve even written about—we risk becoming the very party that is outraged by everything. It’s the old adage in action: “when you point one finger forward, three point back at you.”

But even bearing that in mind, there are some situations that make me truly livid in a way a logo change at Cracker Barrel never could. What transpired over the last few days with the death of Iryna Zarutska, and the media’s astounding lack of coverage on it, is one such instance.

By now most people know the story. On August 22, 2025, 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska was fatally stabbed on a Charlotte light rail train by 34-year-old Decarlos Brown Jr., a homeless man with a long criminal record including more than 10 arrests. She died at the scene, and the grotesque act was caught on surveillance video for the whole world to see.

Today, the story is more becoming about the media’s lack of coverage of the incident. No major mainstream media outlet reported on the horrific incident.

After a decade of lecturing the American public about injustice, an innocent woman dies as a direct result of progressive policy and all of a sudden, the “activists” in the media for some reason don’t have a single word to say about it.

The very party that is obsessed with immigration and the mainstream media machine that perpetuates their propaganda accordingly, somehow can’t muster up a coherent opinion about a migrant being senselessly murdered? Why could that be?

Where are all the “journalists” with the Ukrainian flags in their profiles? Where are all the women’s rights advocates screaming about how this is the patriarchy’s fault?

Where the f*ck is…well, everybody?

The fact that not a single major news outlet covered this gruesome murder—with the exception of Axios, which ran a piece that instead focused on surveillance cameras instead of the crime itself—is outrageous.

Even people on the left should have trouble doing the mental gymnastics necessary to justify ignoring this take. But at this point, who knows?

Regardless, the bad news is that the legacy mainstream media has been fully exposed as a corrupt cesspool with a deeply progressive agenda, catering to the Democratic Party and whoever is paying for ad space.

The good news is that this latest shining example of just how anti-American and disgusting the media has become may finally force the free market—and the country itself—to acknowledge it and demand real, long-lasting change.

Last week, a story broke that CBS was considering hiring Bari Weiss for a metric f*ckton of cash — up to $200 million is the number that is being reported.

This could represent the first of many recruitments of journalists who defected from the legacy model to go out on their own. I’ve often praised outlets like Substack for offering a democratized model that pays real journalists what they’re worth and provides a release valve for reporters still interested in the truth.

What this CBS rumor shows is that, whether by free market capitalist force or common sense, these age-old institutions are realizing that people still want the truth and journalists with integrity.

Journalists like Bari Weiss, Seymour Hersh, Catherine Herridge, Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger, and many others who were abandoned by the legacy model are on the cusp of again being recognized for their actual value as truth-tellers. Their willingness to step away from tradition, once seen as a risk, now looks like proof of their integrity. Ironically, these are the very people the legacy media will be forced to turn back to when they realize their audiences want — and will pay for.

This trend accelerated during the election campaign season when the media ran cover for Kamala Harris and Joe Biden. Trust—even among centrists and Democrats—was lost. Now, the lack of coverage of this latest murder, an incident that would have been front-page news everywhere if the races were reversed, has likely eroded what little integrity the media still had.

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This is one of those rare cases where outrage over the lack of coverage will surpass the coverage itself, and rightly so. The fact that Brown had been arrested and released more than a dozen times before committing this horrific, videotaped crime lays bare the consequences of regressive Democratic policies. Judges and magistrates so incompetent as to allow this man back on the streets should be investigated, if not charged, for gross negligence that cost an innocent woman her life.

It’s unthinkable to look for a silver lining in such a barbaric act, but I truly believe that if Iryna Zarutska’s tragic death becomes enough of a worldwide story, she could be remembered as the turning point where the American media was finally held accountable and forced back toward true journalism. That would be a sense of justice that our legal system obviously failed in a massive way to provide.

This is the very system and country Zarutska believed in enough to make her home, risking everything to be here. The least we can do is honor the trust she placed in us by demanding change, speaking loudly about the justice system and media that failed her, and working to ensure this never happens again. And while there’s more than enough outrage to go around – and in this case truly justified – it’s the hope for change that brings me to honor Iryna in this piece today.

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