By Marc W. Polite
Good evening, my readers. The Polite On Society blog hiatus is over, and I am coming back at you with a thought that has been brewing in my mind for more than a week.
Many of us have heard about the disturbing occurrence of a woman who was set on fire in the subway a few weeks ago. In an incident that was widely reported, an assailant set a sleeping woman on fire, and they were burned alive. The suspect was apprehended, but the victims body was so badly burned, that they could not be readily identified.
A day or so later, images began circulating of the victim, and they were identified as Amelia Carter. Even though the authorities had stated that the person would take days to identify, images and an entire backstory for Amelia Carter would spread, fueling anger.
Come to find out, the images being circulated were created from artificial intelligence, and Newsweek would then publish an article debunking the released information.
https://www.newsweek.com/nyc-subway-fire-victim-amelia-carter-ai-misinformation-hoax-2005548
A week later, the victim of this horrific crime was properly identified. The woman burned to death on the subway was Debrina Kawam, and she was 57 years old. It also came out in the report that Kawam was homeless.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/31/woman-set-on-fire-in-new-york-city-subway-identified
The identity of the victim makes this no less of a horrible crime, but all of a sudden, the sense of outrage from the public noticeably waned. One is inclined to ask why.
There’s the unfortunate reality of the devalued lives of the homeless in the United States. Let’s not forget that Jordan Neely was strangled by a racist vigilante on the subway, and said vigilante was rewarded with by president elect Donald Trump to an Army-Navy football game.
The person apprehended was an immigrant, and the AI images circulated of “Amelia Carter” depicted a white woman, who was supposedly in her late 20s.
The reason it’s necessary to point this out, is that there was obviously an attempt to incite an incident by those who circulated the images. In the current political climate, this is sure to be attempted again. This is why we need to be cognizant of misdirection and those who want to spread hatred using incidents to attack certain groups of people.
The story has all but disappeared from the papers, but we shouldn’t lose the lesson. This is an example of why media literacy is important.