I live about 150 miles from Knoxville, Tennessee and you would think that any kind of sensational crime would be like local news in our part of the country. But such is not always the case.

You’ve probably never heard the names Channon Christian or Christopher Newsome. They were two young students at the University of Tennessee who were carjacked, raped, tortured and murdered.

If you don’t have a strong stomach you probably shouldn’t finish this column, as the murders were so brutal they’re apt to make you sick.

Newsome, the young man, was raped and beaten, they then castrated him and shot him several times. Then they dumped his body by some train tracks and set it on fire while his girlfriend was forced to watch.

Channon was gang raped over a period of days then her breasts were cut off while she was still alive, then they sprayed cleaning fluid in her mouth in an attempt to erase the traces of DNA, then her body was put into a garbage receptacle.

It seems to me that with the headlines and airwaves screaming about such inconsequential things as who is the father of Anna Nicole Smith’s baby and the bogus case against the Duke lacrosse players they could find space to report a brutal crime worthy of Saddam Hussein and his two demented sons.

But have you seen anything on the networks, The New York Times,

The Nashville Tennessean? I haven’t.

I wonder if it could be that the five perpetrators who have all been arrested were black.

If this had been white on black crime Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson and their ilk would have descended on Knoxville like a swarm of angry bees. I guess the lack of TV cameras discouraged them.

A free press is one of our most precious rights and a selective press one of our most dangerous realities. To suppress or ignore one of the most hideous murders of the decade is asinine and reeks of political correctness and agenda driven formats.

Is reporting the latest lewd episode of Paris Hilton’s privileged life or playing Alex Baldwin’s raging diatribe for the thousandth time really more important than letting the public know about a cruel and demented crime like this?

Race should not enter the picture where crime is concerned and every decent human being should passionately condemn such a horrible thing as this no matter what color the victim or the perpetrators are.

Shame on the American media for letting such a violent crime as this slip through the cracks. I wonder what else they’re not reporting.

Pray for our troops.

What do you think?

God Bless America

— Charlie Daniels