TOW #22: What the Kitty Genovese Story Really Means

      Do you believe everything you hear in the media? If you just answered yes, you may want to rethink that answer. Familiar with the Kitty Genovese murder case in 1964? Let's revisit that. Even to this day, 50 years later, Kitty Genovese is still being talked about. She was 29 years old coming back from her job at a bar in the Bronx when she was fatally stabbed to death by an African-American known rapist, Winston Moseley. But out of the 636 murders in New York City that year, this one is the one remembered 50 years later. Kitty Genovese did not only go down in history in the history books, but also in the psychology books. Genovese prompted psychologists to start doing research on what is on called the bystander effect--the phenomena that if something tragic were to happen in public, most people would just watch and not take action. This is because of the so-called 37 witnesses who saw the murder and did nothing. Nicholas Lemann, a writer for The New Yorker, tells the real story behind the story of Kitty Genovese.
    Lemann uses chronological structure to tell the story of what happened after the murder of Kitty Genovese, and the story behind the reporters and writers at the time. This chronological structure makes the reader have an easy time to follow the complicated story of how a simple murder turned into an infamous one. Lemann also uses humor to depict the complete irony of the New York Times writer, A.M Rosenthal, who was responsible for all of this. Rosenthal had generalized there were 38 witnesses who did nothing, when really there was only one or two. Genovese was gay, as well as her neighbor who tried to call the police. Gays living in New York City had a lot to fear during this time. At that time, Rosenthal had recently written an article saying "Growth of Overt Homosexuality in City Provokes Wide Concern." It is ironic that he then wrote an article about the Genovese murder, and had not touched on that she was gay. This also includes historical context, giving the background of the time in the 1960's.
   The purpose that Lemann portrays is that not everything one reads is accurate, and sometimes, in the case of A.M Rosenthal, it is written just to make a job out of it. The effect of Kitty Genovese is not necessarily the bystander effect, but our susceptibility to fake narratives that hit in on our anxieties and fears. The story of Kitty Genovese by Rosenthal had done just that. I think that Lemann does a great job writing this article and supporting his purpose. I had heard of the Kitty Genovese murder many times before this article, but I had absolutely no idea how much of it wasn't true. It really makes you think about what you read and how much you rely on so-called "facts" from journalists. Not all journalists have that credibility, which Rosenthal had showed all of us.