I largely agree with the gist of your comment, but you may be overgeneralizing a little. Depending on, not sure how the describe it, gruesomeness of the kill, it may make national news. If the poor person is a woman, it is a little more likely. If it is a pregnant woman, it is a little more likely. If there was a rape, incest, or some weird sexual story attached to it, media might pick it up. If it was a child, it is a lot more likely. If it was displayed in some public fashion, it may be hard not to cover it.

Short answer is it depends. Not that long ago, white guy got killed by a hispanic guy in what police determined to be a hate crime( https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/wisconsi... ). There was no uproar on CNN. Oddly, I did not see stuff on Fox News either. For whatever reason, it simply did not feel the narrative.

I agree with your example that it is not a given that the killing was political in nature ( as in, we simply don't have enough information to know ). But today, non-white person dying draws a lot more scrutiny. Now serial killers will only be left with the homeless..

> Neither of the deceased were tech entrepreneurs, and, unsurprisingly, this did not make Hacker News,

Why did you expect? This is a community of programmers and tech entrepreneurs. We get articles all the time on the front page about deceased programmers, computer scientists, and tech entrepreneurs. This poor guy was a tech entrepreneur.

You removed from the OP quote:

> nor more than a whisper on the national media circus. I presume you haven't heard about it, either.

I was addressing his specific insinuation about HN. If this was just about national media, why even mention HN otherwise in that comment?

No, the clear implication was that there was some kind of double standard in HN here.

I'm not addressing the rest of his comment, which may or may not be true. But the first part is clearly misleading, or at best uncharitable.

Finally, the full comment is available for all to see by looking up exactly a quarter screen. I didn't "remove" anything-I pulled the quote pertaining to the issue that concerned me.