There was one journalist, a radio reporter named Danny Meenan, who was sceptical of the story about the disinterested bystanders. When he checked the facts, he found that most of the eyewitnesses thought they had seen a drunken woman that night. When Meenan asked the reporter at the New York Times why he hadn’t put that information in his piece, his answer was, ‘It would have ruined the story.’ So why did Meenan keep this to himself? Self-preservation. In those days, no lone journalist would get it into his head to contradict the world’s most powerful newspaper – not if they wanted to keep their job. [..] That’s right, Kitty’s murderer was apprehended thanks to the intervention of two bystanders. Not a single paper reported it. This is the real story of Kitty Genovese. It’s a story that ought to be required reading not only for first-year psychology students, but also for aspiring journalists. That’s because it teaches us three things. One, how out of whack our view of human nature often is. Two, how deftly journalists push those buttons to sell sensational stories. And, last but not least, how it’s precisely in emergencies that we can count on one another.

— Humankind by Rutger Bregman (Page 192 - 194)