That so many black people are killed by law enforcement is a painful, difficult thing to face. That we don’t know how many people is a scandal in itself.
Most media don’t go full Giuliani on the issue. But the effort to look away dies hard.
USA Today (11/24/14) reported on the fatal shooting of a 12-year-old boy on a Cleveland playground. Tamir Rice, holding a BB gun, was shot twice in the chest by a rookie cop. Police came to the playground in response to a 911 call in which a man said he was reporting someone, “probably a juvenile,” with a gun that was “probably a fake.”
The piece, by Jane Onyanga-Omara and John Bacon, included this:
The shooting comes amid a continued nationwide focus on police incidents, including the ongoing grand jury investigation in Ferguson, Mo., and the fatal shooting of a Florida policeman during a house fire outside Tallahassee on Saturday.
Police killing black people with relative impunity and an anti-government zealot who lured first responders to his house with a fire so he could try to kill them–these things are of a piece, as “incidents” in which police are in some way involved? Please.
The New York Times (11/23/14) likely felt it was being poetic, headlining its account of a probationary officer killing 28-year-old Akai Gurley in a public housing project “In Brooklyn, Two Young Men, a Dark Stairwell and a Gunshot.” J. David Goodman’s piece continued the parallelism theme:
From different corners of Brooklyn, the lives of Mr. Gurley and Officer [Peter] Liang, two young men separated in age by a single year, collided amid the faint shadows of the stairwell inside 2724 Linden Blvd., one of the buildings in the vast Louis H. Pink housing project.
Even if Gurley’s killing was accidental, the “two lives colliding” image suggests that both men were comparably positioned, comparably affected. But only one of them had the power of the state behind him, and a gun. And only one of them is dead.
The story notes:
For Mr. Gurley, the stairs, even in their sorry state, offered the best alternative to chronically malfunctioning project elevators. For Officer Liang, their darkness presented a threat.
Did the darkness present a threat to Akai Gurley? It certainly turned out that way.
The policies, practices and attitudes that lead to so many black people being killed by law enforcement have to be confronted. There are some things euphemism can’t cover up.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
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