Originally posted by Sir Robert Peel:
The AP, NY Times, and nearly every media outlet has journalist and editing guidelines that say a person who is 18 years of age or older should be referred to as "man" or "woman" or "young man" or young woman" and should refrain from using child or teen unless they are 17 or younger. Yet they do it when it involves police shooting incidents but not in other stories.
The Orlando Sentinel has a policy not to refer to race when discussing a suspect. If a law enforcement agency puts out a description of a suspect, the Orlando Sentinel leaves out the race and only uses clothing description, height, weight, etc. They say that is their policy to not use race in stories. Then when they report when a person who is black is shot by the police the headline, byline, and story all have multiple references to the police shooting a "black man" or "black teen".
Hypocrisy. If your not going to report race then don't in all cases. If your going to report race then do so in all cases.
The media feels it is their responsibility to try shape the beliefs of whether black men commit more crime or not. It is all infotainment and pushing the political agendas of the media corporations leaders and editors agendas.
I believe media has to some extent always done this. There are also plenty of examples where media under reports crime by certain other groups (whites, wealthy, celebrity, women, kids, etc.) too, but there is a lot of crime under reported for all groups. There is only so much time in a 30 minute window or space in an article. 24 hours news cycles has changed that some though.
The nature and types of crimes have a determination on media reporting practices. Violent crimes tend to provide for more entertainment and attention to viewers and therefore receive more coverage. Just like certain drugs are often used more by certain economic, race, or gender groups, certain crimes tend to be committed by certain groups in the same way. Reported violence against family members in domestic situations tends to be more by whites, just as active shooter situations, at least as society tend to refer to them (schools, malls, etc). Reported "Street" violence such as robberies, drug activity, gang activity, etc tends to be committed more by blacks. There is plenty of reporting with both of these groups for these types of crimes. Why, not because of the race of the offenders, but because of the nature of the violence and shock/fear factor.
There is plenty of stigma that white folks get drunk and beat there wives. Why? Because the media reports these violent incidents because of the crime itself, not necessarily because of the race. People of all races of course are involved in domestic violence, but it is a numbers game. If say 70% of DV incidents report to the police are involving white people then of course the media reporting with be consistent. Just as armed robberies are typically associated by the public as being committed by black men. If the majority of armed robberies report to police involve black men then the majority of the reporting will reflect that. People start to associate certain types of crimes as being race related and that should be expected by human beings.
My only hope is that someday people will put aside political agendas and call a spade a spade. If a city is suffering from hundreds of murders involving black suspects then public figures need to speak out about that and address those groups and give a an effort to try and reduce that violence. The Sharpton's and Holders of the world refuse to even acknowledge black violent crime for fear of alienating those groups due to losing votes and money donations. I don't see the same fear of mentioning crime with other population groups. Politicians of all races have no problem speaking out against white active shooters or white domestic violence abusers. It is sad because when a black person is a victim, even black public figures don't even care enough to speak out for the victims. Sharpton et al doesn't seem to care at all about young black men being slaughtered in some cities at a higher rate than those in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, or other countries with heavy violence and genocide.
This thread is entertaining to read for sure.
