As most of you probably are aware, the state of Missouri (STL area particularly) is embroiled in a police shooting controversy with a white officer and a black victim. The coverage in this state and across the country is near or maybe surpassing the Trayvon Martin case with President Obama also weighing in here as well.
My question revolves around the fact that it only seems to be white on black violence that the media descends on like vultures. I watch the news daily and never once saw 1 percent of the coverage for the Mona Nelson case where a black woman killed a 12 year old white boy with a blow torch (she has been convicted with life imprison but how many saw any coverage of that).
How is that not AT LEAST as news worthy?
While I agree that the Brown case SHOULD be covered, why would the tortuous death of a 12 year old boy - which IMO - is far more evil, heart wrenching and definitively more malicious than either of the above incidents - regardless of color - not merit the same coverage?
Would the Brown coverage (or the Zimmerman case) have been the same if both parties were white or black or if the races were reversed? I am trying to be as unbiased as possible but I believe this applies to all national media from Fox to CNN…the Networks seem as racist and inflammatory as anyone in covering these incidents.
The media is not in the business of providing fair and balanced coverage of events, they are in the business of selling advertising, this includes news outlets as well. The more sensational the story, the more eyes on the coverage, which means higher ratings.
Your complaint is the equivalent of accusing NWA of singing racist songs. So what…if people buy them and attend their concerts.
As long as justice is ultimately served in this case and others is what matter most, not how the case covered by the media.
The OP has apparently heard of Mona Nelson somewhere. I’m assuming that was in press reports. I would appreciate it if the OP could outline he or she feels is being held back from coverage of the Nelson case, and how this information would benefit him or her. Do you, for example, feel there is some cover-up of racially-motivated blowtorch murders going on that requires you to change your behavior or beliefs in some way?
Beyond that, the circumstances seem to be quite different. Seems to me the shooting of an unarmed teenager by police, followed by several nights of rioting, would be inherently more newsworthy than an (apparently) motiveless killing by someone who may be mentally ill and has in any event been tried and convicted. YMMV.
What would you suggest?
Do we hold the media to the “truth” or “fair and balanced” news?
Who then decides what that is? We already have laws about things like libel.
All you can really do is have a free press and let each person decide.
I’m saying the media doesn’t care what you think, as long as you still watch, read, or click on their links, so than sell their advertising. There’s no law that says the news should be unbiased. You start messing with their bottom line and then maybe they’ll make changes.
…now we wait for someone to come along and say the press should be nationalized, like gas stations or something like that.
Not that it is relevant since my concern was with the level of coverage not if it was ever mentioned… but i heard about the Mona Nelson case over lunch today with a few colleagues and was amazed that I had not ever heard of it. So I looked it all up this afternoon in fact and simply could not understand why that case would not be “sensational” enough.
My only conclusion to draw was that race was and is THE primary motivator in cases of violence.
From one single event that you happen to feel was insufficiently covered in the press (although a quick Google search turned up page after page of national-level news coverage), you have jumped to the conclusion that race is “THE prime motivator in cases of violence”? Hunh. I suspect that you already held that conclusion and are just looking for confirmation.
I think if you actually read up on the case, you will find that the majority of speculation that Nelson’s crime was racially motivated is by right-wing sources with a vested interest of their own.
Again, what, specifically, do you think is being held back from you regarding Nelson, and what would your personally having information about this case change, exactly?
That argument doesn’t make business sense. There are a lot more white people in America than black people. Don’t you think the media would make more money by focusing coverage on black violence vs. white victims than white violence vs. black victims?
I think some of the difference is that, first, the murder by Mona Nelson wasn’t, by all indications, racially motivated. It was horrific, but the race of the murderer and victim didn’t really come into play.
I think the second difference is that the killing of Michael Brown was done by the police. We expect the police to protect us, and instead of being protected, Brown was victimized. He was, if reports are to be believed, shot when he was cooperating and not a threat. And sadly, a lot of the African-American experience in the US has historically been this way…the state, instead of protecting the black community, for a long time has served as a tool of oppression. It was the government that enforced slavery and Jim Crow and the kind of explicitly racist laws that have existed in US society. And while some of those laws have changed…we don’t have slavery or like black codes or segregated buses any more, incarceration rates and arrest rates and stuff like that is still higher for blacks than whites. And along with that, there’s this assumption that people have that blacks, especially young black men, are criminals. It’s even harder, they’ve found, for blacks to get cabs than whites, and, all other things being equal, a group of black men are looked at with more suspicion than a group of white men.
So, when a shooting like this happens, people get afraid and angry, more than in something like the Mona Nelson thing, because the Mona Nelson thing is an anomaly. Nobody’s really worried about a crazy woman setting them on fire. Blacks are worried about the police shooting them. So, I think that the coverage and demonstrations have to be seen in that light. What happened in Ferguson was a betrayal by the government, and people are angry about that.
Pretty much this. A Facebook friend of mine shared something similar today. “Hey, how come this white kid killed by black kids never got in the news, huh!?” Well, because as soon as the cops got the report, they launched a full scale investigation and caught the killers. In contrast, the Ferguson PD is doing everything it can to protect the guy who shot Michael Brown. They didn’t even bother to interview any witnesses to the shooting until they were pressured to do so. All murders are horrific, but we have a crapload of them every year, and the ones where the cops do their job and put the killers in jail are not going to get th same kind of coverage as the ones that seem to show gross police misconduct.
Do you hear about every murder case committed everywhere in the country? What makes the Nelson case so outstanding that you were surprised you didn’t know more about it>
That story is about an abuse of power, and racial profiling. Cases like this, and there never seems to be an end to them, demonstrate that it can be truly dangerous to be young, male, and African American, particularly when dealing with the police.
The contrasting case is horrific but doesn’t involve what could well be a systemic failing in law enforcement. Hence a different degree of coverage.
The media is a for-profit industry that lives off of selling ad space and getting eyeballs on it. Forget any lofty ideals you learned from '70s movies about journalists being idealistic crusaders for the truth - their only goal is to produce a product that makes money, no matter how much they have to spin, lie, create stories where no story exists, or make themselves part of the event in order to gin up controversy about “interference with the free press”.
You want objective news coverage? Find a state-run news service like the BBC or Voice of America.
I guarantee you that if a black cop shoots an unarmed white teenager dead, and the police force tries to sweep it under the rug, it will get a lot of media coverage.
The example you cited, on the other hand, is comparing apples to salmon patties.