I’m having difficulty spotting anything actually addressing the OP in this ramble. Oh well, it’s probably just me, I’m tired and feeling brain dead…
Nope. It’s not me.
Isn’t this badly worded thread about police shootings and your reaction to sensationalized police reports?
If not then I’ll bow out. I got better things to do.
I’m not interjecting race into law enforcement. That accomplishes nothing except to bitterly divide our nation. Leaving a dangerous degree of anger and resentment.
“Police-shoot-black-man.” What-is-your-first-reaction-to-this-headline?
Not difficult to grok.
So black = criminal? Very informative post.
But they don’t have that. Oh, the reporter wishes they had that story, but all they have is a dead liquor store robber. That’s not going to get clicks. That’s not going to pay the bills. Nobody’s going to read a story about a dead guy who deserved it and a cop who did his job, and “nobody’s going to read it” just ain’t gonna cut it for this reporter.
People mentioning race when it isn’t relevant. Easily. Clearly. By a lot.
My first reaction to that headline is a tone deaf reporter. There’s no need to include race in the headline. Any legitimate reporter should be sensitive to the family’s feelings and shouldn’t exploit their misfortune with an inflammatory headline.
Personal information in the copy is useful. A photo can provide a lot of information too. Without creating data search engines can pick up and expliot.
All quibbling aside, when I hear the police have killed a black man, I expect the shooting to turn out to have been unjustified. I also expect the shooter(s) to be cleared of any charges after an extended paid vacation.
Facts do not always bear out my instinctive reaction, but they do far more often than is right.
But maybe if we were all taught that you should drop whatever you’re holding when confronted by the police, all of these people wouldn’t have been shot:
[ul]
[li]Cop Shoots Woman Holding Spatula[/li][li]Tennessee Police Fatally Shoot Woman Holding BB Gun[/li][li]Teen shot by San Jose cop while holding drill ID’d[/li][li]Black Man Shot With Vape Device Mistaken For Gun[/li][li]Blind man tasered after his walking stick was mistaken for a gun by armed police officers[/li][li]Caregiver shot by police after toy truck mistaken for gun[/li][li]Police Shot Woman Holding Cell Phone[/li][li]Pa. cop shot man holding underwear, mistaken for gun [/li][li]Cops shot elderly man dead after crucifix was mistaken for gun[/li][li]Police kill man carrying pipe mistaken for gun [/li][li]Alabama Police Officer Shoots Teen Holding Cell Phone[/li][li]Wallet Mistaken For Gun [/li][li]Vietnamese community protests the shooting of woman holding a kitchen tool[/li][li]Bible Mistaken for Gun in Shooting[/li][li]Virginia Police Kill Black Woman Holding Fake Gun[/li][li]New York police sergeant shoots dead naked woman holding scissors[/li][li]Teen Shot, Killed By Police Was Holding Wii Video Game Controller[/li][li]Metal object in fatal police shooting was a welding torch[/li][li]NYC Police Shoot Dead Teen Holding Hairbrush Mistaken for Gun[/li][li]Navajo Woman Holding Medical Scissors Shot + Killed By Arizona Police [/li][li]St. Louis Cop Shoots Unarmed African American Teen, Holding Sandwich[/li][/ul]
My first reaction? Let’s get the whole story before proceeding further.
Pretty much this. Biased media pushing a narrative. If they were being strictly objective, the headline would have been “man shot by police near State Street 7-Eleven” or some such non-judgmental headline.
That’s putting an awful lot of blind faith in the justice system.
Bear in mind that I don’t live in the United States. If I read about an American police shooting all the way out here, I’m going to assume something significantly wrong happened; given the events of the past few years, chances are the police done fucked up.
I would also assume it was an American story, by that phrasing.
The race of the person being shot may or may not be relevant.
If it is not relevant, it does not belong in the headline.
The headline writer almost assuredly does not know, at “press time”, whether the race is relevant.
So the headline writer, in mentioning race, is almost always irresponsibly stirring up shit.
mmm
My first impression is that the newspaper is engaged in race-baiting to increase sales.
After seeing so many instances where the shooting is completely unjustified, my reaction will be that this is just another case of trigger-happy cops going wild.
I’d assume unjustified. Race only makes it into a headline if a black person has been presumably wronged. When’s the last time you saw “Police shoot white man?” Likewise, race is almost always omitted (sometimes even in the story), when a person’s criminality is beyond dispute.
“White” makes it into a headline if talking about supremacy, privilege, inequality, and false accusations or made up claims (invariably by the white person).
Same race crime almost never gets called out in a headline.
Broad brush and always true? No. But that’s the trend as I see it.
I don’t think the reporter is the one who is tone deaf here regarding race.
I didn’t vote for either. I would have said “The newspaper clearly thinks the shooting was unjustified.”
I make no assumptions. Cops can be stupid, racist or incompetent like anyone else.
I can’t vote because I wouldn’t make any assumptions based on the limited information. It find it troubling that the headline would specify race, and this might make me guess an unjustified shooting, but I wouldn’t assume that until I knew more details. Headline writers mess up sometimes, as does anyone relaying a story.