The Ghost of Paley
Posts: 1703
Joined: Oct. 2005
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Russell:
| Quote | | Maybe if I ask them one at a time, I'll have better luck. Let's just go with this: do you suppose that if Diallo had been shot by one or two cops, once or twice, because they mistakenly thought he was reaching for a gun, that would have been national news? That would be one (1) "Yes or No" question. |
Actually, yes. Would it have received as much coverage? No. But I do think it would have gotten more attention than Gideon Busch:
| Quote | If Gideon Busch’s story had followed the trajectory of Amadou Diallo, it would have been a national outrage, with coverage matching or exceeding the more than 1000 stories on the Diallo case. Revealingly, Gideon Busch’s coverage paled in comparison to Diallo. The mainstream media ignored Busch. In the northeast, forty-six articles were written, two in the southeast, zero in the west, and zero in the midwest. The first month’s forty-eight national articles were less than what Amadou had received in the southeast alone. And a majority of the articles came from local newspapers such as The Daily News and The New York Post.
The United States was not alone in minimally covering Busch. Worldwide he received minor attention in the first month after his death. Canada and South America didn’t write any articles on him. They wrote forty-seven for Diallo, thirty for Dorismond, and twenty-one for Thomas. Busch inspired only two articles in Europe. Lexis-Nexis revealed the grand total for the first month of each victim’s international coverage, including Europe, Asia/Pacific regions, Africa and the Mideast, and North/South America. Amadou had 109 articles, Dorismond sixty-nine, Thomas 101, compared to Busch’s paltry four. Patrick Dorismond, shot a year after Busch, received more media attention abroad than Busch received in the United States and the world combined.
Busch’s less than stellar attention abroad might be attributed to the fact that he was armed. But such an explanation for the media’s silence presumes that the Busch story was understood as a legitimate police response to an armed assailant, rather than an episode of police brutality. When in fact, many of the Busch news accounts that covered the episode alluded to Busch’s death being an example of police violence.
While mainstream media ignored Busch, it would be easy to assume that he’d receive more attention in ethnic and religious newspapers. Suprisingly, Busch, a Hasidic Jew received less publicity in Jewish newspapers than did Diallo. The Jewish Week wrote six articles on Busch – nine on Diallo. Forward, another Jewish newspaper wrote seven articles on Busch and fourteen on Diallo. The Jewish Advocate wrote one article on Diallo but did not advocate for Gideon. New Jersey Jewish News published six articles on Diallo- zero on Busch. Was that because he was not from Jersey? It is unlikely, as Diallo was not either. Other papers from the New York region are guilty of the same offense. El Diario/La Prensa, the largest circulation Spanish newspaper in the area, wrote sixty-five articles on Diallo and a measly five on Busch. The disproportion is evident in other ethnic papers as well such as Filipino Reporter, The Italian Voice, and Irish Voice, all of which published between one and five articles each on Diallo but did not follow suit for Busch. Perhaps both mainstream and ethnic newspapers find matters that don’t sensationalize racism as arbitrary or unnewsworthy. Media gives more publicity and attention to police brutality cases that can be attributed to racism. Cases such as Busch’s are essentially ignored.
In order to understand the media’s negligent reporting on Mr. Busch, it is necessary to understand the difference between him and the other police victims. The fact that Busch is white, while the other victims are black might be the reason for the media’s unenthusiastic portrayal of police brutality versus the apparent hype of racism. The media has exhibited a determined obsession with over emphasizing police violence as racially motivated. Could the media be exploiting America’s struggle with racism in order to create a crisis that generates news?
The media’s compulsive chase after white on black police violence reveals the beginning of what can arguably be a racial panic. The media’s creation of a racial panic is best shown through a former moral panic created by the media in regards to drugs. Philip Jenkins’ research published in Justice Quarterly reprinted in The American Drug Scene, shows the influence that the media has in creating a drug epidemic. He warns that a moral panic regarding a particular drug actually advertises it to many Americans. In other words, the media has the capacity to create a problem that may not be as problematic as the coverage maintains it to be. For example, Jenkins suggests that in the 1980s, “Newspapers assigned journalists to cover such stories as their sole responsibility, …the papers had a vested interest in the constant generation of newsworthy items in the area.” Journalists worked solely to cover drug stories. They pursued and covered the so-called drug epidemic. Newspapers were purposely over extending their coverage on particular drugs, sensationalizing an epidemic, which resulted in a moral panic and increased drug use. Could the media be exploiting America’s struggle with racism in order to create a crisis that generates news? Jenkins’ research demonstrated another interesting media trend, the disappearance of a crisis. The media had created a methamphetamine, or ice, national crisis. Unfortunately for the media, “the ice danger did not materialize as a national crisis, and the prospective ‘plague’ faded rapidly in early 1990”. If a real epidemic does not result from the coverage, the issue is quickly dropped. The media then moves on to another topic that it can manipulate.
[my emp]
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Oh, and by the way, ol' Gideon was shot twelve times by four police officers arranged in a semicircle. Yes, he lunged with a weapon - a &*^$ing hammer. A hammer. And he was mentally ill....don't you think the media could have spun that aspect of the story? I can see the headlines: "Four cops pump 12 bullets into mental patient armed with hammer!!!" But Gideon never got the chance outside of mostly local coverage.......
By the way, I notice you misplaced the part where my source contrasts the Thomas Jones and Rodney King cases, you know, where they note:
| Quote | Media coverage of the following case defied logic. Recently in Philadelphia, Thomas Jones, a black male was severely beaten by police. A television helicopter caught the scene on tape. Police fired fifty shots at him, grabbed him out of his car and beat him. The beating was all too familiar and reminiscent of the King incident. The Washington Post expressed a sense of deja vu on July 14, 2000 stating , “what was shown on tape…was enough to bring to some minds the 1991 beating by Los Angeles Police of Rodney King, an incident that has become a rallying point against police brutality.” If the media’s responses to Rodney King’s beating were unprecedented, and the sensationalized video became a rallying point against police brutality, attention drawn to the recently taped Jones beating would be insurmountable. Analysis of his coverage, however, tells a different story. His did not follow the same path in major newspapers that King’s had. During the first six months after each respective episode, newspapers wrote over 1000 articles on Rodney King and only 161 on Thomas Jones. In order to get a clearer understanding of the issue, a Lexis Nexis search for articles containing each victim’s name and police brutality showed the same disparity. The first six months revealed only seventy-six articles on Jones and 368 documents on King.
As both cases had almost identical circumstances, including the race of the victims, what could the difference be between these cases? The difference lies in the race of the police officers. White officers beat Rodney King, while those who beat and shot Thomas Jones were both black and white. Perhaps the media chose to ignore Thomas Jones because his attackers could not be categorized as white and racist. An editorial in the July 16, 2000 edition of Newsday exemplifies the media’s discretional coverage of racially motivated violence, “Of the 59 blows, three officers delivered the most: 17 by a black plainclothes officer, 14 by a white plainclothesman and 10 by an uniformed black officer. His was an equal-opportunity stomping.” It would not have been an equal opportunity ‘stomping’ had all white officers perpetrated it or even if they constituted half of the total blows delivered to Jones. Race seems to be a central issue in this case and we can see that it was mentioned several times but in the context of excusing the act. Their cases appear similar since they were both taped and broadcast worldwide, however a major difference noted in The Washington Post of July 17, 2000 states, “One key difference between the cases...is the racial configuration of the players. In Los Angeles, the officers who beat King with nightsticks all were white, while he was black. But in Philadelphia, the both white and black officers hit Jones, a black man.” So the fact that there were more black officers beating on Jones was a key issue. Papers were not as eager to report on Jones as they had been on previous police violence against minority victims. Since the media is only interested in racial scandal, and not brutality, the Jones’ beating had to be justified since it didn’t fit the criteria for the stereotypical minority victim of a white despotic police force. Accordingly, Mr. Jones’ story quickly disappeared.
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Not up to your standards? 
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Dey can't 'andle my riddim.
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You want me to discuss the ramifications of an event that you deny? Thanks, but no thanks. It's hard enough to get everyone to agree on the facts. ("Paley - define 'facts'. Then, define 'agree'. And what was your argument again? Oh, and before you tell us, please support your argument. But not with the internet - that's a breach of etiquette. And not with any books and journals that would force us to get off of our fat a$$es and check your sources. So support it. Not with that guy - he's a nut. We can't argue with his facts - but he's a nut. No, dummy, that study is overrturned because the authors explained it with evidence that they didn't put in their report. Gee, quit being dishonest. So what was your argument again? And remember, it's against liberalism only. I don't care what you said in another thread and what you contine to claim, we made up a thread title that has the word "liberal" in it, so by God you'll stick to the argument we made just for you, you ungrateful troll. Which you didn't even support. And was...... what, again?")
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