OPINION: Examples of biased reporting point to the power the media has in shaping what we believe.
Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
Media coverage of the Buffalo, N.Y., mass shooting proves that some journalists and reporters cannot handle the truth about racism in America, do not understand what is going on and cannot report on racism in a fair and responsible manner.
Payton S. Gendron, 18, allegedly shot 13 people, killing 10—all of them Black—with his AR-15 rifle in a Tops supermarket in Buffalo. It didn’t take long to identify bias in the news coverage of the shooting.
For example, voices on social media have taken the news media to task for refusing to call racism by its name, which is racism. For example, Uché Blackstock tweeted on the Buffalo coverage: “Media, stop using “racially motivated”. Stop using “racial slur”. Call it what it is. It’s “racist”. It’s “racism”. It’s “white supremacy”. Stop trying to sugar coat it.”
While some journalists are reluctant to identify racism and racial violence in their reporting of the Buffalo shooter, others identified the alleged killer as a “white teenager,” as AP did before correcting it. This, even as reporting from Ferguson, Mo., referred to the unarmed Michael Brown as an “18-year old Black man,” even though the two were the same age. Media narratives of Brown not only robbed him of his youth, but painted him, the victim, as a criminal and a “thug.”
Similarly, like the coverage of other white mass shooters, reporting on Gendron has referred to him as a today!
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