For decades, the mainstream media has helped shape the narrative that Black and Brown men who cause harm are irredeemable and should be incarcerated. This has been done with dehumanizing words including “brute,” “thug,” “inmate” and “felon.” As well as through repeatedly showing sensational, click bait stories of Black and Brown men committing random acts of violence on the evening news and in the headlines of newspapers. All these stories send the message that our cities won’t be safe until these men are incarcerated.
According to one study, when a mass shooting takes place, white shooters are most often referred to as “victims of society” – under undue stress. The same study shows that the media is 95 percent more likely to call a white shooter mentally ill than a Black shooter. The disparities paint white shooters as victims of their circumstances, and Black and Brown shooters as being worthy of blame by virtue of a moral failing. These images and labels have caused many in society to view Black and Brown men who harm as inherent threats to safety and therefore disposable.
As Michelle Alexander said in her book, “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness,” “we use our criminal justice system to label people of color ‘criminals’ and then engage in all the practices we supposedly left behind.” Today’s practices of mass incarceration, systemic racism, and policing are akin to slavery, segregation, and slave patrols. And the labeling has oftentimes been done by editors, reporters, and journalists. The results are telling:
In recent years, some progressive media outlets and elected officials have pointed out how criminalizing labels can reinforce this damaging narrative. Yet, most mainstream news outlets continue to practice the same harmful practices mentioned above.
If news outlets want to be held accountable to the public they serve, especially Black and Brown communities who have been most harmed by their reporting, they should start doing the following:
We are a generation that has easier access to information than any that has come before us. With such an abundance of information comes a responsibility to ensure that stories are told fairly, honestly, and paint a full picture of the details. Lives and livelihoods hang in the balance, and this type of discrimination can no longer be tolerated.