A little boy is murdered. The social media post shows a picture of the smiling happy child with a lengthy written story detailing a despicable crime. The post goes on to say the boy, who is obviously white, was shot by a young black male. According to the post, the boy was shot to death for riding across the yard of the assailant.
No doubt millions of Americans want to know where is the public outrage because this story did not make the national news. Is the outrage over a white child murdered by a black male? Yes, that seemed to be the point of the social media post. The picture is of a white child, but the explanation begins by saying this little boy was shot by a black male.
Stories like these, that don’t make the national news when similar stories do, is a reason why so many call the mainstream media the lamestream media and why so many do not trust the media and certainly think the media is anything but objective. The racially charged undertone should make this a priority story, many Americans seem to believe. And why not, they ponder. Then they may remember the 1990s and the age of PC, political correctness, which was a liberal call to not offend any person due to ethnicity, race, gender, sexuality, physical or mental challenge, religion, culture, age, weight, height, socioeconomic status, you name it. The comedy acts of some entertainers were ruined or had to be retooled while old ones were shelved from rebroadcasting.
As a former news reporter, I’d like to explain why this specific story may not have been covered by the national media. First, this story is one of five child murders that occur every day in the U.S. Yes, five children are victims of homicide each day in America, the statistic higher here than any modern nation. You sure you want to hear about all these horrible crimes every single day for the rest of your life? No you don’t.
America is made up of millions of small- and medium-size towns. Murder does not touch their lives every day, maybe once a year or less often. So, when murder occurs in their community or neighboring areas, region or state, it is widely covered. That news, covered responsibly, is sent to the Associated Press which sends all vetted stories to be picked up by media outlets nationwide. Big city media and those greater smaller community newspapers and broadcasters determine each day the news stories to run.
It’s not difficult to understand what makes one murder story go nationwide while most—the great majority because tens of thousands of people are murdered every year—are only known in the communities where they occurred. Space and time are primary considerations. Then the details: Is it a mass murder, was it committed by a mass murderer, was the child first reported missing (all of those go nationwide by law), what were the circumstances, was it a hate crime, was it committed in a church or an amusement park or other unusual place, is the assailant being sought by the law, is the assailant charged with the homicide, is the suspect the child’s parent (usually they are)? All these editorial considerations are made in seconds. Believe it or not, the national mass media tries hard to avoid sensationalism or over sensationalism.
Social media gets away with it
But social media thrives on sensationalism. Addicted readers like to feel angry or ecstatic, anything but numb. Responsible reporters think first before letting emotions come into play, if even then. The media expects the public to act the same way: think before feeling when hearing about an awful event like child murder.
The mass media doesn’t want to offend the public with gory details. So those would be filtered out of a news article about a murder. Crime scene photos also are reviewed before publication. One reason is to not upset the victim’s family. Fairness is another issue the media considers when reporting a murder, when speaking of the victim and the assailant or suspect.
Now let’s talk about race.
Minorities do not trust ‘institutions,’ I learned in a journalism workshop at Texas Christian University. Such institutions include: the criminal justice system, the judicial system, the prison system, the education system, the government … and the media. What? Being too young to recall the civil rights movement, I thought the media and minorities were hand in hand, working together, the media careful not to offend but to uplift minorities and disenfranchised people and communities. In my mind, seeing life from inside my white skin and behind rosy glasses, I thought the nation’s mass media should be credited with broadcasting the civil rights’ protests. The media reported Southerners speaking against African Americans, holding signs supporting the KKK and segregation. News cameras were rolling during every protest when the police and the canines attacked African Americans who wanted their cities and states to recognize them as human beings and Americans with the right to vote, to work, to shop, to be educated and to live anywhere. I thought the media of the 1960s did a commendable job reporting things the way they were. But Black people continued to distrust the media.
Why?
Because for three centuries prior, American newspapers, the only media, denigrated African Americans in every conceivable way. There were newspapers for white communities and newspapers for Black communities, often published by Black men who were ministers or educators. The white papers seldom featured news about Blacks unless it was a particularly sensational crime. Southern newspapers promoted lynchings as community events, drawing hundreds and thousands of townspeople together like blood-thirsty Romans at a coliseum to watch a gruesome hanging death. More often than not, an innocent man, woman or child was swinging dead on the tree. Here’s a headline in a Texas newspaper: Negro man killed in car crash. The year was not 1870 but 1970. The American mass media had a long way to go to restore trust in their Black communities.
Nowadays when social media posts a Black person killed a child, and the picture is of a white child, people, white people, want to know why isn’t this on the news. They really want to know why wasn’t this story told to the public just exactly as it is in social media: an evil black person killed an innocent white baby.
Responsible journalists aren’t going to report the story mentioning the race of the assailant. And the assailant would be referred to as ‘alleged’ assailant, and when arrested and charged by police, still use the preface ‘alleged’ all the way to the day he is found guilty by a judge or jury in court.
America’s mass media and race relations remain rocky. White reporters cannot really know the Black perspective no matter a journalist’s sincerest intention in trying to make up for centuries of injustice and intolerance, bigotry and racism with well-meaning attempts to bring enlightenment and make things better somehow some way. I should know.