When It Comes to Policing, Journalism Is Part of the Problem – Mother Jones
▻https://www.motherjones.com/media/2020/06/journalism-and-police-violence/?keycode=7AHE011
Last year, in another moment of anger and grief, the former editor of a local newspaper wondered about the role of journalism in covering brutal killings. “Journalists feel the need to bear witness,” John Temple, who ran the Rocky Mountain News at the time of the Columbine shooting, wrote. “But to the same horror, again and again? I can’t say anymore that I believe we learn from terrible things. I can say that I’ve seen the limits of journalism—and of hope. And I’m struggling with what to do about it.”
Temple was talking about a very different problem than the one dominating the news now. Mass shootings have received lots of attention, especially when victims have been white, as opposed to the Black and Brown people harmed and killed by police violence every day. But all the more so is this a moment to ask about the role and limits of journalism—of storytelling, period—as the author #Roxane_Gay did in the New York Times recently. “I write similar things about different black lives lost over and over and over. I tell myself I am done with this subject. Then something so horrific happens that I know I must say something, even though I know that the people who truly need to be moved are immovable.”
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/30/opinion/sunday/trump-george-floyd-coronavirus.html
