For AP, Being Shot by a Cop Makes You a Suspect
http://us10.campaign-archive2.com/?u=8c573daa3ad72f4a095505b58&id=38f179b73d&e=ae188e3081
I often think the clearest glimpse into a media outlets view of an issue comes not in the articles that directly engage it, but in the little throwaway descriptionsthe shorthand used to sum up the story.
Take a look, then, at this AP wire report (6/8/15), in which an account of a brutal policing incident at a Texas pool offered this by way of background:
Incidents involving white law enforcement and black suspects have raised concerns across the US, in particular since last August when a white police officer fatally shot a black 18-year-old in Ferguson, Missouri, fueling sometimes violent protests and a nationwide Black Lives Matter movement.
No, the incidents raising concerns have not involved black suspects. Freddie Gray was not a suspect, nor Akai Gurley. Tamir Rice and John Crawford held toy guns, and Ferguson officers evidently suspected Michael Brown of nothing more than not walking on the sidewalk. A number of those killed have been suspected of being mentally ill and in need of help.
As a matter of fact, the presumption by law enforcementand mediathat any black person involved in an altercation with police must be a criminal suspect is part of the outrage driving public protest.
Telling, too, that in its description of police killings in the news over the last several monthsincluding one officer who went free after leaping on top of the car of two unarmed black people and firing dozens of bullets into them, and another who saw all charges dropped for a putting a bullet through the head of a 7-year-old girl sleeping on her living room sofathe only thing AP sees fit to describe as violent are the protests.