Category: BirminghamWatch
One News Media Bias That Isn’t Debatable
The innocent, young, attractive, white woman was missing, and presumably dead, the victim of homicide. Local and national media pounded the story with daily coverage.
This is, of course, the case of Gabby Petito.
And Mollie Tibbetts. And Natalee Holloway. And Chandra Levy. And others.
The equivalent case of a missing Black woman? Couldn’t find one.
HBO is currently showing a documentary series called “Black and Missing.” It features the founders of the Black and Missing Foundation and makes the basic point that news media and law enforcement pay more attention to missing white people, especially females, than to missing Black people. Sociologists and media often call this Missing White Woman Syndrome. Read more.
After Mass Shootings, Public Safety and Good Journalism Collide
In the aftermath of the fatal shootings at Oxford (Michigan) High School last week, CNN’s Anderson Cooper continued his practice of recent years of not reporting the name of the shooter. This is becoming an increasingly popular editorial decision among news media.
The main reason for this is that, according to research and anecdotal evidence, most mass shooters commit their acts in large part to gain notoriety. Further, there’s evidence that fame for one mass shooter can motivate future ones.
But naming the shooter can serve a public benefit, as well. Read more.
Sin and Confession: Newsrooms Revisit Some Major Failures
The Washington Post on Nov. 12 took the highly unusual step of overhauling two articles that had been posted on its website since 2017 and 2019, respectively. Recent events had suddenly called into question the accuracy of the articles, which reported on the identity of a confidential source who supposedly contributed salacious information about Donald Trump that was contained in the infamous and since discredited “Steele dossier.” The Post removed large portions of the articles, changed the headlines, removed a companion video, and appended editor’s notes. About a dozen other, related stories were corrected, as well. The Post’s editor offered public explanations on various platforms.
This got me to thinking about previous famous situations in which a news organization belatedly found fault with its coverage of a high-profile subject and decided it needed to take corrective action. Read more.
NewsMatch 2021 Offers Chance to Double Donations
The Alabama Initiative for Independent Journalism joins more than 300 nonprofit newsrooms as participants in the national NewsMatch 2021 campaign. Gifts to BirminghamWatch between Nov. 1 and Dec. 31, 2021, have the chance to be part of a one-to-one match, supported by national foundations that understand the value of fact-based, nonpartisan, independent journalism. Read more.
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Staring Death in the Face – Voluntarily
Reporters witness more death than they want to, be it war, disaster, disease, crime or accidents. It’s a whole different jolt to the conscience, though, when a death is scheduled and government sanctioned.
Members of the media are standard witnesses whenever a state – at least in this country – carries out a death penalty. This was in the headlines in Alabama 10 days ago when state news organizations unsuccessfully protested a decision by the state Department of Corrections to allow only one media witness to the lethal injection of an inmate. The DOC cited pandemic safety measures.
The media’s interest in attending such events in numbers isn’t because they want a sensationalistic headline. Rather, it’s a watchdog role. “We are there to observe and report on the most powerful thing the state can do to a person,” said Kent Faulk, the managing producer for state news for the Alabama Media Group and a former colleague of mine. “We need to make sure they are held accountable, doing things the way they are supposed to.” Read more.
Professor Explores Relationship Between White Police and Black Citizens Through the Years in New Book
In recent years, American cities have exploded in protests against police violence. Whether the protests were over the murder of George Floyd in 2020s Minneapolis or Bonita Carter in 1970s Birmingham, these Black communities’ reactions were about more than the killings of individuals. These communities were responding to a century of police violence and murder directed at African American citizens.
In his new book, “Race, Crime, and Policing in the Jim Crow South,” Brandon T. Jett, a professor of history at Florida SouthWestern State College, explores this long history of the fraught and dangerous relationship between white police and Black citizens.
“Jim Crow law enforcement officers and institutions,” Jett writes, “by rule and practice, were not created to improve the lives of African Americans.” The white community wanted police to prevent and solve crime, but whites associated crime disproportionately with African Americans and saw police as the frontline enforcers of Jim Crow.
Looking at three major Southern cities — Birmingham, New Orleans and Memphis — Jett finds that while African Americans had good reason to be wary of white police officers, they also needed the help and cooperation of the police to reduce or punish crimes in the Black community. Read more.
PARCA Researcher Don Daily Remembered After His Death
PARCA Senior Research Analyst Don Dailey, 66, died Oct. 9 after a fall at his home. Daily joined the Public Affairs Research Council of Alabama in 2017 and led research in school discipline, analysis of school performance data and evaluations of local and statewide education initiatives. Read more.
Sources Should Be Sources, Not Editors
I’d have posted this sooner but I was waiting on Adam Schefter to edit it.
Schefter, a National Football League “Insider” reporter for ESPN, became a target of widespread derision within the journalism community this week when the LA Times reported that Schefter sent an entire draft of a pending news story about NFL collective bargaining to a key source for review. It happened 10 years ago but is in the news now because Schefter’s action was revealed in emails that are part of current court litigation involving the key source. Read more.
AIIJ Announces Retirement of Founding Executive Director Carol Nunnelley
The Alabama Initiative for Independent Journalism has announced the retirement of Carol Nunnelley, founding executive director of the organization. Nunnelley joined Jerry Lanning and Mark Kelly to found AIIJ in 2014 and became its first executive director in 2015.
Nunnelley led AIIJ through the creation of its publishing arm, BirminghamWatch, and fostered steady growth in reporting and readership. Key projects included nonpartisan voter guides for local elections and a series on the Legacy of Race. Read more.
In a Disaster, Media Heroism (aka Craziness) Has Its Limits
When a natural disaster strikes a community, residents go to shelter. Public safety workers and journalists go to work.
News organizations usually prioritize the safety of reporters in the field during such events. Often, it’s the reporters who will push the limits on safety in order to deliver vital news to the public. Ethical managers talk them out of it.
But there’s no shortage of instances of reporters subjecting themselves to the brutality of nature to report a weather story. Their aim is to show the public the truth about the conditions. Their critics call it reckless showboating. Read more.
