
When The Media Treats White Suspects And Killers Better Than Black Victims [1]
WHITE SUSPECT
That's how the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal chose to present the story of Amy Bishop, a former college professor who eventually pleaded guilty to killing three colleagues and wounding three others at a faculty meeting in 2010.
BLACK VICTIM
And that's the headline AL.com ran about the shooting death of a 25-year-old black man in Alabama earlier this year.
On the afternoon of Aug. 9, a police officer fatally shot an unarmed, black teenager, Michael Brown, [2] in Ferguson, Missouri. Details remain in dispute. Eyewitnesses have said [3] that Brown was compliant with police and was shot while he had his hands up. Police maintain that the 18-year-old had assaulted an officer and was reaching for the officer's gun. One thing clear, however, is that Brown's death follows a disturbingly common trend of black men being killed, often while unarmed and at the hands of police officers, security guards and vigilantes.