Choosing which stories to tell the American public must be a hard task for the media. There’s so much we should be aware of — Miley Cryus stuck her tongue out again! President Barack Obama did something cute! A Republican politician said something offensive about women!
Aside from these topics, the media, in a sadistic kind of way, loves covering violence. Debates about mental illness, gun rights and parenting are aroused, and large numbers of people tune in to see various pundits shout at one another on CNN.
Sadly, we’ve been seeing too many of these incidents in a relatively small amount of time.
On Mother’s Day last year, a joyous second-line parade in New Orleans was interrupted by a plethora of bullets. Fortunately, there were no fatalities. However, 19 people, including a few children, were shot, and another person was trampled as parade-goers attempted to flee.
Soon after, two brothers, Akein “Keemy” Scott and Shawn “Shizzle” Scott, were identified as the perpetrators of the violent shooting.
Although this incident didn’t receive the level of press that accompanied the Boston Marathon bombing or the Aurora theater shooting, the case has been picked up by the U.S. Attorney’s Office after the brothers and seven others were indicted on federal drug trafficking charges.
My question: when will national media cover this story?
Though there were no fatalities, this is a serious crime of the same nature as what happened in Boston and Aurora. The bullets that struck those 19 people certainly could have killed them. Luckily, they didn’t.
Only three people died as a result of the Boston Marathon bombings. Were the deaths of three non-African-American individuals more worthy than the injuries of 19 African-Americans?
Nevertheless, I can’t help wondering how or if they would even cover such a story. The perpetrators were not identified as Muslim, so the media can’t go with the seemingly obligatory “terrorist” angle. The perpetrators were not frail, unsociable white kids, so they wouldn’t be able to have debates about their mental health.
National media outlets seem to be unconcerned with the perpetration of this so-called “black-on-black crime.” Unless there are white victims, black criminals don’t achieve the apparent stardom white criminals do.
To the media, African- American men committing crimes is nothing out of the ordinary and definitely not worth reporting. Even though statistics show white people have a higher rate of committing crimes than African-Americans, there is no societal recognition of these numbers. White people committed 65 percent of the reported rapes and 62.8 percent of aggravated assaults in 2012, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Media coverage of tragic events like the Aurora theater shooting hurts more than it helps. Victims and criminals become pawns in debates about gun rights, mental illness and terrorism. Instead of focusing on the actual humans involved, even the most respectable news outlets politicize the stories to no end.
As with the Mother’s Day shooting, it is the lack of coverage that reveals more.
Because this incident occurred in a predominantly African- American area by African-American men, there is no one in the story for the white viewers at home to identify with or even sympathize with.
Because of phenomena such as “missing white woman syndrome,” referring to the hours upon hours of media coverage dedicated to stories about upper-middle class white women who have gone missing, it’s hard to ignore the media’s bias against stories that can’t be packaged neatly for the viewer’s consumption.
The Mother’s Day shooting is not different from the crimes the media chooses to cover. The only difference is that the media has deemed the victims unworthy of their coverage and sympathy.
SidneyRose Reynen is an 18-year-old film and art history freshman from New Orleans.