Videos

With some specific racial-based controversies happening all around the country, the follow videos provide excellent insight as to how the media chooses portray the different races in each situation. Although all 3 incidents involve the death of an African American male, the police officers are typically portrayed as the “good cop who was just doing his job” while the black males are seemingly portrayed as “threatening gangsters who were just looking to cause trouble.”

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/dec/04/eric-garner-mike-brown-fox-news-megyn-kelly

The death of Eric Garner has sparked widespread controversy around the country. Apparently, news sources decided to take a more racial approach instead of just reporting the news as it happened, without the commentary. Sources like Fox News, continually label the police officers in all of these black/white shooting as “white knights” while the black kids are continually portrayed as “oversized thugs.”

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/trayvon-martin-shooting-a-timeline-of-events/

With all the controversy around the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin incident, there was plenty of misrepresentation in the media of both men, but more so of Trayvon in particular. The media labeled Trayvon as a “criminal,” “thug,” and “gangster,” that was just minding his own business before he was gunned down by Zimmerman. The media then portrayed George Zimmerman as a “law-abiding citizen” that was just trying to help protect his community.

http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2014/08/us/ferguson-brown-timeline/

This article provides a detailed explanation of the Michael Brown “Ferguson” incident from both the accounts of the friend that was at the scene with Michael Brown and the police officer that is under investigation for the shooting. Again we see how the media has chosen to misrepresent and Michael Brown as big, violent criminal that had just come from committing armed robbery (which didn’t actually happen) when he “attacked” the police officer and tried to take his weapon.