Baltimore: Riot

The media described the grotesquely how the boys raped and beat Trisha Meili. The media describe them stalking Ms. Meili like hungry wolves in the night. The media had such a strong hold on the city that whatever the news was accepted. The media also got their information wrong about these young men. The inner city ghettos are often called the concrete jungles of America. Who lived in the concrete jungles wild savage animals? That was the image America received when watching the news coverage.

Race riots are one of the major news items we hear about via the media when a social crisis occurs. The riots in Baltimore, however, were not so much about race, but more about economic and social class separations. The riots began as a peaceful protest amongst the citizens of Baltimore over the death of one of their own, Freddie Gray. Gray was a young, African-American, from a financially lower class area of Baltimore. Unfortunately, he died while in custody of the Baltimore Police. While this is a tragic loss, he was unlawfully detained by the police (Sarlin, 2015) during this ordeal. On the surface, the riots may appear as a cut-and-dry race provoked, once they are looked into further, that is not necessarily the case.

     News is all around us and is readily available to everyone. There are many flaws in the system that hurts the authenticity of the news when you see it. The media is indirectly part of the political system. Most news is either considered liberal or conservative by many.

On August 9th 2014, an unarmed black teenager named Michael Brown was shot dead by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. A day following Brown’ s death, a riot broke out in Ferguson which caught the attention of the entire country. The fact that black people suffers disproportionally from police violence isn’ t uncommon given that deadly use of force by the police towards blacks under 21 years of age is 20% compared to 8.7% to whites (Johnson et al., 2014). Perhaps what is surprising is the speed of organization and the intensity of young people in Ferguson to use the death of Michael Brown as a final straw in the injustice and racism blacks suffers to this day. For this paper, I shall analyze the Ferguson riot under the #BlackLivesMatter

In today’s society, many sociological issues center around politics. Mass media can be information spread through print, television, or radio sources. Mass media predominantly reports on political topics. Local news media tend to focus on local stories or events rather than politics. I chose this topic because it is a top point of debate in today’s society. Many believe that mass media reporting is biased and often skewed, and it is an interesting topic to examine using sociological ideas and perspectives.

The story of Freddie Gray’s death and the subsequent trial against the six police officers being held responsible calls into question how the relationship between the American police force and the American citizenry is evolving. Gray died on April 19th, a week after he was arrested and sustained severe injuries while in the back of a police van. The difficulty of obtaining objectivity in journalism shines through in the barrage of coverage of his death and its aftermath across different news platforms. The way that a story is portrayed is of critical importance — it influences readers to make decisions that affect the world around them, and with an upcoming trial, it is crucial to ensure citizens have access to the truth of a situation as the press can best uncover it.

Viewers rely on the media to inform them about what is going on in the world. Just like people, however the news industry has different biases. Which is why two different news channels will tell a different story on what is based on the same

When there’s a disaster like this, the media expect a lot of looting, lack of response to the disaster, victims in need of rescue, and even death. But if the media does not believe it is sensational enough, they will create or as this learner likes to call it lie about the facts to gain the attention they need to create ratings for their news stations no matter what, because good news does not catch the viewers’ attention nor does it help their ratings, but bad news is a attention getter, and will help raise their ratings, and maybe even put them in line for The Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards for reporters. The other things that they did not see too much of was the lawlessness or looting, so they exaggerated the severity.

What the news reporter and my brother might not think about is that the Police officers might have a good reason for shooting sometimes. All people focus on is that a police officer shot someone else. But they never think about why. All they say is “oh police officers are abusing their power again” or “they should not carry weapons because then they just shoot other” or maybe even “They are shooting innocent people again”

After completing the final installment of her latest article, entitled “A Taste of Baltimore,” Sarah Morgan, entertainment reporter for the city’s number-one newspaper, the Baltimore Sentinel, breathed a deep sigh of relief. For the better part of June 21, 2013, she had worked diligently to meet her editor’s Friday evening deadline.

news sources express only one view), they are more than likely to only watch that news source or come back to it every so often. When a news source disagrees with a person they are not inclined to watch that news source whenever

Since the beginning of media, producers have created products that applied to the biggest audience. Unreliable political and current event information and bias leads to underrepresentation of various ethnicities and identities. Mass media coverage portrays figures that appeals to the larger audience, hence, isolating others.

Gaskins and Jerit (2012) contributed their research on this topic and introduce it by sharing, “these findings have important implications for researchers and industry executives who seek to understand the changing nature of the media environment and its effects on the mass public” (p. 191).

Protest across this country seem to be gaining momentum. These protest seem to be focused on racial disparities, socioeconomic imbalance, and a common dislike for the current political organizations that are in power. Over the weekend, there was a protest in St. Louis over a police officer being found not guilty of first degree murder. Jason Stockley, a white police officer shot and killed Anthony Lamar Smith, a black man in 2011 and like many officers, was acquitted. (Chavez & Almasy, 2017) A major critical issue that has been plaguing the United States for decades is arrest related deaths. This problem creates a slew of other issues ranging on a scale of minor to serious. The expression of color is important as this country is one formed on racial discrimination. There has always been police violence in our country. Now it has become more of a public spectacle. In a time of the modern technology, videotaping is a finger click away. Not only do people have the ability to record on demand, but there is usually a video surveillance system set up on almost every corner. In urban cities, a few times over, throughout entire blocks. In this situation, there was a video that was inconclusive and did not display what the officer described. Chavez & Almasy (2017) quoted Stockley saying he understood the video looked bad but the optics had to be separated from the facts. The undoubtable fact is that the man died. The side of the victim has to go untold on account of his mortality.

media/government want us, the audience to see. The factors that govern what is reported are news