Media and Police Relations in USA?

It is becoming harder to be a police officer in the United States today. With the events that have occurred just in the past couple of months, the issue of race and the police have been at the forefront of most discussions on the major news networks. There were the major grand jury decisions not to indict police officers in the Brown and Garner cases. That seemed to put many Americans in an uproar about what has been happening across the United States What has helped escalate the distrust and hatred, particularly in the African American communities towards the police is the media.

It is not a secret but all media outlets do have an agenda to push so they do so, the agenda and in many instances wrong coverage of both of these tragedies has helped fuel the fire. In some instances the supposed “facts“ have actually just been lies as time as progressed and evidence in each case has slowly come out.

The media bias has helped separate the country even further and there does not appear to be an end to this madness anytime in the near future.

While many in the media may not be calling racism on white cops, some are there is a contingent that does believe African American’s, particularly men, are singled out by police. With this as ammunition, they push the belief into the households across America that this is true the media has a rather large influence on many individuals’ lives in today’s society.

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With this in mind, it is easy to see how so many people have their views dramatically shifted one way or another, without doing any research of there, simply based on what a commentator or two say. The influence that these commentators have is rather large these commentators really should keep this in mind when reporting on a news story. It is unfortunate that the truth does not sell or bring in viewers but the drama and supposed hatred do some news networks have television personalities that have no problem throwing out the racist word as well.

It is these people that can be even more dangerous than those that subtle g0 around the term racism. Going back to the point that people are easily influenced by the media, hearing something like the term racist or racism, instantly sparks a fire in many people. Based on the landscape of America just a few decades ago, many are disgusted when the term does come up and figure that when it is used, it must be true. One final aspect as to how the media does fuel negative race relations is not necessarily the medias fault. Most people do not follow the news closely they may read something that a friend posts on social media or an article that someone may have posted too many people use this, unreliable sources to get their information on major events in the news. While the media is still writing these articles which are read by many people, it is still the responsibility of the citizens to decipher fact from fiction and also do their due diligence and actually look up more information on what the media is presenting.

It is the general public’s lack of knowledge and care about the news that when something major does come up, they only read, watch, or listen to snippets of it and gain their perspective from the little information that they have. So why does it appear that the media does this? Help incite a racism claim against those of authority in our society. For one, there is a racism problem and there are a few “bad seeds” in police departments across the United States. While the percentage of bad cops is relatively low, in my estimation probably less than a percent of the entire police departments across the United States, those who are the bad seeds usually wind up all over the media. With this in mind, the police officer who had shot Mr. Brown, in selfedefense, was thought to have targeted Brown while his hands were up; in turn people were quick to judge that he was racist.

While the truth is now out of that officer, he was doing it in self-defense and that the issue does have nothing to do with race, people were quick to judge because of the color of the cop’s skin and the color of the deceased‘s skin, partially in thanks to the media and how they decided to cover the story. The media has a major impact in America; they know it and they take advantage of it. It is rather unfortunate because there is an obvious divide in our nation which will persist until the media decides to be truthful about their reporting rather than looking for viewership purposes. Another major reason as to why many have come to the conclusion that cops are just after African Americans is the disproportionate amount of African American crime compared to Caucasian crime. There are more cops in predominantly African American neighborhoods because of the sheer amount of crime that occurs in those neighborhoods.

With so much crime happening in these African American neighborhoods, there is bound to be instances with the police. This should not come as much of a shock to anyone but the media does like to portray shooting incidents as many African Americans being the victim and the cops just looking for trouble, when in reality the opposite is the case a majority of the time the prime example again would be the case with Brown. The young man stole from a convenience store, pushed around the clerk who tried to stop him, then when confronted by the police reached into the officer‘s vehicle, when finally getting away from the vehicle Brown charges the police officer which is when the officer had to fire again at Brown, fatally wounding him. This was not the story told by the media though, the media portrayed Brown as the victim, especially initially.

It was told that Brown never reached into the officer’s vehicle and that brown was shot with his hands up and from behind. This has since turned out to all be fiction passed on ballistics, brown had gunshot residue on his body, which would have only been possible if he was extremely close when the officer fired his weapon. Ballistics also had shown that all shots into brown were from the front. So despite all the actual facts, people still refuse to listen or do not care because of what the media had been reporting before all the evidence came out. It is the media that made this an issue about race and the people took it and ran with it and continue to do so.

It is very unfortunate but the media does play a part in the racism that is continuing in this country. While the media is not directly doing anything that is racist, they are fueling stories with unnecessary information or lies which do incite racism within many communities. This is surely done simply for ratings and to help their own networks. In doing so it helps destroy communities and prolong the unnecessary tension that people and communities feel, along with resentment and distrust that is felt towards the police departments across the nation. It the national media could simply hold off and reporting speculation or any information that was not the facts, things could be much different in the country.