Thanks to my solid academic training, today I can write hundreds of words on virtually any topic without possessing a shred of information which is how I got a good job in journalism.
– Dave Berry, Journalist/Humorist/Columnist/Novelist
Dear [insert the name of your favorite journalist to whom this would apply]:
You have seen fit to re-christen Mike Brown with a euphemistic alias: the “unarmed black teenager.” That he was unarmed, black, and relatively young are all relevant facts. Relevant, but not dispositive by any means. We must be careful not to so cavalierly ascribe to those facts more implicit gravity and consequence than they deserve:
- Although Brown was unarmed, (1) we don’t know if the officer knew that, and (2) a person can still pose a deadly threat without being armed.
- Although Brown was technically a teenager, he was 6’4″ tall and weighed nearly 300 pounds. And there’s a big difference between an 18-year-old and a 13-year old.
- And although Brown was black, that is more relevant to the broader social science studies on preconceptions and innate biases than to the split-second decisions of this officer in that fleeting moment. After all, even assuming the officer was a rabid racist, he would still have the right to self-defense if all the prerequisites presented themselves (which we don’t know).
Many of you have also hastily ruled this a “murder.” In Missouri, “[a] person commits the crime of murder in the first degree if he knowingly causes the death of another person after deliberation upon the matter.” Mo. Rev. Stat. § 565.020. Take away the prior deliberation, and you have second degree murder. Mo. Rev. Stat. § 565.021. However, it’s not “murder” if the lethal force is otherwise justified. Were the officer’s actions justified under Mo. Rev. Stat. § 563.046 (deadly force in the course of an arrest)? Maybe. Maybe not. We don’t know. Could the shooting be justified under Mo. Rev. Stat. § 563.031 (deadly force in self-defense)? Possibly. We don’t know. Was the shooting completely unjustified and prosecutable? Also very possible. We don’t know.
That Mike Brown is deceased is an objective fact. That he was shot and killed by Officer Wilson is also an indisputable fact. Report those points to your heart’s content. But the assertion that his death was a “murder” is not a fact — at least not yet. The assertion that firing six shots is automatically “excessive” is also not a fact; it’s a drawn conclusion. None of this can be prematurely taken for granted.
Likewise, if you don’t know for sure, please don’t call it racism. Of course, it might very well be racism. Certainly possible. But until we know, it’s dangerous to speculate. And I’m not using the word “dangerous” in the metaphorical sense. I mean it is literally dangerous.
Private citizens can guess and hypothesize all they want within the confines of their own discussion circles. And some of their reasoning and conclusions may be plausible or even probable. But you, the media, you play a very, very different role. The First Amendment, just like the Second Amendment, comes with tremendous responsibility. You in the media are just as armed as we are in the gun world. Your pen is just as powerful as my firearm. Both are capable of good and bad, depending on the person wielding the tool. If I mishandle my weapon, innocent people could get hurt or killed. If you mishandle your weapon, innocent people could get hurt or killed.
So please, I beg you, choose your words wisely. File your FOIA requests and fight like hell to get objective data and evidence (like the autopsy reports), and report that. If the authorities are witholding information unlawfully, then hell, report that. But don’t take the liberty of filling in the blanks. Your job is to get the news, not to create it. This is not a fluffy story about tech gadgets or fashion police. Lives are at stake. You accepted this platform, and you have an obligation to respect its power. With emotions running as high as they are, the slightest turn of a phrase could mean the difference between a peaceful demonstration and a deadly riot. Don’t get me wrong. Any act of violence is first and foremost the fault of the actor. But if you egg it on — either by carelessness, incompetence, or deliberation — you have blood on your hands.
If, indeed, words matter, then Dave Barry would like his name spelled correctly. Unless, of course, there is a Dave Berry somewhere who also is a humorist, has a newspaper column, and writes books.
🙂
@FrankC – what good would a dashcam looking out the windshield have been?
stay safe.
Hey Skid – Wouldn’t a dash cam have captured at least the end of the incident, in front of the squad car? Assuming there was a struggle in the car, of course it wouldn’t have caught that video, but might it have caught the audio?
“Words matter”
They do, and it is not by accident that the ones you quote are used. They intentionally fan the flames of rage and riot for their own evil purpose…page 1 and the lead story for all of MSM for ten days and counting and they could not care less that the good people of that town, and of LE, and of our bleeding nation, pay the price for their misleading and incendiary wordsmithing…as long as it keeps their industry back from the abyss for just a little longer.
They know that the truth will come out eventually, and already that bulwark of tainted and tinted journalism NPR, is allowing some of it out. This evening’s interview by Robert Siegle of the attorney for Michael Brown’s acquaintance (who is also the former mayor of St. Louis), made a point of calling the dead boy “Big Mike” several times and calling his behavior “thuggish”, as if the video of the huge Mr. Brown dwarfing the shopkeeper he was strongarm robbing didn’t make those things obvious already. They know that his intimidating presence and predisposition to criminal behavior carries the implication that what happened in and around that cop car probably involved more than a hassled youth trying to give himself up. But they also know that throwing terms like “murder” and “racist” and “teenager about to start college shot in the back” are guaranteed to get them the national exposure they crave right now, while boring details like the facts and the truth and due process are long and boring.
Yes, the truth will come out eventually. Will it justify what happened? It’s hard right now to see how, but again, even though that young cop didn’t know he had a hot robber on his hands, the robber didn’t know he didn’t know, and Brown’s actions could have reflected that and been aggressive and threatening enough that the cop feared being assaulted; again those are things we cannot know now but hope to know later. But later’s not good enough for the six o’clock news, and inciteful commentary along with giving facetime and notoriety to rioters, looters, and worst, the race-baiters who follow the cameras like sharks follow blood. And hell yes, let’s be sure we shout out the name and location of that young cop and his family so maybe a good lynching can keep this circus going a little longer.
I’ll get back to this though; everything that happened that day, from the cigar robbery forward, will play out long and hard and hurtful to all concerned…well, except for media and the publicity whores aforementioned. But all of it, every damn destructive detail, could have been avoided, and is an entirely separate set of actions and reactions than the ones that could have and should have precluded it all…
In the case of State v, Zimmerman, it all could have been avoided if Z had adhered to the number one rule of gunfights; don’t get into one. In his case, keeping his ass in his car would have accomplished that, and no one would have even heard of George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin. Of course hindsight is 20/20, Monday quarterbacking, and all that. But it could certainly be an object lesson to the next guy on what not to do…control your reactions to relatively innocuous actions, and save the hard stuff for when there is no other choice.
And in the case at hand, the need for police agencies big and small to take a hard look at the militarization that has so polarized LE from the citizens that pay their wages…and that includes pretty much all of 2A defenders, libertarians, and belatedly, liberal apologists. But far more important considering the incident in Missouri and the untold number of similar potential scenarios across the country, is to actively and expeditiously bring the ratios of enforcement personnel into line with the populations they serve. I say this because there is absolutely no doubt in my mind, that had that correct ratio been the reality in Ferguson, and had that young cop had the advantage of a shared race, culture, and understanding with Big Mike Brown, young Brown might still be alive and the young cop would still have a career and a future. But as I said in a previous comment, even in the unlikely event that EVERY SINGLE ACTION taken by both parties to this tragedy had been exactly the same, including that young man ending up dead on the pavement, the town name Ferguson MO would still be virtually unknown outside the Saint Louie area, and the incident itself, while still tragic, would have been but a footnote on page three, and this nation would not have suffered the serious and possibly mortal wound to racial progress and social equality that Ferguson Missouri absolutely is.
Sorry, tl;dr, again. That’s me.
Apparently (means I read it somewhere but can’t recall where) Ferguson police cars don’t use dashcams. Cheapskates! I figure the cost of a cheap dashcam to be around $25.
The sad fact is the media has X number of column inches to feel every day and often they don’t care how they fill it. You’re right Tiffany, no one knows what happened and I fear that, as in Zimmerman, at the end of it all much will still be open to interpretation. That would be the worst possible outcome.
🙁
So many people use the TV like Moses listening to the burning bush. Gospel From God.
As gun owners we *know* that this ‘gospel’ has been anything but for nearly 5 decades.
We’ve been lied about and lied to for so long, we should know a large percentage of it is speculated BS but we still fall into the trap of believing it because “I saw a report about… ”
Especially if that report hits our Confirmation Bias nerve.
Your post is absolutely correct. I cannot understand why the state is being so slow to release the forensic evidence. There must be dash cams and police recordings and not releasing these simply fuels the conspiracy mongers. In an earlier comment on the lessons of the Zimmerman affair I alluded to the fact that shooting an unarmed man is never well received by the public or press regardless of the circumstances. This is another example. Finally, it is frustrating to watch how the authorities are allowing the looting to occur right in front of them. I suppose they are walking on egg shells trying not to further inflame the situation. However, the failure of the police to do their job is only going to result in private citizens/business owners eventually taking matters into their own hands and shooting a bunch of people. That is the inevitable result of a breakdown of the criminal justice system. It will not be pretty.
Agreed, sadly 🙁