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MEDIA AND COLLECTIVE IDENTITY

The death of Freddie Gray

OCR KEY QUESTIONS How do the contemporary media represent regions/ethnic/social/collective

groups of people in different ways? How does contemporary representation compare to previous time

periods? What are the social implications of different media representations of

groups of people? To what extent is human identity increasingly ‘mediated’?

Our ‘historical case study’, The Wire is set in Baltimore, a small city of just over 600,000. The drama’s creators,

Ed Burns and David Simon depict Baltimore as a corrupt, gritty drug infested city which suffers from a significant class and racial divide. Because the series has long been lauded for its realistic portrayal of the

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police and criminality in particular, it is interesting to compare this fictional account with the death of

Baltimore resident Freddie Gray at the hands of the police. Moreover, a fascinating aspect of this tragic

incident is that many journalists and the public at large have used The Wire as a reference point for trying to

understand why the death took place and why it sparked so many protests.

On April 12, 2015, Freddie Carlos Gray Jnr., a 25-year-old Black American man, was arrested by the Baltimore Police Department for possessing what the police alleged was an illegal switchblade under Baltimore law. While being transported in a police van, Gray fell into a coma and was taken to a trauma center. Gray died on April 19, 2015; his death was ascribed to injuries to his spinal cord. On April 21, 2015, pending an investigation of the incident, six Baltimore police officers were suspended with pay.

Public reaction to the death has drawn further parallels to the response to the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown, as part of a larger string of controversial uses of force by police officers in the United States against African Americans. As of April 30, 2015, 22 demonstrations had been held nationwide in direct response to Gray's death or in solidarity with Baltimore. Additionally, the Black Lives Matter movement has protested Gray's death

Police timeline of the arrest Sunday, 12

April, 0839: Officers approach Gray and he flees on foot

0840: Gray arrested on corner of Presbury Street, Sandtown

0842: Police request a van 0854: Van departs with Gray

inside, conscious and speaking

0854-0924: Van makes a total of four stops between arrest and police station

arrival 0924: Police request paramedics to take Gray to hospital

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'The Wire' in real life: the Baltimore neighborhood Freddie Gray called home

David Zucchino and James Queally

The images of burning cars and smashed shop windows during riots this week on the edgy streets of West Baltimore were probably familiar to anyone who ever watched the HBO TV series "The Wire," which chronicled the hard life and tense times of many in this American city. The incendiary device this time was the death April 19 of a 25-year-old black man, Freddie Gray, whose spine was severed sometime after he was arrested following a police chase on foot.

But the vociferous street protests come out of a long history of trouble and poverty faced by many Baltimore residents--especially those in the impoverished neighborhoods of Sandtown-Winchester/Harlem Park in West Baltimore which Gray called home. Here, a lifetime away from the museums, upscale restaurants and charter boat tours of Baltimore's tourist-friendly Inner Harbor area, is both the history and the present-day reality of a sobering number of Baltimore residents.

Baltimore has the nation’s fifth-highest murder rate, according to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports for 2013, behind Detroit; New Orleans; Newark, N.J.; and St. Louis. -- In April 1968, riots broke out after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.  Six people died, 700 were injured and 5,800 arrests were made. The National Guard and the U.S. Army's 82nd Airborne Division were dispatched to deal with 1,200 fires and more than 1,000 looted or damaged businesses. Baltimore is 63% black. The Sandtown-Winchester/Harlem Park neighborhood is 97% black. The neighborhood's violent crime rate is 23 per 1,000 residents, according to a recent study by the progressive Justice Policy Institute--nearly double the rate for the city as a whole, and almost six times the U.S. rate overall.

The West Baltimore depicted in "The Wire" was a network of neighborhoods plagued by drugs, poverty and violent crime as police and young blacks clashed on the streets. The series concluded in 2008--but  Sandtown-Winchester/Harlem Park is still a cauldron of poverty, crime, drugs and social pathology.

Young blacks in this part of the city are nearly as likely to be arrested as they are to finish high school. One of every four juveniles here was arrested between 2005 and 2009, according to a 2011 Baltimore City Health Department report. The neighborhood’s juvenile arrest rate was 252 per 1,000 residents, nearly double the rest of the city. Sandtown-Winchester/Harlem Park is the city’s "highest incarceration community"--it

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has more people in state prisons than any Baltimore neighborhood, the Justice Policy Institute report found.  With a population of 14,000, Sandtown-Winchester/Harlem Park has 458 people in state prison, the report said, the vast majority of them African-Americans.

Only 25% of adults over 25 in Sandtown-Winchester/Harlem Park have a high school diploma (although the Justice Policy Institute report found that 66% had either a high school diploma or a GED, an indication that some earned their credentials in prison).  Half the neighborhood’s high school students were listed as chronically absent in 2012. The neighborhood’s homicide rate was more than double that of Baltimore overall between 2005 and 2009, according to the health department, and while the crime rate has started to decline, the biggest problem remains narcotics offenses. Most of those arrested are black men.

 Unemployment among those aged 16 to 64 in Sandtown-Winchester/Harlem Park was at 52% in 2012, according to the Justice Policy Institute report.  The median household income in 2010 was $22,000, versus $37,000 for Baltimore overall, according to the health department report. More than a third of households in Sandtown-Winchester/Harlem Park are headed by a single parent, versus a quarter for Baltimore.  The percent of the neighborhood’s families living below the federal poverty line is double that of Baltimore, 30% versus 15%.

-- In Sandtown-Winchester/Harlem Park, more than 7% of children under 6 had elevated levels of lead in their blood in 2012, the Justice Policy Institute report found. According to a lawsuit filed by Gray’s family in 2008, blood tests on Gray and his two sisters between 1992 and 1996 showed lead levels above those defined by state law as the threshold for lead poisoning. 

‘Wired Up’ David Simon on the Freddy Gray death:“…we shouldn’t be attenuating our attentions through a television drama. We don’t need that right now. At some point someone may find a meaningful drama to explain this moment. If not in Baltimore, then maybe Ferguson or Charleston or somewhere. There is a lot that drama can do, and it certainly has a role. But right now it struck me as being inappropriate, that with all the actual substance of what is happening in the streets right now, in the halls of power right now, we need to be straining this through a drama. Why are you doing that? What was it that made people at various publications and blogs reference The Wire  just because it was black people in Baltimore? That’s fucked up. It’s almost a shrinking of the human mind. Why don’t you attend to what’s actually happening right now in Baltimore? You don’t need McNulty or whoever to access it”.

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CNN’s ugly, racial victim blaming: A sad low in Freddie Gray coverageCNN calls Freddie Gray "the son of an illiterate heroin addict," in latest example of media double standardsBEN NORTON

When black Americans are killed by police, the media has a long history of digging for any dirt it can find on the victims. In doing so, the media often implies that the victim bares some responsibility for being killed, or even that the death may have been justified.

When unarmed black teen Michael Brown was killed by Ferguson police, he was described by the New York Times as “no angel.”

When unarmed black teen Tony Robinson was shot by Madison cops, the media was quick to point out he “faced some past troubles.”

When unarmed black father Eric Garner was strangled to death by New York police while he was standing on the sidewalk, minding his own business, he was blamed for selling untaxed cigarettes.

We now have what appears to be yet another example in a long line of instances of the media blaming victims of police brutality for their own deaths. Freddie Gray was arrested by Baltimore police in April for looking at a police officer and then running away. He committed no crime, and was not armed. Supporters say Gray was arrested for “running while black.” Gray was killed in police custody; his spinal cord was severed 80 percent at the neck. An autopsy shows his death may have been caused by a “rough ride” — an act of harassment in which police deliberately swerve and rapidly accelerate and decelerate their car in order to hurt detainees in the back seat.In May, Baltimore City charged the six police officers involved in Gray’s death, which was ruled a homicide, with crimes ranging from second-degree murder to illegal arrest.CNN published an article yesterday titled “First officer goes on trial in Freddie Gray death.” The first two lines of the piece read (emphasis added):

“The first of six city police officers went on trial Monday in a closely watched case involving a 25-year-old black prisoner who died after being

shackled and placed without a seat belt in a Baltimore City police van. The April 19 death of Freddie Gray, the son of an illiterate heroin addict, made

him a symbol of the black community’s distrust of police.”CNN, the leading U.S. news outlet, described the unarmed and innocent victim of police brutality as “the son of an illiterate heroin addict.” Those are some of the only words used to describe him. The only other sentence

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about Gray’s life in the almost 1,000-word article is “At 25, Gray already had a lengthy rap sheet.”Every time Gray is described — in the mere two lines in which he is allotted space — he is portrayed in a negative light, even though he was completely innocent when the police arrested and killed him. Unlike white victims of crimes, or even white perpetrators of crimes, black victims of police brutality like Freddie Gray are not humanized in any way.After facing backlash on social media and elsewhere, CNN removed the line from the article. In the new version, an editor’s note was put at the bottom that reads “A reference to Freddie Gray’s mother was removed from this story because it appeared out of context.” Out of context” is quite a euphemistic way of putting it. How was the sentence pertinent in any way in the first place? Gray appeared to have had a hard life, and a difficult upbringing. So what? Should he be executed by police for being raised in what has been described as “Baltimore’s slow burn of poverty“?Before the CNN article was edited, it was archived at the WayBack Machine. A screenshot of the original piece follows:

(Credit: Screenshot)

The fact that the line was included in the article is one thing, yet the fact that it is in the second sentence of the entire piece is something else entirely. The only thing sentences like this do is facilitate an atmosphere of victim-blaming, in which police are seen as justified in killing an innocent, unarmed black American. And yet a double standard — a painful, egregious double standard — exists. At the same moment that

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the media depicts black victims of police violence as villains, it also bends over backward to humanize white mass shooters.Dylann Roof was a far-right white supremacist extremist with neo-Nazi ties who slaughtered nine black people at a church in South Carolina in June in hopes of inciting a race war. Just after massacring nine black Americans in cold blood, Roof was greatly humanized by the media, which described him as “just a normal kid” and “a really sweet kid” who “was quiet” and “only had a few friends.” It blamed his violent right-wing extremism on “internet evil” and mental illness, noting he “was raised in a home destroyed by domestic violence.”

Robert Lewis Dear shot 12 people at a Planned Parenthood clinic in November last week, killing three. Authorities say he was “definitely politically motivated” and note the mass shooting was likely an act of domestic terrorism. This did not stop the media from doling out sympathy. Just after shooting 12 people, Dear — who was well known to police, had a lengthy criminal record, and faced charges for allegedly abusing his wife — was characterized as “adrift and alienated” and a “gentle loner.”Elliot Rodger massacred six people and injured 14 more near the campus of the University of California, Santa Barbara in May 2014. He explicitly stated that his attack was motivated by extreme misogyny and that he sought to “punish” women collectively for “rejecting” him in the past, yet the media called him “a quiet, troubled loner.”Compare these media characterizations of white mass murderers to those above of black victims of police brutality. In the tradition of the racist trope, black victims are painted as “thugs” while white killers are painted as “lone wolves.”In the end, white terrorists get more sympathy in the U.S. media than black victims of state repression.

How the Media Covered the Baltimore RiotsMorgan Eichensehr and Daniel Popper

National and local journalists converged on Baltimore Monday to report on the violence that erupted after the funeral for Freddie Gray, a black Baltimore resident who died from injuries sustained while in police custody less than two weeks ago. Their coverage became part of the story as the nation and world focused on their images, stories, videos and commentary.

On Tuesday, President Obama was among those who questioned the intense media focus on destruction of property instead of the peaceful protests and other events that led up to the violence. Journalists also faced physical violence, with quite a few sustaining injuries, Poynter reported. Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake’s office Monday

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reported 202 arrests, 144 vehicle fires — including multiple police vehicles — and 15 building fires. Fifteen officers were injured in the violence that spilled into Monday night. Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan declared a state of emergency and activated the Maryland National Guard Monday night as Rawlings-Blake declared a weeklong citywide curfew starting Tuesday, spanning 10 p.m. to 5 a.m.

American Journalism Review explored how the news media covered the events in Baltimore in recent days, looking through a wide range of websites, social platforms, live video streams, photo-sharing sites and more. Here are some highlights:

Hometown Coverage: Intense, Wide Ranging

The pressure of national news organizations trying to report on local events showed in widespread criticism of CNN’s coverage. Specifically Don Lemon, a CNN anchor, was widely derided on Twitter. Wrote Slate: “When cities spasm with violence for complicated reasons, that’s the only question CNN wants to ask.”

Around the country, while Vice News live-streamed coverage from the ground throughout the night, large news outlets embraced the coverage in varying degrees. Both large and small local outlets relied on wire coverage from the Associated Press and the New York Times, or reporting from Gannett and Tribune Company papers on the front lines.

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Tabloids such as the Chicago Sun-Times and the New York Daily News favored fiery images of angry protesters attacking police vehicles, looting and burning buildings, while larger broadsheet papers including the New York Times and Seattle Times printed images of police in riot gear and tense moments between law enforcement and demonstrators.

One photo in particular, an image from the AP depicting a man walking in front of a burning police van, proved particularly popular among the Newseum’s collection of daily front pages, from small West coast outlets to the Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times.Newspapers within cities also differed in their coverage and presentation. In Miami, el Nuevo Herald featured the story at the top of the page with the AP photo printed large. However, the Miami Herald, its sister outlet, positioned the story lower on the page with a small photo of protesters jumping atop a police cruiser.By Tuesday morning, several news organizations published run-downs and curations of the previous nights’ events, using photos, social media and multimedia to give readers an idea of the extent and impact of the riots.

BuzzFeed published “28 Moments That Show Another Side of the Baltimore Riots,” featuring photos and social media posts of camera-friendly fires and smashed police cars.  In sharp contrast to the more violent images, the gallery featured several photos of the cleanup, peaceful protesters, families and children.Following the riots, the Washington Post published a series of stories providing context to the violence, including an explainer,  columnist Petula Dvorak’s first-person account of the scene and participants, and a story on the viral video of the “mom of the year” berating her son for throwing rocks at police.

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Washington Post reporter Michael Fletcher, sharing his perspective as a 30-year Baltimore resident, offered more context on the city of Baltimore and the social conflict issues that have been building for years.Outside the U.S., the Economist focused on the anarchy and chaos surrounding the riots, particularly the looting and destruction of property.  In the U.K. the BBC noted that a local amateur photographer, Devin Allen, was getting more attention than national publications for his photos covering Baltimore via Instagram and Twitter.The Guardian’s Paul Lewis covered the riots on foot Monday night using the live-streaming app Periscope from different locations. He captured aspects of the action while interviewing people about the night filled with riots.

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