Ferguson-like attack in Utah escapes media notice; race bias seen Discrepancy in attention given to Ferguson’s Michael Brown, Utah’s Dillon Taylor fuels resentment Police wait to advance after tear gas was used to disperse a crowd Sunday, Aug. 17, 2014, druing a protest for Michael Brown, who was killed by a police officer last Saturday in Ferguson, Mo. As night fell Sunday in Ferguson, another peaceful protest quickly deteriorated after marchers pushed toward one end of a street. Police attempted to push them back by firing tear gas and shouting over a bullhorn that the protest was no longer peaceful. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel) (Inset) Undated Facebook photo of Dillon Taylor, 20 who was shot and killed by a Salt Lake City police officer outside a convenience store. Police wait to advance after tear gas was used to disperse a crowd Sunday, Aug. 17, 2014, druing a protest for Michael Brown, who was killed by a police officer last Saturday in Ferguson, Mo. As night fell Sunday in ... more > Critics see racial ‘double standard’ in coverage of police shootings Washington Times 00:00 / 01:28 By Valerie Richardson - The Washington Times - Monday, August 25, 2014 On the surface, the cases appear nearly identical: Michael Brown and Dillon Taylor, two young, unarmed men with sketchy criminal pasts shot to death by police officers two days apart. But while the world knows of the highly publicized situation involving 18-year-old Mr. Brown, whose Aug. 9 death in Ferguson, Missouri touched off violence, protests and an angry national debate, most people outside Utah have never heard of 20-year-old Mr. Taylor. Critics say there’s a reason for the discrepancy in media coverage: race. Mr. Brown was black and the officer who shot him was white. Mr. Taylor wasn’t black — he’s been described as white and Hispanic — and the officer who shot him Aug. 11 outside a 7-Eleven in South Salt Lake wasn’t white. PHOTOS: Best concealed carry handguns The perceived double standard is fueling resentment and talk of double standards on conservative talk radio and social media, where the website Twitchy has compiled a list of Twitter comments asking why Mr. Brown’s death has been front-page news for weeks while Mr. Taylor’s was a footnote at best. “Black cop kills unarmed white male #DillonTaylor in Utah,” says a Thursday post on Twitter by radio talk-show host Wayne Dupree, who is black. “#LiberalMedia can’t find [their] way to cover the story.” A sarcastic Sunday tweet from Valerie said, “CNN Please! We need the name and home address of #DillonTaylor’s killer immediately. Why hasn’t he been arrested??!!!!!” PHOTOS: Top 10 handguns in the U.S. From Mark Andersen: “Black cop kills unarmed white male #DillonTaylor in Utah. Where is @TheRevAl, @msnbc and @CNN? Is @DOJgov there? Did @BarackObama speak?” And this: “People need to be just as angry over #DillonTaylor murder by a blk officer in Utah. He wasn’t armed!” said NeeNee in a Friday post. Critics of the disparity in coverage and outrage said that it is actually the Brown case that is the outlier: Statistics indicate that black-on-black crime is far more common than the case of a white-on-black crime. For homicide, for instance, the FBI in 2012 found that of the 2,648 black murder victims, some 2,412 were killed by fellow blacks and only 193 by whites. (Whites also were likely far more likely to be killed by fellow whites than by members of other races, according to the data.) Talk-show host Rush Limbaugh blamed the discrepancy between the two cases on “the liberal world view” that portrays whites as oppressors and blacks as victims. “[I]n the current climate in the United States, a black person can never be the oppressor, and a white person can never be a victim,” said Mr. Limbaugh on his national radio show last week. Rev. Al Sharpton, speaking at Monday’s funeral service for Mr. Brown, attacked local policing methods in the case and the militarization of local police forces, but also noted that American blacks also must learn from Ferguson. “Some of us act like the definition of blackness is how low you can go,” the civil rights activist and MSNBC host said. “Blackness has never been about being a gangster or thug. … Blackness was, no matter how low we were pushed down, we rose up anyhow.” Another difference between Missouri and Utah was that Mr. Taylor’s death didn’t result in riots. There were peaceful protests a week ago outside the Salt Lake City police headquarters covered by local media, but no outbreaks of violence as happened nightly on the streets of Ferguson. CNN news host Jake Tapper acknowledged the disparity in coverage of the Brown and Taylor cases in the mainstream media, noting that the press often undercovers such topics as inner-city violence and the high rates of black-on-black crime. But Mr. Tapper said Monday that media “critics fail to see” that the greater context of a story such as the Michael Brown shooting, including the reaction it sparked in the St. Louis, in the black community nationwide, and with local authorities and the Obama administration. National media can’t be expected to ignore the rioting that occurred in Ferguson, but questions have also been raised as to whether media overkill actually helped fuel and prolong the unrest. Some of the protesters arrested by St. Louis police hail from as far as California, Illinois, New York and Texas. As with the Brown case, what provoked police to shoot Mr. Taylor is under investigation. Officers were responding to a report of a man “waving a gun around” when they confronted Mr. Taylor, his brother and his cousin leaving the 7-Eleven. “South Salt Lake Police Sgt. Darin Sweeten said three offic Read more: washingtontimes/news/2014/aug/25/critics-see-racial-double-standard-in-coverage-of-/#ixzz3K7yY87zf Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter
Posted on: Tue, 25 Nov 2014 23:54:36 +0000
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