They say it enforces negative stereotypes.
There is a growing trend of newspapers across the country that are refusing to publish mugshot galleries because the pictures of minority criminals are supposedly reinforcing negative stereotypes.
The Tampa Bay Times announced on Monday that they would stop publishing mugshot galleries due to concerns that they “disproportionately show black and brown faces.”
“The galleries lack context and further negative stereotypes,” Tampa Bay Times executive editor Mark Katches said in a statement.
“We think the data is an important resource that our newsroom will continue to analyze and watch carefully, but the galleries alone serve little journalistic purpose,” he added.
They followed suit shortly after the Orlando Sentinel announced that they were making a similar decision.
“We’ve come to realize that without context, the galleries have little journalistic value and may have reinforced negative stereotypes,” the Sentinel wrote about the paper’s decision to censor their mugshot database.
In addition, all Gannett-owned papers have announced that they will no longer publish “mugshot galleries, or mugshot photos that are not associated with a story or other editorial content,” according to a Poynter report.
This is part of a broader campaign to suppress facts about crime from being known by the greater public. Big League Politics has reported about how tech corporations are censoring crime statistics from being shared on their...
Read More HERE
It doesn't really matter. The codes have been obvious for quite some time. No picture to accompany the story means that the perps were not White. If the story mentions "youths" or some other euphemism we know that the aggressors were either non-white or Muslim.
ReplyDeleteStereotypes exist because large numbers of people conform to them. In the case of black criminality, the stereotype is highly accurate, as is borne out by federal crime statistics year after year. Public perception of young black males as a threat to life, property, and public order may be clouded by imposed, undeserved "white guilt," but it's clear enough and widespread enough to power a voluntary resegregation of the United States, which is in progress as we speak.
ReplyDelete