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defrogPossibly. Don’t hold me to that.
So. As a US citizen, I’m required by law to blog my opinion about recent events in Ferguson, MO. I’m also required to express it instantly, and as angrily as possible, preferably without having all the facts of the incident.
Well, I never was good with rules. But I do have a few observations:
1. Public relations: yr doing it wrong
There’s little doubt that the St Louis County police have handled the aftermath of the shooting badly – refusing to release information, breaking out the military hardware to deal with protesters, arresting journalists for filming cops on the grounds that it’s illegal (it isn’t), and so on and et cetera.
Jelani Cobb at the New Yorker – who provides some helpful context to the Ferguson situation – sums it up rather well:
Dude’s got a point. When you assemble the narrative the police have put together, it reads something like this:
It’s possible the narrative would make more sense if some missing details were plugged in. But as it stands, the story boils down to this: Michael Brown was shot at least six times for one or more of three things: (1) jaywalking, (2) stealing some cheap cigarillos (possibly, even though the store owner didn’t think it was worth calling 911 over) and/or (3) shoving a cop back into his cruiser and trying to steal his gun (something that, BTW, no one actually does unless they are insane or whacked out on PCP – neither of which apply to Brown, as far as we know).
No wonder the people of Ferguson aren’t buying it.
I get that in situations like this, the police leadership may not be clear about what happened and need time to piece it together. Still, when yr credibility is already hanging by a thread, yr side of the story shouldn’t sound like yr just making stuff up – especially when you’ve been sitting on it for close to a week.
2. Yr very own tank
I can't really add to what John Oliver has already said about St Louis County’s militarized police force.
I will add that the outrage is a little disingenuous since militarization of police forces in America has been an ongoing trend for a long time now. And the consequences have been pretty horrifying.
3. Yr very own journalism
Some people have been heralding the Twitter coverage in Ferguson as proof of the viability of citizen journalism as a replacement for traditional news media.
I’ve heard this before, usually from people who criticize “traditional” news media for being corporate shills who don’t fulfill their own personal biases and indignant outrage.
Anyway, I get the appeal of “the people as journalism”. The only problem is, journalism requires an editorial role to ensure reports are reliable. Otherwise, this happens. And when that happens, the consequences for innocent people can be severe.
So I’m not all that impressed, no.
To be sure, Twitter is great for broadcasting information in situations like disasters and volatile situations like the Arab Spring (especially when govt censorship is in play). It’s also good for calling attention stories like the Brown shooting and organizing protests and vigils. And yes, “proper” media gets stuff wrong too.
I’m just saying there is (or ought to be) more than a fine line between “citizen journalism” and “Twitter tsumani that could be true, apocryphal, exaggerated or outright false, and yr just going to have to decide that for yrself”.
And that's all I got for Ferguson and Michael Brown.
I could go on about the sillier aspects of all this, like the select (white) pundits complaining about black people making it a race issue whilst also pointing out that Michael Brown wrote rap lyrics, cos we all know about rappers, especially black ones, and especially when yr black president is a fan of them, or the hilarious conspiracy theories about false flags, but, well, that’s enough, isn't it?
Developing …
Don’t shoot (I’m a man),
This is dF
So. As a US citizen, I’m required by law to blog my opinion about recent events in Ferguson, MO. I’m also required to express it instantly, and as angrily as possible, preferably without having all the facts of the incident.
Well, I never was good with rules. But I do have a few observations:
1. Public relations: yr doing it wrong
There’s little doubt that the St Louis County police have handled the aftermath of the shooting badly – refusing to release information, breaking out the military hardware to deal with protesters, arresting journalists for filming cops on the grounds that it’s illegal (it isn’t), and so on and et cetera.
Jelani Cobb at the New Yorker – who provides some helpful context to the Ferguson situation – sums it up rather well:
From the outset, the overlapping bureaucracies in Ferguson handled the case in ways that suggested ineptitude. Yet subsequent developments—the stonewalling followed by contradictory statements, the detention of reporters, the clumsy deployment of sophisticated military equipment—all point not to a department too inept to handle this investigation objectively but one too inept to cloak the fact that they never intended to do so. One protestor held a sign that said, “Ferguson Police Need Better Scriptwriters.”
Dude’s got a point. When you assemble the narrative the police have put together, it reads something like this:
Okay, so Brown was a suspect in a convenience store robbery, but Officer Darren Wilson didn’t actually know that at the time, he stopped Brown cos he was jaywalking, and Brown wouldn’t stop jaywalking, and also he was on reefers, and he attacked Officer Wilson – because you know how wild and violent people who smoke reefers can get – and so Officer Wilson had to shoot him a lot, and oh there’s a curfew now kthxbye.
It’s possible the narrative would make more sense if some missing details were plugged in. But as it stands, the story boils down to this: Michael Brown was shot at least six times for one or more of three things: (1) jaywalking, (2) stealing some cheap cigarillos (possibly, even though the store owner didn’t think it was worth calling 911 over) and/or (3) shoving a cop back into his cruiser and trying to steal his gun (something that, BTW, no one actually does unless they are insane or whacked out on PCP – neither of which apply to Brown, as far as we know).
No wonder the people of Ferguson aren’t buying it.
I get that in situations like this, the police leadership may not be clear about what happened and need time to piece it together. Still, when yr credibility is already hanging by a thread, yr side of the story shouldn’t sound like yr just making stuff up – especially when you’ve been sitting on it for close to a week.
2. Yr very own tank
I can't really add to what John Oliver has already said about St Louis County’s militarized police force.
I will add that the outrage is a little disingenuous since militarization of police forces in America has been an ongoing trend for a long time now. And the consequences have been pretty horrifying.
3. Yr very own journalism
Some people have been heralding the Twitter coverage in Ferguson as proof of the viability of citizen journalism as a replacement for traditional news media.
I’ve heard this before, usually from people who criticize “traditional” news media for being corporate shills who don’t fulfill their own personal biases and indignant outrage.
Anyway, I get the appeal of “the people as journalism”. The only problem is, journalism requires an editorial role to ensure reports are reliable. Otherwise, this happens. And when that happens, the consequences for innocent people can be severe.
So I’m not all that impressed, no.
To be sure, Twitter is great for broadcasting information in situations like disasters and volatile situations like the Arab Spring (especially when govt censorship is in play). It’s also good for calling attention stories like the Brown shooting and organizing protests and vigils. And yes, “proper” media gets stuff wrong too.
I’m just saying there is (or ought to be) more than a fine line between “citizen journalism” and “Twitter tsumani that could be true, apocryphal, exaggerated or outright false, and yr just going to have to decide that for yrself”.
And that's all I got for Ferguson and Michael Brown.
I could go on about the sillier aspects of all this, like the select (white) pundits complaining about black people making it a race issue whilst also pointing out that Michael Brown wrote rap lyrics, cos we all know about rappers, especially black ones, and especially when yr black president is a fan of them, or the hilarious conspiracy theories about false flags, but, well, that’s enough, isn't it?
Developing …
Don’t shoot (I’m a man),
This is dF
