By Nick Wing, huffingtonpost.com
Editor’s note: We’re republishing this story, which first ran in August 2014, in light of a New York Post headline earlier this week that described a white murder suspect as a “clean-cut American kid.” Police have identified 23-year-old Kenneth Gleason as a person of interest in the September slayings of two black men in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, which authorities believe may have been racially motivated.
On the afternoon of Aug. 9, 2014, a police officer fatally shot an unarmed black teenager, Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Missouri. Eyewitnesses said Brown was compliant with police and was shot while he was running away. Police maintained that the 18-year-old had assaulted an officer and was reaching for the officer’s gun. One clear thing, however, is that Brown’s death followed a disturbingly common trend of black men being killed, often while unarmed and at the hands of police officers, security guards and vigilantes.
After news of Brown’s death broke, media-watchers carefully followed the narratives that news outlets began crafting about the teenager and the incident that claimed his life. Wary of the controversy surrounding the media’s depiction of Trayvon Martin — the Florida teen killed in a high-profile case that led to the acquittal of neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman — people on Twitter wondered, “If they gunned me down, which picture would they use?” Using the hashtag #IfTheyGunnedMeDown, users posted side-by-side photos, demonstrating the power that news outlets wield in portraying victims based on images they select.
