Police gunned down 12-year-old, newspaper decides to run this story . . . [View all]

[gollygee]

TAMIR RICE'S FATHER HAS HISTORY OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/26/tamir-rice-father_n_6227312.html?&ir=Politics

We've seen this type of media coverage before, though it's often focused on the victims of police violence themselves, rather than on their relatives. After the deaths of Trayvon Martin in 2012 and Michael Brown in August, for example, some news stories evidently sought to paint the slain teenagers as drug addicts, delinquents and thugs.

This coverage was criticized by many as an attempt to smear the victims' characters and distract from the issue of police violence -- and, more subtly, to suggest that the killing of young black men is somehow acceptable or unsurprising. And it succeeded -- these stories were used by some people to explain why Martin and Brown deserved to die, or how they may have somehow invited their own deaths.

Brandon Blackwell, the author of the story about Tamir's father, was the subject of heavy critique on Twitter once the piece went live. He told one critic that he's also planning to report on the officer who killed Tamir.

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Rather than asking why police officers were so quick to exercise lethal force on a 12-year-old boy playing with a toy gun, as 12-year-old boys everywhere do, some people are asking instead how Tamir's parents could have allowed their child to get his hands on a fake weapon in the first place. Instead of focusing on how young black males face a far greater risk of being killed by police than their white peers, they blame the grieving parents -- a mother and father who, whatever their legal history, will be going to sleep tonight without their son.