Author: William H. Freivogel

BY WILLIAM H. FREIVOGEL// An article of faith among those protesting Michael Brown’s death and among much of the media writing about the protests in Ferguson is that young African-American men are far more likely to be shot by police than young white men.

Much of the national media – The New York Times, USA Today, Christian Science Monitor, NBC, Daily Kos, Daily Beast and Vox among others – have quoted an October ProPublica study of FBI data showing that black males 15-19 years old were 21 times more likely than white males that age to be killed by police between 2010 and 2012.

What hasn’t gotten attention is that leading criminologists criticize the ProPublica findings as exaggerated. It’s true that black youths are killed more often than white youths, the critics agree, but the disparity over the past 15 years is much lower than over the three years featured by ProPublica. The longer period is more statistically accurate, they add.

By WILLIAM H. FREIVOGEL// Attorney General Eric Holder said this week that he was “exasperated” by the flood of leaks from the criminal investigations of Ferguson Officer Darren Wilson’s shooting of Michael Brown on Aug. 9. He suspects local officials leaked the information favorable to Wilson, just as they had earlier leaked a video allegedly showing Brown robbing a convenience store owner.

But two of the three leaks – the ones in the Washington Post and the New York Times – were written by the newspapers’ Justice Department reporters in Washington. The Times story on Oct. 17 attributed the information to “government officials briefed on the federal civil rights investigation” – not the state criminal investigation.

By WILLIAM H. FREIVOGEL// Two months after Officer Darren Wilson shot Michael Brown, St. Louis remains at the vortex of a media whirlwind of live streaming video, social media, traditional media, national media and slanted cable and online outlets.

For this journalist of four decades, the coverage of such an important national story in our hometown is by turns exhilarating, anarchic, frustrating and frightening. Sometimes it seems like a shining example of a community working through deep, festering problems in a democratic fashion. At other times it feels like a mob as nasty Tweets on multiple hashtags fly by faster than they can be read.

By WILLIAM H. FREIVOGEL// Post/Times’ stories powerful; but are they ethical? If a piece of journalism is so powerful that it captures the national conversation and results in positive reform, should it be immune from criticism for bias and inaccuracies?
That question is raised by a potent one-two punch administered by the Washington Post and The New York Times this month following up on the unrest in Ferguson, Mo.