The factoring of race into Stand Your Ground legislation

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BY EVETTE DIONNE / Several prominent Stand Your Ground cases in Florida are raising questions about how the American media are covering race and intimate-partner violence. Michael Giles, a former Air Force member, who is black, shot and wounded three patrons outside a nightclub on Feb 6, 2010. Marissa Alexander, 34, a black mother of three, fired a warning shot at her husband on Aug. 3, 2010. George Zimmerman, a white Hispanic volunteer neighborhood watchman, shot and killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin on Feb. 21, 2012. Michael Dunn, a white male, shot and killed 17-year-old Jordan Davis on Nov. 23, 2012. These four cases serve as flashpoints for examining Stand Your Ground legislation, and, more specifically, how media are covering these cases.

Hoping a new media sensitivity might emerge from the Newtown tragedy

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Soon after tragedy struck a sleepy New England town more than one year ago, residents of Newtown, Ct., vowed the place they called home would be an epicenter for change. There needed to be changes in gun laws, some cried out. Others advocated for a national movement to increase school security. A need for better mental health counseling became a topic of conversation in homes and coffee shops among the town’s 26,000 residents. More subtle and in the undertones, there also were pleas for Newtown to be the epicenter of change in how stories of mass shootings and grief are covered.

Murder less foul: The Duncan shooting in the New York Times

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BY GEORGE SALAMON / How would the paper of record treat the Aug. 16 shooting of the Australian college baseball player by three teenagers in Duncan, Oklahoma? As of Aug. 22, it hasn’t touched the story. Unless you count a seven-line item from the Associated Press it ran Aug. 20, under the heading “Sports Briefing/Baseball.” Say it ain’t so, Jill Abramson, or anyone at the Times, please. The paper’s printing of this abysmal little piece about the horrific shooting and death of the 23-year-old Chris Lane, “Charges in Fatal Shooting in Oklahoma,” and placement of it in the “Sports Briefing” section cry out for explanation and an expression of regret.