Troy Davis Execution - Suppression of Race Discussion?

Commentary

While watching CNN’s Anderson Cooper plow through coverage of Troy Davis’ execution last week, I couldn’t help but think: Where is the discussion of race? Here was a black man convicted of killing a white off-duty police officer, and there were doubts about his guilt.

Race finally reared its ugly head at the very end of the program in the form of a disturbing reminder from CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin.

Toobin told viewers that while the majority of people executed in the United States are white, blacks are more likely to be executed if they kill a white than a person of another race. (Note: African-Americans are overrepresented in death row statistics and executions.)

Another guest noted that the Davis execution in Georgia was not the only state-sanctioned killing that night. In Texas, avowed white supremacist Lawrence Brewer was executed for his role in the dragging death of James Byrd Jr., a black.

Brewer’s execution received much less publicity. One obvious reason is because key witnesses recanted testimony against Davis, making his case more compelling. However, I suggest that another reason for the disparity in coverage was race.

Why does it seem that when the perpetrator is white, mainstream news organizations minimize coverage of or do not mention the perpetrator’s race?

Take, for example, dozens of national stories in recent decades of alleged police brutality such as those involving Rodney King and Amadou Diallo. The victim’s race is mentioned, but the police officers’ race often is not. Coincidence or conscious choice?

Going back further in history, consider rape cases covered by mainstream news organizations as another example. Ida B. Wells, whose journalism career began in the 19^th century, was among the first to point out that incidents involving a white perpetrator and a black victim were rarely covered. However, if the perpetrator was black and the victim white (as Toobin noted), continuous coverage ensued.

I call this phenomenon “selective suppression” — the decrease of news coverage or deletion of a white racial identifier when inclusion might show whites in a bad light. While I’m sure some people would say race is becoming increasingly irrelevant, I disagree. Race and class are still contested spheres, and if journalists don’t pay attention to that, we all lose.

Recently, I discussed the “missing white woman” phenomenon with nearly 200 freshman journalism students as part of ethics night.  I wanted them to open their eyes and pay attention to national coverage of missing and murdered women. Many of the victims are white, blonde, from middle-class to upper middle-class families and considered attractive by white American beauty standards.

I asked the students to consider whether it is fair for the media to place so much value on the lives of one segment of the population while placing little to no value on those of other groups.

Race is sometimes still the elephant in the room when it comes to coverage of stories and discussions about how they should be covered. In this post-racial, Obama era, color-blindness seems to be considered an asset. Striving though we are, we are not there yet.

While I certainly do not espouse using racial identifiers when race is irrelevant, I suggest that journalists need not shy away from the topic when it is. If you are a color-blind journalist, you are not doing your job! A deeper look at race, class, gender and other “isms” will enrich journalism and help society decide how it must improve.

Ava Thompson Greenwell is an associate professor at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University where she has been teaching for nearly 20 years.  She has worked as a television news reporter in Florida, Minnesota and Indiana.  She is also a third-year doctoral student in African American Studies.

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