By M. Bilal Kenasari and Ilgin Karlidag
ANKARA
The American media are complicit in police attempts to demonize Michael Brown, the black teenager whose killing by police sparked rioting in Ferguson, a leading academic has told The Anadolu Agency.
Six days after Brown, 18, was shot dead in the St Louis, Missouri, suburb, police released a security video of his alleged involvement in a robbery at a convenience store. It was only later that day that the Ferguson police chief revealed the officer who shot him did not know of the allegation.
But the video had already found its way on to national news channels, including CNN.
Hatem Bazian, a senior lecturer in philosophy and Islamic studies at the University of Berkeley, California, claimed that it was “not normal for the police to release such material early on without investigation.”
He said releasing the video of the alleged robbery was an attempt to diminish Michael Brown's character and justify the shooting.
Addressing the media’s role, he added: “CNN essentially played on [the perception] that this, basically, is a thug and since he is a thug his killing becomes a justifiable homicide from the police’s perspective."
“It is the same framing that Fox News also pushed. So now you have to step back and ask ‘How are African-Americans represented in the media?’ They’re represented as violent, as criminal, as drug dealers, and therefore to kill them is a normative practice.”
On Monday, hundreds of people protested in front of CNN's headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, against the network's portrayal of African-Americans.
Chief organizer Elle Lucier told The Signal newspaper: “CNN has a habit of depicting people of color negatively in the media even when they are victims of crime and so we’re staging a non-violent protest to speak out, not only against police brutality but [also] brutality against people of color in the media.”
Bazian said the ready use of the video amounted to “killing Michael Brown again.” He said the footage showed the media “engaging in a complete transformation of our thoughts” about Brown.
He added: “So the journalists, their role becomes so critical that they kill him many times over in the consciousness of people."
“That’s why people went out ın large numbers protesting ın front of CNN because their framing, essentially, is justifying the [killing].”
Bazian, founder of the Islamophobia Studies Journal and director of the Islamophobia Research and Documentation Project, criticized CNN for interpreting events in Ferguson “from the police and the authority perspective.”
The unrest in Ferguson has highlighting the racial divide that still exists across America. A population that is more than two-thirds black is policed by a department that is 87 percent white, according to Department of Justice figures.
Last year, according to statistics from the Missouri Attorney General's Office, Ferguson police carried out 5,384 traffic stops – 4,632 on black drivers and 686 on white drivers.
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