Ferguson and the media
Listening Post examines racial conflict and social divisions in the US and how those issues are reported.
Ferguson, Missouri – a dateline that rarely drops on the global news wire. But this week, small-town America was put under the international media spotlight after a black teenager, Michael Brown, was killed on August 9 by a white policeman.
When US journalists do hostile environment training, they usually have foreign conflicts at the back of their minds. This one was right on their doorstep. Because this week, the Midwest turned into a warzone – and the post-racial America story arc just took a turn for the worse.
Helping us to understand how the media reported Ferguson are: Mikki Kendall, a writer; Lizz Brown, a columnist for the St Louis American; Byron Tau, a reporter for Politico; Rashad Robinson, the executive director of Color of Change; and Ash-har Quraishi, a correspondent for Al Jazeera America.
In this week’s Newsbytes: American journalist James Foley was beheaded by an Islamic State (IS) militant; WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange announced he will leave the Ecuadorian embassy in London after two years; and Afghan authorities ordered the expulsion of New York Times correspondent Matthew Rosenberg from the country.
Sometimes, we like doing looking at media establishments that have been around a while. Chronicling their histories and looking at where they are in the present often tells us a lot about the wider context they have lived in and how things are changing.
Our feature this week is on Hong Kong English-language South China Morning Post, a publication with a history that goes back 100 years but whose current editor is the first journalist from mainland China to run the paper. Is the editorial line on China any more lenient towards Beijing – and is the future of the free press here? The Listening Post‘s Meenakshi Ravi reports.
Post-Racial America Alert is our web video of the week. America’s chronicler par excellence: political cartoonist Mark Fiore, looks at the racially-charged tensions in Ferguson with his latest animation. We hope you enjoy the show.