“The Nightly Show” host Larry Wilmore made one request to CNN on Thursday night following the network’s coverage of the shooting of an unarmed black man by a University of Cincinnati cop: Don’t use my mug shot.
When the network introduced both the cop (who is indicted for murder) and the man he killed, CNN used the dead man’s mugshot.
“This guy was just killed by the other guy and you put their mugshots together like they’re a bank-robbing team?” Wilmore said. “You know what ‘victim’ means? Right, CNN?”
But Wilmore said he is planning ahead.
“Let me ask you a favor, CNN. If I ever get shot by the cops, please use a picture of me with my kids. Alright?” he said. “Seriously, I don’t want to be remembered for that one time I went on that cooking meth bender with Nick Nolte.”
Watch the clip, from Comedy Central, below:
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My thought was…well, maybe CNN only had that one photo…but then my next thought was…“did CNN even make an effort to find a different photo?”
I doubt it. That would would mean “actual reportin’” which would take actual work and actual research, which would cost actual time and money, thereby cutting into the profit margin.
Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by profits margin.
Well, there is a good reason behind the tendency to assume the worst, especially in stories like this. The media has a horrible tendency to vilify Black people after they’ve been killed or murdered by police officers, and using a person’s mug shot would be among those ways. A look at how the media covers White spree killers have been treated by the media as compared to Black non-violent offenders turned up an interesting tendency for the media to portray White criminals as “decent people who have gone wrong” as opposed to how they’ve portrayed Black criminals as “thugs who were bad from the moment they were born”, and often dug up criminal pasts, drug abuse issues, etc.
However, I would say that the level of malice, greed and laziness that causes all of this varies greatly from one place to another.
Google and FaceBook are your friends. It’s easy to get pictures of people nowadays.
One day old and only four comments?
Hhhhmmmm…