On the Media; 1996-11-03; Part 1; It'll Never Be Over: Richard Jewell, Privacy & the Press; St. Petersburg, Race & the Media

From WNYC in New York, this is on the media. St. Petersburg, Florida's inner city, erupted in flames last weekend after the death of a black youth at the hands of a white police officer. The incident led to a night of looting and violence and arson. Most of the national media referred to it as rioting. Yet most local news outlets called it a disturbance. How does the way the press covers racial strife affect race relations? How accurately are crises like the one in St. Petersburg portrayed in the media? And perhaps as important? How do the news media portray every day race relations? A new study shows that many people, black and white, think TV just doesn't present an accurate picture of race relations. We'll look into it right after this news. So stay tuned. From National Public Radio News in Washington, I'm Ann Bozell. When racial tensions erupt into violence, as they did in St. Petersburg, Florida, about

a week ago, the news media pay attention. Local TV stations were all over the story and the national headlines reported on how this town, known for its shuffleboard playing and fine weather, had also been a place of festering racial strife. But how well, how accurately did the media cover these violent events? Are we getting the real picture? We see the TV footage, community forums or hastily organized. And this year the president himself came to town to, quote, seek common ground. It's fitting that politicians and the media pay attention to such turmoil. But and this might be even more important. How do the news media report on race and race relations when there is not a crisis? I'm Alex Jones. And this hour on the media, we're taking a good look at how the media report on race and what the public you think of the way the media portray race issues in America. My guests are Keli Swoope, reporter for WFTS,

the ABC affiliate in Tampa. She covered the disturbance or was it a riot in St. Pete? And she put herself right in the thick of things. Keli, we're very glad to have you with us. Thanks for having me, Alex. Leo Wolinsky is metropolitan editor for the Los Angeles Times. He has had lots of experience covering racial unrest and trying to lift the lid on simmering tensions. He's joining us from the studios of QST in Los Angeles. Always good to have you on the air, Leo. Great to be here. Also finally joining us is Keith Woods. He's on the faculty of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies in St. Petersburg. And he teaches teaching a teaches teaching ethics in coverage of race relations, among other things, to mid career journalists. Keith, we're very glad to have you as well. Nice to be here. Alex, Kelly. Swoope, let me start with you. You reported on the disturbances live for your station. What what happened that night? What did you see and how did you happen to be in the very thick of it?

Well, actually, I found out about the incident after I was paid for my station to come in to work. There was a disturbance in St. Petersburg. So by the time I arrived in St. Pete, they had already moved the media back several blocks from where the disturbance originated. So a photographer and I decided maybe we should try to go inside and talk to some of the people involved in the disturbance and find out why they were doing what they were doing. So it was just the two of you. It was actually three of us and someone who handled the sound, in other words. Right. And basically what we did was we drove around when we saw groups of people, we would get out of our live truck, be a couple of interviews, and then we would move on to a location that was a little more secluded, where there weren't large crowds of people and actually do a live report from that location. So how dangerous was it? Wasn't as dangerous as I thought. There was one situation where we were just basically talking to people and one individual who had been drinking and was kind of obnoxious said, let's let's take their truck, let's take their camera. And they surrounded our truck. And but then another individual

said, you know, leave them alone. They're just coming here to talk to us. And I said, we're the only crew in the neighborhood coming down here to tell your side of the story. You don't see any anyone else down here at this point. Give us an opportunity to hear what you have to say so we can present what's going on from this aspect of the story. And that seemed to calm the crowd down a little bit, get our interviews and just moved on to another location. And why were you the only crew? Well, I felt being an African-American journalist that I might have an opportunity to tell to present it to them that, hey, I'm coming down here to hear what you have to say. I'm trying to present your perspective of the story. And that seemed to work. Keith Woods, when you heard this, I mean, I know that you were probably watching Kelly that night. Perhaps I was. How did you judge that compared to the other coverage from the local TV stations down there? Well, 28 was the only station that was live for the first hour so that there was nothing to compare it to.

It was it was live TV. It was it was live with all of the the the the value and the pitfalls of being live from. I thought some some pretty good work done. Also some some some of the things that happen when you're thinking on your feet, both in the newsroom and out in a field that I thought could have been done better. But like I said, there's nothing to compare it to here where the only people out there. Well, let me ask you, Kelly, was there any was there any question about the issue of whether you want to go live with a situation like this? Well, what we had to do. Was since we were pretty mobile, all of the other crews that we had were pretty stationary set up at the command post. So our concern was to find a location where we could do a live shot, but also where we were safe and we weren't putting ourselves in jeopardy or also being in a position where we were inside a crowd. So we specifically look for locations where there weren't any large groups of people where we could set up quickly, do a quick live head and move out quickly.

Well, now, Keith, Keith Woods, what's the problem that you see with Leive? I mean, you obviously the advantage is the immediacy of it in the sense of verisimilitude by just being there on the scene. What's wrong with it? Well, I think Kelly just put a finger on one of them, and that is that you become a part of the story in some cases. I think that you you should point out that that was one of the local TV stations, Channel 44 had that truck burned in this incident. Somebody else's company vehicle was also burned in the very beginning of this evening. So the the effect that the media has on the story is always a possibility when you live, especially when you live in a situation where people are, in fact, trying to get attention of some legitimately, something that legitimately, legitimately and that's one of the problems, I think, is that you have a situation where you are about to handle nitroglycerin on the air, and that is the subject of race relations. And if you're not well versed in it, if you

haven't been giving a lot of thought to it before the cameras, come on, then you wind up with with with some unfortunate things that happen on on the air. And you say things, as one person did, that that tends to portray people in a in a blanket negative light. And I think that's one of the other dangers will. Give us an example from the coverage, if you can, Keith. Well, to two different two different stations had had something similar to this. South St. Petersburg was the area that this happened in South St. Petersburg, like the south side of any of any city. If a large area I live in it. Lots of people that I know live in it. The area that was that was affected by this violence is a very small piece of South St. Petersburg. But when you start talking in in language that that encompasses a lot of things, in a single word, you wind up having trouble. And so we had people saying South St. Petersburg is burning south St. Petersburg, it's a fire tonight.

South St. Petersburg is is awash in violence tonight. Don't go to South St. Petersburg. And that fit into the context of a history of of that kind of of a portrayal of that part of town. And that that was a big part of the problem. Leo Walinski, you have been there and done that in the most extreme way, I guess, of anybody that is worked. This particular difficult thing to cover when the the the riots out in Los Angeles, when Rodney King's at the end of Rodney King's, the people who beat Rodney King were released. Do you hear things that bring that back to you when you hear these two people talking about this? Yes. I can't help think about the live coverage in L.A. and remembering this. This went over a number of days. And the here it wasn't a question of getting mobile units into the area. Every news station had their own helicopter. They can hover overhead and show it live as it was happening. And I recall looting taking place in a particular store where the

manager of the store said, well, if you're going to do it, just come in and do it. Don't burn the store down. And people were driving in and station wagons and whole families were looting together. It was all being broadcast live. Everybody knew this was a good spot for looting. On the other hand, it was good in that it kept people aware of where the dangers were and where to stay out of, because in the case of L.A., the rioting was so widespread, it went through so many parts of the city that people were were absolutely frightened to death. Well, now you have used the R word. And I think that that's really one of the things that seems to have two, to grip the the media when it comes to covering things like this is is what to call it. And it's sort of become an emblem for do you act you try to sanitize it as some people feel like when you don't address what happened is a riot and instead call it a disturbance or something like that, or in fact, are you inflaming it by calling it a riot? I don't know. Keith, how do you feel about this? Well, let's talk about the bigger question and not specifically L.A.

or St. Petersburg to the word riot does come attached with a lot of baggage attached to it, a lot of meaning to different people. That goes way beyond the literal definition of what happened so that as you use it, as you use that word, you begin, you have to use it, understanding that it has that other meaning attached to it that you will find in the dictionary. And that meaning a. Includes things about class and includes things about race in the use of the word, I think also that in both of those events that we're talking about tonight, there was a piece of what happened that is not contained in the word riot, and that is protests. And that is the other thing that went on when people went for the people who weren't throwing bottles and bricks and the people who weren't burning buildings down. And those are the people who have a legitimate complaint that needs to be aired that gets lost in the use of the word riot. I think that the problem we have, Alex, is that people try to condense

what happened into a single word rather than simply telling people what happened. Mm hmm. People threw bricks and bottles. People burned things. People also protested and were very angry at the police about the way that they handled it. All of those things happened. You don't have to put it in a word to tell the truth. Mm hmm. Let me just read because of the I knew that we were going to be talking about this and I looked up riot in the dictionary because I wanted to be as precise about what it means is I can be the first definition is wild or violent disorder, confusion or disturbance, tumult, uproar. The second definition of violent public disturbance of the peace by a number of persons specified in law, usually as three or more assembled together. Now, you said that it has a meaning that goes beyond that. What did you mean exactly? Well, I think that you if you went into into your own head and asked yourself, what do I see when I hear the word riot?

First of all, you see people who are behaving well absent any any legitimate complaint that they are behaving in a criminal way. And so your view of the action becomes the view of of of crime and and it essentially eliminates the protest piece of it. The other thing I think that in America in 1996, that that word also contains images of what and images of Detroit and images of of a of the American civil rights era that also has a black and a brown face to it. And that's the other piece of it that we have to be conscious of when we use the word Leo. Walinski, would you agree? I agree. The term looked for a lot of people. It's a loaded word. On the other hand, we had long discussions about this. And I believe in our first days coverage, I even noticed that the word uprising snuck its way into the into one of our stories.

We felt that given all the different words you could use, whether it be something like uprising or rebellion or the other direction, something as euphemistic as civil unrest, we decided to go with Riot because we felt it was the most neutral. And in the case of Los Angeles, I don't think anybody could challenge the fact that it was widespread. It did get to the level that you could call it. Right. It was bigger than than the Watts. Right. From that standpoint, in some ways, you know, the problems with using words like civil unrest is to me, like using unpicks for war. You know, I'd like to ask our our listeners, how can the media cover racial violence without being accused of reinforcing racial stereotypes? What's the line between sensitive and sanitized? Our number is one one 800 three four three three three four two. That's one 800 three, four, three, three, three, four, two. This is on the media from National Public Radio. I'm Alex Jones. We're back with all the media talking about St. Petersburg

race in the media, how the media covered that very difficult issue of race. We're talking with Kelley Swoope, reporter for WFTS in Tampa, Keith Woods, associate and ethics at the Poynter Institute. And Leo Wollensky, metro editor of the Los Angeles Times. Kelly, how did you deal with this? What did you call it? Our station decided to call it a disturbance. And the reason why we made the decision, it was something that came down from our news directors, because when I think of a riot, I do think of what happened in Los Angeles, something that takes place over several days. That's what happened in St. Petersburg, really only lasted for a matter of hours. And then they also the opinion of the station is that you also have to be careful of what you call it, because that's really going to just add fuel to the fire and incite the crowd a little bit more. And initially, you know, when we went on the air at o'clock, they just didn't feel that it was appropriate to call it a riot. Well, you know, I really wonder how it would have been covered elsewhere in the country if that word riot had not been attached to it.

We did a sort of a bit of a loose sampling of articles from newspapers, the big newspapers, after they after it happened. And I noticed that virtually all the newspapers we saw, like The Washington Post, USA Today, that sort of thing, they almost all called it a riot. The New York Times, on the other hand, called it a disturbance in the in the story, but they had riot in the headline. So I don't know what you know. Leo, how did you guys handle it? You know, it's funny. I don't remember what word we used to describe it. Well, I watched television extensively and there they described it both as a disturbance and a riot versus a riot. And then when I got into it, more of a disturbance. And I think for the reasons that Kelli was mentioning, that it wasn't anywhere as severe as some of the things that we really know is as riots. And we didn't put we didn't put huge resources to cover this this either, probably because of the size of it. Well, you know, Kelly Swoope, let me ask you this. That question that I posed for our listeners, I would pose it for you. How do you draw the line or march or walk the walk the line between

being sensitive in covering and being sanitized in your coverage? Well, I think what would have been crossing that line is if we would have done our live reports from areas where there were unruly crowds and they were screaming and hollering and bottle and rock throwing. And the if we chose to cover it, we were able to talk to some of those people that were involved in the violence. But we didn't have to put ourselves or our coverage in a compromising situation. So you can still cover the story because it is of great newsworthiness, but not necessarily inside the crowd. Well, do you think that covering the violence of the story was not a I mean, Keith Woods, let me ask you this. You say that there was another dimension to it of protest, because I think that some of our listeners may not know that the whole thing seems to have been triggered by a policeman shooting a motorist through the windshield, claiming that the motorist had tried to run him down or something.

But this was a came after a great deal of very bad feeling between the police department in St. Petersburg and the minority community there. Anyway, my point is that how do you sort of pass this story in terms of what the news was, how much of it was the violence and how much of it was this this protest side that you described? It was equal parts, all of it. And I think that's the problem. Alex, if you if you were to go back to the way that you introduced this subject to your audience, you said that it was a night of looting, violence and arson. Well, that that to me is is a framing of the story that completely eliminated the history and the context within which this thing fell, that a police officer shooting a white police officer, shooting a black teenager in a car in a black neighborhood falls within the context of history in both in that community. In fact, there was a similar shooting at a very near that intersection 20 years ago. There was another shooting, several other shootings by police officers of

white police officers, of black people in that area even this year. But it also falls within the context of that relationship that Rodney King fell into the context of the relationship between police departments and poor people. And I think that when you report this story and you don't report that part, then you've already decided that there is no such thing as legitimate protest and there is no such thing as civil unrest, as civil rebellion, that this was a riot and that is is unruly and and and chaos and confusion and all of the other things that don't include that piece. And I think it's a false choice that you're offering people when you say that you either call it a riot or you call it unrest that you. The other, I think, inferior euphemisms that we that we use, that there's no reason to to corner yourself into one of those words in the first place, tell people what happened and

tell them the whole truth. Don't sanitize the truth, but don't try to contain it in a word that won't contain it. And that's what we've been doing. If I can stop this killing. So keep what are you saying that it should have been called? Because in the age of the electronic media and newspapers, you know that there's headlines and TV, there's headlines in newspapers. You have to call it something. Well, if you will, your reporting on violence, your reporting on protest, your reporting on on people who are fed up, your reporting on police officers who find themselves in in difficult situations. The St. Petersburg Times in headlines found a way to tell that story without using the word riot, without using the word disturbance, without using the word civil, the phrase civil unrest or rebellion or any of those things. It simply said that there was that there was violence, that there were fires, that there were all of these things after police killed a man. Now, that headline that I'm talking about didn't include in this case, the protest piece. But I think that given that as an alternative to

using the word riot. But that's a better headline. If the headline is Violence Fires Erupt After Police Kill Driver. That's a headline. I mean, and I think that we you know, we are words people and we can do this if we want to. If we if we don't. Do you think it was sparked by a single word? Do you think do you think, Keith, in the minority community, that that headline would be more satisfactory than one that referred to riot or disturbance? Well, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know that I can speak for that. I think that the that the fact of the matter is that in the journalistic community, it ought to be better because it's the truth. Alex is important. It's precise and explicit. And it's it is as you say, it says things that that are or explicitly true rather than characterizing something. And I don't know. Leo Wollensky, what do you think? Yeah, well, you wouldn't get hung up too much on the on the use of the word. And we used we did use the word riot, but what we did is we made sure in our coverage from the first day out that we had in-depth coverage about the reasons why this took

place in the case of the L.A. riots. Rodney King was one of the reasons, but it wasn't the only reason. And it wasn't just about authority. There was tremendous rubs between culture groups, between Koreans and blacks. For instance, there was a shooting of a Korean teenager, by I mean, of a black teenager by a Korean store owner that preceded this that many believe was just as much of a of a reason for this as as Rodney King beating as well. So in the end, it's a very complex picture and you have to present all parts of that complexity. But but what I'm saying, Leo, is and I don't want to spend the whole time that we're on the air talking about the word riot either. But I'm saying if that word does, in fact, create a frame through which you're going to see all of the other information that you just gave me, and the minute you call it a riot, I see the legitimate stuff that's going to come into the rest of that story differently than if you hadn't called it a riot in the first place.

Well, let me ask you this, Keith. What do you what did you see the front page of The Washington Post or The Washington Post coverage of this? I did not. Well, The Washington Post had a photograph of a burned building, which I think must have been, you know, pretty standard around the country. I don't see it right here in the St. Petersburg area. No, no, no. Pictures of burned building at the Tampa Tribune had a big picture on the front page of a building burning. But The St. Petersburg Times had a picture of the moment when when what was a protest turned into violence. I said it captured that exact moment, the the the other posted photographs of The Washington Post and was of a woman with a baby in arms running out of a liquor store with bottles of whiskey. Now, it was a black woman. Is that was that a picture that you think should not have appeared because of the distortion that it would have created? Well, I don't think that yes or no is the way to frame the question. Should it have appeared on the front page? No. Should it have been a part of the package of information that you give people about what happened? Yes, maybe.

Maybe that picture needs to appear. But but if you could see the picture that I'm talking about of police officers at the very beginning of this thing, in this incredibly tense moment where the police chief is himself trying to stop what's about to happen from happening, then you've got a bigger picture of it. No, I mean, this is a this is a pure cliche picture in a way. It was also, of course, taken there was a legitimate picture there. This is these things are very they're very they're very touchy and they're very interesting to to try to get to the the final funny. The mental values that are behind how you choose these things, but you have a number of people who've called in, we're going to get many of them on the air as soon as we come back. This is on the media from National Public Radio. I'm Alex Jones. We're back with all the media talking about how the media covered the

racial disturbance, the riot, whatever you decide you want to call it, it's an interesting point in St. Petersburg recently, we're talking with Kelly Swoope, reporter for WFTS, who was on the scene from Tampa, Keith Woods, associate in ethics at the Poynter Institute. And Leo Walinski, metro editor of the Los Angeles Times. We have a number of callers. I want to get a lot of you on the air. Diane in Boston, you're on the air. Good afternoon. Hi there. I'm going to end up reiterating much of what Keith Woods has already said. I think that it's important thing to have done with this story was to let people know about what happened, was a reaction to an action taken by the police. It didn't just erupt spontaneously because people had nothing better to do. The police, white police, I might add, killed a man, a black man, which, as far as I'm concerned, is a good reason for quotas in law enforcement. But that's another show. The point is, when you don't have enough black reporters, when

you have stories reported early by white reporters, you get reporting that's from their own perceptions. And I know many white reporters will resent that. And be that that's too bad, I think that we all have certain perceptions, white people included. And just because you're a reporter, it doesn't necessarily mean you're going to be more objective. Well, let me ask you this. Let me ask you to respond to that. Keli Swoope. I'd have to agree with her 100 percent. I felt that what wasn't being told initially was I mean, everyone said that this is because of a white police officer shot a black motorist. But initially they didn't get into the issue of people in the community being fed up with the poor treatment of some of the members of the community, black members of the community by police that blanket it and say that all police are treating blacks poorly. But there is a big problem in that community.

And that's why I wanted to talk to people, at least give them the opportunity to say we're fed up tired and this we need to speak up. And this is the way that we've chosen to do it, to let them know that we're angry and we don't want to do. Leo Wolinsky, how do you respond to this? I think there's no doubt that you have to have a reporting force that represents your community in some way, because reality, there's no real objective truth. There's subjective truth, and we all filter the truth to our own backgrounds. On the other hand, it's not as easy as black and white in the Los Angeles riots. This was one of the first big multicultural riots. A lot of the national media made a mistake on this, thinking about Watts and reporting as a black and white. And it really wasn't. If you went out in the community, there were Latinos, there were whites, there were blacks. All right. But it was left to black reporters to say that most of the white reporters did report it in black and white, and that's how the public perceived it. What about the issue of what about the issue of danger in a situation like this? Is it fair for news organizations to expect black reporters because they are black

or Hispanic or whatever the meaning of white rioters and whites, whatever? I mean, is it is that kind of thing a fair thing to take into consideration? I think it is fair. But my point is, I think the black reporters shouldn't be restricted just to stories about riots or disturbances or whatever you want to call them in the black community. They should be doing other stories as well. Keith Woods, the Poynter has done a very large survey on the issues of how the how people consider the media to report on race issues. How does this play into it? Well, it's interesting because the two, I think fairly major things that come out of this research, it was done for the Radio and Television News Directors Association convention in in September. And it was a poll of about 2000 Americans and the two things that came out of it. One was that most people, black, white and Hispanic or the other groups, largely a part of this poll, felt that the that the media did a poor job of covering it

accurately, accurately, portraying race relations in their community. That that in this survey, 60, 64 percent of the black people surveyed, 53 percent of the Hispanics and 43 percent of the white people surveyed said that they thought a TV does not accurately portray race relations in their community. And an equally large number said that they think that the television news I'm sorry, and maybe not an equally large amount, but a significant number, say that television hurts race relations in a way that it covers it. But people also said that it doesn't matter so much to them who is telling them the story as it does how they are telling it. And I want to. A line under that point, because I really think that it's important that we have a diverse, a diverse profession and that people who are telling these stories are people who you bring to those stories different truths. But it also says that if you find people who do homework,

who do research, who become better at this, then you wind up with with fair coverage. And that's all people really want. And I'd like to jump in here. My station did not at.