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accountability

On July 22, 18-year-old Nia Wilson was murdered in a stabbing at a transit station in Oakland, California.

The teen had just stepped off a Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) train with her two sisters, one of whom was also targeted in the incident but survived. The "prison-style attack" on Wilson, who was black, may have been a racially motivated hate crime, according to investigators.

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"It's nothing imaginable, seeing your child on the BART platform with a yellow tarp over her body," said Wilson's father, Ansar Muhammad. "That is an image I'll never forget for the rest of my life."

The senseless tragedy rattled the Bay Area — and then the entire country.

Even though recently paroled John Lee Cowell — a 27-year-old white man with a violent criminal history — was arrested for the murder the following day, tensions flared across the nation.

Demonstrators in Oakland filled the streets, frustrated with law enforcement's relatively sluggish response to Wilson's death (research suggests police are slower to react when victims are people of color). Angry celebrities like Kehlani, Tegan and Sara, and Anne Hathaway elevated Wilson's story through their online platforms.

"The murder of Nia Wilson — may she rest in the power and peace she was denied here — is unspeakable AND MUST NOT be met with silence," Hathaway wrote on Instagram. "She is not a hashtag; she was a black woman and she was murdered in cold blood by a white man."

— (@)

Many photos of the 18-year-old — who'd been planning a future career in the beauty or music industries or possibly the Army — were plucked from her social media accounts and shared by outraged sympathizers.

Out of all of Wilson's photos, however, a Bay Area news station chose the absolute wrong one to use in their coverage.

In the photo used by KTVU News, Wilson appeared to be holding a gun. She wasn't, to be clear: The item in her hand was a cellphone case shaped in the form of a gun.

But the damage had already been done.

— (@)

This may seem like a non-issue to some people (particularly white folks), but it reflects a much larger systemic problem concerning media portrayals of black and brown people in the U.S.

The news media often portrays people of color as inherently more violent — even when they're the victims of crimes.

White criminals, on the other hand, seem to benefit from their skin color.

Just look at convicted rapist Brock Turner, a white man who's habitually referred to in headlines as a "Stanford swimmer" and complemented with flattering photos. Compare that to much of the coverage surrounding slain, innocent 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, whose "thug" outfit and cannabis use apparently justified his killing.

These aren't isolated lapses in judgment. They're part of a much larger news media system that portrays people of color differently than white people.

— (@)

The photo KTVU used in its broadcast reinforced negative stereotypes and contributed to this problem, according to the National Association of Black Journalists.

"There's no justification for KTVU's airing of a photo of her apparently holding a fake gun cellphone case," the group's president, Sarah Glover, told Poynter. "KTVU victimized her twice by airing an image that puts her in a negative light and that also has nothing to do with her death."

Fortunately, KTVU quickly acknowledged its failure and apologized for featuring the problematic photo of Wilson.

Anchor Frank Somerville addressed the controversy head-on during a live broadcast, going off-script to express his apologies.

"There's no doubt we made a mistake," Somerville said. "It never should have happened. But we made the mistake, and we are owning up to that mistake."

He continued:

"Nia was a just beautiful young woman. And I can only hope right now that her family and her parents are watching so that they can see me and all of us here at Channel 2 say that we are so sorry about what happened to your daughter, and we are sorry about the mistake that we made today."

— (@)

Somerville, with the encouragement of the station's news director, also took to his Facebook page to address the issue.

He may not have been involved in choosing the photo, Somerville noted in a post, but that's irrelevant.

"There is no excuse for [what] we did. Repeat: No excuse!" Somerville wrote. "We NEVER should have used that picture. It was a huge mistake on our part."

You can read his whole post below:

I wanted to take a moment and apologize for a picture that KTVU showed on the air for several seconds today about the...
Posted by Frank Somerville KTVU on Monday, July 23, 2018

Even when it's done unintentionally, the media can get it wrong in big ways.

So when a news source does, it should confront the mistake and vow to do better. The more we talk about the flawed portrayals of people of color in the world around us, the more we can change the problem for the better.

Nothing can bring back Wilson. But her family deserves the world to remember her as the helpful, bright, big dreamer she was.

If you must interview Sean Spicer about his new book, the BBC has shown how to do it.

Hey! Remember Sean Spicer? He just wrote a book.

Spicer was President Donald Trump's first press secretary before resigning just 182 days into the administration. He became a bit notorious for his poor word choices (he accidentally called concentration camps "Holocaust centers") and easily debunked lies (such as his claim that the crowd at Trump's inauguration was the "largest audience to witness an inauguration, period" or the time he defended Trump's voter fraud claims by citing a study's non-existent conclusion).

Since his time in the White House, news networks dashed Spicer's hopes of landing a high-paying contributor role, he completed a Harvard Fellowship that led one student to publicly call for the end of the program in its current form, he showed up at the Emmys for a tongue-in-cheek joke about his crowd size lie, and has started developing his own TV talk show to pitch to networks.

He's been a busy guy, which maybe explains why his book didn't quiteget the care it needed, based on some early reviews.

Sean Spicer posing with wax figures of Melania and Donald Trump, which is somehow not the weirdest thing he's done since resigning. Photo by Cindy Ord/Getty Images for Madame Tussauds.

Media figures could press Spicer on so much during his book tour. But for the most part, they haven't.

NPR's Mary Louise Kelly allowed Spicer to sidestep a tricky question about Paul Manafort, who ran the Trump campaign for three months during the summer of 2016 and is credited with selecting Mike Pence as Trump's running mate. When it started to become clear that Manafort — who was indicted on a number of charges — was about to find himself in some legal hot water, Spicer claimed that Manafort "played a very limited role for a very limited amount of time." Despite this being untrue, Kelly pivoted away from Manafort-related questions as Spicer stumbled.

Meanwhile, NBC's Megyn Kelly began her Spicer interview with a laugh at Melissa McCarthy's portrayal of him on SNL and later allowed him to wriggle his way out of questions on his crowd-size lie.

Fox Business host Lisa Kennedy Montgomery asked, "How important is the book to changing the perception and the legacy that you have right now?" This allowed Spicer the chance to play up its importance as a "behind-the-scenes" look at the Trump White House.

Of the three, Kelly's interview was probably the hardest-hitting, which is ... not great.

Photo by Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images.

American journalists could learn a lot from how BBC Newsnight's Emily Maitlis handled her interview with Spicer.

Spicer tried to brush off a question about his crowd-size claim. But unlike other interviewers, who let Spicer downplay its importance, Maitlis wasn't having it.

"It was the start of the most corrosive culture," Maitlis fired back. "You played with the truth. You led us down a dangerous path. You have corrupted discourse for the entire world by going along with these lies."

In continuing to press the issue, Maitlis was able to get a bit of actual news out of Spicer: He seemed to believe that because the campaign felt like it had been treated unfairly by the press, that telling a lie — though he refuses to admit it's a lie — was justified.

Spicer explained his reasoning:

"We had faced a press corps that was constantly undermining our ability in the campaign to run an effective ground game, an effective data operation. Everyone was saying 'Yours isn't good enough. Hillary Clinton's running a better operation, is a better candidate and campaign. There's no way that you can compete with her.' Time and time again, through the campaign, we heard that. Then we heard similar kind of things during the transition. ... And so, if you constantly feel under attack, then you feel at some point you need to respond and say 'Enough of this.' And when you hear the president and other supporters constantly see this narrative where we are being maligned and undermined and maligned in terms of the validity of our thing, it wears on you."

That's a pretty big admission! Deciding whether or not a government official should tell the truth shouldn't depend on whether or not they're happy with "the narrative" they see playing out in the media.

Maitlis is right — that is a dangerous path, and it's not something that should be rewarded with lucrative book deals and TV shows.

Spicer at a January 2017 press conference. Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images.

Public officials don't get to write and re-write their own history — or at least they shouldn't.

Whether it's Spicer doing chummy interviews to promote his book, Tom DeLay bouncing back from a money-laundering scandal to appear on "Dancing With the Stars," or any of the many other examples of times where the public is asked to more or less forget the lasting effects politicians have on our lives, this really isn't something we have to do as a culture.

There's no law that says that every former administration official is entitled to a nationally televised book tour nor that they're even entitled to a book or TV show at all.

Serving in government is just that: service. In Spicer's case, from that lie on his first day in the job and on, it was a disservice. If journalists must interview Spicer about his new book, they should look to Maitlis and the BBC for how to best serve their audiences.

Reforming our police system seems like a no-brainer. So why does very little usually come of plans to do just that?

With more and more stories of police brutality making their way across the news, you might figure something has to happen eventually. I mean, on a very basic level, the police are meant to serve the public, so there should be some level of accountability ... right?

Yeah. About that:

That's right: Police in 14 states get their own bill of rights separate from the rest of us.

In Louisiana, they even get protection against discrimination despite being a job that people willfully enter into and not a class of people being unfairly punished for their natural-born traits.

But the worst part about it? None of this is new.

Back in 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson launched a commission for justice reform that specifically addressed policing in black communities.

There was even a plan in place to weed out cops who were racist or violent. And yet, here we are, 50 years later. Cops who are disciplined for behavior are still formally protected, to the point where they're guaranteed good recommendations at other police departments even after they've been fired for — you guessed it! — racism and violence.

None of this is particularly surprising either, however, when you consider that organized policing at many times throughout history has been used to make sure that slaves, laborers, and the poor all "knew their place." As formal police departments replaced constables, sheriffs, and local militias in the mid-to-late 1800s, their jobs were less focused on merely keeping the peace and reacting to incidents and more on stopping people before they even had a chance to disrupt the proper "order" of things, whatever that might mean.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Police arrest a civil rights protester in Newark, N.J., in 1967. Photo by Evans/Getty Images.

The craziest part about all of these police powers and protections? The police don't necessarily need them.

2015 was the safest year for police in record history. American crime rates are also at a 25-year low. And on the incredibly rare occasion that an offending officer is actually brought before a grand jury? There's still just a slim chance they'll be indicted for a formal trial, thanks in part to their cozy relationships with the district attorney's office.

The streets are generally safer today, and individual officers are pretty much immune to all potential consequences. Yet police departments have spent billions of dollars on armor, guns, and other military equipment — and are still pushing for more. SWAT units in particular have quadrupled in the same period that crime has gone down. That might sound like a correlation worth considering, but statistics from the ACLU suggest that SWAT aren't particularly effective. (Some of them also claim to be immune to public records laws, too.)

When you treat people like they live in a war zone, it makes them feel like they live in a war zone and not a community. That makes things worse for everyone. Photo by Michael B. Thomas/AFP/Getty Images.

As John Oliver once said: "The phrase isn't 'It's just a few bad apples; don't worry about it.' The phrase is 'A few bad apples spoil the barrel.'"

There's a cultural impulse in the states to always clarify that most individual officers are well-intentioned, upstanding citizens. That may be true. But that also enables a system that allows corrupt and abusive behaviors to continue. And the fact that we're so afraid to outright criticize the enforcers of the state says a lot about the troubling power dynamics at play.

Fortunately, there are places like Denver, Colorado; like Dallas, Texas; and like Washington state, where law enforcement officers are taking it upon themselves to clean up their acts and make their communities stronger and safer, together.

Let's just hope that other police departments follow suit.

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Bottled water is a Band-Aid. Flint is hemorrhaging — it's going to take more.

Why wouldn't Michael Moore want us sending water to Flint, Michigan?

The documentary-maker wrote an open letter imploring people to think deeper than just the surface-level solution of sending bottled water when it comes to helping the city, which is in the middle of a public water crisis.

The short story of what happened in Flint in case you don't know: An emergency manager appointed by the governor chose to switch Flint's water source from Lake Huron to the Flint River. They didn't treat the water correctly, which meant just about everyone was exposed to lead in their drinking water for over a year, and officials sat on this information until it was truly a health crisis of epic proportions.

The people of Flint used to get their water from clean, delicious Lake Huron. Then it changed to Flint River's polluted water. Image by U.S. Army Corps of Engineers/Wikimedia Commons.

“I was hysterical. I cried when they gave me my first lead report," LeeAnne Walters, whose children all tested positive for lead poisoning after the Flint River switchover, told the Detroit Free Press about the heart-wrenching moment she learned they'd been affected.

"I pushed them to drink water — 'Put down that juice, go get some water.' [Now] lead is in our blood," Melissa Mays, another Flint mom, also told the Free Press, expressing her regret at having her teen boys drink the water. She says now she will be plagued with worries and doubts whenever something goes wrong with them in the future, not knowing if it's from the lead or not.

5-year-old Morgan Walker tears up during a finger prick for a lead screening provided as a free service for Flint's young children in January 2016 following the water crisis. Photo by Brett Carlsen/Getty Images.

Essentially, the Flint water crisis is a complex, gargantuan-level disaster that will take various phases and layers of work to address. The first phase of response has been to establish that the poisoning has occurred, ring the alarm loud and clear for the whole country, and to immediately get some clean water to the citizens. That's a necessary short-term reaction and definitely something that was needed.

And people rushed to fill that need.

Like when Cher got Icelandic Glacial to partner with her to donate trucks full of water:

Thrilled to share that we have partnered with @cher to provide over 181,000 bottles of water to the people of Flint: https://t.co/k8WnIHTIkC
— Icelandic Glacial (@IcelandicWater) January 16, 2016

And many other celebrities and regular citizens followed suit.

But what comes next? And does Moore really want us to stop sending water to residents in need?

The city's immediate need for bottled water is far from over, but the larger point he's trying to make is right on. We can only solve the problem if we focus on more than just fixing one symptom of it. Here's how we can do that.

A kind of second phase of recovery requires moving on to doing things to fix Flint's water systems for the medium- and long-terms and to rectify the faulty system that allowed this lead poisoning to occur in the first place. It'd be foolish to let the decision-makers responsible for such bad oversight just promise they'll have really good oversight this time, they swear, in order to fix the mess.

Here are three things all Americans should be doing right now (no matter your political affiliation) in order to help Flint move forward for the long term:

1. Call for Gov. Rick Snyder's resignation.

Snyder speaks to the media about the Flint water crisis on Jan. 27, 2016. Photo by Brett Carlsen/Getty Images.

This isn't about partisan politics; it's just a good idea for how to move on from this crisis. A neutral party is needed in Michigan to assess the situation clearly, not from the vantage point of someone who has a clear reason to minimize his role in the disaster. In his open letter, Moore explains why this is so important:

"Whether it’s via resignation, recall or prosecution, this must happen now because he is still refusing to take the aggressive and immediate action needed. His office, as recently as this past Thursday, was claiming the EPA had no legal authority to tell him what to do."

You can sign the petition here.

2. Insist the state of Michigan be held financially responsible for its role in Flint's poisoning.

Snyder is trying to have Flint declared a federal disaster zone, which will likely at some point be appropriate and necessary. But the significance of this is that it will take the state off the hook for having to cough up the funds it should be providing to clean the mess it pretty much willfully made.

Here's the financial breakdown from Moore:

"This year the state treasury posted nearly a $600 million surplus. There is also another $600 million in the state’s 'rainy day fund.' That’s $1.2 billion – just about what Flint’s congressman, Dan Kildee, estimates it will cost to replace the water infrastructure and care for the thousands of poisoned children throughout their growing years."

Fred the handyman explains a new water filter to a resident of Shiloh Commons, a low-income housing area in Flint. Citizens have been given water testing jugs, filters, and clean water by the National Guard. Photo by Sarah Rice/Getty Images.

Once the state pays its share of the clean up, the federal funds should be a next step, but the state's responsibility for the crisis should not be ignored or overlooked.

Remember the mom beating herself up for having her sons drink the tap water? Chances are she and everyone like her are going to need a lot of services to help their children achieve the best cognitive abilities possible. It's gonna require funding — every penny of assistance Flint can get will be needed — and that includes state money.

How do you insist on this? Contact your local paper and write a letter to your editor or just send lots of tweets (to news sources and elected officials), no matter where you live.

3. As soon as the state has earmarked their share of payment for Flint, the recovery operations need to be placed into the hands of the federal government. STAT.

National Guard members distribute free water to Flint citizens on Jan. 23, 2016. Photo by Brett Carlsen/Getty Images.

Moore has pointed out that the water replacement efforts must be bigger in scope than just providing bottled water. He's right. The federal government can send in help on a level the state just can't. Here's what he proposes:

"The State government cannot be trusted to get this right. So, instead of declaring a federal disaster zone, President Obama must declare the same version of martial law that Governor Snyder declared over the cities of Flint and Detroit. He must step in and appoint a federal emergency manager in the state capitol to direct the resources of both the state and federal government in saving Flint. This means immediately sending in FEMA in full force. It means sending in the CDC to determine the true extent of not just the lead poisoning in the water, but also the latest outbreak that has been discovered in Flint – a tenfold increase in the number of Flint people who’ve contracted Legionnaires Disease. There have now been 87 cases since the switch to the Flint River water, and ten people have died. The local hospital has also noted sharp increases in a half-dozen other toxins found in people’s bodies. We need the CDC. The EPA must take over the testing of the water, and the Army Corps of Engineers must be sent in to begin replacing the underground pipes. Like the levees in New Orleans, this will be a massive undertaking. If it is turned over to for-profit businesses, it will take a decade and cost billions. This needs to happen right now and Obama must be in charge."

Again, you can call for this by writing letters to the editor, signing Moore's petition, and calling your elected officials and asking them to take a stand together for Flint on your (their constituent's) behalf.

These are the things we can all do to help the people of Flint beyond just sending bottled water.

It's not that bottled water isn't appreciated. It is. It's just that it only goes so far for so long. And bottled water treats the symptom, not the problem. At this point, Flint needs people to roll up their sleeves and help get them back on track by holding the people who caused the problem in the first place accountable.

Matt Hopper comforts 5-year-old Nyla Hopper after she has blood taken for a free lead testing. Photo by Brett Carlsen/Getty Images.

The people of Flint need to know that even though their state failed them, America has not forsaken them — or the possibility for their futures. Flint can rise again, in time, with our help.

accountability

A news station made a racist error. This anchor went off-script to apologize.

On July 22, 18-year-old Nia Wilson was murdered in a stabbing at a transit station in Oakland, California.

The senseless tragedy rattled the Bay Area — and then the entire country.

Out of all of Wilson's photos, however, a Bay Area news station chose the absolute wrong one to use in their coverage.

The news media often portrays people of color as inherently more violent — even when they're the victims of crimes.

Fortunately, KTVU quickly acknowledged its failure and apologized for featuring the problematic photo of Wilson.

Somerville, with the encouragement of the station's news director, also took to his Facebook page to address the issue.

Even when it's done unintentionally, the media can get it wrong in big ways.

If you must interview Sean Spicer about his new book, the BBC has shown how to do it.

Hey! Remember Sean Spicer? He just wrote a book.

Media figures could press Spicer on so much during his book tour. But for the most part, they haven't.

American journalists could learn a lot from how BBC Newsnight's Emily Maitlis handled her interview with Spicer.

Public officials don't get to write and re-write their own history — or at least they shouldn't.

Watch a simple explanation of why it's so hard to improve policing in the U.S.

Reforming our police system seems like a no-brainer. So why does very little usually come of plans to do just that?

That's right: Police in 14 states get their own bill of rights separate from the rest of us.

Back in 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson launched a commission for justice reform that specifically addressed policing in black communities.

The craziest part about all of these police powers and protections? The police don't necessarily need them.

As John Oliver once said: "The phrase isn't 'It's just a few bad apples; don't worry about it.' The phrase is 'A few bad apples spoil the barrel.'"

Michael Moore says only sending water to Flint won't work. Here are 3 things to do also.

Bottled water is a Band-Aid. Flint is hemorrhaging — it's going to take more.

Why wouldn't Michael Moore want us sending water to Flint, Michigan?

But what comes next? And does Moore really want us to stop sending water to residents in need?

1. Call for Gov. Rick Snyder's resignation.

2. Insist the state of Michigan be held financially responsible for its role in Flint's poisoning.

3. As soon as the state has earmarked their share of payment for Flint, the recovery operations need to be placed into the hands of the federal government. STAT.

These are the things we can all do to help the people of Flint beyond just sending bottled water.

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