Botham Jean Shooting
Twitter went off Thursday on an article by FOX 4 News, a news outlet in the Dallas and Fort Worth area, about police finding a small amount of marijuana in Botham Jean's home. Jean was allegedly shot and killed in his own home by an off-duty Dallas police officer, who believed Botham's apartment was her own and that Botham was an intruder. Many Twitter users were outraged that the news article led with the fact Botham was in possession of marijuana as if it was a justification for the alleged shooting. There was also anger over the fact the news article led with this fact when the overall story was about the findings of a search warrant executed at Jean's apartment. After the outrage, the news article was later updated to include the lawyer of the Jean family's anger that this information was released. This article is an example of how black victims in police shootings are treated very differently by the press and every piece of negative information is published as if to justify the crimes committed against them.
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Seeing this yesterday made me absolutely furious. This form of biased coverage of victims of police brutality has been occurring for as long as police brutality has existed. Although recently this disgustingly obvious bias has been criticized by the more informed public, certain news media has blatantly ignored the clear problem with their coverage. Most times recently when media has tried to frame victims as criminals, they have been called out in a similar fashion to what you've shown, but unfortunately the pattern continues to repeat.
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