This Sunday I wrote a piece for The Atlantic, which called for media outlets to report more humanely on Black victims of police brutality. I was thinking all week about Jacob Blake’s sons, who watched from the back seat of their car as police shot him multiple times in the back. I thought also about how viral the video had become, and how it would surely haunt the boys in years to come if journalists don’t take action to help scrub it from the web. I am calling for news media to stop airing and publishing images of Black people dying at the hands of the state. Instead, I wrote, I would like them to search for the more complex news story, which honors the victim’s whole personhood. [Read more.]
