After George Floyd's murder, the AP instructed reporters to "avoid the vague 'officer-involved' for shootings and other cases involving police." But an analysis by @notrivia finds that usage of the phrase declined post Floyd but crept back up in 2021. 1/7
huffpost.com/entry/police-v…
huffpost.com/entry/police-v…
The analysis examined nearly 140,000 articles from 2000-'21 for "officer involved" usage+found that some of the most persistent usage came when scrutiny of media coverage of police violence was at its highest, such as the '14 killing of Mike Brown. 2/7 huffpost.com/entry/police-v…
In August 2014—the month officer Darren Wilson killed Brown—the phrase was used 243 times, and the average usage over the year jumped to 132 times per month, nearly double any previous year. 3/7 huffpost.com/entry/police-v…
"I think that a lot of the media felt obligated to have this kind of story then,” former Ferguson protester @deray said. “And I think that especially in 2014, but even today, it’s hard for people to imagine that the government lies so easily.” 4/7 huffpost.com/entry/police-v…
Usage of “officer-involved” peaked in July 2016, when the phrase was used 447 times and appeared at least once in 13% of all articles about police violence, a disturbing trend as that summer was when police killed Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. 5/7 huffpost.com/entry/police-v…
“If we write about it more, that is not a net good thing," said @WesleyLowery. "Not if the writing is bad, not if the coverage obfuscates what happened and launders the police narrative into the public consciousness." 6/7 huffpost.com/entry/police-v…
Perhaps most damningly, @notrivia found that reporters rarely used active phrases like “police shot” and “police killed." During the 2000-2021 span surveyed, active phrases appeared 100 times or more during just three months. 7/7 huffpost.com/entry/police-v…
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