Here is a question for everyone on the political spectrum. Why is a story about black on black violence in the USA the current headline news in the UK? To me, it feels like the stoking of a them and us story about the people vs the police - but it is not relevant in the UK. Why the obsession with US racial and police politics?
It seemed tome that the UK media was convinced that the release of the video would lead to another wave of protests/riots like in 2020. Missing that given it was not white cops involved it was never going to be the same. The reporting was all about the city being "braced for the release" (and by implication the reaction) You can tell with these kinds of things by watching the reaction of the very left wing media that associates more with identity politics. These are mainly found on youtube rather than major outlets (things like The Young Turks and their spin off shows). I used to watch and am still subscribed to one of those spin off shows as it used to align with the end of my work day. The coverage they gave the recent mass shootings by asian perpetrators was minuscule compared to when the shooter is white. I still remember the Atlanta massage parlour shooting where they ran with it for a week and the hosts a guests were basically low key squabbling over whether is was primarily racism, misogyny or "anti sex worker" that drove the crime. Around the same time there were cases of black men sucker punching asian women in the street and the race of the perpetrator was NEVER mentioned (and in the case I am thinking of the hosts were wondering why the security guards of the nearby building didn't intervene and demanding they be fired). It doesn't fit the narrative but I don't think the UK media has sussed that because, for obvious reasons, our relationship with race is very different to America. Which is why the porting over of the BLM riots was always rather awkward. It did not have the same level of relevance. I don't know how this is being covered in the US media though
Read an article very recently about the fact that the English-speaking world is far more divided politically than the remainder of the world. If I recall they think it's because of the overspill of the work done by Bannon et al to encourage and amplify identity politics. We can be affected by it as it's in our language so we fall for it. We see it in here with people petrified by what's happening with drag acts in American libraries or outraged about this piece of news of Tyre Nichols (though note that it's actually seen more as police on black violence) I'll see if I can dig up the article but I'm leaving for the match soon so it'll be later. Vin
It's beyond me that such a brutal attack would take place given the body cameras the police wear, CCTV and phones would mean they would be held to account.
There are on obviously various factors at play. The race thing. The fact that US police forces are trained more like little armies. The American obsession with Wars On (drugs, crime, etc.). I find it very dangerous simply bringing this news over here because young kids are talking about this stuff in the playground AS IF IT HAPPENED HERE- and when you call them out on it they cannot understand that the US and UK are very different places. A level of rage against the UK is warranted, I am sure, but can we not get angry for stuff which is actually to do with us?
There is a good chance that putting it at top billing here is also a distraction tactic. The bbc have been running cover for the government for years now. Perhaps not in the news but definitely in their political programming
Calling it 'black-on-black violence' does obscure the problem a bit. It's 'power-structure-on-black violence'; that the officers are Black really isn't that germane to the situation, which is that the incentive structure and training provided to police of all races in the US results in them responding with brutality and escalation in minor encounters, and that tactic is most commonly (though hardly exclusively) deployed against Black civilians.
Literally said that in the second half of the post. My main point is this is not British news and not something for us to focus on.
And mine was that our news is potentially focusing on it because they were concerned it would trigger mass protests (on the scale of the George Floyd ones). But upon reflection, and noticing the lack of any stories concerning the sitting government on the BBC front page today, I now lean more towards "smokescreen" / running cover. I noticed earlier that this was story 3 on the Guardian website front page with one on our government corruption being first. Telling really.
Another reason is that it's cheap journalism to pick up stories that others have written. There's an increasingly American flavour to our news because shooting lots of people dead in the US is more of a click bait article than a lollipop lady in scunthorpe retiring ater 50 years of seeing children safely across the road. Our media have even adopted 'outage' as the defaul term for a failure. 'Shuttered' instead of closed, and 'shelter in place' instead of taking cover. ****ing ridiculous to me but so is the media here these days. Some on here would rather talk Americal politics than what is happening here because to them, the wonderful world of Twitter and what that daft **** Musk is doing is groundbreaking news. Oh well, at least the allotment is a place of peace and tranquility, although mud sodden and chilly at the moment.
Part of the issue is the way we consume media now. It’s largely online, and therefore funded by clicks/advertisers (as people don’t like the subscription model enough and like everything for free), so the clickbait stuff is the only way an outlet can survive.
“Some on here would rather talk Americal politics than what is happening here because to them, the wonderful world of Twitter and what that daft **** Musk is doing is groundbreaking news.” I’ve been making a similar point for a week or more. Glad I’m not alone.
Glad to hear it isn’t just me getting wound up by this stuff! I haven’t got a clue what is going on in Scotland or France or Belgium most of the time, but every little ****ing thing in the US is shoved down my throat
Spot on. I heard 2 or 3 experienced political journalists talking on a podcast a while ago and they said the job is now very much about being the first to post a story online and get the link out there on Twitter etc. If you're sitting at your desk researching a story and something else breaks you'll get an earful from your editor asking what you're doing and why another paper has the story out first. That and the ability to look at 'live' news 24/7 is why everything in the media is sensationalised and (even more) gossipy.
It’s not a little thing though, is it? This is how the country that has assigned itself the role of policing the world, polices itself. America is the worlds biggest economy, arguably it’s most influential culture; it’s supposedly cherished values of liberty and democracy are in crisis. That’s news, whether you personally are concerned about what happens over there, or not.
I actually disagree. The fact the US has a messed up police system is fairly irrelevant to the rest of the world and it is not why this story is making the top of the UK news bulletins. The USA has had a nightmare police force and nightmare prison population forever. Nobody is shocked to hear that. Everybody knows the US has deep issues with race. The reason this story is running so heavily is because BLM ran so heavily- and this is seen as a continuation of that case. Galtung and Ruge would say this story has ‘currency’. For me it adds nothing to my understanding of the world and is in fact clouding things. By constantly placing US news at the top of our broadcasts we muddy the waters between the two - and that stains us with their problems. It is actively bad for racial relations in the UK.
