This book examines how the media approached long-standing and long-simmering issues of race, class, violence, and social responsibility in Baltimore during the demonstrations, violence, and public debate in the spring of 2015.
This book examines how the media approached long-standing and long-simmering issues of race, class, violence, and social responsibility in Baltimore during the demonstrations, violence, and public debate in the spring of 2015. Contributors take Baltimore to be an important place, symbol, and marker, though the issues are certainly not unique to Baltimore: they have crucial implications for contemporary journalism in the U.S. These events prompt several questions: How well did journalism do, in Baltimore, nearby and nationally, in explaining the endemic issues besetting Baltimore? What might have been done differently? What is the responsibility of journalists to anticipate and cover these problems? How should they cover social problems in urban areas? What do the answers to such questions suggest about how journalists should in future cover such problems?
Foreword
Jane Rhodes
1. News of Baltimore: Journalism and public expression about a citys
problems
Linda Steiner and Silvio Waisbord
Part I. News and the Politics of Place
2. Renewing the Lease: How News Characterizations of Baltimore Realigned
White Reign of US Cities
Robert Gutsche and Carolina Estrada
3. Local news framing of Baltimore as a segregated market
Andrew Rojecki
4. The sociological eye in the news: Covering West Baltimore in the aftermath
of the death of Freddie Gray
Silvio Waisbord, Eissa Saeed, and Tina Tucker
5. Order in Baltimore? On Place-Frames in US Journalism
Barbie Zelizer
Part II. Voices, Visibility and the Public Sphere
6. Its not a pretty picture: Visualizing the Baltimore crisis on social
media
Stuart Allan and Lina Dencik
7. Black agency in the production of counter-narratives of police brutality.
Ashley Howard
8. The Black Press and Baltimore: The continuing importance of African
American journalism during urban uprisings
Sarah Jackson
9. Who Killed Freddie Gray?: The Video that Started It All
Khadijah Costley White
Part III. Journalistic Discourse and Criticism
10. Historical discontinuities in news coverage of the Baltimore 2015 riots
and the 1965 Watts riots
Bonnie Brennen
11. Journalists as victims and perpetrators of violence
Matt Carlson
12. Who speaks for the "real" Baltimore?: How journalists understood their
authority and ability to represent "place" during the 2015 unrest
Katy June-Friesen
13. "I dont want him to be a Freddie Gray": The Hero Mom on Trial
Linda Steiner and Carolyn Bro
Linda Steiner is Professor in the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland, USA
Silvio Waisbord is Professor in the School of Media and Public Affairs at The George Washington University, USA
