A transit cop shooting a New Year's Eve rowdy, face down, in Oakland, Calif. turned into a national story thanks to YouTube, long before local newspapers and TV stations caught up to it.
On New Year's Day, after a fight on a BART train, police pulled Oscar Grant and others off the train at the Fruitvale station near Oakland's airport. Witnesses with cell phones and videocameras capturedJohannes Mehserle, a police officer for the BART rail system, in the act of shooting Grant. A local TV station ran one of these clips Sunday. But Grant's death wasn't widely reported until cameraphone footage was posted until Tuesday, sparking protests in downtown Oakland Wednesday night which turned into a riot.
The reason why is clear: Another death by cop in America's inner cities, rendered in bloodless black-and-white text, would go unremarked by readers. But the video, which shows Mehserle, seemingly unprompted, reaching for his gun and shooting Grant, is chilling. Mehserle resigned Wednesday.
BART officials first claimed there was no surveillance tape — then said they'd discovered one that didn't show the shooting incident. Even that evidence was impounded as part of the investigation, leaving the witnesses' YouTube clips as the only record.
Was Mehserle reaching for his Taser, as some suggest? We still don't know that and other key facts.. A vibrant local news industry might have done more on the story before the Internet made it big news. But Oakland, which has one local paper, the Oakland Tribune, run by a chain known for cost-cutting, is emblematic of the increasingly wide swathes of America which go uncovered by proper journalism.
It's easy to celebrate mediarogue, the YouTube poster who some might call a "citizen journalist." But isn't it disturbing to think that, as easily as it became a national scandal, Grant's shooting might well have disappeared into the morass of mind-numbing clips offered on Google's online-video schlock factory — a death unnoted by our fickle, impatient minds?
On so many levels, there are so many things wrong with this situation. the article has a point, that there is so much that doesn't get printed by conventional media, and that makes me happy that technology has gotten (ironically) more invasive. sure, cameraphones and liveblogging seem intrusive, but at the same time, it covers a lot that doesn't get shown. it means that the possibility of getting hacked or having your privacy invaded is a lot more likely, but i'd much rather have my privacy invaded than to have someone shot in the head and have his death go unreported.
and police brutality. i recently watched the ending of this french movie, la haine, and it stunned me so much, i just sat there. this video (search for it in youtube with the same title) gave me the same reaction. there are moments in people's lives when you get so offended by someone, so upset or so angered, but to be human, i think is to learn how to check your emotions before you go too far. Mehserle passed the point where he should be called human. i hope he can figure out how to justify that to himself. if i were in his position, i wouldn't know how to.
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