| This study analyzes how police use of force and police brutality are represented in the news. Adopting a social constructionist perspective on the news and on public problems, it seeks to understand how public definitions of use of force incidents are constructed in the news, and when and why the news occasionally designates police brutality as a serious public problem. Content analysis of the New York Times and Los Angeles Times reveals that the typical news story about use of force is brief, episodic, and structured around claims provided to reporters by officials which focus attention on deviant, violent criminal suspects who threaten officers and the public, and, occasionally, on "rogue cops" who cross the line between acceptable and unacceptable use of force. In contrast, the widely publicized beating of Rodney King thoroughly escaped the efforts of the LAPD to contain its public definition. The King beating, the analysis finds, became a major news event not simply because it was videotaped, but because the narrative the video suggested undermined official claims about that event, because other officials publicly challenged the LAPD's individualizing claims about the event, and because citizens in Los Angeles and beyond mobilized to define the King beating as part of a pattern of police abuse. A small number of incidents become occasions for news coverage that is less critical than in the King case, but more critical than that given to most use of force incidents. The analysis finds that particular "story cues" arising from some use of force incidents encourage more critical news reporting because they provide the raw materials for dramatic story-telling that identifies potential official wrongdoing. But the openings for critical discourse about policing created by these story cues are constrained by privileged official access to the news and a dominant discourse of crime control. |
