One Tweet Shows the Hypocrisy of the Media's Reaction to Riots in Baltimore

On Saturday, over 2,000 protesters marched to Baltimore's City Hall to protest the death of 25-year-old black man Freddie Gray. Gray died on April 19 after suffering a spinal injury while in Baltimore Police Department custody a week earlier. At some point between when Gray was put into a police van and shackled and the time paramedics were called over half an hour later, something nasty happened.

According to Gray's family attorney, his spine was 80% severed at the neck. Deputy Police Commissioner Jerry Rodriguez admits that Gray gave up without the use of force.

Since then, thousands of people have taken to the streets every day to demonstrate against the fate that befell Freddie Gray and countless other people who have been killed by police in America. But on Saturday night, a small minority of Baltimore's residents decided to irresponsibly engage in property destruction and acts of violence — and the media lost its mind.

Here's how the Baltimore Sun covered the events on Sunday:

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One tweet from American hip-hop artist Talib Kweli shows how the protests could and should have been covered: as a movement against police brutality so heartfelt and widespread that it united even rival gangs.



A false narrative: The vast majority of people who turned out to protest Freddie Gray's death on Saturday didn't engage in violence, smash windows or hurl beer bottles at people. Out of the more than 2,000 people who marched to City Hall that afternoon, Al-Jazeera America reports that about 100 were responsible for the chaos. CNN noted that there was an "overwhelming peaceful majority" and that members of protests put themselves between the "small group" of angry demonstrators and police lines, leading Police Commissioner Anthony Batts to thank the peacemakers in the crowd.

Despite the fact that there have been peaceful protests in Baltimore every day since Gray died on April 19, some folks seem determined to frame the narrative around the actions of a disgruntled minority.

http://mic.com/articles/116524/outrage-over-baltimore-riots-completely-misses-the-point[