“U.S. police chiefs group apologizes for “historic mistreatment’ of minorities” Headline, Washington Post, 10/17/16
“Police Group Apologies for U.S. Law Enforcement’s Role in ‘Historical Mistreatment’ of Minorities” Headline, Time.com, 10/17/16
“Wellesley chief rips ‘dark side’ of police history” Headline, opinion section, Boston Herald, 10/18/16
Wow. Judging from those headlines IACP President Terrence M. Cunningham is out to score points at the expense of law enforcement officers everywhere. He should be drummed out of the IACP right this minute.
Delivery of the news is often shaped by sensationalism and monetary gain rather than through the lens of unbiased reporting. Quotes, soundbites and general slanting of the news can turn a benign story into an eye-catching, inflammatory piece. And that, I suggest to you, is what happened when Chief Cunningham made his remarks at a recent IACP meeting.
Yes, the chief addressed “the historic mistreatment of minorities,” but—as a good friend who served as Deputy Chief of a major U.S. police department put it to me—the cherry-picked quote wasn’t the only thing Cunningham had to say. Nor, as media outlets would have you believe, was that a standalone sentiment. His words were much more nuanced and complex.
Chief Cunningham’s speech addressed the challenges that face today’s law enforcement officers and spoke to the “bravery, self-sacrifice, and service to the community” delivered by the men and women who police our nation. While he acknowledged dark times in our past, he also addressed the irony of today’s public holding current law enforcement officers responsible for the sins of those who came before us and called for disparate members of society to work together to move forward, not take steps back. I think this is a very reasonable position and much less incendiary than most news outlets would have readers believe.
The Washington Post, for example, highlighted the racial aspect of the chief’s remarks and bunched them all at the top. Newspaper stories are structured in what’s known as an “inverted pyramid” form, which assumes readers are likely to scan the topmost information and neglect the remainder. In broadcast media, soundbites can be broken up and served up in bits and pieces, thus skewing their real meaning.
The upshot is that many in the media cherry pick the most attention-grabbing parts of a story and slide those to the top, saving the less salacious stuff for lower in the story, if at all. Think of it this way: if someone went to a cocktail party and another person asked what happened that day, would the respondent most likely say Cunningham called for community cohesion or that he admitted that police possessed “historic mistreatment of minorities”?
Like many LEOs, my hackles rose when I heard Cunningham’s remarks on a major news broadcast, but upon reading the full text of his speech, I realized that this is no different from headlines or stories that trumpet “Unarmed man killed by cops.”
I urge you to read the chief’s remarks in full at the IACP’s website. By doing so, you will—as Paul Harvey used to say—have the rest of the story.
