The Crime Report (https://thecrimereport.org/category/media/)
A viral video of a woman calling the police because of an interaction with a black man over her putting a leash on her dog in a popular Central Park bird-watching location has sparked outrage across the country. Many are comparing the racially-charged incident to what happened to Ahmaud Arbery and Emmett Till.
A group of scholars contends that the Pulitzer Prize awarded to the Louisville Courier-Journal for coverage of former Gov. Matt Bevin’s pardons “served to reinforce a false, but powerful, message that clemency broadly threatens public safety and is a dangerous tool in the hands of a governor.”
Police have temporarily detained journalists at protests or blocked citizen reporters from videotaping an arrest on the grounds they refused to obey lawful orders. Despite a 2019 Supreme Court ruling upholding the practice, lower courts can still find remedies to protect First Amendment rights, says a forthcoming paper.
The series of articles led by Anchorage Daily News special projects editor Kyle Hopkins previously won this year’s Harry Frank Guggenheim Award for Excellence in Criminal Justice Reporting, administered by the Center on Media, Crime and Justice at John Jay College, publisher of The Crime Report.
A freelance reporter arrested while covering an undercover prostitution sting does not have a claim for a violation of his First Amendment rights because he was properly arrested for a traffic violation, says a federal appeals court.
The Anchorage Daily News and ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network won this year’s Al Nakkula Award for police reporting. The Baltimore Sun and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel also were commended.
Victoria Mckenzie, the former deputy editor of The Crime Report, was recognized for her coverage of the plight of Alaska native women subject to sexual assaults. The annual $10,000 award recognizes the achievements of Pulitzer Center-affiliated freelance journalists who cover under-reported issues.
HBO is releasing a five-part documentary, “Atlanta’s Missing and Murdered: The Lost Children.” A review says it “succumbs to the imperatives of a plot-twist narrative.”
The former Manhattan sex crimes prosecutor says she was falsely portrayed as a “racist, unethical villain” in Ava DuVernay’s widely seen documentary about the Central Park Five case.
The complex challenges of U.S. corrections rarely enter the public debate, and legislators and practitioners contemplating changes are hampered by simplistic rhetoric. In an effort to reinforce evidence-based coverage, The Crime Report has published an updated “handbook” for journalists that may prove equally useful for advocates and practitioners.