Social Justice

Unequal media coverage of two murders in Detroit

This is not only an epidemic in Detroit, there is common denominator everywhere. For some reason, media tends to forget minorities, particularly blacks in covering stories.

Published

13 years ago

February 7, 2012

Chenelle R. Covin

This is not only an epidemic in Detroit, this is a common denominator in a lot of cities.

For some reason, media tends to forget people of color, particularly Black people, when covering stories. Stories like Jhessye Shockley, Phylicia Barnes, and many other stories fail to get the media attention it deserves. Sometimes our stories go unheard, and for that reason, it is why Unheard Voices Magazine was started in New Jersey. Well a Detroit News columnist is asking the same question. Why is there no coverage?

Detroit News columnist, Nolan Finley, tries to determine why the murder of a 12-year-old African American girl received less attention than that of a white, wealthy Grosse Pointe, Mich., woman.

He states while the apparent answer is race, the reason may actually be the unusual nature of Jane Bashara’s death compared with that of Kade’jah Davis, the 12-year-old girl. Are we getting used to these murders?

“I also can’t ignore the whodunit aspect of the Jane Bashara case, the suspicions surrounding her husband and the salacious details, from a hidden girlfriend to a basement S & M club. You don’t get to write about sex dungeons every day.

But I suspect the real reason has more to do with the nature of news. By definition, news is the unusual.

Grosse Pointe Park hadn’t had a murder in roughly 20 years before Bashara was beaten and strangled, apparently in the garage of her tony home.

There’s nothing unusual about a homicide in Detroit. In the first 30 days of the New Year, the city had 27 slayings.

Even child killings have become commonplace. Even when a child is killed on the front porch of her own home by bullets intended for her mother, it doesn’t shock us as much as it should because it’s not all that outside the norm.

When bodies are accumulating at the rate of nearly one a day, it gets harder to work up an outrage, even at the most outrageous crimes.

The danger of becoming desensitized to bloodshed is that the raging homicide rate falls down the priority list.

While bullets are flying all over the city, the City Council is debating an austerity budget that could lay off up to 1,000 police officers.

It’s sad that child killings have become so commonplace that it takes an extreme murder such as Bashara’s to dominate the news. As Finley asks, when did life become so cheap?”