Ferguson and the media

(4 pm. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

Listening Post examines racial conflict and social divisions in the US and how those issues are reported.

Ferguson, Missouri – a dateline that rarely drops on the global news wire. But this week, small-town America was put under the international media spotlight after a black teenager, Michael Brown, was killed on August 9 by a white policeman.

When US journalists do hostile environment training, they usually have foreign conflicts at the back of their minds. This one was right on their doorstep. Because this week, the Midwest turned into a warzone – and the post-racial America story arc just took a turn for the worse.

Helping us to understand how the media reported Ferguson are: Mikki Kendall, a writer; Lizz Brown, a columnist for the St Louis American; Byron Tau, a reporter for Politico; Rashad Robinson, the executive director of Color of Change; and Ash-har Quraishi, a correspondent for Al Jazeera America.