Derek Chauvin’s knee was on George Floyd’s neck for 9 minutes and 29 seconds on May 29, 2021. But Floyd was murdered over and over again on America’s TV screens.
Viewers saw graphic images nearly every night during the evening news broadcasts’ trial coverage, and that can be harmful, research shows.
Roxane Silver, a researcher of media and trauma at the University of California, Irvine, said repeated exposure to graphic images has “no psychological benefit.”
In fact, “There is growing evidence that media can serve as a powerful means of spreading the trauma of a community tragedy,” she wrote in a 2016 opinion piece for The Dallas MorningNews.
After the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, Silver and her team found a positive correlation between stress symptoms and hours of exposure to news and social media content about the bombing.
The Chauvin trial was potentially particularly harmful as it was televised and all over social media.
Silver recommended “turning off the television [and] avoiding gruesome pictures.” But if the news can have negative psychological impact, should networks use fewer graphic images or any at all?
Bruce Shapiro, executive director of Columbia University’s Dart Center of Journalism and Trauma, told Capital News Service: “It’s always a difficult call.”
“You don’t want to be sensationalizing or exploiting violence, creating a kind of pornographic relationship to that kind of footage by just showing it…over and over again,” Shapiro said.
But, he added, “As journalists, we want to tell the truth about what happened and that includes telling the truth visually to convey the real significance of events.”
Shapiro has a general test: “Does the use of this graphic image, no matter how disturbing, enhance and enrich the viewer’s understanding of the events? Does taking the image or video out change our understanding of events?”
NBC avoided the traumatic images, while CBS opted for blurred images except when showing specific parts that witnesses referred to. It can be argued CBS provided context to the testimonies that NBC didn’t.
However, ABC’s nightly use of the freeze-frame of Chauvin’s knee on Floyd’s neck — unblurred and without warning — raises questions. Was it particularly excessive? Did it dehumanize Floyd, reducing him to just his death?
The networks’ reliance on such graphic videos can also set a dangerous precedent, argues Alissa Richardson, an assistant journalism professor at the University of Southern California. Will marginalized communities now be always required to produce videos to prove the cause of death?
“We have enough proof. We have enough pain,” she wrote for Vox after the verdict. “What we
don’t have is reform.”
But, she added, “News media can help jumpstart the process though, by doing away with the false idea that African American and Latinx communities need to play this game of video empathy before justice.”
Journalists aren’t activists, and graphic images have undeniably sparked change — from Emmett Till to now George Floyd.
But we do have immense influence. Thus, when making editorial decisions about graphic images, networks have a responsibility to consider the psychological impact, especially on an already traumatized community.
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