I found the News As Myth article by Jack Lule to be very interesting. I thought that it addressed many issues very well. I specifically found the subheading of News and Myths tell the “Real” Stories and News and Myths are public stories to be interesting because we often don’t get the real news stories. Racial profiling will always affect the family but especially when it ends in death. Racial profiling affects the family because it takes an innocent individual and transforms them into something that needs to be “watched.” It’s creates mistrust not only from institution to individual but from individual to institution. It makes individuals feel isolated and may make them feel as if their citizenship is legitimate in papers but not in the hearts of fellow citizens. To relate this to the family we can take for instance the news stories of Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis. Their families and friends always build the publics’ idea and perception of these types of victims. This is not to say that what their family and friends say about them isn’t believable or true but it is biased, just like the publics’ idea of the killer is biased. These news stories became famous because they were very similar in the facts that the people killed were completely unarmed and both black men who were believed to be “threatening.” These are new news stories but after closer research this idea of these teenagers being threatening has been connected to the old stories of the Brute Negro caricature. The Brute Negro is ugly and barbarian-like. He is violent and a male predator who targets helpless victims, especially white women. If you compared the characteristics of the brute negro and the characteristics that George Zimmerman and Michael Dunn, the shooters in these cases, proclaimed that these teenagers had, they are very similar.
The question is if these teenagers had been white would they still be targeted for such a barbaric action? This directly relates to the subheading News and Myths tell the “Real” Stories because there are two sides of two stories that did not get told because two people were killed. This also goes with News and Myths are Public Stories because of the controversial “Stand Your Ground” Law that Florida and a few other states have. These cannot be classified as the real story because there are still other sides that have not and will not be told. News stories lose credibility when one side is not able to tell their side. But realistically when stories like this have no visual and auditory proof they have no credibility. Instead of he said she said it’s he said, he’s dead. As human beings we are inherently moved by emotion and because of this even without trying many times we will always be biased. There is real truth but we won’t ever tell the real truth because everyone perceives things differently and everyone has different ideas of what details and aspects are important. This is why these types of stories will always affect the family because what is of value to one person may mean absolutely nothing to another. These types of news stories and the way that the media paints the victim as a “thug” will always portray the idea that black men are “thugs” and it is because of ideas like the brute negro and other caricatures.