In the December 7 edition of The News-Gazette, it was reported a homeless man by the name of Darryll S. Coleman, 29, was booked into the county jail on Dec. 4 because authorities believe Coleman “was behind a pair of bank heists.” Coleman was charged with two counts of armed robbery and two counts of aggravated robbery.
With their usual attention to overwhelming guilt, The News-Gazette recounted the holdups took place on Oct. 28 at Champaign’s First Financial Bank on Prospect Ave.; and Nov. 10 at Rantoul First Bank on Grove Ave. In both, a man police and prosecutors claim matches Coleman’s description, revealed a firearm and demanded cash from tellers.
Assistant State’s Attorney Sarah Carlson piled more guilt onto Coleman by telling The News-Gazette that police also believe Coleman is the suspect in a recent Vermilion County bank robbery and two or three robberies in Indiana.
Further, the Gazette went on, Paxton police connected Coleman to two incidents in that city a week prior to his arrest. Police say Coleman was seen standing outside First National Bank and Farmers-Merchants National Bank, where he attempted to open an account. The Gazette said Paxton police stopped Coleman after he was getting into his vehicle and questioned him, finding wads of cash and an airsoft pistol that resembled an authentic .45-caliber automatic pistol in his car. Paxton police then photographed the pistol, photographed Coleman, photographed Coleman’s money, and photographed his car. Somehow police used this evidence to later link Coleman to the bank robberies in Champaign and Rantoul.
If found guilty on all four counts, Coleman could be sentenced to anywhere between four and 45 years in prison.
In The News-Gazette‘s selection of still photos from the video taken at Coleman’s arraignment, they made the choice to show as much of the defendant’s surly attitude as possible. Reading law enforcement’s account in The News-Gazette, it would be hard not to vote yes to a prison sentence for Mr. Coleman.
Maybe it’s too conspiratorial to accuse The News-Gazette of deliberately tilting it’s crime coverage to selecting primarily black males accused of drugs or violence for publishing; but a look-back at thirty of their newspapers reveals of the 98 crime stories The News-Gazette ran between November 9 to December 9, 48 were about African-American defendants. Of the 34 mug shots The News-Gazette printed along side a story, 20 were of African-Americans. So saturated is the coverage there, some commenters on The News-Gazette website believe black males commit all the crime in town.
The News-Gazette‘s crime-related tendencies have attracted the attention of U of I Political Science and Communications Professor Scott Althaus, who supervised a team of undergraduate researchers from his Junior Honors Seminar and did a systematic analysis of The News-Gazette‘s coverage over a three-month period in 2015. Althaus has a background in law enforcement and his research specializes in “…understanding the role of the media in shaping people’s perceptions about the world around them.”
The 8-person research team examined the race and gender of suspects reported by The News-Gazette, and compared The News-Gazette’s crime coverage to the race and gender of suspects recorded in the arrest data from major law enforcement agencies in Champaign County, and the jail bookings data compiled by the Champaign County Sheriff’s Department. The research team intends for their project to be shared with the public and their report and summary of statistics can be found here.
Their work showed The News-Gazette overrepresented black suspects in its news-coverage, and even more-so, that African-American suspects were overrepresented when The News-Gazette chose to run a mug shot to accompany a story.
Of the 327 crime suspects that appeared in The News-Gazette between June 1, 2015 to September 1, 2015, 35.8% were African-Americans, 11.9% were white, and the remaining 52.3% were descriptions of suspects where The News-Gazette did not indicate the race of the offender. While African-Americans were only 39.9% of the suspects arrested and 55.6% of those booked into the county jail, the pictures of black suspects were featured 67.5% of the time in The News-Gazette.
Professor Althaus believes news coverage can “serve as the raw material for supporting racial stereotypes,” but Althaus was quick to point out, he didn’t think that what The News-Gazette does is intentional. “Journalists are very busy people. They’re working on deadlines and resource constraints, they have a very, very difficult job.” Althaus says, “…when you see patterns of the sort we’re showing they are almost always unknown to the news organizations that are producing them and almost always unanticipated by those news organizations. [Journalists] are just working so fast they don’t get a chance to take a look at their output the way a study like this does.”
Althaus admitted he has no idea how The News-Gazette constructs a crime story.
John Reed, publisher of The News-Gazette, attended a presentation of the research on a rainy Monday night at Gregory Hall, and Reed stood up and addressed the crowd by calling the findings, “…intriguing.” Reed disagreed with the team’s definition of what a violent crime is; and reminded the audience that The News-Gazette is a regional newspaper and the study didn’t include crime stories from any place other than Champaign County.
The News-Gazette may want to dodge a racist charge since it’s easy to imagine their legal department frantically searching for whether a property-tax exempt newspaper can be sued for racial discrimination by fostering racial stereotypes for decades. What price can be put on the economic damage The News-Gazette‘s crime coverage can do to property values, employment opportunities, and investment opportunities?
Black criminality has been a perfect counter for those preferring things stay the same in the face of an emerging resurgence of African-Americans sticking up for their rights. With righteous indignation, African-Americans are increasingly expressing their rage, having grown weary with how they are treated by law enforcement, The Drug War, and mass incarceration. Beginning on college campuses, African-Americans are also audaciously demanding an education and economic opportunity.
Lest there be any Christian compassion for any of these ills, The News-Gazette‘s crime coverage reminds readers every chance they get, that African Americans are somehow out-of-hand and don’t deserve any set-asides.
Not to say law enforcement’s collection of evidence against Mr. Coleman doesn’t justify arresting and holding to trial Mr. Coleman for these incidents. Whoever was doing these bank hold-ups could have easily gotten themselves, or somebody else killed. An intervention is definitely called for here.
But those stoked on News-Gazette crime coverage, (which is wholly dependent on law enforcement for the content of its crime stories,) read a narrative portrayed in such a way readers are encouraged to lose interest in a humane intervention (like a college education while behind bars), but instead, are provoked to seek revenge in the worst possible way, ASAP. Who needs fair trials or rehabilitation? The man’s an animal, right?
No one is interested in learning what drove Mr. Coleman, (if it’s proved beyond a reasonable doubt) to stick up banks, live out of a car, and travel from town to town. What ever gave Coleman, or anybody for that matter, the notion that was a good idea? No one will piece together the puzzle that went on between Coleman’s ears.
The News-Gazette‘s crime coverage hinders the reforms the criminal justice system is undergoing across the nation, beginning in Ferguson, Missouri. By focusing on “the menacing black male,” readers of The News-Gazette forget real life in Champaign-Urbana is truly segregated.
African-Americans who reside here are disproportionately exposed and forced to deal with the Digitized Jailing System. A criminal case takes the wind out of the sails for anyone to keep up with the payments, let alone the destruction of your reputation on a job application. Even a traffic ticket can crush an entire family. Stories of additional fines and enormous court costs on top of the price of a ticket are legend in this county.
The News-Gazette justifies this unequal application of the law for the last 30 years with the recent rash of shootings and homicides. (By the way, if you want an explanation for the violence that has seized a few residents of the North End, look and listen to this masterpiece for seven minutes and 41 seconds, written by Jazmine McKinney while she went to school here.)
The News-Gazette‘s obsession with crimes of violence promotes false beliefs about the nature of crime and law enforcement. According to the research team’s study, violent crime appearing in The News-Gazette was seven times the occurrence of actual arrests for violent crimes. It would surprise News-Gazette readers that of the 5,016 police-citizen contacts tracked by the research team, 92% were for non-violent offenses.
Given there’s to be Gigantic Apartment Mega-Complexes for our wealthy out-of-towners, (meaning: more students and more professionals living here) News-Gazette readers are led to believe the last thing we need among this building boom is a bunch of African Americans shooting up the place, ruining the reputation of the city, and more importantly, dissuading potential tenants from renting in a particular area.
It would be understandable if pressure to protect the university real estate and professional real estate from harm would drive police departments racially insane to focus their efforts at keeping the riff-raff off the premises- however you define riff-raff. According to the Urbana Police Department’s own statistics, police in Urbana have, for the last decade, usually decided African-Americans are riff-raff. The question is whether Urbana’s Chief of Police Pat Connolly is willing to own it and make some changes. Faithful readers of The News-Gazette, however, don’t believe Connolly has to change a thing.
How we spend future tax dollars hangs in the balance by our brief impressions of society at-large. As they say, perception is everything, and that should include the portrayal of less educated and poor people in general, as unworthy of our collective concern is done by the Digitized Jailing Industry every 4 hours, using the local newspaper’s website as its publicity machine.
Were enough people scared enough and apathetic enough, Champaign County Sheriff Dan Walsh may yet sneak through a $32 million dollar expansion to the county jail.
If we may interrupt the community wetting its pants over the new $90 million dollar hotel and convention center going up behind Countess Cathedral, we have to ask ourselves what have been the financial investments made in The North End over these last three decades? While Downtown Champaign has flourished by drug dealing some alcohol, the North End has suffered reduced services, few upgrades, and little economic activity as seen on campus, downtown, and Research Park. The North End got a Drug War that has swept in and decimated the employment chances of a large percentage of black males under age 50.
Perhaps the constant crime narrative of another crazy black person gone out of control, (“thugs,” as they are referred to by idiots) lulls the future jury pools and taxpayers to shrug with acceptance that Black Lives Don’t Matter. Afterall, look at what “they” do,… brought to you by… your Good ‘Ol News-Gazette.
(Sketch by Christopher Evans)