Department of Communication at Otterbein

SPRING/SUMMER 2018
41
Promising Practices
Eric K. Jones is an associate professor
in the Department of Communication
at Otterbein University,
Westerville, Ohio.
© 2018 by Caddo Gap Press
discussions and incorporating relatable
examples. For the most part, they exhibited
the media-use habits of a typical college
student. A good way to get an impression of
these habits is to look at a report produced
by Nielsen which examined media use activity (Nielsen, 2016). The report describes
some typical media use patterns of people
grouped in the age category of 18-34 years.
Among this age group, the average
amount of weekly time spent consuming
all-media platforms is 26 hours and 49
minutes. 24% of that time (6 hours and 19
minutes) is spent on social media. During a
typical week, 78% of adults within this age
group prefer to spend their time on social
media with their smart phone devices. Ten
percent of adults within this age group
prefer to spend their time on social media
using a tablet. And the other 12% of adults
within this age group prefer to spend their
time on social media using a PC. Their most
popular social media platforms are Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest.
The Pew Research Center (2016) conducted a news consumer study on a corresponding age group of millennials. This
category of viewers was comprised of adults
between the ages of 18-29. The study revealed they get their news in the following
ways: 50% of the people in this group prefer
to get their news via some kind of on-line
source, 27% get their news from regular
television, 14% from radio, and 5% prefer
to get their news from print media.
The Genesis of a Lesson Plan:
The Tumultuous Summer of 2016
The summer of 2016 was marked by disturbing stories of violence associated with
policing. It had such a profound impact on
me personally that I was inspired to start
thinking about how I was going to teach
this subject matter to my students. Most
Introduction
The problem of police brutality in Black
and Brown communities has become a very
frustrating issue. Part of the reason for
exasperation lies with the fact that we are
divided as a country when it comes to the
notion of responsible policing. This became
apparent when the “Black Lives Matter”
movement was quickly met by obstinate
supporters of police officers, rebelliously
retorting chants of “All Lives Matter” and
“Blue Lives Matter.”
At the center of this polarized debate
we saw graphic videos of unarmed Black
suspects being shot by police. We saw Twitter serve as an online graveyard when the
names of the fallen victims of police violence
became trending hashtags resembling digital tombstones (i.e., Walter Scott, Tamir Rice,
and Rekia Boyd to name a few). We also saw
a police officer declaring that he was in fear
of his life at a trial where he was charged
with manslaughter1
(Berman, 2017). After
his acquittal, family members of the slain,
desperate for the justice system to work,
agonized over the loss of their loved one.2
All of these events raise the following
question: How do educators teach students
how to cut through the emotional trauma
of such harrowing stories in order to find
credible information? Part of the answer
is to help students detect distorted ideas
about police brutality that pervade media
coverage. Some of the stories covering the
issue of police brutality have contained
misleading viewpoints even when the
journalists appear to be citing reputable
research on the topic (Simon, 2016).
What follows is a teaching strategy
that features one such article. This lesson
requires students to complete several
tasks: first, they must read the article
as a homework assignment, they must
then deconstruct the article’s coverage for
misleading ideas, and finally they must
critique a social media post while participating in a media literacy exercise. Once
the students are finished, they should be
able to demonstrate competency in detecting misleading media themes and be able
to judge the credibility of research studies.
This article explains in detail how to reach
these learning goals with college students
at the undergraduate level.
Educational Setting
This lesson was taught in a class entitled
“Race, Gender, and Class in Media” on the
campus of a small liberal arts college in
the Midwest. Overall, the purpose of the
class is to examine how media stories that
feature minority groups are distorted and
misleading to their audiences. Minority
groups are defined as people identified
within an underrepresented classification
of ethnicity, gender, or socioeconomic status.
There were 27 students in the class, of
which most were White. Students taking
the class were fulfilling a general education
requirement, therefore the course was comprised of an assortment of majors including
Sociology, Political Science, History, Journalism, Communication Studies, Public Relations, Media Studies, English, and Womens
Studies. Most of the students enrolled in the
class were juniors and seniors.
Many of the students were members
of the millennial generation and could
identify with the subject matter as media
consumers. Knowledge of how students use
media helps professors make informative
decisions about facilitating classroom
“All Lies Matter!”
Revealing Misleading Information
in Media Stories About Police Brutality
Eric K. Jones
MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION
42
Promising Practices
notable were the shootings of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Philando
Castile in St. Paul, Minnesota; and Micheal
Xavier Johnson’s ambush and murder of
police officers in Dallas, Texas.
With so much violence in the headlines,
the news media began to search for expertise and insight about violence in policing.
Roland G. Fryer, Jr., a Harvard University
professor, was vexed by this issue and began researching the topic himself. A paper
he authored began gaining traction in
mainstream media circles when his work
became the focus of an “Up Shot” feature
article in The New York Times (Fryer,
2016). Fryer’s research found that there
was no racial bias in police shootings but
there was racial bias shown in other physical aspects of police-suspect interactions.
At the time, this was seen as a surprising result because many of the shootings
that were receiving heavy media coverage
seemed to indicate police bias. Fryer’s
study was used by news organizations
like the Washington Times to give the
impression that his findings were proof
that charges of police brutality were being
over-exaggerated (Richardson, 2016).
This kind of news coverage contained
an implied backlash sentiment which was
demonstrated by some influential figures
in law enforcement who used the report to
cloud the issue. One example of this sentiment was shown when former FBI Director
James Comey referenced Fryer’s research
during a speech he was delivering at a
conference of police chiefs in San Diego.
In his speech, Comey expressed skepticism
about the intense scrutiny that was being
placed on law enforcement tactics and he
pointed out that much more data needed
to be collected (Berman, 2016).
But prior to the backlash and Comey’s
skepticism, some data had already been
collected by the Department of Justice
(DOJ) that began to paint a different
picture of how police officers engage in
racially-biased use of force. In April of
2014, the DOJ issued a report on the procedures of the Albuquerque, New Mexico,
police department after a two-year review
period (Samuels & Martinez, 2014). They
concluded that the department “engages
in a pattern of practice of use of excessive
force, including deadly force, in violation
of the fourth amendment.” (p. 9).3
The DOJ produced similar findings
when it reviewed the procedures of other
police departments as well (namely those
in Cleveland, Ohio, and Baltimore, Maryland.)4
In addition, the DOJ produced a
damning report on the Ferguson, Missouri,
police department in 2015 which documented a clear pattern of racial disparities
and discriminatory intent.5
The sum total
of all of these events made this topic timely,
challenging, and problematic. These are
characteristics that make a topic such as
this well-suited for a media literacy course
lesson utilizing the teaching philosophy of
problem-based learning.
Problem-Based Learning
When students are learning about
police brutality in news reports, they
must learn how to apply the criticisms
they generate to a broader societal level.
Moreover, they must learn that ascertaining an accurate representation of any
research on this topic helps create a more
informed public and prevents distortion.
This process is conducive to a philosophy
called Problem-Based Learning (PBL) or
engaging students by organizing lessons
around a central problem (Barrows, 1985).
PBL was first developed within the
medical field where educators taught
students lessons that emphasized hypothetical cases and deductive reasoning
(Barrows & Tamblyn, 1980). In addition, Bridges and Hallinger (1997) have
indicated that PBL helps develop good
decision-making skills. According to
Hmelo-Silver, Duncan, and Chinn (2007),
class activities devised around PBL encourage students to work together in an
assertive way: “In PBL, students learn
content, strategies, and self-directed
learning skills through collaboratively
solving problems, reflecting on their experiences, and engaging in self-directed
inquiry” (p. 100).
In classes designed to teach media-related subject matter, PBL encourages students
to make decisions based on intuition, common sense, and experience (Reddy, Aronson
& Stam, 1998). PBL is effective in race and
gender media literacy courses as a method
to encourage students to think critically,
cooperate in teams, and use appropriate
resources (Duch, Groh, & Allen, 2001).
Media literacy classes can also give
students an appreciation for the way in
which the media can operate in a socially
responsible way. Students can be very resistant to lessons about social responsibility.
Some of this stems from student apathy. I
have found a significant challenge in getting
students actively engaged in issues affecting local communities inside and outside of
the classroom. Accordingly, some professors
have seen students reveal in reflection papers their ambivalence about being a part of
any solution to raise awareness of negative
media depictions (Jones, 2011).
A good way to introduce the concept
of social responsibility is to refer to the
Hutchins Commission report (1947). In
this report, scholars, politicians, clergy, and
journalists wrote a government document
outlining some suggested ethical guidelines and principles for media practitioners
to follow. From that document, one of the
suggestions made of particular importance
for race, gender, and media courses was
to avoid giving offense to minority groups
in media coverage. As a government
document, this report brings authority
and credibility to the notion of social responsibility. At the same time, it justifies
the pursuit of this idea within a media
context. Addressing media representations
about police brutality make problem-based
learning a “necessary” teaching tool to
incorporate in the classroom (Knowlton &
Sharp, 2003).
Phase 1:
Assigning The New York Times
Article as Homework
On July 11, 2016, Fryer’s work was
featured in The New York Times as part
of its “The Upshot” series. The article was
entitled “Surprising New Evidence Shows
Bias in Police Use of Force But Not in
Shootings” (Bui & Cox, 2016). Even though
many media outlets reported on Fryer’s
paper, this article gives a seemingly more
thorough summary of the research.
I assigned the article and attached some
basic study questions for the students to
consider before they came to the next class
(see Table 1). The data from the study are
the most notable aspect of the article because they were located right underneath
the headline in a graphic table. The table
is designed to show that police officers
are more likely to use the following types
of force with Blacks than with Whites in
similar police/suspect interactions:
u They’re more likely to use their hands
with Black suspects.
u They’re more likely to push Black
suspects into a wall.
u They’re more likely to use handcuffs on
Black suspects.
u They’re more likely to draw weapons on
Black suspects.
u They’re more likely to push Black
suspects to the ground.
u They’re more likely to point their
weapons at Black suspects.
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Promising Practices
Another aspect of source credibility
is reputation. Research has shown that
there is a greater likelihood that users will
choose to read a news source if it is considered reputable (Sundar, Knoblock-Westerwick, & Hastall (2007). Since The New York
Times is considered a pretty respectable
news source and Fryer is a professor at
Harvard University, one of the most elite
schools in the country, we can engage
students in a conversation about how the
reputation of these important entities
factor into the believability of this story.
Phase 2:
Facilitating a Classroom Discussion
about Fryer’s Research via The New
York Times Feature Story
This reading assignment provides a
good opportunity to walk students through
a discussion that shows how media literacy
merges with the evaluation of credible research. Some of the misleading language
used in The New York Times story led to
criticism about Fryer’s research after the
story was published. Professors can use the
following criticisms to teach their students
about how to evaluate credible research.
Roland Fryer’s research was not a
study published in a peer-reviewed
journal, it was a working paper
submitted to an on-line research
collective.
As a professor who often requires undergraduate students to write term papers
and research projects with bibliography
pages, I often see students include research
papers that they have found online that
have not been peer-reviewed or published
in an academic journal. Fryer’s research
was a good example of this kind of paper.
On the day that The New York Times first
published the article featuring Fryer’s
work, his paper more closely resembled a
work-in-progress draft and not a finalized
research study. Such materials are commonly referred to as working papers.
Fryer and a group of his students
at Harvard submitted the paper to the
National Bureau of Economic Research
(NBER), which is a place where scholars
can upload drafts of their unfinished
research to solicit feedback from other
scholars and interested readers. However,
the framing of the Upshot article referred
to Fryer’s work as a “study” and did not
make the working paper’s actual unfinished status clear to the audience. This is
a subtle but important framing issue. In
the rush to publish what many considered
u They’re more likely to use pepper spray
or a baton on Black suspects.
I assign this article before I assign
Fryer’s paper as a required reading assignment. I think it is important to do this
for a couple of reasons. The first reason is
because it has been my experience that
many undergraduate students who are not
knowledgeable about this kind of research
tend to struggle with reading these kinds of
papers without an introduction. Therefore,
having them read the newspaper article
first works well because it summarizes
pertinent points of the research paper, and
provides table graphics that highlight the
important findings. This makes the reading assignment a good orientation to the
subject matter and it allows the instructor
to raise the student’s level of curiosity
about the research.
The other reason I assign The New
York Times article before I assign the
Fryer paper is because I can then use
the element of surprise as an advantage
when the article is discussed later in the
classroom. Surprise comes into play after
many of the students read the article and
answer the assigned questions without
thinking about whether Fryer’s paper is
being represented accurately.
The questions addressing the article
that I assign are straight forward. Most
of the time the students focus only on
answering the study questions I list,
without giving a serious read to the rest of
the article. When we cover the homework
in class, I challenge them to think on a
deeper level about the article. See Table
1 for examples of the questions I assign
with the reading homework.
These questions focus on the data presented in the article, the impression given
by the story headline, and the students’
thoughts on whether this write-up is a believable summary of Fryer’s research. Some
of the questions are designed to get students
to consider how this story is framed and
some of the questions are designed to get
students to consider how this story rates on
source credibility. Media framing and source
credibility are two concepts that are useful
for educators to consider when they teach
a media literacy lesson.
According to Potter (2004) teaching
students about media framing can increase
their awareness about the kinds of traps
that prevent them from learning the entire
context of a story. Potter defines a media
frame as a snapshot that “limits a person’s
view of a total phenomenon and focuses
attention on that which fits in the frame”
(p. 210). He says that media stories limit
the audiences’ viewpoint in three basic
ways. First, media stories make necessary selections because it is impossible
to present everything. As a result, those
selections limit the audiences’ perspective.
Second, producers purposely constrain the
presentation of information to manipulate
audiences. Third, audiences bring preconceived biases to a media-use experience
which creates a frame that determines
what they pay attention to.
More likely than not, the controversial
nature of police brutality in media coverage will make it easier to facilitate class
discussions around media framing. One
useful question to address framing could
be “What aspect of police brutality is being
left out of this story and the research it is
describing?”
When it comes to the source credibility
of a news story, research has shown that
two characteristics typically stand out.
According to Hovland, Janis, and Kelly
(1953), the aspects of a news story that
make it a believable and credible source
are: 1. trustworthiness—is a source willing
to communicate the correct information on
a topic?; and 2. competence—can a person
provide a valid statement on a topic?
Stories that are perceived as being trustworthy and competent are considered more
effective in influencing audience attitudes.
Table 1
Study Questions for The New York Times Homework Assignment
1. What impression do you get about this research from the headline of the story?
2. What is your opinion about the accuracy of The New York Times as a believable source
of information?
3. What do the data convey about police use of force?
4. What do the data convey about shootings?
5. Does the study strike you as believable? Why or why not?
6. What’s been your personal experience with the police in your hometown?
7. Where do you typically find information about stories of police shootings?
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Promising Practices
to be a newsworthy finding, the article
implied that the research was thoroughly
vetted, but it was not. This presented a
good opportunity to explain to students
the difference between unvetted working
papers and research published in a peer-reviewed journal.
Fryer’s paper relies on the narratives
of police officers.
Teaching students about the reliability
of data is another very important part of
evaluating research findings. One popular
point of criticism was that Fryer’s findings
of no racial bias in shootings may have
been the result of biased self-reporting
(Balko, 2016). In many of the cases that
Fryer included in his study, there was a
reliance on the personal accounts of the
officers who were involved in the shooting.
Not to prejudge every officer account as
a fabrication, but in situations where police
use deadly force, there are going to be factors that prevent an objective assessment.
These factors can include many things that
are consistent with human nature: fear,
panic, shock, and an incentive to avoid
punishment if the officer were to admit
racial bias. Most of these police reports are
plagued with subjectivity and the reliability of this data ought to be considered with
extreme caution.
In a question and answer session about
the research, Fryer disputed that the possibility of biased police officer narratives
would have altered his findings of no
racial bias. But many observers were not
persuaded by his rejection. Moreover, the
question of source credibility comes into
play when considering the trustworthiness of the officers to self-report honestly.
This critique provides a good opportunity
to discuss the importance of measurement
validity in Fryer’s research. Does the data
he received and the results he reported
really convey no bias? Or does it convey
something else?
Fryer’s paper left out whether Blacks
are stopped more often than Whites.
For years, one of the issues fueling
the polarized debate on police brutality
was the question of racial profiling. Some
notable data has been collected on the
racially-biased tendencies of law enforcement to stop Black suspects more often
than White suspects. The stop and frisk
report from the infamous New York City
case is one notable example (Gelman, Fagan, & Kiss, 2007). Among commentators
and other journalists focusing on Fryer’s
research, this became a very controversial
omission from the paper. In The New York
Times article, Fryer does acknowledge the
problem of racial bias in police stops. He
explained that his paper had to eliminate
any decisions on racial profiling because
it wasn’t possible to measure that aspect
(Cox, 2016). He said that to do so would
have required setting up an experiment
and he clearly preferred to examine only
the data that was already available.
Thus, Fryer’s study only explained how
police deal with people who have already
been caught, identified, or apprehended as
suspects of a crime. This is one of the most
important distinctions to make between the
data that Fryer was analyzing and some of
the controversial shootings that were being
covered in media accounts. Looking at some
of the cases covered in the media, consider
the fact that the public got a chance to see
video of the escalation that occurred when
police officers first identified and tried to
apprehend Walter Scott, Eric Garner, and
Sandra Bland as suspects.
Being able to see the video of the escalation gave people much more insight into
whether the stop was justified, or whether
the force that was used to apprehend each
suspect was proportional to the threat they
were posing. But it was clear that Fryer did
not have access to this kind of information
in the data that he analyzed. This led me
to conclude that the article contained another media framing distortion. Consider
the headline of the article again which
was entitled “Surprising New Evidence
Shows Bias in Police Use of Force But Not
in Shootings.” This is a misleading media
frame that conveys a false parallel.
The implication of the headline is that
the data analyzed in Fryer’s paper essentially matched the same types of information the public had in the cases the media
had been covering. This presented a good
opportunity for me to talk to my students
about how research studies have limitations. Being more specific, the headline
created an opportunity to stress how certain research methods are limited in their
ability to measure certain phenomena.
Phase 3:
Analyzing an Instagram Post
Featuring Fryer’s Research
as a Media Text
In my experience, I’ve concluded that
millennials don’t typically get their news
from sources like The New York Times or
The Washington Post. As the data from the
aforementioned Nielsen report suggests, a
lot of the students in this generation are
more likely to find out about any issue
on social media platforms than they are
from traditional media platforms. In the
summer of 2016, I noticed a considerable
amount of attention being paid to Fryer’s
paper on social media. His work became
somewhat of a political football because
posters on social media using pseudonyms
were cherry-picking some of his findings
to advance their own partisan agendas.
The back and forth contained a lot of
misleading statistics and distorted ideas.
I found one example of this kind of post on
Instagram (see Figure 1).
This Instagram post contains a racially-biased interpretation of Fryer’s study.
Given this bias, it can be used as the basis
of an in-class group exercise for the students
to develop their media literacy skills. It is
an ideal media text for students to study,
examine, and critique. This Instagram post
provided a great opportunity to guide and
facilitate a textual analysis session for the
students enrolled in my class.
Buckingham (2003) defines a textual
analysis as a process that “offers depth
rather than breadth and tends to focus in
great detail on single texts … (it) involves
close attention to detail and rigorous
questioning. Students need to be steered
away from making instant judgments and
encouraged to provide evidence for their
views” (p. 71). In order to structure the students’ collaborative efforts for this exercise,
it is always a good idea to provide them with
some core media literacy questions to frame
their deliberations. Jolls and Wilson (2014)
promote five key questions to require the
students to respond to during this process.
For each of these questions, I provide some
additional probes to help specify how each
question can be answered, as follows.
u Who created this message?
The pseudonym on the Instagram
post in the upper right corner says
“aconservativemindset.” Facilitate a
discussion among your students about
the kind of identity this conveys for
the creator of this post. Does it convey
a political viewpoint? (*Interestingly
enough, many of the African-American
students in my class did not associate this
name with politics at all.) Can they make
any other inferences about this person
based on the message?
u What creative techniques are used
to attract my attention?
Probe students to think about what stands
out the most when they look at this post. Is
it the font size of some of the phrases and
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Promising Practices
words? Is it the picture? Are they more
attracted to the rhetoric? What creative
devices are being used by this person to
make their points about racial identity
and police brutality?
u How might other people understand
this message differently?
Ask students to think about other
groups who would disagree with this
message? What would be the basis of
their disagreement? Ask students if they
themselves disagree. Would the claims
mentioned in this post survive the scrutiny
of those who disagree? This would be a good
opportunity to show them other studies
that have been conducted with different
conclusions and that have gone through
a peer review process. Including studies
that have findings that implicate Black
suspects being more at risk than Whites
in police shootings (Nix, Campbell, Byers
and Alpert, 2017; Ross, 2015).
u What lifestyles, values, and points
of view are represented in or omitted
from this message?
Does the person who posted this message
represent a class (socio-economic status)
identity? What are their views about police?
What are their views about social justice
movements led by groups like “Black Lives
Matter?” Does this “snap shot” of the issue
represent an accurate and comprehensive
account of Professor Fryer’s study? What’s
being misrepresented about the study?
(For instance, are the claims comparing
White shooting victims to Black shooting
victims even mentioned in Fryer’s study?)
What’s not included about the study? This
is a good time to encourage them to refer
to the original version of Fryer’s research
from the NBER cite to clarify some of the
confusing and misleading claims of this
Instagram post. As much as you can, try to
steer them away from referring too much
to The New York Times article.
u Why is this message being sent?
Ask students to think about the goals of
the person who created this message? Are
they seeking a political outcome? Are they
seeking to bully or intimidate others? Are
they seeking to confuse, and obfuscate
the issues?
During this group exercise, students
should feel confident to think about and
ponder each of these questions on a deeper
level after you have facilitated a discussion
with them about how Fryer’s research was
described in The New York Times article.
The earlier classroom discussion and
homework assignment should have given
them a solid grasp of what Fryer’s research
was attempting to ascertain.
Conclusion
This lesson plan incorporating Fryer’s
paper provides a unique opportunity to
teach students critical thinking skills
around the issue of police brutality. In my
experience teaching this kind of subject
matter, I have received different responses
from students. Sometimes, I find myself
trying to teach students who tend to
downplay the importance of racial and
ethnic bias and dismiss it as mere “identity
politics.” In other situations, I find myself
teaching students who tend to view these
issues as so central to their experience that
it becomes a challenge for them to process the emotions surrounding the tragic
shooting deaths, the spectacle of the media
coverage, and the deep divide about how to
conduct law enforcement responsibly. All of
these things make this issue a challenging
topic to teach undergraduate students.
No matter how difficult it gets, it is always important to show how academically
rigorous these kinds of lesson plans can
be. Such teaching encourages students to
do three very important things that will
serve them well even after they complete
this lesson. One, they learn the value of
trustworthy and reliable information.
Two, they learn to be aware of misleading
Figure 1
Instagram Post of Roland Fryer’s Research Paper
MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION
46
Promising Practices
media stories. Three, they learn the basic
characteristics of credible research studies. When students become adept at these
things, they not only perform better in the
classroom, but they also become better
citizens.
Notes
1
Officer Jeronimo Yanez of the St. Anthony.,
Minnesota. Police Department testified that he
feared for his life when he shot Philando Castile
during a traffic stop in July, 2016. Yanez was
charged with second-degree involuntary manslaughter and was acquitted of all charges. 2
Castile’s mother Valerie decried the verdict
of Yanez’s acquittal and called her son’s death a
murder. 3 Two Attorneys from the Department of
Justice, Civil Rights Division named Jocelyn
Samuels and Damon Martinez wrote a thorough and detailed letter/investigative report
to Albuquerque Police Chief Gordon E. Eden
documenting the findings of their investigation.
Page 9 of the letter is where the direct quotation
is contained. The full document can be found online at https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/
crt/legacy/2014/04/10/apd_findings_4-10-14.pdf 4
Results of the DOJ’s report on the Cleveland
Police Department can be found at https://www.
justice.gov/sites/default/files/opa/press-releases/
attachments/2014/12/04/cleveland_division_of_
police_findings_letter.pdf
The report on the investigation into the Baltimore Police Department can be found at https://
www.justice.gov/opa/file/883366/download 5
The report on the investigation into the
Ferguson, MO Police Department can be found
at https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/
opa/press-releases/attachments/2015/03/04/
ferguson_police_department_report.pdf
References
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news/the-watch/wp/2016/07/14/why-its-impossible-to-calculate-the-percentage-of-police-shootings-that-are-legitimate/
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Barrows, H. S., & Tamblyn, R. (1980). Problem
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Berman, M. (2016, October 17). FBI director: We
really have no idea if there is an epidemic
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