Reporting on violence is one of the most problematic features of journalistic practice-the area most frequently criticized by the public and those on the receiving end of that coverage. Now in its second edition, Covering Violence remains a crucial guide for becoming a sensitive and responsible reporter. Discussing such topics as rape and the ethics of interviewing children, the book gives students and journalists a detailed understanding of what is happening "on the scene" of a violent event, including where a reporter can go safely and legally, how to obtain the most useful information, and how best to interview and photograph victims and witnesses. This second edition takes our turbulent postmillennium history into account and emphasizes the consequences of frequent exposure to traumatic events. It offers new chapters on 9/11 and terrorism, the Columbine school shootings, and the photographing of violent events, as well as additional profiles of Vietnamese American, Native American, and African American journalists. More essential than ever, Covering Violence connects journalistic practices to the rapidly expanding body of literature on trauma, post-traumatic stress disorder, and secondary traumatic stress, and pays close attention to current medical and political debates concerning victims' rights.

Covering Violence gives journalism a better understanding of what is happening "on the scene" of a violent event, including where the reporter can go safely and legally, how to obtain the most useful information, and how to understand and respect the needs and actions of emergency workers and public-safety agencies.

Marian Meyers explores evidence that shows that news coverage in North American cities routinely depicts criminal violence against females differently from the way it depicts violence against males. She argues that this serves to perpetuate traditional, inegalitarian gender stereotyping. Using original research and qualitative textual analysis, the author discloses the underlying ideology, myths and assumptions within news coverage, and points out the ways in which news broadcasting affects how we view the world and our lives. Meyers advocates a re-examination of crime news from a feminist perspective and a broadening of traditional understandings of the social construction of news to include issues of gender, race and clas

A harrowing story of blue on black violence, of black lives that seemingly did not matter. On September 4, 2005, six days after Hurricane Katrina’s landfall in New Orleans, two groups of people intersected on the Danziger Bridge, a low-rising expanse over the Industrial Canal. One was the police who had stayed behind as Katrina roared near, desperate to maintain control as their city spun into chaos. The other was the residents forced to stay behind with them during the storm and, on that fateful Sunday, searching for the basics of survival: food, medicine, security. They collided that morning in a frenzy of gunfire. When the shooting stopped, a gentle forty-year-old man with the mind of a child lay slumped on the ground, seven bullet wounds in his back, his white shirt turned red. A seventeen-year-old was riddled with gunfire from his heel to his head. A mother’s arm was blown off; her daughter’s stomach gouged by a bullet. Her husband’s head was pierced by shrapnel. Her nephew was shot in the neck, jaw, stomach, and hand. Like all the other victims, he was black—and unarmed. Before the blood had dried on the pavement, the shooters, each a member of the New Orleans Police Department, and their supervisors hatched a cover-up. They planted a gun, invented witnesses, and charged two of their victims with attempted murder. At the NOPD, they were hailed as heroes. Shots on the Bridge explores one of the most dramatic cases of police violence seen in our country in the last decade—the massacre of innocent people, carried out by members of the NOPD, in the brutal, disorderly days following Hurricane Katrina. It reveals the fear that gripped the police of a city slid into anarchy, the circumstances that drove desperate survivors to the bridge, and the horror that erupted when the police opened fire. It carefully unearths the cover-up that nearly buried the truth. And finally, it traces the legal maze that, a decade later, leaves the victims and their loved ones still searching for justice. This is the story of how the people meant to protect and serve citizens can do violence, hide their tracks, and work the legal system as the nation awaits justice. Named one of the top books of 2015 by NewsOne Now, and named one of the best books of August 2015 by Apple Winner of the 2015 Investigative Reporters and Editors Book Award

Writing Terror on the Bodies of Women: Media Coverage of Violence against Women in Guatemala analyzes the scope and dynamics of violence against women in Guatemala and how it is represented in the print media. Using nearly two thousand Guatemalan newspaper reports covering murders and assaults on women, this book contextualizes violence against women within the history of violence in Guatemala; gender ideologies and patriarchal social structures; and the contemporary demands of the women’s movement for social and legislative change. It shows that while some newspapers cover violence against women with investigative reports and editorials that use feminist analysis and language, these are overshadowed by the large number of individual reports that reproduce narratives of terror and conceal the gendered nature of violence against women by suggesting that “delinquents,” “gangs,” “unknown men,” and inexplicably violent husbands are the main culprits, while simultaneously upholding dichotomous gendered narratives of “good” and “bad” wives and daughters.

“A passionate, incisive critique of the many ways in which women and girls of color are systematically erased or marginalized in discussions of police violence.” —Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow Invisible No More is a timely examination of how Black women, Indigenous women, and women of color experience racial profiling, police brutality, and immigration enforcement. By placing the individual stories of Sandra Bland, Rekia Boyd, Dajerria Becton, Monica Jones, and Mya Hall in the broader context of the twin epidemics of police violence and mass incarceration, Andrea Ritchie documents the evolution of movements centered around women’s experiences of policing. Featuring a powerful forward by activist Angela Davis, Invisible No More is an essential exposé on police violence against WOC that demands a radical rethinking of our visions of safety—and the means we devote to achieving it.

Torture is an open secret in Chicago. Nobody in power wants to acknowledge this grim reality, but everyone knows it happens—and that the torturers are the police. Three to five new claims are submitted to the Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission of Illinois each week. Four hundred cases are currently pending investigation. Between 1972 and 1991, at least 125 black suspects were tortured by Chicago police officers working under former Police Commander Jon Burge. As the more recent revelations from the Homan Square “black site” show, that brutal period is far from a historical anomaly. For more than fifty years, police officers who took an oath to protect and serve have instead beaten, electrocuted, suffocated, and raped hundreds—perhaps thousands—of Chicago residents. In The Torture Letters, Laurence Ralph chronicles the history of torture in Chicago, the burgeoning activist movement against police violence, and the American public’s complicity in perpetuating torture at home and abroad. Engaging with a long tradition of epistolary meditations on racism in the United States, from James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time to Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me, Ralph offers in this book a collection of open letters written to protesters, victims, students, and others. Through these moving, questing, enraged letters, Ralph bears witness to police violence that began in Burge’s Area Two and follows the city’s networks of torture to the global War on Terror. From Vietnam to Geneva to Guantanamo Bay—Ralph’s story extends as far as the legacy of American imperialism. Combining insights from fourteen years of research on torture with testimonies of victims of police violence, retired officers, lawyers, and protesters, this is a powerful indictment of police violence and a fierce challenge to all Americans to demand an end to the systems that support it. With compassion and careful skill, Ralph uncovers the tangled connections among law enforcement, the political machine, and the courts in Chicago, amplifying the voices of torture victims who are still with us—and lending a voice to those long deceased.