Racial Inequalities in Baltimore City and Its Reflection in Diverse News Media Coverage after the 2015 Unrest Around Freddie Gray’s Death

Introduction

Both U.S. and international media widely covered the protests or “riots” in Baltimore City on April 27, 2015, centering around the death of Freddie Gray, a young African-American man from the city’s impoverished neighborhood, in police custody. The news coverage exposed not only violent reactions to police brutality on a young African-American man but also racial and economic inequalities in Baltimore City (Lopez, 2016; Robinson, 2016). Consequently, after such negative coverage in the media, city authorities, residents, and local organizations took initiatives to reject violence or destructive forms of protest, to address the distrust between the police and African Americans, and to initiate discussions on the issues of frustration with community leaders and the city’s underprivileged populations. Hence, this study examines the text of the 2-week-long news coverage of inequities in Baltimore City in the aftermath of protests or “riots” on April 27, 2015.

Depending on the nature of their publication, coverage of an event can vary among different types of news outlets in terms of highlighting certain aspects of the event over others (Biswas, 2014; Ramasubramanian, Doshi, & Saleem, 2017). Therefore, this study explores how three types of newspapers—mainstream national, ethnic/community, and local newspapers—covered situations and events in Baltimore, a U.S. city in the State of Maryland, after a violent protest on April 27, 2015, around the death of Freddie Gray. An analysis of the same event or phenomenon from multiple perspectives in the multicultural society of the United States, in this case, diverse media sources, can help us to identify priorities among different media coverage and understand an event thoroughly.

Recent studies on media coverage of racialized policing have focused mainly on the protest events, racial justice campaigns such as #BlackLivesMatter, and victims of police brutality (Mills, 2017; Moody-Ramirez & Cole, 2018; Perry, 2014; Ray, Brown, Fraistat, & Summers, 2017). In contrast, this study focuses on how various types of media cover situations and events, including image building initiatives by city residents, community, and local administration, and their efforts to identify underlying causes of distrust between a section of city residents and the police.

Baltimore City on April 27, 2015

Violent protest incidents, such as setting a police car on fire, damaging other cars on city streets, vandalizing shops, looting by opportunists, burning a business and an establishment down, street battles between police and a group of violent protestors, and the city’s mayor losing her temper and calling violent protestors “thugs” were the highlights of the events in Baltimore City on April 27, 2015 (Ortiz, 2015; Tkacik, 2018). However, there is a lack of agreement on how people would like to describe these violent events. Therefore, Christina Tkacik (2018), a reporter of The Baltimore Sun, in her report, “Remembering the Baltimore riots after Freddie Gray’s death, 3 years later,” used three terms—“unrest,” “uprising,” and “riots”—to describe the city’s situation on April 27, 2015. Therefore, in this paper, the terms “violence,” “unrest,” “riot,” or “rioting,” or “uprising” will be used to refer to the happenings on April 27, 2015 in Baltimore city. The following paragraph includes a summary of events leading up to the violence on April 27, 2015 in Baltimore City.

Freddie Gray, a young African-American man, was picked up by the police on April 12, 2015 from his West Baltimore neighborhood for allegedly possessing a switchblade knife (Ortiz, 2015). Gray sustained a spinal injury in the police van and was later taken to hospital. On April 19, 2015, Gray was pronounced dead (Ortiz, 2015). After Gray’s death, six police officers involved with the event were suspended and protests began to take place and spread around the city.

In the backdrop of growing protest and criticisms against the use of excessive force and racially biased policing in the arrest of Freddie Gray, the U.S. Justice Department announced a federal investigation into Gray’s death. Protests were largely peaceful as well as emotional before April 27, 2015. Gray’s funeral took place on April 27 and violence broke out in different parts of the city after the funeral (Ortiz, 2015).

Economic and Racial Inequalities in Baltimore City

According to a Brookings Institution report, the state of the community–police relationship and criminal justice system in Baltimore were not the only contributing factors to the massive uprising against racial injustice in 2015, the “economic and social context” had much to do with it, too (Berube & McDearman, 2015, para 1). Although overall Baltimore was relatively an affluent city with many job opportunities in and around the city, the city’s prosperity did not reach every neighborhood and across racial lines (Berube & McDearman, 2015).

Baltimore is a Black-majority city since African-American residents make up 63% of the city’s population, but the plight of the Black Community in Baltimore city is worser than the national average for African Americans “on nearly every outcome measure” including health, education, and employment (Asante-Muhammad, 2017, p. 3). Whites that constitute 28% of the city’s population do much better than national averages on social and economic outcomes (Asante-Muhammad, 2017). Racial disparity between Blacks and Whites in Baltimore in terms of household incomes, unemployment rate, and educational attainment is very clear. An average White household (62,705 dollars) makes twice the income of an average Black household (33,801 dollars) while unemployment rate is three times higher among communities of color (Black 14%, Latino 7%) compared to Whites (4%) and completion of college or bachelor’s degree is four times lower among Blacks (13%) compared to Whites (51%) (Asante-Muhammad, 2017). Although African Americans comprised a little over 60% of the city’s population, “almost 85% of those incarcerated in 2014 were African Americans” and “[t]his disparity is of even greater … when considering the long-term economic consequences … wages grow at a 21% slower rate for Black former inmates compared to White former inmates” (Asante-Muhammad, 2017, p. 6; Lyons & Pettit, 2011). In terms of access to health care/health insurance, the gap between Black and White communities in the city in 2014 was much lower than the year 2009, because of the implementation of the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare). Still little over 10% of city’s Black community did not have access to health insurance in contrast to 7% of city’s White residents (Baltimore City Health Department, 2014).

Structural Racism, Power, and the Media

The racial gap in various social indicators is not unique to Baltimore City. A wide racial gap between Black and White Americans in important social indicators, such as education and employment, has been a national trend (Ajilore, 2020; Johnson, 2019). Based on data from 1991 to 2016, a study concluded that even after obtaining college education African Americans and Latinos were outnumbered by White Americans in good-paying jobs (Johnson, 2019). Similarly, unemployment data from 1972 to 2019 suggest that “Black unemployment is consistently twice the white unemployment rate” (Ajilore, 2020). Alden Loury (2019b) describes such widening and sustaining racial gap in a society as “structural racism,” which “is a complex web of policies and practices that produce and reinforce inequalities by race” (p. 31). Acemoglu and Robinson (2012) bring in the influence of elites’ power on the system or policies that regulate justice system, access to and distribution of resources such as education, health care, and employment. Therefore, Lopez-Narbona (2019) argues that dominant racial group’s ideology in the policymaking process can be resulted in the unequal distribution of resources in a society. Hence, Acemoglu and Robinson (2012) observe that the underlying cause of racial inequalities in the United States is systemic because of its relation to power relations and the pattern of power.

Disproportionate rates of incarceration in a community have severe consequences since they affect family members and their wealth (Sykes & Maroto, 2016). Not only that, but the situation also becomes acute when a Black incarcerated person has a lesser chance of getting a job than a White counterpart (Loury, 2019b). In addition, lack of access to quality education among the communities of color can make them less competitive for employment opportunities. The economic determinant of the school system, where the wealth of a neighborhood influences the quality of school education, creates a structural barrier for low-income neighborhoods to grow academically as well as economically (Loury, 2019b). Likewise, interrelated factors such as lower wages, less stable jobs, or lack of good employment opportunities and small to no savings among African Americans affect their access to mortgage and tax benefits (Hanks, Solomon, & Weller, 2018). This discussion of inequity is relevant to Glenn Loury’s “development bias” (Loury, 2019a), which refers to the obstacles that restrict Black people from gaining access to the resources essential for human development.

Since a few companies own the majority of the media organizations (Bramlett-Solomon & Carstarphen, 2017), there is a concern that media outlets can be used to advance dominant and powerful groups’ economic and political agendas, with the experiences of marginalized communities being sidelined (McChesney, 2008). It is argued that media ownership by an elite few can shape the framing of economic and social issues from an elitist perspective (Grisold & Theine, 2017). Consequently, when it comes to economic news, the issues of finance, stock market, or unemployment rate receives more attention in the news coverage than the causes of social inequalities (Grisold & Theine, 2017). Often, poverty was portrayed as a threat in the U.S. news media because of its association with criminality; by doing so, the media also reinforced negative stereotypes about the communities of color and low-income Americans (Entman, 1995). Another weakness in the major mainstream media organizations’ news coverage of poverty or social inequalities was that they are largely event-oriented not cause or theme-oriented. For example, the news media placed responsibility of poverty on individuals than on systemic causes (Bullock, Fraser, & Williams, 2001; Chauhan & Foster, 2014; Gilens, 1996; Iyengar, 1990; Redden, 2011). Such skewed coverage can potentially reinforce political and social inequalities in a society (Grisold & Theine, 2017). The media historically portrayed poor African Americans as undeserving, and by offering such coverage, it created a negative opinion among many about the welfare system (Gilens, 1999).

Power of News Text and Framing

Since this study employs the textual analysis method to identify themes in the news coverage in a comparative media context, a section of literature review is focused on the power of text and news framing. Another section of review will focus on how local and community/ethnic newspapers can cover an issue/event differently from a mainstream news outlet.

News is also described as “constructed reality” and “cultural arm of the industrial order” (Tuchman, 1978, p. 158) since journalists and media owners’ and sponsors’ socioeconomic backgrounds and interests can influence the decision on what stories they cover and how they present them (Schudson, 2003; Tuchman, 1978). Therefore, legal and economic factors and, sometimes, both covert and overt forms of censorship can impact the production of news (Hall, Critcher, Jefferson, Clrke, & Roberts, 2013). Although the media outlets do not primarily define a news event, their relationship with people in power for easy access to official information influences how news is crafted and framed (Hall et al., 2013). Hence, media can disseminate messages from individuals who hold powerful positions and who already have a voice in policymaking and a position of authority. There is always a likelihood that a news story can be skewed toward a certain angle of an issue/event, and it is where the discussion on the theory of framing comes into play.

Framing is a process of organizing a message/text where an emphasis is placed on one aspect of an issue over several other aspects (Entman, 1993). An analysis of the use of keywords, phrases, and use of certain types of information sources over others can help a text analyst identify which aspect of an issue is emphasized over others. Since a journalistic process can be shaped by individuals or ideological and institutional factors and social experiences, news framing needs to be evaluated in a broad context (Schudson, 1978). Journalists use identification/labels to refer to social contexts that are familiar to the audience, and, in this way, they assign meaning to an event (Hall et al., 2013, p. 57).

Using framing techniques and certain types of sources over others, media coverage can impact the way people think and structure their opinions about an issue/event. News coverage on an issue across various types of news media varies based on journalists’ personal backgrounds, diversity in newsrooms, and media market or audience demographics (Shoemaker & Reese, 2014).

In this research context, it is assumed that mainstream newspaper coverage will vary, to some extent, from local newspaper coverage. Similarly, as both mainstream and local newspapers serve the general audience and tend to treat their audience with diverse identities as a monolithic group (Biswas, 2014), their coverage will likely be different from that of African-American newspapers or ethnic news outlets. Unlike general audience/mainstream media outlets, ethnic newspapers primarily serve the members of an ethnic group (Azocar & Funabiki, 2008).

Method

This study utilizes the textual analysis method to examine the news coverage in three types of newspapers after violent protests on April 27, 2015. Textual analysis is also known as discourse analysis. Textual analysis is a method of critically analyzing texts to generate meaning. It is argued that discourse or textual analysis is a systematic way of explaining a text with focus on how they are written and their functions/implications (van Dijk, 1991). Textual/discourse analysts look for a connection between text and social and/or ideological contexts to explain journalists’ choice of certain framing—organization of information and details with certain tones (Billig, 1997; van Dijk, 1991).

Findings

Discussion

Three types of news outlets offered systemic and underlying reasons for the unrest in Baltimore City following the death of Freddie Gray in police custody in April, 2015. As discussed in the “Structural Racism, Power, and the Media” section of this paper, structural racism is manifested through unequal economic opportunities between White and Black Americans and lack of quality education in Black-majority neighborhoods (Loury, 2019b). Powerful political and economic elites that create laws and regulate policy practices tend to serve and reflect the dominant social group’s competitiveness while excluding the interests of the marginalized group (Acemoglu & Robinson, 2012; Lopez-Narbona, 2019). The idea of development bias (Loury, 2019a) that creates barriers for Black neighborhoods from accessing essential skills and resources to be successful is an outcome of structural racism and a racist pattern in power relations (Acemoglu & Robinson, 2012; Lopez-Narbona, 2019). Therefore, while covering racial inequalities, mainstream, ethnic, and local general-interest newspapers brought up the reasons such as lack of infrastructure for economic mobility, jobs, and quality education in Black-majority neighborhoods that have perpetuated racial inequalities in Baltimore City. Consequently, illegal drug businesses reigned in the impoverished areas in the absence of jobs. These news outlets also brought up the distrust between the police and the Black community.

Despite the similarities in the coverage in terms of theme, The Afro’s news coverage stood out, in terms of tone, from the ones of general-audience local and mainstream/national newspapers. The Afro as ethnic media had access to community members who are the victims of the unequal distribution of resources and who had a longstanding frustration with policing, criminal justice system, and the unequal access to resources for growth. Therefore, The Afro presented the voices of the community members through the stories that highlighted structural racism and racial inequalities. On the contrary, a leading local newspaper, The Baltimore Sun’s coverage of the systemic issue was rather shallow. They relied heavily on official and organizational sources. As a community news outlet, The Afro, compared to The Baltimore Sun, might have better access to the members of the Black community in Baltimore. This distinction is important since a diverse media landscape can offer more and nuanced perspectives about an issue at stake.

Unlike two local newspapers—The Afro and The Baltimore Sun—two national newspapers did not highlight the peaceful protest and community dialogue initiatives in the days following the violent protest in Baltimore which received negative coverage nationally and globally. Local news outlets highlighted how peaceful protest and community outreach/dialogue initiatives were geared toward bringing the communities together and building trust. Through The Afro, Black community members shared that violence is not the way to realize racial justice. Mainstream media were criticized for highlighting the violent part of the protest while downplaying the city’s and its communities’ peaceful initiatives for better human understanding and finding pathways to resolve longstanding racial inequalities (Eichensehr & Popper, 2015). As argued in an earlier section, mainstream media owned by few conglomerates can shape the narrative about powerless (i.e., protesters) and sensationalism around the event (Bullock et al., 2001; Gilens, 1996; McChesney, 2008), even though they brought up the underlying reasons of racial divide in Baltimore.

Conclusions

All three types of newspapers—national mainstream, local, and Black—covered racial inequalities in Baltimore city through a common theme in their respective news coverage—systemic issues and underlying causes of unrest. Subthemes of the inequality theme included unequal economic opportunities, lack of infrastructure for economic mobility, lack of quality education in Black-majority neighborhoods, and illegal drug businesses in impoverished areas in the absence of jobs.

As West (2001) argued, it is important for media to look for flaws in society instead of Black people’s problems. In the case of this coverage analysis, it is evident that by covering the underlying causes of unrest, all three types of newspapers bring up societal causes of frustration among Baltimore city protestors. Gandy, Kopp, Hands, Frazer, and Phillips (1997) argued that how news media represents Blacks and Whites in loss and gain situation matters. If a loss or disadvantageous status is attributed to racial identity, there will be lesser public support for a policy change. Instead, if racial inequalities are described as institutional outcomes, it is highly likely that there will be a positive public perception toward a policy change to address the unequal distribution of wealth and economy (Ash & Schmierbach, 2013), which is not always covered in-depth by mainstream news media (Preston & Grisold, 2017).

Since the violent nature of the protest against Freddie Gray’s death on April 27, 2015 affected the city’s image nationally and internationally, both local newspapers published news stories of harmful effects of violent protests, importance of peaceful protests, and initiatives to unite the community. Both The Afro and The Baltimore Sun serve the African-American community in Baltimore. Hence, these publications highlighted the importance of peaceful protests for realizing the community’s demand for racial justice while covering systemic issues and causes of frustrations in the Black community.