Ava DuVernay on Democracy Now! (6/7/19): “They are not the Central Park Five. I came to feel that that was a political moniker. It was something that was given to them by the press. It was something that was given to them by the prosecution. It was something that allowed them to be seen as a gang, as a wolf pack, and not as Yusef, Korey, Kevin, Antron and Raymond, you know, real people, real boys, with real families, memories, hopes, dreams, that were dashed the day that they were captured at a park.”
When They See Us, Ava DuVernay’s harrowing retelling for Netflix of the false conviction of the five New York youths who became nationally known as the Central Park Five, has reignited discussions about race, stereotypes and how America’s penal system has historically brutalized black people under the banner of “criminal justice.”
Yet this conversation would be incomplete without a serious reckoning with corporate media’s role in fanning the flames of racist hysteria and misinformation, which condemned these innocent youth—Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana and Korey Wise—as guilty in the court of public opinion long before the official verdict was handed down. “The press response to this, and the press failure around this case, is something really important to interrogate,” DuVernay told The Root (5/28/19).
While the highly publicized antics of Donald Trump and the coldhearted manipulation of lead investigator Linda Fairstein have received a great deal of condemnation, less attention has been paid to how prominent media outlets, like the New York Times and the New York Daily News, fell in lockstep with the myth of five deranged black youths randomly attacking white cyclists and joggers in Central Park.
Take, for example, a Times article written by David E. Pitt (4/25/89). Under the headline “Gang Attack: Unusual for Its Viciousness,” Pitt indulged all of the now disproven cliches that accompanied the public vilification of the five young men, including the media buzzword of “wilding” and the reference to the brutal rape of Trisha Meilia—in a phrase borrowed from New York prosecutor Peter Reinharz—as a “wolf-pack attack.”
Aside from disregarding the elementary fact that it had yet to be established that the rape was carried out by more than one person (DNA testing later found evidence of only one rapist), the use of the “wolf pack” label to describe a rape allegedly carried out by black youth was disturbingly consistent with the general trend of dehumanization that prevailed in mainstream discussion of the five defendants.
From the beginning, coverage emphasized the non-human nature of the accused (Daily News, 4/21/89).
Some of the most flagrant examples of this brand of dehumanization occurred in the pages of the Daily News, which ran fear-mongering headlines like “Marauding Packs Have Run of the City” (4/25/89). News writers Adam Nagourney (who now writes for the Times) and David J. Krajicek exemplified this mood, writing:
Bands of marauding teenagers similar to the one that ran wild in Central Park last week are creating pockets of anarchy in the city by taking over subway trains …. Cops call them wolf packs; merchants call them rat packs. A social worker says they rampage because “there are no more rules.”
These alarmist portrayals of young people of color, often accompanied by highly dubious psychiatric diagnoses of the teens as uniquely remorseless and cruel, helped to create a climate of mass panic that ensured once the suspects were punished, there would be no serious reflection on the ethical, moral or legal reasoning that informed judicial decision-making.
Tragically, this absence of reflection is more the rule than the exception in current media treatment of the case. Although these outlets ran numerous propagandistic and highly misleading stories—neglecting even to use the word “alleged” to describe the accused in 95 percent of news articles—barely any instances of contrition can be found today.
One exception is an article by New York Times journalist Jim Dwyer (5/30/19), who accepts personal accountability, wishing he “had been more skeptical,” and “had shouted, rather than mumbled, the doubts [he] did express.” Interestingly, he notes in the next sentence:
The enormity of what went wrong was first revealed to a broad audience in a 2012 documentary, Central Park Five, by Ken Burns, David McMahon and Sarah Burns.
This was a full ten years after the sentences against the five exonerees were vacated in 2002, thanks to DNA evidence revealing the crime to have been committed by serial rapist Matias Reyes, but the “enormity of what went wrong”—namely, the public persecution and false imprisonment of five teens for 6 to 13 years—didn’t dawn on him until a filmmaker made a documentary about it? Go figure.
The Daily News TV critic (5/31/19) complains that Ava DuVernay presents false convictions as an entirely bad thing.
And where the New York Times is halfhearted in regret, the New York Daily News is wholly unapologetic in its disregard for basic journalistic integrity. Reviewing When They See Us, Daily News writer Kate Feldman (5/31/19) criticizes the “black-and-white version of the Central Park Five case,” and calls attention to “details DuVernay glosses over,” specifically the fact that some believe “the teens should have been exonerated for the rape, but not other beatings and muggings that occurred that night.”
DuVernay’s refusal to engage with this idea that the five teens may have been violent muggers despite not being rapists prompts Feldman to conclude, “More important than the facts is the idea that the facts no longer matter.” It is the height of irony that a writer for a publication that regularly trafficked in the worst forms of counterfactual, anti-black racism during this period has more to say about the artistic choices of a filmmaker than the real-life decisions of her editors, or the systems of authority to which these editors often subordinate themselves.
While individual gestures of accountability are certainly welcome, no meaningful reconciliation for the trauma inflicted on these youths and their communities at the hands of the most respected media outlets can be achieved until there is a recognition of the systemic character of the misrepresentations that paved the way for many other young black people like them to enter the penitentiary. This would mean official statements from the New York Times board of editors pointing out the errors in judgement they participated in, and, more importantly, steps being taken today to ensure those moral failures are not repeated. Anything less would be a disservice to McCray, Richardson, Salaam, Santana and Wise, their families, and the countless others who strive every day for a more just and equitable culture of justice.
Featured image: Jharrel Jerome as Korey Wise in When They See Us.
FAIR’s critique of journalists would be more effective if they didn’t periodically overstate their case. Here author Xavier Best tries to draw conclusions that do not follow from his own source material. According to his article, Jim Dwyer is quoted as saying he wishes he “had been more skeptical” and that he “had shouted, rather than mumbled” the doubts he did express at the time. Dwyer is then quoted as saying that the “enormity of what went wrong was first revealed to a broad audience” by the Ken Burns documentary. It makes no sense for Best to then say that it was Burns’ film that caused this injustice to “dawn” on Dwyer himself. No, he specifically says that the film first brought awareness to “a broad audience.” There is nothing in the rest of the piece to support Best’s accusation. Instead, just before the material quoted in Best’s article, Dwyer praises the new series in question When They See Us, saying that it “will enlighten even people who have followed these events.” Here he is already pointing to a distinction between a broad audience who may know nothing about the events and people like himself who have followed the story all along.
Thanks for reading. To address your concerns:
The “enormity” of the Central Park Five case was apparent when it was discovered that the five were falsely imprisoned for a crime they did not commit. Any other detail, while maybe interesting, does not tell much about the “enormity” of the case to a broad audience or an insider.
If we accept this, the enormity was well known to everyone not only in 2002 but years before by campaigners and activists who advocated on their behalf.
But for Dwyer the “enormity” of the case wasn’t sufficiently clear until he had a detailed picture of the behind-the-scenes investigative oversights that led up to the false imprisonment, not the false imprisonment itself.
That Dwyer focuses on this as the revelatory moment for the public and not the fact that they were falsely imprisoned is reflective of his priorities.
If his priorities were different I’m pretty sure he would have used the platform that he had during the trial and vocalized his doubts instead of holding back. The fact that he didn’t shows he was as easily influenced by the mob mentality as other journalists who remained silent on the innocence of the five.
It is also worth considering the benefit of saying a “broad audience” was unaware of the enormity of the case until 2012 as a way of excusing one’s own silence. Because silence on a crime whose details are not entirely clear is far more excusable than one being carried out in the open.
As a journalist, it should be a professional goal to go against the grain and speak out even if it makes one unpopular.
Furthermore, why should we accept it as truth that he actually had doubts? Him simply saying it without having documented proof can only be accepted on trust. The airing of doubt decades later comes off as a self-interested attempt to disown his complicity. If I participate in a clear injustice and then say, “I did it hesistantly,” years later it means little to the victims. We don’t know what was in his mind. We only know what his actions were. He has to own them.
Part of owning them means not making facile distinctions that evade the heart of the matter, namely that the bulk of mainstream media was swept up in a racist hysteria over this rape and through this created an environment where five innocent teens could be falsely imprisoned. Whatever Dwyer’s article is, it isn’t that.
Sidenote: Interesting that you read this entire article and your main takeaway was how you could best defend a New York Times journalist and not the tragedy of five teenagers who had their adolesence destroyed by a corrupt criminal justice system.
I’m just trying to keep FAIR fair because I share some of their same concerns and see keeping them honest as the best way to support them. When you guys overstate your case in critiquing journalists, you undermine your overall cause. To say that Dwyer needed the Burns doc to realize there had been an injustice simply doesn’t follow from the material you chose to quote or from his larger article. You could have admitted that in your response, but you chose instead to equivocate. And, wait a minute, I had the temerity to criticize you on one point so I’m somehow downplaying your larger point about the injustice against the five teenagers? No, that doesn’t follow at all, either. Instead, I’m defending the integrity of their ongoing story from your slipshod reasoning. Making weak inferences about me that are not entirely unlike the ones you make about Dwyer show that you not only need the kind of criticism that FAIR doles out, but that you need to learn how to take it.
Certainly sounds like you’re pursuing a distinction with no difference..
What’s the point of this side note? It sounds like a petty attempt to insinuate that a commenter is a racist or authoritarian or something because he criticized you for exaggerating and mind reading – which you do again in your own comment.
That’s amazing you exhaustively critique the article as if you are some authoritative figure on journalism BUT HAVE NOT A SINGLE WORD TI SAY ABOUT LOCKING UP FIVE YOUNG MEN FIR A CRIME THEY DID NOT COMMIT
I have a need to rage on about comments!I
It is amazing to me that black people still have difficulty as being seen as people like me and you ( aka white) I am horrified that it took so long for the DNA evidence to clear them , as it seemed to convict them so easily. I think also of the security guard in Florida the assumed that Trayvon was guilty of something and murdered by a no account security guard–oh was, he was a judge’s son, wasn’t he. I am further flummoxed that long after Sandra Bland’s death . the police somehow found the cell phone video that she took of the bizarre and angry police person. Then there was the Sacramento man murdered in his grandmother’s back yard by 2 policeman who saw something that wasn’t there.
Currently we have a President and an administration who see nothing wrong with separating children and parents at the border and putting kids into cages.
I just read that it’s the 70th anniversary of Orwell’s 1984————-and I am horrified that the media is still telling tales about people of color—-and that the current federal government thinks that they are the ,”thought police.” along with trying to start wars —everywhere. Apparently America doesn’t recognize its own Emancipation Proclamation either. Historically this nation came for the Native Americans, the African Americans , the Mexicans, the Japanese——watch it white people—looks like we’re next. Or maybe it’s ALL the poor people who need to be worried now.
And in recent years, the NY Times has frequently referred to the convictions of the young men being “overturned”, something that occurs with some regularity, not “vacated”, something that almost never occurs.
Not a surprise that the NY Daily New engaged in speculative hearsay to detract from the new documentary.
No, Dwyer ain’t real bright.
“When They See Us” is a Netflix product. So it’s problematic to treat it as legitimate journalism. I’m in the middle of watching the first episode at the moment, and I do find it highly biased. The victims (that is, the so called “Central Park Five”) are all portrayed as angelic youths, while the NYPD and DA reps are all loathsome. I am not a cheerleader for the police, but let’s see a little nuance. I don’t like to feel manipulated by a film director and DuVernay’s treatment of this subject feels highly manipulative. Yet Mr Best’s FAIR piece is a criticism of just that: media manipulation. DuVernay does little for the cause if she uses the same tricks.
Predictably, and not for the first time in the last 10 days, here’s the NY Times using “overturned” to mean “vacated” regards this case:
June 12th 2019:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/12/arts/elizabeth-lederer-central-park-five.html
June 7th 2019:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/07/arts/linda-fairstein-when-they-see-us.html
There is no way any of these White Media Platforms will take responsibility for their racist journalism
BLM