Chicago officials released the video of the 17 year old that was shot 16 times by the a police officer. The incident happened in 2014 but the video was just released on last Tuesday. News rooms across the nation were struggling with how much of the video to show.
The family did not want the video to be shown but the video was not as visually graphic as many people expected it would be. This is such an important issue because it is important to respect the family but viewers will be interested in the video and help with viewership.
Officials were worried about violent protests after the video would be shown to the pubic. However to the surprise of many, most of the protests have been pretty modest in scale.
I think this is a common problem but a unique issue since the video is over a year old. One station chose to play the video until the first shot and then they stopped the video. I think this is a pretty good way to approach it since i think it just seems gruesome to show someone get shot 16 times.
These are always difficult situations to negotiate. I bristle a bit at the notion that a station would show the video for ratings. I’d like to think that they would consider doing it for its news value. It DOES have news value. I think what they did was a good compromise between sharing the news, meeting community standards and being sensitive to a grieving family.