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Archives: Medias

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OP-ED: How TV Crime Shows Erase Racism and Normalize Police Misconduct

In his column, Rashad talks about Normalizing Injustice and how law ‘n order TV shows overrepresent wrongful actions by cops of color while all but erasing the very real hurts our police and prison system inflict on Black women. “The crime genre glorifies, justifies and normalizes the systematic violence… making heroes out of police and prosecutors who engage in abuse, particularly against people of color.”

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Mississippi Prison Debacle with Deaths and Riots Triggers Rally for Reform

COC led a protest – alongside Until Freedom, Team Roc, REFORM and Mississippi Prison Reform Coalition – to persuade newly elected MS Governor Tate Reeves to fix conditions at Parchman, the state’s oldest prison. Many say the state should just shut Parchman down. Seven people have been murdered in their cells, there’s evidence of mold and rodent infestations, and complaints of serious overcrowding.

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How Crime Shows Like ‘Law & Order’ Skew Our Sense of Police Behavior

New COC research reveals that TV shows about law enforcement are really good propaganda for police officers. They frequently create fictions that justify cops inflicting violence or doing an end run around people’s legal rights. When Black people are featured on these shows, they’re almost always portrayed as the perpetrators of crimes, and rarely as victims.

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Hollywood Loves Portraying POC as Bad Cops, Study Finds

This article talks about our latest report Normalizing Injustice and how depictions of crime and justice on ever-popular shows like Law & Order and Brooklyn Nine-Nine may be setting America backwards. It’s not surprising that ff the 26 programs surveyed in our report, 20 had no Black writers, or only one.

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Netflix, NBC, ABC Lead in Depictions of Wrongful Actions by People of Color in Crime Dramas, Study Finds

Our new report found that Netflix, NBC and ABC were the top offenders in the 2017-18 TV season when it came to over- and mis-representing “wrongful actions” committed by people of color working in the justice system. These shows give a skewed picture of the very real harms our system inflicts on Black people. Of course, 81% of showrunners on these shows are white men, 78% of the writers are white, and only 9% are Black.

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Bingeing on Cop Propaganda

This article talks about COC’s new research on crime TV shows and America’s ongoing, unhealthy relationship with a police-know-best mindset. This genre, it says “takes all of the mess and violence of our criminal legal system and packages it for tidy consumption.” Our report Normalizing Injustice looks at 26 different shows from the 2017–18 TV season, and examines the ways these shows are essentially functioning as propagandists for American cops.

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TV Crime Shows Present a Warped View of Our Criminal Justice System

COC’s new report shows how crime series on TV shape and distort the way Americans see policing and prisons. These inaccurate portrayals create a culture where people think the justice system is fair and is working, contrary to the stats and what legal experts, activists, and those studying the system have found.

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Community Asks for More Transparency in Top Cop Search

COC organized a rally of more than 200 Philadelphia residents. Alongside D.A. Larry Krasner, they are pressuring the mayor to make the search for a new police commissioner transparent and focused on candidates ready to reform how the city approaches policing.

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OP-ED: Los Angeles County’s District Attorney Must Go, and Here’s Why

Rashad Robinson and Cal State University professor Melina Abdullah write about the wave of progressive prosecutors who’re helping right our criminal justice system and usher in reforms. In LA, however, where Black people are incarcerated at 5x the rate of white people, communities of color continue to be neglected. Ed Buck’s case is a perfect example.

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The Real 2020 Battle Lines: ‘Hope’ Versus ‘Change’

Rashad offers his analysis of why some Democrats are focusing on hope and others on systemic change this year. “If you believe that we achieved what we needed to achieve in the Obama years, you’re a healer. If you had a different opinion about what we could achieve, and we didn’t quite get there, then you might be a fighter: because you recognize that the forces that stood in the way of so much of what Obama wanted to do are not going to be disrupted just by bringing people together.”

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Pinterest & The Knot Will Stop Promoting Wedding Content That Romanticizes Former Slave Plantations

After COC reached out to wedding planning sites Pinterest and The Knot, both have agreed to stop promoting former slave plantations as sites for weddings and to stop using language that romanticizes their history. The Knot is working closely with COC to create new guidelines for vendors. Zola also said they’d stop listing plantations as venues and will work with COC to ensure their policies “are inclusive and make everyone feel welcome.”

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