The fatal shooting of a black 18-year-old named Michael Brown by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, this August triggered weeks of riots and looting, as well as nonstop media coverage. The press quickly developed a formula for reporting on the “unrest,” as the media still call such violence: select some aspect of Ferguson’s political or civic culture; declare that feature racist, by virtue of its being associated with Ferguson; disregard alternative explanations for the phenomenon; blame riots on it. Bonus move: generalize to other cities with similar “problems.”
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