i started reading newspapers when I was 9yrs old (i guess they looked interesting when I was rolling them up to pass them), and even then was struck by the fact that black murderers or menaces to society were splashed across the front pages of every major city newspaper (Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times), WITH A PICTURE - yet when there was a story of a white person who was of a similar menace (or even greater, i.e. serial killer, child rapist, etc.), their heinous crime story would appear about 8-15 pages into the paper - middle to back pages where studies prove that most readers won't even turn. Oh, and with the white criminals in those days, there was NEVER a picture, so one could never put a face to evil of white criminality.
Beyond that, what would really turn my ire, was the consistent posting of black minors names and pictures on the front pages of the paper. It got to a point where I started to believe there was a different standard when it came to the privacy rights of black minors vis a vis white minors. Indeed, with white minors, there was always the byline that due to the age of the perp, the name could not be shared - one didnt even expect to see a picture of all things! Such racism was par for the course, however - what alarmed me more so, was the fact that it got to a point that all black minors even mentioned were being prosecuted as adults (even 6-8 year olds) because ...yknow....those black kids have adult mentalities - lock 'em up!
Damn, Mack, what kinda banana-republic hell hole did you grow up in???
I've spent more than 30 years reporting news--including the courts and police beats--for Texas newspapers and I ain't never seen the kind of horrors you describe! Even when I was working cops and courts, we seldom ran pictures of any criminals of any color. I worked the night-time crime beat until 1:30 a.m., and we just didn't have that many photographers on duty at the time. Although crime increased with darkness as did arrests, most perps weren't actually charged until some hours later, often pass my deadline, and I never ran IDs of suspects of any color before they were officially charged. Say someone is arrested for murder and then the DA's office refuses for whatever reason to charge him, and your butt's on the line for a possible libel suit!
I don't recall running many photos of criminals--the big city tabloids are more prone to do that, but I never worked for one. Never made a count, but I'd bet we ran more photos of white killers and white victims because whites are more likely to commit the really big or colorful crimes--like the spurned housewife who ran down her cheating husband with her Mercedes Benz in a hotel parking lot where he was to meet his mistress--or mass murderers like "the Candy Man" Dean Corril and his accomplices. I think their victims were a mixed batch of races and cultures, but that was so many years ago that I can't recall for sure.
If anything, we tended to downplay killings among blacks, Hispanics, and even "poor whites"--what we police-beat reporters termed "misdemeanor murders." Such killings were almost always black on black, Hispanic on Hispanic, white on white, usually some guy shooting his nagging wife or some woman knifing her cheating husband. That or a family gathering for the holidays and feelings get hurt, tempers flare and the guns and knives come out. Most of these were fill-in-the blank reporting: "______ was charged today with the murder of ______ at their residence at ________. Neighbors reported hearing a loud argument and then ____ shots were fired."
Frankly, most of the crimes I reported weren't all that memorable. Of course, we ran photos of the spurned wife, dead husband, and her Mercedes Benz! People love that stuff with their morning coffee--especially women who'd like to settle some scores with their own husbands.
When I worked for a small daily in Orange, I carried a news camera to take pictures of the stories I covered because we had only one photographer and she mostly developed the film we reporters brought in. I can remember shooting some covered bodies and crumpled cars, but the only criminal shot I can recall at all was when I was called out one night by police who said they had a suspect stuck in a chimney. Rolled on the scene and there were cops and firemen bunched around a chimney on the roof of a supermarket. Seems a cop had ventured by the store and heard faint cries of "Help me! Help me!" Cop starts looking around, calling, "Where are you?" "I'm up here," comes the reply. "Here, where?" "In the chimney!"
I climb a firetruck ladder to the roof, cops shine flashlights down the chimney, and sure enough, there's this shirtless, skinny young man lodged several feet down the chimney under a string of old automotive fan belts he had tied together to help him with his Santa act. But a fan belt broke or slipped and he fell and wedged himself in the brick chimney. Cops and firemen were trying to figure how to get a harness on him to pull him out or whether they would have to tear down the chimney. At one point, one of the officers asked him, "How did you get down there?" Young man looks up, serious as a heart-attack and says, "Two guys I never saw before pushed me down here." That set off a gale of laughter among police, firemen, and the press. Policemen bantered that story back and forth with him for awhile, until one asked the young man his name. The kid replies, and one of the officers says, "I know him." He calls down, "Didn't you go to prison a few years ago after pleading out to a burglary charge?" The felon admitted he had. "Well, when did you get out?" inquires the cop. Turns out the young fellow had been released on parole just 36 hours earlier, which brought on another gale of laughter.
Eventually, they managed to get a loop around his chest and large officers and firemen took turns standing on top of the chimney trying to pull him straight up from his trap--but not before I snapped a flash photo of him wedged in the chimney. It was a slow process and one officer injured his back. By the time they got him out, all of the young man's clothes were torn or slipped off and he was scraped all to hell by the rough brick. He was taken to the emergency room to get patched up and then to jail. By noon the next day, his parole officer revolked his parole and he was back in prison. The kid was lucky. A check with the store manager the next morning revealed the chimney he was trying to get down led to an old incinerator that had been abandoned and bricked up at the bottom years ago! If the fellow had gotten all the way to the bottom, there was no way he could have gotten out, unlikely he'd ever been heard, and he probably would have died there.
Now that was one crime photo that made the front page of the Orange Leader the next morning. And yeah, the fellow happened to be black. But stupid criminal tricks go beyond color, creed, and religion.
On the other hand, the only time any of the papers for which I worked ran a picture and named a minor charged with a crime was at the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal in Lubbock, Tex., where I went to J-school at Texas Tech University. This kid was 15-16 but was charged as an adult after he walked up to another kid in a high school hallway and shot him dead. Seems the victim had gotten in an argument with the shooter or one of his buddies during gym class. They then went home at lunch, got a gun, came back to school, and gunned down the other kid. The shooter was the meanest, coldest little bastard I ever saw. Seems it was decided he would do the shooting because he was a minor and though he wouldn't be charged as an adult. The little crumb who did the shooting was white. The kid he killed was black, a year younger than the shooter, and unarmed.
Not many blacks live in that part of Texas--the largest minority group out there is Hispanic. But hundreds of local blacks gathered in front of the police station that afternoon when a rumor circulated that the killer had been turned loose and sent home. Police brought in several blacks with community influence to show them the little sh*t was still in jail, so they could go out and reassure the crowd. Just to make sure things didn't get out of hand, the city council (not all white) ordered an 8 p.m. curfew that evening for everyone. But news never sleeps, of course, and we were covering the hell out of this sensational crime. I got off about midnight and drove home another reporter so his wife didn't have to come after him. As we pulled up at his house, two cops pulled up behind me and asked, "What the hell are you doing breaking our curfew?" We showed our press passages, and I assured them I was heading straight home by the shortest possible route.
Mack, I'm sorry you had such a bad experience in J-school. I'm surprised any school would allow such conduct within any department. Sorry you were traumatized by unfair local coverage in your youth. But that's not indicative of the press as a whole or even to a large degree. It's sure not the way real newsmen practice journalism.
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the way i see it - life is life. we all get dealt a hand - sometimes a bad hand - but you play it out. and im not a huge card player, but i played for fun back in the day, and in one particular tourney, my partner and i literally got the worst deal youve ever seen - an impossible hand. i looked at him - he looked at me, and we were like "we're going down swinging!" to this day, im not sure how it happened, but we decimated our opponents so badly, i have yet to do it again with a good deal. never again have i accomplished that feat. 
