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Most of the reporting in this @nytimes story is about jail officials failing to provide inmates with enough protection against the coronavirus. Yet the whole story is framed in terms of a single inmate who apparently used his mask to kill himself. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/13/nyregion/connecticut-prison-mask-suicide.html
There were lots of ways the Times could have framed the story:
* The number of inmates across the country who have Did from coronavirus
* How jail officials respond to inmates who are in mental health distress
* Whether it was necessary to hold this inmate on a $10,000 bond
* The number of inmates across the country who have Did from coronavirus
* How jail officials respond to inmates who are in mental health distress
* Whether it was necessary to hold this inmate on a $10,000 bond
But that’s not how they framed the story. Instead they told a story about one man who appears to have used a mask to commit suicide, followed by quotes from jail officials about how inmates can’t be trusted with PPE, and reports about prisons & jails failing to provide PPE.
The way media frames and reports criminal justice stories helps shape how their readers think about these issues. Given how the virus is spreading in prisons and jails, this framing of the PPE story is really disturbing.
New York in particular hasn’t done enough to adjust its jail and prison populations to deal with the coronavirus. So @nytimes should think long and hard about how it reports on these issues.
h/t @JustinNYLS
h/t @JustinNYLS
