On August 9th, 2014, Ferguson, Missouri resident and African American Michael Brown was repeatedly shot and subsequently killed by a white police officer. Protests immediately erupted which quickly turned into nightly rioting that continued over the next several days. Analyzing the media’s handling of this crisis, Noah C. Rothman, in “Taking Sides in Ferguson,” argues that the news press performed its role poorly and with prejudice in the events following the shooting death of Brown. Rothman presents background information, cites commentary by reporters, and highlights opinions relayed by the media all in an effort to prove that the press supported the anti-police protestors that engaged in riotous activity following the shooting. He also …show more content…
One example of his scrutiny occurs when the media researched a particular officer of the riot police to the extent that they uncovered questionable political statements made by him. The press relayed this information in such a provocative manner that the officer in question was fired. Rothman finds the media’s intense concentration on this one officer to be “of little relevance” (21) which is a valid conclusion to make because the officer’s personal political remarks were unrelated to his ability to perform proper peace keeping duties. An additional incident of Rothman’s analysis occurs when the press demanded that President Obama make a statement regarding race relations in America. When he refused to do so, he was promptly reproached by many including law professor Paul Butler who believed that the president went “out of his way to try to appease [his opponents]” (21). Rothman surmises that Butler blames the president’s “haters” (21) for his lack of action. Because Butler’s comment is an ad hominem that attacks the president’s character, Rothman’s conclusion is valid. Furthermore, because the media wrongfully reported on the now-fired officer and sharply criticized the president for not acting as they had anticipated, Rothman’s argument is still justified, for the media further …show more content…
His first error involves comparing “a ‘national conversation’ about race and inequality” (21) in the press to the misbehavior of African American youths and the lack of education that they receive at American schools. This presents a fallacy of questionable analogy because the relation between the two is not immediately obvious. Rothman’s other error occurs when he proceeds from discussing how he believes that the national media arrived in Ferguson with the intent to correct a historical transgression to explaining that journalism scholars presently debate race-related incidents from the 1960’s (22). A red herring appears to occur because the latter seems to be fairly unrelated to the prior. These two errors detract from Rothman’s argument because they diminish the credibility that he has established thus far in the