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Stephen Padlock Las Vegas Shooting Essay

569 Words3 Pages

Unfortunately, the name Stephen Paddock should be well-known. Paddock was the perpetrator in the Las Vegas Shooting that occurred this October, becoming the deadliest mass shooting committed by an individual in the United States. But some news articles about Paddock seem to humanize him, even in publications such as the New York Times. This humanization, especially compared to the news articles that arise when people of color are either victims or perpetrators of crimes, show the white privilege that often comes with these situations.
One New York Times article about the Las Vegas shooting comes with the headline “Stephen Paddock, Las Vegas Suspect, Was a Gambler Who Drew Little Attention”. The article goes on to describe Paddock in ways that could be seen as favorable, or at least, paint a picture of a man who wasn’t violent, …show more content…

“Many media outlets reinforce the public’s racial misconceptions about crime by presenting African-Americans and Latinos differently than whites- both quantitatively and qualitatively. Television news programs and newspapers over-represent racial minorities as crime suspects and whites as crime victims,”. A real-life example of this is Michael Brown, whose death was the catalyst for riots in Ferguson. Judges ordered his juvenile records to be released to lawyers, which sparked indignation in the community. The records were clearly released was to see if he was a “bad person”, maybe even deserving of his murder. Another example is Tamir Rice, a twelve-year-old shot by police. Media revealed that Rice’s father had been convicted for abuse of women. This investigation received backlash for the same reason as Michael Brown: even if there was a history of violence, these black men (and child) were the victim, and their histories of violence did not justify what had happened. Despite this, they were being represented as suspects rather than

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