Read This: Here’s a pretty good piece on media accountability in the wake of Ferguson and Eric Garner
Following the decision last week by a Ferguson, Missouri grand jury not to indict police officer Darren Wilson for the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown, people the world over took to the streets and to social media to express their dissatisfaction with the jury’s decision. It’s a discussion that has only intensified after a Staten Island grand jury decided yesterday not to indict the police officer responsible for the death of Eric Garner, even with video evidence showing that the officer’s use of a chokehold–which elicited repeated cries of “I can’t breathe” from Garner–played a role in his death. It’s an action–or, perhaps, a lack thereof–that has lead to more emphatic pleas from the likes of Jon Stewart and Killer Mike, and to the proliferation of more hashtags allowing people to raise their voice and share stories of their own experiences with injustice.
Today, Pitchfork posted a piece titled “We Are All Accountable” that addresses the issues many blogs and pop-culture sites have struggled with–The A.V. Club included–in the wake of these judicial decisions. Throughout the piece writer Kris Ex calls out hip-hop blogs that published more stories on Kim Kardashian than the community’s response to the news over the past week. As the title implies, he even calls out Pitchfork, making note of the fact that there’s an obligation that goes beyond the site’s normal coverage, equating that if an artist’s Ice Bucket Challenge video is deemed newsworthy, so is their response to a grand jury ruling.