And now I can’t stop hearing it.ĭeirdre Moultrie noticed those words peppered throughout her two favorite sources of news, NPR and The New York Times’ “The Daily” podcast, most recently in reference to the shooting of Ahmaud Arbery in Brunswick, Georgia. One loyal NPR fan pointed out to me that when we utter that phrase, it doesn’t always mean the same thing for the speaker as for the listener. Since a string of deaths of young black men at the hands of police gave rise to the Black Lives Matter movement, the phrase has become journalistic shorthand for this message: white people unjustly shooting a black man, because their racial prejudice led them to assume he was a threat. When journalists write or broadcast these words - “unarmed black man” - what do you hear? It’s a phrase that has become pervasive in the American news media, including on NPR’s airwaves and in its digital news stories.
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