The Limits of Filming Police Brutality
Slate News
Slate Podcasts
4.5 • 6K Ratings
🗓️ 4 September 2020
⏱️ 20 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In the wake of the killing of Michael Brown in 2014, and the national protests that followed, many believed that video shared on social media, along with footage from body cameras, would reshape the relationship between police and citizens. Six years later, one thing is clear: It didn’t work. Can viral videos really hold power to account?
And why do we so often put our faith in technological solutions to solve societal problems?
Guests:
Bijan Stephen, reporter at the Verge
Ethan Zuckerman, former director, the Center for Civic Media, MIT
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, everyone. A quick note about today's show. We're talking about incidents of police brutality and some of the descriptions may be upsetting. |
| 0:08.3 | You might want to wear headphones if you're listening around children. |
| 0:15.8 | According to an investigation by The Guardian, at least 258 black people were killed by police officers |
| 0:21.9 | in 2016. Tragically, |
| 0:25.1 | that was not an unusual development. |
| 0:27.4 | But the widespread release of video footage of some of those |
| 0:30.5 | encounters was. On July 5th, 2016, |
| 0:34.3 | Alton Sterling was shot and killed while two |
| 0:36.6 | bystanders took videos on their phones. |
| 0:39.2 | The next day, July 6th, Philando Castile was shot and killed. |
| 0:43.5 | His fiancé recorded the immediate aftermath of the shooting. |
| 0:50.1 | A week after these shootings, in the wake of national protests, |
| 0:54.6 | Ethan Zuckerman was trying to make sense of the killings. |
| 0:57.5 | He wrote an article in the MIT Technology Review called |
| 1:00.7 | Why We Must Continue to Turn the Camera on Police. |
| 1:04.9 | My hope was that the ubiquity of mobile phone cameras |
| 1:09.9 | and the ease with which people could turn cameras on |
| 1:13.9 | authorities might be a turning point in the relationship between police and people of color. |
| 1:20.7 | For the last nine years, Ethan has been a professor at the MIT Media Lab. He studies media, |
| 1:26.0 | technology, and activism. How did you think that might change |
| 1:29.8 | the equation? Because this is technology that's been around for a very long time. |
| 1:34.2 | Sure. It's been possible to film things on a video camera going back quite a ways. And in fact, |
... |
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