SIU’s Gateway Journalism Review finds ‘minimal’ reforms 10 years after Michael Brown’s death

August 09, 2024

by Pete Rosenbery

CARBONDALE, Ill. - The Aug. 9, 2014, shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, shocked a community and crystalized a nationwide call by many for police reform. On the 10th anniversary of Brown's death, "Ferguson 10 Years Later," a series by Southern Illinois University Carbondale's Gateway Journalism Review (GJR) looking at the state of racial justice - particularly in Missouri and Illinois - concludes that reforms sought after Brown's death and those in other officer-involved shootings in the nation has been limited.

The conclusion from stories within the 80-page quarterly magazine is that much more needs to be done, said William H. Freivogel, a professor in SIU's School of Journalism and Advertising and GJR publisher.

"Martin Luther King Jr. said the arc of moral universe bends toward justice. But the momentum for reform that flowed out of the killing of Michael Brown, The 1619 Project and the murder of George Floyd has largely dissipated in a conservative backlash," he said. "Black Lives Matter signs that once spread through suburban lawns have come down. Police reforms proposed by President Obama's commission have not been enacted and DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) has been outlawed in a score of states. So, despite some reforms in municipal courts in St. Louis County, the progress toward reform since Brown's death has been limited."

Among the stories in the magazine are police accountability efforts in both Illinois and Missouri; police decertification laws to prevent abusive officers from wandering from department to department, and how Brown's death resulted in a racial awakening and a discovery of lost Black stories.

SIU Carbondale graduated students Amelia Blakely, Kallie Cox and Brian Munoz contributed to the current report, and Jackie Spinner, a notable SIU journalism graduate and a professor at Columbia College in Chicago, is the GJR editor.

Freivogel hopes readers "understand that police and justice reforms have been minimal, and that new laws, policies and ethics are needed to enact the reforms that many Americans thought were important after Ferguson and Floyd."

Numerous special projects

Freivogel noted GJR, which analyzes media in the Midwest, has given extensive coverage to Ferguson and its aftermath. Stories in 2014 and 2015 explored the criminal investigation into whether Officer Darren Wilson should be charged with murder in Brown's death.

"The reporting showed that the Department of Justice investigation had found that no credible witness who supported the 'Hands Up, Don't Shoot' mantra of the protesters," he said. "But it also showed that Ferguson's policing grossly violated the civil rights of citizens."

"Ferguson: America's Arab Spring: Social Media and the Civil Rights Movement," a special edition in 2016, tracked the way social media was the primary method for broadcasting the protesters' message to the world, Freivogel said.

"The communications revolution of millions of tweets and videos pumped energy into a burgeoning Black Lives Matter movement," he said.

"The 1857 Project," published in spring 2020, which included works by SIU students and faculty, offered a historical perspective on slavery, segregation and other aspects of racism in the St. Louis metro area and Illinois. It earned a Sigma Delta Chi Award in Journalism and an honorable mention from the American Bar Association's 2021 Silver Gavel Awards for Media and the Arts.

In December 2021, another special edition examined the "Legal Roadblocks to Police Accountability"and involved 20 journalists from around the country. That project was named a finalist for a national Silver Gavel.

Public link

Please use the above public link if you want to share this noodl on another website.