Biases of Journalism in Official Negligence

Lou Cannon’s writing in his book, Official Negligence, is almost entirely in a narrative fashion.  Cannon turned his introduction of every character into a story about that person to give more background and context to whom the individuals were who participated in the beating of Rodney King.  Specific examples are on page 5 with Tom Bradley and also on page 40 with the description of Rodney King’s past.  The narrative bias that Cannon utilizes in his book helps to give a make the characters more personable to the reader.  Readers are naturally interested in stories with beginnings, middles, and ends, especially when controversy and conflict is involved.  Cannon does a very effective job of making the reader develop a more personal connection with the players in the book through offering individual details of each character’s life.

Cannon exhibited a bad news bias as well in his writing.  Specifically, on page 17, he discussed the rising crime rate in the mid-1980’s that stretched the L.A.P.D. thin at a time that they were already undermanned.  This is an example of the American public believing that good news is boring and bad news is more exciting.  Cannon’s illustration of the rising crime rate in L.A. and how it may have indirectly influenced the culture in which the Rodney King incident occurred seems to be placed in his story to keep the interest of the audience.

It was interesting to hear how the news stations admitted to purposely editing tape in order to maximize the interest of the audience (page 23).  For example, they cut out the first ten seconds of the Rodney King beating in order to avoid a blurry segment, but in turn deleted the part where King charges the police officers, blatantly resisting arrest.  Without this portion, all the audience sees is King being pummeled on the ground, not making any moves toward the officers at all.  This is a clear example of commercial bias, where the newsmakers do what they can to maximize profit from the audience by creating the most interesting, exciting, and newsworthy product that they possibly can.

The police officers exhibited an example of syllogism in their assumption that king was on PCP at the time of his arrest.  They thought that since King was acting strangely, and people on PCP act in the same manner as King was that night, then King must be on PCP.  This seems to have been an influence in the police’s decision to beat him incessantly, since apparently PCP users are oblivious to pain.  Due to this syllogism, in which the police made an assumption based strictly on observation, the entire nation was able to witness the brutal beating of Rodney King.

Some of the eyewitness accounts that Cannon included in his book perform the technique of pathos, in which the story attempts to appeal to the sense of emotion of the reader.  For example, on page 24, Chief Gates describes the officers’ actions in detail, discussing how terrible, uncalled for, and incredulousness of the entire Rodney King incident.  Through Gates’ description of the “fifty-six times” that King was beaten, the audience is led to empathize with King and blame the police for their actions that night.

I felt that Cannon’s use of narrative in his writing was his most effective tool in capturing my attention as a reader.  I had read the account of the Rodney King incident in the New York Times articles, but once I could relate to the characters upon learning all of their backgrounds and true identities, I was literally drawn into the excitement of the story.