Apparently, though, it's also crazy racist.
And that's something I'm not sure I understand.
As it was presented in class discussion, the news clip takes a serious crime - attempted rape - and makes light of it by exploiting the victim's overenthusiastic brother to get a few laughs. The class consensus was that the TV station knew it was inappropriate to use the brother's interview but decided to go ahead with it because the station wanted the publicity. Subsequently, a youtube posting of the story quickly went viral and spawned a slew of - even more hilarious - Antoine Dodson remix videos.
fantastic.
And in my opinion, completely kosher.
Did the story perpetuate racial stereotypes? probably - the TV reporter was a frumpy white woman who looked not just slightly uncomfortable to be in the Lincoln Park community - but are news outlets obligated to censor coverage in order to avoid them?
I don't think that's the answer, and I don't think this story exploits Antoine Dodson.
If the job of news outlets is to act as the eyes of the public, that's exactly what this story did. It reflected the same attitude taken by the victims of the crime. By making an attempt to avoid Dodson, the station would have failed to convey the truth about how the family felt about the crime, because as Daniel Tosh pointed out in his introduction for his web redemption, Antoine Dodson hates rape.
And that's something we can all agree on.
And that's something we can all agree on.
