News Coverage of George Floyd’s Murder, Protests, and Derek Chauvin’s Trial

• In Event: Media-Based Drivers and Consequences of Protests

Abstract

In May 2020, the world learned of the death of George Floyd, a 46-year-old African American man, during an arrest in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Two information sources framed the death: a police press release reporting a deadly “medical incident during police interaction” and a bystander’s video showing the infamous restraint determined to be a murder committed by white police officer Derek Chauvin. On May 26, within hours of the posting of the video recording Floyd’s death, a local story became a global phenomenon. Floyd’s murder was an event of historic significance, sparking widespread discourse about a racial reckoning in Minnesota, the United States, and even worldwide, with protests transcending the specifics of Floyd, Chauvin, and Minneapolis. On April 20, 2021, Chauvin was tried and found guilty of second-degree murder and third-degree murder, as well as second-degree manslaughter, with media coverage first anticipating and then reacting to the verdict that dominated the news that day.

Our research seeks to address questions pertaining to overall coverage of the events resulting from George Floyd’s murder, differences in coverage across points in time and news providers, responses to this coverage, and framing in news stories as a whole. We apply a mixed methodological approach to consider and compare media coverage at the following three points in time: (1) Floyd’s murder and autopsy, (2) protests following Floyd’s death, and (3) the day of Derek Chauvin’s guilty verdict. Our team content analyzes human-coded data from approximately 500 news stories that covered these events and originated from Factiva and News Data Service transcripts of local, national, and cable news broadcasts. Our local news broadcasts come from four stations (KARE, KMSP, KSTP, and WCCO) located in Minneapolis. We also examine broadcasts from three national broadcast channels (ABC, CBS, and NBC) and three cable news channels (CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC), and we analyze both overall news coverage data and differences in coverage across news providers.

As the Floyd murder, Minnesota protests, and Chauvin trial were local events for the Minneapolis stations in our study, we have an opportunity to consider how local news may have differed from national representations of these events. Utilizing focus group and in-depth interview methodologies—as well as relevant opinion data—we look more deeply into the effects of this news coverage, comparing the responses of African American, Native American, and white residents of Minneapolis with those living in a rural Minnesota community 45 miles from the sites of the murder, protests, and trial. We further assess news coverage using LIWC-22, a linguistic analysis software, and we consider prior research regarding race and news media, framing and information bias, and media depictions of protests following Floyd's murder.

The conventional wisdom suggests that news with greater detail and analysis—such as thematic stories, as defined by Shanto Iyengar in the 1990s—both informs and enables viewers to attribute responsibility for given circumstances to officials and others who are presumably empowered to correct the problems revealed by the news. This formulation assumes that such reporting brings news audiences accurate and relevant details in thematic stories. In this paper, we interrogate the “details” and their implications for the field of political communication.

Our research shows that news sources differed significantly in tone, framing (Iyengar: episodic/thematic), level of detail, accuracy and relevance of detailed analyses, and W. Lance Bennett’s four information biases: authority-disorder, dramatization, fragmentation, and personalization. Our work calls into question the conventional wisdom about local news and some of the assumptions promoting thematic news narratives over “just the facts” coverage. Is episodic coverage that is factual without analytical embellishments inferior to thematic coverage? Are detailed, thematic news stories truly desirable if details are inaccurate, tangential, and geared toward Bennett’s information biases?

Authors

• Barbara Allen, Carleton College

• Bjorn Tofteland Holtey, Carleton College (Alumnus continuing research following graduation)

• Daniel Stevens, University of Exeter