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How did people got word of police brutality in the 1950s? (nord.pub)

submitted 2 days ago by NightOps@nord.pub to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

32 comments fedilink hide all child comments

There is no internet (let alone social media or body cams) during that era, since Jim Crow in America was still being enforced towards black people at that time, but the civil rights movement is gaining traction (since Martin Luther King was alive). I mean, cop violence has been around for a long time before body cams were invented. How did people hear first hand encounters from those victimized back then without reliance on social media?

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[–] dellish@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

OK, get this: the media used to do its job. Before Murdoch and then other billionaire assholes bought everything up, the media used to let people know, without too much bias and editorialising (of course there was some, but not completely wide-spread in the same direction), what was going on in the world.

Now almost all media is complicit in cover-ups and downright lies. The media doesn't push back, doesn't investigate, doesn't make politicians shit scared like they used to. You have to go back to the mid or early 80s and before to see what media was actually capable of. Watergate toppled a president, but these days a similar scandal would just be a Wednesday.

Of course all this is by design. An ignorant public make for ignorant voters, which in turn makes campaigns a lie-filled popularity contest instead of something they ought to be: a discussion of ideals and policy. Each electorate is effectively a tribe voting on who is going to represent them in congress with the rest of the country. But do your elected representatives actually represent you now? Not generally, mainly because most voters don't know what they're voting for and that's because the media, which ought to be reporting on what's going on so the public are informed, has failed.

Sorry I seem to have gone on a bit of a rant, but this is something the REALLY pisses me off.