Citation: Burleson, C. & Moody, M. (2011). Through a glass
darkly: A comparison of Jasper
Newsboy coverage with elite publications during the James Byrd Jr. Murder. Journal of Southwest America
Studies.
By
Casanda Burleson, Ph.D.
Baylor University Department of Journalism
& Media Arts
and
Mia Moody, Ph.D.
Baylor University Department of Journalism
& Media Arts
Waco, Texas
ABSTRACT
This
textual analysis looks at media framing of the 1998 James Byrd Jr. murder. Previous
studies provide an excellent overview of the crisis, reputation management and
media stereotyping; however, they do not compare and contrast local coverage
with elite media, nor do they look at the longitudinal effects on Jasper. This
article fills that void by comparing and contrasting frames found in the Jasper
Newsboy with those found in elite publications such as the New York Times and
USA Today and also assesses the lingering effects of media coverage on Jasper through
economic indicators such as unemployment, population, political and racial
breakdown indicators. The James Byrd Jr. murder merits scholarly study because
it was a momentous tragedy in Texas history that garnered worldwide attention. Frame analyses
are imperative because popular
culture provides a huge source of ideas that can shape people’s perceptions of
themselves and other people. Ultimately,
cultural narratives, frames and stereotypes send audiences hidden messages that
suggest people’s importance in society.
Acknowledgements: Thank you Baylor University Department of
American Studies and Department of Oral
History for funding the research that
made this paper possible.
INTRODUCTION
James Byrd Jr. always said he would put Jasper on the map one day.
He did, but not in the way he imagined. On June 7, 1998, three white men (one
local and two from a neighboring town) picked up the 49-year-old while he was
walking home. They beat Byrd up, then attached his body to their pickup truck
and dragged him by his ankles for miles, leaving his body parts scattered along
Huff Creek Road.
The
nation may always remember James Byrd Jr.’s murder, thanks to the news coverage
that shocked the nation. Jasper, which had a population of around 8,000, was
suddenly center-stage in a worldwide drama … like a snow globe turned upside down
and shaken vigorously. Hundreds of reporters from major TV networks and
newspapers in the United States and abroad converged on the small East Texas
town.
Throughout
history, media have depicted Texas residents as traditional, self-righteous and
simple-minded. These attributes are reflected through their characterization of
Texans as gun-toting, racist, deliberate separatists, on one hand, and God-fearing,
land/family loving, on the other (Schneider, 2007). Building on these dichotomous
cultural narratives, out-of-town scribes scalded Jasper’s image under the
media’s magnifying glass, a glass made darker by reporters looking for a Gothic
novel, revealing only a blurred outline of the truth. Some reporters blamed
Jasper for what happened. Later, some said the murder could have happened
anywhere. Either way, the small East Texas town paid
a high price for a hate crime three people committed.
The
James Byrd Jr. murder merits scholarly study because it was a momentous tragedy,
garnering attention worldwide. Inevitably, media coverage by national outlets differed
from reports by Jasper Newsboy journalists, who instinctively knew more about the
town’s political climate, leadership and race relations. The dichotomy of news
frames presented by the two media types provides an immense opportunity to
study differences in how differently local and elite publications cover tragedies.
Previous works addressing the Byrd incident have
looked at community relations and crisis management (see Glascock, 2004; Rojas,
Shah, Jaeho, Schmierbach, Keum, & Gil-de-Zuñiga, 2005; Burleson,
2004 and Underwood & Frey, 2007). These studies provide an excellent
overview of the crisis, reputation management, media stereotyping and the
values journalist brought to the scene; however, they do not compare and
contrast local coverage with elite media or look at the lingering longitudinal
effects.
This textual frame analysis fills that void by comparing and
contrasting frames found in the Jasper
Newsboy with those found in elite publications such as the New York Times and the USA Today. This study is relevant in
today’s rapidly changing media climate because newspaper articles provide
historical content that scholars may use to analyze mistakes made by the media
in covering various issues. Analyses such as this one may help reporters
improve reporting strategies. Such studies are imperative because
stereotypes in popular culture help people make sense of the world around them,
especially for depictions of people of different backgrounds. In the end,
cultural narratives, frames and stereotypes send audiences hidden messages that
suggest a region’s importance in society.
This essay is particularly relevant in the current political-cultural
climate, as recent events have reopened old wounds. The slated September 21,
2011, execution of Lawrence Russell Brewer, 44, one of Byrd’s murderers brings
the hate crime
to the forefront again. Brewer and John William King were convicted and
sentenced to die for the crime. King’s case remains in the courts on appeal. The
third member of the trio, Shawn Berry, who was a Jasper resident recruited by
the recent parolees, received life in prison.
Moreover,
the town’s predominantly black city council appointed a black police chief to
the dismay of many townspeople who argue he is less qualified than Anglo candidates
(Horn, 2011). In response, at least 16 disgruntled applicants have filed
reverse discrimination lawsuits. While the Byrd murder served to bring the
community together, some speculate the appointment will divide the community along
racial lines.
REVIEW OF
THE LITERATURE
News norms
Burleson (2004) suggested reporters covering the Byrd murder and trials
reported the events against the backdrop of enduring values as outlined by
Gans, who called for equitable treatment by media outlets covering poor and
disenfranchised citizens such as those touched by the Byrd tragedy. However, according to Gans (1979), it is impossible for
anyone to work in any environment without values, which he suggests in the news
industry may manifest themselves as subjectivity in coverage, which leads to framing. Entman
(1993) defined framing as selecting “some aspects of a perceived reality and
make them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a
particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or
treatment recommendation” (p. 52).
The framing body of
work shows that socioeconomic status, race, and education can make a difference
in how reporters frame certain issues. As a macroconstruct, the term “framing” refers to modes of presentation
that journalists and other communicators use to present information in a way
that resonates with existing underlying schemas among their audience (Shoemaker
& Reese, 1996). Frame analyses provide a means through which one can study different
aspects of a topic. For example, a “pro-life frame” will use terms such as
baby, abortionist, unborn, murder, and so on; whereas, the “pro-choice frame”
might use fetus, doctor, woman, and freedom to describe the same situation
(Hertog & McLeod, 1999).
The gatekeeper approach (Tuchman, 1978) is also pertinent to the study of the Byrd
tragedy because race and culture play a key role in what reporters and editors
perceive as important. Gatekeeping theory describes the role of initial
selection and later editorial processing of event reports in news
organizations. Undoubtedly, gatekeepers at local and elite outlets will have a
different idea or perception of what is important and what journalists should
cover in their respective newspapers. While debates about whether true
objectivity is even possible, it remains the cornerstones of mainstream
journalism.
Previous research on Byrd
Several
studies have focused on the James Byrd Jr. murder; however, they have not
examined media framing of the nexus of population, politics and economics. For
instance, Glascock (2004) found that the Jasper
Newsboy provided instructing and adjusting information, while the opinion
pages assisted in the town’s reputation management. The researcher provided a
brief outline of the crisis as it unfolded to provide a context for the paper's
role and an analysis of the Newsboy`s
opinion section. Glascock (2004) concluded The
Newsboy's coverage was an important part of the community's response to the
crisis, which ranged from prayer vigils to town hall meetings. By combining
elements of civic journalism and crisis communication, the newspaper helped the
town engineer a successful image-restoration campaign.
Burleson’s (2004) study suggested Gans’ typology of
enduring values (1979) was reflected in the milieu of media coverage from June 7,
1998 to March 15, 1999. Gans’ values are: ethnocentricism, altruistic
democracy, responsible capitalism, small-town pastoralism, individualism,
moderatism, order, and leadership.
Rather than media behavior, Rojas, Shah, Jaeho,
Schmierbach, Keum, & Gil-de-Zuñiga (2005) looked at audience reception of
the event. They conducted a quasi-experimental study exposing subjects to two
versions of documentary films focusing on the murder. Based on findings, they concluded media
consumption was positively related with willingness to discuss the issue of
race and participate politically around tragedy.
Finally, Underwood & Frey (2007) focused on
community in the context of communication. The authors examined the
transmission and constitutive perspective of communication in relation to
studies of community. They explored how community is conceptualized in
communication research, including information on the physical, social and psychological,
and meaning-making attributes of community and dialectical tensions in
communication and community research.
While these studies hold immense value and offer a
strong foundation for research, they
do not provide a communication/critical race perspective of Byrd’s murder and
the ensuing converge. Based on this review of the
literature, the key research questions for this study were:
RQ1. What
was the political, economic and racial climate of Jasper leading up to the
murder?
RQ2.
What were the key news frames in each newspaper for the Byrd coverage?
RQ3.
What are the long-lasting effects of the tragedy?
RESEARCH METHODS
To conduct
textual analyses, Miles and Hubermans (1994) instructed readers to immerse
themselves in data, organize it into categories, ask other researchers and
readers to look over their articles, and gauge the validity of the categories.
Similarly, Squires (2007) suggested grounded theory based in the idea that
meanings available in data themselves must guide a researcher rather than
shoehorning data into preexisting theoretical models.
In previous studies, researchers have used
two general approaches for framing research. The first is to derive deductively
the pervading themes and the second is to define certain frames, inductively,
and to use both deductive and inductive framing analysis (see Semetko &
Valkenburg, 2000), complementary approaches that bring together the strengths
of quantitative and qualitative analysis. In these inductive investigations,
five frames have been defined and investigated: conflict, human
interest, economic consequences, morality, and responsibility
(Semetko & Valkenburg, 2000). We used these predefined frames to analyze
deductively specific elements of each news article. We also read the articles with
open viewpoints to identify inductively recurring themes and to make sure we
had not missed important patterns with the deductive analysis. In determining
the frames or themes in this coverage, we read all articles several times (at
least twice for all, more for others) and compiled an extensive list of key
issues, phrases, depictions of James Byrd. These were synthesized into the
frames or themes presented.
Using the key words “Jasper,” “dragging”
and “murder,” we selected a sample made up of elite newspapers and the Jasper Newsboy. The elite publications
that we looked at include the New York
Times, USA Today and the Los Angeles Times. We chose these
publications because they are considered opinion leaders. Other news outlets
mimic their coverage and look to them as trendsetters. All articles were
accessed using the Lexis Nexis database. We selected the Newsboy because it is Jasper’s hometown newspaper. First published
in July 1865, the Newsboy is Texas’
oldest community weekly newspaper and is owned by Hearst Corporation. The Texas Managing Editors Press Association
ranked the Newsboy 10th-best community weekly in Texas. At the time of
the murder in 1998, the Newsboy was
published each Wednesday. It collaborated with Beaumont’s Enterprise on Sundays to cover the wider range of Jasper
County’s 32,999 residents.
Comparing these two types of newspapers
provided the means to characterize coverage by elite and small-town
publications.
BACKGROUND
Background: James Byrd Jr.
In
1998, the father of three and divorcee James Byrd Jr. lived alone in a modest
apartment afforded by his disability check. He did not own a car and often
accepted rides from acquaintances or walked around Jasper, where the
number of blacks almost equaled that of whites. He was the third of eight children
of Stella Byrd, a Sunday school teacher, and James Byrd Sr., a dry cleaner. The
family’s life revolved around Greater New Bethel Baptist Church, a few blocks
from their home, where she taught and her husband was a deacon (B. Boatner, personal
communication, June 28, 2011). While Byrd had once served as the church’s
minister of music, at some point, he lost faith and stopped going to church.
Byrd’s
sister, Clara Taylor, who refers to him as “Toe,” described her brother as a
larger-than-life character who had always wanted to be a famous musician (C.
Taylor, personal communication, June 28, 2011). He earned the nickname after
losing his large toe in a childhood bicycle accident. The local hospital “chose’’
not to reattach it, which left him with a permanent limp, Taylor explained in
an interview. “He was loud, he liked to have fun, he loved music,” she said.
Taylor said
she will never forget the actions on that fateful night that killed her brother.
It was an ironic crime scene, set between serene fields, tranquil lakes and
East Texas pines. Come sunrise, orange outlines of six circles partially
covered by black paint marked where Byrd’s dentures, keys – then his head and
shoulder – had fallen on the asphalt after being ripped from his torso. His
tortured corpse was in full view – in front of a cemetery near an
African-American church. It was discovered by 6-year-old Marlan Forward and his
stepfather on the way to pick up a Sunday newspaper (B. Rowles, personal
communication, May 26, 2011).
Byrd
was buried in the black section of a cemetery divided by a wrought-iron fence
for 160 years. A group of community members removed the fence Jan. 20, 1999. Ironically,
Byrd’s gravesite now has a similar wrought iron fence around it to protect it
from potential desecraters. His plot sits just behind his mother Stella’s, who
passed away in 2010. To make sure people never forget the heinous crime, the
Byrd family has erected a museum at their father’s home in Byrd’s honor. They
also have a memorial fund, which has paid for a park now equipped with a
basketball court and playground equipment.
Long-term impact
The county seat of Jasper County, Jasper is about 110
miles northeast of Houston and about 72 miles north of Beaumont.
Referred
to as a “Jewel in the Forest” and the “Pine Timber Belt,” Jasper’s economy is
driven by timber, oil, gas and tourism related to fishing and hunting. Jasper’s
economic trend was moving downward at the time of the murder (The Lure of Jasper, Jasper Chamber of
Commerce, 1998). Some said discrimination in Jasper was an economic, rather
than a racial, issue (E. Hopkins, personal communication, June 29, 2011).
Business closings prior to June 1998 included a chicken plant, several suppliers, a large door
manufacturer, U-Save Warehouse Foods, Lakes Regional Medical Center, a saw mill
where 57 jobs were lost, and a Louisiana-Pacific site that had just lost 350
jobs (Webb, 1999). Brent Meaux, a longtime Jasper small business owner, said the
number of for sale signs in the community shocked him after 1998 (B. Meaux,
personal communication, June 28, 2011). Almost every other house in every
neighborhood had a sign in front of it. Outsiders may have speculated it was
because of the Byrd incident, but it was because of the economy, stated Meaux (2011).
Before plant closings in 1999, county
unemployment was at 12.6 percent. Per
capita income was stagnant at $10,784 (Jasper Chamber of Commerce, 1998). Many
of Jasper’s poorest were black or Hispanic; competition for jobs often was
fierce, according to Willis Webb publisher of the Jasper Newsboy during the tragedy (W. Webb, personal communication,
April 8, 1999). In 1998, one reporter described Jasper as “big enough for a
Wal-Mart but small enough that the Cotton Patch Café still sells a plate of
chicken fried steak and fries for $2.99” (Hohler, 1998). In the small town,
wealth is measured by the amount of land a resident owns. “It takes about 20 years for a pine tree to reach maturity, so you can
imagine the power landowners have (H. Wright,
communication, June 29, 2011).”
The median household income for Jasper County has
increased considerably. In 1989, it was $21,612, increasing to $31,584 in 2000,
then to $39,085 in 2009. Conversely, Jasper City income has fluctuated. It
increased in 2000, from $23,272 to $24,671, and then decreased in 2009 to
$24,598. (Table 1).
Table 1: Jasper
County and Jasper City Median
Household Income by Year 1989 2000 2009
Jasper
County
Jasper
City
|
$21,612
$23,272
|
$31,584
$24,671
|
$39,085 $24,598
|
Source: (U.S. Census Bureau)
Webb said electricity rates were one of
Jasper’s biggest problems in 1998 (Webb, 1998). He hoped the Mayor’s Task Force
created in the wake of Byrd’s murder would work on economic issues, such as
attracting jobs and providing education, as well as healing racism. When
interviewed in November 1998, Webb said Jasper had “evolved spiritually” since
the story had broken the previous June, but added that Jasper’s economy had not
recovered from the downward trend it was experiencing before the murder
occurred.
Webb, who is not a Jasper native, thought
Jasper should “modernize its thinking on racial issues for economic
reasons.” He speculated that education
would be the key to racial harmony and economic health. Webb
believed such problems lessen when education, “both the classroom variety and
the embracing diversity kind,” are offered to the greatest extent and benefit
possible. “Discontent is minimal when more people have jobs that put food on
the table, roofs over heads and money in pockets” (Webb, 1998).
However, Jasper’s residents who do not put
as much emphasis on education have stifled progress. Constituents voted down a
bond election to improve the city’s junior high school, which is in great
disrepair. While the city has a satellite
campus for Angelina College, many students go off to college, preferring to
enroll at Sam Houston State University and Texas A&M. Most of them never
return. Today, the economy remains unstable.
FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
When the story broke, Webb said the Newsboy office became a “clearinghouse”
for out-of-town reporters. Media outlets they talked to included all the major
networks, CNN, C-SPAN, radio stations all over the United States and major
dailies, including the New York Times,
Los Angeles Times and USA Today…. “It’s just all-intrusive. There’s absolutely no private moment
for anybody because of the cameras in their face,” Webb said. “It was an eye-opener for me. … It really makes you step back and take a
hard look at the media – all of us.”
Ironically,
in a travel magazine a few months before the murder, Jasper had billed itself
as: “Jasper, the friendly host” (Thurow, 1998). As luck would have it, Jasper residents got a chance to prove their hosting
tolerance to people from all over the world during the intense coverage
after Byrd’s murder, a fact pointed out in an Oct. 2, 1998, San Antonio Express-News editorial: “This newspaper understands Jasper’s pleas
of late to be left alone. Residents have
been gracious in their willingness to tolerate so many disparate voices, and
they have been polite in their calls for fewer visitors” (Higher Taxes, 1998).
Nevertheless,
hundreds of media representatives swarmed to Jasper because: “Tragedies like
the brutal murder … attract national media, politicians and other opportunists
like flies to a screen door. Everyone
wants to get inside and buzz around” (Three Separate
Trials, 1998, A2). Expectedly, June 1998 coverage was displayed prominently in
all three elite newspapers in our sample because of timeliness and the murder’s
bizarre details. Besides facts about the event, media accounts also carried
balanced, neutral/positive, and negatively biased messages about Jasper.
Typical negative comments in 1998 were similar to this excerpt from the New York Daily News (Garza and
Siemaszko, 1998).
Racism is kind of like death in Texas. You’re always going to have
it. Clergy in this churchgoing city …
called for calm as police patrolled the streets. “Everybody is afraid this will
trigger off violence between blacks and whites.
We’re integrated by law, but segregated by heart. I guess it took something like that to bring
that out.” In 1993 the klan (sic)
staged a protest in Vidor, about 50 miles south of Jasper, against a federal
order to integrate a white public housing complex. And there are at least a half-dozen hate
groups in the area, said Laurie Wood of the Southern Poverty Law Center (p. A5).
Findings
indicate that although some differences existed in news coverage by elite
newspapers and the Jasper Newsboy, analysis
demonstrated that both framed the overall story in similar ways. Frames included
“guilty by association,” “exception to the rule,” and “Jasper can handle the
murder case; the real problem stems from outsiders such
as the KKK and the Black Panthers trying to stir up trouble.” Traditional news
frames included “conflict” and “financial.”
Conflict frame
Perhaps the most dominant frame was “conflict,” a vital news
value stressed in most newsrooms. However, emotive language, the inclusion of
negative facts, and quotes depicting Jasper as predominantly racist were
prominent. With deadline strains and a crime reminiscent of Mississippi’s 1955
Emmett Till case (Breed, 1958), some 1998 reporters quickly typecast Jasper as
a racist community. Many headlines and leads prominently displayed the fact
that a black man was dragged to his death from the back of a pickup truck in a
rural section of Texas (true) known for its Klan activity, which was false,
according to community leaders both black and white.
To
support their stereotypical framing, many journalists quoted Gary Bledsoe,
Texas National Association for the Advancement of Colored People president, who
emphasized, “the eastern part of Texas … has been considered a problem area and
a hotbed of Klan activity for years” (Cropper, 1998, A16). Bledsoe pointed to race-relations
problems, such as the controversy surrounding the integration of a housing
project in Vidor, which is located about 50 miles away. For decades, Vidor had
been an all-white town where white supremacists dressed in sheets had thwarted
integration by threatening the first black residents and teenagers (Cropper, 1998).
Out-of-town journalists also promoted conflict between
races by fueling rumors that Byrd’s death was a warning from the Ku Klux Klan.
Many news outlets quoted a source as predicting “they were going to get two
more blacks” and to infer imminent riots, also promoting conflict. Media outlets
also reported local clergy were calling for calm. For example, a New York Times story
included this excerpt (Garza & Siemaszko, 1998,
A5):
Jasper enjoys a reputation as being more racially sensitive than other towns in rural southeastern
Texas. But when Jasper County Sheriff Billy Rowles said there was no Klan
activity in the area, black residents openly jeered. In 1993 the klan (sic) staged a protest in Vidor, about 50
miles south of Jasper, against a federal order to integrate a white public
housing complex. And there are at least
a half-dozen hate groups in the area, said Laurie Wood of the Southern Poverty
Law Center.
In case readers missed clues about guilt-by-geographic-location,
reporters at USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, and the New York Times pinpointed
Jasper and Vidor as close neighbors on a Texas map (Cropper, 1998; Jones, 1998).
In 1998, a reporter’s biased tone often began with the lead, escalated to
inflammatory asides, and ended by portraying Jasper as “redneck,
tobacco-spittin’ country.” For example,
journalist Carol Cropper wrote in a June 10, 1998, New York Times story that
Jasper was located “in a rural section of Texas known for racist and Klan
activity.” To emphasize imminent racial tensions, Cropper mentioned the history
of racism in Vidor and ended by saying that “the NAACP and FBI are watching the case” (Cropper, 1998, p. A16).
Guilty by association
The “guilty by association” frame was
common. Reporters included information
about the Ku Klux Klan and the NAACP, linked the three suspects to the Klan or
Aryan Nation, and reported suspected Klan, Aryan Nation and militia activity so
as to make readers believe these practices were common, i.e., indigenous to Jasper and those who lived there in 1998.
Reports
also cited national statistics about the burning of black churches, the
suspicious death of a black high school student who was dating a white girl in
1977, deaths of blacks who were in police custody in nearby towns (many years,
if not decades, before) – or a more recent burning and beheading of a black man
in Virginia. Stories fanned rumors, using
negative quotes: “There’s never been a racial problem before. There’s gonna’ be one now” (Hart, 1998,
A1).
Reporters
gave credence to rumors of an armed compound in Mount Enterprise and an upsurge
in membership in nearby Christian Identity Churches with congregations led by
white supremacists. Additionally, they generalized with statements such as East
Texas has a history much older than the term hate crime. Articles included
phrases such as “less than an hour’s drive from Vidor,” “a KKK bastion,” and
inferred that the murder provoked fears that the town’s black population might
retaliate for the brutal death of a man who was well liked. Journalists conjectured
the murder was in revenge for the beating death of a white contractor on the
previous Sunday. They fueled the accusation by playing up the idea that black residents
remained unconvinced by white leaders that racism was not allowed to breed in
established Klan territory near Jasper (Rhodes, 1998).
Exception to the rule
Accounts published the first few days after Byrd’s murder clearly
portrayed Jasper as a racist community. Later journalists began to portray the
town as a victim. For example, some reporters said Jasper embodied the good and
bad elements of the South. Others honed in on how the tragic event had brought
whites and blacks together in outrage and determination to end racial violence.
While reporters searched for answers, Jasper was a city searching its soul, a
place where local leaders – many of whom were black – were “pleading that the
entire community not be branded as racist because of the actions of a violent
few.”
During this period of healing, a prominent frame was “Byrd’s
murder was an exception to the rule.” Such articles indicated that most Whites
in Jasper get along with Blacks. In other words, the dragging was an isolated
case of murder and has nothing to do with overall race relations. Reporters
quoted Sheriff Billy Rowles saying, “We’ve got a problem, and we’re taking
control of this. It’s obvious this is a
bad mess. It’s a terrible thing.” Visual
stories noted a local resident’s sign that read, “Jasper, Texas, is mourning,
hurting, crying. America, please pray
for us” (Jones, 1998).
Journalists admitted interference “from
publicity-hungry outsiders” made Jasper’s tragedy worse (Sanders, 1998, A1).
Some described it as “a town that doesn’t fit the stereotype of a racist East
Texas town” (Clack, 1998, A17). Other reporters defended Jasper: “To hear the
locals tell it, the world came here in search of a Southern gothic: the all-too-familiar
tale of a racist killing in a backward town with redneck lawmen unwilling or
unable to solve the crime. But that’s
not Jasper’s story” (Hancock, 1998, A1).
Coverage that was more balanced included a
story as early as June 11 in the Fort
Worth Star-Telegram that began: “There are no likenesses of
African-Americans in historic photographs displayed in the old but striking
Jasper County Courthouse. Yet no easy stereotype can be drawn of Jasper …”
(Shlacter, 1998, A1). Coverage presenting Jasper as intolerant of racism also
appeared in the USA Today and other
publications such as the New York Times, which
published this excerpt (Bragg, 1998, p. A1):
Instead
of living in simmering bitterness, instead of erupting in racial conflict,
blacks and whites have joined … in prayer vigils, rallies and sometimes just
one-on-one discussions over chicken-fried steak, all intended to bind up the
wounds caused by that crime and to show the outside world that what happened
here hurt and outraged all the town’s people, not just its blacks.
Although media swung to a less biased
approach relatively early, some people speculated it was too little, too late,
to repair Jasper’s damaged image. To
counteract negative portrayals, the Jasper
Newsboy contained positive frames from the beginning. Webb and Mike Journee, a reporter from Jasper who was Webb’s
right arm, both said reports from media portrayed Jasper negatively. “I kind of
felt an obligation to come forward and say, ‘Look, this is not Jasper. This doesn’t reflect Jasper or who we are’
and point out this could happen anywhere,” Journee said (Word, 1998, 12).
Both said they felt they had to be “more
responsible” in reporting news than outside media. Webb, who attended Byrd’s
wake, said, “Cameras and the media were so intrusive – so in their face,”
adding that Byrd’s family’s faith had uplifted him during the media circus. “We
have a kinship here, whether we have a friendship or not.” Webb said he was most disappointed in Time magazine’s coverage, and both said
the London Observer’s “The
Town That Shamed America” and an editorial cartoon by Kirk Walters in the
Toledo [Ohio] Blade depicting two rednecks talking with a chain behind their
truck with the caption, “Sure lowers the value, don’t it?” These publications
included glaring examples of media bias.
Conversely, Journee admired the 1998
coverage by the Houston Chronicle’s
Richard Stewart (1998), the Dallas Morning News’ Lee Hancock and the Beaumont Enterprise’s Cathy Frye. Journee stated, “Media
came in looking for an Old-South angle.
They’d ask questions like, ‘What about the Klan activity in this area?’
and ‘How wide-spread is racism in Jasper?’
This was an aberration. They were
surprised when they learned that the real leaders in our town were black.” While
there are places near the town that may more closely fit Texas stereotypes,
Jasper prided itself in being more progressive. “There are places in the piney
woods where you can hide anything – places where even a lawman wouldn’t go –
not alone, anyway,” said Webb, replying to a query about local Klan activity.
Nevertheless, those places were the exception to the rule.
Even before the Bird murder, Newsboy editors were cognizant of providing a
balanced view in their coverage, sending reporters to appropriate
spokespersons, and printing stories that called for tolerance among races and
acceptance of diversity. Our analysis of
Newsboy articles during this period
revealed integrated (racially diverse) news coverage of more than 25 percent
for the Sunday editions in the sample and slightly more than 20 percent for the
city edition, which exceeded the requisite percentages necessary to be
consistent with the makeup of its population in 1998. In fact, on average during the three-month
period under study, Newsboy coverage
also nearly matched the percent of black and non-black proportions, including a
story on the Korean wife and children of the new Episcopalian priest.
It was clear from an examination of the newspaper that when they
had a choice, they selected photos with mixed races. Although school coverage in June and July was
relatively light, school-related sports coverage, general education news, and
dominant, or the largest on the page, photographs in the Newsboy often depicted both races. Photos
and stories about other types of sports news such as hunting, fishing, women’s
social events and individual church events, seldom were integrated. These
figures suggest Newsboy coverage of
both Jasper and the county was correlated to appropriate percentages before and
after Byrd’s murder in 1998. Part of that balance was due to the coverage of
school news. The school district was the city’s second largest employer and staff,
sports activities and classes were integrated.
Webb said he was proud of his decision
to make the opinion page a place for open community dialogue. He felt strongly that “the heart of a
newspaper is the opinion page,” (1998). Newsboy
guest columnists and reporters offered their take on the hate crime. For
example, Jasper’s Chief of Police Harlan Alexander (1999) described how the
event changed his job tremendously. “Tuesday
morning I was talking to Vice President Al Gore. Then at 1 o’clock, I was out chasing a dog.”
One month earlier, he had written about a “crime” story where a man in a blond
wig who was exposing himself to a local postal worker was caught by a male
police officer in a blond wig who was impersonating a woman
(Alexander, 1999).
After dealing with media representatives for months, Jasper Newsboy columnist and Lutheran
minister Rev. Walter Snyder (1998) concluded, “Meeting ignorance with knowledge
is draining, especially if the questions are non-stop …. Some try to find a vast
web of sheet-wearing whites in Jasper County. Others say Jasper is a model of
racial harmony.” Snyder asserted that the evidence for either extreme is
scanty. “The very hate that we abhor in
the murder begins to find new avenues in wagging tongues, tapping keyboards and
scratching pens.”
Jasper’s leadership
In 1998, the City of Jasper’s
egalitarianism was evident in the number of elected black leaders. While the
1990 census reported that the community was around 55 percent white, and 45
percent black, many of its leaders were black. Coverage calling Jasper racist
was set against the backdrop of Jasper’s black leadership, which included Mayor
R. C. Horn, a council member, a high school assistant principal, the executive
director of the Deep East Texas Council of Governments, a hospital CEO, a
county extension agent and the ministerial alliance chair. “Jasper over the
last two decades has been electing African-Americans to the City Council and
the school board and elevating them to top business and civic
posts, like administrator of the hospital and chair of the Chamber of Commerce”
(Thurow, 1998).
The town’s leaders did not fit preconceived notions
journalists had of small Texas towns. “When the media came, they asked us who
to talk to,” Webb said, adding, “We gave them names. They’d come back and say, ‘Where are the
other leaders?’ We’d say, ‘Those are our leaders.’” In the end, Jasper’s
leaders created the Ministerial Alliance, chaired and dominated by black
ministers, who ended up speaking for both communities. “The community searched
for some white leaders; however, nobody really wanted the job,” Webb added.
Due to a heavy minority county population (23.5
percent), both current and past county officials have
run on the Democratic platform. However,
“it can be said with almost total certainty that they are conservative and vote
Republican in general elections for anything above the county level,” said Webb
(1999). For example, in the 1998 gubernatorial elections, 85 percent of state officials who won
Jasper County were Democrats, including U.S. Representative Jim Turner.
Conversely, in the 2006 gubernatorial elections, only 9 percent of state officials who won Jasper County were Democrats.
Today, Jasper has one white, four black city council members, and a white
mayor. Conversely, the school board has three Anglo members and two African
Americans.
Similarly, the ratio of racial groups may have shocked
journalists who expected a mostly white population. Jasper’s population has not
changed since 1998, and there continues to be a larger percentage of Whites in
Jasper County than any other group. Additionally, there are fewer of both
Blacks and Whites now than in 2000, but there are far more Asians, American
Indians and Hispanics in Jasper County than in previous decades (Table 2).
Table 2. Jasper
County Racial Makeup of Residents by Year
|
Black
|
White
|
Asian
|
Hispanic
|
Am. Indian
|
1990
|
5,868
|
24,750
|
38
|
594
|
76
|
2000
|
6,341
|
27,855
|
113
|
1,384
|
148
|
2009-10
|
6,002
|
27,814
|
181
|
1,720
|
161
|
Source: (U.S. Census Bureau)
While the city’s residents and leaders are diverse,
local architecture reveres Jasper’s antebellum past – which may have reinforced
stereotypes in people’s minds in 1998 following Bryd’s murder. For example,
Walter Diggles, who is black, feared Jasper was a racist community and visited
Jasper incognito before agreeing to
work as chief administrator of the Deep East Texas Council of Governments (W.
Diggles, personal communication, June 28, 2011). While Diggles said he did not
find Jasper racist, segregation’s ghosts hovered over
Jasper in 1998. The city’s swimming pool was filled with cement after Brown v.
Board of Education (May 17, 1954), when integration became law. Signs above
water fountains stating, “colored” and “white,” were permanently etched in
people’s minds (R. Horn, personal communication, June 28, 2011). Local lore
included the suspicious death of a black high school youth dating a white girl
in 1977 and the death of a black college youth who was dating the former
white girlfriend of a local law officer. A black man shortly before Byrd’s
murder also had killed a wealthy white man because the black man, who was
allegedly an alcoholic, was denied an advance on his next paycheck, causing
some to whisper that Byrd’s death was retribution (B. Rowles, personal
communication, May 11, 2011).
We will
never know the full effect of Byrd’s murder on the town’s population growth
because it occurred around the same time as multiple plant closings in Jasper. Hurricane Rita also greatly affected Jasper on September
25, 2005, when Jasper suffered considerable damage and the town was a without
power or drinkable water for about three and half weeks. Many residents of
Jasper left – never to return.
However, according to U.S. Census reports, since
1998, Jasper County’s population has increased from 31,102 people in 1990 to
35,710 in 2010. Conversely, findings indicate the rate of growth in Jasper City
has fluctuated (Table 2). The population increased from 7,160 people in 1990 to
8,247 in 2000, and then declined in 2010 to 7,590, suggesting people were
moving away from the city at a faster rate than they were moving to it (Table 3).
Table 3: Jasper County and Jasper Population by Year
County City
Census 2010:
|
35,710
|
7,590
|
Census 2000:
|
35,604
|
8,247
|
Census 1990:
|
31,102
|
7,160
|
Source:
(U.S. Census Bureau)
Many people agree that some positive actions came out of the
horrific murder. Community programs helped bring people of different races
together. Ministers of all faiths formed an alliance that aided in the healing
process. James Byrd Jr.’s parents also stood strong in their faith and asked
for peace, turning away offers from the Black Panthers to seek revenge. In the
end, Byrd’s murder and the murder of homosexual Alex Sheppard spurred the Hate
Crime Bill. However, the mere mention of James Byrd’s death still has a
horrific connotation in the minds of most people. Only time will tell if the
stigma of the “Jasper Dragging” will ever dissipate.
LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE STUDIES
Findings from this study have important implications
for mass media scholars who have long argued that it is important to understand
the ways in which the journalistic framing of issues occurs. Such framing
influences public understanding and, consequently, policy formation. While this
study provides a solid qualitative overview of media frames used by elite and
local presses, it does not include the percentage of times each frame occurred.
We did not intend for this textual analysis to serve that purpose; however,
future studies might add a quantitative element by counting the occurrence of
each frame outlined in this paper.
Additionally, while this article only looks at
integrated coverage of Jasper Newsboy articles, future studies might compare
the newspaper to similar
newspapers in Texas and elsewhere in 1998 (such as Huntsville and Lufkin). Also
relevant is how other regional newspapers covered the issue to look at the
dynamics at work based on the newspaper’s location.
Another worthy study might focus exclusively on in-depth
interviews from editors and reporters to
find out if they consciously decided to frame the issue a certain way. Such a
study might also address other issues such as how newsroom, values, etc.,
translate into different frames. A comparison of interviews from 1998
with those conducted more recently also might add valuable insight. Scholars
might also might explore how media framed the key players in this murder case.
For example, media coverage of Byrd, in comparison to other hate crime victims such
as Matthew Sheppard, might provide valuable insight into the nuances of media
stereotyping.
CONCLUSIONS
Racial tolerance is like love – difficult to
quantify. This study provides insight into the framing and economic, political
and population effects of the James Byrd Jr. murder. It appears that the Jasper Newsboy and elite news
publications differed in their framing of the murder at first. Nonetheless,
their frames became more similar in the end. Many out-of-town reporters came to
Jasper with preconceived notions that they transferred to their news report.
However, the Jasper Newsboy had a
head start in the political cultural context of the city, which helped its
journalists frame the event in a more realistic manner. Similar to previous
studies addressed in the literature, both publication types focused on
conflict, which is a basic news element and expected, due to the context of the
dragging incident, which is hinged in conflict.
Worth noting is news frames changed over the span
of a few months. While elite media outlets framed the town as incapable of
handling the tragedy at first, they changed their perspective after the Byrd
family and Jasper leaders showed they were competent and peaceful. By
counteracting these stereotypes, the town managed to change the focus of
coverage. Frames shifted from “conflict” and “guilty by association,” to the
murder was an “exception to the rule” and “Jasper can handle the murder case;
the real problem stems from outsiders such as the KKK and the Black Panthers
trying to stir up trouble.”
The “financial”
news frame is perhaps the longest lasting. In 2002, the Wall Street Journal reported that Jasper County had to raise
property taxes by 6.7 percent over two years to pay for the death penalty
trails. Even today, stories focus on financial problems caused by the poor
economy, job loss, and the fallout of the murder, such as the trials and image
repair. Additionally, Jasper residents continue to experience the long-lasting
impact of plant closings and Hurricane Rita. Considering the economic and
psychological impact evident in 2011, Jasper is still reeling from the blight
of an image left by members of an out-of-town Fourth Estate now busy covering
other stories in other towns, and continuing a healing process that was
engendered through the soul-searching of a glaring media spotlight.
Whether
the execution of Lawrence Russell Brewer on September 21, 2011, will ameliorate
that somehow, no one knows. Simultaneously,
in Jasper’s quiet, picturesque setting, “young saplings rise by plan from the
land where the forests were planlessly
slain” (Carter, 1950, p. 176). Like pine
seedlings replacing trees harvested by the saws of a now-dwindling lumber
industry, a new generation is rising in Jasper. Still as Southern as magnolia
trees, theirs is a legacy of ambiguity, a few perhaps racist on the one hand
and “Christian” on the other, looking at the past – and the future – through a
glass, darkly. Their story continues.
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