In the recent aftermath of the trial in which former Minneapolis police officer Mohamed Noor was convicted of killing an unarmed white woman, Justine Damond, after she called 9-1-1 in July 2017 to report a possible crime, CNN's coverage showed a double standard in the amount of attention given to alleged police misconduct based on the race of the victim.
CNN gave almost no attention to the case of Damond after the April 30 verdict, burying it early in the morning for a total of just over a minute of coverage.
By contrast, the news network spent more than 43 minutes over two days last week discussing the release of previously unseen cell phone video of black motorist Sandra Bland being confronted by a Texas police officer in 2015 who questionably arrested her after she refused to put out a cigarette during a traffic stop.
The case gained notoriety because, within days of her arrest, she died in custody, in what was ruled a suicide.
Between the afternoon of May 7 and the morning of May 9, CNN’s New Day, CNN Tonight, and CNN Newsroom with Brooke Baldwin each covered the story on two different days, and Early Start covered it on Wednesday morning.
The heavy coverage of the Bland case, compared to the almost non-existent coverage of the verdict in the Damond case, suggests a possible racial double-standard in CNN's coverage of alleged police misconduct.
