By Michael Shaw
Columbia Journalism Review
July 26, 2017
In this article the author contrasts the graphic difference in the way today’s opioid crisis is being covered from the coverage by mainstream and social media of the heroin crisis of the 1970s and crack cocaine crisis of the 1980s. Not surprisingly that difference includes stark racial contrasts. According to the author:
Read ArticleThere is a clear double standard in the visual framing of the opioid crisis. The gentler tone presents a marked departure from historical drug coverage, and the bias in the depiction of the problem as it plagues urban people of color feels baked in. What is even more concerning is the prospect for closing this perceptual gap.