“Facing a Hostile Public”: The Role of Mainstream Media in the Construction of Perceiving the Killing of Michael Brown and its Aftermath

May 2025

I. Introduction

On a humid summer Saturday afternoon in Ferguson, a suburb of Saint Louis, Missouri, 18-year-old Michael Brown and 22-year-old Dorian Johnson, both black males, walked down the asphalt street of Canfield Drive. It was August 9, 2014, and the pair walked back towards their nearby homes, as they had just left the Ferguson Market and Liquor down the street. Darren Wilson, a police officer in his sixth year with the Ferguson Police Department, briefly paused to speak to the boys, driving his FPD SUV. Wilson instructed them to walk on the sidewalk rather than on the yellow dotted line. Two minutes later, Michael Brown was dead, his body laying on that same stretch of yellow dotted line.

Within those two minutes, some sort of confrontation occurred between Brown and Wilson. Because Wilson was not wearing a police bodycam, the actual lineup of the events is up for debate. The killing led to a grand jury trial in November 2014, where 29 witnesses, none of whom were present for the full duration of the incident, delivered their individual perspectives. The trial found that Wilson was innocent and had only fired in order to protect himself. 

In the official DOJ file, Wilson stated that he had been informed by FPD dispatch transmissions that, while he was on a call that preceded the shooting, there was a nearby theft of cigarillos at Ferguson Market. As Wilson drove by the convenience store, he spotted two males walking down the road, one with cigarillos in hand. Yet, Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson said in a press conference on August 14th that the robbery “had nothing to do with the stop.” Hours later, he backtracked, saying that Wilson’s seeing the cigars and “made the connection.” Despite Jackson noting that the robbery and the killing were separate occurrences, the clerk at Ferguson Market identified a man matching Brown’s description and clothing as the primary suspect. The surveillance footage from the convenience store was released on August 15th, less than a week after his death. Only after Wilson was found innocent was a timeline of events released, this being the official DOJ report. FPD rarely made statements or held press conferences after a federal investigation was launched into FPD in September. For those three months, one could only turn to the media, whether it be social or news, for further information. Even in the reasoning for the initial police intervention, the confirmed facts are unclear. 

The concept of a freshly 18-year-old black male alleged to have stolen $48 worth of Swisher Sweets cigarillos and was wearing socks with a marijuana leaf graphic at the time of his murder, which came following a curse-filled and hands-on exchange with a police officer, was just enough of an angle of supposed criminality for the media to run with. Further, Brown’s postmortem toxicology report showed that he had marijuana in his system at the time of his death (cannabis usage in Missouri was legalized in 2022). 

While information was scant for the days immediately following the shooting, a vigil was held the evening of Brown’s death on the sidewalk adjacent to where he lay slain just hours prior. A crowd had gathered in the afternoon, assumably upon hearing the police sirens and related uproar. According to Mother Jones, a police officer “let” his K-9 unit dog urinate straight onto the flower-filled memorial. There was also a separate shrine in the yellow line at the center of the road, with candles and flower petals. As the sun set, FPD cut off non-police vehicle traffic to Canfield Drive, and the lit tealights became glass shards under the weight of STLPD tires.

The immediacy of the intentional destruction of the multiple memorials for Brown, who at that point had been dead for less than ten hours, sliced through the communal tension. Overnight, dozens of nearby businesses and structures were lit on fire, vandalized, or looted. 

The evening of August 9, 2014 began not as a protest but as a moment of reflection upon the life of an unarmed young man who had been gunned down by an on-duty police officer [Figure 1]. In the morning, Michael Brown was viewed as a criminal. In the morning, photos of a burnt QuikTrip gas station took the front page of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch [Figure 2]. After the ‘innocence’ result of the grand jury trial was released in November, the fiery unrest resumed. Again, Brown was not the center of attention. The banner on November 25th read, ‘No charges for Wilson: Pockets of Rioting, Looting Erupt’, accompanied by a photo of firefighters tending to a burning police car [Figure 3]. The only picture of Brown is a single square cutout at the bottom half of the page, noticeably smaller than the bulging type used for the headline. Besides the lack of photos of Brown or his grieving family, the statistic of Ferguson’s 94% white police force was rarely mentioned. As the only official timeline is the police report through the DOJ, Brown’s “overpower[ing]” 6’5 and 289 lb. frame and timed release of information regarding his alleged assistance in the cigarello robbery could have been seen as a rationalization for his killing. While the murder of Michael Brown sparked enormous nationwide press coverage, the focus of the media very quickly shifted from the gruesome details of a black teenager murdered by police to the town’s black residents looting through blazing chaos on city streets. 

II. The Issue of the Timeline

With no bodycam and no clear line of events from witness testimony, the story of Michael Brown was passed on through word of mouth. Several witnesses, including Dorian Johnson, stated that Brown had had his hands raised at the moment that Wilson delivered the fatal shots. The Brown family’s lawyer, who had also represented Trayvon Martin’s family, described the murder in a statement on August 15th, referring to it as an “execution-style murder by this police officer in broad daylight.” Reverend Al Sharpton, who came to St. Louis to deliver a eulogy for Brown, told the crowd, “If you want justice, throw your arms up. Because that’s the sign Michael was using. He had a surrender sign. That’s the sign you have to deal with. Use the sign he last showed. We want answers why that last sign was not respected.” These claims, both from the Brown family as well as several other witnesses from the legal testimony, led to the creation of the online hashtag #HandsUpDontShoot. During the trial, Brown’s physical positioning in his final moments was heavily disputed. In March 2015, Washington Post writer Jonathan Capehart published an op-ed, claiming that the #HandsUpDontShoot movement was “built on a lie”, and referred to the fallen teenager as “an inappropriate symbol.” 

The official police timeline is outlined in the DOJ proceedings from the grand jury trial. After instructing Johnson and Brown to move, Wilson resumed driving. Wilson abruptly stopped the car at a sideways angle to block the road and testified that when Wilson called for backup, Brown approached the vehicle and “punched and grabbed Wilson.” Wilson further said that his mace was unreachable due to the ongoing fight between him, seated in the driver’s seat of the SUV, and Brown, standing at the rolled-down window. His FPD firearm, a pistol, was the only available tool to end the spat. Wilson pulled his gun and told Brown to cease or else he would fire. “You are too much of a pussy to shoot,” Brown allegedly said to Wilson, and put his hand over Wilson’s. After Wilson shot three times, misfiring twice and hitting the SUV’s door once, Brown moved away from the car. Wilson noted that Brown “looked like a demon”, and continued to harm the officer. He unsuccessfully shot again, the gun jamming twice. Brown turned and ran away from the scene, while Johnson hid behind a nearby white car. Wilson left his car and chased the teenager on foot, keeping his gun at his side. After running approximately 20-30 feet, Brown halted and turned around to face Wilson, with his hands up. He testified that Brown began to run towards him, with the “‘most intense aggressive face’ that he had ever seen on a person”. Brown put his hand into the waistband of his pants, which Wilson perceived as him drawing a weapon. Wilson shot, hitting Brown once in the head and four times in the right arm, subsequently falling to the floor. Even after the shot to his upper skull, Wilson testified that Brown sat up “as though he was getting ready to ‘tackle’ Wilson,” who then sent a second bullet into Brown’s right eye. 

Johnson said in a TV interview with WAVY TV 10 six days after the murder that the police chief had yet to “find time” to talk with him, and that he was reluctant to speak with FPD at all. In the Berkeley Journal of Criminal Law, former Assistant Director of the FBI Ronald Hosko wrote, “Dorian Johnson quickly became a media darling. His first-hand recitation of events fed a view that some believe is all too common in police encounters with Black men in America — compliance (or surrender) followed by fatal police gunfire.” Hosko also suggested that the news and television crews “seemed eager to broadcast the lynching of a rogue, racist cop on live TV.” Immediately following the shooting, Johnson ran from the scene, saying, “He just killed my friend.” He then went home, changed his shirt, and returned to the scene, but refused to speak with police officers. Rather, he went to Brown’s grandmother’s nearby home, and informed her and other present family members of Brown’s death. Brown’s family then “encourage[d]” Johnson to speak with the media. In Johnson’s speaking with the media crews, he candidly told his side of the events. Johnson, known as Witness 101 during the trials, said that Brown was fatally shot “execution-style” with his hands up as if surrendering. Johnson’s recounting of the pre-gunfire events matched Wilson’s, yet had more detail in verbiage. According to Johnson, Wilson instructed them to “get the fuck on the sidewalk” and that as Wilson rushed to park his car, he almost hit the pair. Because he parked so close to Brown and Johnson, when Wilson attempted to open the door and exit the vehicle, the door opened “less than an inch” and bounced off of their bodies, shutting it back onto Wilson. Johnson also referred to the brutal scuffle between Wilson and Brown as a “tug of war.” After Wilson exited his car, Johnson says that after a nearby car would not allow him entry, Wilson ran right past him, eyes only on Brown. In Johnson’s sighting of his friend’s final moments, Brown put his hands in the air (noting that one was held higher than the other), faced Wilson, and said, “I don’t have a gun”. As Brown began to repeat the phrase, Wilson fired, and Brown “took a half-step forward” and fell to the ground. The case file notes during Witness 101’s testimony that despite Johnson saying that Brown did not put his hands near his waist, the St. Louis City Medical Examiner “found Brown with his left hand at his waistband.”

In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, multiple social media posts were made that described Brown’s fatal shooting, including the fact that his arms were held up in the air. The St. Louis City PD interviewed one of the original posters, who said that he was not present at the incident but that that was what he had heard from those who were there. Three of the witnesses interviewed (119, 125, and 131) told police after the fact that they were not actually witnesses, and that they simply wanted to be involved. 16 out of the 29 witnesses said that they saw Brown raise his hands in the air before he was shot. 

Although Wilson’s perspective was that he killed the teenager in self-defense in fear of being “overpowered,” he left the scene shortly after the incident and has never spoken directly to the media, even 11 years later. After firing six shots at Brown, Wilson called “every car we got” to the scene, per his FPD radio, turned off his car engine, and informed the FPD sergeant of the altercation. The sergeant ordered Wilson to stay in his vehicle, to which Wilson refused, noting that “if he waited there, it would be known to the neighborhood that he was the shooter.” Wilson returned to the station and washed the blood off of his hands. Because Wilson confirmed he was not bleeding at the time, this blood belonged to Brown. Brown’s blood was also found on Wilson’s firearm. For the next four hours following Brown’s immediate passing, his body remained on the asphalt, soaking and staining the yellow dotted line that parted Canfield Drive. Although he was killed at or around 12:04 PM, Michael Brown’s body was brought into the St. Louis morgue at 4:37 PM for an autopsy. 

According to various witnesses, the sound of the gunfire brought out crowds of nearby residents to the scene. Almost immediately, a witness, who was working at a house in view of the happenings, recounted that two black women approached him and asked him what had happened. The witness replied that they “would not like what he had to say,” to which the women began calling him a “white motherfucker” among other terms left unmentioned in the report. This witness also stated that the crowds had already begun “wrongly claiming the police shot Brown for no reason and that he had his hands up in surrender.” Multiple witnesses corroborated that Brown held up his hands before the fatal shots were fired, but that he put his hands down and assumed a “running position”, as one witness referred to it. 

The obvious split between Johnson’s account and the official police report (in addition to the handful of nonconverging witnesses) led the media to initially take the side of the man who was present during the murder. Following a crime in a public area, especially a murder or shooting, higher-ranking police officials are often relied upon for quick facts. The lack of police statements given immediately following Brown’s death, in tandem with the avid media usage by Johnson and other community members, helped to provide an overall negative public perception of STLPD. Once Brown’s memorial was run over by a pack of police vehicles, this impression became cemented.

Brown had graduated from high school that May, and was days away from beginning an HVAC program at a local trade school. He also had a SoundCloud account, where he would post his original music. His discography is still available on the platform. In one of these songs, “JenningsStations Road”, Brown sang, “My favorite part is when them bodies hit the ground…. Talking down make me shoot off your whole tongue.” This lyric was specifically highlighted by the co-founder of The Daily Wire, Ben Shapiro, in an October 2014 YouTube video. After playing the aforementioned portion of the song, Shapiro said, nodding, “The words of the blessed saint,” referring to Brown and his subsequent “martyrdom.” Shapiro, making it clear that he somehow is of the belief that all songs must be about true events, continues, “The media and the politicians cried bloody murder when this information began to tarnish the candlelit altar they’d built for Saint Michael. Just because Brown had strong-arm robbed a convenience store while high and cut some vile rap videos didn’t mean he deserved to be shot, which is true.” Despite Wilson actively being the one who shot and killed Brown, Shapiro still chose to poke fun at Brown’s violent rap lyrics. The comments section of the video ‘laughs’ along with Shapiro, noting the irony of his own body hitting the ground. One such comment, with almost 300 likes, reads, “Brown's death is a blessing for society.  He was a up and coming career criminal who would have left a huge list of victims hadn't he been killed.”

As Brown began to receive hate online for his supposed involvement in the robbery and as Johnson’s statements began to fall through (as reflected by other witness testimony), the unrest had already begun. After Wilson was allowed to walk free in November, the public uproar resumed. “The police, vilified and facing a hostile public,” wrote Shaila Dewan on the Ferguson aftermath for The New York Times in 2017, “were unable to do their jobs, leaving criminals to run amok.” Further, the bright and graphic imagery of a crouching black man behind an explosive white cloud of tear gas or a group of Black people huddled near an impromptu drumset in front of a burned-out gas station helped to elevate the communal impact of the killing into the mainstream national consciousness. At the root of it all, it seemed, a white man had shot down a Black teenage boy, at the time accused only of jaywalking. 

III. Media Coverage of the Unrest

St. Louis, Missouri has often been referred to as the “murder capital of the United States.” From 2013 to 2022, St. Louis had the highest murder rate of any major city in America and had the 15th highest murder rate in the world. In 2023, the murder rate in St. Louis lowered slightly, nabbing the number two ranking, second to New Orleans. In March 2015, the DOJ released a report following civil rights investigations that had been launched following Brown’s murder, examining FPD. The press release for the findings reports that racial bias was present in both Ferguson’s police department and their municipal court: “The harms of Ferguson’s police and court practices are borne disproportionately by African Americans and that this disproportionate impact is avoidable. Ferguson’s harmful court and police practices are due, at least in part, to intentional discrimination, as demonstrated by direct evidence of racial bias and stereotyping about African Americans by certain Ferguson police and municipal court officials.” In 2014, Ferguson was a town of 21,000 residents, 22% of whom are below the poverty line, 67.4% of them Black. In the same year, there was only one Black city council member; the other five were white.

On November 14th, 2014, St. Louis City PD Chief Sam Dotson referred to the uptick in public protest and subsequent crime following Brown’s murder as “the Ferguson effect.” Dewan wrote that there are two aspects to this theory — a surge in homicides or other violent offenses following a well-covered act of police brutality and the evaporation of trust in law enforcement personnel. The rise in murder following Michael Brown’s killing in relation to the so-called Ferguson effect has been repeatedly disproven. 

The morning after the shooting, St. Louis Post-Dispatch published an article that is at present titled “FERGUSON WRAP-UP: Officer kills Ferguson teen”. However, the original title of the article, still visible in the URL, is “Fatal Shooting by Ferguson police prompt mob reaction”. Shortly after its publication, as revealed by STLP-D archival software, the title was changed to “Anger, confrontation after fatal shooting of teen by Ferguson police officer”, but has since again been renamed at an unknown time. It can be assumed, due to the ‘Ferguson wrap-up,’ that this piece began as STLP-D’s initial story but was added to over time as more information was released. This article does not, however, mention Brown’s race, which stands out from other August 10th stories. The passive usage of ‘shooting of teen’ in the second version of the headline displaces the action of Brown’s death from Wilson’s decision to shoot. In STLP-D’s ‘FERGUSON DAY TWO WRAPUP: Day of protests, night of frenzy,’ active voice is suddenly used, when Brown becomes the subject of the sentence. The article says: “…Brown pushed the officer back into his car and ‘assaulted’ him in the vehicle. Belmar said one shot was fired by the officer’s gun inside the car during the struggle, and that the officer then got out of the car and fired multiple times. Brown fell dead in the street.” Here, the author’s choices of who is responsible for which action is quite apparent. The phrase ‘one shot was fired by the officer’s gun’ may have been used because STLPD was not yet sure of which man had used the weapon, but its being placed without subject right next to Wilson becoming the operator of the gun again appears to place less responsibility upon him. For the factual record, the DOJ case file states that this initial gunshot was fired by Wilson while “Brown’s hand was within inches of the muzzle”. The presentation of the gun firing on its own remains an oddly phrased sentiment, even despite any timeline misunderstandings. Additionally, the short sentence of ‘Brown fell dead in the street’ being unlinked to the prior clause is also notable. Again, Wilson’s action of killing Brown is lessened, and the choice of ‘fell dead’ almost normalizes the incident, as if he had suffered from a heart attack instead of four shots to the head.

Mainstream media coverage in the following weekend helped to bring awareness to Brown’s killing. Online and in-print newspaper coverage is one way that those unfamiliar and/or far from Saint Louis learned of the incident. The first paragraph from the initial New York Times article on the shooting, says, “The fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager Saturday by a police officer in a St. Louis suburb came after a struggle for the officer’s gun, police officials said Sunday, in an explanation that met with outrage and skepticism in the largely African-American community.” This summarization, written the day after the shooting, seems at first to be a good example of conveying both the police and the community perspectives during the period of little information. By highlighting the ‘struggle’ over the gun, the police official defends Wilson’s actions, but the mention of ‘outrage and skepticism’ in the contextualized ‘African-American community’ help to convey the underlying flames of uncertainty. The article continues, noting that Brown’s stepfather was holding a sign that read, “Ferguson police just executed my unarmed son.” Detailing the presence of Brown’s family helps to establish them as members of the community, and the usage of the word ‘execute,’ which was probably used due to Johnson’s statement regarding Brown’s final position, emphasizes the brutality of the situation. This piece also includes the initial statement from St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar, who said, “The genesis of this was a physical confrontation.” If the ‘genesis’ was the ‘physical confrontation’ that occurred when Brown approached Wilson’s police car, then what would Belmar consider the three minutes before that? Why was the genesis not when Wilson pulled up alongside two young men and almost immediately got out of the vehicle, or when he shouted “get the fuck on the sidewalk” at them? According to the St. Louis police department, Michael Brown was at fault for his own death. The taunting police officer, who had a gun and an armored cop car, had no other way to defend himself other than to fire four shots into Brown’s head and neck from two feet away.

In a 2005 study on police reaction to allegations of misconduct relating to racial profiling, Graziano et al. find that police officers caught exhibiting unjustified problematic behavior (racial profiling, use of force, verbal abuses) often distracted away from their improper conduct by “constructing an explanation about the incident that focused on [the suspect’s] behavior,” thereby blaming the individual for the outcome and taking no personal responsibility. This article also includes details of the “peaceful protest that later turned volatile,” citing photos from social media. Because of the detail included in other portions of the story, such as noting the exact distance between Brown and Wilson during the initial shooting (35 feet) from a quote from Chief Belmar, and the reliance on non-standard methods of gathering information (pictures from social media), the lack of a non-police version of events is exceedingly notable. There is no reason given for why the protest began nor why it suddenly turned ‘volatile.’ The closing statement is a quote from Lesley McSpadden, Brown’s mother, yet the Brown family’s timeline of events is not covered.

Rather than unpacking an emotional statement made by a grieving family member or fact-checking a bystander’s snarky quote, speaking directly with the police offers a clear,  media-trained, and ‘reliable’ source. Ray Surette writes in his book Media, Crime and Criminal Justice, “Although sometimes critical of law enforcement, successful crime reporters develop a working relationship with the police that benefits both. Over time, the two sides develop similar work experiences and outlooks.”

On August 11, 2025, Dorian Johnson’s statement was finally published in the mainstream news, on MSNBC. By then, police officers were already one day into wearing riot gear, carrying shields, and spraying tear gas, and protests had already burned down multiple buildings. The piece was written by Trymaine Lee, a Black man who was a pivotal journalist in the Trayvon Martin murder case. Although he wrote his first article a week after Martin was killed, Lee was credited with bringing the story “from margins to mainstream.” At the time, he was a writer for BlackVoices, a (white-owned) website that focused on “African-American culture.” The site has since been bought by Huffington Post (at present, four of their ten ‘top’ stories are about Beyoncé and two are about Meghan Markle). Lee’s presence in bringing both stories to light is interesting. Lee was interviewed almost one year after Brown’s killing by NPR, speaking about the psychological toll that being a Black journalist covering crimes committed against Black people has taken on him. In this conversation, Lee describes the protest crowds in Ferguson as “masses of disaffected young people who felt they didn't have any voice in America.” 

Lee’s perspective on the protests goes against other mainstream news commentary. He focuses on the people and their cause. However, the people behind the protest do not get the cover stories — Black people lighting a convenience store on fire amidst Ferguson’s already run-down streets does. 

An August 16 piece in USA Today sets the physical setting of the protests on the night that Darren Wilson’s name was released: “During the night, buildings burned, windows shattered, and chaos ensued as protesters stood in the street criticizing police. Officers threatened to arrest protesters who came near their trucks. Yet authorities did not attempt to stop any looting as citizens moved to protect local businesses from sporadic thefts.” The article’s author, Yamiche Alcindor (who is Haitian), also refers to the peaceful protests as “calm, though boisterous.” Even the daytime protestors, who played drums and sang in a prayer circle, are not able to catch a break. Rather than using a term that denotes that these actions were in memory of Brown, they are labelled as annoying. Another detail Alcindor chose to point out was that “people stole bags of fake hair, while across the street at Ferguson Market and Liquor [which Brown allegedly robbed] others carried out bottles of alcohol.” Alcindor was not the only journalist on the scene to include the very specific detail of wigs or hair weaves being stolen — it also appears in stories from the LA Times, NPR, and the NYT posted on the same night. Wigs and fake hair, as well as alcohol overconsumption, are stereotypes associated with the Black community, so the specificity of namedropping these items could serve a role in activating certain biases. Further, by focusing only on the business looting and property destruction, this article paints the protestors in a completely negative light. 

On August 27, Chief Belmar spoke at a press conference where he justified the use of smoke bombs, batons, tear gas, armored trucks, and rifles on the protest crowds. The Missouri National Guard was brought in on August 18th, but he does not reference their presence in his statements. A story from USA Today by the same author covers his comments and refers to the civil unrest as ‘riots,’ which creates an extremely negative and perjorative perception. This piece quotes Belmar but does not offer fact-based analysis on his points. When the author discusses the background, she establishes no clear linkage between the protests and the shooting: “Brown, 18, was unarmed when he was fatally shot Aug. 9 by a Ferguson police officer, Darren Wilson. The shooting sparked riots, protests, vandalism and clashes with police, who were seen on national media patrolling streets with military-grade weapons and equipment.” The connection between Brown’s death leading to ‘military-grade weapons’ is left to the reader to decipher. Seeing people of color in protest has become so normalized in America that this article feels no need to add the specific reasoning for why the protest turned to turbulence. Reverend Jesse Jackson Sr. was present at the peaceful daytime protests. In an opinion piece for the Institute of the Black World, he writes:

The county police in Ferguson acted like an occupying military force, responding to a threat by hitting hard and escalating, firing tear gas at residents standing on their own lawns. Police carry identity and name badges so residents can know them. Ferguson’s force was decked out in camouflage as if it were facing not outraged citizens, but foreign guerrillas.

When the crowds are seen as ungovernable and out of control, especially for out-of-town readers seeing only photographic coverage in the newspapers, the militaristic reaction is justified, and may even be viewed as necessary. 

IV. Conclusion

After a three-month grand jury hearing, with an unsequestered jury made up of three black and nine white individuals, it was announced on November 24, 2014, that Darren Wilson was not going to be indicted. The St. Louis prosecutorial attorney was Robert McCulloch. During the trial, McCulloch noted that the materials used in the case would be published if Wilson was not indicted. Rather, information was published over the next few years following the court case, and some evidence remains unseen, such as the two-hour interview with Johnson. In response, Chris King, at the time the editorial director of St. Louis American, told CNN, “By leaking out in pieces, [McCulloch] is encouraging this kind of speculation.” St. Louis American is the only Black newspaper in the city that is still in production and is the largest weekly newspaper in Missouri today. 

McCulloch was immediately labeled as biased, as his own father was a police officer who was killed on duty by a black man. Additionally, McCulloch’s mother, brother, uncle, and cousin had all also served with the STLPD. When McCulloch read out the decision in November, he “claimed that media courage, and particularly social media, had posed ‘the most significant challenge’ to his investigation.” 

Michael Brown’s murder came less than a month after Eric Garner infamously pleaded his last words, “I can’t breathe,” and two years after Trayvon Martin (only a year younger than Brown) was shot dead for acting “suspicious.” From 2015 to 2021, research by NPR found that “police officers have fatally shot at least 135 unarmed Black men and women nationwide”. The global coverage of Brown’s murder, as well as the civil unrest that followed, proved that the murder of Black people by white officers was not just a few isolated incidents. The #HandsUpDontShoot and #BlackLivesMatter hashtags also allowed people worldwide to interact as a community and share their own stories and experiences. Digital citizen journalism allowed global conversations to occur, which ranged from his high school classmates telling stories about Brown to Facebook comments like  “[Brown] got what he deserves. Meaningless thug. Worthless” from a 65-year-old white male Londoner. Social media journalists also gained a more sturdy presence on a variety of social media platforms. For Brown and for Ferguson, social media spread the messages that mainstream media would not accept for publication. 

The decrease in mentions of Brown in mainstream media coverage, whether in general or in connection with the protests, reflects the constant migration of the news cycle towards the most eye-catching imagery, neglecting the lives of the individuals who make up the newspaper’s front page. This action comes in tandem with the criminalization of Brown and the uncertainty around the truth in Johnson’s statements. The shift in coverage displays that Brown’s murder was cast aside by the media, who then chose to run to cover the spectacle of the Black community of greater St. Louis engaged in chaos and nighttime looting in the already-disparaged streets of Ferguson.