Jackson Free Press

Michael Brown, the 18-year-old young man whose death at the hands of a local police officer sparked two weeks of protest, was buried on Aug. 26.

On the day of Brown's funeral, The New York Times published a 1,500-word piece that aimed to paint Brown as a young man "grappling with problems and promise."

John Eligon, a Kansas City-based correspondent for the Times, described Brown in the fifth paragraph of his story, as "no angel, with public records and interviews with friends and family revealing both problems and promise in his young life."

Casting Brown as less than an "angel" sparked a torrent of criticism, both on social media and mainstream news organizations' opinion pages.

On Twitter, users tweeted to @nytimes their relatively minor infractions, such as skipping school and taking home superfluous condiments from fast-food joints, in the event that they, like Brown, are killed by police.

Eligon and the Times backpedaled, albeit unsuccessfully, and called it a poor choice of words. Other commenters later pointed out that the Times previously used more sympathetic terms to describe both serial murderer Ted Bundy and Ted Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber. Mike Brown didn't so much as have an adult arrest record, much less kill anybody.

The New York Times' description of Brown is part of a much wider and more troubling trend of the way media cover the deaths of young black men, compared to the way the same outlets cover killings of and by whites. After white men Jared Loughner and James Holmes participated in mass shootings in Arizona and Colorado, respectively, a lot of national media fell all over themselves to try to understand how these "quiet," "highly intelligent" young men were driven to kill.

By contrast, when black men and teenagers—such as Brown, Trayvon Martin, Jordan Davis—are shot to death, the media ask what the young men did to deserve it. When the victim is black, media point out their failure to be angels and saints. When the victim is white, the media explain their humanity.

We aren't arguing that people who commit crimes should avoid prosecution or even punishment. But imagine if, in the wake of the untimely deaths of young white people, the media went looking for all the bad things they did just prior to their deaths. It would be disgusting as well.

Furthermore, it's the media's inequitable treatment of black and white victims that feed and reinforce the very stereotypes reflected in The New York Times' story, continuing a never-ending cycle of intolerance, even hatred.

Ferguson proved what too many already know: It is long past time for the media—all media—must rethink and retool their uneven coverage of whites and non-whites, whether they're victims or accused of committing a crime.