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Tuesday, March 19, 2024
March 19, 2024

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Milloy: Why is seeing only time we believe?

The Columbian
Published:

A cellphone video captures the image of a man as he illegally enters the White House front door last week. As a result, the public is now engaged in a spirited debate about how best to improve security at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Too bad there was no video of the White House shooting in 2011. A gunman out to kill President Barack Obama strafed the second and third floors of the White House, on the south side where the president and his family live. There were news accounts, but not as many as you might expect, and pitifully few follow-ups on the arrest of the shooter.

And there was virtually no public discussion about preventing that kind of security breach.

Such is the power of the video. In a society where people are reading less and watching more, the influence of the visual over our behavior will only grow.

The search for 18-year-old Hannah Graham, a University of Virginia student who disappeared Sept. 13, intensified as media continued to show three surveillance videos that were released by police in Charlottesville. Hopefully the attention will lead to her whereabouts and a safe return to her family.

‘Humanized’ by video

You’d like to think that anyone who went missing would warrant the same dedication and concern. We shouldn’t have to see Hannah’s face on a security video to feel the nightmare that her parents were going through. Just knowing that she is missing should be enough.

However, during the past five years, four other women have gone missing in that college town. In those cases, there were only photographs of the victims. Media coverage quickly waned, as did public interest in making the streets of Charlottesville safer. Maybe interest will be rekindled now that one of the missing women has been “humanized” by video.

In Ferguson, Mo., where an unarmed 18-year-old, Michael Brown, was fatally shot by police last month, black youths have begun wearing body cameras to record their encounters with police. If they are mistreated, the cameras would help them prove their case.

David Whitt, a spokesman for the California-based company that distributed the cameras, told the Associated Press that the devices would give black residents the ability to “challenge the police narrative.”

Nevermind that statistics compiled by the Missouri attorney general’s office show a decade-long pattern of police misconduct in Ferguson. Blacks have been beaten, racially profiled while driving, and pulled over at rates much higher than white drivers. And yet, whites are caught with far more contraband than blacks.

But the numbers and testimony of residents have not been enough. It has to be on video to be real. Sadly, what gets our attention and moves us to act is the graphic and grotesque. Just look at what has happened since fanatics in the Middle East began posting beheadings on YouTube. Suddenly a war-weary nation ramps up for the “war on terror” anew.

The ugliness of domestic violence is only recognized after an elevator camera catches a football player punching his fiancée.

Blind people don’t need sight to do right. Why do we?


Courtland Milloy is a columnist for The Washington Post.

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