Huspek, M. (2004). Black press, white press, and their opposition: The case of the police killing of Tyisha Miller. Social Justice, 31(1-2), 217-241.

     Michael Huspek is a professor of communication at California State University, San Marcos. In this article, Huspek analyzes, through oppositional theory, the mainstream newspaper coverage as it compares to the coverage by an African-American newspaper as they both follow the story of the police killing of a 19-year-old African-American woman named Tyisha Miller.

The Tyisha Miller case was heavily covered in the media in the Riverside area. Miller, an African American woman, was shot and killed in her car by four white police officers, even though she appeared to be harmless and was not responsive when she was found. The shooting caused a backlash of racist acts in the Riverside community, including a silent protest of police officers who shaved their heads to show their support for the four police offices involved with the case.

     Huspek contends that the black minority press, which is sometimes"devalued" by the majority, operates not as an alternative, but in opposition to, the mainstream press. Newspapers function to create meaning, and the mainstream media serve to perpetuate the meaning of the hegemonic power. As viewed through oppositional theory, minority media transmits codes that reflect race and class division. The black press responds to the mainstream with meaning that resonates with those readers who feel left out or misinterpreted by the mainstream. Using the coverage of Miller's killing, Huspek looks at the role of the ethnic minority media, in this case, the Black Voice News,in contrast to the "liberal" mainstream newspaper, the Riverside Press-Enterprise.' He examines the limits that exist in the majority or white press.

     By analyzing the content of two Riverside, California newspapers’ coverage of the local police shooting and killing of Tyisha Miller, an African American, the author has a basis for testing the oppositional thesis. Background information regarding the readership of each paper was presented; the Riverside Press-Enterprise with its 88.6% white readership and the Black Voice Press with an estimated 50,000 African American readership. Limits in studying the press coverage of the shooting were also stipulated, analyzing stories that were 880 words or more and stories only printed during a six month period after the December 28^th shooting. Huspek found the Press-Enterprise to contain 28 Miller stories which cited official source (i.e. institutional sources like the Office of the District Attorney and the Riverside Police Department) 413 times (66%) and non-institutional sources (i.e. shooting witnesses and members of the community) 209 times (33%). The Black Voice Press, in comparison, had a total of 15 Miller stories, and cited official sources 56 times (22%) and non-official ones 194 times (77%).

     The above findings lead Huspek to determine that an oppositional code is present within the Press-Enterprise. This article goes on to explore the content of the stories, as the majority Press-Enterprise excluded and sugar-coated facts surrounding the shooting and sought to contain the outrage of the African American community. By relying on "official" sources, the mainstream neglected to report on stories regarding the police officers' jubilation immediately after killing Miller and the officers' degrading the of victim and her grieving family members on the scene of the shooting. By community reporting, these were stories carried by the African-American paper. In addition, months later, when the story finally did emerge in court documents, the police department protest the subsequent firing of the officers involved by shaving their heads in protest. The mainstream paper referred to protesting-officers’ "short" hairs cuts, downplaying the meaning of a shaved, or

skin-head. This points to an attempt to contain a discussion regarding the possibility of racism in the Riverside Police Department. The majority press sought to avoid such discourse, not to explore it. Essentially, the minority paper served to fill in the gaps of the Miller story, revealing the limitations of an institutional-citing majority press, one which can suppress, exclude, and contain the voice of the minority community.

      Huspek also suggests that there is a lack of awareness on how the white press manages race / class issues and how it responds to challenges from the black press. After reading this article and considering the author’s success in quantifying the management of such issues vis-à-vis white and black press, the oppositional thesis is functional. This demonstrates the importance of Huspek’s work to the study of ethnic media. (Reviewed by Ari Apelian) (Edited by Judith Klapper) (Edited by Claire Rietmann-Grout)