Political Economy- Culture War Division

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A Tragedy in Detroit, With a Reality TV Crew in Tow

By MARY M. CHAPMAN and SUSAN SAULNY

The Ratings Game, Rome circa 80 AD

DETROIT — The house where Aiyana Stanley-Jones lived on the East Side here is quiet now, a makeshift memorial of teddy bears and balloons on the porch where the police lobbed a stun grenade through the front window last Sunday. They were looking for a 34-year-old homicide suspect.

But Aiyana, 7, asleep for the night on a sofa under the window, died from a bullet to the neck.

On that chaotic night, the Detroit police were being shadowed by a camera crew from a reality television show, “The First 48,” on the A&E cable network.

“Those cameras can influence the behavior of what’s already a very dangerous and unpredictable job,” said Brian Willingham, a laid-off Flint, Mich., police officer and author of "Soul of a Black Cop.”

Laurie Ouellette, an associate professor of media studies at the University of Minnesota who specializes in reality television, says cameras even affect what type of police calls are shown. “There is evidence that they do tend to go into lower-income neighborhoods and are less likely to be shown policing affluent white suburban spaces,” she said.

“They want a particular kind of drama. They want the money shot.”

The original “Cops” series made its debut more than 20 years ago, but police shows are the hottest genre in reality television.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/22/us...it.html?ref=us

The Ratings Game, Berlin, circa 1938 (Kristallnacht)