Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire

How Many Ways Can You Avoid Reporting That Cops Killed a Baby?
Janine Jackson 
24 Jun 2026
🖨️ Print Article
Kohen Wiley

A one-year-old baby was shot dead by police, but corporate media shield the police and their barbaric actions with a passive voice.

Originally published in FAIR.

“One-Year-Old Boy Killed After Officer Fires at Vehicle in Mississippi,” said the New York Times headline (6/16/26). So, a “one-year-old boy”—what most people would call a baby—was “killed after” a police officer fired at a vehicle, but there’s no verb you could use to connect those two things?

The Times subhed continued that pacifying work:

It is not entirely clear what led up to the shooting, but the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation said that police officers were responding to a shoplifting call.

“Ohh, shoplifting…!” we’re evidently supposed to say, before turning the page; that might make the baby murder make sense. I don’t need to say that baby was Black.

There will be more coverage of this heartbreaking, infuriating news about cops in Senatobia, Mississippi, called to the five-alarm crisis of someone purportedly shoplifting diapers, opening fire into a car whose driver “allegedly drove toward them.”

But in the meantime, please think hard about reporting that tells you to calm down, that suggests that, just maybe, nothing wrong happened at all. As ABC News (6/18/26) put it in a piece on how the “officer involved in shooting outside Walmart that killed 1-year-old boy” has been placed on leave: “One-year-old Kohen Wiley was killed, according to the family’s attorney.”

So maybe he’s not dead? Or he died from something other than the gun of the “involved officer”? Caution in reporting is valuable, but when it’s mainly deployed to protect the inflicters of state violence (FAIR.org, 7/11/16), you have to ask if it’s really a principle at all.

Police
Police Killings
Corporate Media
media bias

Do you need and appreciate Black Agenda Report articles? Please click on the DONATE icon, and help us out, if you can.


Related Stories

Community Movement Builders - Newark
CMB Newark Statement on the Killing of Wali Bey by Newark Police
04 March 2026
The media cycle has moved on, but the family of Wali ‘Grillz’ Bey is still waiting for answers after his murder by Newark Police.
Aja Arnold
From the Atlanta Race Massacre to Cop City: The AJC Incites Harm
16 July 2025
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution never stopped printing racist lies—it just upgraded its fonts.
Jon Jeter
As the State’s Complexion Darkens, Minnesota’s Liberalism Wanes
18 June 2025
Minnesota’s progressive myth shatters as its racial gaps in income, education, and housing eclipse even Deep South states, and right wing white
Black Alliance For Peace
Oppression Breeds Resistance, Organization Sustains It
11 June 2025
Defeating the war on Black/African people requires solidarity with all who are oppressed and resistance against our common enemy.
Tunde Osazua
Surveilled and Controlled: The High-Tech War on Working Class Black Atlantans
20 November 2024
Under the shield of public safety, Atlanta's police and political leaders have turned it into the most surveilled city in the country, where Bl
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
How to Protest for Sonya Massey
31 July 2024
Sonya Massey’s brutal murder at the hands of the police has resulted in anguish and anger but no differ
Pan-African Community Action PACA 2568)
Pan-African Community Action Condemns the U.S. Settler State for the Murder of Sonya Massey
31 July 2024
The murder of Sonya Massey by the Illinois police is a symptom of a larger, deeply rooted, systemic assault on Black and Brown working-class co
Cartoon comic about mass shottings
Danny Shaw
Murder Thy Neighbor A Recap of Mass Shootings in 2023: An Anti-Imperialist Perspective
20 December 2023
Mass shootings have become ubiquitous in the US, as part of a gun-obsessed culture that manufactures and exports violence around the world.
Believe Absolutely Nothing the US Government and Media Say About ...Anything
Glen Ford , BAR executive editor
Believe Absolutely Nothing the US Government and Media Say About ...Anything
02 August 2023
It is true now just as when Glen Ford wrote these words in
The Honey Trap: The FBI Used an Undercover Cop With Pink Hair to Spy on Activists and Manufacture Crimes
Trevor Aaronson
The Honey Trap: The FBI Used an Undercover Cop With Pink Hair to Spy on Activists and Manufacture Crimes
29 March 2023
In 2020 law enforcement continued their practice spying on activist groups and attempting to entrap them.

More Stories


  • Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    A Weak Left Stands By as Russia Stands Up for Cuban Sovereignty
    01 Apr 2026
    Russia finally makes good on promises to help Cuba, but its level of commitment is unclear. The left are clearly immobilized, even as Iran demonstrates how to fight back.
  • Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    ESSAY: Against Nuclear Imperialism, Kwame Nkrumah, 1960
    01 Apr 2026
    “We are not freeing ourselves from centuries of imperialism and colonialism only to be maimed and destroyed by nuclear weapons.”
  • Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
    Rwanda’s 30-Year Assault on Congo: The Crimes, the Criminals, and the Cover-up
    01 Apr 2026
    Rwanda’s 30-year Assault on the Democratic Republic of Congo, a new 80-page title from Baraka Books, gets straight to the essentials.
  • Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    STOP Cruel Reich Cult (CRC) from reinventing the wheel
    01 Apr 2026
    "STOP Cruel Reich Cult (CRC) from reinventing the wheel" is the latest from BAR's Poet-in-Residence.
  • Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: Zophia Edwards’ Book, “Fueling Development”
    01 Apr 2026
    In this series, we ask acclaimed authors to answer five questions about their book. This week’s featured author is Zophia Edwards. Edwards is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Johns Hopkins…
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us