On February 25, 2000 it had been more than a year since the murder of Amadou Diallo. The verdict handed down this day delivered the acquittal of four New York Police Department officers of all charges stemming from an incident in which they shot, 41 times, and killed Amadou Diallo in front of his apartment building. It turns out that the four officers had shot and killed a man they believed to be dangerous because he was holding a wallet they believed to be a gun. In the wake of this tragic and disgusting verdict almost every public interest magazine was eager to write a story about the verdict. I found two articles that particularly piqued my interest. One was an article in The New Republic, a conservative magazine that deals primarily with issues related to government, law, mass culture and economics. The other was an article in Time magazine, a popular periodical that deals with politics, entertainment, international affairs and public interest stories. The presentation of the particular photograph in each news story gives insight into the ideology of th

"COPS, BRUTALITY & RACE" and "AMADOU DIALLO 1975-1999". These captions are not intended to inform. Their intent is to incite. To incite what depends on the viewer. At face value the first caption may seem to carry its' sympathy for Diallo into police bashing. However, the caption is aimed at making the reader associate three words that are pertinent to the case. On the surface, the caption begs the reader to ask him/herself, To what degree did race influence the brutality of the murder committed by the police? Moreover, the inclusion of the USA letters on the shirt of Diallo provokes the viewer to ask him/herself, What kind of American was this person? The difference between a figure like Rodney King and Amadou Diallo is that Diallo was not a citizen of this country at the time of his murder. In the wake of propaganda around the country blaming recent immigrants for societal woes, the repeated reference to Diallo as an African immigrant serves the interest of those establishment (police) supporters.

e writer, editor and magazine. The manipulations of the photograph will explain the intention of the writer and the meaning being ascribed to Amadou Diallo.

Had the issues related to picture framing, lighting, cropping and caption not been introduced to me in this class I would have never realized that they have such a powerful effect on the interpretation of a story. As stated by Berger in the Uses of Photography, "Photographs are experience captured..."(p.49). Too bad that Time was the only magazine concerned with capturing the experience of young immigrant who was obviously proud to be living in the USA. As for the New Repu

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Approximate Word count = 1105
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)