How unrest in Ferguson changed a lot, including journalism

ST. LOUIS, Mo. (First Alert 4) - A decade ago, the First Alert 4 newsroom heard the police scanner call for an officer-involved shooting in Ferguson, and would soon learn the killing of Michael Brown would launch a change in society and journalism.

“This one was more,” said First Alert 4 Anchor Cory Stark. “It was different than any other scene I had ever been. It was just a very heavy feeling.”

The events that followed will always be a part of history, but it was also a learning moment for journalists everywhere.

It was Saturday, August 9 2014, around noon, when investigators say unarmed Michael Brown, 18, was walking in the middle of Canfield Green. Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson approached Brown and his friend. The encounter ended Brown’s life. Wilson shot Brown at least 6 times.

Stark was one of the first reporters on the scene that Saturday afternoon. For roughly four hours, witnesses say they watched Brown’s body lie in the street.

" [I] saw the yellow police tape, I saw Michael Brown lying in the middle of Canfield Drive,” said Stark. “I could tell that this was going to spark some kind of movement.”

A movement, leading to protests through North County.

“Yeah, these people are hurting,” said 26-year veteran photojournalist Laura Bluedorn. “They’re sending up a flare to be seen, ‘come help us.’ That’s what I got out of it.”

Bluedorn says she watched the wreckage from the chopper on November 24, the night a St. Louis County Grand Jury decided not to indict Wilson. With a bird’s eye view of the unrest, Bluedorn recorded people, police and the press clashing with one another. She also captured a cop car in flames and angry demonstrators.

“This became a story that was beyond just one young man’s death,” said Amber Hinsley, a former Assistant Professor of Communications at Saint Louis University (SLU). “This was representative of so many things that were brewing nationally.”

Hinsley is now a professor in Austin, TX and says her SLU journalism students brought community conversations inside the classroom.

“Twitter enabled community to tell their stories, but it also enabled journalists to figure out what’s happening here beyond the official story we’re getting,” said Hinsley.

Hinsley says the unrest in Ferguson unfolded in real-time on our Twitter feeds. She thinks it was the first time we saw Twitter connect journalism to social justice.

“They were much more willing to report what they were seeing in a way that was a little more unvarnished,” said Hinsley.

Stark says he’ll never forget how he felt that fateful day.

“Really eye-opening for me. It’s that gosh, I grew up in this city and I had a whole different experience,” said Stark. “So we realized as journalists how important it is to be transparent when we do know information and when we don’t know information, and what we try to do in order to get that information,” said Stark.

For some, the dark days of August 9 grew darker for months and even years, yet it illuminated conversations about racism, police reform, transparency and journalism.

“Community finding their voice on social media and continuing that conversation that forced journalists, and forced the city and the region and the country to then have that be part of a continuing conversation about what’re we’re doing,” said Hinsely.

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