Cable and network news seems to have moved on from covering the mysterious death of Otis James Byrd after early speculation that he was a lynching victim appears to be groundless.
Byrd, a 54-year-old African-American, was found hanged from a tree last week in Claiborne County, Miss. The story initially riveted national news organizations, but television news stations and once-attentive newsrooms seem to have lost interest in the story amid mounting evidence that Byrd’s death was a suicide and not a racially motivated homicide.
The lack of print and television coverage this week stands in contrast to when Byrd, who served more than 25 years in prison for murder and was recently reported missing by his family, was discovered dead Thursday. Newsrooms at first were quick to speculate — or at least strongly suggest — that there was a racial angle to his death.
“African-American Man Hanging From Tree Sparks Concern and Caution,” a Huffington Post blog article blared in a headline.
USA Today asked in a headline, “Was Mississippi black man’s death suicide or homicide?”
The liberal Talking Points Memo reported, “Investigators have yet to determine whether the hanging was a suicide or homicide. But the specter of horrific crimes against southern blacks in decades past resurfaced after investigators discovered the hanging.”
The Daily Mail threw caution to the wind, saying outright in a headline that Bryd’s death could very well be a “possible lynching.”
These headlines were in addition to the heavy chatter Byrd’s death generated on cable and network newscasts, according to data made available by TV Eyes.
Almost immediately after Byrd was discovered, the state conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People requested that federal investigators assist in efforts to determine whether he was the victim of a hate crime, the New York Times reported.
Additionally, on Friday, a Claiborne County NAACP official said in an interview with NBC News, “It’s too early in the process to speculate. But based on the history in Mississippi of racial hate crimes, we are always concerned when an African-American is found hung in a tree in this state.”
Approximately 30 federal, state and local law officials were soon dispatched to the small Southern town to investigate Byrd’s death.
But as investigators looked closer into the circumstances surrounding the death, it seemed increasingly likely that the 54-year-old man had taken his own life.
Asked specifically Friday whether race played a role in Byrd’s death, Claiborne County Sheriff Marvin Lucas, an African-American and former president of the local NAACP branch, told reporters, “I don’t have any reason to even think that.”
Authorities speaking off the record Monday said that their preliminary investigation showed that Byrd most likely took his own life, according to the Clarion-Ledger.
Officials are still urging patience as they wrap up their investigation.
However, even though authorities have not yet issued an official ruling on Byrd’s cause of death, the likelihood that his death will be devoid of any racial angle appears to have lost newsrooms’ attention, as Mediaite’s Joe Concha predicted it would.
“[A]sk yourself this: Would the story be anything outside of a local news item if a white man was found dead hanging from a tree? Rhetorical question, obviously…and our nation’s dark past of these kind of sickening executions occurring isn’t being minimized here,” Concha wrote Saturday. “But…race stories rate. The segments on cable news…easy to produce: Simply pit two provocative guests who seem to engage in this debate for a living and watch the fireworks for eight minutes.”
Concha asked rhetorically whether news organizations would revisit the story with more conclusive evidence — rather than just forget about it — if it turned out not to be a racially motivated killing.
“Of course not. It’ll be a quick reader halfway through a newscast, a Page 18er, an afterthought,” he wrote. “Because more than ever in 2015, allegations and speculation always trump exoneration and closure.”
