Reporting What Happened in Jena

A major part of the Jena 6 story I’m telling is the differences between what the original sources said happened and what later narratives said happened. These differences point to narrative impulses in telling stories and in movement building. This older blog narrates the story.

The sources to be compared are:

• Original Sources: JT=Jena Times, TT=Alexandria Town Talk, AP=Associated Press, AB=Alan Bean’s narrative circulated in April 2007. Town Talk and Associated Press are contemporaneous articles. Jena Times for 2006 was pulled from the Internet in the wake of conflict except for a couple of heavily-redacted December issues, but the 2007 issues are available on line and sometimes refer to what was published in 2006. Alan Bean’s narrative was constructed some time in the spring of 2007 and emailed around. It was posted online in mid-April 2007.
• Early Articles: JF= Jordan Flaherty’s May 9 story posted to multiple online progressive news outlets; HW= Howard Witt’s May 20 Chicago Tribune article; TM=Tom Mangold’s BBC blog that was posted to the BBC website and printed by the Guardian on September 20; PZ= the transcript of the June 25 broadcast of the CNN Paula Zahn show.
• Later Coverage: We show percentages of Black newspaper and mainstream newswire articles that mentioned each event. These percentages come from the articles collected by our larger project from 37 Black newspapers and three mainstream newswire services. We divide the articles into those published through September 20 as they were articles generally seeking to motivate participation in the rally. Articles published after the rally through the end of September were more likely to take a retrospective tone, sometimes challenging the narratives that had been constructed earlier.

The Jena 6 story unfolds in two acts. There were the events around the nooses in September of 2006 and the events around the arson and fights from November 30 through December 2006.

Act I: The Nooses  (September 2006)

Act I occurred between August 31 and mid-September 2007. The events mentioned in different sources are listed in the table below. A Black student verbally challenged informal segregation. (A few later stories say some Black students sat under the tree after the assembly.) The next day nooses were hung on the tree. After the Labor Day weekend, parents contacted local news media and held a protest meeting. The event received local newspaper and television coverage and the Associated Press story was reprinted in multiple places around the country and internationally. The next day, there were fights at school and an ad hoc Black sit-in under the three, a school assembly was called, and the district attorney threatened students that he could ruin their lives with a stroke of his pen. The students who hung the nooses were quickly identified and the principle recommended expulsion. This recommendation was overturned by the school superintendent on Thursday September 7. Police patrolled Jena High on Thursday and the school was on lockdown on Friday. On September 11, Black parents asked to speak to the school board and were not allowed to speak. They said they would be calling the FBI, the NAACP, and NAN. On September 13, the Jena Times said that news coverage of the nooses had caused fights at the school and had blown a prank out of proportion. News coverage of the case by local non-Jena media continued. On September 18 a Black parent was allowed to address the school board calling for it to address the problem of the nooses; it took no action. News articles published in July 2007 say that the FBI did actually investigate the hate crime charges but concluded there was no federal crime. Alan Bean’s narrative says there were no more fights after September 8 until December while other accounts imply that there were.

Coverage of Act I events

			Coverage Period
			Through 9/20/2007		9/21/2007-9/30/2007
Event	Original Sources	Early Articles	% Black News	% News-wire	% Black News	% News-wire
8/31 Black student asked about sitting at “white” tree at school assembly. “Sit anywhere you want to.”	TT AB AP	JF TM HW PZ	50	36	15	33
Students sat at tree (before nooses)		PZ	56	27	15	17
9/1 Nooses hung on tree	TT AB AP	JF TM HW PZ	89	82	54	88*
9/5 Black parents called media	TT
9/5 Protest meeting at L&A Baptist church (covered by local newspaper and television)	TT AB		0	0	6	0
9/6 Black students protest at tree	AB	JF	56	9*	9	0
9/6 Fights at school	TT	HW	0	0
9/6 School assembly and district attorney threatens students	AB	JF	47	9*	15	4
9/6 Principal recommends expulsion for noose-hangers; 9/7 suspension only	TT AB AP	JF RM HW	58	54	24	63
9/7 & 9/8 Police at school	TT AB
9/11 Black parents not allowed to speak to school board	TT AB		0	0	6	4
9/11 Black parents say they are contacting NAACP and FBI	TT
9/13 Jena Times blames conflict on news coverage of nooses	AB JT		0	0
9/18 Black parent Tracy Bowen speaks to school board, no action taken	TT AB JT			0	6
Tensions or fights, no specific dates		JF HW	19	27	12	29
No more fights until December, Black students being disciplined	AB
FBI investigated, no hate crime charges filed (date uncertain)	JT TT**
Number of Articles			36	11	33	24

Notes: * p<.05 for difference between newswires and Black newspapers. ** Reports made in 2007 say the FBI did investigate in the fall. (2) Counts are left blank for events mentioned by no project sources.

What I find particularly telling is that the well-documented protests by Black parents and the local news coverage, which had a protest effect, were never discussed in subsequent narratives about the case. However, claims that the Black students protested are often included, especially in Black newspaper articles, even though that was not documented at the time. Alan Bean’s narrative includes a protest on September 6, the day of the school assembly and the district attorney’s threat (both of which are documented), and Jordan Flaherty’s piece includes this claim. The claim that the students collectively sat under the tree before the nooses were hung generally is substituted for a student asking a question in a school assembly. The CNN Paula Zahn show aired July 25, just before Mychal Bell’s trial, includes this claim. Some articles even claim three sit-ins, before the nooses, immediately upon finding the nooses in the tree, and then again later, on the day of the assembly. There is a strong narrative drive to include one or more spontaneous student challenges to segregation while simultaneously ignoring the documented adult challenges to the nooses and the importance of news media coverage. There is also a narrative drive to “fill in” the time between mid-September and early December, when the crucial fight happened, with periodic or escalating fights.

Act II The Fights

Act II begins with the burning of Jena High School. Black and White students blamed each other. There were multiple racial fights over the weekend. Two specific fights involving Robert Bailey at the Fair Barn on Friday and at the Gotta Go Market on Saturday were later used by the police to construct a conspiracy narrative about the December 4 fight, while advocates for the Jena 6 used to them give examples of failing to punish White aggressors. On Monday December 4, the first day back at school after the fire, some Black males knocked Justin Barker to the ground and beat or kicked him. The forty witnesses gave different accounts of exactly what had happened, and which specific boys had been involved. Barker was beaten and knocked unconscious; he was briefly hospitalized and released the same day and attended an event that evening. Over the next two days, police arrested six boys and initially charged them with felony battery. The charges were later raised to attempted murder. News articles claimed that teachers were threatening a job action if school violence was not controlled. On December 13, the Jena Times published an article by district attorney Walters saying that he would seek the maximum possible punishment for the boys and implied they were also guilty of the school arson. A group of Black and White ministers formed an interracial ministerial alliance and sponsored several events with the goal of racial healing. About three hundred people attended a racial healing event at Jena High School on December 13. I also examined some keywords to capture differences in emphasis among the source types in the elements of the fight story that they emphasized.

Although the authorities picked out the Fair Barn and Gotta Go Market fights as evidence for a causal chain leading to the December 4 fight, and advocates for the Jena 6 called attention to the racial disparity in how the cases were handled, there was very little discussion of  the fact that there had been other racial fights that weekend involving other people. It is notable how few stories mentioned the arson, even though it was a traumatic event that set off the weekend of racial distrust and violence. Few stories before the event emphasized that the charges had been raised or the political context of teachers threatening action if nothing was done. And none of the stories mentioned that Black and White residents perceived a problem of racial conflict and organized and showed up for racial healing events as one form of collective action seeking to address the problem.

Coverage Period			Through 9/20/2007		9/21/2007-9/30/2007
Event	Original Sources	Early Articles	% Black news	% newswire	% Black news	% newswire
11/30 Arson: Main building of Jena High is destroyed	TT, AB, AP	TM HW	17	18	3	8
12/1-3 Many racial fights over the weekend	AB, JT	TM
12/1 Assault/fight at Fair Barn party. Robert Bailey beaten by multiple White men.	AB, TT	JF HW	44	18	18	4
12/2 Fight + shotgun at Gotta-Go market. Robert Bailey and two others take a shotgun away from a White man who pulled it on them. The boys report the incident to the police. They are later charged with robbery of the gun and the White man is described as a “victim”	AB, TT	JF HW	39	18	6	8
(12/2 Fight no shotgun mentioned)			0	9	3	0
12/3 teachers asked school not reopen due to fights	AB, TT, JT		0	0	3	0
12/4 Justin Barker attacked by multiple Black male students. Fight is described in article.	AB, TT,	HW PZ	75	54	33	75*
12/5-6 Six students are arrested and charged with battery
12/6 teacher sickout threatened if something is not done about school violence	AB, TT, JT		1	0	3	0
12/7 charges raised from battery to attempted murder	AB, TT	TM	8	0	27	38
12/13 Walters statement in JT promises to punish the arrested boys and implies they are responsible for the arson	AB JT	TM PZ
12/13 + others Community racial healing events with several hundred attendees	TT JT		0	0	0	0
Keyword “fight” (sing.)			44	36	49	17*
Keyword “fights”			14	46*	15	54*
Keyword “witness”			36	9	12	8
Keyword “schoolyard”			14	36	27	21
Keyword “unconscious”			22	36	12	71*
Keyword “hospital”			56	36	15	8
Keyword “kick”			36	18	18	29
Keyword “shoes” (the claimed weapon in Bell’s battery charge)			36	18	3	0
Keywords both “battery” and “murder” (charges changed)			78	91	21	83*
Number of Articles			36	11	33	24

The keywords partially capture some of the ways the case was discussed. Fights in the plural generally indicated a discussion of there having been fighting without specifying specific dates or incidents and was significantly more common in newswire articles than Black newspaper articles. The keyword witness picked up references to conflicting witness statements and was nonsignificantly more common in Black newspapers. The words schoolyard, unconscious, and hospital appeared in articles making attributions about the seriousness of injuries. Schoolyard downplayed the seriousness of the injuries and was not common in either source type but more common before September 20 in newswires. The greater prevalence of hospital than unconscious in Black newspapers suggests downplaying the injuries; the rise in the prevalence of unconscious in newswires after September 20 indicates revisionist articles stressing Barkers injuries. In Mychal Bell’s June trial, the charge of second degree felony battery was based on claiming his shoes were a weapon when he kicked Barker. This was non-significantly more common in Black newspaper articles. Articles including both murder and battery (indicating the changes in charges) were common in both sources before the rally, but only newswires after the rally.

It is also interesting to examine the proportion of articles who mentioned the six  “Jena 6” boys by name. Only Mychal Bell was named in a majority of articles in either source type. Newswires were less likely than Black newspapers to mention the other boys by name, although the differences are not significant.

Coverage Period	Through September 20		9/21/2007 – 9/30/2007
Name	% Black news	% newswire	% Black news	% newswire
Jena 6/Six	100	100	94	83
Mychal [Bell]	100	82	55	75
[Robert] Bailey	44	36	24	0*
Bryant [Purvis]	44	27	15	4
[Theo] Shaw	44	27	21	0*
Carwin [Jones]	42	27	15	0*
Jesse Beard	25	18	6	0
Number Articles	36	11	33	24