ABSTRACT
The warning that greets a viewer on Instagram, “Sensitive Content,” might well describe not only Walter Wallace’s death at the hands of Philadelphia police, but the fallout that ensued: protests, rioting, and rage. Words are processed in the brain more slowly than images, which activate emotions, particularly fear, more readily. User-generated video presents a host of ethical and epistemological concerns for journalists. The original video of Walter Wallace’s death at the hands of police lasts 91 seconds and starts shakily, apparently shot outside a car window. Spontaneous citizen videos, especially those depicting violence, illustrate how phenomenologically powerful filmic media can be. Wallace was shot in the afternoon, and an angry crowd gathered outside the district police station by sundown. The Wallace case illustrates the way news reports use techniques of language and visual editing to create authoritative distance from citizen video, which shifts the authority of the message from the video to a journalistic narrative.
