Media Spreads Call for Violence as Protests Erupt in Ohio Youth Prisons

In response to the riot, local media responded with systematic spins and manipulations to help spread calls by the guards for more physical violence against the children. Two area papers, the Columbus Dispatch and the Canton Repository, as well as the local TV station, WKYC, referred to the children locked up at Indian River as “inmates,” “criminals,” or at best, “juveniles.” They referred to their cells as “rooms.” They never referred to the prison as a prison, and they refused to interview any of the kids locked up there or any of their friends or family members. They also refused to investigate or describe conditions at the youth prison, and they refused to do any fact-checking on any of the claims coming from guards or the family members of guards, while frequently repeating those claims.

These claims included the dubious assertion that guards at the facility are not allowed to use physical force, and that the kids were rioting and protesting “for fun.” Media coverage was heavily focused on the family members of guards, humanizing them and also shielding them from legal consequences, as most of their more extreme statements came filtered through spouses who are not state employees. With a perspective firmly and exclusively anchored on the side of the guards, multiple articles repeated claims coming from guards that the children locked up at the facility were not actually children but hardened criminals.

The purpose of this coverage was clearly to encourage and normalize the use of violence against imprisoned children, and to win more budget money for hiring more prison guards and buying them more weapons. The coverage is also helping to normalize the practice of charging kids as adults, as is now happening with several of the young people who clashed with guards.