Alexandra Bell Looks Back at the Central Park Five Case

[bell ringing]

[Alexandra] April 19th, 1989,

Tricia Meili was jogging in Central Park

when she was attacked,

brutally attacked actually.

[Announcer] There were more indictments today

in the brutal gang rape

of the 28 year old Wall Street executive.

Five teens were charged with numerous rape,

sodomy and assault counts.

There was an inordinate amount

of focus on this particular case.

I'm convinced that

that's racially driven by the victim being white

and the perpetrators being black and brown.

Over the course of reporting there is

a lack of care that was so pervasive.

They came out the door swinging.

Wolf Pack's Prey,

Savages, you know this is a beastly act.

That set the tone,

we are no longer talking about them as teenagers.

Their photos are shared,

even though they're all under 18.

You know where they live.

You know where they went to school.

There is one page where

they actually quote a police officer

who said, Huh, they're human.

Like it's a discovery.

It's a surprise.

In LA in the '90s cases

and files involving black men,

use the acronym NHI,

no humans involved.

And so if you're kind of telling police in LA

that this does not involve a human,

that's kind of do what you will.

Labels and words matter.

And I think that's a part of

what was happening here.

And so it's no wonder when you get

to day 10.

There's kind of off with their heads,

kill them.

I'm working on a series about

the Central Park Five called No Humans Involved

after Sylvia Wynter.

I was really attracted to this moment

where I think al the rules

of journalism have kind of been abandoned.

And that prompted me

to really try to find a way

to look at language.

And really think about the way

in which words were applied to them,

black and brown people.

This is the way violence and reporting operates

and some of that is about repetition

and the amount of space something gets.

The reportage around the Central Park Five fits squarely

into that kind of thinking.

I'm looking at the first 10 days of reportage

by the Daily News.

There was a lot of egregious awful reporting

about the Central Park Five case right,

it's not simply the daily news

but I thought it may be easier for me

to show kind of a build up if I stayed

within one publication.

There was a particular kind of cadence

that I was after.

Trying to do that thing you showed me how to do.

Okay.

[slow dramatic music]

There's this moment when I was like I'm really interested

in the labor of photo lithography

and I think that that may be

how I approach it.

There's a kind of physicality to it

that's important to me.

[slow dramatic music]

And then I moved

into kind of mimicking this kind

of newspaper production.

Which is kind of exhausting

in some ways

and really exact.

[slow dramatic music]

So this one here.

The process that we use to create

the markings are meant to kind of guide the eye.

I actually blocked out a lot of images and

a lot of the information,

to take out all of the I want to say noise

in a way.

So we removed ads.

Actually I took out a lot

about the victim.

It's tricky to try to figure out

how to remove something without it being a erasure.

[slow dramatic music]

I didn't want to pretend like this didn't happen

to her but I also wanted

to shift the viewer's focus.

[slow dramatic music]

Some of the other articles that are

as particularly very much focused

on Tricia Meile are part of the series.

Terror in the Park just made,

it fit,

these people are having

in many ways equal experiences.

This terror int eh park for the boys as well.

Depending on the angle,

you can actually see through the redaction.

You can see through the black so it's not

a complete block.

It's there you just got to lean in a bit.

There's an effort involved in kind of processing

that information out.

The Trump page concludes the series.

[Man] Please help me

welcoming Donald Trump. [audience applauding]

We get this kind of major New York figure

buying a page.

This notorious ad that he took out

in the paper that called for the return

of the death penalty.

It's almost rabid this kind

of call for retribution.

The Trump page to me

in itself is racist,

it doesn't need any highlighter.

There's nothing to point to,

it exists.

And that's it.

Ultimately five of them are convicted.

And serve between six and 13 years in prison.

[slow dramatic music]

Before the real perpetrator came forward.

And I think it's unfortunate

that you leave 10 days of reporting

and you are kind of convinced that they did it.

Clearly it's not 1989 anymore

but if we look at it now from this new perspective

which is part of the goal of the series, right,

to kind of reorient the viewer around

the boys as victims as well

'cause at the time they weren't considered that.

I really want people

to look at it and question at the role

the Daily News played in the way we viewed

these particular people.

And maybe even in some ways influenced

the outcome ultimately of the case.

I think it's important to really think about

the responsibility that journalists have.

[slow dramatic music]