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These Posters All Over Brooklyn Expose the Racism in Media


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It’s been three years since a white police officer fatally shot an unarmed black teenager named Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, but the widely decried killing has not been forgotten since it sparked protests across the country. Alexandra Bell, a Columbia University journalism graduate who’s taken a bit of a break from writing over the last few months to try her hand at public art, revisited the New York Times coverage of Brown, which was largely seen as one-sided; even over two weeks after Officer Wilson killed Brown, a headline, “A Low-Profile Officer with Unsettled Early Days,” ran alongside one describing Brown less generously as “A Teenager Grappling with Problems and Promise,” along with the Times reporter’s now infamous statement that Brown “was no angel.” And so, in addition to revisiting the articles, she’s also been revisioning them, blowing up Brown’s graduation portrait on the front page and changing words around so that the headline now reads: “A Teenager with Promise.” See more of her posters, which she’s been supersizing and wheat-pasting across Brooklyn, via Instagram, here.

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Alexandra Bell’s work around New York, courtesy of @sorryarchive.

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Alexandra Bell’s work around New York, courtesy of @ogdannyocean.

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Alexandra Bell’s work around New York, courtesy of @shoestringpressny.

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Alexandra Bell’s work around New York, courtesy of @coconut_stokes.

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Alexandra Bell’s work around New York, courtesy of @shoestringpressny.

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Alexandra Bell’s work around New York, courtesy of @shoestringpressny.

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Alexandra Bell’s work around New York, courtesy of @inezmelissa.

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Alexandra Bell’s work around New York, courtesy of @yesitsalex.

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Alexandra Bell’s work around New York, courtesy of @yesitsalex.