Abstract
The police-perpetrated killings of George Floyd in 2020 and Tyre Nichols in 2023, respectively, provide a unique opportunity for comparison of news content. Both incidents were recorded on video and appear to be characterized by unwarranted aggression and brutality. A key difference worth exploring is the race of the perpetrator(s). In the case of Floyd, the killer, Derek Chauvin, was white, while Nichols’ killers were black. The purpose of the present research was to comparatively examine how the Fox News website framed these two police-perpetrated killings. Quantitative content analysis was used to examine Fox News website coverage of the murders of Floyd and Nichols during the one-month periods following the publicity of both incidents. Findings were consistent with researcher expectations that Fox News would be more sympathetic to Nichols than Floyd, and more critical of the black police officers who killed Nichols than the white officer who killed Chauvin. In all, eight out of the study’s ten sub-hypotheses were supported.
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