Pure Copaganda: New Trailer for GRPD TV series and local news coverage about All Access PD Grand Rapids Part II

A little over a week ago, I posted an initial article regarding the local commercial news media coverage of the upcoming HBO/MAX TV series on the Grand Rapids Police Department. In that post I wrote:

The All Access PD Grand Rapids TV series should be seen for exactly for what it is, pure Copaganda. Regardless of what the TV show producer has to say about the GRPD, Black, Brown, immigrant and activists communities know better about how the GRPD really operates. These communities know that there is no real transparency or accountability since Winstrom arrived. The news coverage of the upcoming TV series provides no critique of the GRPD, nor do they include critical community perspectives.

Since the post from last week, the local commercial news media have continued to not so much as report on the GRPD-centered TV show, but hyped it. All three Grand Rapids-based TV stations reported on All Access PD Grand Rapids TV series which begins April 8.

In the WOODTV8 story the reporter and the news readers frame the issue using the GRPD’s perspective. What they had to say is followed by Chief Winstrom, who creates his own narrative around the issue of trust in the community. There is one critical voice, the President of the local NAACP chapter, Cle Jackson, but his comments to provide clear reasons for why he doesn’t think the TV series help build community trust. The channel 8 reporter also spoke with Marian Barrera-Young, executive director of the Baxter Neighborhood Association, who thought that the TV series could be beneficial. It should be noted, that the Baxter Neighborhood Association, receives CDBG funding and Barrera-Young is also the crime prevention coordinator, which means she works directly with the GRPD. The GRPD also has a cop who works out of the Baxter Neighborhood Association, so it is unlikely that there would be any critique of the GRPD coming from this source.

The WXMI 17 story from last week has no critical perspectives and the only source cited in the story is Chief Winstrom. In fact, the channel 17 story is mostly about the fact that Winstrom showed the trailer for the upcoming TV series at the Public Safety Committee last Tuesday and then Winstrom telling the reporter that the show is not scripted and “it just makes us look human.” Of course the TV show about the GRPD is scripted, just like how all TV shows are scripted. The only way for any media to not be scripted is if it is live and unedited. All media is constructed, which is one of the basic principles of Media Literacy.

The WZZM 13 story did not address the HBO/MAX show that will air next week, but it included the same talking points from Chief Winstrom about how crime is down in Grand Rapids, specifically shootings. Unfortunately, the WZZM 13 reporter doesn’t question the data nor does the reporter ask basic questions about why shootings have decreased. The Channel 13 reporter simply takes the GRPD Chief at his word, without seeking out other sources or opinions. 

These three stories are consistent with my news monitoring report from 2024, where the local news media rarely questioned the GRPD and often used the GRPD-created narrative about what was happening in this community. It is also worth pointing out that in all of the 673 policing/public safety stories over the past 12 months, there have only been 16 stories about community-based groups doing crime prevention work. Lastly, of all these 673 stories that centered around crime, there were only 11 stories about the GRPD actually preventing crime, which means in most of the stories the GRPD showed up after a crime had been committed. This should tell us something about the real function of the GRPD.

As I noted in Part I, beginning on April 8th, GRIID will watch each of the 8 shows about the GRPD, provide a critique of the series and juxtapose concrete examples and data on how the GRPD operates and functions in the service of power.