LOS ANGELES : Waters Criticizes Paper’s Use of Gang Picture
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Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) on Thursday criticized the use of a Page 1 photograph in Tuesday’s edition of USA Today for “undermining our efforts to keep the peace” in South-Central Los Angeles.
The photograph of several armed gang members accompanied a story about building tensions in South-Central because of the federal civil rights trial of four police officers involved in the beating of Rodney G. King.
The newspaper ran a Page 1 clarification in Thursday’s paper, noting that the “cover story and caption accompanying a photo of five Los Angeles gang members should have included the information that at least three gang members told USA Today that they planned to turn their guns in to a jobs-for-guns program.”
Waters said at a news conference in Washington that she was appealing “to the hierarchy of the media to keep a lid on this sort of thing. I am extremely concerned about the . . . atmosphere being created.”
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