There was once a belief that if only we had video footage, we could see the truth.
After a slate of police-involved violence, there was a push to record video and make them available to the public so we could know what really happened and the right people could be held accountable.
Then came more body cams and livestreams. But eventually, the videos alone were not enough to definitively prove to any viewer what was true.
The narrative that further criminalized the victim somehow won out. Even with video proof, the idea remained that this person should have just complied, that they were criminals and they must have done something to deserve their fate.
Injustice anywhere …
As Martin Luther King Jr. Once said, “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” This is a truth many Americans have always known.
Seeing the deaths of Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good bring to mind the death of Philando Castile. And Breonna Taylor. And so on.
For all the people who said that previous victims should have just complied, Pretti’s and Good’s deaths demonstrate that there must be something else at play.
“… narratives are being reshaped in real time, right before our eyes.”
Now, narratives are being reshaped in real time, right before our eyes. What some called brandishing a weapon and threatening government agents, others saw as a licensed carrier with a holstered gun.
When we are watching the same video, and being told not to trust our own eyes, it is increasingly difficult to agree on the truth. Some will believe what they see while others will believe what they’re being told.
Lately it seems that we can hardly agree on what is true. It seems more likely that we will believe our social media algorithm, without additional fact-checking, even when we are presented with hard facts.
“Facebook and YouTube outpace all other social media sites as places where Americans regularly get news: 38% of U.S. adults say they regularly get news on Facebook, and 35% say the same about YouTube,” according to a Pew Research Center study published in September 2025.
We must know, however, that just because we see something on Facebook does not make it true, especially in the age of clickbait and AI.
Our social media algorithms are efficiently refined to show us what we like or provide us with supporting evidence for what we already believe. The choice of where We do not necessarily know what other people experience if we never see it.
You would think that video footage would change our minds, but if you’re being told by people who are supposed to be trusted leaders, not to believe your own eyes, what do you do?
Telling the truth
Storytellers from our past made it their life mission to tell the truth as they lived it, to make sure we all saw what they needed us to see.
Emmett Till’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, wanted to make sure the country saw what happened to her son, the disfigured visage of a young Black male. At just 14 years of age, he would not have been old enough to take a drink, vote or drive a car. Unfortunately, he was old enough to lose his life in a historically horrific manner.
Solomon Northup, author of “Twelve Years a Slave,” was a free-born Black man who later endured slavery. Having lived as both a free person and an enslaved person, he could recount both experiences in detail, sharing an undeniable, one-of-a-kind perspective.
Ida B. Wells told of the atrocities of lynching, making sure that those lives were not lost in the void of history. Her efforts gave an account of what many would have otherwise ignored.
Zora Neale Hurston notably said, “If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.”
“It is easier to look away, to deny, or to pretend that we do not see what we are seeing.”
It is easier to look away, to deny, or to pretend that we do not see what we are seeing. It is easier to pretend that we are not repeating the past, that we are better and more sophisticated than our predecessors. Surely, we would not be so obtuse.
So, the pain must be said out loud and in writing and on video, if for no other reason than to make sure other people know it hurts. Otherwise, someone else’s version of history will always win out.
Contact Editor-in-Chief Camike Jones at camikej@indyrecorder.com.
Camike Jones is the Editor-in-Chief of the Indianapolis Recorder. Born and raised in Indianapolis, Jones has a lifelong commitment to advocacy and telling stories that represent the community.
