How the Memphis Police Controlled the Narrative of Tyre Nichols’s Killing

Last Thursday, the Memphis Police Department announced that it was firing five police officers who beat a man named Tyre Nichols to death during a traffic stop. Shortly afterward, all five officers were jailed and charged with murder. Then the police department released body-camera and surveillance-camera footage of the incident. In the days that followed, the footage, and the question of whether or not to watch it, became the object of public preoccupation, superseding the violence it captured. Doreen St. Félix is a staff writer at The New Yorker. She joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss police-brutality videos as cultural objects—and the police as a storytelling apparatus.

Om Podcasten

Join The New Yorker’s writers and editors for reporting, insight, and analysis of the most pressing political issues of our time. On Mondays, David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, presents conversations and feature stories about current events. On Wednesdays, the senior editor Tyler Foggatt goes deep on a consequential political story via far-reaching interviews with staff writers and outside experts. And, on Fridays, the staff writers Susan B. Glasser, Jane Mayer, and Evan Osnos discuss the latest developments in Washington and beyond, offering an encompassing understanding of this moment in American politics.