By 

Elahe Izadi

June 11, 2021 at 10:33 a.m. PDT

WASHINGTON POST:  The Pulitzer Prize board awarded a special citation on Friday to Darnella Frazier, the teenager whose cellphone footage of George Floyd’s murder last summer led to massive protests and sparked a racial reckoning in the country.

Frazier was 17 at the time she filmed Floyd’s death under the knee of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, and she testified at Chauvin’s trial, where he would eventually be convicted. Her video contradicted the initial police account of Floyd’s death.

In Friday’s announcement, the board said Frazier received the citation for “courageously reporting the murder of George Floyd, a video that spurred protests against police brutality around the world, highlighting the crucial role of citizens in journalists’ quest for truth and justice.”

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JUST SAYING

BY RAUL HERNANDEZ

Ms. Frazier was calm and understood the camera’s power more than most people, including many professionals.
She had the poise of a combat photographer to capture George Floyd’s murder that shocked the world.
That video recording can best be described as the Rodney King image of this decade.
There are many so-called First Amendment auditors on Youtube. Most are loudmouth and vulgar clowns with cameras who want to make quick cash by instigating and provoking by using foul language.
Ms. Frazier epitomizes how to set emotions aside and record a horrible incident that resulted in the death of a human being. She deserves the Pulitzer Prize.
Having been a newspaper reporter for more than three decades, I have seen and learned from some of the best photographers in the business. How to remain calm and professional when it hits the fan.
Police brutality and abuse will not end unless people begin to do what Ms. Frazier did with her camera and learn how to do it the right way.
The federal government should make it mandatory to get federal grants that all police departments across the nation outfit their officers with body cameras. Also, journalists should ask police chiefs if their officers are trained on the First Amendment. Federal court cases allow civilians to record the police from a reasonable distance as long as they do not interfere with an investigation.