Episode 1 - The Image Behind the Protests

Neutrality and Its Limits

When we decided to describe the image of George Floyd being killed by a white police officer, one of our early concerns was neutrality and objectivity.

Audio description relies on objectivity to build a verbal representation of what’s presented visually. This is its purpose. We, however, aren’t robots, at least not yet. We don’t shy away from the difficult subjects, and there are times when neutrality feels impossible, or just downright inappropriate. Our goal is to explore and describe, not to editorialize, and we’ll do our best to present information in such a way that lets you make your own judgements. But that’s easier to do (and makes more sense!) when describing a TV show or movie than it is when having a contextual conversation about real-life events. Should any of us be neutral when discussing George Floyd’s murder?

We both understand that we speak from various positions of privilege. We’re not always going to get it right. Sometimes our language will be unavoidably - and even intentionally - harsh to properly convey the reality of what we’re describing. And sometimes we’ll just miss the mark. When that happens, we want to hear from listeners about how we could do better.

If you would like a full breakdown of George Floyd's deadly encounter with the police, The New York Times created an excellent video that includes some solid journalistic descriptions.

The image described in episode can be found in hundreds of places online. It is used as the main image on a Wikipedia page titled Killing of George Floyd.