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James M. Thomas, Savage Portrayals: Race, Media, and the Central Park Jogger Story By Natalie Byfield Temple University Press. 2014. 242 pages. $29.95 paper, $94.50 cloth, Social Forces, Volume 94, Issue 4, June 2016, Page e104, https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/sou123
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On the night of April 19, 1989, New York City police were inundated with reports of several attacks, assaults, and robberies in Central Park. While on patrol, an officer discovered a woman who had been raped, viciously beaten, and left for dead in a remote area of the park. In the days, weeks, and months following the event, the brutal nature of the attack served as fuel for a media frenzy, through which five black teenage boys would become the target of public outrage. In Savage Portrayals: Race, Media, and the Central Park Jogger Story, sociologist Natalie Byfield analyzes this event and its aftermath by combining an autoethnographic account of her time as a reporter for the New York Daily News with content analysis of media coverage of the rape, the trials of the five black teenagers, and, in 2002, the reopening of the case and ultimate vacating of the convictions.