Technology gives bracing immediacy to police shooting story

A live, online piece of footage of a dying man brought a shocking new immediacy Thursday to the issue that gave birth to the Black Lives Matter movement.

The video — posted by a Minnesota woman from inside the car where her boyfriend lay bleeding from police gunfire — was seized on by some as sickening proof of what they have been saying all along: that police are too quick to use deadly force against minorities.

Some viewers found it too painful or voyeuristic to watch, and some of the major TV networks chose to blur the picture.

“We’d never seen anything like this, which is what made the tape all the more remarkable,” said Jim Murphy, vice president for morning programming at CNN, which chose not to obscure the image.