Media Critique

You can find the full article by the Washington Post here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/09/08/officer-threw-black-teen-like-a-childs-doll-during-parking-lot-encounter-lawsuit-claims/?utm_term=.cff29b79c488

While I was researching current events last Thursday I came across an article in the Washington Post that I immediately thought would be a good article to critique. The article is attached above.
The article is about a video clip from 2014 that was released showing a black teen being physically attacked by a police officer. It is a surveillance video, and it takes place in a parking lot. Upon reading the article, I was informed that the girl who was attacked was with her brother at the time of the attack. They both claimed to have been doing nothing warranting any sort of police interaction. The police officer can be seen pushing the girl against a car, throwing her to the ground, and shocking her with a stun gun. There is a lawsuit attached to this case, and the case is seems to have been mostly resolved. So my question is, why are we hearing about this now from a national news source?
First, this took place in 2014. Even if there were something that was worthy of national attention within this story, it happened over two years ago and is, at this point, irrelevant. However, I watched the video, and I was cringing the whole time. It certainly draws an emotional result from the viewer, and I was very quick to click on the video when I saw it in the first place. Though it is absolutely not okay how the police officer treated the girl, there was already a court case and a lawsuit.
To me, this story violates the fourth and first yardstick of journalism. The fourth yardstick "local relevance" states that news that is reported must matter to the audience it is reported to. Though this video could, perhaps, be used to gain leverage in the fight against police brutality and racism in America, it certainly does not affect the entire country directly. The only people that were truly affected by this happening were the people directly involved in the incident, perhaps the families and friends/coworkers of said people, and whoever got involved in the legal process following its occurrence. This is a very small group of people, which means this story is not justifiably national news.
I think that because it is a shocking and upsetting story, the Washington Post decided to report it. The key factor here, however, is that there is video. A video makes a story vastly more entertaining, and more people are willing to watch a clip than read a whole story.
It violates the first yardstick of journalism, newsworthiness, because it did/does not affect a lot of people for a long time. As stated previously, it only affected a small group of people. Also, I must stress again that this video is from 2014. It did not have the power to affect people for a long time when it happened, and it doesn't now. This is a small event, and though it was wrong and worthy of addressing, there is no prevalent long-term, nation-wide affect that stems from it.
This story could have justly been reported at the time of its occurrence by the local station of where it took place. If it had been (and I'm sure it was) reported in the town where actually happened, I don't think it would have violated the fourth yardstick of journalism. At the time it happened it would have been locally relevant because it was a very good example of unacceptable police behavior, which is worthy of coverage. I think it is important to make events like this one known. The article did connect this event to similar occurrences, such as the police shootings in Louisiana. But, that doesn't excuse it from the fact that this happened such a long time ago.
If it were have been a massive attack from the police onto citizens with a large amount of people hurt, then I could see it being nationally relevant. It would have been "newsworthy" (and not in violation of this yardstick) if there were the case. But, it wasn't.
The bottom line is that this story was not nationally relevant when it happened, and it definitely is not today.