Beyond Deflection: Accountability Frames in Opinion Columns*

The ways in which public officials, citizens, and social institutions are held accountable for social problems, including police‐involved killings in the United States, reflect changing attributions of responsibility. Although news reports now rely less on official police narratives and less often stereotype police as heroes and victims as villains, there has been little research on how opinion columns, featuring the views of community leaders, frame these deadly encounters. Through a public arenas approach employing frame analysis, this study examined 165 opinion columns about two victims of police violence, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, published in their respective local newspapers (the Courier Journal and the Star Tribune ) during 2020. Although some columns deflected responsibility away from the police, the majority used pro‐accountability frames. Writers in these columns functioned as “accountability entrepreneurs,” identifying decontextualized injustices (“colorblind injustice” or “social injustice”) or employing understandings of systemically based (organizational and structural) racism. This typology may be applied more broadly, as public opinion continues to change, to how accountability is deflected or centered in accounts of other social problems.