Black ladies let me know!

I got mad at my bf ( we are interracial black and white) because I have a friend who is missing and the picture they showed of her was really bad( hair messy, not smiling, etc) He claims that most times news broadcasters use pictures of the person not smiling because it gets the urgency across as opposed to them using one of them smiling or looking happy etc. I said they could have used a better photo and they always try to make African Americans look bad on the news than say others ( my opinion). I feel that he is just justifying their need to do that by defending it. What do you guys think?