Have you noticed a funny thing about America's long, hot summer of racial tension?
From Shirley Sherrod's speech to the barely extant "New Black Panther Party" to the very few racist signs at Tea Party gatherings, each incident was essentially an isolated, minor event -- before it was blown out of proportion by the media. Unlike other periods of racial strife, from early civil rights protests to more recent battles over bussing and affirmative action, there is no massive activity here. There is no national debate. There is only media.
In place of actual events, the media offers a Matrix-like presentation of racial symbolism.
So Ms. Sherrod was forcibly typecast as an angry, racist black woman who wielded government power -- in the Obama era -- to harm white people. Then she was swiftly recast as a victim of "our" 24-7 culture and "our" rush to judgment. Meanwhile, Fox News' Panther 2.0 story fuses the enduring fear of black violence with the conspiracy of stolen elections. Suddenly, old video of a lone crackpot is treated as a national epidemic -- a several-week story about rampant intimidation of white voters.
We all know why partisan media and dishonest agitators push these stories. But why does the self-proclaimed objective media keep falling down here?
There are two core reasons. One of them is even forgivable.
First, many objective journalists make a category error when assessing other media. They are bizarrely over-inclusive.
Many reporters apparently presume, for example, that Breitbart's websites are part of the news media. And they react accordingly. That means citing to him as a news source -- or feeling scooped and trying to catch up on his "stories."
Yet Breitbart is not a media competitor in objective news. His actual category is partisan operator. He just happens to run websites that mimic a few conventions of the press.
With the accurate category applied, the traditional tactics of journalism kick in just fine. A scandalous item from Breitbart, like a DNC press release or an operative's salacious tip, must be researched and fact-checked. And a quote from him, like many quotable political sources, should be presented more for its political relevance than its veracity.
It sounds so pedantic, readers may wonder why reporters are having category failure at all.
To be fair, there's a ton of new media to learn about, and many have rightly pressed the press to gulp more from the digital firehose.
And to be real, there's also pressure on journalists to show a special bias here. Which brings us to the second, unforgivable reason that reporters keep falling down racial rabbit holes.
When it comes to laundering questions and stories through the traditional media, the right wing pressure groups have really beaten the video game.
So many reporters, or their bosses, worry about accusations of liberal leanings that they now openly take editorial direction from the most farfetched conservative narratives.
Take Bob Schieffer, the esteemed and courtly host of CBS' Face The Nation. Fox News attacked him for neglecting to ask Attorney General Eric Holder in a recent interview about the charges against the New Black Panther members. (Recall that Bush lawyers downgraded the charges from a criminal to civil suit, which the Obama Justice Department resolved in May 2009). Schieffer's response was baffling.
"Had I known about that, I would have asked the question," Schieffer said, adding that the topic "got very little publicity, and you know, I just didn't know about it."
Huh?
Schieffer could have said this was the definition of old news -- charges dropped by Bush appointees and a civil suit settled 14 months ago.
Or he could have noted that there was no substance here -- as prominent conservatives like David Frum and Michael Gerson have declared.
Hell, even the fact that a pro journalist didn't come across the item in interview prep reveals the story's valence in the nonpartisan media. (Some neglected items do deserve to bubble up, of course). Or at least it did. In theory.
Once the conservative kvetching starts, however, many reporters dutifully pretend that Megyn Kelly's stale conspiracies are the new black.
After Fox attacked, Schieffer issued his baffling, retroactive mea culpa. Then he dutifully convened a segment about the topic on "Face The Nation," where Abigail Thernstrom, a former Bush civil rights appointee, repeated her public statements that the evidence for any crime here is "extremely weak." (Analyzing this repetitive cycle of cooking a story and shaming reporters to cover it, media critic Simon Maloy has documented a 6-step "Fox Effect.")
Then came the newspaper ombudsmen, who increasingly toggle between factual criticism and reacting to right wing fantasies. Indeed, Andrew Alexander, of the Washington Post, recently admonished his colleagues to get an earlier jump on the politically-driven non-stories.
"Better late than never," he wrote in an article headlining the "Silence From The Post on Black Panther Party Story."
More "coverage is justified," Alexander averred, and if Holder's team is "not colorblind in enforcing civil rights laws, they should be nailed." Another Post editor weighed in, too, conceding that the story was "significant" and the Post should have covered it sooner.
With this approach, newspapers could cut out the middlemen and just invite Glenn Beck and Megyn Kelly to train their reporters directly.
So where does all this leave us?
Well, reporters and ombudsmen cannot extinguish largely disingenuous charges of bias by applying new, politically laundered biases to their editorial choices. They should stop trying. (One encouraging example is Newsweek's David Graham, a young journalist who stuck to his objective guns, even after his skeptical reporting on the voter charges sparked pointed attacks from Bill O'Reilly, Megyn Kelly and Breitbart's sites.)
And journalists can't win a popularity contest in a mediascape that is continuously expanding content while shrinking the constituency for objective news. An expanding universe makes everything feel smaller. There is one thing, however, that has not changed about journalistic objectives. Reporters were never supposed to be popular -- especially not among the most passionate partisans -- they were just supposed to get it right.
Ari Melber writes for The Nation, where this column was first published. He Twitters news and politics at http://twitter.com/AriMelber.
Follow Ari Melber on Twitter: www.twitter.com/AriMelber
Racist police officers yell the N word, taser innocent black man 9 times until he dies
http://www.examiner.com/x-7732-AntiEstablishment-Examiner~y2010m2d3-Racist-police-officers-yell-the-N-word-taser-innocent-black-man-9-times-until-he-dies
James Rivera, 16, shot by police
http://www.news10.net/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=87503
"I was in the military. I was a former Marine. I had more accountability as a Marine in war than police officers serving in our civilian neighborhoods do, and that needs to change," -Motecuzoma Sanchez-
Their supporters are their worst enemy because they continually derail every substantive policy debate to race.
That was then, this is now under the leadership of the networks where beginning in the 1970s news was transformed to entertainment: Editors were replaced by producers; newswriters were replaced by scriptwriters and reporters were replaced by actors and actresses merely playing the role.
Interestingly enough, fewer and fewer folks are watching and more and more are relying on the Internet for news of the day.
http://www.aldaily.com/
No one can bring forward a meaningful story without bringing their own humanity to the story. No one can even Find a story without looking at the world through the lens of one's own experience.
It is best to dig into more than one side of a story if you want to know the truth. Seldom is it found only on one side or only on another.
I sympathize with Ari's frustration, but he could answer his own questions much easier if he buried his old-fashioned notion that TV presents, or even tries to present, the news. There hasn't been news on TV since the days of Huntley and Brinkley. TV's so-called news divisions are in the entertainment business and have been for several decades now. All TV news, whether it caters to the left or the right, is crafted and evaluated as entertainment by the networks that produce it.
It's deliberate.
It was their history that slaved to build our South, that gave the US a rich and unique musical art and helped create the music recording industry, that embellished and then exploded a stoggy white-boy sports scene into arguably the nation's strongest bit of pride we still relate to, and that now finally years after Martin Luther's assination, have worked their way into every professional niche we as a country extend as common opportunity.
And in this November election, it should be -- above all other races and creeds -- their voice that should be heard at the polling booths. They have earned that right and if we white folks don't want to be heard on election day, let the black vote ring out and determine the losers and our winners.
It strikes me as ------ that here we are today questioning the state of racism in the US, without mention of
Worse yet, that no matter what I said, because I was saying it, it would received as condescending, naive, out-of-touch or even outright prejudicial.
Then I realized my assuming any statement about race from someone who looks like me--including me--is itself stereotyping, and therefore bigoted. So if I can't win for losing, I may as well have my say...
The view that race relations have improved is a relative statement. It simply has not been that long since Jim Crow was alive and well, so certainly those attitudes can not have faded much; or died off to put it coarsely. And if anyone questions why minorities--especially African Americans--are (still) angry, it's because even after all their fight against "the system," equality still doesn't exist in either practice or theory.
If you don't believe that, look at our prison system. Some individuals simply want to be criminals; but how many minority prisoners are there only because for them survival has meant crime?
And what about the present unemployment rate? High unemployment (and underemployment) in specific minority areas has always existed; but when a bunch of people who look like me get screwed by a bunch of people who look like them via fiscal prejudice (greed), suddenly unemployment is a national emergency.
Improvement? Maybe. A lot more progress needed? Unequivocally, yes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3cGfrExozQ&feature=related
You wanna get rid of racism, stop talking about it.
Racism may be ramping up at present, not just because the fire has moved from the trees to the subterranean forest's roots, but also because our economic plight is so broad and extreme that it sponsors a widespread anger in which anything and everything become volatile.
And the media becomes both the catalyst and the self-serving beneficiary.