Is the Media Racist?

In today’s usatoday (online), there is an article discussing this black journalist in miami receiving threats from a white supremacist group. Turns out the supremacist group found out the journalists’ contact information and posted it on its website. This happened AFTER the journalist wrote an editorial calling the media out on how it handles race relations.

It seems this black journalist was wondering in his editorial why the media doesn’t do more to report black on white crime, and questioning the intentions of the media falling all over themselves to report instances of white on black crime. If the media is obligated by some written or unwritten morality concerning fair reporting, I think the journalist may be on to something. In fact, I applaud him for calling the media out.

Politicians fail to hold the media accountable for their reporting because they rely so heavily on the media to sport their agendas and get them elected. As I read this article, I couldn’t help but think back over the last few years and tried to remember when the media focused on anything minority based. Think about it.

They didn’t call mayor nagin out in new orleans for not using the hundreds of school buses that were eventually flooded to evacuate his people before Katrina.

They didn’t say too much about the good reverend jesse jackson and his illegitimate child(ren).
They definitely didn’t really report the details and accusations of plagiarism in Dr. Martin Luther King’s dissertation.

You don’t see anything in the media about missing black children. Or hispanic. Or chinese. Or any children if they are not white, blonde and blue eyed. Is the caucasian race the only race who’s children come up missing? Are caucasians the only ones who disappear on cruise ships?

Yeah. Yeah. You will argue the media did a good job of reporting on the O.J. Simpson trial. But think about it. If O.J. weren’t O.J., would the media have cared? And if you recall, Johnny “The Cock” Cochran alienated his white litigation team members by using the race card. That trial really became world news when they had tapes of Mark Furhman using racial slurs. All of a sudden it was whitie trying to bring O.J. down because of his success. Bullshit. All of it.

Do hispanics, or chinese, or germans, or irish, or any other nationality that makes up this country commit crimes against other races? It doesn’t appear so if you listen to the media.

The media wants you believe that whitie blew up the levies in New Orleans. It doesn’t want to report about the influx of crime committed by non-whites after Katrina.

So I think this journalist might be on to something. Maybe the media, especially with the way the media business in general is struggling to stay afloat, should take a step back and re-evaluate the way they report the news.

Maybe the American public is tired of hearing nothing but bad news and that is why they are tuning the media out.

Maybe people in general want to move forward as a populas, regardless of race. If we are screaming for non-partisan politics in Washington so the country can move forward, let’s scream just as loudly (if not louder) for non-racial relations. Let’s learn to look at each other through eyes that see the color of water.

“We the people” means just that. Not We the Whites or We the Blacks. It means We the People. But we can’t be The People until the media falls in line and makes a committed effort to not just report the news fairly, but report the news in a way that doesn’t focus or bring a negative light to a particular race.

The Don Imus fiasco is a classic example. Where was the media when Jesse Jackson referred to New York as Hymie town? Stuart Scott from ESPN admitted in ESPN The Magazine that he uses the “N” word around his “homies.” Why use it at all?

Until the leaders of the communities, black, white, red, yellow, brown, etc., can put their racial insenuations aside, We the People will continue to be We the Divided.