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Sounding Racist Doesn’t Make You One

richard

In Campaign Coverage, Media Don’t Always Distinguish

Jay Smooth, founder of what is described as New York’s longest running hip-hop radio show, "Underground Railroad" on WBAI-FM, has posted an entry on his video blog that has special relevance to one of the latest developments in the presidential contest. In "How To Tell People They Sound Racist," Smooth makes a distinction between what people say and what they are.

Smooth’s video comes to mind in light of a thread that has continued in the news media since Sen. Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, said on July 30:

"John McCain and the Republicans, they don’t have any new ideas. That’s why they’re spending all their time talking about me.

"I mean, you haven’t heard a positive thing out of that campaign in a month. All they do is try to run me down. . . . They’re going to try to say that I’m a risky guy. They’re going to try to say, well, you know, he’s got a funny name. And he doesn’t look like all the presidents on the dollar bills and the $5 bills."

National Public Radio White House correspondent David Greene said Wednesday on National Public Radio’s "Tell Me More," "I was actually with Obama in Missouri when he made that comment last week. And it didn’t strike me as there being any racial undertone when I heard it. And you know, among the press covering Obama, no one said, ‘my God, he just, you know, he might have played the race card.’

"But as soon as the McCain campaign made the decision to sort of go after him, you know, you saw the punditry just buzzing about this immediately. And it’s sort of one of those issues where if a campaign can sort of find a way to tap into that and bring it up to the surface, it can make some headlines and become a really big deal."

In fact, the liberal media-advocacy group Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting wrote http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3588 on Tuesday, "Corporate media so accepted the McCain campaign’s spin on this issue — when an Obama aide acknowledged that the ‘dollar bill’ remark was an allusion to the candidate being African-American, ABCNews.com (8/1/08) headlined the story ‘Obama Camp Admits Playing Race Card’ — that it becomes difficult to see the obvious: that it’s McCain and not Obama who is eager to see the 2008 campaign become a debate about race."

"He did play the race card. McCain responded and, I think, responded fairly," commentator Juan Williams said on "Fox News Sunday," in one of the many references to the "race card" on the Sunday talk shows.

It was left to such columnists as Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post to affirm what Smooth’s video does: that what people say and what they are are not necessarily the same. Robinson cited Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C.:

"Graham said on ‘Fox News Sunday’ that ‘there’s no doubt in my mind that what Senator Obama is trying to suggest — that he’s a victim of something.’ Graham later added: ‘We’re not going to run a campaign like he did in the primary. Every time somebody brings up a challenge to who you are and what you believe, ‘You’re a racist.’ That’s not going to happen in this campaign.’

"The key words are ‘victim’ and ‘racist’ — which Obama did not say. Graham puts them in Obama’s mouth because of their power to alienate," Robinson wrote http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/04/AR2008080401824.html .

Former president Bill Clinton also conflated being a racist with saying something racist, according to an Associated Press account of an appearance by Clinton on ABC’s "Good Morning America":

"Asked in the interview whether he blames himself for his wife’s loss, Clinton replied, ‘I’ve heard it from the press and I will not comment on it. . . . There are things I wished I said. Things I wished I hadn’t said, but I am not a racist. I never made a racist comment and I didn’t attack him personally.’"

McCain’s aggressive approach toward Obama is paying off in news coverage. "For the first time since this general election campaign began in early June, Republican John McCain attracted virtually as much media attention as his Democratic rival last week," the Pew Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism reported http://journalism.org/node/12200 this week.

Much of that was due to McCain’s ad comparing Obama with celebrities Paris Hilton and Britney Spears.

Image: Kenneth J. Cooper http://www.maynardije.org/columns/dickprince/070307_prince/cooper.jpg Caption: Kenneth J. Cooper

"Generational" Divide Among Pols Called Overrated

"The question of how strongly race will play out in the November election — that is, how many whites will prove to be colorblind — has dominated the discussion of racial politics in the Obama-McCain race so far. But coming this Sunday, The New York Times Magazine looks http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/10/magazine/10politics-t.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin at what the Obama candidacy ultimately means for blacks," Editor & Publisher reported http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003835198 on Tuesday.

"The cover story, by frequent contributor Matt Bai, is titled ‘Post-Race’ and the Times, in its preview, asks, ‘Is Obama the end of black politics?’"

But Kenneth J. Cooper, a veteran journalist and former national editor of the Boston Globe, wonders why a writer with more experience in covering black politics wasn’t assigned the piece instead.

"Bai’s fundamental premise, shared by many newspaper reporters who covered Jesse Jackson’s crude remarks about Obama’s Father’s Day speech, is wrong," Cooper wrote to the e-mail list of the National Association of Black Journalists.

"Obama does not represent a new ‘generation’ of black politicians. Born in 1961, he is a Baby Boomer. So too is Deval Patrick, the somewhat older governor of Massachusetts. But Bai also couples Obama with Newark Mayor Corey Booker, born 1969; US Rep. Arthur Davis of Alabama, born 1967, and US Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., born 1965. Booker, Davis and Jesse Jr. are not Boomers and therefore not of the same ‘generation’ as Obama.

"Black Baby Boomers in political office is not new. Since 1992, a bunch have served in the Congressional Black Caucus, that supposed geriatric society of civil rights champions: Cynthia McKinney, Wililam Jefferson, Carol Moseley Braun, Chaka Fattah, Cleo Fields, Sanford Bishop, Albert Wynn, William Lacy Clay, Harold Ford . . . among others. Nearly all of Boomers in the caucus arrived with prior legislative experience. Bai’s casting the CBC as a redoubt of civil rights-bred spokesmen for black people, not legislators, is dated.

"Bai says there was significant turnover in the CBC because some members did not support Jesse Jackson the elder in 1984 and 1988, leading to "a flurry of primary challenges, the retirement or defeat of several incumbents and the arrival in Washington of a new class of black congressmen." Wrong. Only a handful of CBC members have ever been defeated for reelection. The new class he refers to, the class of 1992, arrived because redistricting created more black majority districts, leading to a 50 percent increase in caucus membership.

"Bai also says before the 1990s Edward Brooke, elected to the US Senate from Massachusetts in 1966, was the only black candidate elected statewide with white support. Were they alive, this would be news to Lt. Gov. Mervyn Dymally of California and Lt. Gov. George Brown of Colorado, both elected in 1974.

"More than these errors and omissions, it Bai’s lazy-minded, stock analysis that a ‘generational’ shift is somehow behind Obama’s success and the decision of some black elected officials to support Hillary Clinton. Every time a black politician makes an advance, the mainstream press declares the arrival of a new generation of black politicians. Black folks do have a higher birth rate than white folks, but we don’t breed that fast."

Unity Falls Short in Influencing Election Coverage

Four years ago, Unity: Journalists of Color decided to meet every four years instead of every five in order to take advantage of the presidential election years. That way, the reasoning went, journalists of color would more directly influence the coverage. The alliance of black, Hispanic, Asian American and Native American journalist associations adopted as a "strategic objective" that it would sponsor one of the presidential debates in 2008.

Did Unity meet those objectives? "I’m not sure that it did," Ernest Sotomayor, who was president of Unity four years ago, told Journal-isms, "given that we were not able to get the candidates there and sponsor one of the debates."

While Sen. Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, eventually decided to speak at the 2008 Unity convention in Chicago, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the Republican candidate, skipped it. In 2004, both Republican George W. Bush, the incumbent, and Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass.., the Democrat, had appeared at Unity’s Washington gathering.

On Tuesday, the Commission on Presidential Debates announced http://www.debates.org/pages/news_111908.html the moderators for the fall presidential and vice presidential debates. Gwen Ifill of PBS will reprise her role moderating the vice presidential debate on Oct. 2 at Washington University in St. Louis, but she will be the only journalist of color before the cameras for the events.

The refereee for the first presidential debate, on Sept. 26 at the University of Mississippi, is Ifill’s PBS colleague Jim Lehrer; moderator for the second, a town meeting Oct. 7 at Belmont University in Nashville, is NBC News’ Tom Brokaw; and out front for the third, Oct. 15 at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y., is Bob Schieffer of CBS. A news release did not explain why the commission chose a single-moderator format over one that might have allowed more participation by other journalists.

Janet Brown, executive director of the Commission on Presidential Debates, was asked in 2004 about the idea of Unity as a debate sponsor. She said then that she had not yet heard of the idea, but "we’re open to just about anything."

She did not return a telephone call on Friday.

2 Black Journalists Among Latest Chicago Tribune Buyouts

At least two black journalists were among those accepted for buyouts Friday at the Chicago Tribune, Glenn Jeffers, features writer, and copy editor John Adkins.

"All told, the Tribune has said it expects to eliminate 80 newsroom positions in this round of cuts, the paper’s fourth in three years. Other departments are making cuts, as well," Phil Rosenthal wrote http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-080808tribune-layoffs,0,3134416.story Friday on the Tribune’s Web site.

Jeffers said he did not feel comfortable talking about his situation, and Adkins, 59, declined to elaborate.

Rosenthal said, "Among those at the Tribune who requested and received buyouts are Hanke Gratteau, a one-time assistant to the late columnist Mike Royko who rose through the ranks to managing editor for news; Timothy J. McNulty, who covered everything from the White House to the Tiananmen Square uprising en route to becoming the paper’s link to readers as its public editor; and Michael Tackett, the paper’s Washington bureau chief."

Meanwhile, two other journalists at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution confirmed they were taking a buyout there and leaving at the end of the month. Lisa Brown, 48, a copy editor and a black journalists, said she planned to take some time off and was "burned out on the newspaper business."

Maria Saporta, 52, a business columnist who described herself as of Spanish descent and one-quarter Jewish, said of her future, "I’m still trying to put that together. She has been at the newspaper for 27 years and a columnist covering urban issues since 1991. Brown has been in the newspaper business for 18 years, 13 at the Journal-Constitution.

Gap Widens in Job Prospects for Graduates of Color

The gap between white journalism and mass communication graduates and their counterparts of color "widened a little bit" in the University of Georgia’s annual survey http://www.grady.uga.edu/annualsurveys/Archive_News/Archive_News_15.php of the job market, co-author Lee B. Becker told Journal-isms.

"Certainly the movement isn’t in a positive direction," he said.

"In 2007, 2,271 spring graduates from a probability sample of 83 universities around the country participated in the survey," according to a study released Thursday by the University of Georgia’s James M. Cox Jr. Center for International Mass Communication Training and Research. The results were announced at the annual conference of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication conference in Chicago.

"The study found that, as in past years, women had more success in the job market in 2007 than did men, and minority graduates were less likely to land a job generally and to find a job in the field of communication than were non-minority graduates."

Becker said, "over the last two years, the gap has increased. In a tougher job market, historically it’s been the case that the minority students suffer more than the nonminority."

What happens next? Becker asked. With employers seeking cheaper employees, those seeking entry-level positions are finding work. "But ultimately, they don’t want to stay in entry-level jobs. At some point, they will want to move up the line," and cost companies more money. Will the companies be able to pay them? he wondered.

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0Ti-gkJiXc]

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