On The Media is produced by:
In the 1950s, the mainstream American press had very little experience covering segregation and its impacts. In The Race Beat, Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff tell the story of how the civil rights struggle gradually made its way onto the front pages.
i found The Race Beat fascinating and very enlightening. Tells of an aspect of history lesser known--how black life was simply not covered in the white press at all, how northern reporters went to the south to tell the civil rights story, exposed what was going on to the the whole nation, and the dramatic problems they had doing it.Also the attitudes of southern papers, and how their reporters had to cope with the new developments.
What is left unsaid is that the northern, mainstream press scapegoated the southern segregationists while continuing to fail deal with the racism in the entire country and, for that matter, of the whole western world, which continues to today.
Evidence is provided not just by the Gina 6, here in Connecticut we have had a spate of nooses left about including at the Coast Guard Academy. Not to be outdone by white racists, our New Haven Vietnam Veterans Memorial, just off I-95, was recently graffitied with "Kill Whites" and "Kill Gringos", supposedly by a violent Hispanic gang.
Whether it is Minutemen stationed at the our borders or a British writer unsettled more by urban music extolling the virtues of the AK47 than by rock and rollers doing the same, race is a beat that has hardly stopped being relevant.
Electing Barak will not make it go away.
Please keep your comments relevant to this entry. Email addresses are never displayed, but they are required to confirm your comments. All comments on On the Media are moderated. On the Media reserves the right to edit any comments posted on this site. Please read the onthemedia.org Comment Guidelines before posting.
Back to Episode
