The media is a BUSINESS.Its job is to get ratings so as to insure more advertising money.
Yet much of it is OUR fault.Picture yourself in nearly any American social setting.Two TVs on.One is a news story about the latest Free Trade agreement debate.The other headlines a story about a pack of wild elephants stomping through an Indian village,killing dozens.Live pictures next.
Guess which TV nearly everyone will cluster around?
Hello again, FRiend.
I understand your concerns but it spills over into more than just cases which have been ‘solved’ more or less.
My issue is in almost every place I’ve lived, they report breathlessly on a rape or robbery and then when it’s time to go into suspect description, they’ll talk about the guy’s hat (like that can’t be changed,) clothing, height, facial hair, eye color but they won’t mention race-—UNLESS it’s a white guy.
This is a great disservice to a community and to innocent people. In some cases, with a little detail, we might be able to catch some of these people but because of their withholding of the race (be the man Asian or white or black or Hispanic) they are taking away a key element in identification. Combine that with height, facial hair and maybe a sketch, and it COULD help someone who knows the person to put 2 and 2 together and turn him in.
But instead they’d rather censor that information than assist the citizenry.
As for coverage of these crimes, I’m mixed race as you may remember and I think there’s still a great deal of racism towards blacks in this country BUT one thing I believe is that the truth is the truth. That means that if they make the Byrd killing national news for several news cycles, it’s only fair if they do the same in other cases. It doesn’t mean EVERY case should be dissected in such a manner but there should be some ATTEMPT at balance.
One thing I have noticed is that the kidnapping and rape of that black woman in West Va. seems to have been slightly underreported based on previous experiences. I don’t know if it’s because she wasn’t as sympathetic or wasn’t killed or what. Maybe the media would rather just underreport everything than give ‘fair’ front page coverage.
I’d argue that the one-sided focus on white racism has actually strengthened black and Latino racism and contributed greatly to anti-white violence but also racism and violence between blacks/hispanics/asians as this form is rarely talked about and thus never positively addressed (except maybe after the LA riots in 92.)