Racism in the News Media......

[Pioneer1]

I've been watching the media coverage of the SUV driver vs Bikers incident and it seems that the media is going out of their way to make sure the public knows that the bikers were Black and Afro-Latino.

First of all, I don't understand why in a society where people are PRESUMED innocent before being proven guilty in a court of law....why the media is allowed to post people's faces and names on television, in news papers, and on the computer even before they've offcially been charged and tried.
It certainly is unethical but it should be illegal.

But there have been hundreds of instances of road-rage in America and I'm sure dozens have happened since this one.....
Yet they keep talking about this "non-story" day after day after day.

I call it a non-story because it's not necessary news on a national level, nor is there any "new" information about what has happened already.
Basically what they've been doing is  rehashing and recycling old information over and over again daily just to keep the story alive and making sure you KNOW who these men were and what they look like.
 

 

But this is just one example in a long list of negative stories the national media seems to have focused on while making sure the the viewers know the villian of the story is a Black person.

-You also have the terrorist incident in Kenya
-The Navy Yard shooter
-The female motorist who was killed at the Capital
-Even the little boy who boarded a plane by himself.
It may have been in a predominately White Minneapolis, but I KNEW he was a Black boy just by the way the media kept telling this "non-story".

They would have shown him but he was a minor so by law they couldn't.
And they wanted to show his father, but he insisted on his identity being kept secret.
So what do they do?
How do they get it over to the public that the boy was Black?

They play his father's "voice" as well as show a Black friend of his as an indirect way of letting the public know...yep...another negro acting a fool.



I don't know what concerns me more.....

1. The increase in the OPEN racism on America's news media today or
2. The seeming lack of concern or indignation from the Black community.

[Troy]

Pioneer, sure there is an overt and obvious bias that permeates the entire culture and most noticeably in how "news" is reported.

 

I watched the video of the Biker Boys on Youtube yesterday.  The reason it made the news is because on of the bikers recorded much of the incident.  The video was posted on YouTube and it went "viral".

 

Now I live in NYC and have been in exactly that same situation surrounded by Bikers on a street:

 

There had to have been 100 or more.  They were riding down the avenue and burning red lights -- preventing traffic from moving.  I actually went around a car in front of me -- refusing to wait out at a green light 'cause these Biker Boyz would not stop at a light.

 

As soon as I got into the mix of bikers.  I knew I'd made a mistake -- it was just too dangerous to be driving among so many motorcycles.

 

Now judging from the video I saw one of the bikers positioned himself in front of the car and slowed down.  The car then hit the biker -- breaking his leg.  The biker should not have pulled in front of the car and the car should not have hit the biker. If anything I'd have to place blame for the accident on the Biker as he initiated the incident which caused the accident. 

 

After that accident that car should not have sped off. If he did not feel safe he could have stayed in his car.  The driver's mistake was speeding off and running over yet another Biker crippling him. 

 

It looks like the police are not prosecuting the driver.  I don't know if the car is Black or white.  But he was described as a Banker and driving a Ranger Rover so the odds are is that his is White.

 

When you see some many bikers together you just have to give them right of way...

 

---------------

 

There are a number of reasons there is no apparent indignation.  We don't have the platforms to express that indignation. We don't tell our own stories, or news.

[Cynique]

This story has a lot of elements that stir an ongoing interest.  That's what the media is all about: reporting the sensational and selling newspapers. Look at how the media pilloried Anthony Weiner.

   

Some black people are just like whining celebrities. They want to pick and choose what is printed about them. They'd have been raising hell if Trayvon Martin's killing hadn't got all the ink and attention it got. 

 

I'm intrigued with this incident because it exposes  the cops involved in it, namely the off duty ones who participated in the parade and the other who was supposedly an undercover agent but didn't report what was going on right away because he was caught up in the thrall of the biker community.  These guys who are suppoed to be uphold the law have been suspended and are being investigated further.   

[Pioneer1]

The guilt or innocence of the "Biker Boys" is not for me to decide.
It seems that the driver...who was Asian....should be charged with something since he actually ran over a man and fled the scene of an accident.

But as I said, none of that matters because the REAL story is actually about showing the public how violent Black people are.


As I post on this site I'm watching CNN right now and 3 Black faces connected to the Biker attack has just flashed across the screen in a nation where people are presumed innocent BEFORE being proven guilty.
And before that....another Black face of some Black man on video robbing a White man in Atlanta was highlighted.


There is no doubt in my mind that there is a racist agenda in atleast some newsrooms around the United States today.
 

Every news organization has an Editor.
Like a Prosecutor decides which cases get tried in court, and Editor decides which stories get airtime.

Nothing a professional does happens by accident.
They have a method and they have reasons for doing what they do and picking the stories they pick.

Most newsroom Editors are conservative White males and I believe many of them have an axe to grind.

[Cynique]

Considering how bad you talk about black people, your displeasure with the racist media has a hollow ring.

[Pioneer1]

Considering how bad you talk about black people, your displeasure with the racist media has a hollow ring.

 

 

I'm not going to lie....

I'm VERY disappointed in the behavior of AfroAmericans these past 30 years.

Too many have turned stupid, immoral, and savage.

But my criticism comes from a position of love and caring.

If you CARE about someone, their negative behavior and pitiful state of existance bothers you.

 

The difference between MY critique of Black people and how we're portrayed in the media is that I try to investigate and get to the bottom of why so many of our people do what they do so we can solve the problem.

The media just shows the end result of what 30 years of Reaganomics and right-wing domestic policies have produced in urban America.

 

 

You want to show the video clip of the Black man robbing the liquor store and praise the cops for nabbing the "bad guy".

But you don't want to do a story on how many times that same man applied for jobs around town and his applications were thrown in the garbage or "lost"  effectively locking him out of the workforce so that he couldn't make a decent living for himself.

 

There used to be a time that if a Black man graduated from highschool and didn't go to jail, he was almost guaranteed SOME sort of job to make a living for himself even if he didn't get rich.

Now they're saying,

"Yeah, we know you have a college degree and no criminal record, fuck you anyway...lol.

We're not hiring ya.

Whatcha  gonna do about it....call Jesse Jackson?????"

 

[Cynique]

This has as much to do with classism as racism. Qualified black people have made inroads in certain areas.  Around Chicago, the Post Office, Utility companies and political patronage jobs are well-staffed with Blacks in high positions.  Yes, private industry does maintain its quotas and glass ceilings.  BTW, Jesse Jackson writes a column for one of Chi-town's major newspapers.

 

We know that whoever controls the purse strings gets to tell the story.  Corporate Networks with their picture perfect token black news anchors reserve the right to show that they haven't completely abandoned the racism that millions of their white viewers harbor.  And so it goes. 

 

NBC has just aired the results of a detailed breakdown in a poll surveying America's population.  This poll showed that the vast majority of Americans of all ethnicities fall into the pragmatic, libertarian middle-of-the- road category.  They don't want too much government interference but they are willing to pay their share of taxes, and think the rich should do the same.  They believe that all citizens should be treated "fairly"  and that the needy should be  helped.  They really hate America casting itself as the policeman of the world and are against all of these wars being fought on foreign soil.  The 2 people most trusted by this group are: Barack Obama and Oprah Winfrey.   Go figure. 

[Troy]

"Yeah, we know you have a college degree and no criminal record, fuck you anyway..."

 

That just about sums it up Pioneer.

 

A manager (older White guy) effectively had told me the same thing using more professional language.  It did not bother me too much because I already knew how we were perceived collectively. The manager was not unique.

 

What surprised me however was that he actually articulated the sentiment.  The guy had less education than I did and was probably under pressure seeing that his role was being outsourced...

 

A few years later, after we both were no longer with the firm, he looked me up, and to his credit, apologized and said he was glad to see that I was going well. 

 

We are all part of the same system.  I don't condemn the self destructive behavior of Black people solely on the individual any more than I blame the racist behavior of white folks solely on that individual.  We all live in a jacked up system that reinforces both behaviors.

 

Unfortunately it is usually the individual that is called to account, not the society that shared in the blame.

 

Most people, it seems, don't really care enough to look beyond their own prejudices or tightly held beliefs to question anything.  So it is quite easy to understand why a celebrity like Oprah and a politician like Obama rate so highly in terms of level of trust.

 

It is the same reason a charismatic preacher can so easily separate so many people from their hard earned money.

 

We all need help...

[Pioneer1]

One of the reasons Republicans hate "government" so much is because of the government jobs so many Black people hold.

I keep waiting for a Democrat to bring up that point during discussions on television, lol.

Go to the Post Office or DMV/Secretary State and it looks like America.

Even the Military is diverse.
Black folks rise quick in the Military because the goals are clear and there is little room for tricks and schemes....it's about performance.

See that wall....jump over it.
See that target...hit it.

The government is the "great arbitrator" in a Capitalist society.

Infact, I came up with a proposal for the state of Michigan to have it's own "state work force" to employ unemployed people who otherwise couldn't find work in the private sector like convicts or people with little skills.

That way people with racist agendas can't "starve" Black folks out of the workforce.
 

But as far as racism in the media.............
One of the things I liked (and still like to a certain extent) about PBS....besides the nudity...was how they showed uncut and uncensored Black history and speeches by Martin Luther King and Malcolm X and other figures that they NEVER showed on the commercial networks!!!!

You can even watch News Hour on PBS and you'll have a more professional and less sensational and racist news format.

[Troy]

It is the same in NYC.  Black people do not have meaningful jobs in corporations but virtually all the workers working for transit are Black.  I'd be willing to bet the majority who work for the Post Office are Black as well.

 

The reason you like PBS is the reason I like YouTube.  I have discovered so many talks by Black intellectuals -- it is a gold mine of information.

[Pioneer1]

As soon as the Biker incident starts to die down, the mainstream media finds more racist crap to focus on.

Now they're focusing on 2 Black men who escaped from a Florida prison.

This story means nothing to anyone outside of Florida.
Why talk about it on every major network and post their pictures on the screen all day for damn near a week?

Racism and the need to frequently depict Black males as criminals, are the only reasons I can think of.

And again, I haven't heard one Black leader come out and speak on this.

[Cynique]

I don't think this case is a good one to prove your point.  This is an intriguing story that sparks nationwide attention because it's like something out of a movie!  It has nothing to do with the color of the subjects.  It has everything to do with how 2 convicted murders could just walk out of a prison without being stopped.  It's a bad reflection on prison security more than anything else and raises the question as to whether the escape was an inside job. These men were considered dangerous and  how they looked had to be constantly publicized.

[Troy]

Cynique, I agree with you, but that does not mean Pioneer is wrong too. 

 

I suspect escaping from prison has happened before and probably occurs at least a few times a year.  Even it If it only happens 2 or 3 times a year then Pioneer would have a point, since this case made national news.

 

These Brother got the idea from somewhere -- I would not be surprised if the same form of escape previously happened at the same prison, but we were not informed about it.

[Pioneer1]

Well, they caught them now....so I guess we can look forward to another story to focus the public on.


Having had a few friends in the local media and having met people in major/national media (when I lived in Atlanta I loved hanging around CNN Center...lol) ....they told me first hand about the tricks and psychological games that are played on the television viewer.

We all know how they use sex to sell, that's old.
But there are dozens if not hundreds of other tricks they use to manipulate the minds of the audience for a particular purpose.  Even things as simple as lighting and the position of the camera can make all the difference in how people are depicted.


Ever notice how some pictures like Drivers Licenses make White people look their best while making Black people look like they're taking a mugshot?
Depending on the camera, unless you're very lightskinned you may not even able to see yourself, all you see is some eye...lol.

It's about lighting and using particular lights that seem to go well with certain skin tones.
Most professionals in the media KNOW this.

I got an opportunity to go to Belgium some years ago and Belgium has a large Congolese population with their own television channels.
I'm laying in bed with my lady in the hotel room and she's flipping through channels.
I'm enjoying the nudity that is commonly seen on European tv.....lol....she's looking for European soap operas.
I saw images of the Congo like major cities with big sky scrapers and military marches....but these were Black folks in the heart of Africa!
You don't see that in America.
In America the pictures of Africa you often see are lions and elephants in the jungles, or tribal fighting.

She remarked about how well Black people looked on television in Europe.
I didn't pay that statement much mind at the time, but started noticing that some television channels seem to make Black people "glow" or pick up the full texture of our skin, while others make Black folks look dull and grainy.