Race Issues

After Paul Ryan held that a voter turnout increase in "urban areas" hurt the Romney ticket, CNN's Anderson Cooper questioned if he was using racial overtones and hammered him with a "Keeping Them Honest" report claiming Ryan missed other reasons why Team Romney lost.

"Well, some critics jumped on those remarks, since 'historically urban' has often been used as a code word for African-American voters," said Cooper, who proceeded to "keep Ryan honest" by noting that urban areas weren't the only reason why Ryan and Romney lost. GOP strategist Alex Castellanos laughed at that assumption and called it "ridiculous." [Video below the break. Audio here.]

On Wednesday's NBC Today, political director Chuck Todd cited Florida as evidence of "this demographic time bomb went off and caught the Republicans off guard," referring to the Hispanic vote in Tuesday's election. He then predicted the same "bomb" could go off in other states in the future: "...it's going to happen in Georgia....Texas and the state of Arizona..." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

During a panel discussion moments earlier, there was universal consensus among NBC journalists that GOP must abandon its principles to attract more voters. Meet the Press moderator David Gregory proclaimed: "The party has got to find a way to reach out to Latinos, the fastest growing voting bloc, to become a more diverse party with the ability to shed some of the orthodoxy around taxes, around spending over the role of government, and this process is going to begin this morning, the soul searching and redefinition."

During a panel discussion on Tuesday's NBC Today, former McCain campaign advisor Steve Schmidt and PBS host Tavis Smiley began writing the Republican Party's obituary before any votes had been counted, after co-host Matt Lauer wondered: "Which party stands to suffer the most long-term damage if they lose today?" [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

Schmidt proclaimed: "Well, if the Republicans lose, there's gonna be a civil war that breaks out in the Republican Party." Smiley followed by ranting that the GOP would be on the decline no matter what the outcome of the election: "I think we agree on this, though, Steve, the GOP is toast in the most multicultural, multiracial, multiethnic America ever if they can't expand their base. They may win tomorrow, but they're not going to win long term." Schmidt replied: "No doubt."

Bill Maher on HBO's Real Time Friday might have said one of the most disgraceful things uttered during the 2012 campaign season.

"If you're thinking about voting for Mitt Romney, I would like to make this one plea: black people know who you are and they will come after you" (video follows with commentary):

NPR doesn’t interview authors who find liberal bias in the news media. But it does interview its own contributors when they attack Fox News and media that feeds "fear and prejudice." On Thursday’s Talk of the Nation, host Neal Conan welcomed on Eric Deggans of the Tampa Bay Times to discuss his new book for a half hour. It's titled "Race-Baiter: How the Media Wields Dangerous Words to Divide a Nation."

Deggans opens the book by talking about his verbal battles with Bill O’Reilly, and explained his title “comes from the fact that Bill O'Reilly called me a race-baiter on his show years ago for the articles I've written criticizing the way he talks about race, and also talking about conservative voices like Rush Limbaugh and other people on Fox News Channel.” Conan began the segment by talking about America’s increasing racial prejudice (which they must think is Fox-based): 

Joel Gehrke at the Washington Examiner has noted the harsh racism recently expressed by the same pastor who delivered the benediction at President Barack Obama's inauguration in January 2009. Readers should read Gehrke's post as well as the underlying article in the Monroe County Reporter in Forsyth, Georgia to get the full flavor of what the Rev. Dr. Joseph Lowery said at St. James Baptist Church this past Saturday, because you can virtually guarantee the establishment press won't touch it, and this post won't be able to capture every offensive word and phrase.

Selected paragraphs from the Reporter's coverage, including its impact-minimizing subheadline, follow the jump (bolds are mine throughout this post):

The latest and possibly last (we can hope) preelection poll from partnership between the Associated Press and GfK Roper International purportedly tells us that most of us "now express prejudice toward blacks" whether we "recognize those feelings or not."

That's the conclusion communicated by AP reporter Sonya Ross and wire service deputy director of polling Jennifer Agiesta. In case we don't get the point, the item's accompanying photograph at the AP national site, Yahoo News and likely elsewhere is of Barack Obama, who despite the recognized and unrecognized racism of most Americans managed to carry 53% of the vote in 2008. Contrary to the report's headline, the AP pair admit that the AP-GfK poll results alone (done online, to add insult to injury) don't prove the point they're trying to make; other bizarre tests are also involved.

As NewsBusters previously reported, black sports columnist Jason Whitlock's article on an "information bubble" that's an obstacle to the success of black National Football League quarterbacks was read on the air by Rush Limbaugh during the Wednesday edition of his radio program.

Instead of being pleased with getting some free publicity, Whitlock slammed the conservative talker for quoting him, saying instead that Limbaugh was using his column as part of his "daily" campaign of "talking race."

Back in 2003, conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh ignited a firestorm of criticism from the left-dominated sports media for daring to point out the obvious fact that many people in the NFL and the media hype up black quarterbacks in the hopes of seeing them succeed.

Limbaugh revisited the topic yesterday on his program by highlighting a column by black sports writer Jason Whitlock, a man known for a number of years for his commendable ability to cut through political correctness in sports:

The liberal media's mission to smear the Koch brothers and Americans For Prosperity, one of the advocacy groups they support, continues.

On Wednesday, the Huffington Post published an article with the inflammatory headline "Americans For Prosperity Distributes Ads Promoting Pro-Slavery Arkansas Legislators":

On Tuesday, the broadcast of the first presidential debate since “Big Bird” and PBS funding became an allegedly huge campaign issues, will be sandwiched (depending on what time zone you live in) by a PBS election special called “Race 2012.”
 
The hour-long documentary is being advertised as a “provocative conversation about race and politics,” from “both sides of the political aisle,” but it is being grossly mis-marketed. I know this because I was interviewed for and have already seen the film.

Remember Carole Simpson, the ABC "reporter" who got all verklempt when she had the chance to interview then President Bill Clinton in 1999?  Simpson so embarrassed herself that she made MRC's "Worst Media Bias" list for that year.

Fast forward 13 years to this morning, when Melissa Harris-Perry had a Carole Simpson moment of her own.  On her MSNBC show, revealing that she recently had the chance to interview President Obama for the current issue of Ebony magazine, Harris-Perry could not restrain her enthusiasm, actually letting go with a "woo-hoo-hoo!" among other expressions of excitement.  View the video after the jump.

Americans who have lost out on their right to vote as a result of fraudulent activity at the ballot box should not expect to attract sympathetic coverage from the New York Times, and other self-proclaimed mainstream outlets. This is particularly true in Rhode Island where ethnic minorities and Democratic lawmakers are disproving the notion that voter identification laws are really about “voter suppression” and “racial discrimination.”  

In response to multiple voter fraud complaints from his own constituents in Providence, Sen. Harold Metts, a black Democrat, led the charge in favor of a new photo voter identification law that is now operative in the Ocean State. Metts is far from alone, however. In fact, despite what the media would have you believe, minorities are more likely to support identification laws than white Americans.

Liberal racism sightings have become like a lunatic's version of "Where's Waldo?" Kevin Baker of Harper's magazine says Romney's referring to his "five boys" in last week's debate was how he "slyly found a way" to call Obama a "boy." Says Baker: "How the right's hard-core racists must have howled at that!"

MSNBC's Chris Matthews says the word "apartment" is racist because black people live in apartments. He also says the word "Chicago" is racist because -- despite its well-known reputation as the home of Al Capone and the Daley machine -- a lot of black people live there, too. (And don't get him started on "Chicago apartments"!)

Okay, Steven Spielberg said what he said about Democrats and Republicans at his prerelease press conference promoting "Lincoln," his next movie which will be released just after Election Day. And of course he's spectacularly wrong in claiming that the country's two major political parties have "traded political places over the last 150 years."

If that were the entire story and Reuters reporter Christine Kearney (pictured here at LinkedIn) had simply relayed what Spielberg said, this post wouldn't be about media bias. But is, because Ms. Kearney herself took a journey into the land of make-believe with this subsequent sentence:

As NewsBusters reported Monday, African-American actress Stacey Dash was thoroughly lambasted on Twitter for expressing her support for Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

During an interview with CNN's Piers Morgan Tuesday, a defiant Dash marvelously said, "I chose him not by the color of his skin but the content of his character" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Can you imagine the outrage if a white commentator wrote an article with the headline "The 15 Most Overrated Black People?"

On Monday, African American Studies professor and political commentator Marc Lamont Hill published a piece at the Huffington Post entitled "The 15 Most Overrated White People."

In his speech to the Republican National Convention earlier this year, actor Clint Eastwood told the assembled crowd that there are more conservatives and moderates in Hollywood than they might think. Such people “play closer to the vest. They do not go around hot dogging it,” Eastwood said.

Unfortunately, actress Stacey Dash is finding out the hard way what happens to those celebrities who are willing to think for themselves: they get attacked by the very people who claim to preach “tolerance” and “peace.” (Note: This blog post is “not safe for work” and certainly not for children.)

MSNBC's Touré made another in a series of racist remarks Friday.

Appearing on the Martin Bashir show, Touré said of Republicans, "If you just have a bunch of white people, you’re gonna come up with alternate realities that don’t make any sense" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

MRC President and NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell appeared on the October 4 edition of Hannity and exposed the hollowness of the media's argument against covering inflammatory quotes Barack Obama made in a 2007 speech on race, clips aired for the first time earlier this week on Hannity. [Watch the full video after the jump.]

Host Sean Hannity set up the newest "Media Mash" segment: "I just played this tape, 2007. Yeah, the speech was reported on, but they didn't report what happened in this speech. They didn't -- major portions of it where the President is accusing the United States government -- before a predominantly African-American audience -- of not taking care of Katrina victims because of race."

In a bit of a surprise, New York Times reporters Jeremy Peters and Jim Rutenberg filed a longish article on a recently unearthed Obama video from 2007 showing the president in a fiery, racially charged mode and praising his anti-American pastor Jeremiah Wright, a video downplayed or ignored by most of the mainstream media: "Race at Issue for Obama As Right Revives '07 Talk."

Less surprising was the snotty text box: "New fodder for a favorite topic in conservative circles." And the reporters took care to trace the tape's provenance down the conservative media food chain.

If one were trying to prove in court that MSNBC is crazily biased, you could do worse than submitting Rachel Maddow's Tuesday night show.

She was discussing the recently released June 2007 tape of Barack Obama using Hillary Clinton's black accent to tell an audience of black preachers that the U.S. government doesn't care about black people, Maddow explained with her typical leaden sarcastic wit that the tape reveals Obama's "secret plan to be way more black than he seems to you now."

CNN dismissed the controversy behind a 2007 Obama video that just resurfaced, by calling it "old news" and whitewashing the President's own words. CNN even touted its own 2007 coverage of the speech without admitting that it ignored the most controversial part.

Anchor Soledad O'Brien, who has stuck up for Obama more than once before, lamely spun that Obama "was talking about racial discontent and hopelessness because of poverty." CNN's Zoraida Sambolin said "it is old news" and added that CNN "covered it at the time." [Video below the break. Audio here.]

Andrew Sullivan is spitting mad at Tucker Carlson.  Writing at The Daily Beast today, Sullivan vilifies the editor-in-chief of the Daily Caller as a "degenerate, disgusting, racist demagogue."

Sullivan is infuriated by Carlson's Daily Caller having recently called attention to a 2007 speech, largely ignored by the MSM, by then presidential candidate Barack Obama.  Addressing an audience of black ministers, Obama lavishly praised Rev. Jeremiah Wright, blamed the LA riots and the response to Hurricane Katrina on racism and made, in the words of the Daily Caller, "repeated and all-but-explicit appeals to racial solidarity, referring to 'our' people and 'our neighborhoods.'”  More after the jump.

In a stunning omission on Wednesday's NBC Today, brief coverage of a 2007 video of Barack Obama completely ignored the then-Senator praising his controversial pastor Jeremiah Wright as a "great leader, not just in Chicago, but all across the country." The NBC morning show adopted a dismissive attitude toward the video, with co-host Savannah Guthrie leading off the broadcast: "Conservatives circulate a five-year-old video, in a move the Obama campaign calls desperate." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

In the report that followed, chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd further quoted Obama talking points: "In a transparent attempt to change the subject from his comments attacking half of the American people, Mitt Romney's allies re-circulated video of a 2007 event that was open to and extensively covered by the press at the time."

Ann Coulter had a tremendously contentious encounter with civil rights activist and author Kevin Powell on Current TV’s Say Anything Tuesday.

Things got so heated that by the end of their discussion, he called her “homophobic, anti-Semite, and a racist," and she called him “a moron” (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

As even the casual reader of NewsBusters is well aware, the MSNBC cable news network is forever on the lookout for racially-tinged "code words" in Republican speeches and "dog whistle" ads by GOP super PACs against Democrats. But the network's keen sense of outrage is conspicuously absent when it comes to attacks by Democratic groups against Mia Love, the African-American Republican Mayor of Saratoga Springs, Utah, who is challenging long-time liberal -- he boasts a lifetime American Conservative Union score of 38.61 out of a possible 100 -- Rep. Jim Matheson (D).

Michael Warren of the Weekly Standard reported on Sept. 28 about a Utah State Democratic Committee mailer than seems to have darkened Love's skin tone. Warren also linked to a Blue Dog Democrat-linked Super PAC ad that falsely charged that Love's record is summed up in the words "skyrocketing crime" [video embedded below page break].