Race Issues

There was, understandably, plenty of outrage this week upon hearing MSNBC host Touré accuse Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney of what he called the "niggerization" of President Obama.   On Thursday's The Cycle, Touré responded to Romney's charge that the President can "take [his] campaign of division and anger and hate back to Chicago” in the following unhinged manner:

On Friday's Inside Washington on PBS, regular panel member and liberal Washington Post columnist Colby King admitted that it "bothers" him that Vice President Joe Biden felt the need to "resort to colloquialisms to talk to African-Americans," referring to the Vice President's "chains" gaffe in Danville, Virginia. After host Gordon Peterson asked, "How did the White House handle this one?"…

As NewsBusters previously reported, MSNBC's Touré Neblett on Thursday's The Cycle accused presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney of using what he called "niggerization" against Barack Obama. On Friday, Neblett offered a twelve second - yes, I said twelve second! - apology for his disgraceful remark (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Cable News Network host Soledad O'Brien has clashed often with conservative guests on her program, but on Thursday, she pressed the liberal chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus when he tried to dismiss Vice President Joe Biden's comment that Republicans wanted to "put y’all back in chains." During that morning's edition of the Starting Point program, O'Brien showed a clip of Biden's…

On Wednesday, August 15, MSNBC’s noon show, “NOW With Alex Wagner,” featured a brief but revealing segment on Vice President Joseph Biden’s recent gaffe. This was the one where Biden addressed a crowd, mostly of African-Americans, and, using what sounded like a Southern accent, said of the Romney/Ryan team: “They’re going to put ya’ll back in chains,” supposedly with deregulation of Wall Street…

MSNBC's Touré Neblett just can't resist tossing out the race card whenever possible. On Thursday's The Cycle, Touré accused presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney of using what he called "niggerization" against Barack Obama (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Wednesday's CBS This Morning did its best to spin Vice President Joe Biden's "he's going to put y'all back in chains" slam of Mitt Romney and even forwarded the Obama campaign's own talking points on the controversial line. Both Anthony Mason and open Obama supporter Gayle King inserted language that the Vice President didn't even use in his original speech on Tuesday. During an interview of…

Andrea Mitchell's Freudian slip was showing on her MSNBC show this afternoon. Mitchell's moment of unintentional honesty came during a discussion with Chris Cillizza of Joe Biden's ugly remark yesterday to a largely African-American audience that Mitt Romney would "put y'all back in chains." As noted here, Capehart defended Biden on Morning Joe today, claiming he had "nothing to apologize…

As the broadcast network evening newscasts on Tuesday gave attention to Vice-President Joseph Biden asserting that Mitt Romney, by "unchaining" Wall Street would effectively "put y'all back in chains," only CBS's Bob Schieffer informed viewers that about half the audience in Danville, Virginia, was African-American, thus suggesting the Vice-President was making an embarrassing pander to black…

On Tuesday's Anderson Cooper 360, substitute host Soledad O'Brien made the argument that Vice-President Joseph Biden's "chains" gaffe in Danville, Virginia, was "racially coded language," as she rejected the Obama campaign's spin that the comment was not meant to be a reference to the enslavement of African-Americans in the past. After relating the Obama campaign's explanation, she shot it…

NewsBusters reported Friday that Politico's Roger Simon, appearing on PBS's Inside Washington, accused the Romney campaign of employing a racist "dog whistle" in its anti-Obama welfare ad. Also appearing on the program was syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer who scolded, "Any time a real issue is brought up here, all of a sudden it’s a silent dog whistle that only liberals hear...Clinton…

Everyone knows that politics can be an ugly business, but MSNBC’s Chris Matthews sunk to a new long on his Hardball program Tuesday night.  Matthews’ outrage came from an ad put out by the Romney campaign suggesting that President Obama, "announced a plan to gut welfare reform by dropping work requirements," which, his administration most certainly did. Since there's nothing factually…

CNN associated a white supremacist neo-Nazi band with the political right-wing as it labeled the punk rock band of Wisconsin shooter Wade Michael Page as "far right." CNN had reported Page's band named "End Apathy" as "white supremacist," "neo-Nazi," and as a "hate group." Yet it also repeatedly labeled it "far right" on Sunday and Monday. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

CNN stoked fears that new voter ID laws might hearken back to the days of Jim Crow. Monday marked the anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, and CNN's Zoraida Sambolin used that to discuss whether the new laws might "suppress the minority vote." "Do you think that having an African-American president is actually reigniting some of these old prejudices?" she asked former Ambassador Andrew…