Race Issues

On Monday’s "Nightline," co-anchor Terry Moran spent almost the entire 30 minute program gushing over Bush-bashing rapper Kanye West. The ABC host asserted that West’s 2005 comment that "George Bush doesn’t care about black people" turned West "into a cultural force to be reckoned with" and extolled the "complex and thoughtful pop star." Moran even opened the program by asking, "What went through…

On Tuesday’s "Good Morning America," the ABC program once again demonstrated the template for GOP figures to receive air time: Trash your fellow Republicans. GMA featured former Congressman J.C. Watts questioning whether top 2008 GOP presidential candidates are racist for skipping a PBS debate on minority issues. Continuing the theme, co-host Robin Roberts asked former House Speaker Newt Gingrich…

This Thursday, PBS is hosting a Republican presidential debate with liberal commentator Tavis Smiley. For various reasons, the top four GOP candidates have all decided to skip it. In doing so, they are making a big mistake, my friend Bob Cox argues in today's DC Examiner. Here's an excerpt. My comments are below the fold:One by one, the four leading candidates for the Republican nomination for…

Now, here we have a very interesting debate about journalism, racism, crime and the new media on the internet. The Sacramento Bee has been forced to revisit a long standing, 15-year-old policy this week. It seems that for years the Bee has, for the most part, avoided mentioning the race of a suspected criminal in their crime coverage. They claimed that they only mentioned race when the story was…

In speaking about the "Jena 6" case last week, the Rev. Jesse Jackson repeated the oft-heard line that there are "more blacks in jail than college." (In addition to televised reports (CNN), his words were also reported in articles like this one and this one.)Sorry, Reverend, but the line is just not true. In fact, the Washington Post addressed this myth last month in an article about a new…

In the midst of the media's typically one-sided view of Thursday's civil rights protests in Jena, Louisiana, Jason Whitlock, the black sportswriter who called Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton terrorists during April's Don Imus controversy, penned an op-ed in the Kansas City Star that should be must-reading for all Americans. Entitled "Lessons From Jena, LA," Whitlock's piece marvelously exposed a…

Here's something you don't see every day: A rapper condemning MTV for, of all things, promoting homosexuality. It makes a little more sense, though, when you realize that he only did so to shift the blame from the increased criticism that rap music has come under following the Don Imus "nappy-headed-hos" incident. In an interview with Complex magazine (h/t RightwingSparkle), rapper Jeffrey Atkins…

When members of the Duke University lacrosse team were falsely accused of raping a black stripper last year, media focused great attention on the woman in the middle of the controversy, and the supposed crime. Yet, as pointed out Thursday by NewsBuster Matthew Balan, as the press report activities in Jena, Louisiana, the name of the white boy who was beaten by the "Jena 6," Justin Barker, is…

In the September 20 presidential press conference, CNN correspondent Suzanne Malveaux sought to blame President Bush and the GOP for a perceived nationwide deterioration in race relations. In doing so, Malveaux raised the plight of the so-called Jena Six, a group of black Louisiana teenagers charged in the beating of a white student.Video (1:56): Real (1.41 MB) and Windows (1.18 MB), plus MP3…