Thou Shalt Not Stereotype ranks among the top ten rules that govern respectable newspapers.
Unless, of course, you happen to dislike a particular individual, or his politics.
As the Philadelphia Inquirer sounded the trumpets for yesterday’s nationwide march with the headline IMMIGRANTS SEND A RESOUNDING CALL, with photos glorifying the event, the paper still found room to profile Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) who opposes amnesty for illegal aliens. This is not popular, this point of view.
The Inquirer interviewed dozens of these marchers and while we were given their names we were not treated to their physical characteristics.
Were they short, fat, ugly, tall, slim, handsome -- none of that because that is none of our business.
But wait. Here comes Tancredo who actually uses the phrase “illegal aliens” and now the rules do not apply.
In the Inquirer’s sidebar to the big IMMIGRATION story (never “illegal” in the headlines or sub-heads), we read this in the third paragraph:
“On Thursday, speaking to the Family Research Council, a conservative advocacy organization, the short, stocky grandson of Italian immigrants managed in 15 minutes to bash President Bush, Citizenship and Immigration Services, churches that ‘aid and abet’ illegals, and anyone else who doesn’t share his point of view.”
(Suddenly, the Inquirer loves Bush.)
Maybe we should know that Tancredo is the grandson of Italian immigrants, yes, this is all about immigrants. But “short” and “stocky?”
That is pure stereotyping. Much ado about nothing, you say? Well, try this: Short, stocky Mexicans.
Mexicans would not like this, and neither would you and neither would I and neither would the Columbia School of Journalism.
You’d be called a racist, deservedly.
We could go on to measure how yesterday’s march was featured along the entire media firmament, like the use of the passive voice throughout (PROTESTERS MARCH FOR THEIR RIGHTS), or even to the ONWARD WE GO battle-cry that rang out from this New York Times headline: IMMIGRANTS TAKE TO U.S. STREETS IN SHOW OF STRENGTH.
But no need, and no space, to go into all that here, for it takes no more than one or two words to prove how news is slanted.
