The police-bashing community organizers known as the “Black Lives Matter” movement have a healthy contingent of completely biased black journalist/publicists. Gene Demby, brought into National Public Radio to agitate in the racial “Code Switch” project, wrote a 3,900-word essay for the NPR website and appeared on Friday’s Morning Edition to discuss how depressing it is to travel from cop victim to cop victim.
Anchor Steve Inskeep said Demby "came close to resigning" and set Demby up to explain the toll of "How Black Reporters Report On Black Death" and why objectivity was a dishonest white construct on this taxpayer-funded network:
GENE DEMBY: Sometimes the stuff I'm writing about is just, like, terrible things happening to black people. And you feel the sense of, I think, responsibility for doing that beat well. But also I think even times when I want to sort of talk about other things or write about other things, I feel this sort of nagging obligation and this guilt around not talking about whatever other pressing story of inequality might be out there.
STEVE INSKEEP: Well, let me ask a question about journalism then. People can say that a standard for journalism is to be objective. Many of us might prefer another word, like truthful or honest or fair. Are you able, in your mind, to meet whatever your standard of objectivity or fairness is when you're covering this story?
GENE DEMBY: I think the idea of objectivity is separate from the idea of truthfulness or fairness - right? - because I think objectivity is often sort of characterized as not having a point of view. And I don't think that's necessarily truthful though, right? I mean, the idea that black journalists are bringing a different set of skepticisms, a different set of assumptions, a different set of experiences into the reporting of policing is an important part of the story of policing.
I mean, if we're talking about the people who are being policed in this country, they tend to be people of color. A lot of our conversations about newsroom objectivity and editorial objectivity start from the position that whiteness is neutral, that white people do not have racialized experiences and that white people do not bring a set of racialized assumptions into situations. And so we're having these conversations in which I think probably more than ever the voices of people of color are - or at least the perspectives of the people of color are - sort of framing much of the conversation. And I think that's part of getting to truthfulness.
STEVE INSKEEP: Gene Demby, I'm glad you're still around.
GENE DEMBY: Thank you so much, Steve. I'm glad I'm here too.
Inskeep completely allowed Demby to traffic in a "different set of assumptions" -- like white people are not "being policed in this country." (This sounds like a racial cartoon of white privilege.) Inskeep completely allowed Demby to argue objectivity isn't "truthful" and it's a racially ignorant white construct, while failing to question the "truthfulness" of routinely ignoring the facts to press an ideological cause -- like in the Ferguson matter, where the forensic evidence clearly shows Michael Brown reaching for the policeman's gun, after robbing a store. Demby's crew are the ones that push "gentle giant" myths.
In his long essay, Demby claims to be popping bubbles, and doesn't think he's the guy marching around in a bubble of anti-police prejudice.
Of course, dealing with uncomfortable assignments is what you sign up for as a reporter, he said. "We can't live in any bubble. We're trying to pop the bubbles. As part of our jobs, we have to confront this stuff in a way that other people don't." [Emphasis in the original.]
But the beat of covering "black death" is only about death at the hands of cops. The national media can certainly set up a beat to question policing. But they shouldn't pretend that this along is a "black lives" or "black death" beat. It puts on ideological blinders that there is no such thing as black-on-black killing, and no such thing as black abortion. It pretends black "mass incarceration" happens to innocent blacks with no actual meaningful crimes occurring.
There is no report on a black life like Jamiel Shaw -- because he was killed by an illegal alien, not a cop. That doesn't match the leftist cause.
This is, by definition, living in a bubble. There's nothing wrong with being an ideological activist that does reporting. But no one should perceive the outlets that spread this as "objective" outlets, and no taxpayer should have to fund this kind of activism -- unless they're also hiring a reporter whose "set of assumptions" comes from being a police officer, and files reports every time a police officer is killed in the line of duty.
In his essay, Demby makes it plain he and his colleagues have their black "skin in the game," which is what makes them vital to American society:
As calls for newsroom diversity get louder and louder — and rightly so — we might do well to consider what it means that there's an emerging, highly valued professional class of black reporters at boldface publications reporting on the shortchanging of black life in this country. They're investigating police killings and segregated schools and racist housing policies and ballooning petty fines while their loved ones, or people who look like their loved ones, are out there living those stories. What it means — for the reporting we do, for the brands we represent, and for our own mental health — that we don't stop being black people when we're working as black reporters. That we quite literally have skin in the game.
While Demby thinks it's important that this Black Lives Matter Media Division stay active through the 2016 elections -- apparently influencing the country more to the Left -- he insists the liberal media need to offer more psychological support for being on the cop-bashing, riot-encouraging front lines:
Those of us on the black death beat have to make it to next November, and beyond, without burning out. So how are we going to do it? While the industry writ large has yet to take on that question, the beat has given rise to its own informal support network — folks emailing and Google chatting and texting to check on whoever's heading out to the latest conflagration or sure to be on the hook for a long essay. Running into MSNBC's [Trymaine] Lee that night on West Florissant [in Ferguson] — "You OK?" "I'm good. You OK?" — a few hours before the tear gas started popping off helped calm my nerves, at least for a while.
