Race and Politics - Is the Media Now Yellow Again?

This was my column in InsiderIowa.com.


Race and Politics
Steffen Schmidt

Conservative blogger – does that mean he’s a Republican and possibly a Tea Part supporter? – Andrew Breitbart posted a heavily edited video of a black USDA employee Shirley Sherrod making a “racist comment.”

Without so much as a phone call asking for an explanation she was fired.

It turns out that Breitbart edited the full talk from which the snippet came totally distorting her comment.

In the speech she was sharing how 24 years ago she was initially reluctant to help a white farmer who needed assistance.

The news media especially “the Unfair and Unbalanced” Fox news ran the story as an example of black racism.

The NAACP even condemned her for saying that.

As it turns out she was using it as an example of how UNFAIR it is to use race when relating to people and how badly she felt even though in fact she helped the farmer Roger Spooner, save his Georgia farm (he has come public this week at age 86 in her defense).

Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack and Pres Obama apologized and told her she could come back to USDA. Nice gesture but it comes after an incredible knee jerk reaction.

This whole think was a blog lynching. It is just the tip of the iceberg for an increasingly brutal and irresponsible “new media” such as bloggers, YouTubers, ambush journalists working for political causes (such as the ACORN fake prostitute and pimp incident also perpetrated by conservative bloggers) and other new parallel sources of opinion and “news.”

That’s ok and exciting to have so much diversity in media. However the problem comes when so-called respectable outlets such as Fox become the legitimizers who give credibility to this crap.

Of course, as some analysts have commented, having a news empire owned and controlled by a foreign interest such as the Rupert Murdoch clan is at best troubling and at worst a national security threat. In most countries it would be viewed as the interference of a foreign power in the internal affairs of the nation.

In any case, the Sherrod incident is an alarming example of the power and irresponsibility of new media and of how desperate conservatives are to instigate tension and to use race as a match to light a political torch.
It may backfire and I for one hope that the news media including Fox will find a new sense of propriety and accuracy. If we only have Yellow journalism we are doomed.

Once upon a time US journalism was all-political. Most newspapers where totally biased to one or the other party, faction, or cause. Moguls who manipulated public opinion could even start wars – the Spanish American War to be precise. Yellow journalism = there was a little buck tooth Japanese or Asian character used in cartoons that were totally racist which is where the “yellow” comes from. Are we gonna start seeing Fox run cartoons with little black characters with pig tails eating chicken and watermelon sometime soon?

Maybe we are going back to that era which would be a shame.

I believe that the media (including the left media) should NOT be used as a mechanism for inflaming national divisions such as race. We know where that leads – to undermining national moral character, discrediting the US in the eyes of the world, violence, division, hatred.

If the right wing bloggers want to go there so be it but there should be a serious backlash from the majority of Americans. Maybe a media advertiser boycott?

Where will we get good and fair analysis if this happens?

I guess the fine writers for InsiderIowa.com may become the last bastion of truth, justice, good reporting, fair analysis, and bipartisanship!