RACIAL BIAS IN THE MEDIA -- By Dr. Robert Warren, PhD


IS THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA RACIST 

In January 2007, Christopher Newson and Channon Christian were jumped at gunpoint in Knoxville, Tennessee. They were bound, blindfolded and brought to a rundown rental home in an inner-city neighborhood. Newsom wasn't there long before he was taken away, sexually assaulted numerous times, shot in the back of the head, set on fire, and left beside some railroad tracks a few blocks away. Over the next day, Christian herself was repeatedly raped in every possible way. Bleach was sprayed in her mouth to destroy evidence and she was eventually put in a trash bag where she suffocated. The case has drawn little national media attention – the defendants are poor and black, the victims, middle class and white.
It is virtually unthinkable that a crime of this magnitude and severity would go unnoticed nationally except for the racial bias of the mainstream media. And I use the term racial bias because political correctness is too generic and too innocent a term.

In March 2006, Crystal Gail Mangum, a black woman who worked as a stripper, dancer and escort, accused three white members of the Duke University lacrosse team of raping her at a party. The local district attorney, Mr. Michael Nifong, immediately labeled it a “hate” crime. In response to the accusations, Duke University suspended the lacrosse team for the 2006 season and forced the lacrosse coach to resign. 88 members of the Duke faculty protested against the lacrosse team, coach and accused students, making it virtually impossible for the students involved in the case to continue their studies.
On April 11, 2007, North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper dropped all charges and declared the three players innocent. To compensate these players for injustice, Duke University paid a substantial monetary settlement. Nifong was disbarred, convicted of criminal contempt, and served one day in jail. The Duke faculty that participated in the rush to judgment suffered nothing more than indignity. None were reprimanded, suspended, fired, or officially sanctioned. Ms. Mangum was never prosecuted.
The entire incident was made into a national scandal by the mainstream media, most of whose reporters took the side of Ms. Mangum. It should have been obvious that a situation of this delicacy deserved the greatest discretion in obtaining and applying the facts to the case. Unfortunately, the racial bias of the media, when combined with the pressures of “getting the news to the public, prevented such discretion. Notably, the mainstream media was unapologetic when the truth was revealed.

In turning to the Trayvon Martin death, we see much the same racial bias in the news media. For example, to make the politically correct racial narrative fit the story, the New York Times reported that an out of control “white” Hispanic named Zimmerman shot Martin, a black teenager, who was doing nothing more than walking home and eating skittles candy. The Orlando Sentinel, apparently believing that they were more racially sensitive, used the terms “white father and Hispanic mother”. (The fact that the surname “Zimmerman” is of German Jewish extraction has been left out of the mainstream media conversation. Stirring up racial hatred has been sufficient to sell the news.)
As this story unfolds, it has been changing. The alternative story is that teenager Martin knocked Zimmerman down, jumped on him, and began beating him. An eyewitness to the altercation confirmed this account. Thus, the mainstream media is confronted with a clear contradiction – which truth to report? Is this a politically correct “white on black” crime or just another run of the mill “black on white” crime? So far, the politically correct truth is still winning the argument and inflaming the public.

Numerous studies indicate that the overwhelming political orientation of news reporters is left of center. Charges of liberal bias and political correctness have been made for years. Few can dispute that the charges are valid – but they are not enough.
What must be said is the truth, particularly when it comes to the treatment of racial matters. Journalistic standards, if such things exist, do not apply to racial news reporting. The mainstream media is racist, and needs to be held to account for that racism.
The bottom line is that it should trouble everyone regardless of political persuasion that fraud, dishonesty, and, yes, racism in the mainstream media is tolerated and excused.

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