Sep 24, 2007
NPR discussion focuses on why popular media misses stories like Jena
Categories: African-American, Justice/Law Enforcement, Media
Written By: Shawn Williams
Today I participated in an extensive discussion on NPR's Talk of the Nation regarding why the national media "missed" the Jena 6 story. Also on the program was Steven Holmes, national editor for The Washington Post and Keith Woods, dean of faculty at the Poytner Institute
Click here to listen to the full discussion and please let me know what you think.
September 24th, 2007 at 6:02 pm
I heard this pertinent program on NPR as I was waiting outside Davenport Central High School to pick up my biracial (White/Filipina) sophomore. Just as you made the point about the White-oriented news media reflecting the Whites’ presumption to the (now defunct) live oak in Jena, I looked around at the students radiating out of the high school in ones, twos, and threes. The little aggregates were as often racially mixed as not– and with no discernable male/female pattern. I’ve always appreciated this aspect of our public school system, but I really wonder– I assume this is the norm in America (like on TV!) but is it?
September 24th, 2007 at 7:14 pm
I was extatic to hear you today on NPR. You really brought it home to me that I can no longer rely on news and information from the easy, convenient, lathargic media sources who are all too willing to neglect stories like Jena, which are the most critically important to me and everyone. Thank you so much for your commitment to spreading the word about the crimes in Jena and asking critical quesitons. I am really appreciative and inspired by your dedication; I aim to follow your lead.
September 25th, 2007 at 5:45 pm
I just recently heard the story on NPR. Thank you for giving your voice to this issue on public radio. I was especially impressed with your response to the caller that kept referring to the young men in Jena as “thugs”! In my opinion, it is this type of language and attitude that makes evident the fact that racist attitudes continues to exist in both covert and overt ways. The mere fact that the media “missed” this story for months is what Derald Sue (researcher @ Columbia University) would call a racial microagression towards people of color in America.
September 26th, 2007 at 1:38 pm
Again, I commend you on a great job and for keeping the focus.
September 26th, 2007 at 10:13 pm
I heard the NPR program and tried to get in with a comment. Now I have two:
1. News Rooms regurgitate East and West Coast feeds for national news. If the Times didn’t run it, it wasn’t newsworthy, according to the record of their inattention and inaction.
AP and UPI serve the same mother-bird role, and have sometimes been caught in direct contradiction with local news which became caught-up in the national/international feeds.
I heard a British journalist tell of his direct experience in Jenna - of learning that he couldn’t find the street on his GPS because streets “in the Quarter” didn’t have street names ’till less than two years ago. Until that point, I was giving the folks of Jenna the benefit of the doubt. It’s a SHAME that it happened, and its a shame that no US reporter bothered to expose that institutional racism years ago!
As to the point made by your fellow guest, that the News Room Editors failed to see the pro-illegal-immigration-rallies:
Those rallies were organized by George Soros’ Open Society Institute, and bank-rolled to the tune of 17 million dollars. It looked like a grass-roots movement at the time because the annual report had not yet been issued. Google them and learn for yourselves, ’cause your editors don’t edit any more.