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Racial Sensitivity

By Kleinheider Posted on September 24, 2008 at 7:02 am

Mike Byrd thinks that the appearance of a local news article on a racist website says something about the quality of the journalistic product:

Looks like Ms. Ross’s readership is expanding in unintended, but not surprising ways. Perhaps she should take a more accountable, measured response to reporting community news before putting others’ reputations at stake under the title “journalism.”

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2 Responses to “Racial Sensitivity”

  1. S-townMike writes
    September 24th, 2008 7:38 am

    When you read Ross’s article is it difficult to reach the conclusion that “white neighborhoods plague the police with calls about black pedestrians”? The “journalistic product,” as you call it, is itself plagued with anecdotes and inaccuracies. And it is not clear that her methods were objective.

    So, it’s not just the linkage on a supremacist website that determines the quality of Janell Ross’s piece. It’s the conclusions she reaches that don’t have to be tortured to be interpreted as they have by racists. If her method relied on sources mainly from her mostly white neighborhood of G-town rather than the mostly African American neighborhood of S-town, then that is an indictment of the “journalistic product,” given her tenuous conclusions. The linkage is karma.

    But don’t bother yourself with those questions of journalistic method or reliable conclusions, ACK. The culture war angle is the hook for you, and I didn’t expect a serious query on my questions about the specific qualities of the journalistic product itself.

  2. S-townMike writes
    September 24th, 2008 9:00 am

    It also deserves mention that the low life who posted to the supremacist website didn’t just tear one of Ross’s sentences out of the context of the article to make his point. He cut and paste whole paragraphs and sections verbatim, and provided almost no commentary himself.

    We’re not talking about someone who wrings an opposite or contrasting meaning out of Janell Ross’s text. We’re talking about someone who can see the self-evidence of her unsupported point that Salemtown whites are prejudicially calling police on transient blacks (S-town is 83% African American; in the same supremacist thread a commenter ironically claims that a white person in a black neighborhood would end up dead). The supremacist obviously didn’t feel like he even had to spin her report into something else.

    So, let’s discuss the merits of a “journalistic product” that can be almost entirely quoted verbatim to support supremacist ideas, shall we?

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