Through the Media Looking Glass: Decoding Bias and Blather in the News

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-- Review by Christine Triano

Excerpt 

You can't see the news these days without encountering lengthy reports on the hateful pronouncements coming from a few black extremists.

The anti-white, anti-Jewish demagoguery of Nation of Islam leaders was recently examined, for example, in a 12-page Time magazine cover spread, and in two ABC Nightline episodes -- one titled "Confronting Black Racism." A central question running through such reports is whether black politicians and civic leaders have sufficiently denounced the mean-spirited rhetoric. Given all the news coverage, you might think black prejudice against Jews and whites has become the dominant bigotry in our country.

Think again. Old-fashioned white racism is alive and kicking. But somehow, it doesn't arouse the same outrage in the national media.

By now, almost everyone has heard of Khalid Abdul Muhammad, the Nation of Islam speaker who spouted anti-white hate to a college audience of hundreds -- and was denounced for weeks in the media and in a resolution that passed the U.S. Senate, 97-0. But how many have heard of Bob Grant? Week after week, he spouts anti-black hate to much larger audiences -- hundreds of thousands. He hosts the biggest show on the biggest talk radio station in the country, New York's WABC.

If you aren't familiar with Grant, that's not your fault -- it's the national media's. New York is the media capital of the country. But few journalists have voiced outrage over a talk show host who routinely referred to former Mayor David Dinkins, an African-American, as "the washroom attendant," and who habitually affects an Amos n' Andy dialect to stereotype blacks as criminals and drug addicts -- people he calls "animals" and "mutants."

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