Prometheus 6

Let's just say that I've been sending Jena Six links for the past 4 months to one of the MSM bloggers considered ' thoughtful'. He has yet to have ONE story on Jena Six. I almost feel like Francis Holland with this guy..LOL

But, it also  reinforces my belief of why we should be building up the Black Blogosphere.

So why WOULD we expect THEM to cover it? I just don't understand why we would. Their concerns start with their "fellow Americans'. Now how many times do you actually think that they include average Black folk in their minds when they see their "fellow Americans"? If they did they would have been all over this and THEY AIN'T! So puhleeeze folks, wake up.

One of of the core agenda items at play in the non-BlackoSphere appears to be that "there are no more race issues in America" regardless of what moniker you want to use to describe yourself socio-politically. You know, "they" have Oprah and Robert Johnson as well as Obama, who has made it clear that there is no "Black America". So pooft, all racial problems solved in a instant, 500 years of hx gone, and anyone pointing out racial prejudice is "playing the race card" (what a convenient term for white males to coin and use to absolve themselves of any complicity). So, this "messy little issue of the Jena 6", well, just can't have that clouding up the "company line", so, let's use BushCo's favorite tact, "let's ignored it and they'll go away".

And, btw, why do you think people like Claude Barnett and Robert Vann started their own media outlets? Because freedom of the press belongs to those who own one. Yes, point out the so-called liberal whiteosphere's complicity, inaction, and failure to stay true to democratic ideals but HECK don't act surprised. And Amen Ra for Prometheus 6, Afrosphere, Black Agenda Report, etc!

Peace. 

The mainstream media's inattention to the story is very reminiscent of the mainstream media's coverage of the Montgomery bus boycott. "Most newspapers and the emerging journalism on television," write Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff in their book The Race Beat, "showed their propensity to cover the hot and simple story, not the complex one; they were drawn to the raging fire, not to the slow burn, so the successful boycott on the Negro side of the racial line went of for weeks with little notice."  Mainstream reporters at that time were looking for evidence that conditions were steadily getting better and passed on hope that white moderates would lead the way in reforming their region.  Even a paper as dedicated to covering Southern race relations as the New York Times failed to grasp what was transpiring.  "It did not see that the overwhelming success of the two-month-old Montgomery buss boycott--which it had covered almost entirely with small wire stories--was indicative of a civil rights movement that had no intention of quitting."  Most other papers and media, report Roberts and Klibanoff, also fell into this misreading of the situation.  "They had no sense of the depth of feeling on either side of the racial divide, had no idea who the leaders of the civil rights protests were, frequently misjudged the commitment and motives of the leaders on both sides, played fast and loose with the names and titles of anyone outside the white power circle, and sometimes served as adjunct investigative bodies for law enforcement in trying to squeeze out whodunit information about the leadership of the civil rights protests," 

Instead of vigorously and thoroughly covering the present-day race beat, modern headline media, more often than not, engage in the kind of practice which was astutely pointed on this site during Imusgate: 1) quote the Reverends Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson; 2) point out their "past as a distraction/excuse for the current bigot eruption"; and 3) leave the discussion at that.  Some say that the Jena 6 rally is the beginning of a new civil rights movement for the 21st century.  It might be too early to determine whether this is the case.  If it is true, however, than the mainstream media is about as uninformed of the events triggering a modern civil rights movement as the ones which triggered the previous one.  I think black bloggers have pioneered a frank manner of reporting and discussing race stories that mainstream media and white bloggers will not touch and thus have the power to independently influence the actions of black protestors in a way that the mainstream will not or cannot understand.                 

ubstu34, 

Well-stated. 

"So why WOULD we expect THEM to cover it?" - NUFF SAID.

Like a swarm of Nigra Locusts?!? - It's all good.