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When My Own Newspaper Gets It Wrong
By
Irene Monroe In Newsweekly columnist Rev.
Irene Monroe discusses how her own paper does a poor job
covering minority communities
3 May 2006
Covering the news is an arduous task
when it comes to communities of color and other marginal
groups within the larger lesbian, gay, bisexual,
transgender, and queer community around the country. One
of the problems is due to the paucity of reporters of
color in our newsrooms.
And because of a lack of reporters
from our varied communities, these stories are then
subsumed by a white queer universality that not only
renders these marginal populations within the larger
community speechless, but invisible as well.
Today, there are ways in which
members of marginal populations will be photographed -
front and center - in queer papers, but are still
invisible. And they are invisible not only to
themselves, but also to the larger community because the
truth of their stories is never told.
In looking at my own paper, In
Newsweekly, there are three interrelated issues
pertaining to what I call its "news lite" coverage of
marginal groups within its community that I would like
to bring to the fore. But while I am turning a critical
eye to my home turf, much the same can be said of queer
papers across the country.
First, In Newsweekly's
coverage of African Americans comfortably fits within
the racist iconography of the dominant culture's
portrayal of us. One of the images is the "helpless
victim" dogged by the weight of race and poverty. In the
case of In Newsweekly's coverage of the "helpless
victim," its portrayal of how survivors of HIV/AIDS is
clearly shown in last week's piece about T. Lance Black
entitled, "AIDS funding vacuum hurts real people."
In reporting how a federal funding
reduction in healthcare programs for people living with
and affected by HIV/AIDS are being slashed and its
potential impact to the New England region, Black
becomes our poster boy. While it is an indisputable fact
that African Americans across the country will be
gravely impacted by the reduction of federal funding, it
is, however, the imbalance of reporting between the
personal subject of the story - T. Lance Black - and the
thematic subject - reduction of HIV/AIDS funding - that
exploits black suffering to tell, from the media's
perspective, a good news story.
For example, the article has a huge
photo of Black replete with helpless-victim quotes like,
"I already don't know what tomorrow is going to bring,
if I'm even going to be here tomorrow."
While this story is real, it is
harmful when it is the only type of news coverage done
around HIV/AIDS and African Americans because it
diminishes, individually and collective, the hope and
agency to combat the problem. And a 2004 Kaiser Family
Foundation survey showed that when it comes to health
issues, African Americans trust community-based media.
Second, when not portrayed as
"helpless victim" struggling with HIV/AIDS, then it is
the classic "happy negro" minstrel image that the paper
recently portrayed of the Bayard Rustin Community
Breakfast with the hubris to title the piece, "Humanity
reigns at the Bayard Rustin Breakfast."
For 17 years, this annual breakfast
functions as a forum for LGBTQ communities and their
families to be informed, affirmed, and empowered in the
face of this devastating epidemic.
The coverage of the breakfast was
referenced on the cover of the paper. However, a
reference to the breakfast and five "happy negro" shots
is not coverage. And with no mention of the national
controversy surrounding originally scheduled keynote
speaker Jasmyne Cannick and her controversial
Advocate.com column, "Gays first, then illegals," speaks
to the "news lite" coverage given to black news in
general.
Had the decision-makers at my own
newspaper understood that the Bayard Rustin Community
Breakfast is much more than black folks getting dressed
up to go eat, the event would not have been summed up
merely by fewer than 100 words and five "happy negroes."
But instead, the breakfast was portrayed as
entertainment, and thus, the coverage was totally
dismissive of black agency in the face of this epidemic
and in the face of our own black community not dealing
with the issue because of its homophobia.
Third, when the news coverage is not
viewing black life from images of either the "helpless
victim" or the "happy negro," the news coverage then
views us from an iconography of white queer images that
do more than distort who we are. It bleaches out not
only the pantheon of black sexualities, but it also
reduces who we are in a gay/straight binary like the
portrayal of my bishop, the Rev. John Selders, in a
recent article entitled, "Straight black minister joins
fight for gay equality." Selders is bisexual!
And this is what my bishop wrote to
me in an e-mail:
"This is not true at all! The writer
NEVER asked me how I identify. I would have said
BISEXUAL loud and clear. The conversation/interview
never lead to any disclosure of the kind. The
editor/writer is a damn liar. Too much out there on me
as Bi to suddenly declare something different."
Gay newspapers function as important
community-based media. They will report what the larger
media will not about our lives; and they are our
mirrors, reflecting our lives and our stories back to
us. Therefore, in bringing our varied communities
together, both locally and nationally, we must be
journalistically responsible in our reporting. Why?
Because if we don't do it, no one will.
posted 22 June 2006
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Super Rich: A Guide to Having it All
By Russell Simmons
Russell Simmons knows firsthand that
wealth is rooted in much more than the
stock
market. True wealth has more to do with
what's in your heart than what's in your
wallet. Using this knowledge, Simmons
became one of America's shrewdest
entrepreneurs, achieving a level of
success that most investors only dream
about. No matter how much material gain
he accumulated, he never stopped lending
a hand to those less fortunate. In
Super Rich, Simmons uses his rare
blend of spiritual savvy and
street-smart wisdom to offer a new
definition of wealth-and share timeless
principles for developing an unshakable
sense of self that can weather any
financial storm. As Simmons says, "Happy
can make you money, but money can't make
you happy." |
* * * * *
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The New Jim Crow
Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness
By Michele Alexander
Contrary to the
rosy picture of race embodied in Barack
Obama's political success and Oprah
Winfrey's financial success, legal
scholar Alexander argues vigorously and
persuasively that [w]e have not ended
racial caste in America; we have merely
redesigned it. Jim Crow and legal racial
segregation has been replaced by mass
incarceration as a system of social
control (More African Americans are
under correctional control today... than
were enslaved in 1850). Alexander
reviews American racial history from the
colonies to the Clinton administration,
delineating its transformation into the
war on drugs. She offers an acute
analysis of the effect of this mass
incarceration upon former inmates who
will be discriminated against, legally,
for the rest of their lives, denied
employment, housing, education, and
public benefits. Most provocatively, she
reveals how both the move toward
colorblindness and affirmative action
may blur our vision of injustice: most
Americans know and don't know the truth
about mass incarceration—but her
carefully researched, deeply engaging,
and thoroughly readable book should
change that.—Publishers
Weekly |
 |
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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