Independent news from the Indigenous Media Freedom Alliance

Diana West: What’s whiter than the GOP? The media

Diana West

BY DIANA WEST
Washington Times

Ah, to be a member of Big Media when the white Republicans gather to nominate their white ticket for the White House. It’s like shooting white elephants in a white convention center, what with their unbearable whiteness of being — so “non-diverse,” as Big Media strenuously signal their audiences.

Gallup tells us Republicans are 87 percent white and Democrats are 63 percent white. But even when Republicans are not white — which occurs despite Big Media efforts to fool viewers (conservative websites observed that NBC failed to post speeches by non-white Republicans at its website, while MSNBC cut to its pundits on such non-white occasions) — they might as well be white. That’s because “white” is the media’s slam on the GOP, their hectoring, subtle-as-a-sledgehammer message: Republicans are too “white” to deserve any decent person’s vote. Perhaps veteran ABC and PBS political editor turned Yahoo! News Washington bureau chief David Chalian blurted out the storyline best: “(The Romneys) are happy to have a party with black people drowning.”

This, it turned out, was a race-bait too far. Chalian lost his job after his comment went viral. But who will take his place? Someone just like him. Probably someone who looks like him, too — and those dread, white Republicans.

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Jodi Rave Spotted Bear

Jodi Rave Spotted Bear is the founder and director of the Indigenous Media Freedom Alliance, a 501-C-3 nonprofit organization with offices in Bismarck, N.D. and the Fort Berthold Reservation. Jodi spent 15 years reporting for the mainstream press. She's been awarded prestigious Nieman and John S. Knight journalism fellowships at Harvard and Stanford, respectively. She also an MIT Knight Science Journalism Project fellow. Her writing is featured in "The Authentic Voice: The Best Reporting on Race and Ethnicity," published by Columbia University Press. Jodi currently serves as a Society of Professional Journalists at-large board member, an SPJ Foundation board member, and she chairs the SPJ Freedom of Information Committee. Jodi has won top journalism awards from mainstream and Native press organizations. She earned her journalism degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder.