Right, Tom. I cringe everytime I hear a fellow white person say "I don't care if they're green or purple"; often they're about to say something offensive. It's a terrible phrase, almost coded at this point, and folks should know it even if they're not using those words in a bad way. Too many do. Along with phrases like "making it racial" and "not a black/white thing."

Of course, someone called me a "liberalist" not too long ago, and I'm still amused by that one. ;-)

More on the Times' #NoAngel [problem from Talking Points Memo][1].

Again: It's a teachable moment for media willing to learn from it.

Of course, I wish more had learned from the media's role in the riots of the 1960s:

*Search for [Chapter 15 in the Kerner Commission (summary) report here][2]. It starts:
Chapter 15--The News Media and the Disorders
In his charge to the Commission, the President asked: "What effect do the mass media have on the riots?"
The Commission determined that the answer to the President's question did not lie solely in the performance of the press and broadcasters in reporting the riots. Our analysis had to consider also the overall treatment by the media of the Negro ghettos, community relations, racial attitudes, and poverty-day by day and month by month, year in and year out. A wide range of interviews with government officials, law enforcement authorities, media personnel and other citizens, including ghetto residents, as well as a quantitative analysis of riot coverage and a special conference with industry representatives, leads us to conclude that:
* Despite instances of sensationalism, inaccuracy and distortion, newspapers, radio and television tried on the whole to give a balanced, factual account of the 1967 disorders.
* Elements of the news media failed to portray accurately the scale and character of the violence that occurred last summer. The overall effect was, we believe, an exaggeration of both mood and event. . * Important segments of the media failed to report adequately on the causes and consequences of civil disorders and on the underlying problems of race relations. They have not communicated to the majority of their audience--which is white—a sense of the degradation, misery and hopelessness of life in the ghetto.
These failings must be corrected, and the improvement must come from within the industry. Freedom of the press is not the issue. Any effort to impose governmental restrictions would be inconsistent with fundamental constitutional precepts.
We have seen evidence that the news media are becoming aware of and concerned about their performance in this field. As that concern grows, coverage will improve. But much more must be done, and it must be done soon.*

[1]: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/m…
[2]: http://www.eisenhowerfoundation.org/doc…

Right, Tom. But many people kneejerk to believe it and not the eyewitnesses. I really wish they'd start to question themselves on why they do that. I've certainly had to fight the socialization of my upbringing. We can't help what they taught up; we can strive to move past it.

(My last comment on this tangent is that I've rather enjoyed the reversal of someone telling on Todd to me rather than the other way around. It's funny how often someone will try to get me in trouble with him for responding too directly, sounding like a b*tch, calling out a fallacy or such. He and I are both always amused when people assume that the male partner is the boss of the female one in such scenarios—and saddened when it's clear that many people want to hold the woman to a different standard. For the record, we're equal partners, and don't need each other's permission to post our thoughts on our website. We're both adults with full control of our own voices. I highly recommend that arrangement to others. Feminist sermon over now. ;-)

Ha, we also told them how they should be reporting on the Iraq War as it started, instead of spreading the yellowcake lies, and they didn't listen then, either. The rest is history, as is Judy Miller. ;-)

To Todd's defense, his response to you was right on. Your argument didn't make sense, and his snark responded directly to your snark, which he posted right above it. It's hard to argue that's out of line when you set the tone yourself.

Otherwise, our conversations here tend to be pretty direct, and we do debate and point out fallacies (and have ours pointed out) but try to refrain from ad hominems and derailing conversations complaining about who's being snarkier. You're welcome to participate, but you might bring a slighter tougher skin to the game.

P.S. I, too, like and often respect The New York Times, but I am reminded that Victor Navasky, my opinion-writing professor in graduate school (where most students salivated over working for the Times while I didn't want to), was very critical of the Times in our classes even as he brought his editor friends from there in to speak with us and was clearly well-respected over there himself. This kind of self-examination within media is healthy and vital to our communities. Otherwise, we're just under-paid stenographers who won't make a mark with our work. I suspect the Times can take it. ;-)

THCleve, I didn't write this editorial, but to me there is no better example than The New York Times. If they can screw this up like that ([which they've admitted][1]), then imagine what others with lesser standards will do, as we see in the metro area all the time. Of course they were trying to cast Mr. Brown in a "human" light, but that doesn't mean they did it successfully by characterizing with the cliché "no angel," which is lazy writing to boot. (And the best human stories show, not tell, with narrative and allow readers to make up their own minds.)

In this case, thankfully, it was met with a torrent of criticism, in social media and beyond, largely by African Americans who are sick and tired of media being so careless when reporting about black Americans, not to mention those who make apologies for them.

And, obviously, the standard for judging offensive reporting can never be, "Well, we've done it better in the past." It is a teachable moment for all media, and especially white reporters, if they will bother to listen without defensiveness. (The reporter who wrote "angel" was black, which doesn't change the standard.)

When I was in NYC writing for the Village Voice, I covered a project based in the Bronx where a group of young people did a media-literacy project on how the media covered youth, and especially youth of color. They intentionally chose the Times because it wasn't thought of as one of the worse ones. And it did terribly, including on how they presented accused young people of color in a more negative light then how they presented white kids (in graduation gowns or what not), as well as having far fewer positive stories on young people (of color) than negative ones.

No surprise really. But the real kicker is that the young people asked for a meeting with the NYT metro editor (Jonathan Landman, at the time), and he was very defensive and dismissive of them as they presented their findings. Those kids were probably left with a worse taste for the Times at the end of the meeting than they had before, precisely because media are so quick to make excuses for their blind spots. We all have them, and we should all seek them out and try to do something about them. But, sadly, that takes more effort than many journalists actually want to put into the profession.

So we're left with "no angel" on the day that Mr. Brown was buried. Talk about no situational and cultural awareness.

[1]: http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2…

CNN is much more *likely* to be correct than the political blogger who throws a lot of trash because they do have attorneys that must know the sources before they can attribute an anonymous source. I studied media law under the then-main-legal counsel for CNN at Columbia, and she was outstanding.

That said, we still don't know for sure.

I agree with that, js. We don't know for sure what injuries the officer sustained, although we have seen the video of him not looking all that hurt standing near Mr. Brown's body (which was lying there for four hours). And I have a sneaking suspicion that the police would have announced already that Mr. Wilson was hurt that badly if he was, considering the other stuff they were selectively leaking. But I could be wrong about that. The point is that we don't know for sure what, if any, injuries Mr. Wilson had. But we do know that Mr. Brown was shot multiple times and left in the street for four hours for residents to look at, and that he did not have a weapon.

And I agree with Todd. Why would anyone be asking if this case if Brown was "innocent"? The question is clearly whether the officer responded excessively to whatever Brown was doing. Attempts to smear either man's character is just a side show.