The failure of the press

The March series merged a lot in my mind with the movie Selma, They cover many of the same events, though with three books March fits in more.

I mention that because I remember having those feelings about the importance of the press while watching the movie, four years ago. It was seeing the photographers and reporters rushing to phones (no Periscope back then), and seeing people watching the news and then going to volunteer. I remember talking to people who saw those news reports and were shocked by them. I can this wasn't really that long ago.

Those memories came back when I was finishing March: Book Three. It was important that people could see. It was important that the eyes of the world were on the actions of Southern racists. It was important that people who turned a blind eye to the persecution were forced to see.

One of the disturbing things from earlier Black History months was hearing that when they were searching for the bodies of the three murdered Civil Rights workers (Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney) they found other bodies. In a way it wasn't so surprising that in a climate like that more murders happened and were hidden, but also it felt like there should be more about that. This month I finally got some answers:

https://dickatlee.com/issues/mississippi/mississippi_eyewitness/valley_of_fear.html

Those answers came to me because I follow good people and this is a good thread: https://twitter.com/RustBeltRebel/status/1039193758389166080

Beyond that, the answers exist at all because of one reporter who went digging. He was not satisfied with sticking to the key story. He could see that those other lives mattered, and he put his skill and ability into finding that.

In 2014 a movie reminded me how the press could be good and it was inspiring. In 2018, similar images from a comic felt different, because 2016 and after showed me how much damage the press could do. When revisiting "her e-mails" daily was more important than actual financial scandals and racism, and negative stories (like knowledge of the Russia investigation) were held back, that was damaging. Even now the feelings of Trump voters are revisited again and again, despite more people voting for Clinton, and them also being people who have feelings and thoughts about this.

(Also this year, while I was starting to think about this post, one NYT  figure who is one of the worst offenders demonstrated a sad fragility about it, but that wasn't really that surprising.)

None of this is really new, but I found surprising evidence of it in Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery, by Leon F. Litwack on page 304:

“... the New York Times correspondent tried very hard to maintain his detachment – and he succeeded. “Whipping, paddling, and other customs, peculiar to the palmy days of the institution, are practiced, and the negro finds, to his heart's sorrow, that his sore-headed master is loath to give him up. There is fault on both sides and equal exaggeration in the representation of his difficulties, by both master and servant.” (NYT, August 2nd, 1865)

This sounds too stupid to have to say, but there is no moral equivalence between the person who is sad to no longer have slaves, thus keeps beating them, and the former slave who should be free - should have always been free, but now the law has caught up - but is still subject to slave treatment. That is a false equivalency. It goes beyond being stupid to being morally repugnant. It is neither honest nor fair.

And it does not succeed in afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted.

I have some thoughts on why it happens for tomorrow.