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New York Times Uncovers A Shocker--Blacks and Whites Disagree

16 Jul 2008 09:54 am

Sorry, but this article is pretty stupid and well critiqued by the Obama campaign. The older I get the more I think that journalism--daily journalism, especially--is simply incapable of dealing with something as nuanced as the black-white relations in this country. They just aren't capable, nor despite their claims of objectivity, are they unbias. Take it from a journalist--good journalism needs conflict. No conflict, no story. But while the artisan searches for the natural conflict inherent in life itself, the hack has some polling firm call a bunch of people, and then writes a headline overstating the results.

Comments (5)

Political journalism these days can't handle any kind of nuance, racial or otherwise.

Posted by dwhite10701 | July 16, 2008 10:43 AM

The original headline amounted to: Obama has failed to get whites to support him 90-2! Well, yeah.

Posted by Katherine | July 16, 2008 11:55 AM

Obama's campaign has shown itself to be racially divisive because unlike in presdiential elections of the past 40 years, the overwhelming majority of black voters support the Democrat while white voters lean Republican by a slim edge. Oh wait....

Posted by Breukelyne | July 16, 2008 1:12 PM

Just wanted to echo the inability of the daily press to do nuance...take the Metro section of the Washington Post for example. Their reporters take a real paint-by-numbers approach to stuff like crime or gentrification. I remember about a year ago they did a piece on my neighborhood (H Street) where the reporter dragged out all the usual black-white BS to the point I literally had to look up a piece from a few years back talking about another DC neighborhood (Columbia Heights) to see if the reporter hadn't copied the thing almost verbatim. So amongst other examples of culture clash, the article on H Street comes up with a story where a local black bartender was verbally abused because of her race...then it turns out on a local blog that the whole situation didn't break down at all like the reporter said and the victim even chimed in to say how unfairly the article portrayed race relations in our area. Every person I talked to in my neighborhood was pissed about the piece and how it didn't really reflect anyone's experience.

Anyhow, I guess my point is that it was a lot easier for that reporter to go in to the story thinking she knows what people actually feel and twisted the story to reflect this. The fact is that you can take a social phenomenon (like gentrification) and it's going to play out differently even in different parts of the same city because of the mix of people involved.

Posted by Arclight | July 16, 2008 5:27 PM

DailyKos took this up with the NYTimes.

Good post:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/7/16/6223/05605/885/552365

Posted by rikyrah | July 16, 2008 11:54 PM