If YOU don't See and Hear yourself in Today's Televised Media, YOU don't exist!
Thanks to Trayvon Martin the world today should be wrestling with this uncomfortable fact. Media apologists, like Howard Kurtz this morning on C-Span, strive to sweep this uncomfortable fact under the rug. If not for Reverend Al Sharpton and MSNBC, Zimmerman would be a free man today and Travon would join the countless thousands of non-white males who are buried in silence while a money-grubbing and white-biased world goes merrily on its way.
Bull Connor and his German Shephards on T.V. were a major, if not deciding factor in the outcome of the Civil Rights Movement in this country. NBC's ill-fated attempt to give Nat King Cole his T.V. show in the late 50's revealed, as a white female officer told me in the early 60's "white viewers found him too shocking". It was reported that NBC tried to get General Motors to sponsor the show and they refused citing their fear that whites in the South would stop buying Cadillacs. All visual media in those days were "lilly-white". Madison Avenue made sure of that.
Before Integration, black communities in this country had their own print media. Before the dawn of television there were large respectable newspapers like The Kansas City Call, and the Saint Louis Post Dispatch that kept even minimally-educated readers well informed. Today, we've retreated to Rappers and BET to do that job. We'd be better informed by bringing back the jungle drums!
Today's white media are of a chorus singing, we have to "wait for the facts"! NO WE DON'T! The most important facts are already known! Trayvon can't be brought back, and, even if the white media engages in another O.J. orgy, what ultimately happens to Zimmerman is of trivial importance. The Martins were told by law enforcement that there would be no arrest. The powers that be in Florida were evidently comfortable in the fact that the story would be contained in local print media. The state of Florida would now have us believe that they would somehow get around to charging Zimmerman. I've got a bridge for you, if you're gullible enough to believe that.
There is the white media (Kurtz and company) and there is the far-right-white media. It is instructive that Zimmerman in his desperation sought protection from the likes of Hannity on Fox. The other networks were complicit in airing the slick media campaign waged for six weeks by the Zimmermans to get their boy off and to sully the image of Trayvon.
We're clearly in the media age and have been for more than half a century. Mushrooming is far easier today with televised and other visual media. (see my earlier blogs). Media is a weapon, today! The military has recognized this, and it's high time that the public recognizes it. Your Democracy and your freedom hangs on your mature and intelligent use and understanding of media.
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