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Old 10-01-12, 08:03 PM   #9
August
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The mainstream media is in the business of getting people to pay attention. If being racist, or more correctly, agitating racist controversy gets people to pay attention then they'll happily play one group of people against another using any issue and that includes racism.

But what I think Yubba refers to is perceived double standard in the main stream medias coverage of certain events depending on which party a politician is from.

IE if it was a Republican in office then these incidents would be cast as an enormous racial strife problem that the president isn't doing enough to fix. Since the POTUS is a D then these issues are marginalized and ignored.

Now while I think the people he listens to are just agitating controversy for attention like any other media type unfortunately there is some history of this.

I'm dating myself here but back in 1992 we used to have an enormous homeless problem in America. In nightly news reports it was cast as a national emergency that threatened the American way of life,.... right up until Bill Clinton beat Bush senior, then seemingly overnight the problem disappeared from the national medias radar. I mean the problem didn't go away of course just the medias coverage of it. It became not worth covering any more. Why? Because it would be embarrassing to a D president?

That's one explanation but I'm thinking the reason is more pragmatic. Without the election to cast the issue against, who is for this and who is against that, statements and speeches, party positions, etc, the issue wouldn't generate enough news to be worth hiring all the extra help to properly exploit it any more so they moved on to something else. Sorry homeless, maybe next election.
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