Posted by
Michael on Tuesday, December 18, 2007 1:49:35 PM
I was in the Bay Area a couple weeks ago, and when I left to come back to Seattle I ended up at a small train station in a grimey part of Oakland. I knew I'd be in need of a book while on the train, so I went to the local Barnes and Noble. The store didn't attempt to be subtle in catering to the local demographic, as just about every book on display had "black" or "African-American" in the title. I'm not black, but I thought the way Barnes and Noble was marketting to blacks at this store was a little condescending, like black people are only interested in books about being black.
The bookstore was only a few minutes away from closing, but I was able to salvage a pretty good book called
Missing Pages - Black Journalists of Modern America, written by Wallace Terry. Terry brings together experiences from black journalists who worked from World War II into the 1990s who had done their job in the face of often ridiculous adversity (one of the reporters, Ben Holman, was beaten up in public and threatened with death by the Nation of Islam, another, Chuck Stone, was working on a story where he was at the whim of a well armed and very angry escaped felon).
An entry from Chuck Stone when talking about objectivity really hit me:
I agree that newsmen should stay out of news situations, except under one condition: Where human life is involved. If you're walking along the street and you see a guy jump off a bridge and you can swim, then you save him. You don't say, "Well, I'm going to sit here and write this story."
Well said.