by Terry O'Neal-Cox MD

Created on: June 03, 2009   Last Updated: June 04, 2009

The media play a significant role in society; sometimes the role is not so good. Do I have a false perception of the media, or is the media perpetuating racism? Lately, media hypocrisy have been at its highest. It has always been present; but starting around the time of hurricane Katrina, it has become pervasive. Following hurricane Katrina, we had the campaign for the presidency with a woman and a black as leading candidates; then the election of a Black President; and now, the nomination of a Hispanic female to sit on the bench of the Supreme Court. It just seem that the media focus too much on race.

Hurricane Katrina

There is no good way to adequately express sympathy for the victims of Katrina. I almost said "unfortunate victims", but I hesitated. The hesitation is because they all knew ahead of time that they should seek higher ground. With the democratic right to choose, they elected to stay, and we are all aware of the consequences.

The media had a field day with the Katrina disaster. They stuck a microphone in the face of every Black person that was willing to blame the mostly white government for what was happening in the known flood zones of Louisiana. Not all of the victims were Black, but it appeared that the media focused on Blacks only; not out of sympathy, but to imply that if they were White, the outcome would have been better. When the media interviewed members of mostly White affected areas, they did not ask about color as they did in the mostly Black areas. To me, this was an egregious act of pretense. To slam the media here is not a validation of the government's actions, one way or another. If the government's response was questionable, I am sure that color was, if at all, the last reason.

The Presidential Campaign

During the latest Presidential Campaign, I cannot remember a time that the media referred to the color of any of the candidates other than then Senator Obama. Early in the campaign, they never let us forget that Obama was the Black candidate. Then, of course, there was the repetitive presentation of the behavior of Jeremiah, the fraud in a frock. That got air time because it had racial discrimination all over it. (Notice that I said discrimination and not "reverse" discrimination. The "reverse" part is, to me, simply "media compounding"). When it became clear that Obama would be the "chosen one", over Sen. Clinton, the media provocateurs desperately tried to make the campaign "race based".

Later on, when he was nominated

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