| GUEST SUGGESTION: Contact: Lindsay M. Young
Communications Director
212-599-7000 ext. 315 COLORING THE NEWS:
How Crusading For Diversity Has Corrupted American Journalism (Encounter Books, 2001) by William McGowan As publicity efforts for COLORING THE NEWS continue, please consider the following new "talking points" for any radio, television and print interviews involving author WILLIAM MCGOWAN: - Media resistance to developing information that might undercut or refute the impression generated last fall of a spasm of "anti-Muslim fervor" directed at innocent Arab, Muslims and others of Middle Eastern descent in the wake of the 9-11 attack. Although investigators have found that many so called hate crimes did not in fact happen as charged, news organizations are reluctant to do necessary corrective reporting, allowing a false impression of xenophobic scapegoating to stand.
- A "quota system for experts" at ABC News. Kowtowing to the complaints of minority special interest groups that the expert sources it features in its broadcasts lack diversity, ABC news has implemented a "minority expert database" which many think will lead to quotas for experts. And though ABC News says the database is "ideologically balanced" inside sources say it marginalizes or excludes conservative points of view, compounding a long-standing and well documented problem of political bias in network news coverage much more significant than any imagined lack of racial diversity.
- The resistance of news organizations to give attention to books by authors critical of how these organizations gather and present news, particularly news involving sensitive racial and ethnic issues. These so called "objective" news organizations often brag that they can take the heat and disseminate dissenting views. But the "blackouts" they extend to critics, such as the New York Times blackout of COLORING THE NEWS, and the networks blackout of Bernard Goldberg's BIAS, inadvertently confirm what these critics are saying, further undercutting news media claims to fairness and balance.
- The contradictions and denial imbedded in coverage of the sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church. News organizations have reported the scandal as a problem of pedophilia in a way that endorses calls for abandoning traditional positions on clerical celibacy and the ordination of women. But they have largely refused to acknowledge facts showing that a vast disproportionation of the priests accused of abuse have been gay, that their victims with rare exception have been pubescent and teenage boys, and that the rise of the "lavender clergy" in the last 20 years has been disastrous for the Church.
William McGowan is the author of Only Man Is Vile: The Tragedy of Sri Lanka (Farrar, Straus & Giroux). He has reported for Newsweek and the BBC and has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, Columbia Journalism Review and other national publications. A regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal, he has been a fellow at the Social Philosophy and Policy Center and is currently a fellow at the Manhattan Institute. He lives in New York City. http://www.coloringthenews.com/ |
