Fundamentals of Interactive Journalism

12:25 pm

Five minutes from now, the Rev. Al Sharpton is scheduled to lead a rally outside 133 64th St. in Manhattan, at the corner of Lexington Ave., the building where accused securities fraudster Bernie Madoff lives.

Madoff is out on $10 million bail but confined to his home. Sharpton and other critics contend that this is much more lenient treatment than minorities accused of crimes receive.

12:32 pm

Still no Sharpton. The crowd is small, maybe 15 people. Channel 4 and 7 newsvans are here.

12:35 pm

The police have set up barricades in the middle of 64th St., and people are gathering across the street from Madoff’s building.

12:40 pm

About 10 people have started marching in an oval inside the police-barricaded area, shouting “Hey hey, ho ho, Madoff has got to go” and “Justice for everyone.”

12:53 pm

The number of people marching and chanting has increased to about 27. They are mostly African-American, plus a few older white folks.

Hey! Sharpton’s here! He has joined the marchers.

12:58 pm

The chants are all about equal justice now. There are several photographers here, as well as curious well-dressed Upper East Siders who look like the economic downturn hasn’t hit them quite yet. Several cops are standing around looking placid.

1:02 pm

The marchers now number more than 30, and a few more white people have joined the ranks. Suddenly they’ve gone silent. Still marching, no chanting. OK, now a National Action Network spokesperson is explaining why they’re here.

1:09 pm

The woman at the microphone, Tamika Mallory, spoke of a two-tiered justice system in the city and called it a blatant injustice. Sharpton spoke after her, echoing her comments. Here is an excerpt from his speech (not the greatest quality audio, partially due to the photographer’s camera next to me clicking incessantly):

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

1:15 pm

After a few more minutes of chanting, the protesters wrapped it up, applauding their own efforts. Members of the press, including me, descended on the group asking for interviews.

Michael Hardy, general counsel of the National Action Network, discusses the double standard of justice that led his group to organize today’s protest:

Letter to the Editor, The New York Times November 5th print edition, from Rev. Connell J. Maguire, Riviera Beach, FL: That day has dawned, the day dreamed of by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., when a man is judged by the content of his character rather than by the color of his skin. …”

Of which man does Rev. Maguire speak?

I’m not being cheeky.  In fact, the question exhibits a lack of assumption that I wish more of the media had deployed both last night and throughout the election cycle.  Hopefully, they’ll master those assumptions over the next four years of practice.

Here’s my beef with reporters and editors: If you’re going to cover race, you can… nope, you should also speak to the roughly 85 percent of the country who isn’t black.

On November 4, in addition to camping out in Harlem and at Morehouse, the historically black college, the major networks could’ve planted reporters in predominantly white neighborhoods too.

John McCain, in his eloquent concession speech missed an opportunity to get it right.  The “special significance” and “special pride that must be theirs tonight” belongs not just to black Americans.  It is America’s and also belongs to white Americans.

What about the white Freedom Riders who’ve lived to see this election?  There’s also the little white boy or girl in the 1950s, forced to give up a black friend and conform or risk being ostracized?  Fast forward a bit: what about the whites who hunkered down in white flight neighborhoods like those in Long Island or the Detroit suburbs between the 1960s-1980s?  Or the infamous “white working class” voters in Appalachia territory?

If the coverage is tainted with what I’ll call, “Baby Boomer assumptions,” about race and racism then two main but truth-obscuring ideas flourish: 1) blacks support Obama simply because he’s black, rather than because he’s charismatic and qualified and 2) whites are miraculously, race-less, or worse, when they are race-full, it’s only because they’re racist.

The cost of skewed coverage is that Americans really are taken aback by each other November 4th–which means that we (blacks, whites, Asians, etc.) really don’t know each other.  And that the media hasn’t helped us in that regard.  It typically hasn’t covered stories, like this Christian Science Monitor piece, that show us how the country and our relations with each other have changed.

Back to Rev. Maguire’s Letter to the Editor: Suppose Martin Luther King, Jr. in this statement plucked from his 1963 March on Washington speech, also included white men and women?  Suppose he realized that whites also judged each other by the color of their skins rather than the content of their characters?

Perhaps voters, including those who abstained from the process on election day, were finally judging McCain by his character?

Just a thought.  But in the final analysis, it’s the questioning of long-held assumptions that matters more.

Joe the Plumber vs. Shaniqua the Hair-Braider

In the last week, journalists and opinionators have been talking up some variant of the question: How will blacks react if Barack Obama loses?  My response: Does it matter?

Supporters listen to Obama at a town-hall event in McKeesport, Pa. ( Matthew Cavanaugh/EPA-Corbis)

Our economy is in fetal position.  In two presidential debates–the shining examples of transparency and access that they were–both candidates avoided the word, sacrifice, like its very utterance would pox the American consumer.  The word doesn’t jive with our other national pasttime but folks in Indiana, for example, have been sacrificing for a minute now.

Compared to Indiana Joe Sixpack, at least the New York Times’ Everyman still has the normalcy of his genteel fears.  Really, when are the genteel not scared of something?  Millions of Americans have been complaining for years, of: losing their one car; making the false choice between health care for themselves or their children; declining wages; a disappearing job market, much less a disappearing job; affording college.  With the nation in triage, the NYT’s Everyman worry seems quaint by comparison.

And so does, at least as reported by Newsweek, TIME, and the Washington Post and discussed in the black blogosphere, a racialized preoccupation with an Obama loss.  This isn’t the 1960s.  While race is a factor, it’s not the underlying tension feeding the nation’s partisan rancor.  I’d venture that the only color that rational voters care about these days, is, green–especially as it relates to health care, jobs and Iraq and Afghanistan.

Instead, recent media coverage of the “What if” question favors the more romantic narrative arc of “the children of slaves,” “firehoses and police dogs” and “rising hopes, finally.”  Cue the cliffhanging score by Spike Lee’s favorite composer Terence Blanchard, please.  Will rioting follow? Will whites be proven as racists after all?  Will blacks fall en masse into a depressive swoon never to recover again?  I can’t help but feel like a desire for drama is partially influencing how media is framing a Barack Obama loss.

And I get it.  Great story.  Great story.  But is the made-for-TV-movie “children of slaves” narrative obscuring more than it reveals?  Real life, certainly, isn’t that simple.  More than that though, based on the issues driving this election cycle and historical moment, why does black reaction to an Obama loss matter?

What are other ways for journalists to cover the “What if Obama loses?” question?

Is the “children of slaves” angle the only way to cover race while answering that question?

Yesterday Amy began an interesting and relevant conversation about this issue especially as we rapidly approach this year’s Election Day. Also, Jackie, drawing on her prior legal experience, added fascinating insight (as well as the human side of the story).

After reading the comments from Amy’s post, I thought maybe this issue needed its own post for ongoing discussion.

First, if you are interested in knowing what New York State felonies are, this site provides a list by offense level. Did you know there are A1 and A2 level felonies, B violent felonies, B non-violent felonies, C violent felonies, C non-violent felonies, D violent felonies, D non-violent felonies, and E felonies? Have a look at the lists. You may be surprised by what you see — and let’s not forget the broad discretion prosecutors have in deciding what charges should be brought in cases.

In New York State if you are convicted of any of the above, you will lose your right to vote (until you are on probation). It is also very hard to get a job (much less a good one) after a felony conviction.

FairVote2020 has some neat interactive charts and maps with loads of good information about felony disenfranchisement across the U.S. by state.

Dan Filler, blogging at the Faculty Lounge, writes:

Felon disenfranchisement has an intuitive appeal – we deny the right to vote to those who breach the fundamental social contract and violate the law.  But these laws have deeply racist roots and a dramatically disparate racial impact today.  There is also a deep democratic problem with the policy; as we criminalize and prosecute more and more conduct, we passively strip more and more citizens of voting rights.

Most states added felon disenfranchisement laws in the aftermath of the Civil War. It is no coincidence that more people gained the right to vote at that exact moment (at least in writing on the Federal level, via the 13th, 14th, 15th, and later the 19th amendments). Only two states allow everyone to vote (including those who are incarcerated): Vermont and Maine. Those two states are each almost 97% white (the highest white populations by state).

For more information and the latest news, see the Right To Vote Campaign, a collaboration between the ACLU, the Brennan Center for Justice, and The Sentencing Project. The Right To Vote Campaign has led on this issue, but its own Web site has been down recently for some reason.

Late Update (9/14/08): See this New York Times article from Sunday’s edition, “States Restore Voting Rights for Ex-Convicts, but Issue Remains Politically Sensitive” and accompanying multimedia map from The Sentencing Project.