Two weeks after the fact, and buried well into the story, the Virginian-Pilot lets slip that two of its own reporters were beaten by a black mob.
A beating at Church and Brambleton, By Michelle Washington, The Virginian-Pilot, May 1, 2012
Last year, when this happened to a white journalist at, of all places, The Onion, I had to note that the media wouldn't face up to racial reality even if racial reality came right up and smacked it.
This apparently remains the case.
The editorialist (it's chuckle-inducing that this had to be handled by an editorial writer) sidesteps the racial issue, though we should credit her for digging up the retaliation-for-Trayvon tweet.
Does anyone suppose that the victims, Dave Forster and Marjon Rostami (not sure how white she is, but to the mob, she probably counted as white — proving John Derbyshire right). will have anything to say?
Will their minds be changed?
I'd love to hear from them.
Both appear to be everyday shoe-leather reporters covering local crime and politics, a few years in but not too grizzled. In other words, not yet in a position with bigger sway in the journalism world. Will they rise? Will this experience bring a touch of reality to some of those editorial meetings? Will they continue in journalism at all? Start exploring forbidden realms, like the science of racial difference?
I sometimes want to sit the entire media down in a massive auditorium somewhere and say, "Guys, seriously, your treatment of race is so far removed from what normal people experience every day and what people actually think that it's kind of bizarre. Please tell me you get that. Please tell me you'd break free from that, but aren't sure how. Please admit that you at least see that your story goes one way, but the reader comments go a totally different way."
And I'd like to think that instances like the Forster/Rostami beating will have that effect, but I'm not betting on it. Few forces on Earth are as powerfully resistant to change as the media's political correctness.
