John Rosenberg over at discriminations: "Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post is worried (and he claims others are worried) that too many members of the Washington press corps look like him. "
"So, “racial progress” requires more black White House reporters? Why? In fact, since there is a finite pool of talented blacks (as of every racial group) and since it is inescapably true that every single black who decides to become a reporter thereby decides not to become something else, in Kurtz’s view it must be true that “racial progress” in White House reporting must mean racial regress, or stasis, in some other field."
"Here’s a closing thought experiment: if some of those Kurtzian “people of no color” who lament the woeful lack of “racial progress” in their field were fired so that they could be replaced by a “person of color,” would they praise their former bosses for the justice of their dismissal ... or develop a new appreciation for the principle that no one should be burdened or benefited because of his race? "
Read the whole thing (good).
UPDATE: more on the story by Sam Dealey, Thomas Jefferson Street blog (HT: conservativegrapevine) - Racial Media Bias Meets Liberal Media Bias. "With the inauguration of America's first black president less than a week away, it was inevitable that the self-obsessed media would insert their own diversity into the occasion."
"It feels like you would want to have black journalists there to bring a different racial sensibility," he says. Whoa, hold on a minute: Hasn't the mantra from media types all along been that journalists are objective?"
"If we accept that black reporters will have a different take from their white colleagues on Barack Obama, does it follow that one of those views is more "accurate" or legitimate than the other? And now substitute "conservative" for "black." " BINGO!
