More Bullshit

Care to see a prime example of rampant media bias?

Here's the headline for an AP story written by Mira Oberman as it appears in Yahoo News today:

Race relations still tense a year after Katrina

Not exactly a smoking gun yet. Anybody with half a brain knows that race relations are somewhat tense in this country. Let us read on:

Images of seas of black faces begging for help that took days to arrive, and stories of sheriffs from adjacent white suburbs turning desperate evacuees away at gunpoint as they tried to flee New Orleans, horrified the nation.

But for many who grew up in a city that had hosted the slave trade and clung to segregation, the initial shock was transformed into fury that their deepest fears and suspicions were true: the government does not care about black people.


Whoa. Now wait just a damn minute. Sure, the systemic racism of Louisiana politics is well known and documented. But she's not talking about the government of Louisiana. She's just indicting "the government." Imagine what Mira Oberman's editors would have said if she wrote "Louisiana's Democratic Governor, Kathleen Blanco doesn't care about black people." The article goes on to outline the dismal conditions of New Orleans and the bungling of the reconstruction, but at no point does it mention the party affiliation of the governor or mayor presiding over the situation. Had they been republicans, we'd be reminded of it over and over again.