'Ordinary' American tells Clinton: Stay in the Kitchen
You know you’re getting older when you start to complain about news programmes, ‘dumbing down’ compared to the hard hitting, serious stuff you remember.
And, ok, it was only radio 1’s newsbeat, hardly a beacon of the serious news establishment (although it is part of the bbc let’s not forget), but I was pretty much shocked and appalled by their recent coverage of the US campaign for democratic leadership.
After a (swift) recap of the actual events they jumped straight into some sound bites from American voters. An approach lacking depth aside from anything else and utilising the often pointless ‘have your say’ style news reporting, rather than providing opinions and insights from people with any actual expertise.
But the truly stunning thing was the people they quoted. The first quote came from a man who was planning on voting for Obama because he didn’t think a woman would be able to hand the stress of the presidential job. His insightful analysis continued along the lines of pointing out that she hadn't aged well. (Obviously, looking good is a crucial part of being president).
The second, and possibly even more offensive opinion came from another man who thought Obama would be equally lacking in the position as he had observed that the black men he knew didn’t work very hard. He wasn't too worried though as he thought that if Obama did make it to the white house someone would probably kill him anyway.
I should possibly point out that I was in the car when I heard this for the first time and almost drove myself off the road in shock. Are we to assume that these are supposed to be a representative set of comments? Is this really the view of the American in the street - that women can’t cope with stress and black people are lazy. Perhaps it’s just equality in action, with both racism and sexism being given equal billing. But seriously, when a news bulletin chooses to broadcast offensive and ill informed views without even pausing to notice that hey, they are pretty offensive and ill informed, something very worrying indeed is going on.
Given that the entire race between Clinton and Obama has threatened to descend into ‘who is a more valid minority’ farce on more than one occasion, journalism like this does little more than re-enforce and normalise sexist and racist views, and lends credence to the idea that the gender and race of the candidates running are the most important things about them.
And, ok, it was only radio 1’s newsbeat, hardly a beacon of the serious news establishment (although it is part of the bbc let’s not forget), but I was pretty much shocked and appalled by their recent coverage of the US campaign for democratic leadership.
After a (swift) recap of the actual events they jumped straight into some sound bites from American voters. An approach lacking depth aside from anything else and utilising the often pointless ‘have your say’ style news reporting, rather than providing opinions and insights from people with any actual expertise.
But the truly stunning thing was the people they quoted. The first quote came from a man who was planning on voting for Obama because he didn’t think a woman would be able to hand the stress of the presidential job. His insightful analysis continued along the lines of pointing out that she hadn't aged well. (Obviously, looking good is a crucial part of being president).
The second, and possibly even more offensive opinion came from another man who thought Obama would be equally lacking in the position as he had observed that the black men he knew didn’t work very hard. He wasn't too worried though as he thought that if Obama did make it to the white house someone would probably kill him anyway.
I should possibly point out that I was in the car when I heard this for the first time and almost drove myself off the road in shock. Are we to assume that these are supposed to be a representative set of comments? Is this really the view of the American in the street - that women can’t cope with stress and black people are lazy. Perhaps it’s just equality in action, with both racism and sexism being given equal billing. But seriously, when a news bulletin chooses to broadcast offensive and ill informed views without even pausing to notice that hey, they are pretty offensive and ill informed, something very worrying indeed is going on.
Given that the entire race between Clinton and Obama has threatened to descend into ‘who is a more valid minority’ farce on more than one occasion, journalism like this does little more than re-enforce and normalise sexist and racist views, and lends credence to the idea that the gender and race of the candidates running are the most important things about them.
posted by Kate | 17:24
1 Comments:
"Is this really the view of the American in the street - that women can’t cope with stress and black people are lazy."
I hope not. I really really hope not. My first instinct was to say no. But then, there's always going to be a percentage for which such thoughts exist and affect the way they view the candidates. I'm not 100% surprised that Newsbeat has chosen to feature such vox pops... they are nasty and sensationalist more often than not in my (albeit limited) experience.
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