Media Reflection

While the historic event of November 4, 2008 may not have heralded the post-racial era, most of the campaigning that preceded Election Day was conducted in the post-Imus era. Humor and banter based upon racial insults and negative stereotypes was exposed for what it was, racism, and it was no longer to be condoned. Media companies were challenged to present a more balanced cast of on-air talent and points of view.

All in the Family creator Norman Lear, in an April 2007 posting, offered this hope:

This could be an historic, watershed moment if American leaders in every field, in every business, were to see the opportunity as well as the responsibility to use this incident as a teaching moment, an opportunity to hold up a mirror to Americans everywhere and show them the truth of racism in our culture. And then exercise their right to clean up the areas in which they have control -- and rid them of the demeaning and the dehumanizing hostility toward race and gender.

MSNBC, the most culpable as they had been the television broadcast home of the Imus show, now regularly includes numerous African-American journalists and politicians in their coverage and analysis, including Eugene Robinson, Jonathan Capehart and Perry Bacon of the Washington Post, Clarence Page of the Chicago Tribune, former Congressman Harold Ford, Jr., Independent Women’s Voice President Michelle Bernard and Republican strategist Ron Christie.

A step in the right direction.