New Mexico Independent: Comments by Marjorie Childress

Marjorie Childress — Thu, 22 May 2008 21:31:35 GMT

That’s right, thanks for pointing that out. I saw today that Alaska is going to sue to block the listing.

Marjorie Childress — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 16:23:35 GMT

This is a very good point. In addition to Jim Crow segregation laws, the right to vote for blacks was severely curtailed by poll taxes and literacy rules throughout the south. Essentially, the 15th amendment giving black men the vote was made moot, at least in the south, and white women as a group therefore had an actual ability to vote well before black men did. The refusal to not only recognize this, but to actively encourage a less than complete analysis, is just one of the ways in which Gloria Steinem’s op-ed in the New York Times last January made so many folks angry.

Marjorie Childress — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 16:35:47 GMT

Here’s a good time line on voting rights: http://www.infoplease.com/timelines/voting.html

I learned something new from it. In addition to the poll tax, many southern states held private all-white primaries until they were ruled unconstitutional in 1944. You can read about them here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_primary

Marjorie Childress — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 19:28:41 GMT

The bigger question, for me, is what is fair and balanced in the media? Both in the blogosphere, as well as print journalism, television and radio? Do journalists ever leave some facts out of their stories, or not cover certain stories at all, due to their own personal agendas, or to advance their own careers?

What power does the “liberal blogosphere” frame have, when it comes to public perception? How does it stack up with the recent news reported right here at NMI about the conservative slant of the opinion pages of the nation’s newspapers? These same newspapers are often charged with being part of the “liberal media,” so what gives?

Why not just “the blogosphere” in general? Are we to believe that Fox News doesn’t regularly read conservative blogs? Someone tell me, because I don’t know. But I do know that Fox news is a conservative outlet. Where does it get all the tidbits that feed its 24-hour nonstop “news”? And is it invalid for mainstream media to look to blogs for news? It appears that many news outlets do so routinely these days. It used to be that there were many more newspapers in this country, from small “rags” to metropolitan wide publications. It could be that blogs are picking up some of that slack.

Life, in fact, is not as cut and dried as a lot of career journalists would like it to be. Journalism, by its nature, interprets reality for the public. That is not a function owned by anybody. Regarding the particular case that Heath mentions here, I’ve actually heard counter-arguments from Barb, et al, for why that particular comment was worthy of being reported. Their question, then, is why didn’t Heath himself report it? And why does he think that his interpretation of the context is more valid than theirs?