Free Tibet Gets Away With Racism
At times it seems like the media enjoys reporting on allegations of racism or sexism simply so they can say/quote all the things that they'd like to be able to write/do without getting lambasted for being racist/sexist themselves. The idea of being objective shields them from culpability. Cable news enjoys a racist slur against Obama so they can then repeat it infinitely. Someone says something stupid about Jews or women and now the papers can write about it, conjecture without fear of reprisal. The way the mainstream media has handled the Spanish ad where they pulled their eyes into "slits" is a perfect example. The stupid act allowed the media to then "report" on how Chinese look different than white folk because they have "slitty eyes." It allows them to openly reinforce juvenile ideas under the guise of newsbecause they've been holding in the bigoted ideas and need some way to release them on viewers/readers.
[Brendan O'Neill over at spiked] goes a step further and calls media folk on their hypocritical coverage of the "slitty-eyed" problem. "...Why is it wrong for athletes to make the slitty-eyed gesture but it is apparently okay for well-to-do campaign groups concerned about Tibet to peddle the slitty-eyed prejudice about the Chinese? As spiked revealed earlier this year, the London-based Free Tibet campaign has disseminated propaganda showing the Chinese as slitty-eyed, yellow-skinned, buck-toothed invaders, and nobody batted an eyelid (no pun intended)." It raises an important issue: The media only enjoy running with racist stories as long as they can manipulate the story into some "race row." Not when it actually has the potential to raise serious doubts about the validity of an organization that has been deemed positive or above blame.
[Read the complete story here.]