Sunday, February 09, 2003

That librul bias

Atrios calls it:

Racial Bias in Media Reporting of Terrorist Activity
David Neiwert just suggests it, but I think it's impossible to not come to that conclusion. This arrest of the white supremacists should be major news in a terrorism-obsessed country. The FBI says this is major and that the information they stole and distributed poses a serious threat.

I can't say that I disagree. I don't think there's any evidence of a conscious racial bias per se, but the outcome certainly suggests one of those unconscious racial/ethnic biases that, once upon a time, newspaper editors were scrupulous about avoiding.

As Al-Muhajabah later wryly observes in Atrios' comments:
I was just imagining the news coverage if Muslims had been caught doing the same thing the Davilas were. That seems to answer the question about bias.

This is exactly correct.