Race / Ethnic Issues

Blocking the Black Vote

by Sheldon Rampton — October 31, 2004 - 11:00pm

"Overseas, our troops are being mauled in the long dark night of Iraq," writes Bob Herbert.

Main Source: 
New York Times, November 1, 2004

The Presidential Race Card

by Diane Farsetta — August 10, 2004 - 10:00pm

"A Washington nonprofit group with ties to the Republican Party is airing radio ads ... asking if U.S. Senator John Kerry takes 'the black community for granted?'" The group, People of Color United, was founded last week by DC Parents For School Choice, which supports school vouchers.

Main Source: 
Philadelphia Daily News, August 11, 2004

Race, Elections and the Media

by Diane Farsetta — August 1, 2004 - 10:00pm

"Gaining access to the Republican National Convention has become a tortuous struggle for a slew of local ethnic publications," reports a New York City weekly. In Arizona, a Bush-Cheney organizer "insisted on knowing the race of a ...

Main Source: 
City Limits, August 2, 2004

Lobbying for Solitude, Oil

by Diane Farsetta — July 22, 2004 - 10:00pm

The Iraqi Kurdish region's "leaders try to project a united front in Baghdad and abroad, but few Kurds in the north or Arabs in the south have forgotten that" the Kurdish Democratic Party and the rival Patriotic Union of Kurdistan "spent four of their Saddam-free years fighting a civil war." Now, the KDP "has retained Barbour Griffith & Rogers as its lobbyist to ensure that Iraqi Kurdistan maintains its autonomy" and to push for "the return of oil-rich Kirkuk,"

Main Source: 
The Guardian (UK), July 23, 2004

Not Wrong, Just Misunderstood

by Laura Miller — June 21, 2004 - 10:00pm

When it comes to acknowledging the widespread anti-American anger in the Arab World, the Bush administration refuses "to engage in self-criticism," according to James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute. "The fault, they insist, must be elsewhere. And so they maintain that Arabs are only angry at us because they are being taught to hate us and their regimes use that hatred to deflect from their own inadequacies. ...

Main Source: 
Middle East Online, June 22, 2004

A Dirty Trickster's Bush Bonanza

by Sheldon Rampton — April 18, 2004 - 10:00pm

"Roger Stone, the dirty-tricks hobgoblin of Republican politics, has exploited his Bush connections to become an influence-peddling force in the $13 billion Indian gaming industry," reports Wayne Barrett. "Stone's booming business in such a federally regulated enterprise makes his recent pro bono orchestration of Al Sharpton's double-edged presidential campaign an even stranger covert caper.

Main Source: 
Village Voice, April 19, 2004

Ebony and Ivory

by Diane Farsetta — March 1, 2004 - 11:00pm

The Democratic presidential campaigns of John Edwards and John Kerry have one thing in common: the racial make-up of their TV ads depends on where you watch them. An Edwards ad about job losses "running in Ohio... would be identical to one it ran in South Carolina last month if not for one thing" -- in the Ohio ad, the factory worker is white, but in South Carolina, the worker was black.

Main Source: 
New York Times, March 2, 2004

Sleeping with the GOP

by Sheldon Rampton — February 4, 2004 - 11:00pm

A Republican effort to suppress the black vote may be linked to black preacher Al Sharpton's campaign in the 2004 Democratic presidential primary. Sharpton has postured as a radical firebrand, accusing other Democratic candidates such as Howard Dean of racial bias. According to reporter Wayne Barrett, "Roger Stone, the longtime Republican dirty-tricks operative who led the mob that shut down the Miami-Dade County recount and helped make George W. Bush president in 2000, is financing, staffing, and orchestrating the presidential campaign of Reverend Al Sharpton. ...

Main Source: 
Village Voice, February 5, 2004

Neo-Nazi Hoax Exploits Iraqi War Bias

by Sheldon Rampton — April 16, 2003 - 10:00pm

An anti-Semitic web site called the "Barnes Report" is distributing fake whistleblower memos on media bias in the Iraq war that attempt to exploit public skepticism about the accuracy of U.S. news coverage. Excerpts from the alleged memos appear on a series of web pages titled "Controlling the News." The "memos" instruct reporters to avoid showing scenes of violence from the war and to stress images that depict U.S. policy in a favorable light.

Main Source: 
http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Fake_whistleblower_memos_on_media_b...

Republicans Seek a Few Good African Americans

by John Stauber — February 1, 2003 - 11:00pm

Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten feels "sorry for African American Republicans. They've never had it real good ... So I was heartened when I happened on a Web site last month run by a group called the African American Republican Leadership Council. ... The honorary chairman of the panel is listed as former U.S. senator Edward W. Brooke III, a Republican from Massachusetts. So I called up Brooke, who confirmed the important fact that he is black. Alas, he is not in any way associated with the group.

Main Source: 
Washington Post, February 2, 2003
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