Jim Webb Condemns Dateline NBC's Prejudices

By: Corey
Published On: 4/8/2006 11:41:11 AM

Calls upon NBC and GE to Sanction Dateline

Today Jim Webb condemned Dateline NBC for "irresponsible" reporting today. Last week, Dateline NBC sent a film crew along with a group of "Muslim-looking men" to a NASCAR race in Martinsville, Virginia for a report on anti-Muslim sentiment in the United States.

"This week a team of Dateline NBC reporters traveled from New York City to a NASCAR event in Martinsville in an amateur effort to show that +óGé¼-£rednecks are racists.+óGé¼Gäó As a former journalist, I understand the need for balanced, in-depth coverage but this kind of journalistic approach is simply irresponsible.

"In order to begin the process of becoming a more tolerant society, NBC and their parent company General Electric must denounce the actions of Dateline NBC and these reporters.

"At the same time, I want to commend all of Virginia's race fans for proving once again that we are a tolerant community despite the stereotypes of certain elitists."


Comments



Ugh (Maura in VA - 4/8/2006 6:58:37 PM)
Thanks for adopting right-wing terminology, Webb, calling the media "elitists".  Yuck.


Right-wing terminology? (DanG - 4/8/2006 7:37:11 PM)
Elitist is in the dictionary:
n : someone who believes in rule by an elite group.

If it's in the dictionary, I think anybody can use it.  It's hardly right-wing terminology.  As a matter of fact, Jackson, a Democrat, was the first politician to use it.



I think the term elitist here fits. (DisgustedDem - 4/8/2006 10:22:02 PM)
Sounds to me like these people assumed that people of a different social class than themselves would behave like bigots.  That sounds like elitism to me.  Maura, Jim is an EMMY award winning journalist, an author of a vast number of articles that have appeared in papers throughout the country, the author of 7 books and two screen plays.  He's spent most of his life involved with the media.  I hardly think that he thinks of the media in general as elitist.  But Jim says what he thinks, and if he thinks someone is being elitist and insulting people who don't deserve it, then that's what he says.


Thanks (Maura in VA - 4/10/2006 5:48:53 PM)
The context of Jim being very unlikely to think that the media in general is elitist is helpful to know.  :-)


I understand (Maura in VA - 4/10/2006 5:46:46 PM)
I know what you mean about the literal use.  I guess it just stood out to me as bothersome because so often the right-wing noise machine accuses the so-called liberal media of being "elitist". 

If NBC went to a NASCAR event assuming that everyone would be a racist, Webb is absolutely right to question them for having simplistic, stereotypical assumptions about NASCAR fans.  I just have a sensitive radar, I guess, for Republican code-terms, and I hate when our side uses them.  I hate when fellow Democrats use "Democrat" as an adjective, as in "the Democrat candidate was superior".  I hate when our side uses the term "partial-birth abortion", even though it doesn't exsist as a medical term.  "Elitist" used toward a member of the media just stood out to me as a similar Fox News code word.