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Posted on 07/16/2003 1:46:45 PM PDT by hsmomx3
The editor at the Arizona Republic yelled across the newsroom, "It's time to beat the dead horse of phony racial issues and stink up the news pages again. We're not meeting our Gannett quota for race mongering and racial pandering, and our bonuses are in jeopardy."
Reporter Doug Carroll was the first to respond. Digging at the bottom of the ink barrel, he discovered a small drop of misleading racial muck that he would smear on the front page of the Local Section in the July 16, 2003, edition.
Tickled pink, black and brown over Carroll's work, the editor gave the story the title, "Minority teachers scarce in Arizona." He then wrote the following memo to his boss:
TO: Managing Editor
FR: Editor
CC: Gannett VP of Diversity
RE: Doug Carroll
I am very pleased to let you know that Doug Carroll did an outstanding job in today's story on minority teachers. He not only employed a statistical sleight of hand to make a point about minorities, but he was also able to mislead the public and uphold the party line about public education spending. He hit two homers in one article.
Doug started with a pebble of truth and turned it into an avalanche of poop, er, propaganda, er, news. The pebble of truth was that minorities account for almost half of Arizona's public school students, yet only 16 percent of teachers are minorities. The poop/propaganda/news was the way he counted minorities. He did it just as we taught him in diversity school.
First, he subtracted Hispanic Whites from the "White" category. Then he labeled the Hispanics as "minorities" and labeled the remaining Whites as "White." Of course, as we know, Mexican Americans are the largest ethnic group in Arizona, so it's incorrect to label Hispanics as a minority group. But since Hispanics race mongers say they want their people to be referred to as minorities, we oblige. That means, of course, that we can't use the minority label to describe such true minorities as Greeks, Bosnians, Iranians and Russians.
This is where your advice at last week's staff meeting was so brilliant. Taking your sage advice, Doug lumped the true minority groups into the catchall White group, making them disappear and lose their unique ethnicity, along with the other 50 or so distinct nationalities and ethnic groups in the White category.
A quick learn, Doug also said nothing about Asians in his article and quoted none of them. He knows from experience that Asians always mess up any stories about race, poverty and education. As you said long ago, including them would force us to actually cover race in an intelligent way. Shucks, we only have journalism degrees, which are about as useless as education degrees.
Speaking of which, Doug really stood up for our sisters and brothers in poop and propaganda from the education establishment. He quoted all the usual insiders, including the head of the Arizona teachers union, Penny Kotterman, who said, "It isn't that White teachers can't teach, but they provide a different kind of role model." We should remember to thank Penny when we attend the Labor Day picnic at her house again this year. Or was it the May Day parade that we attended with her?
Doug deserves a Wurlitzer Prize for putting an ending spin on the story that rivals the spin put on 45 records by old juke boxes. He actually repeated National Education Association canards about the reasons for the low numbers of minority teachers. For example, "Salaries are low for teachers when compared to salaries for other professionals."
Of course, as guest columnist and compensation consultant Craig Cantoni wrote a few weeks ago after conducting a study of teacher pay, salaries are not low for teachers compared to salaries for other professionals. Thank goodness we have that troublemaker buried in the community section. If I could, I'd bury the White Wop, with Jimmy Hoffa.
Yeah, I know that the NEA quote about low salaries is illogical. After all, if salaries are low, they'd be low for both White and Hispanic applicants, and schools would not be able to fill jobs from either group. Don't worry, our readers won't notice. Most of them went to public schools and were not taught logic or critical thinking. Besides, it's okay to be misleading and illogical in advocacy journalism.
In conclusion, I recommend Doug for a full bonus and for the annual Party Line Award.
_____________
Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and consultant. He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com.
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What burned me up was that the article on the drug bill was nothing like the FR post yesterday. They have increased articles on homosexuality (the new editor is gay & his partner moved here), pro-marriage, of course.
With the exception of one recent Saturday, every week the back page of Arizona Living features ALCOHOL, even to giving a recipe for some wild concoction, telling where young people can go in the metropolitan areas of Scottsdale, Phoenix, etc., to meet people & drink.
I suppose the editor/management would take refuge under the Constitution if someone were to sue for leading our youth astray.
P.S. I'd cancel my subscription, but we like the comics....& I NEED a laugh a day. They tried their utmost to get rid of B.C., though they did cut The Wizard of Id in the daily papers.
We've wondered why the AzRep keeps Montini, though they've relegated him to inside the local section.
He used to harp on poor kids - told of taking one young boy out for ice cream. After delivering the kid back to juvenile hall, or wherever, Montini remembered he had a free ticket to a baseball game that afternoon.
Steve Wilson was not much better, & he's now one of the editors.
Ch 3 - Patti Kirkpatrick is much more dignified than when she was on Ch 12. Shortly before she left Ch 12, something or someone disgusted her & she laid her head on the table, threw her arms out, leaned her head on one arm.
I do think she is the best-dressed.
If you can't see the connection between what that newspaper pushes, aiming then to lower inhibitions in the name of faddish, trendy places to meet other people & drink exotic combinations of alcohol, then there's nothing I can say to change your mind. You'll just have to grow older & wiser.
About the bimbo's here in local news. It amazes me how many times some of them have been married!! Patti has been married 3-4 times and so has Jineane Ford. I'm not knocking them down but it is amazing. And that Liz Habib--I heard she married a police officer after dating him for a few weeks. Interesting people they have in this state. Wonder how many marriage proposals Napolitano has had? Just kidding!!
Nope, I am not a native Arizonan. Proud to be from the midwest.
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