New Book Looks at News Coverage of Race Issues in the 60s
It doesn’t come out until November, but I thought I’d make note of this so I don’t forget to pick it up (from Editor & Publisher):
Some 16 years after signing a book contract to write about press coverage of the civil rights era, legendary journalist Eugene Roberts has finished the project, to be published by Alfred A. Knopf in November. Titled “The Race Beat: The Press, The Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation,” the book touches on several areas not previously investigated at length, such as the role of the black press in early coverage of the story and insight into what drove segregationist editors of the time.
The tome is co-authored by veteran scribe Hank Klibanoff, a former Philadelphia Inquirer staffer and currently managing editor for news at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Looks like interesting stuff. It’s well-known that newspapers both reflect and influence the worldviews of their readers, so I’m expecting to see all sorts of shameful defenses of “tradition” from racist editors and reporters. But these were the same sentiments that animated the broader Southern contingents that fought for segregation to the bitter end, so the book will be valuable for the primary-source documentation it will add to this sordid chapter of American history (if it’s any good, that is).
Published on July 5, 2006 at 2:38 pm.
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Filed under racism, news/politics.
