Tell me true CNN, would you love the NAACP if Reverend Wright wasn't the keynote speaker?

Gossip girls.

That's what you are, CNN reporters: gossip girls.

You seek scandal and spread it, your eyes wide and your tone quivering with excitement. It's a little too excited, if you ask me. I think you've all become adrenaline junkies and you'll make drama if you can't find it legitimately. Like you're doing right now in Detroit, recasting and dissecting the Reverend Jeremiah Wright's keynote address.

I knew girls like you in junior high. You pretended to cozy up like friends just so you could get in and get the goods.

Now you are cozying up the NAACP convention in Detroit, like you care. You don't care, although you should. You should be researching and reporting on the state of the black union, but you aren't.

Do you even know what the NAACP has been doing lately?

If you want to keep it related to politics, the NAACP has been working to stimulate and educate first time voters with their 'Turn Up The Vote' National Hip-Hop Summit. According to the NAACP press release

The summit will focus on topics that effect American youth, including: overcoming poverty, healthcare, education, alcohol and drug prevention, stopping violence in urban communities, ending the war in Iraq and the importance of civic engagement.

“This event will further boost the interest and energy young people are displaying this election year,” said Brown [NAACP Youth & College Division   Director Stefanie L. Brown]. “‘The ‘Turn Up the Vote’ National Hip-Hop Summit will underscore the power of the vote and provides another opportunity for the hip-hop generation to be vocal and act in the development of a common agenda that strives toward bettering our communities and allowing every individual to reach their fullest potential.”

The NAACP is also celebrating that an initiative they backed, the Second Chance Act, was just signed into law

The Second Chance   Act, introduced by Congressman Danny Davis (IL) and Senators Joe Biden (DE), Sam Brownback (KS) and Patrick Leahy (VT) will provide state and local communities with $165 million in federal assistance annually to establish ex-offender re-entry projects with enhanced focus on job training, housing, substance abuse and mental health treatment, as well as programs to work with the children and families of ex-offenders.

“The Second Chance   Act will, each year, give the more than 650,000 men and women who have paid their debt to society a fresh start as they transition back into communities across the nation and strive to break the grip of recidivism,” said NAACP Interim President & CEO Dennis Courtland Hayes. “Now Congress must stand behind its commitment by acting to fully finance and assure successful implementation of the law’s intentions.”   

NAACP also is supporting and asking members to lobby for the Jubilee Act---which is to help bring debt relief to impoverished countries---and opposes Bush's 2009 budget.

These issues are important to the citizens of the US.

Listen carefully to what Elizabeth Edwards means when she accuses you of "strobe-light journalism," and cautions how essential actual news is to creating an informed electorate versus the shallow reporting you are currently providing, a la behind hands, in a giggly whisper

A report by the Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy found that during the early months of the 2008 presidential campaign, 63 percent of the campaign stories focused on political strategy while only 15 percent discussed the candidates’ ideas and proposals.

Reverend Wright's comments are interesting, and may even be newsworthy, but in and of themselves.

You reveal your hand---and a poor one it is indeed---when you so obviously say, "Wow, I wonder if Obama knew he was going to have such an incendiary speech!" And then titter gleefully.

This is my answer to Mrs. Edwards call. I am going to demand a vibrant, vigorous, factual, informative press.

So get to it. That means you, CNN. How about you start it off, Anderson Cooper?

Comments

[Gunfighter]

Oh, Come now, Julie... you know they won't act responsibly. The mass media, mainstream or Fox, hasn't been acting responsibly throughout this campaign season.

The reporters are busy MAKING the news these days, not reporting it.

[Kris]

You are so right about the gossip girl thing on CNN. If it isn't in someway scandalous, it isn't on CNN.
That Elizabeth Edwards article was great! Loved it. There has been more talk about Obama's and Clinton's mundane activities than what their various plans are for healthcare (as mentioned in the article), whether or not we are really getting out of Iraq, etc.

And the media perpetuates that stuff.

Gunfighter above makes an excellent point with the reporters being too busy making the news rather than actually reporting it-doing their job.

Great post.

[birdgal]

I totally agree with you Julie; HOWEVER, the NAACP chose to have Reverend Wright as their keynote speaker (I would assume), thus stoking the 'controversy' further. Why even give CNN the chance (or other major media outlets)?

[Gunfighter]

To answer your question birdgal... because the NAACP is full of shit.