Existing comment:
News Coverage Challenged
President Lyndon B. Johnson charged Illinois Gov. Otto Kerner with investigating the summer's riots. Naming white racism as the chief cause, the Kerner Commission also condemned the media's failure to report on the underlying problems black Americans faced. It found that reporters made the riots appear worse by uncritically accepting inflated official estimates of damages, and called the press "shockingly backward" for not employing more black journalists. |