strength. where you are not subjugated or held back over set apart because of cultural background or what you look like or what your gender is, but where we value that stuff. we find that to be something that adds to our strength and makes us a better nation. and for better or for worse, there's not very many nations out there that are trying to do that the way we are. so it's gotten -- it's going to messy come it's going to be copied and it's going to be tough. and so our conversations about race and race baking in america. when i try to have these talks are basically have a few ground rules. very simple. first this is a conversation but as we go forward on going to ask you guys to get a little feedback. we're doing this for c-span television, so we may have to have some people get you a mic if you want to talk. so if we can get ready -- who is going to be doing that?

that's you. as the presentation goes on and ask a few questions you're there, and if you want to pipe in just take your hand up and beth will come up with a mic and we'll get to comment. but we want this to be a conversation. second, one of the things i think is both a good thing and that thing about demonizing racism in america is that we tend to think now prejudiced stereotyping as these other ideas that are over there on the fringe that only certain people will indulge, right? but in a weird way that's like outsourcing racism. that's like saying only certain people really awful people are probably wear white sheets, you know, in their off hours and that they're the only people who can fall prey to stereotypes, and that's just not true. falling prey to stereotypes doesn't make you a racist. it doesn't make you a bad person. white magic is human. also everyone gets respect.

so you decide you want to raise your hand and you want to dispute something that i've said, you have an alternative point of view, i definitely want to hear it and i want to be respectful about hearing it come as long as you are respectful of it in what i have to say. everybody deserves respect. these concepts apply to many martial is good in america. as much as i'm going to talk about black and white because, frankly, that's what i firsthand experience with, right, we are also going to talk about other groups. so this can stretch to a muslim, how gay people are treated, this can stretch to help hispanics are treated to any martial is good in america has to struggle, but how its images are portrayed in media and media outlets that make profit by disporting -- distorting that image. that's what we're going to talk about. soy we are, this is old media. those of you of a certain age in this room will be depressed to know how few students actually recognize this guy and this guy when i gave speeches earlier

today. i'm going to assume that we all know who they are. so hawkeye pierce from m*a s*h and walter cronkite, the most trusted man in america at one point. one of the things that was interesting about mashed that he heard coming to visit it was most watched episode of television, the finale for this show. reportedly according to the myth and legend, whenever the commercials came on for the finale, the water table in new york went down. people went to the bathroom. that was before you could keep your stuff and pause live television and all that stuff. i'm trying to explain what it was like to watch television when do you have a vcr to tape it, you know? talking about the stone age's. so this is old media. what i tell people is if you want to know why 95% of things happen in media, figure out who's making money or who is

losing money. who is making money over who is losing money. the old media used to make money by getting together i these big ideas and then they would sell advertisers access to the big audiences. that's how they made money. if you want to get together a big audience, you can't have a message that is divisive, right? the whole point is to get a bunch of people together watching the same thing. so you're not going to have messages that pit one part of the group against the other part of the group because then it won't get together and you won't be able to charge procter & gamble or mcdonald's all lots of money for ads. all about money. modern medium, monetizes an issue. so modern media goes out and says, look, we're never going to get an audience the size of the finale of treachery or the cosby show or what uncle walter, so we will find in each. we will find young males, young

white males and we will create a channel called comedy central. we will superserver that lifestyle to the point where young white males will show up in droves. or we will target older women, and we will create a channel called lifetime that is filled with movies whether constantly imperiled. and looking for men to compensate them for their peril. and that will be the channel that super service that lifestyle. but along the way there are some channels that you stereotyping and prejudice to draw in audiences. and also hold of those audiences, not delete them from going to a place. as a matter of fact, some of the same tactics that are used to mobilize political parties are now used to galvanize media audiences. so when you think about the latest election we all survived, i was in florida, believe me, it was tough to survive it. on had to wait 45 minutes to

vote. but the same tactics that are used to mobilize political parties, so if you're a politician, you don't just say i'm great and the other guy won't be good at the job. you say the other guy is a liar. user, the other guy can't be trusted. you say the other guy is morally reprehensible or morally suspect, right? you don't just you can do the job better. the other person somehow is deficient. what we're seeing in modern media, news media, the same thing. fox news doesn't just say we're better at reporting the news. fox news says the other side is literally vise grip the other side is not going to take it too. the other side is delivered going to take you because they have a political agenda. so you should trust us. but what ends up happening is that the roads people's trust in all journalism.

so why should we care about it. why should we care about the fact that there are stereotypes and prejudice in media. why should we care about this? it is the question i'm asking you that i expect you to answer. so why should we care about this? way in the back. >> [inaudible] >> because we want objective perspective. why do we want an objective perspective? >> so we can make an educated decision on the validity of -- we can develop our own perspective because our democracy depends upon the. >> right. it seems like you're saying in a competent way something that is much simpler. and it's even some up in one word. i want one more reaction. why do we care about this? go ahead. give them the mic. >> because who knows who's going to be a minority in future.

it could totally affect your. >> well, that's true. self-interest, right? you might be the person who gets marginalized or misrepresented one reason i think is because portrayals of miners reflect how the majority society views and treats these issues and people, right? so american movies, television go out into the world, and they are a beacon to the world about how america feels about black people, about women, about hispanics, about everything. because media is great with a set of ads. every time you watch a tv show, there's a set of values that are sort of embedded in the presentation the unit is a good guy is picking up the bad guy is. you know where the tension in the story is. so these portrayals sort of go out of the want of that's interesting to me is that i still can't believe that back in 1997, ellen degeneres landed on

the cover of "time" magazine just by saying yes, i am day. a couple years ago neil patrick harris said he was gay and he was like two paragraphs in us weekly, right? that so far we've come in life in 10 years. from the cover of "time" magazine to we can barely hear it enough to get a blog post out of it. so what changed that was the portrayal of gay people in the. we got used to seeing gay people, gay relationships, they live in a media. and we suddenly realized if you're gay, okay, not that big of a deal really. but that only changes if the portrayals are accurate and fair. and media images resonate, especially with those have no practical experience. i was in a band that was moderately successful here in bloomington.

it was called the voice band. we got signed to motown from you and me directed for them. one of the last things i did is we went to japan and we played for two months in a club over there. there wasn't much to do, i tell you when you don't speak the language and you don't redoubling which, you can't read newspaper, you can't listen to the radio, you can't watch television. but the one thing i did is i could go to the movie theater and i could watch american movies. because they don't dub over the lines. they just put subtitles in japanese. it was just like being in a regular american theater except i was the only western person and a 200 seat theater. not the only black person. the only non-asian person, right? so i'm sitting there watching these movies, and dancing help black people are portrayed in these movies. and a lot of times i'll tell you, it's full of stereotypes,

kind of insulting. it was kind of depressing. then i walk out of here and i wonder, what do these people think about me? because they just saw that, right? so media image is ever. so finally after she. that's what i was getting at with you. i think you were kind of thing a bunch of things that one of the dangerous thing is if you don't have accurate information, you can't make good decisions in a democracy. in school of journalism we're all about accuracy. so media outlets that are filled with stereotypes and prejudice are not accurate. so in my book, each chapter takes on a different element. i think what i want to do know, especially since c-span is taping this for booktv, i should read some of the book, right? i'm going to read a little bit out of the first chapter. this is a passage that involves me and my good friend bill o'reilly.

so the first and only time i met fox news channel star bill o'reilly and he looked at me like i owe him money. the situation was, i would make, and uncomfortable when. he and the publicity executive at fox news had already turned on in the request for the three book, despite the fact that he inspired the title. and though he planned several stops or am i \saint/st.\{-l}street petersburg, florida home based to tout his own book at our 2012, sharing a cup of joe with me was not particularly i to be honest to do this. that's because we have come as a therapist might say, a little bit of history. at the very signed on as top rated evening cablecast, o'reilly had call me dishonest, racially motivated, and one of the biggest race baiter's in the country for criticizing the way he talks about race on his program. i wanted to talk with o'reilly and he didn't want to talk to me. fair enough. but when the top rated anchor came to give a speech in nearby sarasota, organizers e-mailed me

an invitation to a small press conference he was holding before the event. we had history, i warn. he probably won't be happy to see me there. and sure enough, when we gathered a small green and airy, deep inside the hall, tight smiles with the order of the day. to reporters in local papers into his go students like me at a small round table where all right was going to field questions. after talking with anger about my presence, the president of the group presented the luxuries had one question. will you be civil? of course, i replied. as long as he is. until this day most all of our discontent occurred in media. after i wrote a story in 2002 and a primetime special he put together for the fox broadcast network, he complained about the newspapers so much that my e-mail filled with toxic messages from his fans. when i sat on a 2008 panel discussion a symposium in minneapolis covered by the

anti-consolidation media watchdogs free press, he said a producer to interview me on camera, ambushed stockham asking why i hadn't appeared on his show. bill hasn't asked me i answered. never die. once i got a call out of the blue from the producer wanted to know what political party i was registered under, and whether i given any money to political candidates, i'm a registered democrat and am a journalist. so i don't have any money to give. he would later note in one of the shows that he couldn't find quote one tv critic who isn't a liberal or registered democrat, unquote, without detailing his research method or if you're like a phone calls like the one i got i bet he didn't get any answers. but nothing seemed to get under his skin like the controversy over comments he made with one camera to show back in 2007 about sylvia's restaurant, a well-established black owned soul food eatery in harlem. recalled an experience dining there with al dining there with al sharpton, all right on this list as i could get over the fact that was no difference between that restaurant any other restaurant in oopsie.

it was exactly the same, even though it's run like blacks, primarily black patronage. that's what this society is about in the u.s.a. there's no difference. later in the show during a conversation with fellow pundit ron williams he noted quote, there wasn't one person in sylvia's it was screening and effort, i want more iced tea. it was like going into an italian restaurant in the sense people were sitting there and they were ordering and having fun and there wasn't any kind of craziness at all. the liberal watchdog group media matters posted the transcript with the most disturbing line highlighted sparking coverage in "the associated press," "new york daily news," cnn. i wrote on it, noting of these words sound like an awful backhanded complement like he walked into the door to sylvia's expecting a scene am a bad rap beat the o'reilly blank media matters for a big the middle part of the show when he talked about his grandmothers -- how

her attitude was rooted in fear translated as irrational hostility. and it did the full audio of his remarks geared between some statements saying quote i think black americans are certain to think more and more for themselves. they're getting away from the sharpton, two more conciliatory notes about how prejudice exists because white controlled media pass along harmful images of black people. what seemed obvious than in israel have a great look at their for talking about any of this. and too often instead of having a respectful dialogue, we fight. all of which i want to discuss with o'reilly in sarasota but my first question asking what he called me a race baiter didn't get much response. i don't have that court infamy, he said. i'm not going to answer quotes i said for years ago because i don't know what the context is. i can't answer the question because i don't know. if you have a transcript, i will take a look at it. but he said that can white people can talk to black people

about race particular same way now? all i know is i did a commentary on a restaurant in harlem. where i was very confident about the restaurant and what went on there. i got shattered by ideologues who are just looking to take things out of context. i think it's a press problem, not a people problem. then why did you enter a commentary -- and me for helping create a climate where good people are being driven away from constructive dialogue that might advance racial harmony? why did every example of tb is race baiting feature allegations of prejudice against white people? if we're all equal, can't white people make mistakes, to? later i asked about the track record of his employer, fox news and close the coming issues that may heighten fears of black people, including fellow anchor sean hannity making the case that derek bell, the first african-american to become a tenured professor at harvard university's law school, was a radical extremist closely linked

the president obama. to be honest, i wasn't that surprised i didn't get answers to my questions. people used to having one-sided conversations sometimes have trouble when the setting is different. forget about a meaningful discussion on opposing views or allowing people to cover to initiate debate. instead of opponents are instantly dismissed with a term whose toxic meaning shuts down all discussion, race baiter. but sometimes such a slur coming from the right people this less like a criticism of any badge of honor, commuting mostly one thing, you are on the right track. so that's a little bit from the introduction of the book. to give you a sense of what it's like with my good friend bill run. but it's also explains why wrote the book in the first place. it as i feel like a lot of times when you want to have discussions about how prejudice place, how racism plays out, how

bias plays out in the, people try to turn around and they try to call you a race baiter. what i'm doing is i'm trying to reclaim that, that word a little bit. and each chapter of "race-baiter" takes on a different element. so i started talking on the bit about nbc and fox news in the first chapter which is subtitled downgraded all journalism. the pew center for research did a poll was asked a bunch of people, okay, if somebody comes to you and asked you to say immediate outlet it just pops into my come when you talk about the media does this or the media does that, what pops in your mind? 63% of the time they said a cable news channel. so cable news may not get the lion's share of tv news ratings. broadcast tv news outlets draw a much bigger audience. when we talk about the media,

often we are talking about cable news. when you have to ideologically opposed cable news channels that are covering the same story and presenting these widely different pictures of what's going on, i think that erodes people's confidence in journalism in general. al sharpton, i talk about him a lot in the first chapter, and he was kind enough to give me an interview even after i said on cnn that a question whether the msnbc should give him an anchor job. so i've got to give them props for at least being willing to talk to me. what i've got to say that some the things that he does has anchor as an advocate trouble me as a media critic. in the middle of the trayvon martin situation where trayvon martin's family was trying to pressure officials of the florida to charge george zimmerman am the man who shot and killed, with murder. al sharpton decided to be a spokesman for the family. and so on march 22 of last year there was this huge rally in

florida, part of the reason that the rally was to raise money for the family, to help them press their legal fight. so al sharpton was out there getting people to donate money, pressuring and calling for prosecutors to go after george zimmerman. and 6:00 rolls around, and he stopped doing what he's doing. he grabbed trayvon martin's parents, kids in front of the tv camera and he spends an hour on hosting the msnbc show, politics nation. them when i chose over, does right back to the rally and right back to raising money and then right back pressuring prosecutors to go after george zimmerman. now i would ask you, what's wrong with that? what's wrong with that? what's wrong with al sharpton collecting money for trayvon martin's family and hosting a show called politics nation on msnbc? >> he is becoming part of the story. >> and he has a tremendous conflict of interest, right?

i mean, on the one hand he has a vested interest in seeing that george zimmerman is prosecuted for this killing, and on the other hand he is a voice of a cable news channel which, hopefully, with at least fairly cover this issue, right? that's the kind of cognitive interest that journalism educators, teaching people to avoid. at msnbc, 18 months before that, keith olbermann and joe scarborough got -- here, al sharpton is allowed to host a show on msnbc and then also lead a rally where he is collecting money for the family at the heart of the biggest new story on the planet at the time, no problem. msnbc said it because everybody knows who al sharpton. everybody knows he's an anchor and an advocate and mixes those two roles and it's not like they're trying to hide it. but i feel like people look at

that and they sort of say, well, he's got an agenda, everybody's got an agenda. and george zimmerman sued msnbc news because another part of nbc news made a mistake when edited audio of a 911 tape with george zimmerman was talking to the stanford police. they made it look like he had focus on trayvon martin because of his race in a call. so that anybody want to take bets on whether the what al sharpton didn't msnbc during the trial? of what happens, eminence in d.c. news lose a multimillion dollar judgment is there able to talk about some unfairness. this stuff can be very complicated. one chapter of the book on fox news talks with how i feel their focus of collateral damage. one group that fox news seems to like to cover is the new black

panther party. i was watching election coverage in november, and on election day they seemed to keep coming back, to this voting area in philadelphia where this guy was a member of the new black party -- black panther party was launching. he was opening doors for people coming to vote the he was standing out in front of the polling place opened the door for people and standing there as a volunteer for the as far as i know they were the only news outlet that were continually cutting back to this point place. it just, why i was in so much time dealing with the transcend? they are a very small group of people have many members. they have been criticized as a hate group by the southern poverty law center. they are antiwhite.

they have problems with jewish people. they are a hate group in a lot of ways but they're also very small and don't have a lot of influence, so why is fox news talk about them so much? well, because fox news core audience, their target audience, people, that niche is mostly middle-class, mostly middle-aged, although bit more male than female, and what is one of their greatest fears? black people. so if you create a channel where you're invoking that point of view and your realizing that culture and news coverage. one of the things you're going to issue going to talk about fears, right? black president who secretly supports or is being supported by this antiwhite, black history. whether or not i they make sens, whether or not there's any real context it, whether or not it deserves that kind of coverage. now, this is fox nation, a blog

connected to the fox news channel. it tends to be more extreme than the stuff you see on television. but when president obama and holds been at the white house and have some lack celebrities come along, all of a sudden it was defined as a hip-hop a barbecue. and for some reason it was expected to create jobs and people were disappointed it didn't. i don't understand why hip-hop a barbecue is supposed great job. and i can't understand if it' ia hip-hop barbecue the only one rapper showing up up, and there's jay-z. [laughter] again, you get a sense of how audience -- the brookings institution produced a big study that a footnote in the book, and as part of that they ask people whether or not they thought it was an equal chance that white people could be discriminated

against because of their race as black people or people of color. i found that 46% of people they polled felt it was an equal chance that white people might be discriminate against because of their race as people of color. but when asked people who watched fox news regularly, that total jumped to 70%. so this is an audience that essentially doesn't really believe in institutional racism, doesn't really believe that racism is holding people of color back anymore o anything ee is holding white people back, right? if the chimp is going to speak for that audience they will have that attitude as well. decoding the dog was other power -- politics. when i was giving a lecture, we, of course, use the term dog

whistle politics to talk about messages that politician productive that may still over the heads of most people in the audience but will reach the audience that they want to move. dog whistle politics. one of the most famous example of that might be the willie hortonized added that was created to support the candidacy of george h. libbey bush when he was running against michael dukakis. it was an avid talk about a convicted murderers let out on a formal program and then committed another rape and murder while he was out. this and said he was out of furlough and committed these crimes and then noted that dukakis supported the furlough allow this man to go out. for the mainstream audience it's an ad that says hey, you know, this guy support a program that doesn't work. but to people who are frightened of black people committing violent crimes against them, there's another messenger. this is the guy who turned his

dangerous black criminals loose in your neighbor. they can be very effective. i've talked to dave weikel from slate magazine about covering newt gingrich and covering the republican primary for president early last year, and he said newt gingrich won the south l.a. primary right after running an ad that plate of some of the attacks you can make it as president obama that some of those same things we call them the food stamp president. he had said earlier in the year, he said in january newt gingrich it, that he was going to go to the naacp convention and show them why they should value paychecks instead of food stamps. like black folks need to be told they wanted job instead of food stamps. but those were dog whistle messages meant to reach the

people who might be predisposed to respond to them, and he won the south carolina primary as you remember. so here's another question that you might want to answer. herman cain at one point was a front-runner for the republican nomination for president. this despite the fact it never really been elected to an office before. this despite the fact that he had a book out, so does seem like maybe he was turning his candidacy into a book tour. i'm important it is to sell books. and this despite the fact that a habit of saying some really stupid stuff in public, right? this is all before the sexual harassment scandal that eventually ended his candidacy. so given that, one might some conservatives like herman cain, why does he at the top of leaderboard for a while when there are like six, seven, eight people running for president on the republican side?

we've got somebody right here. >> because it makes them look like the problems with president obama's so then they're not racist. >> right. tea party and some extreme conservatives were being accused of being racist. so what could be less racist than wanting to elect a black eye for president, right? >> to me it sounds bad but when i saw he was running for the republican nomination, i just thought, he was awful tom, like some who've cheated, like sidney poitier, though i love, by someone who caters to a white audience. >> because he is in line with the belief, yes. i will tell you, number one, since i had the same reaction, what i don't want to do is associate of black republicans with this idea that they might be an uncle tom. because i do think it's possible to be a black person and be a republican and have those of use i'm not be consideredcome you're

portraying a race of something like that. but i do think it's odd that one of the central criticisms of rock obama when he first ran for president was that he didn't have enough experience. he had been a state senator and u.s. senator come and this guy has the possibility of winning the republican nomination and he hasn't been elected to anything. how is that possible? he talks about the race the way they do. he doesn't believe that racism holds black people back. he doesn't believe that institutional racism is a problem. he believes that people should work hard and if they apply themselves they will be successful, just like him. and these people could have their ideas sort of validated by a black guy, right? he talked about race the way they do.

but, unfortunately, i think sometimes also again ends up encouraging stereotyping, invalidating prejudice in a way that makes them very uncomfortable. the katrina effect. another part of the book talks about the katrina effect. i remember interviewing brian williams, the anchor for nbc news. he was still in new orleans not too long after katrina had impacted. he was grabbing docket, taping of the window, he was in the thick of it and he seemed to really feel like he was in the middle of some really important reporting, and that can be an exciting thing. so i was talking to about hurricane katrina and how the impacts on the new orleans area revealed all of these problems of poverty and race t. and he said to me then very earnestly that if this does not start national conversation on race and poverty in america, we

will not done our jobs. and then i caught up with them five years later and i said, i don't think we have a national conversation. unless i was out of the country when it happens. and he had to admit that part of the problem was that my audience would rather watch -- is hard to get people engaged in these conversations. i also think that one reason people don't understand, is because the news media is not covering poverty enough. i went to the project excellence in journalism, and they contract in the top news 50 outlets in this country. i said i ha i have this suspicin that poverty doesn't get covered a lot. can you tell me how much of all the news stories for the whole year, how much poverty get covered in 2009, 2010, and 2011?

they said, well, in 2009 about 2% of the stories involve poverty. bear in mind this is one after we had achievements meltdown in our economy. people were losing their homes left and right. people were losing their jobs left and right. 2% of the stories were present on poverty. in 2010, they couldn't give me a number for the percentage of stories centered on poverty except to say it's a little bit above zero. that's how low it was. unfortunately, our news media doesn't cover poverty very much. so we have some you like mitt romney speaking to a bunch of wealthy donors and saying that 47% of the country just wants free stuff from the government and is not going to vote for them, one reason why he might say that and one reason why people might believe it is because media has not told them about the poor. the working poor, they people that he's talking, the 40 some%

people who don't pay federal income tax, still working at wal-mart, working at mcdonald's. they might be working gps or at a grocery store. maybe they have two jobs. maybe they're taking a bus or riding a bicycle to work. we know how much work is to get around when you don't have a car, right? sometimes being poor is a lot of hard work, thank you very much. but people don't know that sometimes because the media doesn't tell them. i used as an important source this book called why americans hate welfare, a great professor at princeton university who wrote this book trying to dig into why people are so, people so reject the word welfare. like if you ask people their opinions about welfare, which is the schedule term that describes a bunch of different programs that are to help people in poverty. augustine but will very often get a lot of negative reaction.

but if you ask them about the programs in welfare they often say they like a lot of those. one of the things he found was the coverage may have associate black people with welfare in a way that encourages people to reject the word overall picks we looked at coverage of general topics, time, "newsweek" and u.s. news, and stories 1967-1992, 25 years. and found like people were 57% of the poor show in those stories. of general stores but poverty, just a general thing, no race and bald, black people were 57% of the people shown and that was twice the rate of black poverty at the time. in 1972 and 1973, black people shown in 75% of the welfare stories. i want to be that that happened out of a genuine altruistic situation to try and depict people of color in poverty more.

to talk about those issues. but what ends up happening is black folks to associate with welfare beyond their proportions in these public programs. and that unfortunately aids people who want to dismiss them. i talk about two definitions to remember. when we are dissecting the stuff. confirmation by, which is a tendency to search for and interpret information in way that confirms your preconceptions. this comes from the world of science. so if you start an experiment and you feel like you already know how it's going to turn out, then you'll mostly pay attention to the evidence that supports the conclusion all already have in my. and that's to distort the experiment, right? but when we talk about prejudice and stereotypes, if you have a sense that you already know what someone is like or you already

know what certain types of people are like, then you're only going to pay attention to the evidence that supports that conclusion. so confirmation bias is something that can be a lot of work in the support. accurate observer bias, i thought about it like when i'm driving. if i'm driving and i'm breaking the speed limit and driving really fast, it's because i'm late for an appointment, right, or i'm late for work, or the person in front of me is driving too slow or whatever, right? but if somebody else is driving really fast at a time and i don't want to drive fast, that person is unsafe. that person a future. accurate observer bias this attribute your own actions to external causes but blaming other people for their own misfortune. so if you are struggling to pay the bills it's because it' it'sa tough economy out of it and it's hard to get a good paying job. and the field your 24 does have a lot of openings.

but when other people have trouble paying their bills and they are in poverty, they made a bad decision. they are not working hard enough. they are lazy. that's accurate observer bias. what do they have in common is the content. that's what our job as journalists, providing content. but often what happens with these outlets that are distorted by prejudice stereotypes is the context is missing or the context is distorted. and then confirmation bias is actor observer bias takes hold and the next thing you know, you've got an inaccurate account. added my book get its name? like i said, my good friend bill o'reilly, right? michael though in writing this book was to reclaim the word race baiter like with all of these spots, terms and concepts about race that are implicit. that operate at the edges of our

conscious. if anythin things went holds alt without thinking about them. what i wanted is a want to make them explicit i want to draw them out, i want people to talk about them, contemplate them, and we decide whether not they make sense. and so for me, reclai reclaimine word race baiter means getting people to do that. if i can get people to think, one of the great achievements of the civil rights era is that open racism is mostly rejected now. you can't just walk up to me and call me the inward in public and have people clap, right? so that means that if we get people to think about this stuff in the open, then maybe they will reject it. so that is pretty much my presentation. if you guys have any questions or any comments, i would be happy to entertain them right now. do we have some questions,

comments? thank you. [applause] >> i think you touched on this briefly a little bit, but i'm primarily print focused. one thing i've hard to understand is this idea that some of our commentators or television news reporters are sort of a loud for lack of better term to have a sort of opinions and that sort of thing that maybe al sharpton has, that we know he has begun talking about people who began their careers as journalists. can you comment on this culture in cable news i guess of having an opinion? >> sure. i actually think, and forgive me if there's any fox news fans in the audience but i'm going to blame fox news for this, because again, okay, i said that if i% of what happens in the media is about something making money or

somebody losing money. so when the fox news channel was being developed, the idea was how do you compete with cnn, right? cnn has bureaus all over the world. their place everyone turns 20 breaking news is going on. reporting from iraq, how do you compete with the? the way you compete with that if you don't report the news. you talk about the news. you talk about the news that everybody else already knows. and as media gets more and more fractured, as it gets more and more put out on smartphones and websites come it's more a more likely that by the end of the day at 7:00, 8:00 or 9:00 anybody already knows the news of the day. so you need someone who can talk about the news in a really compelling way. that's what fox does really well. and now all of a sudden, that is the template for getting people to watch cable news shows when the news is not that compelling. you can't really talk about the

news and express an opinion about the news. you kind of have to do that. so that's why we are where we are. some people will say that these people are not journalists, which is what msnbc often says. they say that al sharpton is not a journalist. rachel now is not journalists. lawrence o'donnell is not a journalist. but, you know, what? they are in a suit and they're sitting at a desk and i got that graphic over the right shoulder or over their left shoulder and they're telling us what happened that day. so they look like journalists. and, frankly, there whole thing that you give credibility. so journalism-ish, right? you can use that. ..

i do want to sound like a broken record, but that it. people can't make money that way

anymore. nbc right now is getting the kind of ratings that put it below univision to the 1849 viewers. it's in fifth place right now and a 4% raise. so we are reaching the point where broadcasting is increasingly hard to do. this whole book is premised on the idea that i'm not going to be able to convince media outlets to do with their view because they make money doing it. the project for excellence in journalism released its state of the media report. i don't know if you looked at the profits, but fox news made $1.8 cnn made $1.19. what i'm trying to do is convince you guys come to the audience to change how you see what they're doing.

when you change how you respond to what they're doing, they have change what they're doing. >> the audience can change what is marketed to us. >> the great thing about the fragmentation of media if it takes power for the gatekeepers and distributes it down. the gatekeepers have less control and you have much more control. we were just talking about this the second ago. the nash guild, you better watch whenever some cbs. you couldn't even record on vhs until it 10 years or 15 years after television. if you didn't see that on sunday

night, they had it up less than a day later. you could watch the teams that minutes after the show was over. all of a sudden, everyone has more freedom than power over that presentation. they take seth mcfarlane's joke and everyone put their comments about why they think it's cool and abc can ask you to take down a video, but they do have a lot of control over the process. so my only hope is to convince you guys to convince them to change what they're doing. anymore questions? >> at their election of barack obama in light of your topic is a signal people are paid more attention to social media than the cable outlet?

>> now, unfortunately. i actually think it will be interesting to see what happens in 2014 and we'll see whether the side landmark change in the electorate or whether we have two of the treats. i thought it was an interesting idea. we have a presidential election involving barack obama, more young people come out. more people of color come not to vote the democrats. one of the reasons the predictions were off his people expand they would not come out and they came out so the young people they had four years ago. it had just been asked, but people in all of a sudden the predictions were off because

everybody showed up the same way they did four years ago in some people showed up even more. when we have an off year election in barack obama is mum on the ballot that will do some people show up to vote click the people who in 20 similar to the house of representatives will be the people who will be voting. so we will see. they may have a country where he had a too different a lack traits. you're facing a much diverse and much younger electorate than you would in an off year election. >> i think you addressed this in your vote, but i was wondering how the larger media discourse of the changing demographics of america, about what will happen, you know when whites become a

minority. the new majority. i wondered how that would complicate the discussion made in the media and project them into the future might complicate our discussion of race. >> when i gave my talk at a class earlier today, i had a student from costa rica, to me and he and i talked about how hispanics and latinos are the most underrepresented in. i just did a story where the depth percentage of characters and assigned them by race. a percentage or white, non-white, hispanic, asian and black. hispanics read 5%, even though

there's 16%. no other group is underrepresented to that level. so i think what we had when there's no ethnic group that is a majority in the u.s. once hispanics grow enough, we reach a point where no one has a majority. but that doesn't speak to us power. white house will still control corporate power. though still run the movie studios, television, radio from a newspaper, a magazine industry. so what white males think is important will still have more weight because they'll still control institutions. we saw that in south africa. 23, 25 million black people in a much smaller number of white south africans but because they control the economy and the industry, they controlled the

country. i feel like opera. and only people of a certain age will get that joke. >> i'm interested in how you view jon stewart and stephen colbert are as a media critic. we have a lot of discussions and classes about he claims he's a comedian, that they are people and we've had pools of people who think otherwise. >> that's a standard response. i'm just a comedian. i'm just a court jester. one thing i will say is they are the most brilliant media critics working in media today. they just have an airing ability to find the weak spots of media.

the bit that stewart did about how cable channels say will be the air. your 24 hour news channel. just come back and keep talking about it. so i really loved the way they dissect media. one of the things i noticed about "the daily show" is i really thing leading up to the last election they have become more partisan. at one point jon stewart seem to feel an obligation to make sure he was taking shots at the other guys and at some point, it felt like things changed on the show. i watch it almost every night when it do new episodes. we hear now he's going to be direct in the movie during the summer and will take a hiatus from a show.

so maybe it's a sign he's a little tired and wants to try some other thing. but at some point i defend "the daily show" against people who said it's an attack on democrats, but even though he has a set of values where you can tell he believes in the process more, he still gives everybody a hard time equally. i felt like that changed a bit. the last interview he did an interview with barat obama before the election and was eventually a softball energy. i went back and watched an interview before the 2008 election, when he was president. he was honest.

he was basically bit disappointed liberal challenging barack obama and the difference to me was surprising. this is a guy who does not want the president to lose this election. that's what i was saying last year. i felt like that's the problem. the other thing with cold air and "the daily show" is they don't have to show the other side and that's what makes journalism boring sometimes are not as hard-hitting or death than giving people's faces. that i think is always going to put us one step the hind because they can say whatever they want and make it look like they are being fair. but we have to be fair. >> i just wanted to ask how you think reality television show

get into the meaty talk about increased it. >> i didn't give you any money for that plug. there's a chap reality television. obviously reality television is the way for tv producers to prevent some stereotypes and pretend they are showing life. the first thing about any television as you do not see if economic professional television show that you are not meant to see. yes, reality shows, too. some of them are scripted as an entertainment project. when you see something on a reality show coming in to see it the way you're saying. a lot of times these reality shows, like i just ate a big column for the newspaper about how i tank they bite people and ways they could never get away

with if they did with hispanic people are back people. if they get muddled manner in the outcome and the projects and were showing a guy with 10 children, it would get shut down any minute. but why folks don't react that way when their own stereotypes are used to feel tv shows. said here comes than a boo-boo. whoever runs the child of a siege and see live should lose their job because i would be in the front doorstep every day just documenting what's going on. demeter go on "good morning america" 6:00 a.m. they gave her mountain dew, tickets to a certain point you shut it down. take her into custody. it's over. but to be serious, i think these reality shows say research is

showing real people. we are not satirizing the south by having somebody with attacks and then putting subtitles that they're speaking some other language. come on, that's a southern accent. he touched a nerve gas. sorry. >> in terms of the black stereotypes in my stereotypes that they portrayed in reality tv shows, what do you think the differences between white stereotypes and black stereotypes is in today's media? >> i think what happens is a lot of time way people don't think they have a racial culture. so there isn't a response to this stereotypes in the same way there is a response to stereotypes about black people

and people of color. what i always say is the best way to subjugate a people is to make them keep themselves in line. i feel like women in america are the best example of that. over the years, we've taught by men to them that what they can achieve. we don't have to pay women less because they'll do it themselves. for people of color, that's happened for many, many years. waited many years of stereotypes that taught everybody, including people of color that their options are limited. now at least we recognize that the mechanism of oppression and we've got to save it. why people don't see it that way yet. so we cannot just let this stereotypes, especially

southerners circulating media panic is these huge rating. even people on the show know what they're doing. they're looking at the camera. they are paid an $800,000. at some point people will get tired of it and enough people attack about what's happening that it will get exposed. right now resisting things in racial terms and that explains the difference in how people are react. stereotypes are enduring. they're hard to step away from. as much as we know how it works, we see involving people of color and black folks consuming and watching the shares, even though said that the images are

damaging. we've got somebody here? and let me know when i've run out of time because of the holiday. >> most of the discussion is focused on tv, but some of the same portions behind these channels are now venturing into print and that area of journalism. what do you think of the future with that? >> i don't know. acting challenges are much different. challenges are trying to figure out how to make money with a constantly disintegrating economic systems. so i don't know that i see -- the problems i see are problems i've always seen. we cover raise like an athletic

event rather than covering up regularly. so if you watch the nightly news or pick up a newspaper, below is the report and see what the president did. but we do stories about raise the debate hall party seriously spent two years working on coming here it is and that we don't talk about raise for another month or two months or two years. we do that with poverty, too. some of the problems this stereotyping is the same game. we do see online, you know, outlets transferring. fox news approach is now mirrored on the drudge report news posters.org and msnbc is

also the "huffington post" ran media matters. so that is migrating online as well. prince problem if it feels like old news. i guess people in the next buggy whip is coming out. >> so eric, i wanted to ask you about this whole genre of allowing citizens to comment in youtube videos for new stories and so on. there's also an alum who's a professor at the university of oklahoma. one of the arguments she's made his big theater of citizen democracy is allowing people to say incredibly racist things in online spaces. said the people who could not respond, maybe some of them

should pass. i wondered what she thought about, what is this doing race relations in this year at the supposed they'd be opening up of media space. >> you can't just focus on commenting because commenting is one part of the online experience. you can comment without attaching your identity to the. people say awful stuff because they want to be provocative obey no one will hold them accountable or they just like hurting people or whatever and they can do it because they're anonymous. people can find each other who normally would never find each other. if you are a biracial one iron enthusiast living in

indianapolis, you can find other one armed biracial soccer enthusiasts all over the world and they may only be 50 of you. all of a sudden your united and there's a bunch of other people and you can trade ideas about your identity in the world or how people stereotype enthusiasts. you can interact. this is what i like is that mobilizes people. size document clay shirkey for the book and those who don't know clay shirkey, here is a professor at nyu who is just ahead of the curve in terms of the effect of unnamed media on social groups and how this works in terms of media and one of the things he pointed out with a situation where the hunger teams movie came out and a lot of fans

at the hunger teams spoke said lee realized they were cared tourists who are black and the movie that they didn't know where black in the book. so they started posting this racist stuff on twitter like why did they cast by felons though as so-and-so. all of a sudden this wave of people descended on these people to the point where i thought of the accounts people have walked away from them. what happened is even a twitter that people do make these comments, they found out there's this whole universe of twitter users that were not going to put up with that. so that began in the gang and that's why i don't believe in shutting down comments sections. they can be problematic even though they're hard to keep control of even the people go nuts on them. it's another part of the open

discussion we have integrated social media and it's important for journalism organizations especially to savor going to be up in nine days and be inclusive as we possibly can. thank you very much. if you want to talk later, just come on down. so i guess we're signing books over here. if you want to purchase the book, i'd be happy to do that. and then you can find out more. [applause] >> here's a look at books being published this week:

>> co-authors trimmed five, trained by then and turn nine look about persecutions around the world up next on booktv.

being a bloke on. behalf of the president and our chair, i like to thank everybody for attending especially authors and analysts for making this program possible. my job is to be brief and secondly, my only task is to introduce eric metaxas, who is going to set up and share the program today. for many of you, he doesn't need much introduction because he's done many port thing known to you and others joining us by television. perhaps some of you have argued that his best-selling book, "bonhoeffer", which has a near times bestseller and important

book about an important man. in addition here in washington d.c., i believe players copies of the presentation available outside. we are also grateful for him being a participant in this book, "persecuted", he hoped to write the foreword and has been an important contributor. i want to thank them for their participation. aside from a much distinguished work, including the companion to the movie, the heroic campaign to end slavery, and other important man with import work they needed to be more widely known that he hoped to make

possible. he has a varied array of interests in a sense of hamner, for someone who appears in washington, is not all that common as some of you know. he has written for not only the near times and many other publications, but also for chuck colson and veggie tales, so i want to thank him for that as well. he also read a book entitled don't shoot the leave and ripley's believe it or not that led no culprit to the true heir of gary larson. it may see more about that than anything else. his important work on the topics of faith, truth, justice and freedom are