>> let us know what you reading this summer. tweet us at booktv. posted on a facebook page or send us an e-mail at booktv@c-span.org. >> eric deggans is next on

booktv. mr. deggans, i.t. and media critic for the tampa bay times forum argued that the immediate is fractured into even smaller divisions populated by pundits who played upon the fears of prejudice of their viewers to garner larger audiences. this is about an hour 10. >> thank you very much for having me. i'm here to talk about some of the themes from a new book, "race-baiter." it's interesting, i got the idea a while ago to basically take all the writing that i've been doing about race and society in media and kind of put it into one book. and it was interesting. it was interesting and it was depressing, be honest. i was bring in this book for a right to march of last year. and if you guys remember, around march of last year was when the trayvon martin situation became a huge national story. and i'm sitting in florida close to ground zero. so with all this reporting going

on about the 1 17 year old kid, african-american, walking in a subdivision in florida, seemingly puzzling mining his own business and he winds up in a fight with a neighborhood watch volunteer and gets shot to death. three weeks before my deadline. right? so all of a sudden i have to figure how to incorporate all the stuff about race and media that came out in the wake of a really explosive international story. then just as that is starting to wind down the sandra fluke situation happened where the student at georgetown university went before a congressional committee, wanted to talk about having her insurance cover contraception, and for the double she gets called a prostitute and a slot by rush limbaugh and national radar. that cost them 50 plus advertisers and actually threatened the whole business model of talk radio.

but what it also convinced me of was a really important idea which is that america is trying something that is messy and complicated, but also really important. we are trying to build a country where our diversity is our strength. winter you were not subjugated or held back or set apart because of your cultural background or what you look like or what your gender is, but what we value that stuff. where we find that something to be asked 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 going to be messy, complicated and it's going to be tough. and so our conversations about race and race baiting in america. when i tried to these talks, i basically have a few ground rules. very simple. first, this is a conversation.

so as we go forward i'm going to try to ask you guys to give me 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's going to be doing that? so as the presentation goes on i may ask a few questions here or there, and if you want to pipe in just take your hand up and beth will come over with a mic and will get you, but we want to be this -- we want this to be a conversation. mistakes don't make you racist but one of the things i think it's both good and bad about demonizing racism in america is that we tend to think no prejudice and stereotyping of the a good idea that 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 kind of people really awful people and probably wear white sheets, you know, in the off hours, that they are the only

people who could fall prey to stereotypes. that's just not true. also, everyone gets respect. so if you decide you want to raise your hand and you want to just be something that i said, you have an alternative point of view, a definite want to hear it and i want to be respectful about hearing it as long as you are a spectral abiding what i have to say to everyone needs respect. the concept applies to many marshals groups in america. as much as i'm going to talk about black and white, because, frankly, that's what i have first hand experience with, were also going to talk about other groups. so this can stretch to how muslims are created, how gay people are treated, how hispanics are treated. any marginalized group in america has to struggle with how its images portrayed in immediate and media outlets that may profit by distorted, and

that's what we're going to talk about. so here 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. we all know who they are. so hot that pierce from m*a s*h -- hawkeye pierce and walter cronkite. the most trusted man in america at one point. one of the things it was interesting about m*a s*h for her, till recently it was the most-watched episode on television, the finale, for this show. reportedly according to the myth and legend, whenever the commercials came on for the finale episode, the water table in new york went down. people were in the bathroom. that was before you could dvr stuff and possible live television and all that stuff but i was trying to explain the

student was like to watch television when you didn't have a vcr to tape it. i felt like i was talking about the stone age's. so this is old media. what i felt 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 or who is losing money. so old media is to make money by getting together thi these big audiences 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 -- 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 another part of the group because then they will get together and you won't be able to charge proctor and gamble or mcdonald's all lot of money for the ad, right? it's all about money. modern media 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 m*a s*h or the cosby show or what uncle walter used to draw from the cbs evening news so we will find a niche. we will find young males, young white males. we will create a channel called comedy central that specializes in human they love and we will superstar that lifestyle to the point where young white male to show up in droves. or we will target older women and will create a channel called lifetime that is filled with movies where they're constantly imperiled. and looking for men to come and save them, and that will be a channel that super service that lifestyle, right? but along the way there are some channels that use stereotyping and prejudice to draw in audiences. and also hold those audiences, and not delete them from going

to other places. as a matter of fact, some of the same tactics that are used to mobilize political parties are now used to galvanize immediate audiences. so when you think about the latest election that we all survived, i was in florida, believe me, it was tough to survive it. i only had to wait 45 minutes to vote so that wasn't bad. at the same tactics that are used to mobilize political parties. so if you're a politician you don't just say i'm great any of the cuts will be good a job. you see the other guy is a liar. you say the other guy can't be trusted. you say the other guy is morally reprehensible or morally suspect, right? you don't just a could do the job better. the other person is somehow deficient at what we are seeing in modern media, news media, the same thing. so fox news doesn't just a we're better at reporting the news. fox news says the other side is liberally biased.

the other side is not going to tell you the truth but the other side is deliberately going to treat you because you have a political agenda. so you should trust us. but what inside happening is that the roads people's trust in all journalism. why should we care about this? why should we care about the fact that their stereotypes and prejudice in media? why should we care about this? that is the question i'm asking you have actually expect you to answer. so why should we care about this? way in the back. [inaudible] spinning because we want an objective perspective. why? >> so we can make an educated decision on the validity of, we can develop our own perspective because democracy depends on the stand right. isn't like you're saying and it

can't get away something that is much simpler though. is even summed up in one word. i want one more reaction. why do we care about this? >> because who knows who's going to be the minority in the future? it could totally affect you. >> well, that you. self-interest, right? you might be the person who gets marginalized or misrepresent. one reason i think is because the trail the minors reflect are the majorities -- so american movies, television, glad in the world and they are a beacon to the world about how america feels about black people, about women, about hispanics, about everything. because needed as, with gray with a set of us. every time you watch a tv show there's a set of values that is sort of embedded in the

presentation. you know who the good guys, you know who the bad guys. you know where the tension in the story is, right? so these betrayals sort of go out there to one of the things that is 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 gay. and i don't know, a couple years ago neil patrick harris said he was gay and it was like two paragraphs in us weekly, right? that so far we've come in life in 10 years, 12 years. from the cover of "time" magazine to we can barely get enough to get a blog post out of it, right? so what changed that was the betrayal of the people in the. we get used to seeing gay people, gay relationships, gay life in the media. and we suddenly realized if you're gay, okay, not that big of a deal really, right? but that only changes it the

portrayals are accurate and fair. media images resonate, especially with those who have no practical experience. i was in a band that was moderately successful here in bloomington. it was called the voice band. we played the bluebird and we got signed to motown and made a record for them. and one of the last things i did with and was we went to japan and we played for two months in the club over there. there wasn't much to do, i'll tell you. when you don't speak the language and you don't read the language and you can't read a newspaper, you can't listen to the radio. you can't watch television but the one thing i can do is i could go to the movie theater and i could watch american movies because they don't dove over the lunch. they just put subtitles in japanese. so it was like being in a regular american theater, except i was the only western person in

the few. not the only black person, the only non-asian person. so i'm sitting there and i'm watching these movies and i'm seeing how black people are portrayed in these movies. and a lot of times i'll tell you, it is full of stereotypes. it was kind of insulting. it was kind of depressing. then i walk out of the theater and i wonder, what do these people think about me because they just saw that? so immediate image resonates. finally, i considered as well as getting at with you. you were kind of sing a bunch of things but one of the dangerous thing is if you don't have accurate information you can't make good decisions in a democracy, right? and in school journalism were all about accuracy. some media outlets that are filled with stereotypes and prejudice are not accurate. so, in my book can each chapter takes on a different element. i think what i want to do now,

especially since c-span is taking this or booktv, i guess 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. .. >> o'reilly has called me dishonest, racially motivated is and one to have dig biggest -- one of the biggest race baiters

in the country. so as i planned this tome on how race issues and prejudice played out in the media, i wanted to talk to reilly, and he didn't want to talk with me. fair enough. but when he came to give a speech in sarasota, e-mailers -- he probably won't be happy to see me there. and sure enough, when we gathered in a small green room area, tight smiles were the order of the day. two reporters from local papers and two high school students flanked me at a small round table, and after talking with the anchor about my presence, the president of the group presenting the lecture series had one question, um, will you be civil? of course, i replied. as long as he is. until this day most all of our disagreements had occurred in media. after i wrote a story for the st. petersburg times in 2002,

panning a prime time special he put together, he complained about the newspaper so much that my e-mail filled with caustic messages from his fans. when i sat on a 2008 panel discussion at a symposium in min name lis -- minneapolis, he sent a producer to interview me on camera ambush-style, asking why i hadn't appeared on his show. bill hasn't asked me, i answered. never called back. once i got a call from a producer on his show wondering if i'd given any money to campaigns. i'm a registered democrat and a journalist, i told him, so i don't have any money to give to anyone. without detailing his research methods. if he relied on phone calls like the one i got, i bet he didn't get many answers. but nothing seemed to get under the skin like the controversy over comments he made on his

one-time radio show back in 2007 about sylvia's restaurant, a well established black-owned eatery in harlem. i couldn't get over the fact there was no difference between sylvia's restaurant and any other restaurant in new york city even though it's run by blacks. it was the same. that's really what this shot is about in the -- what this society is about in the usa, there's no difference. later in the show, he noted, quote: there wasn't one person in sylvia's who was screaming mf offer, i want more iced tea. people were sitting there and ordering and having fun, and there wasn't any kind of craziness at all. the liberal watchdog group media matters posted a transcript with the most disturbing lines highlighted sparking coverage in the new daily news, cnn and the tennessee times. i wrote on it noting how these

words sounded like an awful, backhanded compliment. o'reilly blamed me for omitting the middle part of the show where he talked about his grandmother's racism, how her attitude was rooted in fear translated as irrational hostility. and, indeed, the full audio of his remarks veered between some statements that sounded insulting saying, quote: i think black americans are starting to think more and more for themselves. they're getting away from the people trying to lead them into a race-based culture, unquote, to more conciliatory notes about how prejudice exists because white-controlled media pass along harmful images of back people. we don't have a great vocabulary for talking about this, and too often instead of having a respectful dialogue, we fight. all of which i wanted to discuss with o'reilly in sarasota, but

my first question didn't get much response. i don't have that quote in front of me, he said. 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'll take a lock at it. but you said that white people couldn't talk to black people about issues of race, i answered. do you feel the same way? all i know is i did a commentary on a restaurant in harlem where i was very complimentary, and i got shattered by idealogues who were looking to take things out of context, he said. i think it's a press problem, not a people problem. why did you blame media matters, civil rights activist jesse jackson and me for helping create a climate where good people are being driven away from constructive dialogue that might advance racial harmony, and why feature allegations of prejudice against white people? if we're all equal, can't white people make mistakes too? later i asked about the track

record of his employer, fox news n closely covering issues that may heighten anxieties of black people, including sean hannity making a case against derek bell that he was a radical extreme closely linked to president obama. to be honest, i wasn't that surprised that i didn't get answers for my questions. people used to having one-sided conversations sometimes have trouble when the setting is different. forget about a meaningful discussion or allowing people of color the space to initiate debate. instead, opponents are instantly dismissed with the term race baiter. but sometimes such a slur coming from the right people feels less like a criticism than a badge of honor, communicating mostly one thing: you're 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 to cross horns with my good

friend, bill o'reilly. but this also explains why i wrote the book in the first place, because i feel like a lot of times when you want of to have discussions about how prejudice plays out, how racism plays out, how bias plays out in media, people try to turn that around and call you the race baiter. and what i'm doing is i'm trying to reclaim that word a little bit. and each chapter of race baiter takes offense a different element of this equation. so i started out talking a little bit about msnbc and fox news in the fist chapter -- in the first chapter. now, the pew center for research did a little poll where they asked a bunch of people, okay, if somebody comes to you and asks you to say a media outlet that just pops into your mind, 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, right? so cable news might get the lion's share of tv news ratings, i mean, broadcast tv news outlets draw a much bigger audience. when we talk about the media, often we're talking about cable news. and when you have two ideologically-opposed cable news channels that are covering the same stories and presenting these wildly different pictures of what's going on, i think that erodes people's confidence in journalism in general. al sharpton, i talk about al a lot in the first chapter, and he was kind enough to give me an interview even after i said on cnn that i questioned whether or not msnbc should have given him an anchor job, so i've got to give him props for at least being willing to talk to me. but i've got so say some of the things he does trouble me as a media critic. in the middle of the trayvon martin situation where martin's

family was trying to pressure officials in florida to charge george zimmerman, the man who shot and killed him, with murder, al sharpton diseased to be a -- decided to be a spokesman for the family. and so on march 22nd of last year there was this huge rally in sanford, florida. part of the reason was to raise money for the family. so al sharpton was out there getting people to donate money, pressuring and calling for prosecutors to go after george zimmerman, and then 6:00 rolls around, and he stops doing what he's doing, he grabs trayvon martin's parents, he gets in front of a tv camera, and he spends an hour hosting his tv show, "politics nation." then when that show's over, he goes right back to the rally and right back to raising money and right back to pressuring prosecutors to go after george zimmerman. and 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's becoming part of the story. >> he's becoming part of the story and he has a conflict of enter. he has a vs.ed interest in see -- vested interest in seeing that george zimmerman is prosecuted, and on the other hand he has a news show that at least would hopely objectively cover this issue. at msnbc 18 months before that, keith olberman and joe scarborough got suspended for giving contributions to political candidates without getting a previous okay from nbc news. but here al sharpton is allowed to host a show and lead a rally

where he's collecting money for the family at the heart of the biggest news story at the time. nbc says everybody knows who al sharpton is, and it's not like they're trying to hide anything. but i feel like people look at that, and they sort of say, well, he's got an agenda, everybody's got an agenda, right? and george zimmerman sued nbc news pause another part of -- because another part of nbc news made a mistake when they edited audio of a 911 tape where george zimmerman was talking to sanford be police, and they made it look like he had focused on trayvon martin because of his race in the call. so now anybody want to take bets on whether or not what al sharpton did on msnbc comes up in that 2r50eu8? and what happens if they lose the judgment because they were able to talk about some unfairness exhibited on another

branch of nbc news. see, this stuff can be complicated. one chapter of the book on fox news talks about how one group that fox be news likes to coffer is the new black panther party. i was watching election coverage in november, and on election day they seemed to keep cutting back to this voting area in philadelphia where guy who was a member of the new black panther apparently was also volunteering to help people, you know, he's opening the doors so people could come in and vote. i guess he might explain a ballot to them, but he was standing out in front of the polling place and standing there as a volunteer. as far as i know, they were the only news outlet that was continually cutting back to this polling place. and it just -- why are we spending so much time looking at this guy from the new black

panther party? the they're a very small group, they don't have very many members, they've been criticized as a hate group by the southern poverty law center. they're anti-white, they have problems with jewish people. you know, they're a hate group in a lot of ways, but they're also very small, and they don't have a lot of influence, so why is fox news talking about them so much? well, because fox news' core audience, their target audience, that in each that they're serving is mostly middle class, mostly middle-aged, a little bit more male than female, and what is one of their greatest fears? scary black people, right? so if you create a channel where you're we vocking that -- evoking that point of view, one of the things you're going to do is talk about greatest fears, right? that there's this black president who secretly supports or is being supported by this

anti-white, black hate group. whether or not it makes any sense, whether or not there's any real context to it, whether or not it deserves that kind of coverage. now, this is -- fox nation is a blog that's connected to fox news channel. it tends to be more extreme than the stuff that you see on television. but when president obama held a dinner at the white house and he had some plaque celebrity -- black celebrities come along, all of a sudden it was defined as a hip-hop barbecue. and for some reason it was expected to create jobs, and people were disappointed that it didn't. [laughter] i don't understand why a hip-hop barbecue's supposed to create jobs. and, in fact, i don't understand why if it's a hip-hop barbecue, there's really only one rapper shown, who is jay-z. [laughter] but, again, you get a sense of how the audience's views on race dictate their strategy.

the brookings institution produced a big study that i footnote in the book and talk about in the book a little bit, and as part of that they asked 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 and people of color. and they found that 46% of the people they polled felt that there was an equal chance that white people might be discriminated against because of their race as people of color. but when they asked people who watched fox news regularly, that total jumped to 70 president. 70%. right? so this is an audience that, essentially, doesn't really believe in institutional racism, doesn't can really believe that racism is holding people of color back any more than anything else is holding white people back, right? and so they're going to -- if a channel is going to speak to that audience, they're going to have that attitude as well, right?

decoding the dog whistles in politics. so another thing that was interesting was to find how few students actually understood what a dog whistle is when with i was giving a lecture. we, of course, use that term dog whistle politics to talk about messages that politicians put out there that may sail over the aides of most people in the audience but will reach the audience that they want to move. dog whistle politics. one of the most famous examples of that might be the willie horton ad that was created to support the candidate is si of george h.w. bush when he was running against michael dukakis. it was an ad that talked about a convicted murderer who was let out on furlough program and committed another rape and murder while he was out, right? and the ad showed this very scary looking black guy and said he was out on this furlough and exited these crimes and then note -- and committed these crimes and then noted that

dukakis allowed this guy to go out. to the mainstream audience, it's an ad that says, hey, you know, it's an ad that supported a program that didn't work. but to people who are frightened of black people committing violent crimes against them, there's another message there. this is the guy who's going turn these dangerous black criminals loose in your neighborhood. and it can be very effective. i talked to dave weigel from slate magazine about covering newt gingrich and covering the republican primaries for president early last year. and he said newt gingrich won the south carolina primary right after running an ad that played up some to have attacks that he had been making against president obama that had some of those same themes where he called him the food stamp president, right? where he -- he had said earlier in that year, he said in january, newt gingrich had, that he was going to go to the naacp convention and show them why

they should value paychecks instead of food stamps. right? like black folks need to be told that they want a job instead of food stamps. but those were dog whistle messages, right? meant to reach the people who might be predisposed to respond to them, and he won the south carolina primary, if 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 that he had never really been elected to an office before with. this despite the fact that he had a book out, and it sort of seemed like maybe he was turning his candidacy into a book tour. i know how important it is to sell books, but, man. and this despite the fact that he had a habit of saying some really stupid stuff in public, right? [laughter] ask and this is all before the sexual harassment scandal that eventually ended his candidacy.

so given that, why might some conservatives like herman cain, why was he at the top of the leaderboard for a while when there were, like, six or seven or eight people running for president on the republican sidesome -- side? we've got somebody right here. >> because it makes them look like they're not, don't have problems with someone like president obama because they're not racist. >> right. the tea party and some extreme conservatives were being accused of being racist. so what could be less racist than wanting to elect a black guy president? >> like, to me, this sounds really bad, but when i saw that he was running for the republican nomination, i just thought he was uncle tom, like someone who caters -- like sidney poitier, someone who caters to the white audience because he's in line with their beliefs. >> yeah. and, you know, i will tell you

number one i sympathize with you, i had that same reaction. what i don't want to do is associate 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 views and not be considered you're betraying your race or something like that. but i do think it's odd that one to have the central criticisms -- one of the central criticisms of barack obama when he first ran for president was that he didn't have enough experience. and he had been a state senator and a u.s. senator. and now this guy has the possibility of winning the republican nomination, and he hasn't been elected to anything. i mean, how is that possible? i think some conservatives like herman cain, frankly, because he talks about 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'll be

successful just like him. and these people can have their ideas sort of validated by a black guy, right? he talks about race the way they do. but unfortunately, i think sometimes that also, again, ends up encouraging stereotyping and validating prejudice in a way that makes me very uncomfortable. the katrina effect. another part of the book talks about, um, 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, like, grabbing duct tape and taping up a window and, you know, 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. and so i was talking to him

about hurricane katrina and how the impact on the new orleans area had revealed all of these problems with poverty and race. and he said to me then very earnestly that if this does not start a national conversation on race and poverty in america, we will have not done our jobs. and then i caught up with him five years later, and i said i don't think we had that national conversation. unless i was out of the country when it happened. and he had to admit that part of the problem was that my audience would rather watch entourage. it's harder to get people engaged in these conversations, right? i also think, though, one reason why people don't understand the poor in america is because the news media is not covering poverty enough. i went to the project for excellence in journalism, and they keep track of the top 50 news outlets in the country and

what they report on. so i went to them, and i said i have in the suspicion that poverty doesn't get covered a lot. can you tell me how much all the news stories of these top 50 news outlets for the whole year, how much poverty got covered in 2009, 2010 and 2011? and they said, well, in 2009 about 2% of the stories involved poverty. now, bear in mind this was one year after we had this tremendous meltdown in our economy. and people were losing their homes left and right, people were losing tear jobs left and right. 2% of the stories were centered on poverty. in 2010 they couldn't give me a number for the percentage of stories centered on poverty except to say that it was a little bit above zero. that's how low it was. unfortunately, our news media doesn't cover poverty very much so when you have somebody like mitt romney speaking to a bunch of wealthy donors and saying that 47% of the country just wants to get free stuff from the government and is not going to

vote for him, one reason why he might say that and one reason why people might believe it is because the media has not told them about the poor. the working poor, the people that he's talking about, the 47% of people who don't pay federal income tax, they're working at wal-mart, they're working at mcdonald's, they might be working at ups or a grocery store. maybe they have two jobs. maybe they're taking a bus or riding a bike to get to work, and we know how much work it is to get around when you don't have a car, right? sometimes being poor is very hard work, thank you very much. but people don't know that sometimes because the media doesn't tell them. um, i used as an important source this book called "why americans hate welfare." a great professor at princeton university wrote this week trying to dig into why people are so, um, people so reject the

word welfare. like if you ask people their opinions about welfare, which is this catch-all term that describes a bunch of temples, if you -- terms, if you ask them about welfare, you often get a lot of negative reaction. but if you ask them about the components of welfare, they'll often say they like a lot of stuff. and one of the things he found was that media coverage may have associated black people with welfare in a way that has encourageed people to reject the term overall. so he looked at time, "newsweek" and u.s. news in stories from 1967 to 1992, and he found black people were 57% of the poor shown in those stories. so general stories about poverty could have just a general thing, no race involved, black people were 57% of the people shown, and that was twice the rate of

black poverty at the time. and in 1972 and 1973, black people were shown in 75 percent of the welfare stories. now, i think, i want to believe that that happened out of a genuine, altruistic decision to try and depict people of color in poverty more and talk about those issues. but what ends up happening is black folks get associated with welfare beyond their proportions in many these public programs -- in these public programs. and that, unfortunately, aids people who want to dismiss them and want to turn away from them. i talk about two definitions to remember. when we're dissecting this stuff. confirmation bias which is a tendency to search for and interpret information a way that confirms your preconceptions leading to statistical errors. 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 come out, you'll turn to ed that supports the -- turn to evidence that supports the conclusion you have in mind. but when we talk about prejudice and stereotypes, if you have a sense that you already know what somebody's 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 at work in a lot of this reporting. and i thought about it like when i'm driving, right? 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 when i don't want to drive fast, well, that person's unsafe. that person's a jerk. active observer bias is

attributing your own actions to external causes but blaming other people for their own misfortunes. so if you're struggling to pay the bills, it's pause it's a tough -- it's because it's a tough economy out there, and the field that you're trained for doesn't have a lot of openings. but when other people are in poverty, well, they made a bad decision. they're not working hard enough. their lazy -- they're lazy, right? that's active observer bias. and what do confirmation bias and active observer bias have in common? it's context. that's our job as journalists, providing context. but often b what happens with these outlets that are distorted by prejudice is the context is missing, or the context is distorted. and then confirmation bias and active observer bias take hold, and the next thing you know you've got an inaccurate account. how did my book get its name? well, like i said, my good

friend, bill o'reilly, right? my goal, though, in writing this book was to reclaim the word "race-baiter." i feel like we have all of these thoughts and terms and concepts about race that are implicit. they operate at the edges of our consciousness. they are things that we indulge almost without thinking about them. and and what i want to do is i want to make them explicit. i want to draw them out, i want people to talk about them, contemplate them and really decide whether or not they make sense. and so for me reclaiming the word "race-baiter" means getting people to do that. if i can bet get people to think, you know, one to have 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 n-word in public and have people clap, right? so that means if we can get people to think about this stuff in the open and consider it, then maybe they'll reject it.

so that is pretty much my presentation. if you guys have any questions or any comments, i'd be happy to entertain them right now. do we have some questions, comments? thank you. [applause] >> i think, um, you touched on this briefly a little bit, but i'm primarily print-focused, and one thing that i have a hard time understanding is this idea that some of our, um, commentators or television news reporters are sort of allowed, for lack of a better term, to have the sort of opinions and that sort of thing that maybe al sharpton has, that we know that he has. >> right mr. and i'm talking about people who sort of began their careers as journalists and continue to be journalists. can you comment a little bit on this kind of culture in cable news of having these opinions?

>> 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, too, because again, okay, i said 95% of what happens in media is about somebody making money or losing money. so when the fox news channel was being burst and sort of developed, the idea was how do you compete with cnn, right? cnn has bureaus all over the world. they're the place somebody turns to, they made their bones reporting from iraq during the first iraq war, how do you compete with that? well, the way you compete is 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 web sites, it's more and more likely that by the end of the day at 7:00 or 8:00 or 9:00 everybody already knows the news of the day. so you need somebody who can talk about the news in a really

compelling way, and that's what fox does really well. and now all of a sudden that's the template for getting people to watch cable news shows when the news is not that compelling. and you can't really talk about the news millions you express an opinion -- unless you express an opinion about the news. so that's why we are where we are. and some people will say that these people are not journalists, al sharpton's not a journalist, rachel maddow's not a journalist, lawrence o'donnell's not a journalist, but you know what? they're in a suit, they're sitting at a desk, and they've got that graphic over their right or left shoulder, and they're telling us what happened that day. so they look like journalists. and, frankly, they're hoping that you give them the same credibility that you give journalists. so it's journalism-ish, right?

journalism-ish, you can use that. feel free. >> thank you. thank you for your talk. and i have a bit of a long question. i'm going to go ahead with some preppation and ask -- trepidation and ask the big question that's billion -- that's been on my mind for a while. you talked about specific niches in part helps create these stereotypes, minority groups in our media and our culture. so do you think the solution is for journalism to return to a bit more broadcasting at larger audiences, something that could be considered more objective or accurate, whatever that means? or, um, do stereotypes perpetuate themselves in old media as well, and perhaps new media has the advantage of letting us see perspectives that would have been out of the mainstream or marginalized in old media? >> yeah. well, i would refer back to what

i said earlier which is 95% of what happens in media is somebody's making money or losing money, right? i don't want to sound like a broken record, but that's it. going back to the old media model's not going to happen because people can't make money doing that anymore. nbc is getting the kind of ratings that put be it below univision in the 18-49 viewers, right? it's in fifth place right now in a four-person race. it's in fifth place, right? so we're reaching the point where broadcasting is increasingly hard to do. so i don't think that's going to come back. but what i do think -- i mean, this whole book is premised on the idea that i'm not going to be able to convince these media outlets to stop doing what they're doing, because they're making money doing it. i don't know if you saw the project for excellence in journalism released its tate of the news -- its state of the news media report, and i don't know if you looked at the profits that cable news channels were making, but fox news made

$1.8 billion, and cnn made $1.1 billion. you know? they ain't going back. but what i'm trying to do is convince you guys, the audience, to change how you see what they're doing. and when you change how you see what they're doing and how you respond to what they're doing, then they have to change what they're doing, right? >> saying there's some sort of bottom-up -- >> totally. >> -- that we could change, the audience could change what is being marketed to us? >> totally. i mean, the great thing about the fragmentation of media is that it takes power from the gatekeepers, and it distributes it down. right? and the gatekeepers have less control, and you have much more control, right? i mean, we were just talking about this a second ago, right? when m.a.s.h., that finale aired, you better watch it on cbs was there was no other way to see it unless you were really

lucky, they reran it six months later. yes, young people, that happened. right? [laughter] you couldn't record it on vhs until 10 or 15 years after it was on television, right? now it's to the point where the if you didn't see the academy awards on sunday night, they had up on the internet lass than a -- less than a day later. so all of a sudden everybody in the audience has much more freedom and power over that presentation. they can take, you know, seth mcfarlane's joke about, you know, we saw your boobs and put it on youtube, and then everybody can put their little comments about why they think it's cool, sexist or whatever, and abc, you know, they can ask youtube to take down the video, but they don't really have a lot of control over that process, right in so i think my only hope is to convince you guys to make them change what they're doing. any more questions?

yeah. right there. >> your analysis of the re-election of barack obama in light of your topic, i mean, is it a signal that people are paying more attention to social median that to the cable outlets? >> no, unfortunately. >> msnbc -- [inaudible] >> no, unfortunately. i actually think it'll be interesting to see what happens if 2014, and we'll see whether we saw landmark change in the electorate or whether we have two electorates. ezra klein talked about this, actually, on msnbc, and i thought it was an interesting idea. when we have a presidential election, especially involving barack obama, right? more young people come out, more people of color come out, and can they vote for the democrats. one of the reasons why a lot of the predictions for the election were off is that people assumed that those groups would not come out for the democrats in the same numbers that they did in

2008, and what happened is they came out even more, right? so they did better with women, they had the young people that they had four years ago, they had hispanics, they had black people, and then all of a sudden all of the predictions were off because everybody showed up the same way they did four years ago, and some of them showed up even more. now, the question is when we have an off-year election where barack obama is not on the ballot to, will those same people show up to vote? if they don't, then the people who in 2010 elected the house of representatives that we have now will be the people who are voting, and they'll be older, they'll be whiter, right? so we'll see. you know, i think 2014's going to tell us a lot. we may have a country where we have two different electorates, and, you know, if you're running in a presidential election, you're facing a much more diverse and a much younger electorate than you would face in an off-year election when people, frankly, don't pay attention. >> i think you address this in

your book, but with i was wondering huh this larger -- how this larger media discourse about the changing demographics of america about what will happen, you know, when -- [inaudible] to become a minority. there's been so much coverage about the hispanic population becoming the new majority. >> right. >> i wonder how are those discussions taking place in the media, how do you think sort of projecting into the future it might complicate our discussions of race? >> yeah, i think it's interesting. when i gave my talk at a class earlier today, i had a student from costa rica come up to me, and he and i talked about how hispanics and latinos are the most underrepresented minority right now. i just did a story where i looked at the percentages of characters in scripted television and assigned them by

race, so, you know, what percentage are white, what percentage are nonwhite hispanic, what percent are asian and black. husband panics are 16 -- hispanics are 16% of the population, there's no other group that's underrepresented to that level. so i think we're, what we're going to hit is a time when there's no ethnic group that is a majority in the u.s. once his pan you cans grow much -- hispanics grow enough, we'll reach a point where no one really has a majority. but that doesn't speak to who has power. and white males will still control corporate power in this country. they'll still run the movie studios, they'll still run the it's, they'll still run the radio, they'll still run the newspaper industry and the magazine industry, right? so what white males think is important will still have more weight because they'll still control a lot of those institutions. and, in fact, we saw that in

south africa where we had, what, 23, 25 million black people and a much smaller number of white south africans, but because they controlled the economy and they controlled all the important industry, they controlled the country. i feel like oprah p. >> yes. [laughter] >> and only people of a certain age will get that joke. >> i'm interested in how you view jon stewart and stephen colbert as a media critic. >> yeah. >> we have a lot of discussion in classes here about how he claims he's a comedian -- >> right. >> -- but there are people, and we've even had polls that are shown who think otherwise. >> right, right. yeah. yeah. that's -- yeah, that's his standard response. i'm just a comedian, i'm just a court jesser. but -- jester.

but then you have people who get their news from the daily show. i think they they are the brillt media critics working in media today. they have an unerring ability to find the weak spots of media. that bit that stewart did about how cable channels will say we'll leave it there. oh, we've got to leave it there. you're a 24-hour news channel, what do you mean you've got to leave it there? just come back and keep talking about it. no, we've got to leave it there. so i really love the way they dissect media. one of the things i noticed about the daily show, though, is that i really think leading up to the last election and after the last election they have been have become more partisan, if you can believe it or not. i think at one point jon stewart seemed to feel an obligation to make sure that he was taking shots at the other guys, at the democrats. and then at some point it felt

like things changed on the show. and i'm a regular viewer of the show. i watch it almost every night when it's in new episodes. and i don't know, you know, we hear now that he's going to be off directing movie during the summer and that he's going to take a hiatus from the show, and is john oliver's going to host it for a while. so maybe it's just a sign that he is a little tired and wants to try some other things. i used to defend the daily show who said it was just an attack for the democrats. and even though he has a set of values where you can tell he believes in the democratic message more, he still gives everybody a hard time equally, you know? when the democrats do something dumb, he'll talk about that too. but i felt like that changed a bit. and i noticed the last interview he did, i even wrote about in the newspaper, he did an interview with barack obama right before the election, and it was, essentially, a softball interview. he didn't challenge him very much. and then i went back and watched

the interview with barack obama before the 2008 election -- i think it was before the 2010 elections when he was president, that's what it was -- and he was on him, you know? he was basically the disappointed liberal challenging barack obama to say how come you didn't live up to these proms that you made us? and the difference to me was surprising. i felt like this is a guy who does not want the president to lose the this election. that's what i was seeing last year. and i felt like, you know, that was the problem. and the other thing with colbert and the daily show is they don't have to show the other side, right? they don't have to be fair. and that's what makes journalism boring sometimes or not as hard-hitting as you want. that whole, oh, we've got to be fair, you know? and that, i think, is always going to put us one step behind the satirists because they can

just say whatever they want and make it look like they're being fair be, but we have to actually be fair. is -- oh, yeah. >> sorry. i just wanted to ask how you think reality television shows fit into some of if media that -- some of the media that you're talking about and race baiting. >> oh, thank you so much. i didn't want even give you money for that plug. there is a chapter about reality television. yeah. well, obviously, reality television, i think, is a way for tv producers to present some really awful stereotypes and pretend that they are showing real life. the first thing you should understand about any kind of television is that you do not see a second on a professional television show that you are not meant to see. yes, reality shows too. yes, reality shows too. some of them are as scripted as any entertainment product. right? so when you see something on a reality show, you're meant to see it, and you're meant to see

it the way you're seeing it. so i think a lot of times these reality shows like i just did a big column. if they did a show like myrtle man nor but they set it in the hood in the projects and they were showing a guy with ten children, a black man with ten children, it would get shut down in a minute. but, you know, white folks don't react that way when their own stereotypes are fueled to show tv shows that depict them. duck dynasty and here comes honey boo-boo, oh, my god. i can't believe whoever runs the child abuse agency where they live should lose their job, because i would be on their front doorstep every day just documenting what's going on. okay, they made her go on good morning america at six a.m.

okay, they fed her a mountain dew. just keep a list, and once it gets to a certain point just shut her down. take her into custody, and it's over, you know? but to be serious, i really do think that these reality shows, like the producers are able to say we're just showing real people, right? we're just showing real people. we're not sattyizing the south by having somebody with thick accepts and then putting subtitles like they're speaking some other language, come on. [laughter] it's a southern accent, you know? you touched a nerve, i guess. sorry. yeah. >> in terms of the black stereotypes and white stereotypes that they portray in reality tv shows, what do you think the difference is between the sticking power of white stereotypes and the sticking power of black stereotypes is in today's media? >> um, i think what happens is that a lot of times white people don't think they have a racial

culture, you know? so they don't, there isn't a response to the stereotypes in the same way that there's a response to stereotypes about brach people and people of color -- black people and people of color. because what i always say is the best way to subjugate a people is to make them subjugate themselves. make them keep themselves in line. and i may get in trouble for saying this, but i feel like women in america are the best example of that. over the years we have taught women to limit their own thinking about what they can achieve with or without a man. and so we don't have to pay women less because they'll do it themselves. right? and for people of color, that's happened for many, many years. we've had many, many years of awful, limiting stereotypes that taught everybody, including other people of color, that their options were limited.

and now at least we recognize that that's a mechanism of presentation, and we've got to fight it. but i think white people don't see it that way yet, you know? so we can have this litany of stereotypes to about working cls white people that are circulating in media, and duck dynasty gets these huge ratings. you can look at some of the people on the show, and they're like winking at the camera, yeah, yeah, you know? i wouldn't really be dressed like this, but, hey, they're paying me $800,000, you know? at some point i think people will get tired of it, and enough people will talk about what's happening that it'll get exposed. right now i just think we're used to seeing some thicks in racial terms and other things not in racial terms, and i think that explains the difference in how people are reacting. but stereotypes are enduring, you know? they're really hard to step away from. so as much as we know about how

stereotyping and prejudice works, we still see a lot involving people of color too. and we see a lot of black folks consuming those messages, watching those shows and enjoying those shows even though, um, some of the images in them are really damaging. yeah, we've got somebody here. and let me know when i've run out of time, because i'll talk all day, man. i. >> most of the discussion is focused on tv, but some of the same forces behind these channels are now venturing into print and, well, that area of journalism. what do you think about the future with that? >> yeah, i don't know. you know, i think print's challenges are much different. prohibit's challenge -- print's challenges are figuring out how to make money with an outdated

and constantly disintegrating economic system, you know, money-making system. so i don't know that i see -- the problems that i see with stereotyping in print are problems that i've always seen, you know? we cover race like an episodic event rather than covering it regularly. so if you watch, if you watch the nightly news or if you pick up a newspaper, you're always going to see a report on the stock market, you're always going to hear about what congress was up to, you're always going to hear about what the president did. but when we do stories about race, it's a big 12-part story that we spent two years working on, and here it is, for a week we're going to talk about race, and then we don't talk about it for another month or two years, right? and we do that with poverty too. and so i think some of the problems with stereotyping in print, you know, is the same thing. now, we do see online, you know, these outlets transferring, you

know, fox news' approach is now being mirrored on breitbart.com and the drudge report and newsbusters.org, and, you know, msnbc's sort of answer to that is also, you know, we see that on the huffington post, or we see that, you know, on media matters, you know? so there -- so it is a migrating online as well. but i think print's problem is it feels like old news. it's like asking people when the next buggy whip is coming out, you know? it's like sad to say, they're not making a lot of them anymore. >> last question. >> okay. last question. >> yeah. >> so, eric, i wanted to ask you about, you know, this whole genre of allowing citizens to comment, right, on youtube videos or news stories and so on. and there's also -- [inaudible] who's a professor at university of oklahoma, and what i wondered what you thought.

one of the arguments she has made is the sort of theater of citizen democracy is allowing people to say incredibly racist things. >> oh, sure. >> in online spaces -- >> sure. >> and so, you know, the people who could not respond to m. of a.s.h., maybe some of them shouldn't have, you know what i mean? >> sure, sure. >> i wonder what you thought about, you know, what this is doing for race relations and racism, you know, in the sphere of, you know -- >> right. >> -- the supposed opening up, right? >> sure, sure. >> of media space. >> what i think is you can't just focus on commenting, right? because commenting is just one part of the online experience. and commenting, you can comment without attaching your identity to it. so people say a lot of ugly, awful stuff because they want to be provocative or because they know nobody will hold them accountable for it, or they just like hurting people or whatever, right? and they can do it because they're anonymous. but what social media and online

also allows is that people can find each other who normally would never find each other, right? so if you are a biracial, one-armed soccer enthusiast living in indianapolis, you can find other one-armed biracial soccer enthusiasts all over the world. and there may only be 50 of you, but you could all get together on that facebook page be, and all of a sudden you're united. and you know there's a bunch of other people out there who are just like you, and you also can trade ideas about your identity in the world or, you know, how people stereotype one-armed biracial soccer enthusiasts, you know? you can bear act, you know -- interact, you know? it mobilizes people, right? so i was talking to clay shirky for the book, and those who don't know him, he's a professor at nyu who is just really ahead of the curve in terms of the effect of online media on social

groups and, you know, how all this stuff works in terms of media and society and people. and one of the things he pointed out was we had this situation where "the hunger games" movie came out, and a lot of fans of the book suddenly realized that there were characters in that book who were black in the movie that they didn't know were black in the book. and so they started posting all this racist stuff on twitter like why'd they cast so and so as so and so, right? all of a sudden this wave of people descended, the whole wrath of the twitter sphere descended on these people to a point where a lot of these accounts are now deputt. people have walked away from them. so what happened was even though twitter allowed these people to make these comments, they also found out that there was this whole universe of twitter users who were not going to put up with that, and they made it plain very quickly, right? so that's thein and the yang of

where we are today with online media, and that's why i don't believe in shutting down comment sections even though they can be problematic, even though they're hard to keep control of, people kind of go nuts on them, it's just another part of this open discussion that we're having integrating social media and the freedom that social media brings, and i think it's important for journalism organizations especially to say we're going to be open minded to that, and we're going to be as ip collusive in that -- inclusive in that space as we possibly can. so -- all right. thank you very much. i think that's the end. if you want to talk to me later, just come on down. [applause] and so i guess we're going to be signing books over here, right? so if you want to purchase a book and have me sign it, i would be happy to do that, and then you could find out more. >> for more information visit the author's web site, ericdeggans.com. >> here are some of the latest

headlines surrounding the publishing industry this week. penguin books has ableed to a $75 million settlement in an anti-trust e-book pricing suit. last year the department of justice proceeded with lawsuits against apple and five major publishers for engaging in what they believe to be price fixing between the companies. mcmillan and harpercollins have agreed to a $20 million settlement, hatchet has agreed to pay 32 million, and simon & schuster has agreed to pay 18 million. apple is still fighting the lawsuit. stephen king has announced he has no plans to make his new book 'joyland" available in electronic format. the author attributes this recent decision to his love of paperbacks as a child. "the new york times" has made some changes to its book review section. the e-book best sellers list will no longer appear in the printed version of the review, and a new column devoted to

author readings and panels titled "open book" has replaced the "up front" column that previously appeared in the section. the changes to the section were made by pamela paul who took over as editor of the book review earlier this year. stay up-to-date on breaking news about authors, books and publishing by liking us on facebook at facebook.com/booktv or follow us on twitter @booktv. you can also visit our web site, booktv.org, and click on "news about books." >> what are you reading this summer? booktv wants to know. ♪ ♪

♪ ♪ >> send us an e-mail at booktv@c-span.org. >> there tends to be a denigration of the u.s. military by some historians that whenever one german battalion fought an american battalion or one regiment fought an american regiment, that the germans tended to be tactically superior, that mano a mano they

were the better pill tear. i think this is -- military. i think this is just nonsense, because it's pointless. global war is a clash of systems. it's which system can produce the wherewithal to project power in the atlantic, the pacific, the indian ocean, southeast asia which system can produce the civilian leadership to create the transportation systems, the civilian leadership that's able to produce 96,000 airplanes in 1944. ..