Is the British media explaining the American crisis?

Thomas Sowell, for many years one of America’s leading black intellectuals, once wrote, “The reason so many people misunderstand so many issues is not that these issues are so complex, but that people do not want a factual or analytical explanation that leaves them emotionally unsatisfied.”

Factual or analytical explanations of the riots in America have been in short supply on British TV news over the past days. How many black people in America have been killed by the police compared with the number of black people killed by other African Americans? Why are young black men so much more likely to be killed by the police than black men in their 40s and older? Why are so many of the rioters and demonstrators we see on TV every night young white people, mostly in their 20s? Did the Obama years improve the figures for police violence against young black men, and if so, by how much? Has the situation of black people improved at all, for example, are there more or fewer black police chiefs, judges, mayors, governors or Congressmen and women than there were twenty years ago?

These are all pretty obvious questions. But I have not yet heard any of them raised by TV reporters or interviewers. This can partly be explained by two factors. First, the choice of interviewees on news programmes and, second, the shared agenda of the news programmes themselves.

This agenda can be summed up briefly. Racism is endemic in America. There is a clear line from slavery, Jim Crow and lynchings in the South to the killing of young Black men by white police today. The emphasis is on continuity, not change. Black lives matter when they are the victims of white policemen (though we don’t hear so much about BAME policemen and women). Black victims of black violence don’t get discussed. Black storeowners whose businesses get looted, don’t matter either and so they don’t get interviewed.

This agenda is reinforced by the choice of interviewees who share these views. For example, on the BBC Ten O’Clock News on 2 June there was a three and a half minute interview with filmmaker, Spike Lee, who was promoting his new film. He was allowed to put forward his well-known views on race in America without any critical questioning at all.

Of course, there are some Republicans who tend to get interrupted and treated with a striking lack of courtesy. On BBC 2’s Newsnight on 1 June, two black women were interviewed: Ilhan Omar, a Democrat Representative for Minnesota, and Kathy Barnette a Republican congressional candidate for Pennsylvania. Both were articulate and polite. Omar was interviewed for nine minutes and forty seconds and was not interrupted once. She put forward the conventional agenda. Barnette took a different view, emphasising the crisis in law and order. She was interviewed for six minutes and forty seconds (three minutes less) and was interrupted seventeen times. The presenter (Emily Maitlis, for it was she) disagreed with her (“Hang on, hang on”) and sighed audibly to express her disagreement. None of the questions I raised at the beginning of this article were asked.

There is another group of people who might question the media’s agenda, academics and intellectuals who take a different view, such as Barry Latzer, emeritus professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York (quoted by Monica Porter in her recent piece for The Article), Michael Lind, author of a fascinating article on Tabletmag.com on recent social changes in the American city, Julius Krein, editor of American Affairs, professor Patrick Deneen from Notre Dame or Harvard law professor, Adrian Vermeule. Or from the UK, interesting writers on populism like Eric Kaufmann (author of Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration and the Future of White Majorities), Matthew Goodwin (co-author of National Populism: The Revolt Against Liberal Democracy) and John Gray. I have not seen/heard any of these or other dissenting voices interviewed.

Huw Edwards began the BBC 10 O’Clock News on 2 June by saying there had been “widespread criticisms of President Trump’s handling of the riots”.  Cue clips of and interviews with clergymen, demonstrators and Joe Biden who all vigorously criticised President Trump. The idea that America was deeply divided, between liberals and the Right, was not mentioned. All the clips were of young white and black demonstrators in big cities. Small-town and rural “Middle America” was invisible. I have not yet seen a single news report from these heartlands.

The media present a surprisingly homogenous view of the riots in America, their causes and who is to blame. They do not present a society that is deeply divided on all these issues. The effect is to iron out intelligent debate and to remove all complexity.