Ishmael Reed's contextualization (CounterPunch, 6/29/09) of the epic demonization of Michael Jackson within historical U.S. media racism also takes a swipe at CNN's Black in America program, "an exercise meant to boost ratings by making whites feel good by making blacks look bad, the marketing strategy of the mass media since the 1830s":

In preparing for a sequel to the first Black in America, which boosted the networks ratings (the O. J. trial saved CNN!), CNN rolled out the usual stereotypes about black Americans. Unmarried black mothers were exhibited, without mentioning that births to unmarried black women have plunged since 1976 more than that of any other ethnic group. Then we got some footage that implied that blacks as a group were homophobes even though Charles Blow, a statistician for the New York Times, recently published a chart showing that gays have the least to fear from blacks. Recently, the media perpetrated a hoax that blacks were responsible for the passage of Proposition 8, the California proposition that banned gay marriage. An academic study refuted this claim, but that didn't deter the New York Times from hiring Benjamin Schwarz to explain black homophobia. Schwarz is the writer who wrote in the Los Angeles Times that blacks who were victims of lynchings in the south were probably guilty.

In the last Black in America, Soledad O'Brien, CNN's designated tough love agent against the brothers and sisters, scolded a black man for not attending his daughter's birthday party. The aim of this scene was meant to humiliate black men as neglectful fathers. Ms. O'Brien won’t be permitted by her employees to mention that 75 percent of white children will live at one time or another in a single-parent household and that the governor of South Carolina's not showing up for Father's Day isn't just a lone aberration in "White America."

On that note, Reed wonders, "How would CNN promote a White in America?" Would they feature "the thousands of meth addicts who have abandoned their children? The California rural and suburban white women who do more dope than Latino and black youth?" And if not, "Why not? Can’t get State Farm, Ford and McDonald's to sponsor such a program? All of these companies are sponsoring Black in America"--"the aim of which," Reed reminds us, "is to cast collective blame on blacks for the country's social problems. For ratings."

The New York Times' Charles Blow writes on the op-ed page ("Heaven for the Godless?," 12/27/08): "The Bible makes it clear that heaven is a velvet-roped V.I.P. area reserved for Christians. Jesus said so: 'I am the way, the truth and the life: No man cometh unto the Father, but by me.'”

He then expresses puzzlement that many Christians nevertheless avow that Jews, Muslims, Hindus and even atheists can get into heaven.

Maybe these Christians know their Bibles better than Blow does: In his most explicit discussion of Judgment Day (Matthew 25:31-46), the Jesus of the Gospels describes the Son of Man saying on his return:

Come, you who are blessed of my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.

For I was hungry, and you gave me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited me in; naked, and you clothed me; I was sick, and you visited me; I was in prison, and you came to me.

...Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of mine, even the least of them, you did it to me.

Note the lack of any reference to believing in Jesus. Blow suggests that "many Christians apparently view their didactic text as flexible." If by "flexible" he means open to varying interpretations, that's obviously true.  But Blow seems to think that a "literal" interpretation of the Bible requires one to believe that Jesus was not speaking literally when he said that helping other people alone could get you into heaven.