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."

Eugene Hernandez of indieWIRE.com reports (5/11/09) that NPR censored its own review of the Outrage documentary for "nam[ing] politicians believed to be closeted homosexuals in the film, specifically those whose public voting record counters the civil rights of gay and lesbian Americans." NPR cited its privacy policy as reason, but to Hernandez "it seems to support charges by [director Kirby] Dick, made in the film, that the mainstream media has a history of handling stories of politicians same-sex orientations with kid gloves":

"It's not about outing," [Outrage distributor Eamonn] Bowles noted today, reiterating a point being made continuously by filmmaker Kirby Dick (see related indieWIRE interview), "It's about hypocrisy, people are saying one thing and doing another."

"The entire point of Outrage is that there is an 'overriding public need to know' about the kinds of men profiled in Outrage,'" film critic Nathan Lee told indieWIRE on Sunday. "Let's say [Florida Gov.] Charlie Crist had a record of voting for vigorous anti-immigration policies, and then it was rumored that he employed illegal immigrants. The press would have absolutely no qualms investigating him to the hilt in the public interest of exposing hypocrisy. Why should it be any different in the case of possibly gay public figures who vote against the civil rights of gay people, or, in the case of HIV/AIDS funding, their very life and death?"

Bowles points out to indieWIRE "that the gay press has been covering these stories for years, but the mainstream media has refused. He added that, while the movie has generated a lot of attention from the press, some mainstream outlets, including two national networks, have declined to cover the allegations in the film."