Video coming soon from FAIR's Election ’08: Race, Gender and the Media event!

Thanks to everybody who came out to FAIR panel discussion and debate watching party that packed NYC's Brecht Forum on October 2nd!

The evening kicked off with a panel discussion on race, gender and the media in the 2008 election. In an election year that has seen the first black candidate nominated for president by a major party and the first Republican woman nominated for vice president--while two women of color have teamed up on the Green Party ticket--issues of race and gender have been at the forefront during this campaign season, not least in media coverage. But how well has the media served the public in this historic election? What issues are being ignored, even as the press heralds the race as evidence of shattered glass ceilings and the “end of black politics”? Three speakers took up this question.

Glen Ford, the executive editor of the Black Agenda Report, discussed the role of the media in creating Obama's corporate friendly 'post-racial' image, as well as the bizarre spectacle of the media's insistence that he publicly denounce his former pastor Jeremiah Wright. He also offered a critical assessment of what he argued had been a scarcity of critical discussion of Obama's candidacy on black radio--which as listeners of FAIR's radio show CounterSpin know, has been particularly hard hit by recent waves of media consolidation, to a point that, as Ford pointed out, it has been all but stripped of news programming.

Longtime organizer and writer Mab Segrest, a professor of Gender and Women’s Studies at Connecticut College, looked a the way issues of gender and race in this election intersect with issues of class--a reality that is becoming all the more apparent with the economic crisis.

Moderator Laura Flanders, the host of GritTV and RadioNation, and former host of FAIR's radio show CounterSpin, brought in her own critical questions about the media marketing of Sarah Palin's image to women, and the media's treatment of Michelle Obama.

Video of the event will be posted soon on this page. Readers interested in FAIR's take on the Sarah Palin/Joe Biden vice-presidential debate should check out FAIR's blog at www.fair.org/blog.

More about our featured guest panelists:

Laura Flanders is the host of GRITtv.org and RadioNation, and a former producer and host of FAIR’s radio show CounterSpin. She is the author of Blue Grit: True Democrats Take Back Politics From the Politicians (Penguin Books, 2007), Bushwomen: Tales of a Cynical Species (Verso, 2004) and Real Majority, Media Minority: The Cost of Sidelining Women in Reporting (Common Courage Press, 1997) She has written on Hillary Clinton in The Contenders (Seven Stories Press, 2007) and edited The W Effect: Sexual Politics in the Age of Bush in 2004 for the Feminist Press. Her writing appears in The Nation, Alternet, Ms. Magazine and elsewhere, and her op-ed pieces have appeared in papers including The San Francisco Chronicle.

Glen Ford is the executive editor of the Black Agenda Report. He co-launched, produced and hosted America’s Black Forum, the first nationally syndicated black news interview program on commercial television. He also launched Rap It Up, the first nationally syndicated Hip Hop music show, broadcast on 65 radio stations. He was national political columnist for Encore American & Worldwide News magazine; founded The Black Commentator and Africana Policies magazines; authored The Big Lie: An Analysis of U.S. Media Coverage of the Grenada Invasion (IOJ, 1985); and served as reporter and editor for three newspapers. Ford was a founding member of the Washington chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ); executive board member of the National Alliance of Third World Journalists (NATWJ); media specialist for the National Minority Purchasing Council; and has spoken at scores of colleges and universities.

Mab Segrest helped to found North Carolinians Against Racist and Religious Violence and worked in that organization from 1983 to 1990 to rally citizens of the state against virulent neo-Nazi and Ku Klux Klan activity and an epidemic in hate violence. Segrest’s 1995 book, Memoir of a Race Traitor, narrates this experience. It was named an Outstanding Book on Human Rights in North America and was Editor’s Choice for the Lambda Literary Awards. Segrest worked for the World Council of Churches, the Geneva-based Protestant ecumenical organization that represents over 300 million people worldwide, as Coordinator of the US Contact Group of the WCC’s Urban-Rural Mission from 1992 to 2000.

Cosponsored by the Brecht Forum and Manhattan Neighborhood Network

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