KSTP-TV, the Hubbard Broadcasting-owned ABC affiliate in Minneapolis, Minnesota, ran a racist smear piece against Minneapolis, Minnesota Mayor Betsy Hodges on one of their local newscasts earlier this week because she was filmed pointing at Navell Gordon, a black community activist affiliated with a group called Neighborhoods Organizing for Change, during a get-out-the-vote (GOTV) effort in Minneapolis for the this year’s November elections.
KSTP has been the subject of frequent criticism since they ran that racist piece, in fact, the Twitter hashtag #pointergate has been trending non-stop on Twitter since not long after KSTP aired and published the piece. KSTP deserves to be criticized over this, in my opinion. This smear attack against Hodges is clearly racist, since KSTP wouldn’t have aired such a piece if the person she was pointing at was a white person like me.
KSTP responded to the criticism over their racist piece by claiming that they aired and published the piece because the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) asked them to do so. Given that most police officers in this country are more interested in hunting down black people than actually protecting and serving their communities these days, it’s even worse that KSTP admitted to being a public relations shop for the police department of Minnesota’s largest city.
It’s bad enough that there are tons of right-wing Republican politicians who launch Willie Horton-style attacks against Democratic candidates for public office. It’s even worse that the corporate media is doing the Willie Horton-style attacks against Democratic elected officials themselves. These kind of pieces by the corporate media do nothing but stir up racial tensions in this country.
Betsy Hodges is not a gangbanger, and for KSTP to effectively claim that she is amounts to nothing more than a racist attack against her. It’s about damn time that the corporate media got called out on their race-baiting and right-wing bias in a big way!
The Progressive Midwesterner 