Making you hate your brother is big business.
Odds are that if you picked up a newspaper over the weekend in Mississippi or scrolled through social media, you came across articles aimed at painting America, the Magnolia State, and its Republican leaders in as bad of a light as possible.
But hey, what’s new these days? It’s what the wannabe coastal media elites do, even in Mississippi newsrooms.
This weekend you saw everything from questioning Speaker Philip Gunn’s faith in an attempt at justifying Medicaid expansion to couching a story on campaign finance in a way that made politicians look greedy and guilty to the mainstream media being damned and determined to make you believe Mississippi and America are systemically and institutionally racist.
There was even a story in the Washington Post on Mississippi’s Jim Crow past aimed at defending President Joe Biden’s talking points on Georgia’s election law. It was proudly shared by local Democrats and left-leaning politicos to take aim at Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves.
It’s as if these “journalists” and media conglomerates are just coordinated extensions of Democrat party policy war rooms.
Fact check: They essentially are.
Now, I’ll pretty freely admit that conservatives are bad at media and don’t really value it. Mississippi is no exception. Interestingly, conservatives put their belief money into “policy think tanks” here. There are at least four center-right leaning policy think tanks in Mississippi. All non profits with websites, development executives, CEOs and legislative outreach staffs. Liberal activists, however, dump their belief money into media outlets in Mississippi and stuff gobs of money into messaging… and they are better at it than conservatives. Hands down.
These media entities, by and large, collectively receive millions of dollars annually from liberal and leftist donors who support, promote, and fund such narratives, passing them off as news when, in fact, these articles are little more than politically charged press releases. They weaponize headlines, selectively choose facts, and poorly contextualize data to appeal to readers’ outrage and offense reflexes instead of educating and edifying readers which would allow the reader to see both sides of the story and decide for themselves. In fact, in today’s media elitist view, presenting both sides is vilified while cultivating half-baked liberal activism is celebrated.
Paradoxically, the virtue-signaling, activist journalists most often sewing most of the seeds of racial discord, at least in this market, are on the whole not people of color. Their primary goal seems to be selling white readers, and black readers if they can get them, on the distorted notion that people of color in Mississippi have no agency or control in their lives. They are content to sell the myth that people with darker skin tones in Mississippi and America are permanently victimized.
Don’t believe me? Here are the most recent examples from over the weekend.
- Mississippi Today: Gov. Reeves says there is no systemic racism in the justice system. The numbers say otherwise.
- Mississippi Free Press: Systemic Racism Built Mississippi. Gov. Reeves Says It Doesn’t Exist.
- Washington Post: The ‘Mississippi Plan’ to keep Blacks from voting in 1890: ‘We came here to exclude the Negro’
A young black woman named Savannah Edwards summed this up nicely in a now viral video making its rounds on social media.
Edwards took issue with white actress Alyssa Milano’s rant on racism in policing, telling the former child star, “People like you find power in fear so you keep it front-page news.” Edwards added, “You are everything you preach against. You’re not helping. You’re making things worse. You’re causing more division.”
Boom! pic.twitter.com/y2BnuoEMcI
— Art TakingBack 🇺🇸 (@ArtValley818_) May 1, 2021
Edwards’ said in full:
“Imagine being a black man and being told by some white lady with a microphone that you and the criminal on TV are one and the same because you look alike. Imagine being told by society that white people can be all that they can be but you as a black man, the content of your character is completely irrelevant. You are the color of your skin and that is all that you will ever be. Imagine being told you can’t figure out how to vote because of the color of your skin. Socio-economics affects everyone but apparently you’re not as smart as the poorest white person.
“Lady, I don’t want to hate you. I’m a 90’s kid. I grew up with you, so I know you’re very talented. I understand your heart is in the right place, but you are everything you preach against. You’re not helping. You’re making things worse. You’re causing more division. You’re causing more fear. Statistically speaking, I am more likely to be shot and killed by my black elderly neighbor across the street than a cop who patrolled my neighborhood. … Statistically speaking, homicide by cop is very rare, but people like you find power in fear so you keep it front-page news. You don’t have to be a white supremacist. You can be better.”
Mississippi and America should demand better from its media establishment. Readers should reject this virtue signaling aimed solely at clicks and donations.
This nation is unarguably better than it was 10 years ago, 50 years ago, and certainly 100 years ago for people of all skin tones. The content of one’s character is now considered more important than appearance. Last time I checked that was the goal all along, right? Yet, that is a fact that the media is desperate to obfuscate.
Our nation, as a whole, has advanced the truth that all life has meaning and value more than any other in the history of the world. America, like each of us individually, has grown up from its infancy, seen the error of its ways, and has worked to set right what was once wrong at a far greater pace than any nation before it.
These United States are not perfect, just as no man and woman are perfect, but this land provides the greatest opportunity for achievement through freedom and liberty for people of all races and creeds, which is why millions have risked and continue to risk their fortunes and lives to come here.
Our state and this nation have taken action repeatedly through legislation and policy to bring the ideal of a “more perfect union” to fruition. It has not been easy, but we are closer to that dream now than ever before. Continually dredging up the past in a blatant attempt at mischaracterizing people and policies of today clouds not only the present, but the future, perpetuating a cycle of permanent victimization whereby healing can never occur and true progress can never be enjoyed.
Our communities are not as divided racially or politically as these traffickers of hate would have you believe. That is a fact.
The vast majority of people of every race, color and creed in this state value their family, their faith and this nation’s laws – and they get along with each other. That is also a fact.
It’s time to cease lending an ear and your hard-earned money to these leftist mainstream media hatemongers that peddle such divisive rhetoric for their own personal and financial gain. Doing so will turn down the temperature in the public discourse in Mississippi and America, improve personal relationships in our daily lives, and restore a sense of unity and respect within our political discourse we have not seen since the rise of the 24-hour news cycle and Big Tech’s social media explosion.
Frank Corder
