Above Photo: From PopularResistance.org.
The viral video“#ConcernedStudent1950 vs. the media” shows a group of students at the University of Missouri physically blocking a journalist from taking pictures in a public space.
Dave Zirin, sports editor at The Nation Magazine, joins Acronym TV host Dennis Trainor Jr for a conversation about the reasons that the activist community in general and black community specifically views the media with suspicion, hostility, or disdain.
As Terrell Jermaine Starr writes in the Washington Post:
“When they blocked journalist Tim Tai from photographing the encampment, reporters complained that media were denied access to a public space.
Certainly, Tai – like any journalist – had a legal right to enter the space, given that it was in a public area. But that shouldn’t be the end of this story. We in the media have something important to learn from this unfortunate exchange. The protesters had a legitimate gripe: The black community distrusts the news media because it has failed to cover black pain fairly.”
“We have all seen the way the right wing in recent years posed as regular media with their cameras and said things that blatantly weren’t true to take down Acorn, to take down Planned Parenthood and so that trust has been abused,” says David Zirin, sports editor at The Nation in this interview with Acronym TV host Dennis Trainor, Jr. “and so people do have the right of self defense and their own safety before the media has the right to get their page views.”