Just about every part of the Don Imus story troubles me. But I have to wonder if media haven't become complicit in spreading the hateful stereotypes that Imus uttered so publicly.
For days on end, his racist language about the Rutgers women's basketball team have been quoted over and over in wire service stories as well as radio and television reports.
It's not as if the repetition takes the sting out of them; in fact, just the opposite is true: the racial rant just gets ground deeper into our consciousness.
In the piece by Maki Becker and Emma Sapong in today's News, the quote had a place. How else would readers know what the African-American women they interviewed were responding to?
But in most other cases all this long week, the constant use of the Imus quote just got to be ridiculous.
Today finally, cooler heads prevailed in some newsrooms. In an Associated Press story, this wording was used: "Imus was fired from his CBS radio program Thursday amid furor about racially charged (my emphasis) comments." Similar wording was used in National Public Radio reports Friday.
What took so long? Could it be reporters and editors couldn't resist the shock value of Imus' words? Could it be no one took the time to think about the effect those words might have on young readers, women, African-Americans?
I thought the media learned something from that other highly publicized racial rant - the Michael Richards debacle. Apparently not. Hopefully, we did this time.
