In the July 26, 2009 issue of the New York Times, an article about the 44 arrested NJ officials was published, where the main point of the article was to show how engrained corruption is into the system. The article points out that over the last decade, over 150 NJ officials have been arrested on corruption charges. This time it was three mayors and even one rabbi who were arrested.
The link to the NY Times article: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/27/nyregion/27jersey.html?_r=1&hp
An article published on the same topic in the ethnic Russian newspaper called "Novoye Russkoye Slovo" (The New Russian Word) also explains the facts in a fashion similar to the New York Times. When covering Tri-State Area news, this newspaper offers a very similar slant to the New York Times, as this is the same newspaper that I brought to class which translates New York Times articles into Russian.
The link to the article from the Russian newspaper:
http://www.nrs.com/news/front/usa/240709_203808_88373.html
I noticed two major differences in how the article was portrayed in the Russian news as opposed to the New York Times. First, this article made the front page of the Russian newspaper, while this was not the case with the New York Times. The reason for this, as far as I understand, is that many readers of the Russian newspaper come from the former Soviet Union which, as far as my parents told me, was horribly engrained with corruption. It is the opinion of many Russian people, like my parents, that while corruption does exist in the US (as pointed out in two articles), it is more possible to prosecute because the American criminal justice system is supposed to be less biased and less nepotistic than the Soviet one. Also, the Russian community generally tends to have a distasteful outlook on politicians who are caught pocketing their tax dollars, and for this reason sees political corruption as a very serious crime that is worthy of outrage and a front page article.
The other major difference that I noticed was that in the Russian article, it was mentioned very specifically that most of the public officials that were arrested for corruption were of Syrian-Jewish decent. While the New York Times does try to be as ethnically neutral as possible (especially when the article pertains to a legal case), the Russian ethnic press is very preoccupied with ethnicity. This is perhaps because in the Soviet Union, one's ethnicity was listed in the one's passport - making it a lot easier to ethnically differentiate people. I guess this is what is the most responsible for such an ethnically-differentiated outlook on society by many Soviet expatriots.
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You made some excellent observations. It is quite interesting that The New York Times would not put a story that hits so close to home on the front page. Also, I believe another reason The New York Times was more neutral in regards to the arrested officials' ethnicities was that The New York Times was trying its best to be as "P.C." as possible. Though a "liberal" newspaper, I'm sure it still feels an obligation to abide by the American codes of ethic, or, in other terms, political correctness.
ReplyDeleteMany media studies have looked at reporting on crime and when ethnicity is and is not specified in relationship to stereotypes about criminals and who commits crimes.
ReplyDeleteLooking at this case, do you think there is any value to or effect on society/culture to reporting the ethnicity of criminals? Another way to think about it is what would happen if reporters stopped reporting ethnicity of criminals all together?
Reporting the ethnicities of criminals emphasizes that aspect of their identities to the consumers of the news. As there are unfortunately many people (many of whom are prominent public figures) who play the race card where they directly correlate a particular race or ethnicity to criminality, such reporting may have indirect negative consequences on the ethnic community at large. Many episodes of ethnic violence have been and are still constantly being provoked by such reporting in many places around the world.
ReplyDeleteI feel that the most ethical journalistic coverage of a crime should only contain three things: the name of the criminal, the nature of the crime with the possible penalties, and the names and ages of the victims where appropriate. I feel that the ethnicity, religious beliefs, and even age (if an adult) of the criminal should be excluded from the report. These things are not relevant to most criminal proceedings (the factor of age in a statutory rape case being an exception), so excluding these details will not only help keep the jury (some of whom will have certain racial prejudices) more objective, but will also emphasize to the consumer that the report is first and foremost about a human being that broke the law and/or caused the suffering of others and that this human being, upon conviction in a court of law, will be punished the same exact way as any other human being would be if they were to do the same. Given the way things are today and the emphasis our society places on race and ethnicity, such objectivity is direly needed to ensure that everyone is treated equally in the eyes of the law.
Ethnicity should be no more than a cultural identity that one uses to identify or effectively socialize with a particular group, should one so choose. Ethnicity should certainly not serve as an excuse to cause tensions and divide people!
By the way, race and ethnicity have no scientific basis and were even disproved by science. Yes, disproved! A study was done on the Mitochondrial DNA of several people who came from all 6 inhabited continents of the world. Mitochondrial DNA is only passed on through one's mother and males are incapable of passing it on. One has the exact same Mitochondrial DNA as their mother. Logically, it can be concluded that if two people have the same Mitochondrial DNA, they must share a common female ancestor. Amazingly, it was found that someone from Africa with a very dark complexion can have the same exact Mitochondrial DNA as a person from Scandinavia who has blond hair and blue eyes and that someone from China can have the same exact Mitochondrial DNA as someone from Peru. How can two people with a common female ancestor be of different races? They can't because that makes them very distant relatives! Perhaps we're all more alike than we like to think.
Race and ethnicity were historically used as 'legitimate' justifications to differentiate and separate us, as well as to perpetrate many wars and even genocide. Now that science has effectively proven that race and ethnicity are just made-up concepts that don't really exist, can't we just do away with them?
Before we are whatever ethnicity we were told we were, we are all first and foremost human beings!