Demonizing the inner city

From Stephen Macek, via an e-list:

Check out this new video on media representations of poverty and the inner city. A low-resolution, streaming version is available free online via Google Video.

Labor Beat #515: Demonizing the Inner City - Ideology and the Urban Poor

In this video presentation, I analyze the hysteria over the central city and the urban poor that permeated American politics and popular culture in the 1980s and 90s. I dissect the way mainstream politicians (Rudolph Giuliani, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, George Bush Sr.) , conservative intellectuals and the corporate media conspired to demonize inner city neighborhoods and their residents.

In particular, I discuss the way that TV news reproduced and validated the right's stigmatizing, victim blaming images of the urban poor. Ultimately, I critique the reactionary political interests served by this divisive discourse on urban pathology and points to what activists can do to counter its destructive influence.
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Two weekends ago I was watching the tv news which was all about murders in Prince George's County and Washington, DC. Granted every murder is a tragedy. But what happens in PG and DC is not only people getting murdered. You wouldn't get that from just watching tv news programs.

To understand media, we all need to read Making Local News by Phyllis Kaniss and The Whole World Is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of the New Left, With a New Preface by Todd Gitlin

Dealing with this broad issue via local television production is one of many things on my list of things to do.

NY1 News, the 24 hour cable news channel in NYC, is a lot different.

So is CITY-TV in Toronto. See "Don't Change that Channel ... Change the Rules!" and "Citytv" both from Fast Company for more. (And I'd kill to be able to do this with a streetside tv studio at Connecticut Avenue and K Street NW, where the Citibank is located.)