Would The Civil Rights Movement Be Possible In bu$h's Amerika?

[dbt]

Having been laid up with the flu for the past few days, I have been watching a lot of the History Channel--and, of course, it's February so Black History programs are on, including a fine one about the Greensboro Four, the college students who began the lunch counter sit-ins at Woolworth's.

IF programs on the History Channel can be taken as accurate, there certainly seemed to be a lot of (DARE I say it?) Mainstream Media coverage of the Civil Rights Movement. There were many reporters and camera jockeys seemingly at every protest, sit-in, march and/or boycott. And though I was all of twelve at the time, I remember a good bit of coverage by ABC of Dr. King's March on Washington in 1963.

From what I have been watching, the News Media seemed to present a rather fair and balanced accounting of what actually went on back then--back in the days when it was just a given that news programs would not return a profit to the networks; back when reporting was viewed as an obligation of using airwaves which belonged to the public. Looking back over better than forty years, it seems that TV did a good job of covering this period of struggle to right centuries of wrong.

So flash forward to the 21st Century and suppose that the Civil Rights Movement had been delayed for a half a century or so. Would we be hearing about police dogs and fire hoses being turned on black people in Selma? Or would the demonstrators be sneeringly referred to as "Conspiracy Theorists" who do not reflect "Mainstream Values?" Would Dr. King be roundly ridiculed on "Hardball" as a malcontent who was only seeking to stir up trouble and pit one group against another? Would Bill O'Reilly accuse Rosa Parks of being a Camera Hog? Would the KKK wear their sheets on "American Morning?"

Probably.

Thank Goddess it's a moot point, but where would the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s have gotten if it had been covered by what passes for the News Media today? How much would it have been held back by networks who view themselves proudly as an arm (tentacle?) of the Administration?

:freak:
dbt

[izzie]

1. This group act like fascist. I hardly think so

--

[alphafemale]

2. ..a few disgruntled communist sympathizers disrupted downtown buisness

...today. Witnesses say the trouble makers were quickly dispersed and order was soon restored."

Something like that?

[Catch22Dem]

3. Absolutely no way

He has way too many fundamentalist bushbots out there doing his bidding.

[Wright Patman]

4. Dr. King's every utterance

was being picked up by FBI surveillance.

If you think what happened to Bill Clinton in terms of the Monica thing was bad, just think what J. Edgar Hoover (likely a compromised figure in his own right along with his "bestest friend" Clyde Tolson) would have done with the audio he had of King's hotel rooms.

Back then, though, there really was such a thing as "decency standards" on the networks. They self-censored according to a broadcaters' code upon which they'd all agreed even without any FCC threats to their licenses. So that kept Dr. King's private life from making it to prime time.

[Zuni]

8. But the FBI also destroyed the KKK

it was an agressive FBI war on the KKK that ended their reign of terror

[The Backlash Cometh]

5. We need one more term of a Bush-like president, and then we'll

see civil rioting in the streets. The unemployment rate would need to go higher, bankruptcies would soar, and there would have to be a noticeable observation that the minorities who make it in a Bush-like administration, are hand-picked Stepford clones.

[LizW]

6. Not with today's American media

When I read about the history of the civil rights movement, I am struck by how many people from other parts of the country say they came to support the movement because they saw images on television of people marching and being attacked with hoses and dogs. Those images being broadcast across America and the world made a huge difference.

If the same thing were happening today, you would not see the images. You would hear hours of talking heads discussing how the bus boycott was destroying the economy of Montgomery and how the marches in Birmingham were disrupting the peace.

[Zuni]

7. Yes, it would have.

The Southern segregationists were hard core. The KKK attacked people, the police clubbed them
In short, by saying they couldn't do it today is ignoring the opposition they had in the South.

But then again, I doubt Bush would have been receptive to helping the civil rights movement like Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, kennedy and Johnson did.

It was their support, and the FBI's war on the Klan that really put the segregationists in line, but the civil rights marchers would have marched anyway.