journalism « Yuri Kageyama

Race and crime _ and reporting on race and crime

When an American racial minority commits a crime, race is an important fact, if not the most significant fact.
When a member of the racial majority commits a crime, race is incidental.
This is something that has to be said, although many people don’t like to say it for fears of being perceived as defending the crime or worse yet the criminal.
This is not about putting the blame on racism to defend the crime/criminal.
Obviously there are far more people who have been victims of racism all their lives and DON’T kill.
It is to the credit of all members of racial minorities who have gotten beyond racism and managed not to end up criminals.
But is this being understood?
Not if every time, race becomes the big focus of a crime, and that’s being taken for granted as a matter of fact.
And isn’t that, after all, the mentality that perpetuates that kind of crime in the first place?
Why isn’t that being addressed today?

More than 40 years ago, it has all been said in Alex Haley’s interview with Miles Davis.

Statement from the Asian American Journalists Association

Asking the media to avoid mentioning race in a story may be unrealistic.
Asking the media to mention race in the proper way (with the proper perspective) may be just as unrealistic.
But it’s not asking too much to ask the media to avoid the assumption that race is somehow an important aspect of the suspect that led to the crime.
The media should also avoid using wording that plays upon such public assumptions.
Some of the language on broadcast news is appalling.
The sad thing is that the people who are speaking don’t even get it.
If we all tried to be more sensitive, then this wouldn’t even be an issue.
Such standards for sensitivity should be higher for journalists than for the general public.

Horiemon 3

I was one of the reporters rushing around March 16 to tell the world the verdict in the trial of Livedoor founder Takafumi Horie.
Since foreign media are assigned only two seats for some 10 news organizations that wish to get into the courtroom, we have to play a musical chairs version of reporting.
We get armbands from the ninth floor PR office that show to court security that we are indeed reporters. We pass each other the armbands like a relay racer.
The trial is attracting a great deal of attention. TV was an endless stream of Livedoor reporting. TV and still photo cameras aren’t allowed in Japanese courtrooms except for the first few minutes before the session starts. And so what we see (is Horie wearing a tie? What color is the tie? Is he hair slicked back? Or spiky?) is important.
When Horie asked the judge to let him leave the courtroom, we all had to rush out to relay that information, although we had no idea what was going on. I thought he had to go throw up.
When Horie came back five minute later, looking pretty much the same as when he had left, we had to all rush out again and relay THAT.
His lawyer told us later that he hadn’t been feeling well all day and he probably needed to use the bathroom. Horie, appearing in a TV interview in the evening, said he had diarrhea.
The whole drama is far from over because Horie is appealing.
Besides the question of his innocence, there are others:
Is the same punishment being fairly doled out for a comparable crime? I don’t remember cases of executives of major companies ever getting prison terms for this kind of white collar crime.
Does a guilty plea win lenience? I.e., what is Miyauchi’s verdict/sentence going to be next week?
How sane is a justice system that convicts 99.9 percent of its defendants?
It is often difficult to hear what the judge is mumbling from where the foreign media must sit _ the very back row.
Fortunately, all the Japanese reporters who get to sit up front are all yelling the news in their version of relay tag:
Guilty, guilty, guilty. Two years six months prison. Two years six months prison. Two years six months prison.

Chips EveryWARE

Adam Greenfield, who has written “Everyware, the Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing,” had some harsh words on his blog for my Chips Everywhere article. But there’s always a happy ending to Yuri’s endeavors: He is willing to be that expert who will be interviewed for comment for my next technology story!