How mainstream media became 'part of the race grievance industry' harming Black neighborhoods

Fox News

3 days ago

Civil rights activist Robert L. Woodson Sr. believes America's mainstream press is "complicit in the self-destruction" of Black neighborhoods by excusing poor behavior and said the only way forward is a return a media landscape that respects the agency of all Americans — regardless of race.
"The media has been really nihilistic. I really think they're demeaning the values of the country in the name of promoting social justice," Robert L. Woodson Sr. told Fox News Digital.
Woodson, who is Black and a longtime civil rights activist, penned an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal last week, urging the nation to "disregard race in how we judge one another" before it leads to "national ruin."
"When a mob violently attacked two people in downtown Cincinnati last [month], video of the beat-down spread across social media. But not a single major television network covered the story. It didn't fit the mainstream media's narrative about racial violence in America," Woodson wrote.
"The victims were White," he continued. "Today's media seems to conflagrate over violence only when the perpetrator is White and the victim is Black. Then the cameras roll, protests erupt, and hashtags fly."
Woodson said he became motivated to write the piece because he has been a longtime admirer of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who believed "the only defense that a minority has in a majority country is to insist on moral consistency."
"We were concerned back in the pre-civil rights days of Jim Crow South that Black was demeaned and devalued. If it was dismissed, it's a crime committed by a Black, by another Black, if it wasn't prosecuted as diligently as a White committing a crime against a Black woman. And so, we demanded that fair justice be administered," Woodson told Fox News Digital.
"But right now we're saying just the opposite. We're going back to the pre-civil rights era in terms of what we're insisting upon," he added. "The media is part and parcel, part of the race grievance industry."
Woodson, who has authored multiple books, including "A Pathway to American Renewal: Red, White, and Black," believes the press played a key role in civil rights deteriorating.
"The media's complicit in this race grievances proposition that America is inherently racist and there are systemic forces that place Whites [as] all villains and Blacks are all victims," he said.
"This is a bipolar view of the country that is devastating in terms of its impact. But it hurts the people who are most vulnerable," Woodson said. "That's why I advocate for low-income Blacks. They are the ones who suffer the consequences of police nullifications."
Woodson said that when outrage and riots are provoked, or when police are vilified by liberal activists, Black people get hurt the most.
"There's what they call the Ferguson effect where police do not vigorously enforce the laws in vulnerable neighborhoods. As a consequence, the murder rate shoots up in these communities. So, the press is complicit in the self-destruction of these Black neighborhoods, in the name of reporting on social justice," Woodson said.
In his Wall Street Journal piece, Woodson wrote that "Americans should renounce any schema in which one race is guilty and another innocent" in order to avoid "national ruin."
"National ruins would mean that we abandon the values of our founders and become nihilistic and begin to blame one another rather than affirming the values. And that's why it is important that many people on the left derive their moral authority by promoting themselves as being the legitimate representatives of the downtrodden and those who are so-called marginalized," Woodson said, when asked by Fox News Digital to expand his thoughts on the topic.
"But we believe the way you attack that is what we do at the Woodson Center, is give voice to those so-called marginalized people to speak for themselves and to act for themselves," he continued. "And that's why, for example, when the left supports 'Defund the Police,' and that we should abolish prisons and whatnot, 80% of low-income Blacks support the police. They know that, and they affirm these values."
Woodson, 88, said the conditions that Americans are faced with today have "nothing to do with the shortcomings of America's past," and he yearns for the days when elderly people could walk safely in Black communities without the fear of being assaulted by the younger generation. He said Blacks felt safer despite the fact that "racism was enshrined in law."
"The people who are suffering most must be given the means to speak and act for themselves, and that is their strong desire to be agents of their own uplift," Woodson said.
In the meantime, Woodson said the media is "injuring with the helping hand" by ignoring people's obvious faults and poor behavior.
"I come along the days of Walker Cronkite and the others who were giving honest reporting — objective reporting. In fact, that was celebrated. But then… the news reporters became opinion writers, masquerading as reporters. And they're always solicitous of Blacks, always demeaned by excusing excesses of behavior of Blacks," Woodson said.
"The worst thing in the world is to be patronized and demeaned. I'd rather be hated than demeaned," he added. "The very fact that the media believes that Blacks are incapable of self-governance, and therefore any excess exercised by them should be dismissed, or even celebrated, is the most destructive thing that I have ever seen."