Detroit is a city with growing pains and I’ve yet to see anyone who denies that truth. At the same time, Detroit is also a city with evidentiary hope and promise which continue to inspire those who are working tirelessly in the city for the betterment of us all.
So when “Dateline NBC” announced that it would air a one-hour special on Detroit, “America Now: City of Heartbreak and Hope,” about one of the most misunderstood cities in the nation, some of us held our breath and wanted to give the all-knowing reporter, Chris Hansen, the benefit of the doubt.
We expected Hansen — who has similar credentials to Time magazine reporter Daniel Okrent, who did a shoddy and lazy job of telling us how Detroit is backward without an incisive view of the city — to give us balanced reporting on the crisis facing this city because both hail from this area. Hansen, in interviews he conducted prior to the airing of the special on Sunday evening, especially his appearance on WDIV’s “FlashPoint,” appeared like a surgeon who understood the city’s ailment and was out to issue the required prescriptions. But that was not the case. Apparently his interview on “FlashPoint” was a sales pitch for thousands in the Motor City to watch the upcoming program. To our disappointment, Hansen repeated the same things that Okrent did when he also jetted in like a savior who wanted to deliver Detroit from its varied problems. Hansen’s reporting was devoid of any balanced picture of where the city is currently.
One is forced to wonder if there is a concerted effort by the media to bury Detroit alive despite the efforts being made by committed, hardworking men and women to change the current economic and political climate.
Hansen talked about the city’s old train station standing in ruins for years as an example of how economically destabilized Detroit is. But he woefully failed to mention the Matty Maroun connection to that train station and why it is in its present condition.
Why?
Is it because Maroun is a powerful transportation mogul, almost an omnipotent White businessman who is untouchable by the media?
Is it because the reporter thinks that Detroiters cannot read between the lines of their very subjective and prejudicial reporting?
This type of omission is one reason there is a growing suspicion that the media is never up to any good when it comes to Detroit.
It is the same reason why a lot of people are no longer watching the news and reading the newspapers, choosing instead to tell their own stories through the blogsphere.
If the media, which is supposed to be that sacred fourth estate, is now a fifth column, then it is justified when people look to the Internet for information instead of the clearly filtered, biased news organs.
Hansen owed his viewers the responsibility of an accurate picture of the city. He mentioned the 1967 riot in passing (perhaps it was not that significant to him as far as Detroit’s political and economical evolution is concerned), a cunning way to dance around the issue of race.
At the center of Hansen’s reporting is Cordette Grantling, who has been raising abandoned children despite having a meager income. But the spirit that Grantling exemplifies is the same zest and dynamism maintained by those who have chosen not to leave Detroit despite the constant bashing by the media.
All Hansen had to do was find more people who personify Grantling’s spirit, but he instead went in search of the most extreme situations which can be found anywhere in New York, Chicago, Washington, DC, and any other city where there is a large underclass.
The portrayal of Detroit on “Dateline NBC” was primitive with its ever-present racial undertones taking the city to the dark ages, a stark reminder of how the media succeeded in blindfolding African Americans about Africa with its “Tarzan ape” image of another misunderstood continent.
Hansen showed an older Detroiter who kills raccoons for his own consumption and also sells them to survive in the economically depressed climate. Lest we forget, Blacks were once referred to as “coons.”
When you portray a majority African-American city in such a decayed and animal-like manner and the only solution to the city, according to the report, is help from the suburbs, undercutting the efforts of groups and organizations based here that are working tirelessly, why won’t others call your reporting racist?
Why didn’t Hansen interview City Year Detroit, New Detroit Inc, City Connect Detroit, Detroit Parent Network, Michigan Welfare Rights Organization, Community Development Advocates of Detroit and many others? He could have talked to the Detroit Regional Chamber, the largest business group of its kind in the nation headquartered in Detroit.
Hansen could have sat down with Faye Nelson of the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy to find out what is being done to attract families to the downtown area in the summer months.
But interviewing these organizations would not make for a titillating interview for “Dateline.” It is not the kind of interview that will create a jaw-drop for his national audience which forces us to wonder what the editorial agenda of that reporting was?
In the last two years Detroit has seen two new hotels in the downtown area. The Book Cadillac Westin and the Doubletree hotels are signs that businesses are not giving up on Detroit.
One of the owners of the Doubletree, Emmett Moten, has been at the center of Detroit’s economic and political journey for decades. A former development czar for ex-mayor Coleman Young, and a once instrumental figure to the creation of the Illitch business empire in Detroit, Moten could have schooled Hansen about Detroit and where it is today.
So why did Hansen miss the developments of these two hotels in his reporting?
The Detroit Metro Convention and Visitors Bureau just struck a deal for Detroit to host the 2015 American Society of Association Executives conference, expected to generate $2.8 billion in revenue for this area.
Why was this important news development missing in the one-hour special?
Maybe the editors and producers of “Dateline NBC” do not see such developments important enough to merit inclusion in a report that puts a major city’s reputation and spirit at stake on the national stage.
In June of this year, Detroit will host the 2010 U.S. Social Forum, the gathering of activists, social justice advocates, progressive politicians and policy makers. This gathering will bring about 20,000 visitors to the city and generate a significant economic stimulus.
Yet Kid Rock tells “Dateline” that Detroit is a “ghost town” which is an insulting description by someone who professes to love the city. If Detroit is, as he said, a “ghost town,” why are major businesses and companies still here?
If Detroit is such an empty town to the extent that it is becoming unlivable as the “Dateline” report attempted to sell to its national audience, why are all the major universities in this region, University of Michigan,Wayne State University, Michigan State, enhancing their foothold on the city?
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What we witnessed in the “Dateline NBC” report is yet another example of the onslaught of pseudo-journalism and the handsome salaries paid to those who practice it.
Those who are concerned and have a stake in the terrible image that was presented about Detroit on “Dateline” cannot keep silent. They should respond vigorously and demand objective coverage by hurling piercing shards of fact, logic and history of the city’s present state.
When I look back on the reporting of Hansen, it seems like Grantling, the woman raising abandoned children, was used a pawn on a larger scheme to scare businesses, development and families away from the city.
But again, for those who are familiar with the different harbingers of the media evolution will know that this latest Hansen report is another reminder of journalism’s decay. That the true ideals of journalism are sacrificed for stories that are woefully lacking in facts and balance.
Joseph Pulitzer, journalism pioneer, called for an accurate press.
“Put it before them briefly so they will read it, clearly so they will appreciate it, picturesquely so they will remember it and, above all, accurately so they will be guided by its light,” Pulitzer said.
Certainly if Detroit is to be guided by the light of reports such as Hansen’s, we might as well turn off the lights and leave the city.
Last Friday Wayne State University School of Journalism honored Pulitzer Prize winning columnist Leonard Pitts Jr.; Lynette Clemetson, founding editor of the Root.com; Osama Siblani, publisher of the Arab American News; Walter Middlebrook, assistant managing editor of the Detroit News; and myself with the Helen Thomas Spirit of Diversity Awards. The award is named after Thomas, dean of the White House Press Corps.
The students in attendance heard from virtually every speaker on how significant diversity is. Because when stories like the one “Dateline” aired on Detroit are reported it underscores why we are fighting for diversity in the media. Because if we depended on the one-sided view of the Hansen-type reports, Detroit would be cast in the dark ages.
Diverse voices in the media help to unmask the kinds of subterfuge presented as special reports by media outlets that have shown what their editorial agenda is.
Watch senior editor Bankole Thompson’s weekly show, “Center Stage,” on WADL TV 38, Saturdays at 1 p.m. This Saturday’s program, April 24, will feature a feature a special roundtable discussion about the “Dateline NBC” report on Detroit with Tony Mottley, Emmy Award-winning producer; Deidre Bounds of Brogan and Partners; and Bertram Marks of the Detroit Council of Baptist Pastors. E-mail bthompson@michronicle.com.
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