I was in the breakfast room of a Washington, D.C. hotel two weeks ago preparing to attend the Congressional Black Caucus Annual Legislative Conference when the phone rang asking me to tune in to the daily “Morning Joe” show on MSNBC because the managing editor of Time magazine, Richard Stengel, was on explaining the magazine’s cover story, “The Tragedy of Detroit: How a Great City Fell and How It Can Rise Again.”
After attending some of the usual morning sessions/workshops at the CBC, I was still getting calls about the article in Time.
So when I got back to the city I read the story written by Daniel Okrent, a former public editor for the New York Times. In his preamble Okrent made it clear where he was shooting from by listing decade-old themes of racial entanglement, inept leadership and an automotive industry that ran amok as holding back Detroit’s progress.
There are some positive aspects to the piece and to his credit, Okrent’s article was the personal observation and journey of a man who left his city and returned briefly for a review. The thrust of his widely circulated article is that we live in a dead city and Okrent offered the prescription of a regional government as the panacea without explaining the complex facets attached to this notion of a “regional government.”
The only thing new in the piece is that the problems of Detroit through the eyes of Southeast Michigan have now been elevated to the national level. That has its merits and demerits depending on who is interviewed.
If Okrent’s article is supposed to be the opening greeting of Time Inc’s one-year stay in Detroit, I’m afraid it has succeeded in deepening the skepticism that average Detroiters have about mainstream media coverage of a major city.
The feeling has been that Detroit has always been under siege by the media and evidence of that is the sometimes blatantly and negatively driven articles. Sometimes Detroit’s issues reported in national media give an enormous pretense of a “dog eat dog” climate in Detroit.
The articles, which scare investors away from the city, fail to document the fact that every city has its own trials and tribulations and that the stories that come out of Detroit could be found anywhere.
WHEN I lived in Washington it was disheartening to see that even in the nation’s capital — the power center and nervous system of the world — there are countless homeless people, others living in abject poverty and the number among Washington’s Black population is even more staggering.
The same story could be told of New York even though it is the investment capital of the world.
But New York, Washington D.C. and other places considered pristine by the news media — of course, they are the power base of those magazines and newspapers — hardly ever come under harsh and biased reviews for racial entanglements, incompetent governance, hubris, etc. They are always promoted as prime examples of what cities like Detroit and others ought to strive to be.
I recalled reading an article in the Wall Street Journal about two years ago in which the writer, who is based here, concluded that things are so bad in Detroit no one would want to raise their children here. The sea of pessimism that is imposed on the future of this city does not help Detroit progress.
MISSING FROM Okrent’s piece is the fact that there is no real and honest dialogue about race and racism in this region and how that impedes progress.
Missing from the article is the fact that there are neighborhoods in this city that are coming back thanks to the tireless efforts of community groups, local institutions and businesses who would not give up on Detroit.
Missing in the article is an explanation of why Blacks in Detroit embraced Coleman A. Young despite his flaws when he became the first Black mayor of Detroit after Gary, Indiana set the pace with the election of Richard Hatcher.
Despite the length of his article, Okrent did not provide space for his readers to understand the climate that ushered in major Black political figures like Young at a time when the sweltering heat of Jim Crow was alive, just six years after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Okrent at least owed it to his readers in the interest of responsible journalism to provide some details about the political philosophy that informed the Young era, and how it was inextricably tied to the battle for civil rights.
WHEN OKRENT talked about Mayor Young spending his time insulting suburban leaders — no matter how wrong that was and how the White flight did afffect Detroit — he did not mention the fact that there are huge thriving businesses today in the city of Detroit owned by White businessmen and women thanks to the Young administration that got them started.
At a recent function I attended at the Detroit Opera House hosted by New Detroit Inc. to honor former Michigan governor William Milliken and other pioneers, I watched Milliken as he talked about the skills of Mayor Young as a shrewd politician, masterful negotiator and a tough ally despite their frequent disagreements on policy.
By the way, Milliken is considered the best Michigan Republican governor in recent history with deep admiration and respect from both sides of the political aisle.
Okrent should have contacted Milliken for some tutoring about the nuances of the political climate under Young and Detroit’s struggles at that tumultuous time.
The photo of the dilapidated building on the cover of Time showing Detroit’s ruins could have been taken in New York or any of the so-called flagship cities considered models of 21st century America.
Make no mistake, there are crucial problems in Detroit that must be tackled. There is an entitlement mentality to governance that needs to be eroded.
But another big issue here as Detroit’s problems move into the national spotlight is the responsibility of the news media in covering the problems.
If objectivity means telling both sides of the story without imposing one’s views, then the media has been missing in action in its professional and moral responsibility.
VERY FEW news outlets today are providing responsible and balanced coverage.
Unfortunately, what we consider newsworthy may be a far cry from what the news media wants to cover. There are few in the profession who reflect the true ideals of journalism, which anchors on fairness and accuracy.
Why should it be difficult today to produce the likes of Vernon Jarrett, founding member of the National Association of Black Journalists?
Jarrett, whose career started at the Chicago Defender, practiced his profession in the large democratic tradition of W.E.B. DuBois.
He championed the under-reported plight of African- Americans. The news media has a history of selecting what Black issues it wants to cover — and thankfully since the genesis of the Obama dispensation some newsrooms, feeling guilty, are learning to pronounce diversity with meaning — and Jarrett’s presence at the time at papers like the Chicago Tribune and Sun Times sought to make a noticeable difference.
Consider this: Many journalists today have been awarded the Joseph Pulitzer Prize, yet many don’t aspire to be like Joseph Pulitzer.
“We will always fight for progress and reform, never tolerate injustice or corruption, and always fight demagogues of all parties, always oppose privileged classes and public plu
nderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to the public welfare, never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty,” Pulitzer wrote in the New York World newspaper in May of 1883.
Pulitzer in another article that appeared in the North American Review in 1904 placed the burden of shaping the nation’s future in the hands of journalists.
“A CYNICAL, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time a people as base as itself. The power to mould the future of the Republic will be in the hands of the journalists of future generations,” Pulitzer wrote.
If that is the kind of passion that motivated Joseph Pulitzer’s work to be a watershed in American journalism, the news media has lost it.
And Time Inc has an obligation to find it at this time in history, not only to the memory of Joseph Pulitzer and in keeping with the sacred tenets and sanctity of journalism, but for everyone in Detroit to be fair and balanced in their coverage of a city that has been so misunderstood and misled — often deliberately — to the detriment of its future.
I invited Steven Gray, the house manager and correspondent for Time who is assigned to Detroit to come and explain to our readers and viewers on the “Center Stage” TV show about the media conglomerate’s decision to dedicate one year to Detroit. He recently took me up on my offer .
Senior Editor Bankole Thompson is a radio, television analyst and moderator. Watch his public affairs show, “Center Stage,” every Saturday at 1 p.m. on WADL TV 38. E-mail him at bthompson@michronicle.com.