For the past three weeks I have been doing at least one radio interview every day. The same question is always asked: “How come I just heard about this story a week ago? Why has the national media dropped the ball on Jena?”

In America, news is entertainment. That doesn’t mean that journalists throw caution to the wind and invent titilating fictions for the amusement of the audience–this happens, but it is rare. It’s a matter of ratings. Newsroom editors know that some stories (however trivial) get a big audience response; other stories do not. For instance, stories about black-on-white violence don’t sell; stories about racist southern towns do. The Jena story is a hybrid combination of the titilating and the taboo. Bloggers and talk radio personalities wield the story like a cudgel because they appeal to niche markets and generally preach to the choir. Major media outlets know a story this instense will turn some viewers on and turn others off. So they sit on the story. Or they produce “town divided” pieces featuring passionate sound bites from both sides and ending with a disclaimer (either stated or impled): “There you have it: the black folks are saying this; the white folks are saying that–you figure it out.”

Little is said in these stories about the grassroots organizing that has been going on since January or about the stream of concerned attorneys who have flocked to the defense of the young defendants. Many of the attorneys and activists who have rushed to the assistance of the Jena 6 are white–and that screws up the “racial tension” story line. When radio personalities stumble across this story, they have the mistaken impression that the Jena 6 are at the mercy of racist whites. When Mychal Bell went to trial that was pretty much the truth. Two months ago, I was losing sleep over the legal situation. No more.

The mainstream media lives in dread of its own shadow, but it has nothing to fear from this story. A month ago, Dallas reporter Wade Goodwyn produced a tight eight-minute report for NPR’s All Things Considered that simply laid out the story in just-the-facts-Ma’am fashion
(http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12353776). White urban professionals (the core of the NPR audience) were appalled. Told straight, without editorial insertion, this story is a jaw-dropper.

The major media will kick in on Jena sooner or later. ABC and CBS have shot copious footage in Jena and will make use of it by the end of September. When the media covers a legal story the coverage ebbs and flows with the court docket. When things heat up in the court room, the story springs to life in the newspapers and on the evening news. The big outlets have been silent on Jena for weeks now; but they will be back with a vengeance.

Fortunately (as Eugene Kane indicates below), the bloggers and the radio talk shows have been filling the gap admirably. Inaccuracies abound, to be sure, but the basic outline is there. For the next week or two, that will suffice.

Alan Bean
Friends of Justice
_____
http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=655469
Tales of injustice find audiences via Internet
Posted: Sept. 1, 2007
Eugene Kane
Some news stories exist below the radar screen, but that doesn’t necessarily
make them less important.
When headlines about Michael Vick, the bathroom-trolling senator and the
latest stumbles of Britney/Lindsay/Paris dominate the late-summer news
cycle, some stories are inevitably squeezed out even if they deserved more
ink.
Take the incredible story of the Jena Six.
My e-mail inbox was filled up last week with pleas from activists across the
nation trying to get more black journalists to write about the Jena Six, a
criminal case involving six young black people in Jena, La., who are charged
with beating up a white student last year after a racially charged incident.
The story begins September 2006 in Jena, a central Louisiana town of about
4,000 people – 85% of them white – with an altercation over a tree on high
school property under which only white students reportedly were allowed to
sit. When black students at Jena High School protested by claiming the tree
as their own, the next day someone put up three nooses on the tree to send
an ominous message.
The white students responsible for the nooses were suspended for three days.
The racial tension at the school intensified after a brawl led a local
district attorney to charge six black teenagers with attempted murder for
beating up a white teenager who suffered no life-threatening injuries.
None of the six had a criminal record.
Mychal Bell was the first member of the Jena Six to face trial in July. An
all-white jury convicted him on lesser charges of battery and conspiracy. He
could get up to 22 years at his sentencing this month.
The rest of the Jena Six face similar fates, all because they were involved
in a fistfight after a bunch of whites and blacks at the school failed to
get along.
Twenty-two years in prison seems a bit excessive, given the circumstances.
Predictably, civil rights advocates and local black leaders expressed
outrage over treatment of the Jena Six. The story was covered this summer by
some national news magazines and CNN, but exists largely under the radar
screen as an example of outrageous prosecution possibly tied to race.
That’s where the Internet comes in. The e-mail campaign on behalf of the
Jena Six includes a link to an NAACP petition asking the governor of
Louisiana, Kathleen Blanco, to intercede. The National Association of Black
Journalists also issued a statement last week urging its membership to
continue drawing attention to the case.
The Jena Six case is just the latest in a series of questionable
prosecutions and sentencings for young African-Americans across the nation
in recent months that sparked a reaction after the case became well-known. A
similar e-mail campaign was launched earlier this year on behalf of Genarlow
Wilson, an African-American man sentenced to 10 years in a Georgia prison
for having consensual sex with a 15-year-old girl when he was 17.
In June, a judge agreed to release Wilson, but the state attorney general
appealed the decision, which meant Wilson remains behind bars.
Also, there was the outlandish case of Shaquanda Cotton, a black girl who
was sentenced to serve up to seven years in prison in Texas for shoving a
white teachers aide when she was 14. Shaquanda was released from prison in
March after a special judge reviewing the local criminal justice system for
racial inequity agreed the sentence was excessive.
Both of those stories found similar public support after e-mail campaigns
and petition drives designed to get the cases more attention succeeded. In
the age of point-and-click communication, spreading news about questionable
court decisions involving African-Americans is easier than it’s ever been.
That can only be a good thing.
Closer to home, an e-mail campaign in support of jailed Ald. Mike McGee
questions whether the government’s case against him is racially biased and
criticizes a judge’s refusal to grant bail on corruption charges. The
campaign hasn’t gone national yet, but I suspect “Free McGee” petitions
might start circulating on the Internet if more people knew some of the
puzzling turns taken by prosecutors in regard to the alderman’s bail.
Sometimes, supporters win a huge victory after pleading their case on the
Internet. On Thursday, Texas Gov. Rick Perry commuted the death sentence for
Kenneth Foster Jr., a black man convicted for his role in the fatal shooting
of a merchant in 1996. Under Texas law, a defendant can be executed even if
he didn’t pull the trigger.
Foster, who has maintained his innocence, was the subject of similar e-mail
campaigns in previous months by people who oppose the death penalty. Instead
of being executed, he’ll spend the rest of his life behind bars.
As for the Jena Six, word is slowly leaking out about this curious brand of
justice being dispensed by some officials in Louisiana who apparently
believe the law should be harsher on black kids than anybody else.
Clearly, this is a below-the-radar case that requires as many eyes watching
as possible.
Contact Eugene Kane at (414) 223-5521 or ekane@journalsentinel.com.