Wednesday, March 30, 2005
On What is Withheld
No-Longer-Very-Dear Editors,
A quotation from your front-page article today:
"The eight-person jury - three white men and five women - took slightly more than a day deliberating before they brought back the verdict..."
Was it just poor reporting that caused you to omit the race of the women on the jury? You obviously thought it was important we knew that there were three white men on the jury. Curious!
More curious, your decision to include, next to the article, a rather one-sided article on how some think this verdict will risk police diversification efforts. You included stated article with no definition of diversity, merely the assumption that it is highly valued. How highly valued? Enough so that the only quotation you pulled out of either article and placed in boldface was this:
"I believe that it is a blow to diversification, and I think that's very important to a municipal police department, especially here in Milwaukee." - Arthur Jones,Former Milwaukee police chief.
Surely you can understand how defenseless readers may get the strong drift that JS -- an organization whose editorial board cuts its teeth writing strongly-worded missives on the distinction between the news department and itself -- values diversity to such an extent that even discrimination ought to be tolerated in its promotion.
Or maybe you can't understand that.
Humbly submitted,
A quotation from your front-page article today:
"The eight-person jury - three white men and five women - took slightly more than a day deliberating before they brought back the verdict..."
Was it just poor reporting that caused you to omit the race of the women on the jury? You obviously thought it was important we knew that there were three white men on the jury. Curious!
More curious, your decision to include, next to the article, a rather one-sided article on how some think this verdict will risk police diversification efforts. You included stated article with no definition of diversity, merely the assumption that it is highly valued. How highly valued? Enough so that the only quotation you pulled out of either article and placed in boldface was this:
"I believe that it is a blow to diversification, and I think that's very important to a municipal police department, especially here in Milwaukee." - Arthur Jones,Former Milwaukee police chief.
Surely you can understand how defenseless readers may get the strong drift that JS -- an organization whose editorial board cuts its teeth writing strongly-worded missives on the distinction between the news department and itself -- values diversity to such an extent that even discrimination ought to be tolerated in its promotion.
Or maybe you can't understand that.
Humbly submitted,
