Local media failures a pox on Greensboro

If you have given up on reading Jerry Bledsoe's "Cops in Black and White" in the Rhinoceros Times because you think you "get it;" or, if as someone rather surprisingly told me yesterday, you have formed an opinion that it is not worth your attention without having read any of it; or if you are a local journalist who worries that you might ruin your weekend with the discomfort of facing the failures of your enterprise and colleagues, do yourself a favor and read anyway this week's chapter 85.

It is about the incredible lie perpetrated on the people of Greensboro and how the lie gained a foothold that had people and institutions become invested in perpetuating the lie, even when their professional responsibilities were to refute it.

The storytelling by our local media regarding the "black book" is the most monumental failure of Greensboro's institutions in my lifetime. Their refusal to acknowledge or correct their mistakes is the most heartbreaking disappointment this Greensboro son has seen in anything "Greensboro" since moving here in 1970.

The News & Record gave its imprimatur to fabrications, then declined to dispel the myths when new information was revealed. This failure sits on the shoulders of editor John Robinson and publisher Robin Saul. Yeah, it's rude to call people out, and I don't like how it makes me feel personally. But these decisions were not made by a building or a masthead or a company, they were made by real people who bear their responsibility.

The News & Record opinion pages called for a full and complete revelation of the truth surrounding the black book. When that truth conflicted with tales already spun, The News & Record pulled up short, its windy protestations suddenly no longer serious. The News & Record rejected substantive critiques of how it covered this issue from its opinion pages by explaining that such examinations had already been thoroughly undertaken in local blogs. These decisions were not made by a newspaper, or an editorial page, or a corporation, these decisions were made by a real person; this failure sits on the shoulders of opinion editor Allen Johnson.

Local television follows the lead of local newspapers. As long as the News & Record is complicit in letting the myth stand, WFMY gets a free pass on their continued perpetuation of the black book myth, but they should know better.

There are two serious consequences to these failures. First, Greensboro can now look forward to another generation of unnecessary racial suspicion, between the "yes it was" implications of believing the black book myths and the "no it wasn't" understanding of the truth. Let's spend another thirty years with our fingers crossed that we'll just "move on" and forget. Without a mass forgetting, subsequent legitimate charges of racism will have a harder time being taken seriously, first having to prove they are not a product of the local media "crying wolf" again.

Second, Greensboro is consigned to going forward knowing we are operating at the disadvantage of having small media that will choose concealing their own ineptitudes at the expense of pursuing the truth; that any genuine understanding of who we are as a community is in jeopardy; that any perception we think we have of ourselves, if gleaned from the media, may simply be a chimera.

We face a future almost certain to include stepping on some otherwise avoidable landmine because the institutions reponsible for shining the light on our path will extinguish the light if they find themselves poorly reflected in it. They would prefer to let us stumble through the dark rather than utter the simple but too-big-for-Greensboro words of "We made a mistake."