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(AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
Sharyl Attkisson is an award-winning investigative reporter who walked away from a high-paying job at CBS in no small part because of a “slant” in reporting. She had numerous stories spiked because her facts didn’t fit the narrative. In her book “Slanted,” she details a number of stories that producers refused to air because Attkisson didn’t toe the line or slant language to cast a negative light. It’s only gotten worse.
In modern newsrooms, stories will make it to print (or broadcast) if they fit a left-leaning slant. And those stories will be written with a particular linguistic framing in mind. On Tuesday, Reuters published a 1619 Project-like shaming piece on America’s political class who have slave-owning ancestors.
Bylined by a team of six people, the article titled “America’s Family Secret” runs over 7,000 words. It is heritage shaming disguised as investigative reporting. The intent is clear – show America that its political class is top-heavy with descendants of slave owners. They (and, by extension, you, America) should be shamed and ashamed. Shamed into reparations. The article is a demand for reparations masked as investigative journalism.
Reuters tells us that, for instance, five of the six living presidents had ancestors who were slave owners. But there are six living presidents – who doesn’t have slave-holding ancestors? Donald Trump. Barack Obama is descended from slave owners. There are two Supreme Court Justices, 11 Governors, and 100 legislators, “descended from ancestors who enslaved black people.”
From Reuters:
The Reuters examination is different. It focuses on the most powerful U.S. officeholders of today, many of whom have staked key positions on policies related to race. It reveals for the first time, in breadth and in detail, the extent of those leaders’ ancestral connections to what’s commonly called America’s “original sin.” And it explores what it may mean for them to learn – in personal, specific and sometimes graphic ways – the facts behind their own kin’s part in slavery.
Further down, Reuters lays out graphics with individual profiles like a rogue’s gallery. It shows photos of legislators, their ancestral link to slavery, and the number of slaves held by the ancestor. The way Reuters frames the link is part of the story and the slant.
In a section titled “Remaining Silent,” Reuters’ lede reads:
Members of Congress often speak proudly of their ancestries, highlighting long ties to the places they serve or offering a family story emblematic of the American Dream.
Directly below the lede, Reuters tells us that Tom Cotton’s great-great-great grandfather (on his mother’s side) held six slaves 173 years ago. Reuters tells the reader that Cotton was asked five times for comment and “did not respond.” The framing is clear. Cotton is a slave-owning descendant and refused to comment (i.e., condemn his ancestors). Cotton is proud of his family’s history, Reuters tells us, thus insinuating that Tom Cotton must also be proud of long-since-dead, slave-owning ancestors.
There are other legislators highlighted, like Democrat Tammy Duckworth. Her link is even more attenuated. A Great-great-great-great-great-grandfather had four slaves 193 years ago. Duckworth, as you might have guessed, was willing to accept her guilt and family shame. She said:
But I think it’s a disservice to our nation and our history to walk away from this. If I am going to claim – and be proud that – I am a Daughter of the American Revolution, then I have to acknowledge that I am also a daughter of people who enslaved other people.
Reuters even has a side note quoting Ben Affleck, who was “embarrassed” by his ancestorial link to slavery. Affleck pressured producers of a PBS show to scrub any mention of his ancestor from a genealogy show as if it never happened.
What is the point? Reuter’s point isn’t veiled. It’s a shaming piece intended to pressure lawmakers into considering slavery reparations. Lawmakers are reminded by Reuters that they had slave-owning ancestors and they should compensate the descendants of slaves. But why?
My family on my mother’s side owned slaves. On my father’s side, I have a long list of men who fought for the North, and no one owned a slave. One of them ended up a prisoner in Andersonville and was crippled for life.
A counter-argument to Reuters is this: Any former American slave should be compensated. But there are none still living. Not one. In fact, there are no children of former slaves. There are, to my knowledge, no grandchildren of former slaves. No living American-owned slaves. No one living was enslaved. Although Reuters spent 7,000 words shaming living legislators with long-since dead ancestors, there is one salient indisputable fact: No one living owned slaves or was enslaved.
Reuters spent a lot of words and expensive graphics, shaming the living for the sins of people they never knew. Reuters shamed the living with the lives and sins of, in many cases, a great-great-great-great-grandfather’s sins. Instead of bringing America together, Reuters, like most of the media, wants to divide with race and a call for reparations. To what end?
A California commission recently proffered the absurd conclusion that a state that wasn’t a slave state should, by one estimate, pay black residents close to a trillion dollars — around a quarter-million per person. Articles like Reuters’ Tuesday reparations take are slanted to shame Americans and legislators into paying for sins that no one living ever committed and no one living ever suffered.
Reuters concluded with a subhead that read: “A Better Nation.”
We are. Immensely so. But that isn’t Reuters’ framing. It’s more shaming. We are six or seven generations removed from slavery. And, regardless of what Joe Biden claims, we are several generations removed from Jim Crow. Reuters doesn’t want to move on. Most Americans do.
Ben Affleck is rich. Ask him to pay for something he never did.
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RELATED ARTICLES
REPORT: Trump Is The Only Living President Not Descending From Slave Owners
By Ilan Hulkower | TrendingPolitics.com
Former President Donald John
Trump, a 2024 Republican candidate for the White House,
is the only living president who does not descend from
slave owners according to a study by Reuters. Reuters explored the genealogies of
America’s political elite from legislators to governors
to Supreme Court judges. They found that “a fifth of
the nation’s congressmen, living presidents, Supreme
Court justices and governors are direct descendants of
ancestors who enslaved Black people.”
The report made mention that the
current president, Joe Biden, and almost all former
living presidents had ancestors who owned black slaves.
Donald Trump was the exemption to this trend because his
“ancestors came to America after slavery was abolished.”
Trump has German roots. Even
before the Civil War, as a result of the failed 1848
revolution in Germany, many Germans fled to the United States in search of liberty
and opportunity. These communities of German ex-pats had
a number of significant individuals who worked to
abolish the practice of slavery in the United States.
Some of whom, like Carl Schurz, would
become prominent politicos in the Republican party.
Nowadays according to Reuters due to the concentration of
political party strength, they found that “at
least 8% of Democrats in the last Congress and 28% of
Republicans have such [slaver] ancestors.” The
Republican party being in modern times more dominant in
the South would logically have a larger pool of such
ancestry since slavery by the 19th century in the United
States had become an exclusively Southern enterprise.
However, ancestry alone does not
implicate a person in the sins of their father (or
mother as it may turn out). As Henry Louis Gates Jr., a
Harvard professor, sagely observed “We do not inherit
guilt for our ancestors’ actions…It’s just to say: Look
at how closely linked we are to the institution of
slavery, and how it informed the lives of the ancestors
of people who represent us in the United States Congress
today.”
Representative Nancy Mace (R-SC)
released a statement after being named by the report as
being a descendant of a slave owner. She stated that “I
don’t recognize these people named and can’t confirm
they are relatives, but slavery was a stain on this
country and we as Americans should be grateful for the
progress we’ve made since the 1860s.”
Of particular note, it was the
Republican party that led the way in the abolition of
slavery and it was that party that passed the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments
to the US Constitution that effectively ended the
practice and extended rights to the newly freed black
population. A higher percentage of Republican
party members also voted than Democrats did for the 1964
Civil Rights Act that ended racial segregation in public
places.
Via Grand Old Partisan.
Grand Old Partisan highlights a classic condemnation of the Democratic Party’s pro-slavery policies. Springfield, June 26th 1857, Abraham Lincoln delivered an insightful speech. He observed:
“The Republicans inculcate, with whatever of ability they can, that the negro is a man; that his bondage is cruelly wrong, and that the field of his oppression ought not to be enlarged.”
“The Democrats deny his manhood; deny, or dwarf to insignificance, the wrong of his bondage; so far as possible, crush all sympathy for him, and cultivate and excite hatred and disgust against him; compliment themselves as Union-savers for doing so; and call the indefinite outspreading of his bondage “a sacred right of self-government.”
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EDITOR’S NOTE: To read more information about civil rights history, see the article “Republicans And Democrats Did Not Switch Sides On Racism” posted on this blog.
