What's Race Got To Do With It?
If there's a shooting, count on Trey Garrison to show up. After all, he used to work for Dallas Blog, where he covered the crime beat, telling us when every inmate on death row was scheduled to die. Today on his blog, it's a column by James Ragland of The Dallas Morning News that catches his eye. Ragland points out that a homeowner who confronted a burglar and ended up shot and stabbed, failed to provide a detailed description of the assailant. This sends Garrison off on a tangent, complaining that newspapers often don't report a suspect's race when they report crime stories. WTF? Can you say non sequitur? What's race got to do with Ragland's story?
But now that Garrison brings it up, I do seem to remember that in all those Dallas Blog stories about impending executions, Garrison never missed an opportunity to highlight the condemned man's race, at least when he was African-American. Hmmm... But that's just how I remember it. I could be wrong. I usually don't pay too much attention to race.
Cat Fight in Dallas Media
Tim Rogers has a column in this month's D Magazine titled "Why the Observer Stinks." Yawn. If you want to goose sales, create a controversy. If you want to draw attention to yourself, call someone else names. It's worked since the schoolyard, I'm sure it'll work today in Dallas media.
But if you don't want to look like a total idiot about it, pick a subject to complain about other than the Observer's coverage of the Trinity River Corridor project, which has been first-rate. Jim Schutze was a model of what good investigative reporters do. Sam Merten's work at Dallas Blog was in the same vein. (See, I can say something nice about Dallas Blog.) The highest value of a free press lies in its role as watchdog for the public interest, something that The Dallas Morning News and D Magazine show no interest in filling.
In today's Unfair Park, Sam Merten fires back at Rogers. Rogers definitely comes out the worse for the exchange. Idiot.
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