Imagine if you will a Republican city councilman anywhere in the United States railing against Asian-American small businesses and Filipino immigrants who work as nurses in local hospitals. The national media would swoop in with critical attention to the matter and demand Republican politicians all the way up to apparent presidential nominee Mitt Romney to renounce the racist politician.
But when it comes to D.C. Councilman and former Mayor Marion Barry (D), alas, there's no national media attention devoted to the racist ex-convict's sentiments about the Asian-American community in the nation's capital. While the Washington Post and Politico have done their part -- Politico even noted a political consultant calling on Barry to step down as a Democratic convention delegate -- our search of Nexis reveals that neither ABC, CBS, nor NBC have covered the story on their morning or evening news programs.
By contrast, early this year, after East Haven, Connecticut Mayor Joseph Maturo, a Republican, made a lame joke about going home to make some tacos -- in response to a reporter's question about an FBI investigation against city police officers' treatment of Latino residents -- NBC's Today show devoted a full story to the matter on their January 31 program. Five days earlier, CBS's Betty Nguyen addressed the controversy in a news briefing on the CBS Morning News.
