Quote of the Day – October 23, 2012
After all is said and done, either President Barack Obama or his Republican challenger, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, will be elected president in two weeks, and neither will have spoken at length during the yearlong campaign about race or poverty—two serious challenges facing the country as we become a more diverse and economically stratified nation.
[...]
But a recent study released by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, a Washington, D.C.-based media watchdog group, “found poverty barely registers as a campaign issue.” The organization noted that mainstream reporters have used “rules [that] are selectively applied,” permitting discussions of poverty only after a candidate has brought it up. As a result, less than 1 percent of presidential campaign coverage between January and June of this year focused on poverty. “In the current election year, when neither the incumbent Democratic president nor any of his challengers in the GOP primary have been making poverty even a minor issue, such ‘rules’ are relegating tens of millions of struggling citizens to virtual invisibility,” the report stated.-Excerpted from the article “Race and Beyond: Let’s Talk about Race and Poverty” written by Sam Fulwood III and originally published on the Center for American Progress website.
