<story><title>The local news crisis is deepening America&apos;s divides</title><url>https://www.axios.com/2022/07/04/local-newspapers-news-deserts</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rayiner</author><text>I’ve spent quite a bit of time in South Georgia, as a visibly non-white guy with a Muslim surname. Folks were nicer to me there than in NYC or DC.&lt;p&gt;Majorie Taylor Greene was elected in 2021. She’s a &lt;i&gt;reaction&lt;/i&gt; to national media efforts that started with the governor’s race in 2018 to paint half of Georgia as “deplorables.” People are tribal. When attacked from outside, they’ll close ranks.&lt;p&gt;As to Ahmed Aubury, it’s an unfortunate fact that police fuckups and cover ups happen. But the media chooses how it frames any given such event. Notice how the media isn’t portraying the Uvalde police department’s efforts to cover things up as an indictment of the whole community? Do you think it has nothing to do with the community being 80% Hispanic in addition to the police chief? If the community and shooter had been white, we would have been treated to story after story about how “mass shootings are a manifestation of white supremacy.”</text></item><item><author>lotsofpulp</author><text>&amp;gt; They made Georgia out to be an unreformed Confederate backwater:&lt;p&gt;Electing Marjorie Greene Taylor and the coverup attempt around this killing might have contributed.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Murder_of_Ahmaud_Arbery&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Murder_of_Ahmaud_Arbery&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Although, I would not say rural areas of GA are special in being unreformed Confederate backwaters.</text></item><item><author>rayiner</author><text>The nationalization of news and politics in a country of 330 million people is toxic. We’re one country but we don’t share a single set of values. Even the notion of “blue America” and “red America” is misleading. What would be unremarkable in San Francisco would raise eyebrows in Baltimore.&lt;p&gt;I noticed this acutely living in Atlanta for the better part of a decade. Politics was not a big deal when I lived there. Atlanta was “blue” and the rest of the state was “red” but politics was forward looking and productive. The mayor when I was there, Shirley Franklin, was truly put the city above partisanship. A Democrat, she endorsed Mary Norwood, an independent, in 2017, because the Democratic candidate was a protege of a mayor she believed to have been corrupt: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.wabe.org&amp;#x2F;former-atlanta-mayor-shirley-franklin-endorses-mary-norwood&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.wabe.org&amp;#x2F;former-atlanta-mayor-shirley-franklin-e...&lt;/a&gt;. She waved aside criticism suggesting that she (a Black woman) should have endorsed the Black Democratic candidate instead of Norwood, a white woman.&lt;p&gt;Then in 2018 all hell broke loose when Georgia’s governor’s race became the subject of national attention. The state became a battleground in a proxy war between New York and Mississippi. Racialist rhetoric reached a fever pitch in the New York Times and Washington Post (but notably, the Atlanta Journal Constitution was far more prudent). They made Georgia out to be an unreformed Confederate backwater, instead of a state that’s the destination for huge numbers of Black residents leaving California, Illinois, and New York, attracted by plentiful jobs, low taxes, and an excellent public university system. The national media completely misrepresented Georgia and the people in it to the rest of the country.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>lotsofpulp</author><text>&amp;gt; As to Ahmed Aubury, it’s an unfortunate fact that police fuckups and cover ups happen. But the media chooses how it frames any given such event. Notice how the media isn’t portraying the Uvalde police department’s efforts to cover things up as an indictment of the whole community?&lt;p&gt;The difference is that in Ahmed Aubury’s case, there was clear evidence of corruption along racial lines amongst local leaders, and which there is a long history of in the area Aubury was murdered in.&lt;p&gt;Obviously, this was not the case in Uvalde and so it would not be portrayed as such.</text></comment>
<story><title>The local news crisis is deepening America&apos;s divides</title><url>https://www.axios.com/2022/07/04/local-newspapers-news-deserts</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rayiner</author><text>I’ve spent quite a bit of time in South Georgia, as a visibly non-white guy with a Muslim surname. Folks were nicer to me there than in NYC or DC.&lt;p&gt;Majorie Taylor Greene was elected in 2021. She’s a &lt;i&gt;reaction&lt;/i&gt; to national media efforts that started with the governor’s race in 2018 to paint half of Georgia as “deplorables.” People are tribal. When attacked from outside, they’ll close ranks.&lt;p&gt;As to Ahmed Aubury, it’s an unfortunate fact that police fuckups and cover ups happen. But the media chooses how it frames any given such event. Notice how the media isn’t portraying the Uvalde police department’s efforts to cover things up as an indictment of the whole community? Do you think it has nothing to do with the community being 80% Hispanic in addition to the police chief? If the community and shooter had been white, we would have been treated to story after story about how “mass shootings are a manifestation of white supremacy.”</text></item><item><author>lotsofpulp</author><text>&amp;gt; They made Georgia out to be an unreformed Confederate backwater:&lt;p&gt;Electing Marjorie Greene Taylor and the coverup attempt around this killing might have contributed.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Murder_of_Ahmaud_Arbery&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Murder_of_Ahmaud_Arbery&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Although, I would not say rural areas of GA are special in being unreformed Confederate backwaters.</text></item><item><author>rayiner</author><text>The nationalization of news and politics in a country of 330 million people is toxic. We’re one country but we don’t share a single set of values. Even the notion of “blue America” and “red America” is misleading. What would be unremarkable in San Francisco would raise eyebrows in Baltimore.&lt;p&gt;I noticed this acutely living in Atlanta for the better part of a decade. Politics was not a big deal when I lived there. Atlanta was “blue” and the rest of the state was “red” but politics was forward looking and productive. The mayor when I was there, Shirley Franklin, was truly put the city above partisanship. A Democrat, she endorsed Mary Norwood, an independent, in 2017, because the Democratic candidate was a protege of a mayor she believed to have been corrupt: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.wabe.org&amp;#x2F;former-atlanta-mayor-shirley-franklin-endorses-mary-norwood&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.wabe.org&amp;#x2F;former-atlanta-mayor-shirley-franklin-e...&lt;/a&gt;. She waved aside criticism suggesting that she (a Black woman) should have endorsed the Black Democratic candidate instead of Norwood, a white woman.&lt;p&gt;Then in 2018 all hell broke loose when Georgia’s governor’s race became the subject of national attention. The state became a battleground in a proxy war between New York and Mississippi. Racialist rhetoric reached a fever pitch in the New York Times and Washington Post (but notably, the Atlanta Journal Constitution was far more prudent). They made Georgia out to be an unreformed Confederate backwater, instead of a state that’s the destination for huge numbers of Black residents leaving California, Illinois, and New York, attracted by plentiful jobs, low taxes, and an excellent public university system. The national media completely misrepresented Georgia and the people in it to the rest of the country.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>justin66</author><text>As someone with family from the Dalton area, I would warn against trivializing the difference between Greene&amp;#x27;s district (NW corner of the state) and places where sane people tend to congregate in larger numbers. People I love have lived there, but it&amp;#x27;s exactly the kind of place where three out of four people would think voting for Marjorie Taylor Greene is a good idea.&lt;p&gt;Marietta is a cultural Mecca, comparatively, not to mention Atlanta.</text></comment>