Review of The Seattle Times from a native Seattleite, person of color

Seattle's only remaining daily newspaper has a responsibility to provide balanced coverage.  It does not.

http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/seattle-activist-we-can-channel-our-anger-to-make-change-that-matters/

Even after the recent Dallas police massacre (or the murder of four Lakewood, WA police officers several years ago   by a black man), the Seattle Times refuses to present balanced coverage, even in a city which is 88% white, Asian, Hispanic, American Indian, Arab.

This is a betrayal of responsibility.

As a liberal myself and a person of color, I would like to suggest a radical notion:

The responsibility for decreasing the violence lie is a two-way street:  not just police reform but also greater community responsibility.**

If there is suspicion among blacks about police, there is also suspicion among police about blacks, statistics aside.

Maybe many citizens, not just the police, feel threatened--and for just cause--by certain behaviors, ones that are all too often exhibited by the very groups demanding to be heard and respected.

Grabbing microphones from other groups*, shouting in the faces of those who disagree with you, or lunging at them does not show respect.

But no one will dare express these opinions publicly, and certainly not in The Seattle Times (or Seattle Weekly, The Stranger).

What about a Seattle Times headline the next time, "Seattle police kill white man.  Another white man"?

What is clear in the Dallas and Lakewood murders is that the murderers did not even know the men and women they, respectively, targeted and killed.  These were deliberate acts of violence, not essentially any different from the massacre in the black church in South Carolina months earlier.

It is not clear at all or proven is that in Ferguson or elsewhere that the police who killed the black persons did so without any motivation other than racial hatred.  In fact, there is varying degrees of evidence, some strong, that the victims were suspects in a crime, even if the police over-reacted or used excessive force.

There is a big difference in the intentions in each case.

Have we all become cowards in our own city?


Where are other voices?    The Seattle Times is marginalizing, if not silencing, these voices, including other neglected minorities.

I feel marginalized and discriminated against by the Times.

Surely the mark of an open mind and heart is the willingness to consider an issue from more than one vantage point or the views of different races, backgrounds, etc..

I do not think theThe Seattle Times encourages bona fide diversity--just its own notion of "diversity"-- or divergent opinions.

(The same editorial columnists year after year...).

But I am not speaking of the editorials, but of the actual news coverage and the way it is presented.

I am not motivated at all to subscribe to The Seattle Times, even though I would very much like to be informed about what is going on locally..

The city where I was born and grew up deserves better,

And in these times, it is critical that the media provide balanced coverage rather than fan the flames of conflict by choosing to side with one group over another.



*  including grabbing microphones in 2016 in Seattle's Westlake Plaza (1) from Bernie Sanders organizers to disrupt a the candidate's first major rally there (Black Lives Matter) and (2) from Chinese-American speakers at a pro-NYC cop Peter Liang demonstration (black counter-protesters) from as well as, in the more distant past, (3) from someone no less than former Mayor Paul Schell and hitting him in the head with it [microphone]. causing head injury but not concussion.





**  Anti-violence and conflict resolution workshops are part of community accountability.  I have never heard of either being proposed in my home city as part of "the reform" that should be happening.