Flag wins, opponents get coverage
Robert Stacy McCain
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
April 20, 2001

The people of Mississippi voted by a nearly 2-to-1 margin Tuesday to keep their 1894 state flag, Confederate symbol and all, but most Americans heard only from the losing side of the fight.

Accounts in the national press dwelled on arguments by opponents of the Confederate-themed banner, who had hoped Mississippians would choose a new design approved by a state flag commission.

In a news story Wednesday, the New York Times said the "divisive symbol" is blamed for "retarding the state's economic progress . . .by projecting a retrograde, backwater image." The Washington Post began its front-page story Wednesday by citing "criticism" that the old flag is "a hateful reminder of slavery and generations of racial oppression."

Similarly, Emily Wagster of the Associated Press repeated critics' claims that the old flag is "a symbol of past injustices, including beatings and lynchings by the Ku Klux Klan," while the new flag "would help move the state forward economically and socially."

The flag vote "forced the state to deal with unfinished business from its segregationist past," declared the first paragraph of the AP story that appeared Wednesday in many newspapers across the country.

The AP quoted flag opponents, including former Gov. William Winter and a University of Mississippi activist who called the Confederate emblem a symbol of "terror," but the only defender of the old flag quoted was a farmer named Terry Galey.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution devoted much of its Wednesday story on the vote to George Shelton, a political consultant to opponents of the old flag. According to reporter Marlon Manuel, Mr. Shelton discovered he "couldn't break generations of reverence for Mississippi's 107-year-old state flag any more than he could crumble bedrock with his bare hands."

Defenders of the old flag were represented by two quotes at the bottom of the story.

"Any effort to change anything is covered, somewhat disproportionately, about the folks who are trying to change it," said Mike King, public editor for the Journal-Constitution. "If it wasn't about the change, we probably wouldn't be writing about it. . . . The folks who are defending the flag, or trying to keep the status quo, are almost by definition not going to get [as much] coverage."

But a preponderance of coverage for the losing side of a lopsided vote -- 65 percent of Mississippians voted to keep the old flag -- defies common sense, said Rich Noyes of the Media Research Center.

"If the story is about a state choosing to keep its old flag by a 2-to-1 margin, if it was my job to explain why the people had done that, I would quote more people who had voted to keep the old flag," said Mr. Noyes, director of media analysis for the Virginia-based watchdog group.

"It sounds to me as though the AP story was more designed to castigate Mississippi for voting the wrong way than to explain why they voted the way they did," Mr. Noyes said.

Kristin Gazlay of the Associated Press said the intent of the coverage "was not to take any point of view."

Comments from flag opponents were meant to address the "question of whether [the flag vote] would have an adverse effect on the state," said Miss Gazlay, a deputy managing editor for the AP.

The AP story went far afield to portray the Mississippi vote as "part of a larger debate across the South over how to deal with its troubled racial history," citing an unrelated trial in Birmingham, Ala., of a man accused in a 1963 church bombing.

"The only thought there was to put the vote in the context of other related things that are happening in the South," Miss Gazlay said.

Chris Chamberlin of Jackson, Miss., said he was mystified by the press coverage.

"I really can't explain it. I guess because it sells," he said. "I used to think that the media had a liberal agenda," said Mr. Chamberlin, chairman of the Mississippi League of the South, which supported the old flag. "And then I started talking to liberals, and they think the media has a right-wing agenda. So I am forced to draw the conclusion that a newspaper is a business and they have a product to sell, and they have to take it from an interesting angle that sells papers."

And it's not just the national media, he says, citing the local newspaper, the Jackson Clarion-Ledger.

"The headlines are mostly about groups that supported a new flag and how they think this is going to hurt business," said Mr. Chamberlin, who dismissed threats of boycotts led by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

"You can boycott a product, because there's always another brand - if you don't like Coke, there's Pepsi," he said. "But it's hard to boycott a whole state. It just doesn't make much sense to do that."

Copyright © 2002 News World Communications, Inc. All rights reserved.

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