FAIR Alert: Washington Post Sweeps Away Lott's Racist Record

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FAIR-L
Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting
Media analysis, critiques and activism

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2494

ACTION ALERT:
Washington Post Sweeps Away Lott's Racist Record

April 18, 2005

Mississippi Republican Senator Trent Lott's efforts to rehabilitate his
public image were given a valuable boost by the Washington Post, which ran
an uncritical profile in its April 14 edition.

Lott lost his position as Senate Majority Leader after comments he made at
a December 2002 party for retiring Senator Strom Thurmond were made
public. Lott saluted his home state's support for Thurmond's 1948 run for
the White House on a Dixiecrat platform staunchly supporting segregation
and opposing anti-lynching legislation:


"I want to say this about my state. When Strom Thurmond ran for president,
we voted for him. We're proud of him. And if the rest of the country had
followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these
years, either."


Post reporter Shailagh Murray recalled that outburst as being "what some
saw as nostalgic words about segregation." Of course, "some" would
interpret them that way-- namely, anyone who heard or read Lott's words,
and knew the history of Thurmond's campaign. But the Post chose not to
dwell on the past; instead, their article is a tribute to Lott's
perseverance: "It takes a certain determination for a politician to fall
so spectacularly from grace and then refuse to go away."

If Lott has detractors, readers of the Post certainly aren't aware of
them, since none are quoted. The closest the article comes to a critical
point of view is in the very last sentence, which alleges that some people
"who do not care for Lott" think he might be "engaging in advance damage
control."

While Lott's many critics go unmentioned, so does Lott's long history of
racist affiliation. The Post's headline, "Lott Puts 'Little Bump' Behind
Him," refers to Lott's own assessment of the Thurmond episode as a "little
bump" in his career. But this was not the first racist controversy for
Lott: In 1998, Lott's connections to the racist Council of Conservative
Citizens (CCC) were revealed by FAIR and several mainstream media
outlets-- including the Washington Post (12/16/98).

The CCC is the successor to the notorious white Citizens Councils, whose
history dates back half a century to the 1950s when the groups were
referred to as the "uptown Klan." In December 1998, Lott denied any
personal knowledge of the CCC, falsely claiming through a spokesperson
that his links to the group amounted to a single speech made over a decade
before he'd entered the Senate. But the facts showed otherwise: In 1992,
Lott praised the CCC as the keynote speaker at its national convention; in
1997, he met with top CCC leaders in his Senate office; his column
appeared throughout the 1990s in the group's newsletter, which once
published a cheerful photo of Lott with CCC members who were also his
close relatives. Lott was also the guest of honor at a 1982 banquet
hosted by a Mississippi chapter of the old white Citizens Councils.

And Lott's legislative record demonstrates that his connections to the CCC
were no fluke. In 1978, then-Representative Lott was behind a successful
effort to re-instate the citizenship of Confederate President Jefferson
Davis (Associated Press, 6/2/78). In 1981, Lott prodded the Reagan
administration into taking the side of Bob Jones University and other
segregated private schools that were suing the Internal Revenue Service to
restore tax exemptions withdrawn a decade earlier because of the schools'
discriminatory racial policies (Washington Post, 1/18/82).

In 1982 and 1990, Lott voted against extending the Voting Rights Act, the
law passed to insure that minorities-- especially Southern blacks-- had
access to the voting booth. In 1990, he voted against continuation of the
1964 Civil Rights Act, the crown jewel of civil-rights legislation that
desegregated education and public accommodations. In 1983 Lott voted
against a national holiday for Martin Luther King, Jr., and in 1994 he
voted to de-fund the MLK Jr. Holiday commission.

And Lott's 2002 support for Thurmond echoed a statement Lott made in 1980:
"You know, if we had elected 30 years ago, we wouldn't be
in the mess we are today."

None of this history is mentioned in the Post's fawning profile of Lott,
whom the paper calls "one of most of the colorful figures in the Senate."
In an interview on CNN (4/14/05), Lott called it "a very nice article."
Indeed, it's hard to see anything in the Post's profile that Lott would
find objectionable.


ACTION:
Ask the Washington Post why their profile of Trent Lott glossed over
Lott's racism-- ignoring the paper's own coverage of Lott's racist past.

CONTACT:
Washington Post
Michael Getler, Ombudsman
Phone: [phone]
mailto:[e-mail]


As always, please remember that your comments have more impact if you
maintain a polite tone.

Read the Post article at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A51374-2005Apr13.html