April 4, 2001

3:58 AM

Human Rights Watch report on USA.Rather serious charges against the US government. Nothing new of course, but how come items like this are never discussed in major US media? "As in previous years, serious human rights violations were most apparent in the criminal justice system-including police brutality, discriminatory racial disparities in incarceration, abusive conditions of confinement, and state-sponsored executions, even of juvenile offenders and the mentally handicapped. But extensively documented human rights violations also included violations of workers' rights, discrimination against gay men and lesbians in the military, and the abuse of migrant child farmworkers. "
posted by talos (4 comments total)

"how come items like this are never discussed in major US media?"
I think you answer your own question in your list of the types of human rights violations identified in the report. minorities and people in jail are not a high priority for the U.S. media.
posted by Outlawyr at 6:22 AM on April 4, 2001

how come items like this are never discussed in major US media?

What media are you looking at? Everyone of those topics has been covered - sometimes ad nauseum - in major media outlets in the past year.
posted by m.polo at 6:37 AM on April 4, 2001

The "news" on for-profit networks should have to carry the disclaimer: For Entertainment Purposes Only. It's all about ratings, and Joe Sixpack absolutely does not want to hear about complex problems, especially when he could be watching video of the latest car chase or police standoff. In an effort to be well informed, I rely on NPR, PBS, the BBC World Service, and the CBC. It's pretty sad living in a place where the vast majority of people are poorly informed about their world, usually by choice.
posted by gimli at 7:17 AM on April 4, 2001

m.polo:
I was referring to the HRW report itself. Whereas if HRW had a report on human rights abuses in China, US media would definitely notice and mention it, in this case the report was not even discussed. A search on cnn.com reveals no matching document on the US, but plenty referring to HRW reports on other countries. A similar search in the NYT also reveals not a single article on this report (although it may be mentioned inside the older for-pay articles, I can't be certain.)
Although particular issues discussed in the HRW report might have been touched on by major US news sources, the fact remains that when a respectable, and often-quoted in other circumstances, human rights organization
publishes a report that is critical of human rights violations in the US, it is simply not newsworthy.
posted by talos at 7:58 AM on April 4, 2001