CBS took the UN's racism conference quite seriously.
While a CBS Evening News story noted how slavery is ongoing in
Africa, the report was mostly devoted to relaying the arguments
from three people about how the U.S. should pay reparations for
slavery. The three statesmen quoted by CBS's Elizabeth Palmer:
Fidel Castro, Jesse Jackson and Charles Ogletree.
CBS Evening News anchor Thalia Assuras set up the September 1
story: “At a UN conference on racism being held in South Africa,
Arafat today condemned what he called Israel's racist practices,
but stopped short of calling Israel a racist state. The conference
today also heard a lively debate over slavery and heard calls for
the United States to pay reparations. Elizabeth Palmer reports.”
Narrating from London, Palmer began her Saturday piece: “Until
just a few months ago, 17-year-old Mariama Oumarou was a slave,
bought for $300 by a Nigerian man who abused her. 'I was beaten
because I was just a slave,' she tells delegates to the UN
Conference Against Racism. Oumarou managed to escape, but she left
behind friends who remain slaves. These are modern victims of
slavery, which still goes on in parts of Asia and Africa, but it's
the issue of American slavery, which ended more than a century
ago, that's taken center stage here. Leaders like Fidel Castro are
calling on the United States to make reparations, to pay for its
past. 'Cuba supports the idea of reparations as an unavoidable
moral duty,' he said. The United States fought hard to keep
reparations for slavery off the conference agenda, but
African-Americans here have made sure the controversial idea is
getting lots of attention.”
Reverend Jesse Jackson: “The idea of reparations time has
come. It will not go back. The question left is how and in what
form it will take place.”
Palmer: “Charles Ogletree Jr., professor of law at Harvard,
says that America has to recognize its responsibility, even if it
costs billions of dollars.”
Professor Charles Ogletree Jr.: “We will make sure that people
understand that a debt is owed to the Africans who died in
America.”
Palmer concluded: “But there's no consensus on reparations,
not in the United States and not at this conference. Few white
Americans support the idea of payment and neither do some African
leaders. Meanwhile, the rhetorical battle over historic slavery
threatens to overshadow the plight of Mariama and the thousands of
modern slaves who are not lucky enough to escape. Elizabeth
Palmer, CBS News, London.”
Overshadowed because reporters like Palmer give credibility to
the rantings of Fidel Castro about a “moral duty.”
ABC's Richard Gizbert reflected a more reasoned take on he
conference the next night on World News Tonight/Sunday. After
recounting how the conference turned into a fight over Israel,
with a conference resolution calling Israel a “racist, apartheid
state” guilty of “war crimes and acts of genocide,” while calls
were made for reparations by the U.S., Gizbert concluded: “In the
end, the UN's anti-racism effort was hijacked by those with
historical scores to settle — consumed by the very hatreds it
sought to eradicate.”
(This update courtesy of the Media Research Center.)
