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Death by Journalism: One Teacher's Fateful Encounter With Political Correctness
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Death by Journalism: One Teacher's Fateful Encounter With Political Correctness
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by Jerry Bledsoe
Sales Rank : 685122
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Hardcover: 241 pages
Publisher: Down Home Press; 2nd edition March 2001
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1878086936
ISBN-13: 978-1878086938
Product Dimensions:
9.2 x 6.3 x 0.9 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
From Booklist
Jack Perdue, an amateur historian, developed a course on North Carolina's role in the Civil War for an adult education program at a small community college. Because the class was partially sponsored by the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV), a group devoted to Confederate history and the flag, it caught the attention of an ambitious young reporter. Never bothering to check the facts, the reporter alleged that the course defended slavery and taught that blacks were happy as slaves and fought for the Confederacy in significant numbers. The distorted news article sparked a firestorm of controversy and negative publicity, and triggered contentious debates between hate groups and civil rights advocacy groups. Bledsoe, a former reporter and best-selling author, retraces the events that led to national attention as the media blindly accepted and re-reported the original story. This book raises some important issues, especially our seeming reluctance to closely examine the history of American slavery. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Book Description
When Rhonda Winters, director of the Archdale campus of Randolph Community College, decided to offer an adult, community outreach course on the Civil War in North Carolina, she couldn't have imagined the storm of political correctness she was setting into motion and the nightmare it would bring.
The course was almost finished, and the students were enjoying it immensely, when a controversy-seeking reporter for the News & Record of Greensboro, who had entered the class without permission, clashed with instructors and students and wrote an article falsely claiming that the course was teaching that slaves in the South were happy.
Picked up by the Associated Press and reprinted worldwide, the article brought a barrage of vituperative news coverage and vilification to the college. Although students, instructors and college officials protested that the newspaper's sensational claims never happened, News & Record editors insisted that its articles were fair and accurate--even after evidence indicated otherwise.
The articles resulted in branding the college, students and instructors as racist, and brought about an investigation by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and the cancellation of the course.
In this engrossing, moving, and frightening account, national award-winning journalist and New York Times #1 bestselling author Jerry Bledsoe takes readers into the class to show what actually happened and behind the scenes as college officials, students, and instructors attempted to deal with the crisis. But more than that, it tells the story of an honorable man, Jack Perdue, the course instructor, a local historian and preservationist, who died during the controversy. A man whom family, friends and students believe was destroyed by the news media.
Death by Journalism? raises important questions about free speech, academic freedom, political correctness, racial politics, and integrity of the news media. It should be required reading for journalism students.
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