Our multi-award-winning local newspaper, The Reading Eagle, continues to show that it is clueless about covering important social issues with its front-page story Sunday, “Special Report: Mass Incarceration.”
A glance at this awfully insensitive and moronic headline on the sidebar demonstrates that the news staff is in over its head. Former Eagle copy chiefs must be spinning in their graves or dreaming of cold ale.
Take a close look at the entire main article, though, as intelligent readers should, and you can see that this story would get a C- in any composition course.
First, what’s the purpose?
A) Examine the injustice of racially discriminatory incarcerations.
B) Examine the problems caused by America putting a higher percentage of people in jail than every country except China and Iran.
C) Sell papers by publishing a voyeuristic story [with a cheerful ending] about the very troubled life of a middle-aged black convict who discovered his mother’s dead body when he was 9 and went on to deal with violence, crack addiction, childhood sex abuse and 18 siblings.
D) Get a head start on next year’s Keystone prizes.
And what’s the news? God, wouldn’t it be scary if the Eagle newsroom just found out that “mass incarceration of people with such backgrounds, most of them minorities, has become a national issue”?
But it wouldn’t be a surprise, looking at the homogenous group of Eagle award winners.
The Eagle could inform readers if a higher or lower rate of black men are locked up in our community, compared to the state or America or similar counties.
Or it could trace the numbers over time to see if they are getting better or worse here in Berks.
Then it could ask District Attorney John Adams, who is responsible for putting people in jail in Berks, if it is a problem here.
It could ask Reading Police Chief Bill Heim if his officers are arresting too many black men just because they are black.
It could write about drug-abuse treatment options. Are there waiting lists? If there is a demand, why aren’t there more? How many methadone centers are there?
The Eagle’s list of causes for mass incarceration sound like a bad Wikipedia article: lack of role models, lack of home learning, missing parents, sex abuse as a child, drug abuse, the war on drugs, and “untreated mental health issues.”
The Eagle does take pains to be fair about all this:
“Conventional wisdom sometimes indicts Republicans as chief promoters of mass incarceration. Angus Love, executive director of the Pennsylvania Institutional Law Project, which provides legal assistance to inmates in civil cases, said Democrats are equally to blame.”
“ 'This mass incarceration movement wouldn't have happened without their assistance,’ " Love said.
If you want a good article about mass incarceration, try “Why mass incarceration defines us as a society."
It’s about Bryan Stevenson, who fought to bar mandatory life sentences without parole for minors.
Here's the Eagle's take on that idea:
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