THE MAYORS RACE - CAMPAIGN COVERAGE AND THE DISCOURSE OF RACE IN AMERICA 3 LARGEST CITIES

In the coverage of recent mayoral campaigns in Chicago, New York and L os Angeles, objective news reporting worked as an ideological force. F irst, the press viewed the campaigns as horse races driven by the logi c of racial strategy, and the urban public as fundamentally constitute d by racial and ethnic blocs. Particularly in its fascination with Pol ling, campaign coverage focused on carefully delineating those blocs a nd obsessively measuring the gaps between them. Second, campaign cover age naturalized this view when it uncritically accepted race and ethni city as appropriate tools of practical electoral politics. through its emphasis on strategy, the news implied that mayoral politics is condu cted in the most reasonable way-perhaps, the only way-possible. Finall y, and ironically, campaign coverage was ideological in its persistent disregard of the social issues for which race really does matter. The news constantly asserted that race is the only real issue but rarely reported on why that is and what is to be done. Since this discourse a dheres to the conventions of modern journalism and seems to be grounde d in reality, it is particularly pernicious: It interacts with and hel ps maintain a basic reality in which race is intrinsic to politics. Th e ideological import and the practical consequence of this discourse i s the construction of the terrible inevitability of racial division.