By Kyle Drennen | September 22, 2011 | 3:43 PM EDT

Update: Full transcript added.

During the weekly "Today's Professionals" panel discussion in the 9 a.m. ET hour of Thursday's NBC "Today," while on the subject of the execution of Troy Davis, attorney Star Jones used the opportunity to proclaim: "You're never going to see a rich, white man being put to death in the United States of America. That's not going to happen right now." [Audio available here]

The outburst was prompted when co-host and panel moderator Savannah Guthrie wondered: "Some people....think the system is rigged against the poor in our society, against African-Americans in particular, and I wonder what your view is of that?"

View video after the jump

By Alex Fitzsimmons | April 8, 2011 | 12:00 PM EDT

Previewing the network’s “Black Agenda” special, MSNBC anchor Andrea Mitchell dragged out one of the most liberal members of Congress on April 7 to demagogue Republican budget cuts as harmful to poor minority groups.

Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) turned what was supposed to be a conversation about the consequences of a government shutdown, which most members on both sides of the aisle want to avoid, into a screed against only $60 billion in cuts to non-defense discretionary spending.

“And so people need to know, people are going to bed hungry tonight,” fretted Lee, even though the government was still open yesterday and wouldn't close until at least tomorrow morning. “There will be more people poorer if the budget that the Republicans want passed gets passed.”

By Ken Shepherd | April 2, 2011 | 2:24 PM EDT

In her April 1 Washington Post story, staffer Krissah Thompson explored how the "mission" and "challenges" of the Congressional Black Caucus have "evolved" from its initial aim "to eradicate racism."

Yet nowhere in Thompson's 23-paragraph article is any mention of how the CBC has denied entry to prospective members on the basis of skin color, such as liberal Democrats Steve Cohen (Tenn.) and Pete Stark (Calif.).

Here's how Politico's Josephine Hearn reported on the controversy surrounding the former in January 2007:

By Kyle Drennen | August 4, 2010 | 5:50 PM EDT
Katie Couric, CBS On Monday's CBS Evening News, anchor Katie Couric praised the heroism of the New York City Fire Department but fretted: "...a federal judge says something is missing in their ranks: Diversity." Correspondent Jim Axelrod began a report on the topic by noting: "Fire Captain Paul Washington has a big problem with his department." Washington declared the FDNY to be "all-white, lily white."

Axelrod described how "Eight years ago, the fire department was 92 percent white and only 2.8 percent black, in a city that was 24 percent black. A disparity that remains largely unchanged." A sound bite was featured from Columbia Law School Professor Suzanne Goldberg, who like Couric, noted the department's heroism, but went on to describe the lack of diversity as a "singular embarrassment."

Touting how "a federal judge agreed" with Goldberg, Axelrod explained: "...the hiring test to become one of New York's bravest was not just discriminatory, but illegal. [The judge] ordered the city to fix it."

As Axelrod mentioned the judge's ruling, a few sample questions from the supposedly discriminatory test appeared on screen. One set of questions asked applicants to respond to a particular firefighting scenario: "What would be the most direct entrance for firefighters to take to save the children?...The probable cause of the fire was?...How many ways can firefighters enter the house?"
By Alex Fitzsimmons | July 22, 2010 | 3:16 PM EDT
An indignant Anderson Cooper railed against Andrew Breitbart with an uncharacteristic angry commentary at the top of his eponymous CNN program yesterday, calling the conservative activist a "bully," likening him to a "weasel," and accusing him of posting a video which was "clearly edited to deceive and slander [Shirley] Sherrod."

Admitting he has never met Breitbart, Cooper preached, "Watching him try to weasel his way out of taking responsibility for what he did to Ms. Sherrod today is a classic example of what is wrong with our national discourse."

After pointing out that Breitbart should have apologized for posting an out-of-context video that made Sherrod, a black woman working at the Department of Agriculture, appear racist toward white farmers, Cooper dismissed the publisher of BigGovernment.com as a ideologue who will never own his mistakes: "Today, Mr. Breitbart could have just apologized, said he was wrong, but he didn't. Bullies never do. And nor do ideologues in our divided country." It's strange that Cooper would demand honesty in our discourse and then suggest he's not one of those "ideologues." As if he never snarkily attacked "teabaggers."
By Matt Robare | July 22, 2010 | 2:22 PM EDT

New Black Panther Party logoThe ongoing controversy surrounding the actions of two members of the New Black Panther Party at a Philadelphia polling place during the last presidential election has become increasingly less about facts and more about opinions. The mainstream media ignored the story for so long, basically giving Fox News exclusive rights to deliver the story to a mass audience and now they’re incensed over Fox’s coverage.

On Sunday Washington Post ombudsman Andrew Alexander wrote “Indeed, until Thursday’s story, The Post had written no news stories about the controversy this year. In 2009, there were passing references to it in only three stories” and “For months, readers have contacted the ombudsman wondering why The Post hasn't been covering the case.” Alexander’s column prompted a response by Joel Meares in the Columbia Journalism Review. His point was that Fox News’ coverage cannot be trusted because of the channel’s alleged conservatism and, in a nice example of ideological bigotry, that the story is not worth being covered because conservatives are interested in seeing it covered.

He wrote “The story has been mostly told online and on TV by those whose political shadings have dictated the angle, and the content” and questions The Post’s motivation in publishing something its readers apparently want to read:

By Alex Fitzsimmons | July 20, 2010 | 6:16 PM EDT
On his July 20 afternoon program, Dylan Ratigan shouted down the Washington Examiner's J.P. Freire for challenging the MSNBC host's liberal orthodoxy and accusing him of giving more air time to the liberal panelist appearing opposite him.

Eschewing any sense of balanced reporting, Ratigan thundered: "I said I'm in charge of the show. I decide who I'll talk to. I might spend the entire time talking to Jonathan Capehart and not talk to you at all. And then you can choose never to come on my show again."

"I'm sorry, Jonathan was taking up a lot of my time earlier in the segment," explained Freire. "Look at the amount of time he's been talking and the amount of time I was talking."
By Noel Sheppard | July 5, 2010 | 5:24 PM EDT

If you were African-American living in the era of President Barack Obama, would you hate the Fourth of July because it reminded you of slavery and economic inequality?

You would if your name was Julianne Malveaux and you were the syndicated columnist that also serves as the president of Bennett College, the historically black women's school in Greensboro, North Carolina.

So disdainful of America's most-revered national holiday is Malveaux that she admitted in her July 2 USA Today op-ed, "I have never been big on the Fourth of July. Most years, I took great pleasure in reading the powerful Frederick Douglass speech, 'The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro.'"

Though written in 1852, this college president actually sees relevance to modern day America in these words:

By Ken Shepherd | May 20, 2010 | 12:21 PM EDT

A persistent meme of the liberal mainstream media this election year is that the Tea Party is steeped (pun not intended) in racism and/or neo-Confederate sympathies. Howard Fineman is more than happy to breathe new life in that storyline in yesterday's attack leveled at Kentucky Republican senatorial nominee Dr. Rand Paul in particular and Bluegrass State conservatives in general.

In his May 20 "Rand Paul and D.W. Griffith," blog post, the Newsweek staffer not-too-subtly compared Kentucky's Tea Party contingent of 2010 with the more racially-charged elements he perceived among some anti-busing opponents in the 1970s:

If Americans think of Kentucky at all, they tend not to regard it as part of the Deep South on racial matters: no history of water cannons fired at civil-rights demonstrators; the kind of place that gave the world a proud and defiant Muhammad Ali, not a brutal and racist Bull Connor.

But there is another Kentucky, one I witnessed as a reporter starting out there when court-ordered busing began in the 1970s. It is a border state with a comparatively tiny black population, and which, as a result, is way behind the times in accommodating itself to the racial realities of modern America.

By Colleen Raezler | April 23, 2010 | 10:21 AM EDT
The Pentagon rescinded the invitation of evangelist Franklin Graham to speak at its May 6 National Day of Prayer event because of complaints about his previous comments about Islam.

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation expressed its concern over Graham's involvement with the event in an April 19 letter sent to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. MRFF's complaint about Graham, the son of Rev. Billy Graham, focused on remarks he made after 9/11 in which he called Islam "wicked" and "evil" and his lack of apology for those words.

Col. Tom Collins, an Army spokesman, told ABC News on April 22, "This Army honors all faiths and tries to inculcate our soldiers and work force with an appreciation of all faiths and his past comments just were not appropriate for this venue."

By Noel Sheppard | December 6, 2009 | 11:31 AM EST

Associated Press headline:

Tiger’s Troubles Widen His Distance From Blacks

‘Two layers of suspicion ... one is the pattern in the race of his partners’

The article that followed labeled the golfer racist not only for "declin[ing] to identify himself as black," but also because of "the race of the women" he's involved with.

On top of this, the AP made the case that America's fascination with Woods's philandering is only because he's cheating with white women (h/t NB reader Matthew Noll):

By Jeff Poor | September 14, 2009 | 12:03 PM EDT

The National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA), also known as the Black Press of America, which is a non-partisan 501(c) 3 tax-exempt organization, has decided to show its disapproval of South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson's "You Lie" remarks by canceling a convention in the state.

"Rep. Wilson's remarks were racist, disrespectful and a disingenuous violation - not only of President Obama - but to the institution of the presidency and only solidified our position and the importance in not spending Black dollars where Black people are not respected," NNPA Chairman Danny J. Bakewell Sr. said in a statement.

The conference was scheduled for January according to Fox News. Bakewell said the 69-year-old organization, which includes 200 black community newspapers across the country, would exercise its ability to harm the state economically.