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PARTING SHOT DAVID DUKE’S MEDIA PROBLEM- AND EVERYONE’S

PARTING SHOT DAVID DUKE’S MEDIA PROBLEM- AND EVERYONE’S
By Chris Tucker |

A lot of this is contextual,” ex-American Nazi, ex-Klansman and ex-plastic surgery patient David Duke told The Dallas Morning News recently.

Duke, treading carefully, was dis-cussing the crime rate among blacks. He was clearly worried that his remarks, if taken out of context, would read as if he believed African-Americans were genetically predisposed to anti-social behavior. In talking about context, however, he also seized upon a major problem for the media. “They took that out of context” has got to be the most frequently heard knock on the press. Duke is dangerously wrong about many things. But even a blind hog finds the trough once in a while.

Among Duke watchers nationally, the article was seen as a turning point, one of those gotcha! moments. According to the frontpage headline (“Duke says he’s proud of years as Klan chief”), and the authorities quoted, Duke was shucking off the more moderate, mainstream disguise he’s worn since being elected to the Louisiana House of Representatives in 1989 and slipping on the old cross-burner robes again. Here, the civil rights leaders and hate-group experts said, was the real Duke-ugly and unregenerate.

Not surprisingly, the next day Duke blasted the article as “a pack of lies.” He allowed that the story was factually accurate, but, he told the News, “You do quote my sentences in half.” Reacting to Duke’s charges, the News then printed lengthy excerpts from the interview, so that readers could decide for themselves whether Duke’s lament had merit.

The transcripts show that Duke certainly helped hang himself. There is enough backward, provincial whining about the white man’s burden in that interview to justify anyone’s scorn. If there is a case to be made for what Duke calls “European values.” the salesman should not be Duke, who oozes love for what he calls “our arts, our literature, music” etc., but whose “European” role model often seems to be Hitler, not Beethoven or Goethe. And it’s hard to fathom what Duke means when, asked if he has ever been a racist, he answers, “In a negative sense, yes.” Is there a positive sense in which one can be a racist?

But that’s not the only tale the Duke transcripts tell. Compare them with the quotes chosen for the original story, and you’ll find yourself in the uncomfortable position of agreeing with David Duke: He was taken out of context in several ways.

● On genetic differences among races: Sounding more like a cautious sociology prof than a flaming bigot, Duke says, “We all have genetic differences-that’s why there are different races-I don’t think one race is superior to another in any sort of intrinsic sense or any sort of real sense.” This line, which contradicts white supremacist theory, does not appear in the News story. Duke then spins into left field with a stereotypical remark about blacks as a group liking athletics. “They tend to be faster, fast reflex-type sports.” This line appears in the story, showcased in a pullout box.

● On genetic engineering: “The only kind of genetic engineering that I would endorse,” Duke says, would be to “eliminate diseases” or to make sure that a child “won’t have some sort of hereditary disease.” Benign stuff, but it doesn’t appear in the first News story. Instead, the writer says that Duke “continues to believe in the importance of genetic engineering” and offers two ominous quotes from 1985 and 1989, in which Duke does sound Nazi-ish on genetics. The past statements are scary and may well represent the “real,” unborn-again Duke. But shouldn’t his current thinking-or what he claims is his thinking-be part of the story? If not, it would make more sense to skip the interview and rely on the clip files.

●On black crime: The first story quotes Duke as saying. “This idea that blacks tend to act more in anti-social ways, well, I think crime figures tend to bear that out. That’s not stating anything other than what the fact is.” But Duke says something else that didn’t make the article: “I don’t think the verdict is in on whether that’s anything other than environmental.” Perhaps readers would have been confused to hear Duke echoing what liberals have long said-that much crime is a desperate reaction to a violent, stunting environment in which people lack education and hope.

This is not to defend the indefensible Duke, who provides a more marketable cover for racism and ethnic chauvinism. Nor is the point to drub the News for doing what every publication, including this one, has done at one time or another-treating someone less than fairly. What’s far more important than Duke is the prickly problem of context.

In the strictest sense, almost everyone who is interviewed is taken “out of context.” That’s because an interview is a context, and writing a story means creating a new context for the remarks. By the time the story is turned in to editors, the interview exists in a new context; when the story appears in print or on the air, the remarks are in yet another context, now edited and usually, to the writer’s chagrin, shortened. Rare is the story that contains everything the subject said; all writers and editors prune out redundancies, rambling anecdotes and the general uhmmm-say-uh-see-whaddameanis static that crackles through any conversation.

A story containing the full context of every original interview would be impossibly long and often incoherent. What readers want and deserve is a story that is faithful to the spirit of the original context and reflects the balance and shape of the interview. That’s not always easy to do, especially when the subject is a politician who is busy reassembling his past for mass consumption.

Sometimes the press gets it wrong and does violence to the original context in which the words were spoken. Sometimes we get it right, but still get blasted by peo ple who wish they hadn’t been so honest. What’s at stake here is not the tattered reputation of a blow-dried demagogue, but the public’s faith in the media and the ongo ing struggle of imperfect people to do a perfect job-issues that will live on long after David Duke becomes an ugly footnote to history.

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