
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, April 2, 1995                   TAG: 9503310107
SECTION: HORIZON                    PAGE: G-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: MITCHELL L. MENDELSON, Roanoke
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

A REPORTER'S BIAS

As I waded through yard after repetitious yard of your "special report" on urban renewal in inner-city Roanoke (Jan. 29), I grew increasingly dismayed at your reporter's rank bias against the seemingly unmitigated evils of urban renewal and in favor of anyone with a sob story to tell about its supposedly damnable effects. Then I remembered: It is the self-appointed role of the American press to nurture every grievance and nurse every grudge held by black people against whites, to pick at the scab endlessly and clumsily, so that the wound of racial conflict and animosity can never heal.

But tell me: In all her exhaustive legwork, in all her dozens of interviews and hundreds of hours of effort, was your reporter unable to find a single black person in Roanoke who actually benefited from urban renewal? Perhaps someone who has a good job or a nice home or lives in a better neighborhood because of urban renewal? Presumably not, since finding such a person might mean your reporter would have to give some weight to a side of the story she preferred not to tell. Balancing the report with positive testimonials simply wasn't on the agenda. (Only in a few paragraphs of your companion editorial did I find any admission by your newspaper that the ultimately discredited urban renewal programs, for all their many shortcomings, might have done some good - even for the black people whom your reporter casts as hapless victims.)

There is a story to be told about the radical economic, physical and social transformation of these Roanoke neighborhoods, but a greater service would have been done (with no loss of black circulation) by telling it in a fair, balanced and unbiased manner.

by CNB