... if you watch TV you STILL won't know why.
Incredibly,
this article was written in 1995--1995!--yet nothing has changed in terms of how the media cover the man.
It's become a TV ritual: Every year in mid-January, around the time of Martin Luther King's birthday, we get perfunctory network news reports about "the slain civil rights leader."
The remarkable thing about this annual review of King's life is that several years — his last years — are totally missing, as if flushed down a memory hole.
What TV viewers see is a closed loop of familiar file footage: King battling desegregation in Birmingham (1963); reciting his dream of racial harmony at the rally in Washington (1963); marching for voting rights in Selma, Alabama (1965); and finally, lying dead on the motel balcony in Memphis (1968).
An alert viewer might notice that the chronology jumps from 1965 to 1968. Yet King didn't take a sabbatical near the end of his life. In fact, he was speaking and organizing as diligently as ever.
Almost all of those speeches were filmed or taped. But they're not shown today on TV.
Why?
It's because national news media have never come to terms with what Martin Luther King Jr. stood for during his final years.
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So, what did he stand for?
Things too radical to appear on TV apparently.
Yet, he still has a national holiday and a monument on the mall in Washington, DC. Even as our actions as a nation dishonor what he stood for as a man, especially in those last two years of his life.
Read the rest to see what you are missing. Warning, you won't see this in the news today! Human rights ... economic justice ... redistribution of wealth ... anti-war ...
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Here is how he is being covered:
CNN:
His lesser-known gems
There are the iconic speeches and writings: "I Have a Dream" and "Letter From Birmingham Jail." But MLK's "overlooked gems" spotlight his hidden side.
FULL STORY
Fox:
Nothing. Literally nothing!
SIGAR
AP
Reuters
Reuters
Reuters
