Former NBA great and TNT commentator Charles Barkley said the media do not “have clean hands” when it talks about race. He made his comments while discussing the George Zimmerman verdict and the media’s coverage of it on Thursday.
In an interview on CNBC, Barkley also called out the media for not having a “pure heart” when it comes to race.
“I don’t like when race gets out in the media because I don’t think the media has a pure heart [when discussing race],” Barkley said. “Racism is wrong in any shape or form. Sometimes when people talk about race, they act like only white people are racist, there are a lot black people that are racist.”
He again emphasized, “I don’t think the media has clean hands.”
Barkley said what bothered him the most about the trial was that the commentary about it gave “racist” whites and “racist” blacks opportunities to “vent their ignorance.”
He said many who commented–whether they were white or back–on the case have a “hidden agenda” and ultimately “their biases come out.”
As Breitbart News’ John Nolte has extensively documented, the mainstream press exploited Trayvon Martin’s death to advance their preferred narrative, on a national level, of a white man victimizing a black teen even though Zimmerman is a Hispanic.