Race, Politics and Political Fiction Writing

I’m not here to defend Sally Kern, the Republican state representative from Oklahoma or to get into a discussion of affirmative action or even racism.

I’m here to talk about basic journalistic malpractice.

Kern has been hammered in national media over remarks she made during a debate in the Oklahoma legislature over affirmative action. According to a staff report on Tulsa World:

During a debate on affirmative action Wednesday night, Kern said: “We have a high percentage of blacks in prison, and and and and and him that’s tragic, but are they in prison just because they are black or because they don’t want to study as hard in school? I’ve taught school, and I saw a lot of people of color who didn’t study hard because they said the government would take care of them.” Kern also said women earn less than men because “they tend to spend more time at home with their families.” Kern apologized for the comments the next day. [my emphasis]

The NAACP called her to resign. The story has been written up on sites as wide ranging as The Root and the Huffington Post and Perez Hilton. all repeating the quote from Tulsa World, word for word.

Except – that’s not what she said. And there’s no indication in any of those publications that the quote isn’t what Rep. Kern said.

Here’s the actual quote from Rep. Kern’s speech.

We have heard tonight already that in prison there’s more black people. Yes, there are, and that’s tragic. It’s tragic that our prisons here in Oklahoma, what are they, 99% occupancy? But the other side of the story perhaps we need to consider is, is this just because they’re black, that they’re in prison? Or could it be because they didn’t want to work hard in school? And white people often times don’t want to work hard in school, or Asians often times, but a lot of times that’s what happens — I taught school for twenty years and I saw a lot of people of color who didn’t want to work as hard; they wanted it given to them. As a matter of fact I had one student who said “I don’t need to study. You know why? The government’s is going to take care of me.” That’s kind of revealing there. Equal opportunity, not equal results.

See for yourself — this is video of the entire debate on affirmative action. Sally Kern starts speaking at about 1:16 – her quote starts at about 1:20.

Two key differences…

• In her real quote, Kern brings up white and Asian as well – this is completely dropped from the Tulsa World “quote”.
• In her speech Kern mentions an antidote where one student says “the government is going to take care of me”. In the Tulsa World version, this is changed to “a lot of people” making a specific statement.

Whatever you think of Kern’s actual statement, it’s clear that Tulsa World didn’t print her actual statement and made no indication that the quote attributed to her had significant edits and omissions to the point of creating entirely new sentences. They didn’t indicate that it was a summary or a reporters interpretation. It’s a direct attribution.

This kind of deliberate mangling of the quote is far beyond the excerpting that is often called selective editing in attacks on sites like this one by groups such as Media Matters. We can’t really debate issues if they are being misrepresented.