On Monday, South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley announced that she was appointing U.S. Congressman Tim Scott to the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Jim DeMint. When he is sworn in on January 3, Scott will be the lone African American of either party in the Senate but this historic news didn’t seem to interest ABC or CBS as neither mentioned the news that night.
Unsurprisingly, both ABC and CBS had segments on gun control during their respective Monday, December 17 broadcasts. But not a word about Senator to be Tim Scott was uttered.
One would think that the “diversity” of this story alone would be of interest to the big networks. After all, we have a female Governor who is the daughter of Sikh immigrants appointing the only African American to the Senate. We also have a Senate seat that is famed for having once been occupied by Strom Thurmond, a one-time Dixiecrat, segregationist turned repentant Republican. And we have the first black Senator from a southern state since Blanche Bruce of Mississippi in 1881. This is almost “diversity” overload.
Perhaps one mitigating factor for the old networks is that all of this “diversity” was wrought by Republicans?
To its credit, NBC did spend some time on this historic appointment. A whole 24 seconds.
Brian Williams reported,
Congressman Tim Scott of South Carolina is reportedly about to become the first black Senator from the South since reconstruction. The Governor of South Carolina, Nikki Haley, has chosen Scott to replace Senator Jim DeMint. Scott is 47, he has a strong conservative voting record, an inspiring personal story. The official announcement apparently comes tomorrow. There are four years remaining in Senator DeMint’s term.
Certainly the aftermath of the school shooting in Newton, Connecticut is still huge news. But that two of the big three networks couldn’t even find a minute to report on the historic appointment of Tim Scott to the Senate is rather telling.
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