It’s hard not to be a little bit amused by the latest hypocrisy coming from MSNBC’s Joy Reid. For those who don’t know, Reid has been one of the loudest voices on cable news when it comes to manufactured racism, and her latest theory is a real doozy.
According to Reid, the media has once again proven how racist it is because it has extensively covered Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, while conflicts in non-white parts of the world don’t get the same attention or warm and fuzzy memes on social media.
Reid cited the ongoing civil war and humanitarian crisis in Yemen as a prime example. “We haven’t witnessed the same type of solidarity for the Yemenis as we do for the Ukrainians. We don’t see historic sanctions or global campaigns, corporations like Airbnb and Netflix taking a stand,” she observed last week on Monday’s episode of her show The ReidOut. “The coverage of Ukraine has revealed a pretty radical disparity in how human Ukrainians look and feel to Western media compared to their browner and blacker counterparts.”
It’s too bad that Reid doesn’t have a platform for calling attention to stories she says don’t get enough attention.
Oh wait, she does. She just doesn’t use it. While Reid herself has extensively covered Ukraine on her show The ReidOut, based on a search of transcripts conducted by Mediaite, she hasn’t mentioned the Yemeni civil war for at least six months and hasn’t mentioned Yemen since her rant about how ignored it was last week.
I guess that means Reid, like everyone else in the media, is rayyyyciiiiistt.
Or maybe it’s just Reid, because according to Mediaite Yemen did get covered over the past week on MSNBC’s PoliticsNation, Ayman, Morning Joe, The Rachel Maddow Show, The 11th Hour, and All In. CNN also discussed the Yemen conflict on Inside Politics, New Day, and CNN Newsroom Live, as did Fox News, which covered the story on The Five, America’s Newsroom, Fox and Friends, and Fox and Friends First.
So why didn’t Reid cover it, even with just a passing mention? Did anything or anyone stop her? Of course not. She probably just googled something to be outraged about that supported her “let’s get angry about racism” story of the moment.
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When it comes to covering stories she thinks are important but don’t get attention, Reid always defaults to complaining about the lack of coverage rather than being proactive and using her platform to make these stories matter more.
Last year, Reid complained that coverage of the Gabby Petito case was essentially racist. “The Petito family certainly deserves answers and justice,” she graciously conceded, “but, the way this story captivated the nation has many wondering why not the same media attention when people of color go missing? Well, the answer actually has a name: Missing White Woman Syndrome, the term coined by the late and great Gwen Ifill to describe the media and public fascination with missing white women like Laci Peterson or Natalee Holloway while ignoring cases involving people of color.”
And, as with the civil war in Yemen, Reid herself never mustered enough outrage to cover the stories of minorities who went missing on The ReidOut. Perhaps she couldn’t fit them in between all the coverage of stories like George Floyd, Jacob Blake, or Breonna Taylor, all of whom were obviously white, given the amount of attention they got.
Let’s face it: Joy Reid is just an opportunist who only cares about black lives when they help her ratings.