CNN, Where's the Intergity? Failures of the Media, Case File #101

This afternoon when I went on the homepage of CNN, I noticed the top story headline was "Oscars: Where's the Diversity". I clicked on it and read about how there were no black actors nominated this year and how there was no female director amongst the five Best Director nominees.

To understand how ridiculous this story is, all you have to do is read some of the comments provided at the end of the article. Here are a few of them:

Wonderful! Another race-baiting story making headlines on CNN's website.

Another race baiting article from CNN. Shocking. Say, if we now have a quota for Oscars, can we also have one for the NBA All-Stars as well? Nobody's complaining about that one... 

I didn't know that a woman winning for Best Director last year meant that another woman had to be nominated this year. I guess we should be happy a one-armed Filipino with a speech impediment didn't win last year - where would we have come up with another one of those?

Shame on CNN and its author for writing this article. The movies nominated deserve to be nominated. And the races of the crew are more coincidence than a sign of bias. Shame of CNN for trying to fabricate and contentious story that's not even there.

Here's an idea: Maybe the best movies of the year weren't made by women/African Americans? Last year Kathryn Bigelow won best director for "The Hurt Locker", and rightfully so. Mo'Nique won for her role in "Precious", and rightfully so. They didn't win because of their gender or their skin color.

The line that pisses me off the most? "Javier Bardem, who is up for best actor for his role in "Biutiful,' is a Spaniard and therefore European".
So Bardem is denied his heritage because it's on a particular continent? If that's the case, why isn't CNN crapping their pants because "There's only one European nominated"? They aren't. Because there's no "story" to it.
Idiots.

So all Europeans are white? Now who's racist, Lisa (the writer of the CNN article)?

When are you going to get it that no one F*%#ing cares what color, race or gender the actors are. If they are the best, they deserve it and those 5 actors were the best of last year without a doubt. Should Denzel get nominated for his "stellar" performance in Unstoppable? Don't you realize that you are adding to the racism. When I saw those nominees. I didn't see color. I saw 5 great performances. When you saw it you saw 5 white males. Who's the bigot? I think it's you!

I'm a person of color and I feel really insulted that this writer is suggesting minorities should get special look or treatment. We do not need affirmative action on Oscar nominations, so if this year doesn't have too many films of diversity to consider so be it. There's NO special category for film made or starred by People of Color!! 

It's pretty intense stuff there, and those are the tamer comments from the site.

There's another article online (I think it's from moviefone) that blatantly asks "Why Are There No Black Actors Nominated?" or somewhere along those lines. I agree with the commenters and believe that the media is trying to enforce prejudice amongst its readers. I don't see anyone complaining about the lack of Latinos or Asians in the acting categories. The writer of the CNN article believed that last year's Oscars set a "high bar" on diversity that the Academy should force themselves to reach that bar.


It also pisses me off that "diversity" is only seen by this writer as racial diversity. Has seen even seem this fucking list of nominees?! You have a movie based on the founders of Facebook, something that wasn't a part of millions of people's lives 5 years ago going by against a historical drama about a King of England, a sci-fi blockbuster with an original story(an original story! Hollywood doesn't even bother doing that anyone. Look at the nominees and winners of the Best Original Screenplay Oscar over the past decade. Almost all of them are scripts from independent films, Pixar, or films made outside the United States) that made people think, and a comedy about a lesbian couple and their family.

I understand that opportunities for minorities in Hollywood are still slim but it's better than it was twenty, thirty years ago. Tyler Perry and Oprah Winfrey own their own TV studios. One of the most popular late-night hosts is of Mexican descent (George Lopez) and another one is a female (Chelsea Handler). That wasn't around five years ago.


I'm disappointed that CNN felt the need to feature a story that has a writer shouting that minorities are being neglected by the Academy. Don't they know that President Obama is in Wisconsin today or that the ousted dictator of Tunisia is a wanted criminal?