The Martin Luther King You Don't See on TV

[Jesus Malverde]

It's become a TV ritual: Every year in mid-January, around the time of Martin Luther King's birthday, we get perfunctory network news reports about "the slain civil rights leader."

The remarkable thing about this annual review of King's life is that several years — his last years — are totally missing, as if flushed down a memory hole.

What TV viewers see is a closed loop of familiar file footage: King battling desegregation in Birmingham (1963); reciting his dream of racial harmony at the rally in Washington (1963); marching for voting rights in Selma, Alabama (1965); and finally, lying dead on the motel balcony in Memphis (1968).

An alert viewer might notice that the chronology jumps from 1965 to 1968. Yet King didn't take a sabbatical near the end of his life. In fact, he was speaking and organizing as diligently as ever.

Almost all of those speeches were filmed or taped. But they're not shown today on TV.

Why?

It's because national news media have never come to terms with what Martin Luther King Jr. stood for during his final years.

http://fair.org/media-beat-column/the-martin-luther-king-you-dont-see-on-tv/

[msongs]

1. our corporate owned politicians would prefer you ignore the MLK economic equality bit nt

[Nye Bevan]

2. Well, nobody focuses very much on Babe Ruth's post-Yankees stint with the 1935 Boston Braves.

Is it fair to say that MLK's civil rights leadership had more of an impact than his speeches on the economy?

[Wilms]

3. ^