As the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination approaches, NBC News is airing a two-hour documentary about how MLK and the civil rights movement masterfully used the media – especially photos and video – to help further its cause. Called “Hope & Fury: MLK, the Movement and the Media,” the special will air on Saturday, March 24, at 8 p.m.
It features interviews with more than two dozen experts, reporters and contemporaneous players such as Rep. John Lewis, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, C.T. Vivian, Dan Rather and Tom Brokaw. It’s narrated by “NBC Nightly News” anchor Lester Holt.
Hank Klibanoff, the Pulitzer-Prize winning author of “The Race Beat” who now runs the Georgia Cold Cases Civil Rights Project at Emory, is frequently featured in the documentary since his entire book was about the subject at hand: how the press covered the civil rights movement, both the black and white press primarily during the 1950s and 1960s.
Author Taylor Branch in the special called the decision of mainstream press in the 1950s to ignore black lives as “galling… the level or disregard and oblivion that was in the media at that time.”
It took weeks before national press even paid attention to the Montgomery bus boycott, for instance. And white media often didn’t even bother to reference black people by name, as this would be indicate of a sign of respect.
King and his peaceful protests eventually gained the attention of white media thanks in part to the success of the Montgomery boycott. The city relented and allowed integrated buses.
The special then explores the media coverage of the Little Rock school integration battle, the lunch counter protests and the Freedom Fighters. King’s media savvy was undeniable. Con't..
http://radiotvtalk.blog.ajc.com/2018/03/22/preview-of-nbcs-50th-anniversary-special-about-martin-luther-king-jr-media-and-the-civil-rights-movement/
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