Race and Media: The Enduring Life of the Moynihan Report

From the The Newsweek headline of August 9, 1965 was “New The Negro Family.” That year, headlines of virtually every major corporate media organ were to chorus with news reports heralding the announcement of a new ideological rationale for establishing policies on blacks. That rationale – the core of these news reports – was contained in the “Moynihan Report,” completed that same year. It “At the heart of the deterioration of the fabric of Negro society is the deterioration of the Negro family.” That conclusion was to be uncritically and swiftly adopted by corporate media, sealing its contribution to the capitalist ethos – that of maintaining the exploitative policies by dismissing the condition of blacks as an “inherent incapacity,” a “cultural dysfunction,” an “innate disorder,” or simply as a matter of “lifestyle.”