Pinkerton: The media "like brown people" and "black people," but "what they really dislike, of course, is white people"

Summary: Referring to news coverage of the May 1 "Day Without Immigrants" demonstrations on Fox News Watch, Newsday columnist James P. Pinkerton claimed that "[t]he media like brown people, but they like black people more." He then added: "[W]hat they really dislike, of course, is white people."

Asserting on the May 6 edition of Fox News' Fox News Watch that a "racial typology -- brown, black, white -- was visible" in media coverage of the May 1 "Day Without Immigrants" demonstrations that took place throughout the country, political analyst and Newsday columnist James P. Pinkerton claimed that "[t]he media like brown people, but they like black people more." He then added: "[W]hat they really dislike, of course, is white people." When other panelists on the program challenged Pinkerton's "racial typology" allegation, he stated that he "stand[s] by it completely, in terms of the way the [volunteer border patrol group] Minutemen were covered."

From the May 6 edition of Fox News' Fox News Watch, also featuring host Eric Burns, American University professor Jane Hall, and media critic Neal Gabler:

HALL: I think there are a couple of things that I would like to see the media cover. One is the businesses that hire these workers. I mean, there's an unusual alliance here. And President Bush actually called this a "guest worker program." So if you're going to talk about language, he was presenting it that way. A lot of these people have stayed on past legal visas. That's a different category. And I think there's a lot that we're not seeing in the coverage only of this march.

PINKERTON: The media like brown people, but they like black people more. And so, therefore, the -- when Jesse Jackson and his -- some of these people are starting to worry about immigrants cutting away jobs from African Americans, that's one thing. But what they really dislike, of course, is white people. And so --

HALL: Oh, Jim. Oh, please. Please.

PINKERTON: -- in that sense, the -- the racial typology -- brown, black, white -- was visible there, and I think --

[crosstalk]

PINKERTON: I stand by it completely, in terms of the way the Minutemen were covered on this coverage. And anybody can watch --

GABLER: The Minutemen got a favorable article on the front page of The New York Times.

PINKERTON: The Minutemen get slammed --

[crosstalk]

HALL: And The New York Times covered the black question --

[crosstalk]

BURNS: Cal [Thomas, panelist], because you've been -- because you've been --

HALL: -- inaccurately.

—J.B.