Last Wednesday, 2,400 copies of UC Berkeley's Daily Californian, were stolen to protest the paper's alleged racism. On Thursday, it happened again. The Daily Cal's editor in chief isn't mincing words: "There seemed to be a concerted effort to censor the Daily Cal and deprive the campus community of an important forum for news and opinion," he said. Last Friday's Daily Cal ran a number of letters to the editor: they included comments from people who were harshly critical of the paper as well as from people who support its editorial decisionmaking.

This item has not gotten one but deserves a comment. Follow the link and read the first LTE. Apparently, a black Cal football player was arrested for rape, and as part of the story the Daily Cal printed his photo; I believe this is what the author of the first letter refers to. Is there more to the story? Has there been a pattern of other (e.g. white) students being arrested for rape with no photo being published? No evidence of this is given. Note the complete illogic of the suggestion the paper "use a picture of a white student, in proportion to their numbers on campus". Huh? What purpose would that serve? One is left to conclude the only reason this letter was published is because the author identified herself as black; it certainly couldn't be because it offers intelligent commentary. As the final absurdity, anyone who reads newspapers knows that for the most part reporters and editors make an assiduous effort to expunge race/ethnicity from crime stories (in large part cowtowing to just this sort of sentiment). In short, they do everything they can to make sure readers do not get a complete picture of the 'coloer of crime', i.e. the consequences of "diversity", or of the value (if any) of (much demonized) "racial profiling". Staying in the same geographic area, I recall reading in the San Francisco Chronicle story after story about very serious violence after certain musical events. The only clue one got to who was involved in this violence was the use of certain terms like "hip-hop", and also the word "gang". Finally -- finally -- after months and months of this, the word "black" appeared in one of these stories, but only because the mother of a young man killed after one such concert was quoted as saying (roughly) 'Because it's just a bunch of black kids the police don't do more to prevent violence at these events'. Ad infinitum. So it is ridiculous to suggest news portrayals of crime vis-a-vis non-whites is somehow unfair.