For The Nation, Robert Borosage writes in an obituary of the Reverend Jesse Jackson that in both 1984 and 1988, Jackson faced a “skeptical, often hostile press, with little money for paid advertising, [and] Jackson relied on generating free media and drawing big crowds.” Yet Borosage argues that Jackson’s “brilliance and his greatest legacy [are] that the mission, strategy, message, and agenda of [his] campaigns remain directly relevant four decades later… We would be wise to follow the path he forged.”
ROBERT BOROSAGE; [email protected]
Borosage is a progressive writer and activist.
JEFF COHEN; [email protected], @jeffcot
Cohen is an author, media critic, founder of FAIR, and cofounder of RootsAction.
Borosage told the Institute for Public Accuracy: Reverend Jackson was “treated very skeptically, from the very beginning, by mainstream media. They said that he wasn’t qualified and recycled every rumor that they could recycle. In the beginning, very little attention was paid to what Jesse was saying, his strategy, the effect he was having in his campaign.
“Then, ironically, when he took off in 1988 and seemed to be a leader in getting the [Democratic] nomination, Time and Newsweek ran a big story titled ‘What Does Jesse Want?’. He wanted to be president! There was a sense that he wasn’t a real candidate––even as he was doing really well and beating other candidates… They sensed Jackson wasn’t a real candidate because he was a civil rights leader and [a faith leader], not a politician.
“One of the things Jesse did was an early version of social media. He would wake up early in the morning and do Black talk radio around the country. He had his own social media. He was reaching African Americans through a media that the white press wasn’t paying attention to and didn’t know existed.”
RootsAction also put out a statement mourning the loss of Rev. Jackson, writing: “Jesse Jackson was a lifelong leader in the effort to transform the Democratic Party into a vehicle for peace and justice, a struggle he waged at the 1972 Democratic convention, where he was a force behind Senator George McGovern’s antiwar candidacy. His own runs for president in 1984 and 1988 built a Rainbow coalition and were the first Democratic campaigns to advocate for justice for Palestinians.”
RootsAction’s founders were active in exposing biased and racist media coverage of Jackson’s 1988 campaign.
Cohen told the Institute for Public Accuracy: “In his presidential campaigns, especially in 1988, Jackson had to overcome not only the Democratic establishment but the media establishment. Elite media figures continuously scrutinized his motives and policies more closely than they scrutinized other Democratic candidates.”
In 1988, the media’s “refrain––‘What Does Jesse Want?’––had racist overtones. In spite of a mainstream media barrage encouraging suspicion of Jackson, many voters, not just progressive ones, heard his pro-working class/pro-inclusion messaging and warmed up to him… similar to how Zohran Mamdani has flourished decades later.”
Cohen wrote: “In 1989, two colleagues and I from FAIR met with the New York Times publisher to discuss our point-by-point memo documenting biased [Times] coverage of Jackson. I told Jesse of the meeting; he said that he had sent FAIR’s critique to his mom to convince her that his complaints about media bias were not unjustified.”
FAIR provided a list of quotes revealing establishment media’s typical and unfair coverage of Jackson:
- “Jackson’s overreaching gave Dukakis an opportunity to act presidential and he seized it, giving Jackson nothing but rhetoric as he cut Jackson, the would be co-quarterback, down to the subservient role of blocking back.” George Will (Washington Post, 7/20/88)
- “Jesse Jackson now must look around and see there are lots of other responsible office-holding black leaders, so he cannot wag the Democratic Party quite so much.” George Will (This Week with David Brinkley, 11/12/89)
- “There have always been two Jesse Jacksons. There’s Jesse the radical, who preaches rage and black separatism. That Jesse has always angered whites. And there’s Jesse the self-promoter, who preaches desegregation and compromise.” Dan Rather (7/13/92)
- “I don’t want Jesse Jackson stirring up racial tensions and class warfare.” Bill O’Reilly of Fox News (11/8/00)
- “Why hasn’t someone given the hook to Jesse Jackson, with his phony claims of African-American disenfranchisement?’’ Al Hunt (Wall Street Journal, 11/16/00)
- “Unlike Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson, Obama is part of a new generation of black leaders who insist on being seen as more than representatives of their race.” Time (2/20/06)