Poynter on the Record

Ajc.com reader Patty Rasmussen posed a good question while taking The Atlanta Journal-Constitution to task for its coverage of former Ambassador Andrew Young's comments about neighborhood stores owned by certain ethnic groups.

"Are we ever going to be able to have an open dialogue about race?" asked Rasmussen, a free-lance writer from Conyers. "Can we know that Young did not mean harm in his remarks? He made them in a general way that wasn't pleasant, and you should never make generalizations."

But there is truth to what Young said about many stores in poor and predominantly black communities, said Rasmussen and other readers. ...

... "My biggest complaint about the coverage in general is that we immediately went into the 'Oh my God, I can't believe he said that' and 'Is he going to apologize' and 'Is he a racist' comments. My question immediately was what did he mean?" said Keith Woods, dean of the faculty at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies in St. Petersburg, Fla.
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