Sexism and Racism, or Dollars and Cents?

There is a debate these days about impartial and factual presentation of the news. One of the issues in that debate is whether the news is presented to us fairly. I would say that with regard to the the New York Times, sometimes maybe not.

After being away from news for several days I drove into town to stock up on food, and also bought a New York Times. In the July 2 Times I found an article about sex and race bias in the recording industry, focused especially on the issues surrounding media companies’ ownership of master recordings. The article was professional and accurate in its survey of the issues until near the end when it added the “business…has long faced criticism for its treatment of many creators, especially young women and people of color” and then went on to describe contract issues faced by the artists Sky Ferreira, Halsey, Jay-Z and XXXTentacion.

Previously in the article the authors documented a straightforward business decision by Swift to not buy control of her master recordings – not an act of sexism or racism by the recording company. Control of intellectual property is an issue for all creators regardless of gender or ethnicity. Note that the focus of the article, “Taylor Swift, And Artists’ Fight to Own Their Own Work” is a white artist who is probably worth millions; and that this very same issue was probably faced by stars like Hank Williams and Elvis Presley in their time. To make the case that intellectual property is a gender and race issue, a writer must do more than simply point out that the issue also touches minorities and females.

Early in the article the authors used a Marxist lens to analyze the issue – which worked. It seems fairly straightforward to view this as a labor versus capital issue. However, when they tried to apply gender and race bias to the problem they really had nothing to work with beyond the fact that yes, women and minorities also lose control of master recordings. Progressives often cite cases of disproportionality as proof of bias. “If the impact is more severe on females and minorities, it must be discrimination.” Of course I don’t agree, since disproportionality by itself proves nothing. In this case the authors didn’t even claim disproportionality, they just waved the bloody shirt. The facts be damned!

I don’t generally read the New York Times because my perception is they don’t honor the proper separation between news pages and the editorial page, and it just gets depressing.

THE BOTTOM LINE
To Ben Sisario and Joe Coscarelli, the reporters bylined on this story: bless your Marxist hearts. While the story of the master recordings does fit neatly into the labor/capital paradigm, since it afflicts all recording artists equally it is NOT an example of sexism or racism. I agree that sexism and racism are wrong, but crying wolf weakens your case.
To the editors, save the ideological posturing for the opinion page.