"President Bush urged Americans to exercise racial tolerance while pointing out only White reporters to ask him questions during a White House press conference about the war against terrorism in Afghanistan," wrote Hazel Trice Edney, the NNPA's Washington correspondent.
Bush used the bulk of his remarks at the event, scheduled one month after the September 11 attacks, to drum up support for his government's war on Afghanistan. Near the end, Edney reported, he appealed to "my fellow Americans not to use this as an opportunity to pick on somebody that doesn't look like you or doesn't share your religion."
During the conference, attended by nearly 100 reporters, Bush "called on eight white men and two white women of the White House press corps, while an invited multicultural group of about 26 reporters sat excluded from the dialogue in assigned seats to his left," she observed.
"On one hand, the press conference updated America's response with tough talk and a recap of some of the actions taken. On the other hand, except for the two women, it appeared to be a chat among the White House press corps 'good ol' boys.' At one point, the president held up his left hand to silence the increasingly aggressive, but professional reporters, to his left," Edney reported.
"'Excuse me. I'm having trouble hearing John,' he said.
"One dark-complexioned reporter with a Spanish accent seemed so frustrated that he continued to shout his question after the president had left the podium."
"Two Egyptian-American reporters quietly discussing the exclusion as they left the East Room agreed that it was 'not intentional,' but systematic," wrote Edney. Bush had said "from the outset that he would 'be glad to take questions from the White House Press Corps,'" she noted. "It happens that the press corps, decades after major media organizations began desegregating its ranks in the late 1960s and early 1970s, remains almost lily White, despite applications backed up as far as last March."
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