By no means was I suggesting that television and other mass media networks-including newspapers and Interent-are inherently positive when it comes to promoting interracial understanding.

I know that that's not the case.

I agree with your point, And I agree with your point, robomaticm that the media can be used to help rather than hinder racial understanding and fan the flames of racial misunderstanding or hatred.

For example, I think that television's coverage of the 1960s and 1970s American civil rights demonstrations was crucial in helping Americans see that institutional changes needed to made in a number of laws and policies, and that personal changes needed to be made in how people of different races considered each other.

And more recently, television coverage of the government's absolutely inept response to Hurricane Katrina, shocked scores of people and may have planted the seeds of the Republicans' undoing and led to the election of President Barack Obama.