Nashville's print news media returns to sad Old South standards; BOYCOTT NASHVILLE!

Now I know how my African-American brothers and sisters felt amid the human rights atrocities committed against them during the Civil Rights movement.

I'm not talking about water hoses and lynchings. I'm addressing the virtual absence of fair reporting and editorials about the atrocities to them in the local print news pages and on newspaper opinion pages.

In the case of the torture of Mrs. Juana Villegas (DeLaPaz) and the separation from her newborn, Nashville's print news media has virtually ignored her plight along with the heinous effects of the 287g deportation program.

Today, The Boston Globe published an editorial condemning the inhumanity and 287. Meanwhile, the local City Paper published an editorial endorsing 287g while not even mentioning the torture of Juana Villegas. It takes a really talented writer to avoid the obvious. Or perhaps there is another name for such a writer?

There also is another difference between The Globe and the City Paper -- readers actually pay to read one of these papers; readers of the other publication get it for free.

Yet the City Paper does represent one truth that closely resembles how the media in the South covered the Civil Rights movement versus the media in the North. The print media here in Nashvile has done its damndest to avoid Mrs. Villegas' case. Media apologists have taken to their positions to refute this human rights abuse.

The Associated Press, The New York Times and The Globe have had to step in and write on this outrage and 287g. The same media outlets had to do the same during the Civil Rights movement, along with exceptional reporting and film footage from the national TV networks.

With Mrs. Villegas, however, no TV network has bothered to cover her story. And CNN has been personally contacted. Darn, if we could only get Paris Hilton to have her hair mussed by a sheriff deputy here, then we could get a live CNN report or break in.

Yet there were some notable and heroic exceptions in the Old South, with what is now called The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the late great Hodding Carter Sr.'s fine small newspaper in Mississippi

The Tennessean did briefly have the late great David Halberstam on the Civil Rights beat. But his stories on sit-ins and other protests -- according to a longtime Tennessean city editor who used to work at the newspaper like me -- were regularly published on the back page.

Hell, I'd take that with Juana Villegas's case from Nashville's print media. But being Hispanic seems to make her story even less worthy of attention in the eyes of the supposed new and progressive South. The Tennessean - the print source of record in Middle Tennessee -- has really acted oddly. It did a comprehensive story on 287g a couple of months before Mrs. Villegas' torture. Now it has refused to cover her story, except in running an AP story below the fold on the second page of the Local section. What gives? Where is the consistency? What can someone constructively say about such behavior to affect positive change? I'm baffled. I'm open to any suggestions.

In reality, Old Times are not forgotten here, just duplicated, even in 2008.

So that's why I'm encouraging readers across the country and outside of Nashville to boycott Music City when it comes to your tourism dollars and your conventions. And don't buy the country music product from here.

Boycott Nashville! That action is the only logical and moral response from people of conscience.