Jackson Faults Media Minority Portrayals : Says Press ‘Poisons Minds’ in Speech at Sacramento Fund Raiser

Democratic presidential candidate Jesse Jackson unleashed a sharp attack on the news media during a fund-raising luncheon Tuesday, saying the media portray minorities in a way “designed to poison the minds of the common people.”

Jackson, in California for fund raisers here and in San Francisco that were expected to bring in $100,000 for his presidential campaign, made the remarks to a roomful of mostly black business and political leaders.

The $500-a-plate luncheon was closed to the press, but some reporters listened to the remarks and tape recorded them from an adjacent partitioned-off area at The Firehouse restaurant.

While recounting the difficulties of competing with other, better-financed Democratic candidates, Jackson said the “ultimate struggle” is against the media and their power to write and report on his campaign, which he termed “appraisal power.”

Says It’s Daily Occurrence

Jackson declared the media project minorities, particularly blacks and Latinos, “in five deadly ways every day.”

“It projects us as less intelligent than we are, as less hard working than we work, as less patriotic than we are, as less universal than we are and as more violent than we are--in ways designed to poison the minds of the common people,” Jackson said.

The black civil rights leader singled out conservative columnist George Will for special criticism.

Saying that Will once acted as an adviser to President Reagan before one of Reagan’s 1980 campaign debates and then sat in judgment of the debate as a journalist, Jackson asserted that “he is more dangerous to us than Jimmy the Greek and Al Campanis.” Jackson did not elaborate.

The references were to sports figures Jimmy (The Greek) Snyder, a CBS-TV sports commentator who was fired last week because of offensive remarks about blacks, and former Los Angeles Dodgers Vice President Al Campanis, who was forced to resign last year because of racial remarks.

Declines to Elaborate

Meeting with reporters later, Jackson declined to elaborate on his remarks or say whether he felt he was being unfairly treated by the press.

“There is a constant challenge for the press to be fair, but I am not going to make that a campaign issue and waste my time. I am not trying to convert the press, I am trying to win the people,” Jackson said.

In other remarks at the news conference, Jackson criticized President Reagan for cutting federal funding for the fight against drug smugglers at a time when he was calling for increased aid for the Contras in their war against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. He said the policy represented “immoral and impractical priorities.”

The candidate was introduced at the luncheon and later at the news conference by Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco), who is national chairman of Jackson’s campaign. Brown was the chief organizer of the fund-raising events.

‘I Did Not Hear’

Brown, questioned about Jackson’s remarks about the media, said he hadn’t heard the same comments reporters heard. When it was pointed out that he was sitting next to Jackson when the candidate spoke, Brown laughed. “I did not hear what you heard,” he said.

Jackson said the $100,000 he expected to raise in California would represent the largest single fund-raising day of his campaign.