‘Tavis Smiley’ on Poverty Tour

Tavis Smiley has described it as “a call to conscience.”

An 11-state tour by Mr. Smiley and Cornel West, the Princeton professor, to raise awareness about poverty in America will be translated onto television starting on Monday. All five episodes this week of the PBS program “Tavis Smiley” will focus on the subject, which is one that antipoverty advocates say is all too often slighted by television news programs.

Mr. Smiley said that many of the poor Americans he met on the tour feel the same way.

“They sense that they’re being rendered invisible,” he said in a telephone interview last week. “They sense that the focus has been on Wall Street, not Main Street, much less on the side street.”

Mr. Smiley says he agrees, and hopes the PBS series will be a partial antidote.

http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/tavis-smiley-on-poverty-tour/?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha210