Dancing with the Devil: Fox News and the CBC E action

[Omaha Steve]

Watch the video, take action: http://www.colorofchange.org/cbci/

Fox News has a horrible record of attacking Black people, Black leaders, and Black cultural institutions. But at this very moment, the Congressional Black Caucus Institute is negotiating to partner with Fox to host presidential debates prior to the 2008 elections.



For the CBC Institute to partner with an organization like Fox News—given its hostility to Black political interests—would be shameful. You can help prevent them from making this serious mistake by calling on them to drop negotiations with Fox:

http://www.colorofchange.org/cbci/?id=1488-88032

The CBC Institute, an organization led by Black members of Congress, claims to share our goal of politically empowering Black America, and we'd like to give them the benefit of the doubt. But for weeks they've continued to entertain Fox's proposal, even after being presented with the case against Fox1. We expected that they would recognize the obvious: that validating Fox as a legitimate source of news hurts Black America, and undermines the CBC's credibility.

We've spoken several times with the Institute's executive director, and she says that she and the board welcome public comment. So we wanted to invite you to do exactly that. The Institute hasn't made a final decision, but they'll make an announcement in the next few days.

Fox's record is horrible. They regularly select Black guests they know will undermine Black causes. Their on-air personalities and regular guests consistently marginalize Black leaders, culture, and institutions. In fact, Sen. Obama has stopped giving interviews to Fox reporters because of repeated attacks on his character and intimations that he has connections to terrorism. Even the Democratic Party in Nevada backed out of doing a debate with Fox2 because of remarks about Obama, but the CBC Institute hasn't moved.

And it's not just Obama. Here's a sampling of the kind of offensive messages put out on Fox News3:

* Commenting on Hannity & Colmes about the speakers at Coretta Scott King's funeral, featured guest Mary Matalin said, "I think these civil rights leaders are nothing more than racists" who are keeping "their African-American brothers enslaved."

* Jesse Lee Peterson, a regular guest who is Black said: "Kwanzaa is a racist, pagan, Marxist holiday" and then claimed that the "so-called seven principles of Kwanzaa are socialist, Marxist, separatist ideas... a white man started a white holiday, seven-day white holiday, black folks would be burning down America."

* Erik Rush, another Black guest, labeled Sen. Obama's church as cultish and separatist for espousing values of black unity and black empowerment. Rush said he replaced the word "black" with "white" in the church's mission statement and "Suddenly, I was looking at this really scary doctrine. You know, it was something that you'd see in more like a cult or an Aryan Brethren church… I would go beyond saying they're Afrocentric. They're African centric. They refer to themselves as an African people and that somewhat disturbs me from the viewpoint of well, do they consider themselves Americans? Do they consider themselves Christians?"

* On Hannity and Colmes, David Horowitz said: "The only lynch mob in America that is allowed to exist in America is a black lynch mob."

* On The Big Story, John Gibson, warned viewers that nearly half of all children under the age of five in the United States are minorities. "You know what that means? Twenty-five years and the majority of the population is Hispanic." He then urged viewers to "do your duty. Make more babies." He later repeated: "To put it bluntly, we need more babies."

Given its record, Fox News shouldn't enjoy the support of Black political or cultural institutions connected to the Congressional Black Caucus. We believe the CBC Institute will change course once it realizes that Black America, if not all of America, is watching. Please join us in making sure they hear us, loud and clear:

http://www.colorofchange.org/cbci/?id=1488-88032

Thank You and Peace,

-- James, Van, Clarissa, Gabriel, Liat, and the rest of the ColorOfChange.org team
March 14th, 2007

References:

1. Letter to the Executive Director of the CBCI, March 1, 2007
http://colorofchange.org/cbci/letter.pdf

2. "Nevada Democracts cancel presidential debate co-hosted by Fox News," Los Angeles Times, March 10, 2007
http://colorofchange.org/ref/cbci_1.html

3. Summary on Fox News and coverage relating to Black Americans
http://colorofchange.org/fox/