[News] White Liberals and Glass Houses

[Anti-Imperialist News]

White Liberals and Glass Houses: A Reminder that 
Black Radical Journalism is a Tradition
Jared A. Ball

October 21, 2006
VOXUNION MEDIA

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             Even as they decry the practice of 
exclusion among the mainstream press the white 
left-led media reform movement does the same to 
Black American and domestic or local news.  While 
just a brief overview, one far from being 
exhaustive in its study, this commentary is both 
a postscript to past analysis performed on the 
subject and a prelude of more in-depth 
forthcoming work.  However, following a recent 
study published by the white-left media watchdog 
group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting or FAIR 
and in advance of my own participation at next 
year’s Media Reform Conference in Memphis I would 
at least like to propose the following for consideration.


This is precisely why I make mixtapes.  As crazy 
as it sounds to some FreeMix Radio: The Original 
Mixtape Radio Show, a Washington, DC-based freely 
distributed mixtape CD, is as likely to let an 
audience in on the real conditions of the United 
States, particularly Black America, or to allow 
for the airing of the real critical political 
hip-hop as any popular media including that 
produced from the white liberal left.  In other 
spaces I have, and will continue to, analyzed the 
fact that maybe more than any other popular form 
of musical expression political, or at least 
non-abusive hip-hop, is least likely to gain 
access to any airwaves in the United 
States.  Even my beloved WPFW Pacifica Radio here 
in DC with whom I currently work has an 
allegiance to jazz that relegates only 5 hours a 
week to hip-hop and that is it for the entire 
city when it comes to the particular form of 
which I now speak.  This leaves our youth solely 
at the hands and whims of a commercial pop 
culture world which, in the words of Jonathan 
Kozol, is bent on their 
“cognitive  decapitation.”  In terms of news or 
perspective little changes when it comes to the 
white left.  We agree that the right-led 
mainstream news environment is a destructive mess 
and many of us consider even attempting change in 
that arena a hopeless waste of time.  But perhaps 
we will yet again need to condemn our comrades on 
the left and further the development of more 
Black-centered progressive or radical journalism.


The 
<http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2973>October 
13, 2006 edition of Counterspin – the 30 minute 
weekly radio show from Fairness and Accuracy in 
Reporting a white liberal media watchdog group – 
was dedicated to their recent study on PBS’s 
Newshour with Jim Lehrer which detailed the 
right-wing slant of the show and an overall lack 
of inclusiveness in major media.  Among the 
report’s findings were that on PBS’s Newshour men 
appeared 4 times as much as women, republicans 
twice as often as democrats and that only 15% of 
all guests were so-called “people of color.”  But 
even with such distinguished guests as FAIR’s own 
Julie Hollar (who also co-wrote the study) and 
media scholar Robert McChesney founder of the 
media reform group Free Press nothing was 
mentioned of their own inclusiveness failure 
rates.  It must also be noted, parenthetically, 
that their standard of inclusion also remained 
fairly conservative in that it only measured 
republican versus democrat as if that latter is 
somehow enough of a distinction.  In other words, 
their study would be even more damning were it to 
include even more white radical perspectives of 
communism, socialism, anarchy, etc. not to 
mention were it to include the varied radical 
concerns among African Americans (or Africans in 
America or New Afrikans).  That is if inclusion 
of democrats is a standard then where are we to 
look for pan-Africanism or African Socialism?



But if we take their radio programs as signs of 
their particular range of coverage and 
perspective of that coverage, understanding as we 
do that FAIR, for instance, also publishes a 
print edition called Extra!, McChesney and Free 
Press all publish widely, etc. and so on, we 
would notice an absolute paucity of focus on 
African America.  Future analysis will expand on 
this but I am enough of a listener and reader (I 
read McChesney widely and have interviewed him 
myself twice and even once emailed him with these 
very concerns) I feel confident in saying that similar findings would result.



The FAIR study mentioned uses invited guests as a 
leading component in their analysis.  Being that 
I am not able to determine in all cases the race 
or ethnicity of guests by listening to them or 
reading their names in show summaries and 
recognizing that the inclusion of Black faces is 
not necessarily a guarantor of Black-centered or 
Black radical perspectives, I can make an 
assessment based on keynote topic selection as to 
whether or not particular attention was paid, in 
this case, to Black America.   If we just look at 
the last calendar year and the primary or central 
themes of Counterspin we notice that only four of 
those themes were potentially specific to the 
conditions or struggles of African Americans and 
every single one was related to Katrina (shows 
on: 10/14/05, 1/27/06, 3/10/06 and 9/1/06).  Each 
of these shows were follow ups on Katrina, but 
while we can give some benefit of the doubt, 
there would need to be further investigation to 
determine exactly what percentage of these 
stories were about Black people as opposed to 
issues of finance or the funneling of tax dollars 
via friendly no-bid contracts, etc.  Even still, 
the horrific event some thought would bring media 
into more of a discussion of race and class has 
largely failed to do so even within the media reform left wing.



             McChesney is no better in this 
regard.  In his weekly one-hour radio show Media 
Matters there has been little discussion of race 
and the Black struggle or current condition and 
when there is his invited guest expert is likely 
to be white male.  In roughly the last year he 
too has had only 4 shows which discussed race at 
all, and these not necessarily the condition of 
Black America or its ongoing struggle, and 2 of 
these shows had white male guests Robert Jensen 
(10/02/05) and David Roediger (7/24/05).  I wrote 
him recently an email reminding him that during 
these shows while he twice referenced writer and 
journalist Glen Ford (formerly of Black 
Commentator and now 
<http://blackagendareport.com>BlackAgendaReport.com) 
he had yet to actually invite him on as a 
featured guest.  McChesney did remind me of what 
I had known that in the 2 other instances 
Sundiata Cha-Jua (3/19/06) and Salim Muwakkil 
(1/29/06) had appeared bringing the grand total 
of Black guests to 2 in the course of roughly 50 shows in the past year.



             In preparation for our participation 
in Free Press’ upcoming conference on media 
reform my 
<http://industryears.com>IndustryEars.com 
colleague Paul Porter too noted the lack of 
inclusion of Black voices and was even inclined 
to remark how “Free Press is the Clear Channel of 
Media Reform.”  Porter continued, saying that, 
“It has become blatantly obvious that the media 
reform movement is as racist as media ownership. 
While we continue to lose ground daily for some 
strange reason our efforts often lead us to align 
with the groups that marginalize us.  Groups like 
Free Press and Democracy Now! have systematically 
added token voices to appear as our agenda's are 
the same. When you look at key reform groups over 
the years they consistently hire and speak to 
audiences that don't look or think like 
us.  Until we collectively form a unified 
partnership we will continue to be marginalized 
and basically used until further notice. I am 
sure I will hear the benefits from some of you on 
why we need to align with larger reform groups 
but the proof has been in  past history.  I am 
most interested in change.  Speaking at the 
Memphis media reform or conducting a panel is of 
no use unless it changes the landscape.”



Oh, and that beloved media reform movement and 
Pacifica radio favorite Democracy Now!, which 
airs 5 days a week?  In my 2005 study of that 
show I noted that of the 176 possible shows in 
the calendar year prior to the levies flooding in 
New Orleans only 21 shows or 12% had any focus on 
Black America.  Of those 21, 10 were historical 
references to the Civil Rights era, including 2 
about the historic – yet re-emergent – story of 
Emmitt Till, but only 4 with any contemporary 
focus.  Of the 4 all were with the late activist 
Damu Smith surrounding much of his organizational 
work on issues of politics and environmental 
racism.  One would hope that this powerful media 
outlet would not need to await another of the 
caliber of Damu before these issues gain 
coverage.  Or perhaps such a figure will go 
unnoticed because of such inattention.



Now, this is not to say that the white left is 
the cause of the problem.  But they are a 
problem.  The pattern of abandoning Black 
American concerns for those considered more 
pressing or more exotic is again playing out in 
2006.  The fact remains, that listeners to the 
radio programs discussed above will have a 
greater working knowledge of Iraq, Israel or 
Palestine than of Black America.  I am sure part 
of the response will be that there is a war or 
international news is sorely lacking in 
mainstream press.  No doubt this is 
true.  However, I think it is more of a return to 
the Black Power era of “you don’t want us? The 
fuck you too! We can cover Vietnam or the 
environment or the whales!”  It is necessary to 
inform the nation of its role in and relationship 
to international politics.  However, an overly 
intense focus on international issues or to 
domestically tend only to cover issues at the 
highest federal levels that borders on copping 
out in that in each case the mostly white 
audience will feel appeased of its guilt in being 
complicit with a North American juggernaut and 
powerless to make real change.  More attention to 
local and domestic concerns would be more likely 
to challenge people to become more active in 
fixing, internally, the nation that most of the 
world rightly recognizes as the greatest threat to world peace.



But what we are seeing now are the remnants of 
the Civil Rights and Black Power era sellouts and 
conformists who have abandoned any attempt at 
domestic revolution in favor of challenging 
mainstream coverage of federal-level or 
international concerns.  In the end the white 
left follow an agenda set by the elite owners of 
media and the world and leave the rest of us 
unsupported, protected or covered.  The issue of 
communication, as Mark Lloyd has said, is a civil 
rights one but we are not seeing the same kind of 
white liberal, progressive or radical 
journalism  that supported those efforts and 
popular Black media has convinced us we need no 
such similar effort in Black journalism.



White America, as Dr. King said 40 years ago, has 
not done enough to condition itself out of white 
supremacy and there is a sense I get from this 
wing of political struggle that says, “we did 
that Black stuff already.  You got your rights, 
you have celebrities and Black 
journalists.  We’re moving onward and 
upward.”  Well, despite the imagery Black America 
is no better off today than at any other 
time.  We remain imprisoned, ill-educated, with 
poverty and segregation levels that rival any 
other point in our history.  Plantation slavery 
remains the standard by which we measure the 
condition of African Americans which prevents us 
from seeing that what currently exists is not 
progress but the proverbial knife being pulled 5 
inches out of a 9 inch deep wound as Malcolm X 
once made clear.  And of any segment of the 
population who should be most able; given access, 
education and proclaimed criticism to see through 
the barrage of false imagery its our white 
friends of the upper-middle class left.  But more 
likely is the reality that the trend remains much 
like Dr. King again said of the white left, they 
have “in devastating numbers walked off with the 
aggressor” where it appears as though the “white 
segregationist and the average white citizen has 
more in common with one another than either had with the negro.”



Dr. Todd Burroughs and I have argued for the 
creation of a <http://voxunion.com>B-SPAN, a 
Black national news service dedicated to 
year-round coverage of Black struggle and 
condition.  I make mixtapes, do low-power and 
internet radio all of which is meant to support 
or exemplify underground and alternative 
journalism or the development of space for the 
expression of a decolonized culture.  But more 
will need to be done in media and political 
organization if real progress is to occur.  We 
must remember that the primary reason, despite a 
lack of intent to include from the white left, 
that Black Americans have eschewed “media reform” 
as a “movement” is because from the beginning it 
was and is understood that dominant media work 
for the dominant and that there is little chance 
of democratizing media in a decidedly 
un-democratic society.  From Sam Cornish to 
Marcus Garvey, W.E.B. DuBois, Ida B. Wells, 
Robert and Mabel Williams, Sam Napier, Malcolm X 
Black radicalism has always included an 
underground/alternative press component.  None 
argued that reforming media would reform society 
they all argued that in order to reform or 
revolutionize society a supportive media would 
have to be created.  And this is not exclusive to 
Black America.  As noted by Lauren Kessler, 
radical journalism is a “tradition” not an 
anomalous “time-bound” occurrence.  This brief 
look at the white left need only be a reminder 
that we cannot expect that movement to be 
ours.  Black America, whether in journalism or 
larger political struggle, is fast-approaching 
complete isolation mostly from half-hearted and 
apolitical media inclusion and journalistic 
practice but also from a complete inattention 
from our white left comrades.  As we work within we must also work without.



This has been Jared Ball for VOXUNION MEDIA and FreeMix Radio.


Dr. Jared A. Ball is an assistant professor of 
Communications/Media Studies at Morgan State 
University.  He is editor of the 
<http://wblinc.org>Words, Beats and Life Journal 
of Hip-Hop and Global Culture and is also the 
founder and creator of FreeMix Radio: The 
Original Mixtape Radio Show, a rap music mixtape 
committed to the practice of underground 
emancipatory journalism.  He and his work can be 
found online at <http://voxunion.com>VOXUNION.COM.


The Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
(415) 863-9977
www.freedomarchives.org 
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