Fox News has a horrible record of attacking Black people, politicians,
and cultural institutions. But, at this very moment, the Congressional
Black Caucus has agreed to partner with Fox News 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--is
shameful. I've signed on with ColorOfChange.org to help prevent them
from making this serious mistake. Will you join us in calling on the
Institute to drop its talks with Fox?
http://www.colorofchange.org/cbci/?id=2075-167130
The CBC Institute, an organization led by Black members of Congress,claims to share ColorOfChange.org's goal of politically empowering
Black America. But after being presented with the case against Fox
and hearing vocal opposition from over 12,000 ColorOfChange.org
members, the CBC Institute elected to complete a deal with Fox.
We'd expect that they would recognize the obvious: that validating
Fox News as legitimate hurts Black America, and undermines the
CBC's credibility.
Fox's record is horrible. Their on-air personalities and regular
guests consistently marginalize Black politicians, 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 Fox 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 News:
* 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... if 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 (Fox regularly selects Black guests it knows will
undermine Black causes). 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 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 it's record, Fox News shouldn't enjoy the support of Black
political or cultural institutions connected to the Congressional
Black Caucus. We believe (or at least hope) 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=2075-167130
Thanks.
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