NABJ Is Prepared To "Set It Off" If CNN Replaces Larry King With Someone Else White!

The following letter was released today by the National Association of Black Journalists:

Dear Cable News Executives:

It is 2010, but the National Association of Black Journalists sees our cable news networks moving backward when it comes to who they believe is worthy of anchoring prime-time news shows.

NABJ was founded in 1975 to encourage news media companies to hire and to promote more Black journalists. At that time, black journalists originally hired to cover riots during the turbulent 1960s found they were not being assigned to other meaningful beats or were only allowed to cover "Black" stories.

NABJ's advocacy for fair hiring practices paid off. Many of our founders, including columnists Les Payne in New York and DeWayne Wickham in Washington, D.C., and anchor Maureen Bunyan in Washington, D.C. remain prominent figures in the media.

NABJ continues this advocacy today. To be candid, we have been focusing our talks with media executives on ways they can increase the diversity of their news management teams. It is our belief that a diverse management team improves coverage decisions and hiring practices. It seems, though, that the companies have taken that to mean that we don't care about who is on the air. We're watching, and we do.

Over the past several years, NABJ Executive Board members have met with leaders of the top media companies. Our message: "Let us help if you are looking for diverse talent."

Some of the companies have reached out, but the names we have submitted never seem to be called in for interviews.

Three years ago, Ebony magazine's Kevin Chappell noted, "While CNN has the most Black news anchors with eight, the other cable networks don't (fare) as well... and none of the national cable stations has any Blacks in prime-time slots."

Nothing has changed. NABJ questions CNN's decision to hire former New York governor/attorney general Eliot Spitzer to co-host a new show in Campbell Brown's old time slot. The company missed another opportunity to place a person of color in prime time. It just seems that cable news can never find diverse candidates who are good enough to meet their standards. We want to know your standards.

Are you telling us that CNN could find no one better than an ex-politician who quit being New York governor after consorting with prostitutes to grace America's living rooms each night?

CNN does have Tony Harris anchoring in the morning, and Fredricka Whitfield, T.J. Holmes, and Don Lemon on the weekends. But that's not prime time. The same can be said about MSNBC which last week named veteran Lawrence O'Donnell as the anchor of its new 10 p.m. show. The prime-time host line-up at Fox News also lacks any racial diversity.

"In his story, Chappell talked with NABJ Member and CBS News anchor Russ Mitchell who summed up what many of us have witnessed over the years. Mitchell told Ebony "I've been to journalism conferences over and over again, and heard some executive say 'I'd like to hire more African-Americans, but I just can't find any qualified ones out there.' That was b.s. then, and that's b.s. now."

NABJ couldn't agree more.

Sincerely,

The National Association of Black Journalists

SOURCE National Association of Black Journalists

D.L. Hughley's CNN Gig Get's A Nice Pre-Launch Bump With Ex-Bush Aid Scott McClellan Endorsing Barack

Blogtalkradio Host Kevin Ross On CNN Discussing Being A Black Republican For Obama

See The Actual Interview Here

NEW YORK (CNN) -- Polls indicate that about 7 percent of blacks describe themselves as Republicans. Some say they are torn this election between ideology and the chance to make history.

"For me, this election, I have to go with Barack Obama," said black Republican Kevin Ross.

Ross says while he'll vote for Obama for president, he'll vote along Republican Party lines for the rest of the ticket. He says his two young sons are one of the reasons he's supporting Obama.

"When I look at those young people and I look at my boys and say you can be anything you want to be -- that holds true except for one position and that one position has been president of the United States," said Ross.

Soledad O'Brien Premiere's CNN's Black in America Series: First Up, Eyewitness to Murder - The King Assassination

We ALL Need To Watch This Family!

Sanding on the Lorraine Motel balcony in Memphis where it happened, Reverend Billy Kyles still looks struck.“And the shot rang out: a-payow!” Recalling the dreadful evening that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. “It was loud,” he says, “real loud.”

Retelling the horror of the event with Soledad O’Brien, this is the first installment of CNN’s six hour series about Black folks in America.

The first installment, “Eyewitness to Murder: The King Assassination.”

The show traces the events that brought King and James Earl Ray together on 4 April 1968, and presents doubts about the official explanation. “Years later, questions still linger and fester,” says the biracial news anchor at the very beginning.

While much of the show remembers King’s career, the familiar landmarks as well as some details that aren’t so typically recounted, like King’s joking about his death with his “inner circle,” all understanding the risks he took. Andrew Young remembers that he was stabbed in Harlem at a book signing: just after a brief look at a black and white photo of King looking caught off guard in his hospital bed, Young smiles, “When they removed the knife, they left a scar in the shape of a cross.” Though King talked about being killed, Young says, “He never let us get nervous about it, and he was never nervous about it.” Instead, he took on extra engagements—speeches, meetings, and marches—as needs arose.

Over footage of clashes in city streets, O’Brien narrates, “His nonviolent protests brought out the worst in white America, police dogs and fire hoses in Birmingham in 1963, Alabama state troopers beating back protestors on the bridge in Selma in 1965. And their violence would strike a flint on the nation’s conscience.”

It’s not clear just what that “strike” was, or how the “nation” had a conscience. Certainly, violence against Civil Rights workers and demonstrators persisted, even as it was exposed on television and moved President Johnson to push through legislation that granted voting rights and equal education to black Americans, at least in theory. King continued to press for other changes, having to do with economic and educational systems, arguing that poverty oppresses populations insidiously, like racism. As King was injured and arrested during his work—illustrated here in news photos—he made use of the media, print and TV, to promote the cause. The more sensational the official response, the more sympathetic the demonstrators appeared.

As the movement grew, the official response became more surreptitious—though hardly secret. As O’Brien reports here, the Attorney General’s office (Robert Kennedy) signed off on wiretaps in October 1963, and J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI took up the mission with a vengeance. Young recalls that King and his followers found listening devices in motel rooms and once, Ralph Abernathy found one in a church, at which point he spoke directly to “Little Doohickey”: “I want you to tell President Johnson, and I want you to tell J. Edgar Hoover, and I want you to tell George Wallace, I want you to tell everybody that no matter what they think, we are going to be free.”


Famously, of course, the surveillance did pick up sounds of a sex act in a hotel room, and Hoover became obsessed with King’s deviance and sexual behavior. David Garrow, author of Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, notes that the FBI also began leaking stories concerning what the agency and Hoover perceived as movement leaders’ associations with the “Red Menace” to “discredit” King. He began receiving missives from the Bureau, at least one suggesting that he kill himself out of shame: “You are an evil abnormal beast,” the typed letter reads, “Satan could not do more. King, you are done.” Such “official” activities suggest that Hoover’s fixation was pathological. As John Lewis laments, Hoover “saw Dr. King as a threat to the order of American society.”

Along with the Bureau’s ongoing activities, “Eyewitness to Murder” tracks Ray’s route to Memphis, it allows the case that has circulated for years since the assassination, that Ray was not the killer, or at the least, he was supported by a greater organization, though whether it is the FBI or the mafia, some ugly combination of the two or some other group with money and planning capacities, is not entirely resolved. Highlighting documents, inexplicable events, conflicting witness accounts, and Ray’s own changing stories (when captured, he pled guilty, and then, once he was in prison for life, recanted), the show focuses on those lingering and festering questions.

A career and decidedly smalltime criminal, Ray had escaped from a prison in Missouri in 1967, just three weeks after King made his historic and provocative anti-war speech at the Riverside Church. Ray made his way to Montreal, where, he later told William Bradford Huie (who published He Slew the Dreamer in 1978), he met the mysterious “Raoul.” According to Ray, after he performed a series of jobs for Raoul (smuggling “something” over the border into Detroit, for instance), he was instructed to rent a room in Memphis “for three or four days.” (Here O’Brien looks at Ray’s boarding house room, now encased in glass at the National Civil Rights Museum, headed by Beverly Robinson, who recounts that other boarders heard him moving furniture on the day of the assassination.)

“Eyewitness to Murder” doesn’t make only one case; rather, it includes interviews with men who knew Dr. King, researchers with a range of experiences, and people with questions. Black Memphis policemen and firemen remember that the security for King that day was reduced, compared to previous visits to the city, and that black firefighters were reassigned to other areas, away from the Lorraine Motel. None of this information is categorical. But some of it was left unaddressed in conventional accounts. According to William Pepper, who became Ray’s lawyer following his conviction, there remain doubts that Ray acted alone. A clip of King’s son Dexter meeting with Ray illustrates the historical turn, when the family publicly took a stand in favor of further investigation and in support of Ray’s assertions that the case was more complex than the official version. “Eyewitness to Murder” provides various accounts of the event and the case against Ray, some from eyewitnesses.

That it doesn’t reach a definitive conclusion speaks elliptically and effectively to the experience of being “black in America.” by Cynthia Fuchs

The Great 2008 Debate: We Give You The Analysis On Barack Versus Hillary, CNN Gives You The Whole Story

OBAMA GAINING NATIONALLY ON CLINTON

Romney: McCain adopting Nixon-like tactic
McCain, Romney spar over Iraq, credentials
Schwarzenegger backs McCain in GOP race

Time: The year of the youth vote

Union Switches From Edwards To Obama

Ticker: National Journal rates Barack most liberal
Campaigning could delay Senate stimulus vote
Dubious claims in GOP debate

Bill Clinton: Get Out Of The Way

Since When Did Fox News Analyst Juan Williams Become A "Happy Negro?"

Fox's Bill O'Clueless Has Brothers Waging War On Each Other Instead Of The Idiot Who Put His Foot In His Own Mouth.

While our sistah here at Three Brothers has much love for Dr. Boyce Watkins, I don't know if I can co-sign on brotherman dissing Juan "Eyes On The Prize" Williams.

Boyce went on CNN recently to discuss the Bill O'Reilly's "Black Folks at Sylvia's Restaurant are just like other folks" remarks. Remarks that have caused all kinds of Internet buzz on blogs referring to O'Reilly as being everything from a prophet, to a double-neck White boy who's long overdue for a beatdown.

While it's clear O'Reilly is a talented journalist adept at being a media provocateur simply to keep those big checks coming in, he's either stunningly misinformed, brilliant, or just an unadulterated asshole. Maybe it's all the above.

Juan, however, is a stellar cat who totally gets it. Just listen to him on this clip:

Boyce, I think you owe this Black man an apology -- big time. While I'm good with you making your mark and laying it down on CNN, I hate to see us go for the jugular with each other when we're all trying to end up in the same place. There are too many other folks who deserve that "Happy Negro" label. Based on what I've personally seen and heard when it comes to Juan Williams, he ain't the one!

Today, It's All About Katrina, Jena 6, And The Bobby Brown/Whitney Houston Custody Battle Trainwreck

Bush: 'Better Days' Ahead Two Years After Katrina
CNN, Spike Lee Give Camcorders to Kids Post-Katrina
Response to Hurricane Katrina Draws Fire
As La. Rebuilds, Many Think the Nation No Longer Cares

Video: The Jena 6 Need Your Help Sign Petition
School Bans 'Free the Jena 6' T-shirts

Brothers Indicted in Assault of Two Black Teens in Oregon
Study Shows Blacks Die Earlier than Any Other Group

Whitney Houston Bobby Brown Custody Battle

HP's Newest Commercial Featuring Serena Williams
New Miss Black T.E.E.N. La. Crowned
Keyshia Cole Sets Mark & New Record

CNN'S Don Lemon Did A Great Job On That James Brown Piece, Now I Want The Real Thing

Okay, I might be on the late freight, but I just finished watching the CNN story about James Brown and thoroughly enjoyed it. If you caught the one hour special, by all means tell us what you thought.

One thing I didn't know was that Bootsy Collins played back-up for Brown before he and his crew blew up. Of course that made me want to hear some vintage Bootsy:



The other thing I hadn't thought about was when Chuck D mentioned that on his birth certificate, he's referred to as a Negro.




I immediately went to check mine and sure enough, it said Negro as well. For some reason, that really got me thinking how much we have gone through as a people -- even in terms of what we've called ourselves over the years.

Well, that's was a nice stroll down memory lane. And how was your Sunday?

CNN CABLE NETWORK: ANOTHER REASON WHY DIGITAL MEDIA WILL SOMEDAY RULE THE WORLD

Is it me, or is someone sleep at the switch over at CNN today?

For over thirty minutes, the CNN cable network covered a police pursuit in Broward County, Florida, and a strip mall fire in Alhambra, California.

THIS IS NEWS?!?!

After a brief breakaway to cover the press conference of the Los Angeles Archdiocese $660 million settlement with abuse victims, CNN went back to cover these two stories AGAIN!

MEDIA ALERT: In the digital age, there's no such thing as a slow news day!

What about the abuse in other churches, such as the Baptists or other denominations. There are all types of abuse accusations in the Black community. That would be an interesting follow-up.

But no, we get force fed garbage like Miss New Jersey keeping her crowd, while 22 year-old New York student Stepha Henry remains missing in Florida and largely forgotten by the mainstream media.

We love CNN.com and will continue to use it as a source. CNN cable network, however, is looking pretty toasted.

Step it up guys, or step out of the way!

PARIS HILTON & LARRY KING: LIKE WATCHING PAINT DRY

Aren't We Tired of Her Yet?!

Los Angeles - Paris Hilton, in her first interview since being released from jail, told CNN's "Larry King Live" she has a new outlook on life and sees her time in jail as a "blessing in disguise."

Hilton served a 23-day sentence for violating her probation on an alcohol-related reckless driving conviction.

"I think in life, everyone makes mistakes, and you have to learn and grow from them," Hilton said. "I've been a little immature in the past and made some wrong choices, but I've learned from them, and that makes me the person that I am today ... I have a new outlook on life."

Hilton, 26, described jail life to King, saying her meals consisted of "mystery meat" and "jail slop" but countered reports of drastic weight loss, saying she had only lost a couple of pounds. Her fellow inmates were "really nice," she said, and the hardest thing for her was speaking to her family through glass -- particularly on Father's Day when she could not give her father a hug.

Asked whether she took any portion of her sentence lightly, Hilton said, "I was locked in a cell for 3 1/2 weeks. It was a horrible experience. I did my time."

Meanwhile, US Weekly flips Paris the bird.

And of course, leave it to our dear Sistah to keep it real.

Courtesy of AlaskaReportNews.