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| Is Chronicle’s “This Week” a media Trojan Horse? |
| Political-astute African-Americans are fully
aware that Publisher’s News Analysis’s primary purpose is to take the special
agenda spin out of misleading information, erroneous data and propaganda damaging to the
Black community, that is persistently reported in the mainstream media. In essence, we
look for intellectual Trojan horses that are offered as a gift (pertinent information and
knowledge), but ultimately is used as a weapon to further divide and confuse, our already
fractious neighborhood organizations. Much like the 88-year-old Jewish Anti-Defamation League (ADF), Publisher’s Analysis search for misinformation that has a (real or imagined) negative impact on our people and challenge it by addressing the same news and issues from a Black perspective. In case you’re not history-literate, the ADF was created in New York in 1913 for almost the identical reason that the Freedom Journal was started in 1827. Today, the ADF has almost a thousand staff members and a multi-million dollar annual budget that is dedicated to researching and analyzing media, or any other propaganda source that’s considered harmful to Jewish people’s progress and prosperity. Certainly, if challenging mainstream media misinformation is good enough for the ADF that vows, “Never Again!” It’s good enough for us, who should also vow “Never Again!” However, for some reason when Black people strive to wake their people up, we’re often criticized as malcontents, racists and unpatriotic militants when we challenge mainstream information that is regurgitated in Black newspapers. We’re called even worse when we challenge Black faces in high places, other Black newspapers and/or Black radio talk show hosts who depend on other people’s media as their main source of information. It’s no surprise that several Black newspapers in other cities and states have adopted our news and issues analysis concept, because it becomes very obvious that the mainstream media is not African-Americans’ friend. If you recall, we warned the Black community that the Houston Chronicle’s This Week supplement is designed to negate Black newspaper’s value in our community. Supposedly, This Week was created under the guise of giving the readers that subscribe to their publication more coverage, but have you noticed it is supported by advertisers? As we’ve explained, in the past, advertising has nothing to do with economics, but is strictly political. When Black newspapers go to many advertisers, especially automobile dealerships, we’re told that they get more bang for their buck by advertising in the Chronicle, because they can reach more African- Americans (with good credit), than they can in Black newspapers. Ironically, the same car dealerships advertise in many weekly White newspapers without question. Realistically, This Week has become somewhat of a Trojan horse that not only negates the value of Black newspapers, but exploit Black consumers. And that’s a reality we’ve learned to live with. Willie Lynch knew what he was talking about, and we know that a paragraph in the Chronicle is better than an entire page in a Black newspaper. Our people haven’t overcome their slave indoctrination fully, but at the same time we would be remiss not to at least identify intellectual Trojan horses, especially when they cause the kind of confusion it did when Chronicle reporter Robert Stanton wrote a very complimentary article on Willie Baker, aka “The Mayor of Acres Home.” Many of the “haters,” who cause most of the disunity and political conflict in the Acres Home community were outraged. They were outraged that Willie (a person who they consider an oddity at best and one who tends to have delusion of grandeur at the very worse got such positive pub), and angrily made their displeasure known to the Houston Chronicle. Meanwhile, an embarrassed Chronicle exposed Willie’s rather lengthy history of drug dealing and subsequent trips to TDCJ in the next edition. So what? What significance was Baker’s prison record to the positive story of him working to make his community better? As you already know, there are many outstanding pastors, business people and very productive citizens in the African American community who have criminal records. In fact, I’ve been jailed (erroneously) and it wouldn’t surprise me if that record is still on the books. Lest we forget, our old African warrior is currently on felony probation. Does a criminal history exempt citizens from serving their community? Naturally, that’s an academic question, because you and I know, exposing Baker’s criminal record was the Chronicle’s attempt to repair their badly damaged credibility. Incidentally, This Week has written two previous articles that referred to Acres Home as Fifth Ward, but nobody seemed to care. Perish the thought that we consider This Week a threat to our publication. No publication in the world can editorialize from a Black perspective as effectively as AAN&I even if they dared tell it like it is, or report all news without fear or favor. Nevertheless, we take issue with a publication that insults our people’s intelligence and try to exploit their consumer dollars, or readership as if they have the best interest of our community at heart. Cutting to the chase, you can’t cover the Black community by remote control. The Baker situation that provided many Acres Home citizens with comic relief, obviously wasn’t funny also to the Houston Chronicle executives. It was reported in the Chronicle’s June 16, 2002 that homeboy James Campbell, a Houston born African-American, “Will serve as the reader representative,” as part of “the Chronicle’s commitment to make the newspaper more responsive to readers.” We suspect, however, that being embarrassed by the poorly researched Baker story had something to do with that move. Campbell was making a name for himself in the Black community as a hard-hitting crime reporter, before he was kicked upstairs to the editorial department and almost disappeared. We would like to remind the Chronicle and all others who desire to interact with our community that the Acres Home Citizens Chamber of Commerce holds a network/luncheon on the first Thursday of each month. The luncheon is attended by every politician, organization, business, or concerned citizen that is truly interested in doing business in the Acres Home community. We gladly support and spend our consumer dollars with those who respect and support our community. And yes, speaking as chairman of AHCCC, we welcome representatives from the Chronicle or any other media who wants to make a positive impact on the community’s progress. In fact, we would like to extend all who will come an invitation to our next AHCCC Network/Luncheon that will be held on July 11, 2002 at Carver Academy, 2100 S. Victory. Guest speaker will be Bruce Leslie, chancellor of HCCS. For information and direction please call Sharon Johnson at 713/692-7003. |
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