TEXAS’ Widest Circulated and Read Newspaper with a Black Perspective

Misguided readers often call, and/or e-mail African-American News&Issues to ask why we haven’t jumped on the mainstream media for some (real or imagined) racist act. We say misguided, because intelligent Black people know that nothing justifies Black newspapers’ existence more than the mainstream media’s failure to objectively cover all news without fear or favor. Even so, a recent e-mail complaint involved Ralph Cooper, the long time sports guru who has managed to build up a manic base of listeners to his Sports Rap call-in talk show that’s aired on KCOH (1430 AM) radio from 5 - 7 p.m., Monday - Friday, with the exception of Tuesday when Shad Bogany talks real estate from 6 - 7 p.m.
It seems that Cooper, who is “safe” enough to also share Channel 13’s Extra Point’s forum on Saturday at 6:30 p.m., was ignored by the Houston Chronicle’s Radio/TV columnist, David Barron, when he rated Houston’s radio shows that talked sports. Quite frankly that’s good news for Texas’ circulated and read newspapers with a Black perspective, because whenever the mainstream media drops the information ball, we have a chance to score. Nevertheless, as we’ve explained in the past, anything that doesn’t make sense is nonsense. And our audited estimated 2 million readers in 30 Texas cities and millions accessing our Web page (www.aframnews.com) already know that our editorial staff has too much sense to waste their time, and our precious space discussing “wannabe White” nonsense.
We Must Understand, the only way for Black people to truly be included in big business and power politics of America is to be at the table when decisions are made. As watchers on the wall it puzzles us why supposedly educated Black people continue to embrace every editorial Trojan horse that the mainstream media offers. Especially, when history has warned us to “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts” (FYI: In classical mythology, a large, hollow horse made of wood used by the Greeks to win the Trojan War. The resourceful Odysseus had come up with the plan for the horse. The Greeks hid soldiers inside it and left it outside the gates of Troy. They anchored their ships just out of sight of Troy and left a man behind to say that the goddess Athena would be pleased if the Trojans brought the horse inside the city and honored it.
The Trojans took the bait, against the advice of Cassandra and Lacoon. The men hidden inside the horse emerged and opened the city gates for their companions. The Greeks sacked the city, thus winning the war. The story of the Trojan horse is the source of the saying “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.” -The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy.) In other words, African Ameri-cans who feel that they have been historically discriminated against and denied equal justice in the land of the free, have to be brain dead to depend on the mainstream media for their major source of information. Incidentally, we must apologize for not following up the TSU lawsuit story forthwith (as promised), but “blameless” defendants asked us to give them a chance to respond to last week’s exclusive article, so that their side of the story can be included.
We Must Understand, however, if the mainstream media continues to ignore the lawsuit story, it will still be news whenever we publish the full details. Meanwhile, we want to give you an example of the kind of ham and egg reporting by the mainstream media that contributes to America’s status as a ham and egg nation. In a May 10, 2006 Houston Chronicle article (Most in poll here see a hard road ahead for U.S: But Houstonians interviewed at random express optimism about their personal life), Mike Snyder and Dale Lezon wrote: “For the 2006 Houston Area Survey, conducted Feb. 13 to March 14, the University of Houston's Center for Public Policy interviewed 765 residents answering phone numbers selected at random. The sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points….
“For the first time since 1999, a concern other than traffic congestion was rated as the biggest problem facing the Houston area. This year, 31 percent rated crime as the biggest problem, compared to 13 percent last year. Twenty-six percent this year said traffic was the biggest problem.” Need we explain that if unemployment is Black America’s biggest problem, the economy tops our list? In fact, joblessness increases crime and decreases a need to worry about traffic. Meanwhile, as the ham and egg story goes, it’s only a day’s work for mainstream America to produce eggs, while the only source for ham is on Black America’s butts. Translation: America’s ham and egg economy is putting a little strain and pain on mainstream America, but it’s killing Black America.