Meet the (Black) Press

...Maxine Waters to “reveal the truth” about the CIA...

...Cecil “Chip” Murray...

...Positive stories on blacks tend to focus on mainstream entertainers and athletes like Michael Jordan, Denzel Washington, or Ken Griffey Jr...

...What emerges is a one-dimensional portrait of blacks in America: If they’re not committing a crime or leeching off society, they are running, jumping, joking, or singing...

...Similarly, when the San Jose Mercuvy News published its allegation that the CIA helped bring crack into Los Angeles, the Watts Times, unlike so many other media outlets, chose not to focus on the high-profile campaign by US...

...But in their quest to promote a more positive image of the black community, many black papers-either by choice or as a result of pressure from the community-are unwilling to take on the failures and misdeeds of black leaders or institutions...

...They also failed to make clear that the bulk of Californians on welfare happen to be white...

...According to these reports, only members of the church have managed to obtain loans...

...However, the church happens to be a loyal advertiser in the Watts Times...

...Watts Times...

...An equally grave threat to that mission is the reluctance of many black newspapers to challenge black leaders who abuse the public’s trust...

...Over the months and years since the rioting, a number of major corporations, including Disney, Texaco, and Bank of America, have poured millions of dollars into the program...

...We cannot expect to have good leaders if we do not hold them accountable...

...In fact, many of the stories covered by the Watts Times, while interesting in their own right, also carry broader lessons...

...The Watts Times published a story on the issue that was misunderstood by a Leimert Park merchant as an endorsement of the meters...

...So the Watts Times’ publisher has prohibited any discussion of the church‘s loan program in the pages of our paper...

...Even when ad revenue is not at stake, many black papers take the view that it is not their place to air the dirty laundry of the black community...

...One example is the paper’s recent profile of an African-American grassroots organization called MADDADS that is aggressively working to take back its community from street gangs and drug dealers through 24-hour street patrols...

...Yet, since the program’s inception, nurnerous small business owners in South Central have complained to the Watts Times that they have received little benefit because, they allege, the church‘s lending practices are corrupt...

...The church may be completely innocent of any wrongdoing, but at the very least, the coniplaints the Watts Times has received seem worth investigating further...

...The Watts Times also makes an effort to seek out and broadcast the good news about African-hericans that is so rarely heard...

...The First African Methodist Episcopal Church in South Los Angeles is a case in point...

...Audiences are bombarded with negative images of black men, whether it’s convicted drug dealer “Freeway” &cky Ross or slain rapper Tupac Shahr, Rodney King or OJ...

...In addition to its entertainment value, the story emphasized a littleknown aspect of black history-that AfricanAmerican pathfinders have not been limited to orators, revolutionaries, and abolitionists...

...However, as the managing editor of the L.A...

...Furthermore, the media’s biased reporting only fuels racial strife and misunderstancling by widening the already huge gulf of ignorance between blacks and whites...

...The Watts Times provides a case study of how this is done...

...Today, too many African-American newspapers still follow the Defender‘s example, presenting multiple pages of sensational material-usually crime storiesand perpetuating the very misconceptions they criticize mainstream papers for harboring...

...while, far more uplifting black role models like former NASA astronauts Mae Jemisons and Guion Blufors or black members of Congress go unnoticed...

...The first black newspapers were founded for the express purpose of spreading the word against slavery...

...Some of the publications that led the call for equality were the Philadelphia Tribune, the (Baltimore) AjPo-American, the Chicago Defender, and the Pittsburgh Courier...

...Simpson’s guilt as many whites...

...Similarly, I have long wanted to publish an op-ed piece criticizing Louis Farrakhan for his racist and anti-Semitic rantings-and to point out that they merely undermine his positive work, such as encouraging blacks to build up their own enterprises and create jobs in impoverished communities...

...You’d be hard pressed to find even one op-ed this year in any black publication that focused a critical eye on prominent black leaders like the Rev...

...To be sure, the black newspapers usually augment their coverage with news of black society and religion, but their focus on lurid stories threatens to distract them from their mission to provide a different perspective on the news...

...The Watts Times has experienced such retaliation first hand...

...I am not saying that either of these leaders is guilty of any egregious sins, but surely black publications should not grant them sainthood status and the immunity from journalistic scrutiny that goes with it...

...The move was opposed by area businesses that worried that the one-hour limit on the meters would discourage potential customers...

...Yet a third is a piece we did on Carl McJunlun, a black 18th-century cowboy-paleontologist who discovered the skeletal remains of a prehistoric bison in Colorado...

...By 1935, the Defender’s circulation was 230,000...

...And far from serving the community, the papers’ hesitancy to level legitimate criticisms on certain issues not only undermines the credibility of the black press but also protects those who are operating without the best interests of the community :it heart...

...By and large, they do a good job, serving up everything from profiles of local heroes to unique perspectives on national issues that affect Mrican-Americans...

...And by failing to do so, black newspapers are also undermining their own viability...

...This is something all Los Angelenos could have benefited from learning about...

...In many cases this is because the papers’ precarious financial situation makes them particularly vulnerable to retaliation by those leaders...

...The simplistic and inaccurate slant that dominates news ‘coverage of blacks certainly does little to improve the self-image of the African-American communityin fact, it may have a great deal more to do with the general apathy and low self-esteem of many African-Americms than we fully appreciate...

...For instance, the paper recently reported on how white moviemaker Michael McMeel founded the Awareness Foundation, which introduces innercity kids to the outdoors through camping excursions to horse ranches in the California countryside...

...another is the story we ran on a local Christian ministry group that spends Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays preparing 1,000 meals for the homeless...

...So they started crusading newspapers of their own, such as Freedom’s Journal, founded in 1827, and Ram’s Horn and Frederick Douglass’ The North Star, both founded in 1847 After the Civil War, hundreds of black newspapers sprang up to inform, instruct, and agitate on behalf of African-Americans, reporting to hundreds of thousands of readers on everything from landmark legal cases to black society...

...Yet the mainstream , news outlets were so busy playlng up the racial angle that they completely ignored this large segment of the black population...

...Last year, we published a story on the incorporation of parking meters in a black art-renaissance district called Leimert Park...

...a truly balanced view) of their communities...

...During World War 11, the total circulation of black newspapers in the U.S...

...The Good News The community spirit that motivates so many African-American newspapers today draws on a 170year legacy of journalistic activism...

...is the managing editor of the L.A...

...As for the mainstream media, they have proven to be completely uninterested in the story...

...It is this attitude and, more importantly, the fear it strikes in the heart of the owners of black newspapers, that prevents black papers, including the L.A...

...The Bad News All of the good that black papers do only makes their shortcomings more disheartening...

...For example, in 1995, when former US...

...Through the local merchants’ association he began organizing a campaign to cancel all advertisements with the Watts Times, and burn any future editions of the newspaper that were distributed to the area...

...As a result, many black leaders and organizations are untouchable...

...Maxine Waters...

...However, the new approach also diminished the service these black newspapers were providing to the black community...

...We thought a more responsible ’ course of action would be to print an in-depth series on the devastation wrought by crack cocaine in the inner city since 1980, in the hopes of focusing attention on the greater problem of the proliferation of crack to an enormous dependent population...

...Their editors have both a responsibility and an opportunity to tell the stories that their mainstream counterparts ignore-in short, to present a real, objective view of African-Americans...

...During the 1992 riots, Murray received praise for providing a much needed voice of calm and reason...

...The church, whose membership tops 15,000 and includes some of the most widely known African-Americans in the nation, is run by the Rev...

...It is this state of affairs that makes black-oriented newspapers so valuable...

...Blacks couldn’t trust white editors to champion their causes...

...Walter Tucker was videotaped :accepting a bribe and sentenced to nine years in prislon, most black newspapers portrayed the story as a government plot to harm black leaders...

...Watts Times, from running pieces that cast a critical eye on black leaders...

...If black papers truly want to serve their constituents, they must move beyond this type of protectionism and present both the good and the bad (i.e...

...Today, the specific issues may have changed, but the mission remains the same: to share stories important to the black community that other mainstream publications overlook...

...To be sure, the formula was commercially successful, attracting a voracious readership...

...However, the Watts Times ownership is fearful that such a commentary would offend L.A.’s Black Muslims, who have been faithful readers and loyal advertisers...

...But even when black leaders do commit egregious offenses, black newspapers tend to respond by circling the wagons in their defense...

...True, in the short term the black papers’ timid approach enables them to hold onto the revenue from local advertisers...

...For instance, during the “Trial of the Century,” Watts Times reporters went in search of African-Americans who were as adamant about O.J...

...Nineteenth-century black journalist T Thomas Freeman, an ardent militant on racial matters, founded the New York Freeman in 1884 to advocate the establishment of a National Afro-American League to fight disenfranchisement, black lynchings, and other injustices...

...Yet not one mainstream newspaper, TV news station, or radio outlet picked up the story...

...topped 1 million...

...Rather than pointing fingers and slinging accusations, we wanted to help communities outside the inner city understand why many African-Americans were so outraged by the allegations against the CIA...

...But although the debate was contentious, the mainstream media had little trouble boiling it down for public consumption: As far as the media was concerned, this was a black-and-white issue-a simple story of angry white taxpayers taking on equally angry black welfare mothers who saw themselves as being targeted for elimination from the welfare rolls because of their race...

...LAST SUMMER THE CALIFORNIA GENERAL Assembly debated and passed a new welfare-to-work law that will radically overhaul the state's entitlement program...

...Much of the blame for this tendency among black newspapers, can be laid at the door of Chicago Defender founder Robert Sengstacks Abbott, who set a new standard in the early 1920s when he abandoned the moral tone common to black newspapers of the day and patterned the Defender after William Randolph Hearst’s sensationalist tabloids, smearing hs front pages with accounts of crime and scandal...

...Watts Times, a newspaper aimed at AfricanAmericans, I was aware of another story: The fact is that African-Americans who go to work every day and who pay taxes deride the overburdened state welfare system just as much as-if not more than-their white counterparts...

...In the aftermath of the riots, the church was chosen to act as a clearinghouse for private financial aid in the form of micro loans to undercapitalized businesses in South Central...

...Sadly, the media’s inaccurate portrayal of black Americans is not limited to their coverage of welfare...

...Fortunately the merchants’ association eventually recognized its error and backed down...

...But the point is black leadership loathes criticism, and reacts to it even more venemously when it comes from within the black community...

...But it is the black community that’s really being harmed...

...But in the long run, this strategy will only destroy their readers’ respect for black newspapers, causing a decline in readership that will eventually cause local advertisers to abandon them anyway...

...Had the mainstream media-and more black newspapers and black radio programs-presented a similarly balanced view, they might have helped to diffuse the racial animosity that deepened between blacks and whites in the aftermath of the not-guilty verdict...

...Simpson...

...For years, employed blacks have been critical of the debilitating dependence on government aid that welfare has caused many in the black community to develop, sapping them of their motivation, ambition, and self-reliance...

...MeanJARRETTE FELLOWS JR...

...Jesse Jackson, or Rep...

...The Watts Times was interested in the story not only because it was a first-time adventure for many young black, Latino, and Asian youngsters, but because it demonstrated to blacks and whites alike that the two groups can come together for positive change...

...Particularly disappointing, though far too typical of the black and mainstream media alike, is the sacrifice of journalistic standards for the sake of “what sells...