Wanna do something…
fill out this petition to help persuade the Congressional Black Caucus from allowing FOX NEWS to host their debates.
Do it NOW!!!
Color Of Change's official statement follows:
Dear Friends,
Fox News has a horrible record of attacking Black people, politicians, and cultural institutions. Despite this, the Congressional Black Caucus Institute 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 ask them to reverse course. Will you join us in calling on the Institute to drop its deal with Fox?
http://www.colorofchange.org/cbci/?id=1739-151207
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 its record, Fox News shouldn't enjoy the support of Black political or cultural institutions connected to the Congressional Black Caucus. We believe 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=1739-151207
Thanks.
