The Gantt Report
By Lucius Gantt
Most African Americans disapprove of the way they are depicted in the news-papers and on news broadcasts.
Four out of five Blacks that were surveyed said they see racist or racially sensitive news stories daily in media outlets, according to a recent Pew research study.
Well, don’t be surprised, the media business is just like other businesses. All media companies, white and Black, seem to aspire to please white viewers, readers, and advertisers.
It wasn’t always this way. In the late 1960s, white media companies began to hire at least one Black newspaper writer or one Black broadcaster to show Blacks in America that media companies were diverse and not necessarily Lilly white.
Before the token hiring, almost every Black house-hold had a copy of The Pittsburg Courier, The Atlanta World, The Chicago Defender, or Marcus Garvey’s Negro World newspaper. If not, Black families had a copy of Jet Magazine or Ebony Magazine.
Each of those publications was distributed nationwide and The Negro World was dis-tributed worldwide.
If you wanted to know the truth about the Greenwood massacre in Tulsa, the Rose-wood massacre in Florida, the murder of Emmett Till, the fights of Joe Louis and Sugar Ray Robinson, the coverage of Negro League baseball, and other stories about Black life and Black culture were all covered in Black newspapers.
Roy Wood, Chico Renfroe, Alley Pat, and others were early Black broadcasters.
The best Black media pro-fessionals were fearless mes-sengers who wrote, printed, and broadcasted the news and information that Black folk wanted to read and listen to.
Today, there are only a hand-ful of Black newsmen and broadcasters who will write and broadcast stories that our people will seek to see, read, and hear.
New journalism and communications majors will spend money to attend meetings of the National Association of Black Journalists to try to get a job at a white media company.
Too many young Black media professionals don’t look at Black media companies as being equal to white media companies.
They have been told, “If you don’t work for The Washington Post, New York Times, Miami Herald, or The Atlanta Journal”, you’re not a “real” journalist”.
Black newspapers are considered “inferior” now, so instead of being in every Black home, some Black newspapers are never in many homes!
Leonard Pitts, Eugene Robinson, Cynthia Tucker, and other Blacks have won Pulitzer Prizes for stories or columns that were written for white-owned newspapers and were acceptable to white readers.
In other words, if your media oppressors and exploiters don’t recognize you and, award you, you must not be a good writer or a good broadcaster.
But don’t put all the blame on the imperialist press, Black media owners, more often than not, say strong writers who are unafraid to tell the truth about Black, African, and other media people of color have “no value” and so many Black newspapers, for instance, are beginning to look alike by running the same press releases, the same editorials and the same “advertorials”, or ads that look like editorials.
It’s no secret which Black media professionals generate the most views, the most letters to the editors, and the most white and Hispanic readers but I know, and the Black media owners know how influential advertisers are.
Advertisers aren’t ashamed to tell Blacks where and when to place their ads, what writers, and broadcasters they like, and how quickly advertising will end if their requirements are not met.
My friend. Bobby Henry, of the Westside Gazette newspaper in Fort Lauderdale, Florida is currently Chairman of the Board of the National Newspaper Publishers Association.
I was asked by Levi Henry, Bobby’s dad, and founder of the paper, to come to South Florida and hold the paper down until Bobby came down from Ohio to take over.
I thought I was “family”, so to speak, so one day I wrote to Bobby and told him to find me something to do at NNPA but Bobby never responded to me. That was OK. I never drop my friends, so I still love Bobby as a brother and as a fraternity brother. But I was “hurt” a little.
Yes, the media has changed, and Black media has changed drastically, but The Gantt Report will never change.
I will continue to write the column and make it available to all media companies that want columns that Blacks will want to read.
I also promised Wayne Fields of Gainesville and broadcasters in Atlanta that I would try to produce TV and radio shows that can be streamed and broadcast worldwide.
My dream is to finance an “All World Journalism Foundation” to train young journalists how to write and produce media that will serve and inform our community.
Our media enemies are dividing, conquering, and killing our media giants softly.
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