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.
I have joined ColorOfChange.org in asking that the presidential candidates take a stand where the CBC has failed and refuse to participate in the CBCI/Fox debates. Please join me:
Link
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:
Thanks.
Hi
I want to thank Catherine Johnson for throwing the get together yesterday. Thankyou. Also I want to thank everybody that came to the get together. It has to be us to get the word out in Jackson. Lets work hard and make Barack Obama president in 2008.
Jason DeWaters
First off, if you missed it here is the link to watch it after the fact. Link, I'm curious to hear how your event went. I attended the event at EMU and we started off well but the lag time on the live feed was difficult to deal with. For a while it worked well and then it went back to the stop...buffering...start mode.
Before Barack started we had a chance to sign up a few folks to the site and give a quick overview of how it and www.michigandersforobama.com works. We then took some questions and had everyone introduce themselves. After Barack we gathered in a circle and discussed what we thought of what we had just seen and what next steps we can take.
What I find so appealing is that Barack is great during his time on stage but the conversations that I have been involved in at every meeting with the others in attendance has been so inspiring and educational. I'd say that this campaign has really started to change the way we look at politics and each other.
What do you think and how was your experiance today?
Today the Michiganders for Obama official web site went live. This site will not take the place of the great organizing and information sharing that barackobama.com offers us put it will allow us to share additional information as it is made available. Currently you can access and download fliers, mailers, pictures, videos, find contact to the state wide volunteer campaign and many more resources.
If there are things that are needed on the site just respond to this post or send an email through www.michigandersforobama.com.