Organizing for America | Stop Fox Now!: Stop Fox Now

Stop Fox Now

By Michael from Aurora, IL - Mar 29th, 2007 at 6:31 pm EDT

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Dear Friends,

Fox News has a horrible record of attacking Black people, politicians, and cultural institutions. But, at this very moment, the Congressional Black Caucus is negotiating 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--would be shameful. I've signed on with ColorOfChange.org to help prevent them from making this serious mistake. Will you join us in calling on the Institute to drop its talks with Fox?
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The CBC Institute, an organization led by Black members of Congress, claims to share ColorOfChange.org's goal of politically empowering Black America. But for weeks the CBC Institute continued to entertain Fox's proposal, even after being presented with the case against 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.

ColorOfChange.org has spoken several times with the Institute's director, and she says that she and the board welcome public comment. So we're doing exactly that.
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.
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Thanks,

Michael Smith

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