This is a matter most
urgent and dire. The very liberties observed and freedoms appreciated are
grossly threatened by a culture's desire to protect a monolithic press and
tyrannical government. A secure press promulgates the façade that a
secular city prides itself on one party rule. Such a press biases
reporting with agenda driven editing and condones unilateral thought on multitier
matters for the individual and family, education, economics, government and
religion. Rather than becoming the fearless
butch dog that checks and balances institutions of power, press, granted ornate
and excessive strength through its editorial boards and opinion, simply demur
and become data carriers of the engorged and corrupt. The tool for this lethal subversion or weapon
against speech that provokes reason is the art of diminishing the voice of the dissenters. No, I am not talking about Moscow, Beijing or
Havana. I refer to the "Black" Press in Washington, DC that has
for nearly a century secured the proliferation of liberal, progressive speech
while degrading and censoring conservative speech. For the sake or pure reason and the
advancement of a demoralized culture, it is essential that organizations like The Washington Informer and The Afro-American tear down the walls of
monolithic reporting and commentary and open the doors and windows of a free
press.
Frederick Douglass,
whose home is landmarked in Old Anacostia thanks to the efforts of such great
citizens as Nannie Helen Burroughs, advised, “A battle lost or won is easily described, understood, and
appreciated, but the moral growth of a great nation requires reflection, as
well as observation, to appreciate it.”
Many a battle has been lost and won in our culture yet, it seems the
only narrative presented is that our most prominent victories are the 1964
Voting Rights Act and the elections of two black presidents—one by the Congressional
Black Caucus and the other by Electoral College. We are constantly losing the religious, economic,
education, family and individual battles because we have a secure press that
promotes without protest the religion of secularism, the economics of Lord John
Maynard Keynes, public school only education and family and individual rights
as doled out by the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. This was not always so. Rich debate and journalistic excellence was on
display in “Black” Papers like the Chicago Defender and the Pittsburg Courier. In 1932, Courier
Publisher Robert Lee Vann swayed black voters to shift their political
allegiance from the Republican Party to support the Democratic candidate
Franklin D. Roosevelt. By 1936, he would
come to regret such a decision. Having criticized
Blacks in 1932 for selling their “souls” to the Republican Party, he realized by 1936, per Black
Americans in the Roosevelt Era: Liberalism and Race by John B. Kirby, that,
Blacks had refinanced their souls with the Democrat Party. It was not allegiance to either but rich
independence from both that would allow men to reason the best course to meet
the needs of their culture.
It is written in the First of the US Constitution’s Bill of
Rights that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. So why does the
Black Press blockade its readers from so small an opinion as those that
dissent? Why does the Black Press reduce,
diminish or make less the protester’s view of facts or expression of
thought? Why does the Black Press
discriminate against alternative voices in its business of printing or publishing?
Frederick Douglass published the North
Star for four years before merging it with another newspaper. The North Star's
slogan was "Right is of no Sex--Truth is of no Color--God is the Father of
us all, and we are all Brethren."
It is best that a Free Press pursue the Truth at the cost of losing its
coveted place of leisure with the corrupt or relaxing its menace against the corrupt. Sociologist William Julius Wilson
once quipped, “There is a tendency to want to treat blacks as a monolithic
socioeconomic group.” This should never
be the doctrine or practice of the Black Press.
Our culture is in need of a Press that will fight tirelessly for their
rights as citizens and as human beings.
Black Press, dismantle this wall of monolithic reporting and commentary
and open us to a free press.
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