Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire
  • omnibus

“Civil Rights” Leaders, Politic365 bloggers, CBC Members Get Paid, the Public Gets Played on Network Neutrality.
Bruce A. Dixon, BAR managing editor
26 Aug 2014
“Civil Rights” Leaders, Politic365 bloggers, CBC Members Get Paid, the Public Gets Played on Network Neutrality.
“Civil Rights” Leaders, Politic365 bloggers, CBC Members Get Paid, the Public Gets Played on Network Neutrality.

Is there any part of the black political class that isn't for sale, or hasn't been already been leased by Comcast, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, AT&T or Time-Warner? While the old school politicos at least try to hide the hands of their paymasters, the young guns pretend being a shill is almost an honest living. It's not.

A lot of people with loud voices get their public policy notions from the same places they get their condo payments. As a principle this is neither complicated nor controviersial. Every sixth grader understands it, and every Supreme Court law clerk.

Some corporate mouthpieces however, have brand identities to look after, as designated representatives of oppressed minorities, or elected Democrats and their hangers-on, whose careers depend on passing themselves off as standing for the little people. For them, obscuring, hiding or simply downplaying the importance, even the identities of their corporate benefactors can be pretty important.

Back in April, Black Agenda Report revealed that

“...the NAACP, National Action Network, the National Urban League, the Hispanic Technology and Telecommunications Partnership, League of United Latin American Citizens, Minority Media and Telecommunications Council, and Rainbow PUSH all object to a proposed Federal Communications Commission rule that would force them, whenever they weigh in on matters before the FCC, disclose who they're getting money from.”

...All of them... have in recent years backed state and federal legislation that keeps cities and towns from regulating cable networks or laying their own cable. They've all endorsed laws that bar cities and towns from spinning up their own broadband services which might compete with those of their donors or provide services to poor communities, to schools, libraries and small businesses in their communities that their donors do not. Every one of them opposes network neutrality and backs the digital redlining of black, brown and poor communities. Every one of these so-called civil rights organizations in recent years has backed the privatization or outright giveaway to their wealthy donors vast amounts of the electromagnetic spectrum which could and should have been set aside for community broadcasters and the public good. And of course, these corrupt “civil rights organizations” have unreservedly backed each and every proposed broadcaster and telecom merger, from AT&T's failed attempt to buy T-Mobile to the Comcast-NBC deal and they're lining up right now to back Comcast's current attempt to buy Time Warner cable as well.”

As reprehensible as all this is, the efforts on the part of these dinosaur “civil rights” organizations to conceal their ties to donors at least speaks to their shamefaced awareness that there is or ought to be a standard of decency and moral accountability, even though it's a standard they'd prefer to evade. Sadly, the empowered and amoral generation of black wannabe fixers, stooges and operatives that came after them have no such standards.

Not two weeks ago in a David Pakman interview, Kristal High, the editor of Politic365 not only outed herself and Politic365 as well as corporate mouthpieces, she affected a tone of mild outrage at the notion that Politic365's “incubation” in the bowels of the Minority Media Telecommunications Council, a notorious telecom shill operation and her own consultant agreement with a firm that did PR for telecoms were in any way related to the one-sided opinion pieces Politic365 carries on telecom mergers, cable regulation and network neutrality. At Black Agenda Report we know a little something about carrying one-sided opinion pieces. The difference is that ours are our own and those of our authors, not something a soulless corporation is paying us to say.

The interviewer pointedly asked High why, if her opinions were indeed her own and not those of her corporate sponsors, she didn't express them for free.

Kristal High was seconded by Lauren Victoria Burke, also of Politic365 who in an open letter to journalist Lee Fang and our friend Yvette Carnell tried to pretend that getting funded by the telecoms makes her and the crew at Politic365 experts worth consulting before anybody writes anything serious about the public good and network neutrality, and that fingering them as corporate stooges might actually be libel or defamation.

This was almost bankrupt as the tone-deaf TV One interview forrmer CBC staffer and current corporate lobbyist Angela Rye did with North Carolina's G.K. Butterfield and disgraced former Maryland congressman Al Wynn in response to reports that the CBC, at the urging of their former staffers turned lobbyists, were leveraging their brand as tribunes of the oppressed to represent corporate banksters, military contractors, telecoms, private schools, payday loan operations and other interests. It couldn't be a real story, they said, because they're the black experts at all this, and nobody had talked to them.

In the real world, corporate operatives like Burke,Ghatt and High and Rye are experts at two things. The first is getting paid, and the second is reliably representing the interests of those who pay them against those of the people. No doubt, they're looking forward to long and lucrative careers.

Bruce A. Dixon is managing editor at Black Agenda Report and a state committee member of the GA Green Party. He can be reached via this site's contact page, or at bruce.dixon(at)blackagendareport.com.

net neutrality
Congressional Black Caucus

Trending

Elizabeth Warren Wants Green Bombs, not a Green New Deal
Parallels Between Black and Palestinian Struggles
Cory Booker Hates Public Schools
Bill Cosby Should Have Been Denounced by Black America Long Ago
The Black Wall Around Barack Obama: Who Does It Protect Him Against?
How Complacency, Complicity of Black Misleadership Class Led to Supreme Court Evisceration of the Voting Rights Act

Related Stories

Terri Sewell, the Worst of the Black Caucus, Subverts $15 Wage Bill
Glen Ford , BAR executive editor
Terri Sewell, the Worst of the Black Caucus, Subverts $15 Wage Bill
18 April 2019
Selma, Alabama, has produced the most reactionary Black Congressperson in modern times, part of the Democratic Party’s increasing servitude to corp
The People v. The Information Monopolies: Case Continued
Ann Garrison , BAR contributor
The People v. The Information Monopolies: Case Continued
19 December 2018
Democrats failed to get enough votes to repeal the FCC’s undoing of net neutrality, but there’s still time to change some member’s votes.
The Black Political Class and Network Neutrality
Bruce A. Dixon , BAR managing editor
The Black Political Class and Network Neutrality
21 December 2017
Earlier this month, Chicago journalist Curtis Black called the office of Congressman Bobby Rush (D- IL) to ask what the congressman’s position on n
Blacks, War and the Phony “Resistance”
Glen Ford , BAR executive editor
Blacks, War and the Phony “Resistance”
07 December 2017
“The Democrats are ‘all in’ for the Pentagon, including a majority of the Congressional Black Caucus.”
Net Neutrality and the Drive to Censor the Internet
Andre Damon
Net Neutrality and the Drive to Censor the Internet
29 November 2017
“These giant monopolies will be able to block access to entire websites.”
Trump FCC Wants To Remove Caps on Calls From Jails and Prisons, and to Kill Network Neutrality
Bruce A. Dixon , BAR managing editor
Trump FCC Wants To Remove Caps on Calls From Jails and Prisons, and to Kill Network Neutrality
23 November 2017
When it comes to the people’s will, the FCC have
The Indecency of the Black Misleadership Class
Glen Ford , BAR executive editor
The Indecency of the Black Misleadership Class
09 August 2017
If Congresswoman Barbara Lee is among the best that the Black political class has to offer -- which she is -- then that class is “wholly unfit to g
Gabbard and Lee Join the War Party
Danny Haiphong , BAR contributor
Barbara Lee and Tulsi Gabbard Side with War Party on Sanctions
09 August 2017
The Democrats’ two leading congressional dissidents have finally surrendered, now that the party has “taken the lead in the project of endless war.
What Happens to #Ferguson Affects Ferguson: Net Neutrality, Algorithmic Filtering and Ferguson
Zeynep Tufekci
What Happens to #Ferguson Affects Ferguson: Net Neutrality, Algorithmic Filtering and Ferguson
26 August 2014
This timely article explains how Twitter assisted the public in knowing about Ferguson, and essentially forced corporate media to cover it, while F
Why President Obama Won't Deliver On His Network Neutrality Promises
Bruce A. Dixon , BAR managing editor
Why President Obama Won't Deliver On His Network Neutrality Promises
01 December 2010
After two years of President Barack Obama, where are we on network neutrality, and the rights of minority communities to fight the digital redlinin

More Stories


  • Trump as Othello in a Corporate Theater
    Glen Ford, BAR Executive Editor
    Trump as Othello in a Corporate Theater
    21 Jan 2021
    Trump the straw man has finally been knocked down, giving the Democrats a victory that costs their corporate masters nothing.
  • The Left Lens: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and American Empire, with Ajamu Baraka
    Danny Haiphong and Margaret Kimberley
    The Left Lens: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and American Empire, with Ajamu Baraka
    20 Jan 2021
    Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday is often celebrated without any regard for his radical political legacy.
  • Freedom Rider: Why the Left Don’t Protest
    Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnist
    Freedom Rider: Why the Left Don’t Protest
    20 Jan 2021
    The worse the political and economic crisis becomes, the more lethargic the US left behaves – as if generations of collaboration with corporate Democrats has sucked the life out of the left.
  • Return to the Source: Democracy is Dead
    Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    Return to the Source: Democracy is Dead
    20 Jan 2021
    By what stretch of the imagination can the US be a democracy when ordinary citizens have virtually no influence over what their government does? 
  • Uganda: Bobi Wine Rocks the Vote but Museveni Claims Victory
    Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
    Uganda: Bobi Wine Rocks the Vote but Museveni Claims Victory
    20 Jan 2021
    Ugandan pop star turned presidential candidate Bobi Wine is not Sankara or Lumumba, but he has risked his life to mount a fierce challenge to the 36-year dictatorship of President Yoweri Museveni.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us