Jackson: Imus Media Megaphone Suggested ‘Corruption of Concentration’

Rainbow/PUSH Founder Points Out Lack of Minority Airtime

By John Eggerton -- Broadcasting & Cable, 10/12/2007 4:18:00 PM

Rainbow/PUSH founder The Rev. Jesse Jackson said it was not so much what radio/TV jock Don Imus said about the Rutgers University women’s basketball players, although it was very offensive, but rather the size of the media megaphone he had to say it.

At a media conference in Washington, D.C., Friday sponsored by the group he founded, Jackson pointed out that Imus had 750 hours per year on MSNBC and more than 1,040 on CBS Radio, which was more time on radio and TV than all of the African-American, Hispanic and Asian talkers put together -- which, he added, was suggestive of the "corruption of concentration."

With a few exceptions -- Oprah Winfrey and Tavis Smiley among them -- the media are "all day, all night, all white," he said, which "does not represent the American culture."

For more than one year, Jackson has been pushing media ownership as a civil-rights issue, saying that controlling the media means, to a large extent, controlling the national agenda. He added that he intends to “organize a critical mass of people" to be Federal Communications Commission watchdogs, dogging hearings whether in Washington or around the country. "I would rather have 50 people getting up at an FCC hearing than 5,000 at some other more prominent department," he said, because the media determine "what the whole world sees."

Jackson added that the story of the Jena (La.) Six -- in which six young black men were charged with beating a white student following racially charged incidents, including a noose hung from a tree -- was publicized by bloggers and black radio, not the mainstream media, which, he said, has not been vigilant in covering crimes of violence and hate.

Joined on the dais by Democratic FCC commissioners Jonathan Adelstein and Michael Copps, Jackson said the major media portray minorities in "deadly ways," including less intelligent, less hard-working and more violent.

He added that driven by the "suspicion that the political levers may change next year," there could be an attempt to effect "even more concentrated media ownership in the next few months. We must resist that with all of our democratic might."

FCC chairman Kevin Martin said at the same event that it is time to get moving on the media-ownership rewrite.

Copps said Friday that the FCC "has no business voting on any rule change on ownership until we do something about minority ownership. Not put out a notice of inquiry, but doing something effective.” Adelstein echoed that sentiment.

Martin has proposed leasing digital-TV digital spectrum to minorities and others to use to create programming services that would be accorded the same cable-carriage rights as TV stations. Adelstein said he was not opposed to that effort, but there were still questions about how it would be implemented. He added that it did not get to the fundamental issue of ownership and said, pointedly, "Media sharecropping is not a viable alternative to ownership."

Elsewhere at the media conference, Martin said his DTV-spectrum-lease proposal was not a solution in and of itself, but a step in the right direction, one of several he said he proposed to give diversity a greater voice.

"Some commissioners today are going to say that leasing is no substitute for ownership," he added. "And they are right, which is why we need to address the ownership issues that I have proposed, as well. However, this does not mean that leasing does not provide an important opportunity for new entrants and independent voices."