Bruce, we can’t take responsibility for predicting the assumptions you’re going to make and then heading them off. That’s what you’re basically asking us to do (the CNN deal hadn’t been announced until after our mailing). And a simple web search on Fox and CBC would have surfaced plenty about the CNN deal–that was the dominant news story. I have mad respect for your writing and the work you do, but in this case it seems like you’re making points based on pure speculation and putting the responsibility on us to remove the preconditions for you going there.

Really I saw no mention of that anywhere till I saw the end of the relevant post on this very blog.

Still, it’s not as though CNN or any of them want to talk about racially selective mass imprisonment either. What’s stopping Anderson Cooper or Paula Zahn or somebody from talking about that stuff now — tonight? Maybe they are waiting for the CBC presidential debate too, I guess.

The idea that no networks other than Fox want to do debates with the CBC Institute are simply false.

CNN is hosting a debate with the CBC after a long period of negotiation, and NBC along with MSNBC offered to begin talks with the CBC as well. In addition, Tavis is doing debates with PBS.

The CBC Institute has had and continues to have alternatives. That’s not the issue. The issue is the CBC Institute partnering with THE most effective media mechanism that helps keep in play the racist frames that make it hard for groups like ours (ColorOfChange)–and the CBC members themselves–to engage the very issues we need to be working on (and speaking about in real, race terms), like Black imprisonment, access to quality education, etc.

Black folks have a whole set of issues that white America, including many of our white allies are simply unwilling to talk about in sensible terms. That is why no candidates talk about racially selective mass incarceration and its far-reaching consequences as a public policy issue, for instance. White media and white folks generally don’t want to talk about race execept on their own terms, and it is generally considered evidence of bad manners at best when we bring the subject up without their permission. At worst, black opinion, when it differs from white is simply regarded as beyond the pale of sensible discourse. I recall getting into an argument in the fall of 2005 with the WSJ’s online Opinion Journal when they basically pronounced black opinion irrelevant simply because it disagrees with white opinion.

Instead of deep-sixing the CBC debate cause it appears on Fox, why is nobody insisting that one of the other corporate media outlets step up and host the damn thing? Faux News is the devil, no doubt about it.

But where is the outrage against MSNBC, ABC, CNN, NPR and PBS and the rest of that crowd for not stepping up earlier to host a CBC presidential debate? And where is the pressure on THEM to step up NOW?

The racist reluctance to honor our community’s points of view as a legitimate part of the American and the capital d “Democratic” — as in party — dialog is pretty much a constant both in Democratic party circles and in corporate media, as well as in “netroots” across the board. Fox News is no friend, but they cleverly seized upon the opening created by “liberal” racism to throw this bomb. And it seems to be working. Now we are crusading against a debate in which our own views MIGHT be aired in some fashion or other and we have exempted from criticism the Democratic party circles, netroots and corporate mainstream media who STILL can step up any damn time and say OK — we’re PBS or ABC or CNN or NPR and we WILL host the debate if you get it away from Fox!

That would be something! That would be positive! We need a campaign that recognizes the legitimacy of a CBC debate in the first place, something I am just not hearing anyplace. A campaign that is ONLY directed against Fox News and lets the rest of the corporate media establishment and other villains of the piece off the hook doesn’t do it for me.

I’m with you. I’ve been asking this myself, and wondering about it, and I found a plausible answer on another board.

Someone posted to me that possibly it has nothing to do with the CBC, as a group. That they are looking at it, INDIVIDUALLY, and hoping that they are the next ‘ Negro’ to be paid from Fox, like Juan Williams and Ford.

Quite honestly, it was the only thing that remotely made any sense to me. I, too, said that, if someone could show me the ‘money trail’ and it came back to the CBC, I could get that.

As it is, I am confused, but will accept that ’someone’ is looking for a future Fox gig.