In 2003, for reasons that have never been entirely clear, the Congressional Black Caucus co-sponsored a Democratic presidential debate with Fox News. It didn’t go well — the questions were slanted, the in-studio analysis was ridiculous, and the coverage of the event itself on Fox News was cut short so conservative talking heads could start criticizing the candidates before the debate was even over. Indeed, the ’03 event was used by activists recently as an example of why the Nevada Democratic Party shouldn’t team up with FNC for another presidential debate in August.
With this background in mind, this week’s announcement was very disappointing.
Fox News and the Congressional Black Caucus Political Education and Leadership Institute announced that they had agreed to sponsor two debates for presidential candidates this year…. The schedule for debates by Fox and the institute, includes a Sept. 23 event for Democratic candidates in Detroit. No date has been set for a Republican debate.
Color of Change, an African-American online activist group, launched a campaign several weeks ago to convince the CBC Institute not to strike a deal with a Republican cable channel and to urge the group to pick a different network.
“Fox News is not a ‘fair and balanced’ source of information or political debate, and it has repeatedly proven itself hostile to the interests of Black Americans,” says a letter online activists can sign on the group’s website. “Fox on-air personalities and regular guests consistently marginalize Black leaders, culture, and institutions.”
To help prove its case, Color of Change asked Outfoxed director Robert Greenwald to compile an online video detailing Fox News’ record of attacking the African-American community — and Greenwald put together a rather devastating montage.
It didn’t work; the CBC Institute reached an agreement with the network anyway. Now the next phase begins.
Yesterday, the Rev. Jesse Jackson weighed in, denouncing the partnership and urging presidential candidates not to participate. Jackson said:
“I am disappointed by the Congressional Black Caucus Institute’s partnership with FOX, and strongly encourage them to reverse that decision. Why would presidential candidates, or an organization that is supposed to advocate for Black Americans, ever give a stamp of legitimacy to a network that continually marginalizes Black leaders and the Black community? FOX moderating a presidential debate on issues of importance to Black Americans is literally letting the Fox guard the henhouse – FOX should be rejected.”
James Rucker, director of Color of Change, said the online grassroots group would take up a petition drive calling on candidates to boycott the FNC debates. “Every presidential candidate now must decide whether to legitimize Fox — a network that calls black churches a cult, implies that Senator Barack Obama is a terrorist, and uses the solemn occasion of Coretta Scott King’s funeral to call black leaders ‘racist,'” Rucker said.
It leads to two questions going forward: figuring out why the CBC Institute would make such a deal and determining which candidates are going to show up if the deal with Fox News remains intact.
On the first point, Ben Smith and Matt Stoller have detailed backgrounds on the largely unreported relationship between News Corp. and the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, which may help explain why the CBC Institute struck the deal.
On the latter, this won’t be easy for the candidates, particularly John Edwards and Bill Richardson, both of whom pulled out of the Nevada debate (before the state party dropped its co-sponsorship with Fox News) because of the partisan network. For consistency’s sake, both will probably need to do the same with this event.
But, it’s more complicated, isn’t it? No candidate wants to be perceived as slighting the African-American community. Boycotting a CBC Institute debate will no doubt put campaigns in an awkward position. Knowledgeable observers will know that skipping the event will have nothing to do with the CBC and everything to do with the GOP network, but when the media runs the “Dem Candidate to Boycott Black Caucus Debate” headline, it’s likely to cause headaches.
Time will tell how all of this shakes out, but in the meantime, the Congressional Black Caucus should be prepared to explain how and why they’d partner with an obvious partisan propaganda outlet.