After appeals and the recanting of testimony from witnesses, as well as the pleas from various human rights groups like Amnesty International and the NAACP, the State of Georgia seems determined to put to Troy Davis to death. Davis was imprisoned for killing an off-duty police officer in 1989.
The Daily Beast is reporting that Al Sharpton's new gig on MSNBC may be the result of the long-time Civil Rights activist endorsing the NBC Universal-Comcast merger. The merger was controversial for many reasons, but most because of the media behemoth it created. There was quite a bit of opposition against it, including opposition from some black organizations and members of Congress, but Sharpton, Ben Jealous of the NAACP and Marc Morial of the National Urban League all signed off on it. NBC-Comcast later agreed to creating a type of informal "diversity council" to advise the new media conglomerate. The Daily Beast is implying the council Sharpton helped create may have "created" Sharpton's new role with MSNBC as an afternoon anchor.
Not too long after the NAACP ripped CNN and others for their lack of black prime time anchors, Rev. Al Sharpton, Civil Rights activist and sayer of uncomfortable things, has been made the new afternoon host of some random news program on MSNBC. He's replacing Cenk Uygur who was kind of terrible in the same slot. Sharpton, while not a polished broadcast journalist, brings a much more unpredictable sense to the program, as conservatives, barely able to contain their disgust, attempt to have a debate with him on air.
Danielle Belton | 5 Comments | Share Article | Email Article | Print Article | tagged Al Sharpton, CNN, Keli Goff, MSNBC, alison stewart, keith olbermann, media, michel martin, naacp, rachel maddow, roland martin, toure 
Black farmers rally in Washington, D.C.A famous scarecrow once sang, "You can't win. You can't break even. And you can't get out of the game." Obviously, that was coming from the personal experience of being a scarecrow on a black-owned farm.
Last week, amidst all the Shirley Sherrod drama there was another victim -- Black farmers who found their $1.25 billion discrimination settlement, announced by President Barack Obama earlier this year, stripped from a war funding bill after Congress refused to authorize the money.
Who saw this coming? Shirley Sherrod, who got caught up in the matrix last week, announced to the National Association of Black Journalists that she will be suing conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart for his release of an edited piece of video that made it appear as if Sherrod had willfully discriminated against a white farmer. After the video popped up online via Breitbart and was played on FOX News, Sherrod claims she was forced to resign from her position with the USDA.
Danielle Belton | 10 Comments | Share Article | Email Article | Print Article | tagged Andrew Breitbart, Andrew Brietbart, FOX News, NABJ, Politics, Shirley Sherrod, naacp, racism 
In this guest post author and journalist Amy Alexander "goes there" on NAACP President Benjamin Todd Jealous in the aftermath of the Shirley Sherrod fiasco. At very detailed length, Alexander describes her time as the "voice" of Jealous, writing his editorials, crafting his talking points and attempting to get him media ready. The key word is "attempting." Many people have remarked that Jealous' jump to erroneous conclusions on Sherrod smelled to high heaven of someone who's not media savvy (or even regular savvy). Alexander paints an even more damning portrait -- of a man in love with himself and in love with the limelight, but incapable of meeting the needs of the 101-year-old, historic civil rights organization.
Shirley SherrodWell. All they did was smear a good woman's name in the pursuit of ratings and "Reverse Racist" shame the NAACP and the White House into piling on. But, bump that! Former USDA employee Shirley Sherrod isn't going away without a fight!
From Media Matters via Plum Line:
She said Fox showed no professionalism in continuing to bother her for an interview, but failing to correct their coverage.
"I think they should but they won't. They intended exactly what they did. "They were looking for the result they got yesterday," she said of Fox. "I am just a pawn. I was just here. They are after a bigger thing, they would love to take us back to where we were many years ago. Back to where black people were looking down, not looking white folks in the face, not being able to compete for a job out there and not be a whole person."
Danielle Belton | 8 Comments | Share Article | Email Article | Print Article | tagged FOX News, Politics, Shirley Sherrod, naacp, racism ;)
Yet all they did was end up with egg on their face. It was Shirley Sherrod who lost her job, was blasted as a racist online and on TV and was used as a political football between the Right Wing and the NAACP. Yesterday was just another day in knee jerk, reactionary 24-hour-news cycle. Where your career can end due to some poorly edited tape.
Washington Post PostPartisan blogger Jonathan Capehart brought up a widely spread column by anti-racist writer/activist Tim Wise from April today, rehashing Wise's question of "What If the Tea Party Black?" in Wise's post "Imagine: Protest, Insurgency and the Workings of White Privilege." In the essay, Wise illustrates the nature of White Privilege when it comes to fringe movements. How one persons' anti-government, homemade sign party is another person's dangerous hoods and radicals.
