MANSFIELD: Boycott Channel 5

 

When I turned on the news at 5pm to watch the coverage on the day Louis Stokes was laid to rest I was shocked, disgusted and outraged by WEWS Channel 5. I sometimes have more than one news broadcast on at the same time, and while all of the other local stations started off with coverage of the funeral, Channel 5’s lead story was about some suburban minister who had been arrested for bilking an elderly church member out of her money.

Just to check, I turned back to the station at the 6pm hour and it wasn’t the second or even third story by then; the coverage of the going home ceremony of one of the greatest statesmen our country has ever produced ran fourth.

Yeah, you read that right — it was bumped down to fourth.

I don’t know about you, but that’s it for me. I’m boycotting the station until management issues an apology, one that I doubt will ever come. So it’s probably goodbye to my friend Leon Bibb and the lovely Danita Harris; I enjoyed them and will miss them both greatly, but I simply can’t watch a station where the management is so insensitive to minority viewers, no matter how much they claim to be “5 On Your Side.”

Since TV news is highly orchestrated and very well planned out, this act of disrespect was no accident or oversight. Some news director or producer (or both) decided with malice aforethought to slap the black community in the face by leading off with what was essentially a non-story rather than pay proper tribute to the memory of our great deceased congressman. And they didn’t stop there. They, with even more malice, dropped the story way, way down the lineup in the later newscast.

To me this is no small matter. I’m old school and I still get a goodly portion of my daily news from TV, as do a number of my contemporaries. So when this blatant disrespect occurred, I immediately called the station for an explanation and a young woman (who probably wasn’t even born when Congressman Stokes retired) cavalierly informed me that it was a decision made by the producers. What she didn’t say, but clearly implied, was that I could like it or not like it — my choice.

Well, I’m choosing to not like it to the point of boycotting the station.

Obviously Channel 5’s attitude is that they don’t want to appear to be catering too much to the black community; that might piss off some of their white viewers. Of course they will deny this and become outraged at the mere suggestion of it, but what else, in God’s name, could cause them to make such a purposeful and wrongheaded decision?

Anyone naïve enough to think race still doesn’t play a role in virtually every aspect of American culture — media included — all they have to do is read some of the smarmy and disgusting comments made on Cleveland.com in regards to the passing of the great man.

Others can do as they like, this is still supposedly a free country. But for my part I’m boycotting Channel 5. I took to Facebook and posted something about the incident right after my interaction with the station, and numerous people responded with outrage. I hope that outrage continues to grow.

From Cool Cleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier’s From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available again in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author by visiting http://NeighborhoodSolutionsInc.com.

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