TOTEUSCredo of the Black PressThe Black Press believes that America can best lead the world away from racialand natural antagonisms when it accords to every person, regardless of race,color or creed, full human rights. Hating no person, fearing no person in thefirm belief that all are hurt as long as anyone is held back.Foiled AgainBill Clinton must be beside him-self.As The Carolinian went to press,it looked as if United Nations Secre-tary General Kofi Annan was on theverge of working out a peaceful solu-tion to the Iraq crisis.We had mobilized men and mate-riel, battle groups had steamed intothe Persian Gulf, goodbyes had beensaid, and the troops were stoked.As one captain candidly admittedwhen interviewed, oThere will be asense of letdown� if a peaceful solu-tion were to be found.Surely no one would be more letdown than Bill Clinton.If peace talks do prove fruitful,this would mark the second time inhis presidency that last-second diplo-macy has prevented him from exer-cising decisive military action.The first time was shortly into hisfirst term, when he was all set to in-vade Haiti if the military rulers whohad ousted President Jean-BertrandAristide didnTt give up and leave.Not that he or the United Statsliked Aristide, of course. But theewere thousands of Haitian refugeesshowing up on our shores.The ELS. government was havingto explain why they were being heldin virtual concentration camps asoeconomic� refugees while Cubanswho admitted they just wanted abetter life in America were auto-matically given full political asylum,especially with the press full of re-ports of massacres and detentions.So Clinton took the bull by thehorns and decided this was the timeto look presidential. He announcedthat we would be coming if theydidnTt relinquish power right away.Of course, they didnTt, and hewould have had his required quickand decisive military campaign if ithadnTt been for the efforts of formerPresident Jimmy Carter, who talkedthe three military strongmen intoexercising the better part of valor,literally at the 11th hour.Now, a chance to show the Ameri-can people and the world whoTs bossseems to be in jeopardy by the ef-forts of the UN secretary general.There have been some halfheartedrumblings that the U.S. wouldnTt ac-cept a ophony deal.�But how exactly we would justifythat is unclear, given that the entirereason we were going to clobberIraq was to enforce UN sanctions.Poor Bill. Sometimes you ISL canTtstart a war.Just Pardon ThemYou're the president of the UnitedStates. A former member of your in-ner circle and several good friendsare charged with lying to a specialprosecutor, and possibly, with ob-structing justice. What do you do?What can you do?Well, if you are to follow recentpresidential protocol, there is onlyone course of action to take.You pardon them.That's right. Pardon them andanybody connected witch the affairfor anv and all crimes that may havebeen committed in connection withit. Pardon them, declare the matterclosed ofor the healing of the coun-try� and move on.We can hear our conservativefriends already. oThatTs absolutelyoutrageous! Clinton will never beable to justify pardoning MonicaLewinsky and Vernon Jordan if theyare charged. It totally subverts jus-tice!�Calm down. First of all, who saidwe were talking about Bill Clinton?And who said the above scenario wasfrom the immediate future?Who, for that matter, said it washypothetical?Actually, the scene we were talk-ing about has already transpired, in1992. The White House employeeweTre talking about is former De-fense Secretary Caspar Weinberger.The president was Ronald Reaganand the scandal was the Iran/Contraaffair.We have compared the almost to-tally fruitless Whitewater specialprosecutor's investigation to that ofIran/Contra, saying that the Iran/Contra prosecutor wasted a similaramount of time and money with noresults.Actually, as we pointed out iy ouropening vignette, that isnTt eritirelyaccurate.The Iran/Contra prosecutorstopped short of charging eitherRonald Reagan or George Bush withany crimes, though many who wereprivy to the evidence said there wasenough to charge them both.Nevertheless, he did bring chargesagainst several members of ReaganTsinner circle, including Lt. Col. OliverNorth, Weinberger andT others, forlying to Congress and to his investi-gators under oath.North was actually convicted,though his conviction was over-turned on appeal.But as the case against Wein-berger was set to go to trial, Reaganannounced a full presidential pardonfor him and the others.Ah, you say, this case was differ-ent.We agree. This case involved di-verting arms to a hostile nation, andbankrolling an armed insurrectionagainst a democratically elected gov-ernment that we didnTt like"all inspecific violation of U.S. law.Another difference is that weheard nobody talking about impeach-ment, even though it was obviousthat Reagan knew what was goingon, even if he didnTt directly plan it.Even if every allegation broughtup by the special prosecutor in theoZippergate� scandal is true, all thathappened is that Clinton had sexwith a consenting 21-year-oldThe only thing that anybody canbe charged with is lying to the spe-cial prosecutorTs grand jury aboutwhether that happened.While technically a violation oflaw, it isnTt one that appears tobother anybody"except the mediaand the Republicans (and not all ofthem, if polls can be trusted).And the media are rapidly losinginterest.So, yes. Bill should go ahead andpardon everybody involved. Declarethe matter settled and move on.He has the power of the presi-dency and precedent on his side, Andnobody will care.Well, almost nobody.SupportThe Black Press!CER 2) Se le Oe ee BL ee eee ids: ds iheVOICES ON THE PAST, THE PRESENT AND THEFUTURE OF BLACK MEDIAPart Three: My Suggestion Box for The FutureBy Tod BurroughsSpecial To The NNPANotice how often black people talk about how once welearn how to play the game, the rules change?ItTs a truism, whether we're talking about corporateAmerica or the presidential cabinet.The rules of the mass media are currently changing.First, there may no longer be a omass media.� Cable,VCRs and the World Wide Web have changed mass commu-nication forever. They are not only here to stay, but growingin power.- Second, print media are either slowly dying or transform-ing into something else. Something almost three-dimen-sional and accessible by millions worldwide on the Informa-tion Superhighway. Something combining text with movingpictures, graphics and sound.Third (and this is most important): No one is safe.That includes the black media. What will happen toblack-owned media when Microsoft powerhouse Bill Gatesdecides he wants to set up 200 black websites to do the job ofboth black newspapers and black news-talk radio? What ifhe gets the traditional major black media advertisers? IfWhites can start Vibe and Source magazines, nationalagenda-setting publications on black youth culture, why notother media, particularly in a post-print media environ-ment?Change is painful, but necessary. Why? Because futurenews consumers are different.Please Note: According to the Freedom Forum, a mediastudies group, a third of all Americans under 30 listed thelate-night talk show monologue as their favorite news sourcein a survey conducted within the past five years. And noteagain: Newsweek reported last year that half of AmericaTs 34million blacks are now under 30.The black media are great at organizing oMillion� march-es, reporting on local church and NAACP news, fighting forthe right of Mumia Abu-Jamal to speak freely and printing anever-ending amount of oWhat Black People Need To Do�Op-Ed manifestos.What they need to do now is simple:1) Local black newspapers need to combine editorial andadvertising forces. We need the power (and protection) of theblack newspaper chains of old. Merge, merge, merge!2) Seek the Web. Print and broadcast from there.3) Report information that folks find vital to their presentand future, and hire reporters who can provide this informa-tion. Ebony writes endlessly about celebrities when we needit to write seriously about how welfare reform is woundingour poor. Emerge has not in its nearly 10-year history had afull-time feature reporting staff covering Congress and theWhite House (even though the publication has been head-quartered in D.C. for most of this decade!), so for the mostpart we get newspaper-style features (mostly from peoplewho work full-time somewhere else) as cover stories insteadof hard-hitting investigative magazine journalism. Why dowe have to read Time, Newsweek, white-owned hip-hopmagazines or Henry Louis GatesT articles in The New Yorkerfor detailed, critical magazine articles on black leaders andmovements? Too little of such writing is in either publica-tion.Local and national black talk radio does a great job"when its producers care enough to schedule guests and ad-equately prepare its hosts for interviews. But to be honest,itTs often long on caller rhetoric and short on informed dia-logue. We need national documentaries and analytical newsreports, not just interviews.The future was yesterday. If enough black media merge,creating black-owned, multimedia print-broadcast-Web con-glomerates, the above suggestions can be implemented.We can either prepare now, or eventually get swept awayby new tides. There may always be a need for the blackpress, but that doesnTt necessarily mean it'll be black-owned.For the public of tomorrow will judge its media by the use-fulness of its content, not the racial purity of its ownership.Todd Burroughs is a journalism doctoral student atthe University of Maryland at College Park. He can beE-Mailed at tburroughs@jmail.umd.edu.,DO YOU oWALK THE WALK� OR JUST oTALK THETALK?�Michael A. Grant, J.D.Special To The NNPAoItTs time for a check-up from the neck up.�"Zig ZiglarFrom time to time, I have to check myself out to see if Iam doing what it takes to accomplish my goals.It is easy to tell ourselves what we intend to do. Andmany people take great pride in trying to impress otherswith the magnitude of their plans. Some will talk endlesslyabout what they are going to do, where they are going to be,and what they are going to have.We all know individuals like this. Whenever we encoun-ter them, they are getting ready to do something spectacularor, at least, better than the average.After a while, being around them becomes intolerablyboring. After we've listened over and over again, we growweary with undertakings that never get done. The truthabout their real intentions eventually turns on a light ofawareness inside of us and we then resolve that, enough isenough.Observing the fake, the false, and the fantasy in others isdone with relative ease. We wait for action to follow words,but it never does. A pattern is established. We judge theperson making the false promises to himself/herself to beinsincere. Then we move on.Seeing the faker in others is easy. But what about seeingthe pretender in ourselves? What about our own hollow at-tempts to impress others with what we plan to do? Howmany times have we told ourselves that we are going toaccomplish this task or that, knowing full well that the nec-essary effort would not be forthcoming? eeSo, other than the vain attempt to impress others withwhat we are capable of achieving, why do we talk endlesslyabout what we are going to do?I believe the answer is low self-esteem. We are trying tohelp ourselves feel good about who we are and what we aremade of. The irony of otalking the talk� but not owalking thewalk� is this: Not following through with plans that we haveannounced to others (or to ourselves) does not raise our es-teem, it lowers it. We also respect ourselves less.You see, high self-esteem is more than just temporarilyfeeling good about ourselves. And the good feelings that ourtalk generates are ephemeral or short-lived. Like the effectof a drug wearing off, our moods plummet to lower and lowerlevels each time we attempt to do with words what onlydisciplined action can accomplish.Sustained high self-esteem has as one of its most essen-tial components integrity. Integrity means wholeness orcompleteness. When our words and deeds are so integratedwith purposeful action that we only say what we truly in-tend to do, we have integrity. And our integrity helps us toreally feel good about who we are.My grandmother used to recite the poem: oCheating theman in the glass.� I donTt recall all the lyrics, but I distinctlyremember the poemTs potent closing stanza:oYou may fool the whole world down the highway of lifeand get pats on the back as you pass. But your final rewardwill be heartaches and tears if youTve cheated the man in theglass.�The one person that we can never really fool"not eventhose most gifted at denial"is our self.Success in any venture"large or small"demands itspayment in advance. There are no easy routes to take. Weretain a degree of self-respect when we choose to seal ourlips until weTre ready to put forth the necessary energy totransform our talk into action. But when we do muster theresolve to get busy"busy owalking the walk� and not justotalking the talk�"we boost our chances of succeeding andlift our self-esteem in the process.God bless!Dr. Grant, author of Beyond Blame, is a motivational/inspirational speaker. His company, G&C Motivational Con-sultants, also conducts seminars, leadership workshops, andteam-building meetings. For more information, please con-tact Victor Cook at (615) 726-1934 or via e-mail at GandCCons@AOLcom.08 Hy NE OR: fgEducation woesPdr nigerencordng teOut of tou hrpmags tnd oh . : o » Yes, studenthac as bis hoauen AOM ro ting clot spond sah ti cry�@ 69 Less moral / ethical@63 Less involved with their childrenTs school lives@ 83 More self-centered SOURCE: 1997 survey o 2.733 wachoraby Education Communications, Inc