Capital Press Club Podcast
Capital Press Club Podcast
CPC Legacy Podcast #26 - Nelson Mandela, Media for Eaton, and Empowering Black Voices
Reflections on Mandela.
Highlight WKU Black Women’s Podcast
BET Media Group and others Help Eden Fire Victims
Don Lemon applies for White House Press Credentials
Welcome to another edition of the Capital Press Club Legacy Podcast. I'm Dr Colin Campbell and I want to thank you for joining us for episode number 26. This day in Black history in 1990, the former leader of South Africa, nelson Mandela, was released from prison in the post-apartheid South Africa. Of course, he had spent almost 30 years in prison because of apartheid rules that incarcerated him and many people were fighting to champion the cause for self-empowerment and freedom and liberation for black South Africans. He was released from prison. He walked hand in hand with his wife at the time, winnie Mandela. He went on to become president of South Africa and his legacy lives on Now.
Speaker 1:Of course, right now we know that in South Africa there's a lot of differences and disparities between white South Africans, black South Africans and also colored South Africans, which is a racial category that they do have in South Africa. Of course, we don't have that name here. We kind of phased that out sometime in the civil rights era, but it is still part of the lexicon in South Africa and you still have black South Africans and colored South Africans fighting for equality, fighting for land rights, and it has also been controversial South Africa because of their stance. They've taken on some international issues. Well, we do have our guest and my colleague here, derek Kenney, who is joining me as we talk about the latest coming out of journalism and black media in the US. Derek, good to see you, man.
Speaker 2:Good to see you, Colin. How are you today?
Speaker 1:All right, all is well, all is well. A lot of things to talk about. We start with some other women who are trying to build a legacy of their own when it comes to podcasting and talking about media issues, and out of WKU, western Kentucky University, we have two women who are doing their own podcasting, trying to empower Black women in media, who are looking to get into the field, those who want to share their stories and, of course, advanced storytelling. All journalism is about is storytelling. That's really at the heart and essence of the trade, and I think that right now, we're in kind of murky waters when it comes to truth-telling, when it comes to looking at the verisimilitude of the narratives that are coming from various aspects of society. Eric, what do you think about the current landscape and why it's so important for women to tell their story?
Speaker 2:Oh, for so long, I believe women have. Well, even the shortest. Maybe 50, 60, 70 years ago, women were not quite as empowered to be able to tell their own stories. It was often told through the lens of men, and I think a legacy of that is the term mansplaining, where a male doctor will tell women how they feel, based off of his not often medical knowledge, but also his knowledge of women as a man, and then in the business industry environment as well, oftentimes men were overlooked or marginalized or relegated to positions where they don't have a voice.
Speaker 2:However, of course, you know, in the last several decades, women, of course I guess women have always been powerful, but I think the last 30 or 40 years, women have been at the forefront of all things intellectual, civic and industry, corporate and government. So I believe that now, especially with the advent of things like podcasting and content creator vehicles like YouTube and TikTok, all people, especially women, have a chance to really speak for themselves and from their perspective. There will be no there's probably still some mansplaining out there, but there will be no mansplaining and that's a great thing, I think. And podcasting, as you know, as we know, is a great vehicle to not only get your information out there, but to create a connection with listeners that may be interested in what you have to say and, in this case, the empowerment that you get from black women that have a mission to empower those that are looking to grow in media is very interesting. It's very, very powerful. That are looking to grow in media is very interesting.
Speaker 1:It's very powerful. Yeah, most definitely. We're starting to see podcasting really explode. It's a trajectory that's really been emphasized in a post-COVID society, when people were at home most of the time. They set up studios in their homes and started to podcast from there. Now, this is not to say that podcasting started then or that people weren't already doing it.
Speaker 2:It was already well established by COVID time no-transcript yeah probably around then I would say in the mid-noughts right.
Speaker 1:But we did see an augmentation of people being involved in podcasting around COVID times, especially in the education sector and other business-related fields where people wanted knowledge, wanted news and information sharing but were afraid or were restricted to going out into the public.
Speaker 1:So people started to share a lot of their ideas right from their bedrooms, right from their living rooms.
Speaker 1:We even saw legacy media participate in that, with people broadcasting from their home offices or, in some cases, their bedrooms too right.
Speaker 1:So just on the coattails of that, as they're broadcasting issues around the Kentucky community, they look at racial disparities there, they look at quality of life issues, they look at the future of education, and these women are really trying to empower women to tell their individual stories, especially when it comes to issues of intersectionality.
Speaker 1:Now we understand intersectionality as a number of factors that contribute to a person's experience, not just their race, not just their gender, but also their socioeconomic factors, going into how it affects their quality of life, how it really affects how they navigate the world around them, how it may or may not interrupt their social cohesion, that comfort that they feel within the environment that they live in.
Speaker 1:And I think it's important for young women to have this space to tell their stories, especially when it comes to some of the unique challenges that they face in an economy that seems a bit questionable with the issues that they're facing, like artificial intelligence, where there's another aspect of downsizing government, less opportunities for government jobs, when there's less opportunities in the private sector to some degree, because the jobs may be inaccessible because they may be overseas these are all issues that are affecting not just everyone, but particularly Black women as well, who have to navigate this, and I think it's great that they are opening up the podcasting platform for them to give their own unique perspectives and to tell stories that may fly under the radar of more prominent voices and more prominent platforms that are sucking all the oxygen out of the air.
Speaker 1:It comes to covering domestic politics and some of the drama that's happening in our federal government.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I find that it's important to have a voice just shifting a bit as a professional communicator. There's so many ways to continue communicating. Even when you're between paid working, journalism or working communication professional positions, you should always have your voice out there, always honing your craft, and podcasts are one way to keep your voice relevant, keep it fresh and maintain your experience and exposure as a working communications professional. So I'm encouraged by what these young ladies are doing out there in Kentucky, but then also a lot of others that are out there doing their podcasts or doing content creation. We mentioned just last week that content creators and podcasters now have been legitimized, so to speak. Not that they weren't legitimate before, but now they can get White House credentials, which wasn't necessarily the case last year or in previous administrations.
Speaker 2:So podcasting is not just a very easily accessible medium to build an audience, it's also a legitimate medium. So you are now a media organization and with only as few as 1,000 viewers or 1,000 listeners, you're as big as an AM station was just 10 years ago. And let's know that those guys had advertisers. They were able to generate revenue. So if you're out there, you're a content creator and you're getting 3,000 views. 5,000 views. Just think of yourself as the size of almost a small radio station was just 10 years ago or even now, which is still powerful, was just 10 years ago or even now, which is still powerful. And on radio I guess it's still average quarter-hour listeners as opposed to video views or downloads, but it's still kind of relative when you're talking about your actual impact in terms of reaching listeners or viewers. It's significant. It's just a very different world.
Speaker 1:This is almost like the updated version of ham radio and, like you said, am radio, where now you have these independent broadcasters. And then some, so some degree. It's also narrow casting, because you might have a certain subject matter that only a few people may be watching or paying attention to, but the potential to reach the masses is out there, as long as the Wi-Fi is working and the internet connections are stable, you could reach around the world, and I think this is a huge opportunity for people to broadcast some of their own unique experiences that most of us would not even realize that are happening.
Speaker 1:for technology, the micronization of technology and the facility in which people can access it, just like I said, from there, from the comfort of their homes. Right, yeah, you need a camera, wi-fi connection and you're good to go. So what I what I find interesting is that they're calling this the I believe, the melanated or melanin media broadcast group. So you know, just the focus on people who look like us, who are again sometimes marginalized when it comes to mainstream media and what's being covered, and who knows where this can go. This could be a huge project for them as they try to recruit more women to tell their stories and as they try to appeal to their communities around them. I wish them a lot of luck. It's not always easy podcasting and trying to get large audiences.
Speaker 1:You and I know this quite intimately, but you've got to keep going right and I think, that these young women are very committed, they've got the energy for it, they've got the vision for it and it'll be interesting to see how they progress in years to come with their project and their fledgling effort, trying to get their voices seen and heard around the world, potentially, derek. So one of the other things that we're talking about today, too, is the BET Media Group and how they want to bring more attention to some of the families that were affected by the wildfires in Los Angeles. So you have the BET Media Group, you also have the NAACP and other groups that are trying to raise funds for these families, and what's interesting about this is, you know, speaking about disparities and marginalization. You have Palisades Fire, which received lots of attention, even most recently last week at the Grammy Awards, where you had people raising funds for these families in the Palisades. Maybe some would reach Altadena victims of the Eaton Fire, but what we do know about the Eaton Fire and Altadena area is that there were a lot of Black people who were affected by these fires, who lost their homes, some lost their lives. We know that collectively, in the series of fires that happened in the Los Angeles area, nearly 30 people have lost their lives. I think the current count is at 29. Several of them were Black folk who couldn't leave their homes or they decided to stay with their homes. Whatever the circumstances were, they ultimately paid the ultimate price for the result of what these fires created and the carnage it left behind. And so right now, you're getting these groups that are trying to raise money for families affected by this.
Speaker 1:We know that the costs of this fire are, of the series of fires have reached astronomical heights. I mean, we're talking tens of billions of dollars. Ok, not just a couple billion, tens of billions. In fact, this looks like it'll be the most costly result of fires in the state of California, and that says a lot. So, when we're talking about the loss of life, the loss of property, this is huge right now, and it totaled more than several thousand acres.
Speaker 1:And it totaled more than several thousand acres. I think what more than a thousand acres that these fires encompassed. So I think the last estimate is close to 60,000 acres. I think they put it around 57,000 acres. And so, if you think about it, when you think of our marginalized populations, those who may not be able to afford to get back on their feet, who may not have the celebrities and more prominent members of our society, they're going to really be suffering the most, and I think this is where the sensibilities of groups like the BET Media Group and the NAACP are trying to advocate for these people, who will definitely need help for several years, for the foreseeable future, and it's quite unfortunate. They don't know what caused these fires, but they do know that there are a lot of people who are in pain right now, still recovering, and who are going to need that extra help.
Speaker 2:And also I guess it kind of harkens to the question being a responsible corporate citizen. What does that mean, even for media and communications companies or even for content creators? As you start to make an impact and you start to monetize and you create a revenue generating or profit generating business, how are you as a corporate citizen, as a world citizen and here we see an example of BET Media Group putting their money where their audience is, where they have a largely, predominantly African-American audience that has been supporting them all these years, and then they're giving back through helping the residents, largely African-American community within California that may not have the means, as you mentioned before, to rebuild as many of their well-to-do neighbors in Southern California. So I think it's pretty cool. What do you think about media organizations as corporate citizens? We talk about them all the time when it comes to making decisions on what to share, what type of content, what the hiring practice is, but what do you think about them as corporate citizens or citizens of the United States, as businesses?
Speaker 1:Well, because of the disparities that have lasted since the creation of America, let's put it bluntly there has always been a level of advocacy when it comes to Black media.
Speaker 1:We know that as journalists, as storytellers, as truth speakers, we should be very impartial, but there is an element of advocacy, of endorsement, of pushing for, you know, the promotion of the Black experience, because it has often been overlooked. When you have established media and you have legacy media, which tends to bend towards corporate favor, the voices of the people coming from lower socioeconomic classes, which involves a lot of Black Americans, is often deprioritized, and I think that's why it's important for members of media, prominent members of media, to really look for those voices that are often just pushed over, pushed aside or neglected in favor of people with more money in their pockets. Let's take a look at what the CEO of BET Media Group, scott Mills, said. He said for generations, altadena served as a refuge for Black Americans looking to escape the Jim Crow South and the discriminatory land ownership practices pervasive in so many other communities in California.
Speaker 1:As such, it became a haven for black families and an exemplar of the power of generational wealth in the black community, and so what Mills is saying here is that this was building a home, buying property. That was really one of the few ways that black people could build generational wealth to pass on to their children and their grandchildren, because they couldn't always do it through jobs. They couldn't do it, maybe through a pension, where some of the members of our white community are able to do that on a much greater scale. Right now, we're dealing with the disparity of the average white family being worth eight to 10 times more than the average black family, and this is a statistic that has been holding steady for decades.
Speaker 1:There hasn't been much movement, whether whoever's in office, what initiatives have been put in place? We hear lots of talk over critical race theory and affirmative action and DEI and all these other quotas. You know, back in the late 70s, early 80s, there was discussions about quotas. Early 80s there was discussions about quotas. We hear all of these discussions about programs that are seemingly are supposed to favor Black Americans so they can get a leg up, but when you look at the results, statistically it's really white women who benefit from a lot of these initiatives and the disparity of wealth is still constant.
Speaker 1:There really has not been a dramatic change in that. And so when you look at situations where people have invested in property and housing to build generational wealth and it's wiped out in the blink of an eye, like here with the Eaton Fire in the Altadena area, of course there needs to be some type of attention given to the destruction that's happened and the manifestation of what will happen to these families who now have had their generational wealth pretty much wiped out. We saw this happen with Hurricane Katrina back in 2004, 2005, I believe, where people lived there for generations in the New Orleans, louisiana area and they were displaced. They were displaced so much so that members of our lighter complexion media called them refugees, even though they were Americans, right.
Speaker 1:Looking for a place to live. We have to remember that language. We remember a prominent rapper saying that the president at the time didn't care about black people because he just kind of flew over and wasn't really doing anything that substantive for the displaced families. So there's been a history of this destruction of property and then black families really feeling the brunt of that impact. So to see Mills and members of the NAACP and other groups working in partnership with local organizations and associations to help prop these families back up again, I think that's great. So there's. You're asking me if I think there should be a level of advocacy.
Speaker 1:I think there always has been when it comes to Black media, because there are so many disparities that we've faced. When it came to Fannie Lou Hamer talking about the lynching campaigns, a lot of brothers, a lot of Black men, were lynched. There were some Black women too, but a lot of Black men were targets and media, of course, mostly white-owned, if not all white-owned weren't talking about these issues. For them it was just another day. Remember. There used to be picnics and barbecues and almost parties around lynchings at times, right. So when it came to the media covering these issues, they were often ignored. It really came to a Black woman, fannie Lou Hamer and others, really highlighting some of the tragedies that happened out of the lynching campaigns coming from white society towards Black people and fast forward to 2025,. Again, we need to rely on members of black society to talk about the issues that white media or mainstream media are largely ignoring.
Speaker 2:That's. That is incredible, and I guess, in this day and and age, I guess when you say you take the training wheels off, meaning a lot of the DEI is gone, a lot of the emphasis on enforcement of parity or equity or equality being taken off it's more important than ever that we are in a position I mean African-American media, organizations and professionals are in a position to make sure that stories are told, the stories of marginalized or underrepresented audiences or people in America are told, and that's that's. The onus is now even more important than it has been in the past in the past.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it's vitally important now because of the de-emphasis of people's identity and being Black American, of course, that's an important identity for a lot of us because we didn't have any knowledge of what our identities collectively were like before America was founded, before the colonies were instated, before the independence from England was established.
Speaker 1:You know, our histories were wiped away from us, kept away from us.
Speaker 1:So Black American identity is very important to many of us as we continue to be underrepresented and marginalized.
Speaker 1:So when it comes to the era we're in now, where we're supposed to almost ignore this separation or this distinction, but still living with the disparities that have been caused by the separation and distinction, it's important that media groups talk about these stories and try to raise money to help these families to do something active so that people can get back on their feet, and a lot of this money is going to go towards legal fees, temporary housing.
Speaker 1:I mean these are issues and things that people really need in a desperate time right now. Of course, there are people who are in need all over the country, but when we look at the focus and the millions of dollars that have been raised for victims of the Palisades fire and the Eaton fire. We do have to wonder how much of that will reach Black families, because we know that sometimes money has been withheld, sometimes money has gone missing, the money just doesn't reach the families who really need it. And so to see this program being discussed and implemented and people participating, it is somewhat optimistic that these people may be able to get back on their feet despite the vast amount of destruction that they have fallen victim to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah you know, so we'll see again. You know what happens with this program and how it'll affect families. How many families I think it's still too hard to tell right now how many families specifically bet media group, nap and local organizations and associations are helping, but I know that it is many and there are a great number of people who are in need for extra money for housing, for insurance, to cover up any gaps in insurance. One of the other things you mentioned earlier in this podcast, derek, was the legitimacy of podcasters in the White House, content creators in the White House, and we talked about it a little bit last week too. Where to get into the White House? You needed a hard pass. You had to go through Secret Service, which I'm sure you still have to go through Secret Service but there was a huge barrier to entry to get into the White House in order to cover someone. If you told someone that you were a magazine writer or a blog writer or something like that, you'd be pretty much dismissed.
Speaker 2:I wouldn't say they would laugh at you. They might laugh at you or not respond at all.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but yeah, but they definitely weren't taking you seriously. Well, they were in a new era where the White House has decided that they're going to bring in some content creators and some podcasters and bloggers and, sure enough, you have everybody wanting to jump on board, wanting that access. How many people did they say applied? 7,000?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I wanted to say it was close to 7,000, or it was in the thousands, it was like four digits? Certainly four digits.
Speaker 1:It was high.
Speaker 2:I didn't know there was that many content creators that were qualified, or at least believe they're qualified, to get White House credentials. But who knows? Who knows what qualifies as acceptable or what's the real criteria to be able to have access.
Speaker 1:Making that determination, what qualifies as legitimate or not. So I think that it's interesting If you have a blog, you write for Medium or have a few subscribers on Substack, does that count or do you need a wide following?
Speaker 1:Well one person that has, who has tried to apply for these credentials, is Don Lemon.
Speaker 1:As you know, lemon was used to be an anchor on CNN before they made some personnel shifts and then he found himself on X for a hot second. It wasn't even a hot minute, it was a hot second contract with the CEO or the chair or the leader of X, elon Musk, and of course, that fell apart, and so now Don Lemon is on his own. I believe he still has a podcast that airs on YouTube and so he applied for credentials to be back in the White House covering the President of the United States. Now I don't know if he's actually received those credentials or not. I guess time will tell, as they're probably still going through, if there are thousands of applications, probably still weeding through some of those applications to see who they're going to let in and who they're going to exclude. Because remember, like I said last week, that briefing room is not that big. It's not like you have even a half of a football field worth of space to cram reporters in there. It's really almost like a large living room if you think about it.
Speaker 2:I'm sure people's living rooms in the dmv are larger than the oh wow, some, some, some people's, some people's living rooms, of course, especially if you get to the suburbs, uh, maybe some parts of georgetown, uh, or some parts you have, you know, when you get into, like buoy and areas like that, uh, when you're in the ex-burbs, montgomery county's areas, yeah, certainly the living rooms and some bedrooms are probably larger as well, certainly, yeah, speaking of rooms.
Speaker 1:What this does is it leaves room for independent journalists to really apply and to get in there. Before we go, we only have like a minute left. Quick story my first job out of undergrad was to work in Fox 5. And I was a news assignment editor where I would basically look at factors that came in and try to run them up to the assignment desk to see if it was newsworthy to cover. And guess who sat at that assignment desk well before he was a reporter, well before he was an anchor, and that was Don Lamm, don Lemon.
Speaker 2:Now, I don't know if you've heard of him but yeah, it was my first job.
Speaker 1:I worked not side by side with Lemon, but yeah, you know his desk was close to where my desk was and I very cool faxes up and say, hey, is this worth covering the news? You know for a whopping five dollars an hour I was making back then.
Speaker 1:So you know, brings back memories, but I do remember him working there and I remember his departure when he decided he wanted to be a news reporter and I think he went back to down south I can't remember if it was Alabama or Tennessee. I met up with him again when he was at WMAQ in Chicago and since then it's been history for him. So we'll see if he ends up in the White House, derek.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, we'll see. And the question I have I guess you said there's limited space. So what does that do to traditional media organizations or legacy media organizations? As you allow more people in to a room that's already filled to capacity, you have to kind of let some people out. So what is the decision-making process going to be for the white? House or something yeah, you know that's gonna be strange.
Speaker 1:Last week there was a hierarchy, there was you know, the legacy media was very prominent. Sat in the front. You had the ap in front, reuters in front, abc, cbs, nbc, fox all all in the front row I. I could see them changing that around a bit. But, again, time will tell. We're only a few weeks in, not even a month yet in, so we'll have to see how the media are arranged in the briefing room, Derek.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and we'll be able to see if there's any trends or any type of if there's any trends or any type of deliberacy when it comes to making a selection process, so to speak, and I'll leave it at that.
Speaker 1:Most definitely. Well, we'll be back and we'll be investigating that in weeks to come to see how that all is laid out in the Brady Briefing Room. As content creators are allowed in and other so-called independent journalists, it's definitely going to be a different era when covering the White House. With all that, I want to thank DK for joining me with the Capitol Press Club Legacy Podcast, episode number 26. We'll see you back here for episode 27. Take care.