Broadcasting While Black

“In Black Power TV, [Chicago media scholar] Devorah Heitner chronicles the emergence of Black public affairs television starting in 1968.”
*
Heitner will read from Black Power TV on Wednesday evening at the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum.

Heitner will be joined by WBEZ journalist Natalie Moore to explore the public television show Soul! We will return to a particular moment in American television when Soul!, a national program coming out of New York, carved out a cultural space that resisted the politics of respectability, introduced audiences to a vibrant Black creative and political aesthetic, pushed past normative boundaries of gender and sexuality while entertaining viewers and valuing Black life and performance.

Featuring a DJ set before and after the program.

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Posted on April 22, 2014

By Tuffy And The Angry Aussie

Except when we do – and when we can lie about it.

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Posted on April 21, 2014

By Steve Rhodes

Just when it looked like maybe the producers of Chicagoland would branch out a bit, they tripled down on Rahm Emanuel, Garry McCarthy and Liz Dozier as the city’s super-citizens deserving of more screen time than Michael Keaton in Multiplicity.
Enough!
Even more so than he already has been, Rahm is portrayed as the most compassionate man in America; the music swells and the images of poor black kids revert to slow-motion as the greatest mayor since the last one intones rhapsodizes himself and his city.

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Posted on April 18, 2014

By Steve Rhodes

“WBBM-Ch. 2 weekday news anchor Rob Johnson has paid more than $1.8 million for a four-bedroom house in Hinsdale,” the Tribune reports.
Meanwhile, I’m searching for an apartment for around $800 a month. This is in inverse proportion to the amount of quality journalism each of us has done.

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Posted on April 17, 2014

By Tuffy And The Angry Aussie

“It’s like, ‘South Side, bang bang, violence, bang bang, and look at what a fucking great job the mayor’s doing!’
“What this series promised was an investigative, journalistic look, in eight episodes, so they can get into the meat of the story, as to the trials and tribulations and problem-solving capabilities of a modern city, and it just turned out to be this total fucking wank.
“If you want to learn about what has happened to North American cities over the past 30 years or so, you can borrow the series, it’s called The Wire. It’s five seasons, and a) it’s way more entertaining than this shit, and b) you’ll learn a helluva lot more and there’s a helluva lot more truth in The Wire than there is in any of these episodes.”

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Posted on April 14, 2014

By Steve Rhodes

In the midst of the most hagiographic treatment yet of our hero mayor, a triumphant Richard M. Daley returns to the scene of his crimes to totally escape even a slightly serious question, instead regaling viewers with bromides about what a great problem-solver he was.
Never mind that the Current Occupant conveniently blames Daley not only for all the problems he inherited, but all the problems he’s created.
In fact, the Chicago that Rahm inherited was so bad – though for two decades Daley was hailed as the greatest mayor the universe had ever produced – that Rahm’s motto, narrator Mark Konkol tells us, could be “Building A New Chicago.”
Could be!
“Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who championed many of the initiatives comprising the plan, is a master of message control and media packaging who attempts to sell his plans as new, even when they’re not,” the Sun-Times reported last June.
“In March, 2012, the mayor unveiled, what he called, ‘Building a New Chicago,’ a $7.3 billion plan to rebuild Chicago’s infrastructure and create 30,000 jobs.
“But it was little more than political packaging by a new administration that had fast become famous for it.
“Most, if not all, of the CTA, water, sewer, parks, schools and City Colleges project had been announced before. So had the $1.7 billion Infrastructure Trust the mayor hoped to use to bankroll some of the projects.”

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Posted on April 11, 2014

By Steve Rhodes

“Former Mayor Richard Daley spoke exclusively with ABC7 Eyewitness News for the first time since he was hospitalized this winter,” Ben Bradley reports.
1. Only if you define “exclusive” as “we caught up with the former mayor at the White Sox opener where anyone could have talked to him.”
2. Only if you define “interview” as “we asked him about his health in several different ways and put cliches in his mouth that he parroted back without saying anything worth putting on the air.”
3. Only if you define “reporter” as “someone so deferential to a man who oversaw torture and nearly bankrupted the city while running an entirely corrupt City Hall that he forgot to ask about the mayor’s imprisoned nephew and the kid he killed.”

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Posted on April 8, 2014

By Tuffy And The Angry Aussie

Back to myth-making while a city evaporates.

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Posted on April 7, 2014

By Steve Rhodes

At least Chicagoland this week roused itself from its two-week slumber to become incredibly aggravating again; nothing is worse than being a bore.
Of course, that means a return to fact-free hagiography of Rahm Emanuel and Garry McCarthy.
And hey, enough Liz Dozier, huh? We get it.

More painful: watching the #Cubs or watching #Chicagoland?

— Beachwood Reporter (@BeachwoodReport) April 4, 2014

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Posted on April 4, 2014

By The Young Turks

What does MSNBC look for in a host? While you can argue it doesn’t apply to all of their hosts, it’s hard to argue that Al Sharpton doesn’t simply repeat talking points in support of the President Obama. Watch the mashup in this video if you’re still not convinced, and then listen to The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur break it down.

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Posted on April 2, 2014