"Never in the history of commercial Black media has a candidate for national office gotten as much free publicity of all kinds, as Barack Obama has reaped from Black-owned media."
For as long as I can remember, African Americans have complained that the Democrats take Blacks for granted. It's almost an axiom. Such complaints have circulated through the pages of Black newspapers and on Black radio talk shows ever since the Black vote coalesced near-unanimously around the Democratic Party, by the mid-Sixties.
Having worked at my share of Black newspapers and radio stations, I can vouch for the fact that Black-owned media feels its importance most keenly during election seasons, when the white Democrats - and in most places the candidates are more likely to be white - show respect and good sense by sending campaign dollars their way. Campaign advertising was almost as much a ritual as a commercial transaction; an acknowledgment that the Black media, and its audience, were not to be taken for granted, even by Democrats.
Then Black folks got more than many had even dared to wish for: a Black candidate for president on a major party ticket. Nearly all of the Black-owned media shouted Hallelujah, in unison, and enlisted in Barack Obama's quest for the White House. Never in the history of commercial Black media has a candidate for national office gotten as much free publicity of all kinds, as Barack Obama has reaped from Black-owned media. They talked him up, they wrote him up, their talk show hosts shouted his critics down, his events were publicized in every city with Black media outlets as if he were a native son of the town, a homecoming hero.
And then it came time to spend some serious money on Black media in what would clearly be the most expensive presidential campaign in history, but also one in which the Black guy had by far the most money!
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