Sale of BET leaves void in Black community

The sale of BET, the country�s premiere Black-owned cable television station, bodes ill for the Black community and the media in general. Despite the personal gain of Bob Johnson, an esteemed businessman and founder of the popular station, the sale is another example of the growing monopolization of the media. Viacom, the nation�s third largest media conglomerate, just got bigger.

It�s not that BET was sold to a white conglomerate that saddens us. It�s the fact that BET was our only one, a station that has a national presence that we could call our own. And though BET was criticized in some circles for some of its programming, particularly the regular showing of music videos that critics complained demeaned our women and our community, at least we could complain and have the ear of those who worked at BET. Who will listen at Viacom?

The ability to present images, shape opinions and define the issues for the masses increasingly is falling into the hands of fewer and fewer people. And that�s the danger in the sale of BET and the ownership of so many of our Black-oriented radio stations by those outside our community. It means that somebody else is feeding our minds the images and ideas we digest.

It is the creed of the Black press, the Black-owned newspapers of this country, to tell our own story. And while the Black press is not where it should be, and one day will be, at least it is in our hands to make it what we want it to be once we support it the way we should.

Too much of our Black press, as it is with our radio and television stations, the few that are left, are controlled by the whims�and threats�of advertisers and others outside our community. It is the white-owned media that has portrayed all of our Black freedom fighters in a negative light. They have attempted to do the same today with the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, the preeminent freedom fighter among us today.

We are thankful for publications like John Johnson�s Jet magazine, which presented excellent coverage of the reality of the Million Family March in Washington. Jet told the story the way it should have been told to give our community a real view of the beauty of the day absent the negative undercurrents that typically are cast of Black events in the white-owned media.

BET, likewise, was a medium used to give our people a view of the March and has been a vehicle to give our people a look at today�s events from a Black perspective. And perspective is what it�s all about.

Who understands the issues and what�s important to our community better than we, ourselves, do? What kind of attention will those at Viacom and media conglomerates like it give to significant events in our community in the future? For most of us today, if the television news doesn�t cover it, then it didn�t happen. Therefore, significant events important to our community get written off because media managers ignore them, or they "spin" the news so that the real meaning of our events get minimized or get negative coverage.

The sale of BET should not be a big issue for us today, because with some $550 million flowing through our hands annually, we should have more than one BET to brag about.

That�s the real tragedy.