Obama Offers Detailed Anti-Poverty Strategy, Ignored by Mainsteam Media

As the Think on These Things blog pointed out, when Barack Obama offered a detailed anti-poverty strategy in a major speech at Hampton University last weekend, AOL and some other news outlets were quick to report the most sensational part of the speech: the potential for riots when the needs of the poor are ignored year after year, with the LA riots as a case in point.

But that premise was merely the introduction to a speech in which Obama offered a list of positive and constructive solutions, all of which were ignored by the AOL article. Obama said, "Let's start with fighting poverty. There are 37 million Americans who are poor . . . It's time to . . . lift the poot out of despair and into the middle class of America."


Highlighting "mutual responsibility for each other" and "individual responsibility to strengthen our families," Obama proposed:

* A health care plant that would cover every American and cut the costs to ensured families by up to $2,500 per year;
* Expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC);
* Qualified math and science teachers for struggling schools;
* Increasing the Pell Grant program;
* Prosecution of predatory lenders;
* Rebuilding New Orleans and the Gulf Coast;
* Home visits by registered nurses to new mothers and mothers-to-be through the Nurse-Family Partnership;
* A Youth Service Corp to "directly engage disengaged and disadvantaged young people in energy efficiency and environmental service opportunities . . . ;
* Enganging faith-based organizations to provide support to inmates and their families before, during and after incarceration;
* A $50 million program to begin worforce development and training.

Considering the substantive anti-poverty proposals that Obama made at his Hamton College speech, some of the press attention can only be described as propaganistic. Rather than inform the public about the substance of the speech, some of the mainstream press focused on the most inflammatory phrase, "quiet riot" and reported only Obama's observation that little has changed since riots last erupted in Los Angeles. But that was literally less than 1% of the message of the speech, and the press preferred to ignore the substantive policy solutions that Obama offered.

Although AOL mostly ignored the subtance of the speech, other mainstream news outlets like Forbes.Com faithfully reported the entire speech. CBS News reported mostly on the word "riot" while ignoring most of Obama's policy proposals. Although the Seattle times did not reprint the entire speech, did a better job of reporting the policy purpose of Obama's address.

Even this blog reported the speech based only an MSM report, failing to access the entire speech, and therefore initially missed the many constructive policy proposals that followed the speech's initial assessment of America's lack of progress addressing the causes of urban violence.

To me, the lesson here is clear. To communicate with Blacks, Black leaders and progressives in general need to communicate directly with Black blogs, who will report faithfully the proposals of Black leaders rather than twist these proposals into inflammatory and devisive anti-Black propaganda, as the mainstream media so often does. Here AOL penalized Obama for addressing the issue of poverty, by linking him to the controversial issue of riots without reporting his policy proposals that were the occasion for his addressing this issue in the first place.

What mechanisms have Obama and Clinton developed to communicate directly with Black blogs, without using the mainstream media as an interpretive intermediary? Will they send copies of their speeches directly to receptive African-American bloggers, as they do to the mainstream media? That's an issue both campaigns will have to address if they hope to beat back the onslaught of right-wing propaganda as the campaign heats up in the coming months.