NBC Chastised by Congressional Black Caucus for Lack of Diversity

Townhall Staff | February 26, 2010 12:44 PM

Guest post from Seton Motley with the Media Research Center

MSNBC hosts Chris Matthews, Rachel Maddow and the egregiously stentorian and officious Keith Olbermann

have made their warped interpretation of the conservative and TEA Party movements as racist a staple of their oft-ridiculed and rarely watched television programs.

These three (and other hosts at MSNBC) have engaged in this slander with regularity and fervor.

Reporting on an August 18, 2009 Arizona TEA Party, white host Contessa Brewer fretted "there are questions about whether this has racial overtones....(with) white people showing up with guns" (Arizona is an open-carry state). The only problem was, one of the men they showed packing was black, and they edited out of the video any show of his melanin so as to carry further their fraudulent narrative.

The Dallas (Texas) TEA Party created a video mocking Olbermann (and Company) for these serial assaults, showing people of color attending TEA Parties and contrasting it with the prevailing whiteness of MSNBC's line-up. To which Olbermann responded [# More #] with a list of black participants in the alleged news making of his network (and that of parent NBC).

Well Olbermann's explanation, and all of the race-baiting "reporting" done by his vile network, apparently wasn't nearly good enough for Congresswomen Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-Texas) and Maxine Waters (D-California), two members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC).

These two Congresspeople are members of the House Judiciary Committee, which yesterday convened to examine the proposed merger of NBC and television-internet company Comcast. They find the diversity of NBC to be sorely lacking.

Two members of the Judiciary panel - Reps. Shelia Jackson-Lee (D-Texas) and Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) - ripped into (Comcast Chairman Brian) Roberts and (NBC President Jeff) Zucker for what they saw as the lack of diversity in programming and in the executive ranks at either company.
"There is no diversity on the Sunday morning talk shows," Jackson-Lee told NBC's Zucker.
Armed with lists of board members for both companies, Waters asked Roberts why Comcast had only one woman and one black man on its board. She then asked Zucker why NBC didn't currently have any black programming on NBC. "Is there some assumption that black programming is not profitable?" she asked him.
Zucker said that diversity was one of his strategic goals and that the company was trying to do better.

According to these two CBC members, it's not all unicorns and Rainbow Coalitions at (MS)NBC.

So Keith, how about naming Zucker Worst Person in the World (or whatever it is your calling it these days) for thus far apparently having dropped the racial diversity ball? Or is he off the hook due to his Avis approach to improvement of the situation?

You, Sir, ... .

Oh forget it.

Seton Motley is Director of Communications for the Media Research Center and Contributing Editor for NewsBusters.org.