-By Warner Todd Huston
Last year, Barack Obama spent only one million dollars for advertising in the African American press for his reelection campaign. This was two million less than Bill Clinton did and far from the $20 million that activists had called for.
According to Robert Redding, Jr., of the syndicated Redding News Review radio show, during the late election Obama refused to spend campaign cash on advertising in black-owned newspapers and magazines. And Redding alleges the situation got worse after the Obama campaign reacted negatively to an op ed by Cloves Campbell criticizing him for spending so little for advertising to the black community.
Campbell’s piece, titled “Black Press to presidential campaigns: Show Me the Money!,” was published last August. Mr. Campbell is the Chairman of the National Newspaper Publishers Association.
“Once again the Black Press has been unfortunately relegated to an ‘Oh By the Way’ campaign that features one 1/2 page ad placed two weeks before the election in all Black newspapers totaling a shameful $1.2 million dollars!,” Campbell wrote last year.
In an interview with Redding, Campbell claimed that Obama’s campaign representatives demanded he apologize for his op ed.
Redding was quick to point out that Obama has appointed few blacks to officers in his administration and has ignored suggestions that he do so.
“What’s more, many listeners and readers of Redding News Review were shocked to learn just how white the White House has become under Obama,” Redding said.
The Congressional Black Caucus has even helpfully provided Obama with a list of 61 names of candidates they would like Obama to consider for various positions in the administration but he has yet to appoint a single one of them.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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