Don't forget to mark your calendars folks-on June 29th, 7pm eastern Industry Ears' Lisa Fager drops by to chop it up with our Afronerd Radio audience. I first became aware of Ms. Fager and Mr. Paul Porter's Industry Ears project a few years back, courtesy of an op ed piece by Stanley Crouch. Ears is a think tank/watchdog organization that monitors questionable content that is oftentimes propagandized by today's media. Ironically, Crouch just posted another updated piece, once again highlighting Porter and Fager's efforts. Here's a snippet from yesterday's NY Daily News:
Direct action has its benefits and its irritation.
Paul Porter knows this well. A former programmer for Black Entertainment Television, the infamous BET, he is now a member of Industry Ears, a nonprofit watchdog agency that he co-founded with Lisa Fager in 2004. It is dedicated to cleaning up those aspects of popular culture in which irresponsible material is aimed at children.
Porter's most recent victory was over Motown Universal when he organized a protest against a slick trash video promoting Ashanti's new recording. The protest was to be held at the fifth game of the NBA Finals. That would put the problem in a high-profile position.
Ashanti was to sing the national anthem and Porter's people would have been outside of the arena protesting the league's choice of a woman who was advertised in an ad designed to titillate with violence.
Sylvia Rhone, the black woman at the top, must have howled before firing off an e-mail announcing to Porter that the ad would be discontinued. She might well have commiserated with Debra Lee, who is at the top of the BET executive pyramid that has sailed atop a garbage scow for some time now, making it clear that it is all about the Benjamins. After all, black people should be free to make money, too. Don't forget this is a capitalist society.
But it is, just like the fate of pimps, getting hard out here for a black businesswoman. Especially since Procter & Gamble, Pepsi, Wal-Mart and General Motors have just pulled ads from BET rap programming. Porter believes it is the result of "The Rap on Rap," a study done by the Parents Television Council (parentstv.org), another watchdog organization which has on its Web site this statement: "Children who watched BET's 'Rap City' and '106 & Park' and MTV's 'Sucker Free' were bombarded with adult content - sexual, violent, profane or obscene - once every 38 seconds."
Click below for the remainder of the Crouch piece and we'll keep you guys abreast of the Fager interview as the week progresses:
Industry Ears, Parents Television Council making it hard for media execs
Industry Ears' Lisa Fager visits Afronerd Radio
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