For immediate release
Contact: NAACP El Paso Branch President, Harold Howell 915-751-6490.
NAACP El Paso Branch (other groups including the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Committee of El Paso) to protest at KFOX-TV in El Paso, Texas over Fox owned New York Post cartoon.
The nation’s largest civil rights group will hold actions in over 70 other cities on Thursday, February 26, 2009. El Paso will hold this press conference Wednesday, February 25, 2009 at 2:00pm MST at Full Gospel Evangelistic Temple located 4631 Atlas Avenue, El Paso, TX 79924.
“It's an invitation to the assassination of the 44th President,” says Mr. Harold Howell, President of the El Paso Branch of the NAACP speaking about the New York Post cartoon that has sparked outrage around the country. The nation’s largest and oldest civil rights organization is asking that the Fox Corporation terminate the cartoonist, the editor-in-chief and increase diversity in the news room.
The El Paso Branch of the NAACP joined by The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Committee of El Paso will deliver a letter to KFOX, the local Fox television affiliate, asking the general manager to write a letter to Fox Corporation owner Rupert Murdoch supporting our demands. Mr. Murdoch’s apology yesterday, in which he said his paper would endeavor to be more sensitive to the community, is welcomed as a first step but is cited as inadequate by civil rights organizations for not offering any concrete measures to do so.
“President Abraham Lincoln said it is the silence of good men (and women) that allows evil to flourish. We are calling on our local Fox affiliate general manager to join us in expressing opposition to the hate speech of the New York Post, which is owned by their parent company. We ask KFOX to be good corporate citizens and go on record against this abhorrent display of overt racism. “
The cartoon, which showed police shooting an ape with a caption saying “I guess they’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill”, was juxtaposed against a photo of President Obama signing the stimulus package. Both Fox News and the New York Post have come under criticism by a variety of media watch dog groups for racially insensitive and biased reporting. Fox News was widely condemned for calling Michelle Obama “Obama’s baby mama” and then-candidate Barak Obama’s fist bump with this wife a “terrorist fist jab.”
“There is a pattern of lack of diversity in the newsroom and racial insensitivity in the news at Fox News and the New York Post,” says Harold Howell. “Likening our African American president to a monkey is unacceptable. African Americans have for too long been called primates as a way of dehumanizing an entire race of people. It’s time for this pattern at Fox news to stop” Harold Howell says.
For more information contact 915-751-6490.
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