Rather than acknowledging this angle, the Washington Post<\/em> only seems to see our most recent impact as a chance to be snarky.\u00a0 Rather than reporting the real news at hand, it chose to play \u201cgotcha\u201d with the National Center\u2019s minority outreach arm.\u00a0 From first contact, it seemed the writer had already formed his conclusions; he was just figuring out a way to justify them.<\/p>\n Richard Holt<\/p><\/div>\n Our Project 21<\/a> black leadership network published a press release<\/a> last week on the controversy surrounding ESPN host Jemele Hill.\u00a0 She took to Twitter to assert that President Donald Trump is \u201ca white supremacist who has largely surrounded himself [with] other white supremacists.\u201d\u00a0 Project 21 Richard Holt<\/a> said Hill\u2019s outburst was \u201ccausing more harm in a divided America\u201d and \u201ckeep[ing] us from moving into a post-racial society.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMs. Hill isn\u2019t wrong to dissent,\u201d Holt noted, \u201cbut she picked the wrong method to do it.\u201d\u00a0 While ESPN issued a statement distancing itself from her remarks, the network will apparently not discipline her despite an apparently obvious violation of network policy<\/a> on social media and a history of disciplining other outspoken hosts<\/a> (often conservatives).<\/p>\n Christopher Arps<\/p><\/div>\n Project 21 member Christopher Arps<\/a> said the situation \u201cfurther harms a network suffering a loss of viewers like me who are tired of the rampant political bias.\u201d\u00a0 As mentioned, the National Center is quite familiar with the problem of political bias at ESPN.\u00a0 Our Free Enterprise Project<\/a> (FEP) raised the issue<\/a> with Disney Chairman Bob Iger at the company\u2019s annual shareholder meeting earlier this year.\u00a0 Soon after, ESPN issued new rules<\/a> \u2013 including the social media policy Hill appears to have violated \u2013 to dial down the political vitriol on the sports channel.<\/p>\n And, after the Project 21 release was posted and members began speaking out on talk radio about Hill\u2019s comments, ESPN President John Skipper sent a memo<\/a> to his staff last week to remind them that \u201cESPN is about sports\u2026 not a political organization.\u201d<\/p>\n This is all certainly news, but that\u2019s not what the Washington Post<\/em> wanted to discuss.<\/p>\n Just 12 minutes after the release was sent out, Washington Post<\/em> reporter Eugene Scott replied to ask about other National Center \u201cpress releases condemning comments about white supremacy in response to statements made by the President or other lawmakers or television personalities.\u201d<\/p>\n OK \u2013 so we forget about the issue at hand in which Project 21 members criticized a media personality who made extreme, unsubstantiated and blanket statements about the President of the United States, his administration and his supporters in an apparent violation of network policy at a network already trying to downplay a reputation of being a bastion of liberal bias.\u00a0 Deeming the appropriateness of our putting out that release was the obvious focus.<\/p>\n In email exchanges over the course of the afternoon, I explained our organization\u2019s ongoing interest in ESPN.\u00a0 I explained that Project 21 members had participated in many interviews about the events in Charlottesville, the removal of statues of Confederate figures and white nationalist\/white supremacist allegations.\u00a0 We never issued a post-Charlottesville release, I explained, because Project 21 members were already fielding calls for comment, and a release was determined unnecessary for media outreach.\u00a0 I said this our first release pertaining to the white supremacy debate.<\/p>\n Asked if we spoke on race issues during the campaign, I explained that our nonprofit status prohibits us from involving ourselves in elections (we turned away countless media requests over the years regarding the candidacies of people such as Trump, Barack Obama and Herman Cain for that reason).<\/p>\n Asked about any incidents prior to the campaign where we spoke out against white supremacy, I invited him to look through our 20 years of online archives.\u00a0 I also asked ,\u201cwhen has white supremacy been a front-page topic in the past 20 years?\u201d<\/p>\n That was apparently what the reporter was searching for all afternoon.\u00a0 His piece<\/a> was on the Post\u2019s<\/em> web site about 20 minutes later. \u00a0The headline drew on my comment about it being our first release on white supremacy, and featured my question about front-page coverage of the topic.<\/p>\n Our Project 21 members\u2019 quotes were featured and the Jemele Hill controversy explained, but there was no mention of the National Center\u2019s work related to ESPN to put it in context.\u00a0 The article mentioned our nonprofit status, yet cited Trump\u2019s endorsement by the Ku Klux Klan\u2019s newspaper as an apparent example of recent white supremacy headlines on which we could have commented.\u00a0 Also cited were tweets by David Duke about President Trump after Charlottesville \u2013 but no justification for equating a failed politician (three percent in the 2016 Louisiana Senate primary) with 49,400 Twitter followers to a broadcaster with a show on every weekday evening and 695,000 Twitter followers.<\/p>\n Council Nedd II<\/p><\/div>\n Had he checked our archives at my recommendation, there was a blog post on Charlottesville<\/a> in which Project 21 Co-Chairman Council Nedd II<\/a> said \u201cI particularly take issue with the white supremacists who claimed they were there because they are conservative.\u00a0 They most certainly are not.\u201d\u00a0 Project 21 member Ted Hayes<\/a>, who spends a great deal of time promoting racial healing by drawing attention to the 2008 congressional apology for slavery and Jim Crow laws, said, \u201cWe must abhor white supremacy like we must abhor all attempts to allow one race to hold power over others.\u201d<\/p>\n In the past, Project 21 members also condemned the racist attack on Condoleezza Rice<\/a> by a political cartoonist.\u00a0 They rebuked allegations of racial intolerance at Tea Party rallies<\/a> and condemned the anti-Semitism of the Occupy movement<\/a>.\u00a0 They even took on al Qaeda<\/a> when members of its leadership called Obama, Rice and Colin Powell \u201chouse negroes.\u201d\u00a0 And there\u2019s vital work that\u2019s been done by Project 21 members to promote black economic empowerment and to stop voter fraud.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.conservativeblog.org\/storage\/holt_sm.jpg?__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSION=1505853343772\")
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