Black news on mainstream TV: not in my lifetime

From what I’ve seen, besides BET News (which wasn’t allllllllll that bad) there has never really been a readily available scheduled news program dedicated to black news and issues on mainstream television.
Along with my addiction to CNN and MSNBC, I normally find my black news through various Web sites like http://www.topix.net/afam and blacknews.com. Going out of my way to be informed has been a pain because between the gig with this publication, school work and the crappy college minimum wage job; the time for that isn’t really there.
Yeah it’s sad, but that’s life.
So when I saw the previews of Comedy Central’s “Chocolate News” staring David Alan Grier and CNN’s “D.L. Hughley Breaks the News,” I thought to myself well it isn’t the hardcore traditional news show I wanted but it has to be better than nothing right?
Well I was wrong.
“Chocolate News,” which airs Wednesday nights, had the potential to be the black equivalent to the “Daily Show with Jon Stewart” or “The Colbert Report” but instead is another minstrel show.
Instead of taking queues from shows mentioned above and being a humorous news program, he does the exact thing that made Dave Chappelle return that $50 million back to Comedy Central, go back to Africa and essentially give his subliminal middle finger to the white executives there.
He creates what is essentially a retarded mix between “The Daily Show” and the last horrible season of “In Living Color”–the one without the Wayans Brothers—with skits about typical jokes in black comedy such as the issue of the N-word, Barack Obama, Hip-Hop and more.
Grier could have taken a more intelligent road with his comedy, but instead creates a program that takes serious issues in the black community and dumbs them down in an unfunny manor for its probably white audience.
Oh yeah, it isn’t funny either. From what I saw from the premier and until I can observe future episodes, this show turns David Alan Grier into the official “monkey” of Comedy Central.
What’s even more offensive is the fact that the first African American to get a full fledge show on CNN isn’t Soledad O’Brien, Tony Harris, Don Lemon or T.J Holmes but D.L. Hughley?
WTF?
Hughley just got his GED…like…a few years ago. Does CNN really think the only way to get blacks to watch their news network, which I do religiously just to stay informed, is to give one of the stars of “Soul Plane” a news program?
This move by CNN should be a slap in the face to all black journalists out there. I will say that the show on it’s own merit is a sometimes funny and informative show, if that’s the only news you watch that week, but it’s still filled with stereotypical black jokes and I know it won’t do anything to set black journalism forward. CNN should be ashamed of itself for doing that.
So with all that said, I am slowly realizing that maybe the everyday stories of my people won’t be told by… my people and instead will be ignored by the mainly white media yet made fun of by comedians that so happen to have my skin tone.