(NAME-MCE) Black Radio on Obama Is Left’s Answer to Limbaugh

[Aukram Burton]

July 27, 2008
Black Radio on Obama Is Left’s Answer to Limbaugh

By JIM RUTENBERG
ATLANTA — Warren Ballentine, one of black talk radio’s new stars, was  
on a tear against Senator John McCain as he broadcast from the  
Greenbriar Mall here last week, blithely dismissing Mr. McCain’s kind  
words about Senator Barack Obama at the recent N.A.A.C.P. national  
convention.

“He came out talking about how good of a race Barack Obama was  
running, and how proud he was of Barack,” Mr. Ballentine said. “You  
know he went back home and said, ‘I can’t believe I spoke in front of  
all those Negroes today!’ ”

“He was pandering to the crowd, talking about how he felt when Martin  
Luther King Jr. died,” Mr. Ballentine went on. “However, he didn’t  
vote for the holiday of Martin Luther King Jr.”

Rush Limbaugh, meet your black liberal counterprogramming. Mr.  
Ballentine is one of the many African-American radio hosts and  
commentators who are aggressively advocating for Mr. Obama’s election  
on black-oriented radio stations daily.

Since Mr. Limbaugh first flexed his tonsils two decades ago, Democrats  
have publicly worried about their lack of an answer to him and his  
imitators, who have proven so adept at motivating conservative  
Republicans to go to the polls, especially for President Bush.

Now it is Mr. Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, who has a  
harmonious chorus of broadcast supporters addressing a vital part of  
his coalition, feeding and reflecting the excitement blacks have for  
his candidacy in general. Mr. Obama is getting support from white  
liberal talk radio hosts as well, but the backing he is getting from  
black radio hosts could be especially helpful to his campaign’s  
efforts to increase black turnout and raise historically low voter  
registration enough to change the math of presidential elections in  
battlegrounds and traditionally Republican states like this one.

“Urban stations can be in ’08 what Rush Limbaugh delivered for  
conservatives a generation ago,” said the Rev. Al Sharpton, who has a  
two-year-old radio program that is now syndicated on stations  
throughout the country, including in states like Georgia, Michigan,  
Ohio and North Carolina. “If you look at the political map of where  
our shows are, it matches the gap of unregistered voters.”

Mr. Limbaugh and other conservative hosts generally support Mr.  
McCain, though perhaps with less enthusiasm than they displayed for  
the man he hopes to replace.

When it comes to criticism from black radio hosts like Mr. Ballentine,  
Tucker Bounds, a spokesman for the McCain campaign, said, “John McCain  
believes every person is entitled to their opinion, no matter how  
outrageous.”

“But John McCain is an inclusive candidate,” Mr. Bounds added, “and he  
will be the president of all Americans.” (Mr. Ballentine was correct  
that Mr. McCain voted against the Martin Luther King holiday, in 1983  
— but Mr. McCain later expressed regret and supported the holiday in  
his home state.)

While debate may continue over whether Mr. Obama is drawing an  
inordinate share of attention from mainstream news and entertainment  
outlets, there is generally little pretense of balance in major  
African-American media outlets. More often than not, the Obama  
campaign is discussed as the home team.

Mr. Obama conducted frequent interviews with black radio personalities  
during the primary season, appearing on programs like “The Tom Joyner  
Morning Show,” where his swing through the Middle East was referred to  
as a “pre-victory tour” on Friday; the “Michael Baisden Show,” where  
the host has joked that the savings from the gasoline tax suspension  
Mr. McCain supports would help him buy a pack of “Now & Laters” candy,  
and “The Steve Harvey Morning Show.”

Those three shows report reaching a combined audience of nearly 20  
million, though industry analysts say exact, national numbers are hard  
to peg and programs generally are known to exaggerate their audiences.

The favoritism extends beyond talk radio.

This month’s Ebony magazine lists Mr. Obama first among the “25  
Coolest Brothers of All Time,” alongside Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X.  
Caribbean stations play songs about him, like “Barack Obama” by Cocoa  
Tea and “Barack the Magnificent” by the calypso star Mighty Sparrow.  
“We spin them three, four times a day,” said Sir Rockwell, the morning  
D.J. at WDJA in Delray Beach, Fla.

Earlier this year, attendees of the Black Entertainment Television  
network’s annual awards program, including the stars Alicia Keys and  
P. Diddy, turned it into an impromptu rally for the candidate (“Obama,  
y’all!,” Ms. Keys shouted upon receiving an award before a television  
audience of nearly six million people).

The network is planning to show Mr. Obama’s acceptance speech at the  
Democratic convention live, but not Mr. McCain’s. “This is an historic  
occasion, so that demands some special treatment from us,” Debra L.  
Lee, the BET chairman, said of the Democratic convention. Her smaller  
rival, TV One, said it would not cover the Republican convention at all.

Within the black media, there have been questions about whether Mr.  
Obama is keeping his distance from them and their audiences to avoid  
being too identified by race. Some black radio hosts now complain that  
he is avoiding them at worst and taking them for granted at best as he  
courts white voters through more mainstream outlets.

“There is the appearance he will go to a Larry King before he will go  
on black radio in, say, Arkansas,” said Bev Smith, a black talk radio  
pioneer based in Pittsburgh. She placed the blame on Mr. Obama’s  
staff, not the candidate, who has occasionally visited her program.  
The Obama campaign has come under similar criticism from some members  
of the major trade group for black newspaper owners, the National News  
Publishers Association, after Mr. Obama declined invitations to appear  
at the group’s events.

Aides to Mr. Obama said he has been busy transitioning to a general  
election footing, part of which has included outreach to other voter  
groups less familiar with Mr. Obama. But, earlier this week the  
campaign hired a new communications strategist, Corey Ealons, to focus  
exclusively on black media and help with an intensified effort to take  
advantage of their excitement about Mr. Obama’s candidacy.

“As Senator Obama expands his outreach to voters during the general  
election, African-American media will continue to be a very important  
part of expressing his priorities for the community,” Mr. Ealons said.  
Mr. Obama is to appear Sunday at a gathering of minority journalists  
in Chicago called the Unity ’08 Convention. Mr. McCain declined an  
invitation to speak to the group.

Whatever criticism the black media has of the Obama campaign, it has  
generally not shown up heavily on the air or in print. Earlier this  
year, the PBS and public radio host Tavis Smiley, one of the best  
known black radio and television voices, resigned as a regular  
commentator on Mr. Joyner’s show after receiving a hail of angry e- 
mail messages and phone calls for questioning Mr. Obama’s commitment  
to black issues.

One caller to Mr. Ballentine’s show last week laid out some boundaries  
for him, as well: “All of us coming down on him and criticizing him  
before we give him a chance, you know, that might hurt his campaign —  
let’s get him in there first,” the caller said. Mr. Ballentine  
responded, “Brother, I would never criticize him — until he’s in the  
White House.”

Mr. Ballentine, who says he has an audience of three million people  
nationally, usually broadcasts from his home town of Durham, N.C. His  
special appearance at the mall here — with a predominantly black  
clientele — provided a vivid example of just how helpful hosts like  
him can be.

“Even if you are a convicted felon, you can go and vote,” he told his  
listeners, although the laws vary from state to state. “We need to be  
registering people with tremendous numbers.”

At each commercial break, he invited his local audience to come to the  
mall to register; he did not mention that the man signing up voters  
was an Obama staff member.

Mr. Ballentine has plenty of company in the registration drive. “I  
really push to get out the vote,” Ms. Smith, the host from Pittsburgh,  
said. Ms. Smith said Mr. Obama could turbo-charge the efforts by  
appearing on black radio more, though she understood the complexities.

“Barack Obama is walking a thin line because whites will accuse him of  
being too black and blacks will accuse him of being too white,” she  
said. “I think he’s a godsend — whether he’s on my show or not, I’m  
going to talk about him every day.”


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