Protesting Demeaning Images in Media
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Wearing white T-shirts with red stop signs and chanting “BET does not reflect me, MTV does not reflect me,” protesters have been gathering every Saturday outside the homes of Viacom executives in Washington and New York City. The orderly, mostly black crowds are protesting music videos that they say degrade women, and black and Latino men.Among other things the protesters want media companies like Viacom to develop “universal creative standards” for video and music, including prohibitions on some language and images. Video vixens and foul-mouthed pimps and thugs are now so widespread, the protesters maintain, that they infect perceptions of ordinary nonwhite people.“A lot of rap isn’t rap anymore, it’s just people selling their souls,” Marc Newman, a 28-year-old car salesman from New Rochelle, N.Y., said on Saturday. He was among about 20 men, women and children from area Baptist churches marching outside the Upper East Side residence of Philippe Dauman, the president and chief executive of Viacom Inc.
The protests, by a group called Enough Is Enough, began in mid-September outside the Northwest Washington home of Debra L. Lee, chairman and chief executive of BET, a unit of Viacom. (Viacom also owns MTV, VH1, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon.) On Oct. 20 protests also began outside Mr. Dauman’s home. The rallies in Washington have sometimes attracted hundreds of people, many belonging to the church of the Enough organizer, the Rev. Delman L. Coates, as well E. Faye Williams, as the chairwoman of the National Congress of Black Women and members of other civil rights and advocacy groups. The three rallies in New York have been much smaller.
“In the wake of the Imus affair, I began to think that the African-American community must be consistent in its outrage,” Mr. Coates said in an interview, referring to Don Imus, the radio personality fired by CBS in April for racist and sexist comments. (Mr. Imus was recently hired by Citadel Broadcasting for a job that starts in December.)
“Why are these corporations making these images normative and mainstream?
” asked Mr. Coates, 34, a pastor of the Mount Ennon Baptist Church in Clinton, Md. “I can talk about this in the church until I am blue in the face, but we need to take it outside.”
The rallies are taking place as civil rights leaders, cultural critics and others use the moment to debate how to represent the diversity of black life while minimizing offensive words and images. A big issue is the distinction between standards and censorship. Some charge that what Enough Is Enough does is censorship.
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