Home-grown terror

With the Martin Luther King Jr. National Holiday looming on the horizon, we would be remiss if we did not ask why mainstream media coverage of the recent bombing of the NAACP branch in Colorado Springs, Colorado was so sparse.

Only a handful of mainstream media organizations, including The Los Angeles Times, covered the incident, which happened in the same town where Americans recently gathered to demonstrate their support of law enforcement officers. Coincidence? You tell us.

What we do know is that were it not for Facebook and Twitter, the nation and world may not have known that someone had bombed the NAACP headquarters in Colorado Springs.

Not even CNN, which has covered the nationwide protests of police brutality, the accusers of Bill Cosby and the recent terrorist attack in Paris relentlessly, thought the bombing was worthy of much media attention.

Why are the terrorists in Colorado Springs less dangerous or terrifying than the pair of siblings that took innocent lives in Paris last week? Why is it still so hard for mainstream media organizations to even concede that these attempted killers in America and white supremacists should be classified as acts of terrorism?

In an era where cops are still getting away with murdering unarmed Black men and boys, mass incarceration has replaced chattel slavery and questions continue to arise about the racial attitudes of elected officials, we certainly think the bombing of the Colorado Springs NAACP headquarters by domestic terrorists is worthy of more than lip service by mainstream media organizations.

And our readers do, too.

Which pretty much explains the need for a strong and independent Black Press in the 21st century.

– Edmund W. Lewis, Editor

This article originally published in the January 12, 2015 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.