Norton to introduce bill requiring federal agencies to advertise with minority-owned media

Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) announced that she will introduce a bill to require all federal agencies to include the amount they spent in the most recent fiscal year on advertising contracts with newspapers and media companies owned by minorities and women in their annual budget requests to Congress.

Norton’s bill would also require the agencies to produce projections of their spending for the upcoming fiscal year.

“The federal government is the largest advertiser in the United States, and it has an obligation to ensure fair access to its contracts for minority and women-owned newspapers and media companies,” Norton said on Thursday, Sept. 20.

The congresswoman, who has served in the House of Representatives since 1991, said she will also send letters to all 12 appropriations subcommittees during the next appropriations cycle requesting that they require each agency under their jurisdiction to include this advertising data in their budget requests.

“My bill would provide the transparency to ensure federal agencies are striving to reach minorities, who often get their daily news from smaller media outlets who serve communities of color,” Norton said.

Two years ago, Norton led a group of Congressional members in requesting a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report on the federal advertising contract obligations to small disadvantaged businesses (SDBs) and those owned by minorities and women.

During a news conference on Capitol Hill alongside numerous African-American and Latino newspaper publishers and owners from the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA) and the National Alliance of Hispanic Publications, Norton demanded accountability.

She drafted a letter asking for a report from the GAO that eventually contained signatures of dozens of her colleagues on the Hill as well as senators and others.

In July, the GAO released a report revealing that fiscal year 2017 saw only 16 percent of the federal government’s advertising contract obligations spent with SDBs and those owned by minorities and women.

Further, the report concluded that, of the $5 billion spent on advertising by federal agencies over the past decade, just $50 million went to Black-owned businesses.

This article originally published in the October 1, 2018 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.