ABSTRACT
Despite the distinguished history of the black press and its much-needed presence across the breadth of America’s cultural landscape, many contemporary media analysts in the United States have tended either to ignore its signifi cant contributions to public discourse or to outright dismiss them. This widespread neglect, puzzling to say the least, is made all the more so by a relative lack of stated rationale from so many whose work reveals the conspicuous omission. Writings of the prominent media analyst W. Lance Bennett are something of an exception-not because he attends to the black press, for he doesn’t, but rather because he offers some rationale for the exclusion. In the second edition of his widely read News: The Politics of Illusion, for example, Bennett states an unwillingness to seriously consider the alternative press on the purported rationale that “it is not credible in the eyes of most Americans” (Bennett 1993, 2). And in the third edition of the same book he dismisses writers and readers of the alternative press on grounds that “when people turn to more pointed or radical sources, they become more isolated from the issues and perspectives that shape public opinion and the political agenda of the mainstream media” (Bennett 1996, 9). By the fourth edition of the same text (Bennett 2001), there is not a single reference to the black press or other alternative media, and hence apparently no demonstrable need for the author to continue to rationalize its exclusion.
