ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a 1979 episode of Detroit’s Black Journal (WTVS, 1968-present) entitled “A Matter of Control…Who controls the Media?” to analyze the racial politics of local media production during the Black liberation struggle. After contextualizing local television and the public interest mandate that governs local communications policy, I survey the possibilities and limitations of local television’s mission to serve public interests and facilitate civic discourse in racially divided urban space. While popular critics and scholars often approach Detroit as an emblem of American post-industrial urban crises, my work turns to the Black produced and oriented public affairs program, Detroit Black Journal, and associated Black media reform efforts, to acknowledge the labor Black community members have always put into addressing problems facing their city. I approach my case study of Detroit Black Journal as exemplary of many obstacles BIPOC media producers encounter while trying to address systemic racism in local media industries. Yet I remain attentive to the close relationship between urban history and Detroit media practice to demonstrate how debates over local television are informed by specific conditions of locality and imagined perceptions of the urban publics therein.
