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Who Controls the Narrative? Media, Mistrust, and Authoritarian Power
Episode 198 • 26th December 2024 • TonyTidbit: A Black Executive Perspective • TonyTidbit ™
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Episode Audio Link: https://podcast.ablackexec.com/episode/Who Controls the Narrative? Media, Mistrust, and Authoritarian Power

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This episode of 'Need to Know' with Dr. Nsenga Burton explores critical issues surrounding media integrity, corporate influence, and the rise of authoritarianism. Dr. Burton discusses the problematic relationships between media owners and political powers, the reduction of DEI policies, and the pervasive nature of anti-Black racism. She urges the audience to exercise their power responsibly by being mindful of their economic choices and corporate support. The episode underscores the importance of maintaining democratic principles and holding institutions accountable.

▶︎ In This Episode

00:00: Introduction to Need to Know with Dr. Nsenga Burton

00:26: Billionaires and Media Influence

01:55: The Erosion of DEI Policies

03:20: Anti-Black Racism and Its Impacts

04:32: The Role of Media in Democracy

08:01: Taking a Stand: Personal Accountability

09:54: Conclusion and Call to Action

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Transcripts

BEP Narrator:

A Black Executive Perspective now presents Need to Know

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with the award winning hyphenated Dr.

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Nsenga Burton.

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Dr.

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Burton.

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What do we need to know?

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Dr. Nsenga Burton: Hello and

welcome to Need to Know with Dr.

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Nsenga Burton.

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I am she, Dr.

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Burton.

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I am happy to see you today.

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Today, I would like to talk to

you about um, a couple of things.

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One, there's an article about,

uh, Billionaire's kiss in the

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ring, um, of the 47th president.

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That's coming into office on January 20th.

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Dr.

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Martin Luther King's national holiday.

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Yeah.

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Uh, and then, uh, there was a

wonderful, um, Video it's not a video.

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It's an Instagram post of, uh,

by Keith Boykin talking about the

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same thing and how it is really

compromising media and media companies.

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Because you have these billionaire

owners who are literally doing

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whatever they can to curry favor

with this president, because they

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know how punitive he is and how he

demands loyalty and they are in fear.

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Of what may happen or what may

come once he comes into office.

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And so now we are really in a place

of we being the public are in a place

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where we have to really think about

whether or not to trust our media.

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In a way that we haven't before, um,

because we have, as Mr Boykin says,

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and it might be Dr Boykin, but Keith

Boykin says, uh, slow marching into

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authoritarianism and we are complying.

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We're complying by responding to

settling lawsuits that are frivolous.

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We are complying by, uh, pulling

endorsements of national, uh,

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presidential candidates, um, which

is what happened with the Washington

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Post and the Los Angeles Times.

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Uh, we are complying by getting rid

of our DEI, uh, uh, uh, policies, uh,

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that really were put into place, not

because, not to give people, uh, fear.

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not to give people opportunities

they hadn't earned.

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It was because people had

earned those opportunities and

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still were not getting them.

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And so it's like you at least have to

interview someone or what have you.

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And if you look at the stats in

schools and what have you, um, the

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only people who are really being

affected by the erosion of the DEI

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policies are other students of color.

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Our numbers aren't going up or down

because you weren't admitting us anyway.

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I'm a college professor 23 years in.

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Um, and so I know that to be true.

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So, you know, with all the in

place, it wasn't helping us.

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It was really helping,

um, you know, white women.

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It was helping in some cases, white

men, because white men, if you

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looked at those numbers, they have

been going down significantly in

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terms of those who are choosing to

enroll in college and universities.

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Right?

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So it was helping them.

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Get in even though they may

not have had the best grades.

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Um, and then even with this happening,

you know, the folks whose numbers are

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dropping, Asian American students, Asian

students, um, are trying to sue black

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students for taking their spots instead of

people who have, um, benefited from legacy

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emissions and all that kind of stuff.

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And so there's just this laser focus

on black people having anything.

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Anti black racism is pervasive

throughout the world.

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Right.

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It is pervasive in this country.

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So people literally think that

we shouldn't have anything and.

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The reason that they think we

shouldn't have anything is because

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they think that we're less than right.

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So we don't deserve to be in these places.

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We haven't earned our spot.

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We were in servitude slavery for so long.

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How dare you think that you

should be here or there?

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So I'm bringing all this back together.

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All of this is part of

the same poisonous fruit.

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And that is called racism and

it's called anti black racism.

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And so basically, what you all are doing

when you are settling these cases, when

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you are allowing him to escape, um,

and have allowed him, but, you know,

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by and large to escape, uh, serving

time that he would have been, uh, he

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would have been, um, made to serve.

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Had he been a regular old person, um,

you know, it is, you know, The hypocrisy

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of holding people in jail who haven't

even been charged when you have someone

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who is now going to be president of

the United States with the number

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of felonies and convictions that he

has is just, uh, it's preposterous.

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It's a boring every all the S.

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A.

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T.

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words.

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It's all of those things.

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Um, and so what I'm saying is.

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What is happening is that people are

getting misinformation and disinformation.

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But in addition to that, what is happening

is the erosion of our institutions

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that are supposed to be the foundation

to our society to our democracy.

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And so, if you can't trust your media,

if you can't trust your HR, your HR

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professionals, if you can't trust your

admissions counselors to colleges and

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universities, then where are we going?

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And where we're headed?

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You know, we live in a democracy.

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The beauty of a democracy is that

everyone allegedly has a voice that you

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can correct, uh, damage that has been

done to people populations or what have

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you, you can change things as a populace.

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You can say, hey, this isn't work.

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Segregation isn't working for us anymore.

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So let's see if we can create some

opportunities so that everybody has

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equal access to resources didn't happen.

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But, you know, we aspire to it.

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Um, you know, part of being a democracy

is not only just having one vote, one

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person, which, of course, we know that

hasn't happened with the Electoral

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College, which has to be done away

with, um, if we ever want to have any

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type of power, the people, the populace

over our lives ever again, um, that

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those things are in place for a reason.

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And so when you have people.

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Who own these media companies,

and, you know, the irony is

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someone who works in media.

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The irony of these media companies is that

the people can afford to buy and sell and

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trade and do all the things that they do

are typically not media trained people.

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They may be business people, but

they're absolutely not journalists.

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They're not media or communicate.

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media makers or communicators.

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So they don't have the

same level of ethics.

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They don't have the

same amount of training.

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They don't really understand that

we are the fourth estate, right?

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There's the executive branch,

the legislative branch, um, the

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three branches of government.

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I'm having a brain fart on the other

one, but the fourth estate is the press.

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We're supposed to be the watchdog, right?

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Um, and we're supposed to be there for the

people to make sure that, um, we are, uh,

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Not being abused, used, mistreated, um,

by those different branches of government.

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So I just wanted to use today to

say that sometimes, um, and to

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echo what Boykin said, sometimes

you just have to make a decision.

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You have to decide if you're going to

be on what I call the right side of

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history or the wrong side of history.

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And I will say that if

you are bending the knee.

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Kiss in the ring or any of those

things and basically selling out

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the people who have made you, i.

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e.

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your customers.

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Uh, IE, your fellow humans, your fellow

citizens, uh, your fellow, um, uh,

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colleagues, then it's, it's

not going to end well, it's

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not going to end well for you.

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Like, you know, we, we are, uh,

one of our foundations is violence.

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For this country, I hate

to say it, but it's true.

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It's violence country found on violence.

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It was founded on the elimination

or the attempt to eliminate

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whole groups of people.

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We don't have a great history when it

comes to our foundational principles and

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to be heading back that way as fast as

we can is very, it's not scary for me

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because I'm a historian, you know, you can

see these things happening in cycles, but

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it is problematic and I don't think that

people know what they're signing up for.

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So.

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We have to hold our people accountable.

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Uh, that includes the businesses.

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Um, you know, you have to figure

out how to vote with your dollars

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because that's the only thing that

people in this country understand.

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That's how capitalism works.

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So be mindful of what you support.

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What you do.

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Um, you know, I'm in the process

of figuring out how to get myself

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off of Amazon and off of prime.

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I've already, and I worked for the,

uh, an organization that was owned

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by the Washington post for 10 years.

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Um, but I canceled my

Washington post subscription.

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I canceled my LA time subscription.

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Um, I'm getting off of Amazon and

I'm going to finish watching cross.

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I got three more episodes cause I

just cannot say no to Elvis Hodges.

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Um, but after I finished cross,

Uh, prime's gotta go too.

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And uh, it's just unfortunate, but

it's just like, you're not going

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to run my people into the ground.

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And have me help pay for it.

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I'm just not going to do it.

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So, you know, Walmart is like literally

walking distance from my house.

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I go all the way over the target

and pay more targets are messing up.

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I'm just gonna have to

do away with them too.

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We just got to figure it out.

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Um, and I think, you know, 1 of my

friends said this weekend that it's going

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to be really hard to actually Purchase

things ethically anymore because of how

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the country is, um, being structured

and just being structured to be run by

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major corporations and billionaires.

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Uh, and basically the people are supposed

to, we're supposed to bend our knee and

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just pretend like this is normative.

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And we have no say in it.

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Well, I don't believe that.

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And, um, I am here to say that

I'm not going to be a part of it.

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So if I can in any way, shape or form do

anything, it can be the slightest thing.

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And it might not be a big deal to you.

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Uh, but when I look at my tax, when

I started doing my taxes, I see

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how much money I spend on Amazon.

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I think it's going to be a big

deal if enough of us do it.

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Um, and then that's what I'm going to do.

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So I think you need to know

that you do have some power.

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You can exercise it in a myriad of ways.

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You know, it can be

doing what we're doing.

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Tony and I are doing.

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Talking about what we're talking

about, um, you can do it with

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your exercise and your dollars.

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You can get off of X, which

I've done that as well.

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I'm now debating on blue sky because I

just don't trust the platforms anymore.

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I don't know what they're

gonna do with our information.

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I don't know who they're gonna sell it to.

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I don't know how they're

gonna sell us out.

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So I'm just, you know, in that

frame of mind, because all of them.

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You know, it's Instagram.

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It's threads.

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It's all of it.

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Mark Zuckerberg.

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It's Jeff Bezos.

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It's all of the billionaires.

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They have been at the knee.

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And so I'm like, well, I can't trust you

with my information anymore, or I can't

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trust you with my people and not that we

ever really did, but it's just like, okay,

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well, you know, commerce is commerce.

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So this works, but when you

are basically saying to a white

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supremacist that whatever you say and

do, I'm going to go along with it.

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You can't do that with my money.

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And with my identity and my

information, you just can't do it.

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So I got to figure this out.

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I don't know how I'm gonna stay in

business, but some of us are having

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some meetings and trying to figure

out how to stay in business aside from

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being on these social media platforms.

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We have websites, obviously, we

own those, but, um, you know.

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It's just a matter of time before even

those, those places are purchased as well,

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the people who provide those services.

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So, um, I say do what you can now.

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Do what you can that feels good.

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If you're not ready to give

up, Aidis Hodge on cross.

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I understand honey.

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You ain't got to do it right

now, but work towards it.

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Work it out.

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Like let the brother get

his, you know, his shine.

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He's going to be on some other stuff,

but you know, he always lands nicely.

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Um, but if you're not ready

for that, that's okay.

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We're not judging.

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I'm just saying try to do

what you can most of the time.

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So you can stay out of Walmart easily.

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You can stay out of Publix easily.

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You can't stay out of

certain places easily.

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There are other things that you can

do other places that you can buy.

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And actually Amazon, you

just get up and go out.

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There's the benefit of Amazon

just comes to the house.

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It's not even more affordable anymore.

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It just comes to the house.

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So just get up, take a walk, get

up, get in your car, get on the

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bus and go get what you need.

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All right.

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So that's it.

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I wish you a wonderful day.

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Please tune in next week to

a black executive perspective

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podcast, and we will see you then.

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Happy holidays.

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BEP Narrator: A black

executive perspective.

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