#black-cyberconsciousness #black-history #US-history #La-Cia #CIA #Iran-Contra
2023-08-09

beyond the bastards cracktoberfest part 2

I had never heard anything about this as an internet phenomenon, or about the wider influence of the internet, until now. But it makes a lot of sense.

And I found the post, or at least one of them.

Reposting the excerpt, and the link (GWU's archive of writings about various FOIAed things).

As Webb began giving out his story's Mercury Center website address (http://www.sjmercury.com/drugs/) on radio shows in early September, the number of hits to the Center's site escalated dramatically, some days reaching as high as 1.3 million. Over all, Bob Ryan, who heads Mercury Center, estimates a 15% visitor increase since the stories appeared. "For us," he says, "it has certainly answered the question: Is there anyone out there listening?" The demographics of Web traffic are unknown, but some media specialists believe that the rising numbers at Mercury Center in part reflect what the Chicago Tribune syndicated columnist Clarence Page calls an emerging "black cyber-consciousness.'' Online newsletters and other net services made the series readily available to African-American students, newspapers, radio stations, and community organizations. Patricia Turner, author of I Heard it Through the Grapevine, the definitive study on how information travels through black America, suggests that this marked the "first time the Intemet has electrified African-Americans" in this way. "The 'black telegraph,'" noted Jack While, a Time magazine colum- nist, referring to the informal word-of: mouth network used since the days of slavery, "has moved into cyberspace."

Black-oriented radio talk shows boosted this phenomenon by giving out the website address. At the same time, the call-in programs themselves became a focal point of information and debate. African-American talk-show hosts used their programs to address the allegations of CIA complicity in the crack epidemic, and the public response was forceful. The power of talk radio was demonstrated when Congresswoman Maxine Waters was a guest on WOL's Lisa Mitchell show in Baltimore on September 10, and announced that the Congressional Black Caucus meeting that week would address the issues raised by "Dark Alliance." Two hundred people were expected; nearly two thousand attended.