Reach Is Not Standing

Commentary · Opinion / Media — REAL POWER.TV

Photo: Kirby Lee / Imagn Images

Saturday night in Atlanta, the National Association of Black Journalists gave Stephen A. Smith its Thumbs Down award. The reason they gave was specific: a pattern of tearing down prominent Black women in politics, sports, and media. He was one of five. CBS News got one. The Washington Post got one. So did the sitting chairman of the FCC. Five is the most NABJ has ever handed out in a single year, which tells you plenty about the year.

Smith answered inside of 24 hours. Not with a question about why. With a promise to go find out who at NABJ deserves one.

Here’s what nobody’s saying about it.

Stephen A. Smith holds one of the largest platforms any Black man has ever held in American media. Cable, streaming, podcast, whatever comes next. What he does not hold is a constituency. Nobody elected him. No membership body can pull his card. No board can revoke a mandate he was never given. He built reach, and reach is not the same thing as standing. The difference only shows up on a night like Saturday.

NABJ is not a fan club. It’s an institution with members, dues, elections, and a written standard. When an institution grades your work, that isn’t a review. That’s a professional body telling you where the line sits and which side you’re on. You can dismiss it. You can go to war with it. You cannot out-shout it, because it doesn’t need your ratings to survive.

Now the part that actually matters.

The pattern NABJ pointed at was aimed at Black women. Not one bad segment. A pattern. Black women are the most reliable voting bloc in this country and the operating system of Black civic life. In Cleveland, they run the churches, the block clubs, the nonprofits, the campaigns, and a good share of the offices those campaigns win. When the loudest Black voice in American media makes a habit of diminishing them, it doesn’t stay on television. It travels down. It shows up in how a councilwoman gets covered, how a candidate gets questioned, how a director gets second-guessed in a room she built.

That’s why this is a power story, not a sports story.

Cleveland should watch this one closely, because we run the same trade every day. Plenty of people have a microphone. Far fewer have a mandate. Audience can be rented. Standing has to be earned from people who can take it back.

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