The Blackwash
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The Blackwash
Ethnic ethics in Black British Journalism: Navigating New Media challenges (Shadeborough)
Is Shade Borough damaging the integrity of Black British journalism? Tune in to this episode of Blackwash as we explore the tension between entertainment-focused social media platforms and traditional Black national newspapers. We scrutinize the massive social media followings of Shade Borough compared to the Voice newspaper, Britain's lone Black national newspaper. Why does a platform filled with user-generated content and entertainment draw more support than a publication committed to serious journalism? We question the accountability and transparency of platforms like Shade Borough and ponder is there an agenda?
Going back to the 1960s, we uncover the covert history of Flamingo magazine and its unexpected ties to MI6, revealing how it was used for subtle propaganda among Black West Indian communities after the Notting Hill riots.
Join us as we reflect on the importance of maintaining cultural integrity in our media representation and the broader implications for our ethnic ethics.
Welcome to the fourth podcast episode of the Blackwash. Now, if you aren't aware, I go live and direct on IG and TikTok every Tuesday at 9pm. During my live, I ask my viewers how do you access Black news? Some said Shea Burrow, the Voice. One person said Nadine White, who writes for the Independent newspaper, and some said creators like myself writes for the independent newspaper, and some said creators like myself thanks for the love, guys.
Speaker 1:Honing in on some of the replies, namely shade borough, this didn't surprise me because prior using ig, I looked at some of our mutual friends and I found that shade borough and I share 257 mutual friends. Bear in, I only follow 700 people, so essentially one third of the people I follow follow Shade Burra. Outside of our mutual friends, shade Burra, as of this podcast, has 850,000 followers on IG, so it's no surprise that they were mentioned. Let's compare and contrast that with the Voice newspaper, britain's only black national newspaper. We have 130 mutual friends and overall, the voice newspaper has 50k followers on ig. Now there's a disclaimer here. Of course, social media is not everything. Of course, the voice newspaper has a monthly physical circulation as of 2019. However, readership and circulation is harder to quantify than social media, but I make this comparison to highlight the disparities in followers, both overall and even with my mutual audience.
Speaker 1:Now, believe me, as a cultural theorist, I understand that for some, shea burrow will be escapism, or light-hearted entertainment, also known as diversion, or for personal relationships, under the theory, uses and gratification, and that's fine. I believe everyone uses some form of media slash medium to escape, be it family guy, the simpsons, crime documentaries, etc. Where one of the problem lies is that we as a community often say we can do both, but in this circumstance, we aren't. We are not doing both as a community. We are clearly, at least online, supporting one black british journalism institution over another. And that leads me to the title of today's episode, which is questioning our ethnic ethics. Ie, what is the ethnic code of conduct? What do we expect from our black british journalism institutions, with a primary focus or case study, if you will, on the shade borough?
Speaker 1:For those who don't know, shade borough was founded in 2016 and it says that it posts user-generated content that is relatable and engaging. It also says that is one of the leading outlets for showcasing the diverse culture within the uk and breaking exclusive entertainment and celebrity news. I believe it to be the uk version of shade room. That was founded in 2014 two years prior and I believe that, due to the similarities in the name, as you may expect, with shade room being stateside, they have a much bigger following, with 30 million followers. When I look at our mutual friends, we have 175, so even more people that I follow follow Shade Room than the Voice newspaper. Just as an FYI, I have never followed the Shade Room and I did used to follow Shade Borough because they posted me one time they were on private, so I had to request to see the post from that video that they posted of mine.
Speaker 1:I received death threats in my DMs. Now I didn't take any of it seriously and I wasn't stressed, but I say that to come back to what we should be thinking what is our ethnic ethics and how do we contribute to the advancement of ethnic ethic analysis? I highlight the death threats to lead to my first point who is the face of Shadeborough? Who is the owner? Who is the founder? Who are the journalists? Are they even journalists? If I had a complaint regarding the death threats, where do I go? I use an example. This is a post that they posted quite recently. There's a story that's been out in the news and it's about, unfortunately, them finding the body of Jay Slater, who passed away in Tenerife. And when I look at the comment section in Shade Borough, I see nothing but banter. The reason why I bring up that example is because who do we hold accountable and who are they accountable to, other than perhaps meta? That may suspend them for a while and then they come back. If we look at shaderoom, that essentially has the same premise. Right, it's just stateside.
Speaker 1:However, you can easily find their founder. It's a lady called angelica. She's 34 years old. She's from la, with nigerian heritage. She graduated university. She's done a number of interviews, such as with the new york times, for example. She has her own social media. She is the face and they are accountable with shea barra. On the other hand, of course, you can find their names on company house. However, they are completely hidden from public eye. They don't do interviews. We don't know any personal information about them, ie where they graduated, how old they are, what their heritage is. We can somewhat guess from their surnames, but you know it's not confirmed. They don't have any public social media.
Speaker 1:There is one supposed photo of the owner that was leaked by the uk rapper, digga d, when he got vexed that shea barra posted a story about him so he outed them. Shea barra then said and replied back and said they would take legal action against diggity. Now this disagreement between them two occurred two years ago and I don't care for the ins and outs. I simply mentioned this scenario to highlight that shade barra don't want the names of their founders, owners or journalists out there, despite them outing other people's business, which I find a little hypocritical, which, once again, should lead us to question their ethnic ethics, because historically, all black british journalism institutions have had a face, a founder. If we look at the voice, for example, it was founded by jamaican-born val mccalla in 1982. He initially wanted to be in the raf. He then became an accountant and launched a voice newspaper to coincide with notting hill carnival that year. He unfortunately passed away in 2002. So salute you, sir, for your legacy.
Speaker 1:Even when we go back further into black british journalism institutions the west indian gazette, the african times, orient review all of them have founders and faces who accomplished things in their own right. Once again, who is the founder and owner of shade borough and what is their agenda? What makes me question their agenda is not the gossip or the slander or the entertainment, or however you want to coin it. It's the fact that they class themselves as the leading outlet for showcasing diverse culture in the uk. In their ig bio it says culture. The simple definition of culture is way of life, and yet they didn't post any relief efforts of hurricane beryl, which recently happened. Nor did they post anything for windrush day. Are these two things not culture? Nor did they post anything for Windrush Day. Are these two things not culture? Should we as an audience not question the ethnic ethics of two supposed black founders who state culture in their bio and yet do nothing for the culture? Of course we should. Because of agenda, which may be careerism and or propaganda. Do you know why? Because black British journalism institutions have been used for agenda and propaganda before. Have you heard of Flamingo magazine? Let's go back to the 1960s. Flamingo magazine was created and it was a groundbreaking magazine. It mixed glamour, sex advice, culture and international politics. It was one of the first magazines to target Britain's African Caribbean community and it ran from 1961 to May 1965 and at its peak sold 20,000 copies in the UK and 15,000 in the US. It was also distributed in the Caribbean and West Africa, namely Nigeria, ghana and Liberia.
Speaker 1:In 2019, it emerged that the Flamingo founder was a man called Peter Hornsby. Sounds like a normal name, right, but his career, his profession, was far from normal, because he was an agent for an intelligence service, and that intelligence service was the MI6, which used the magazine to push an anti-communist agenda amongst black and West Indian communities. Anti-communist agenda amongst black and west indian communities, bearing in mind this is just slightly after the notting hill riots of 1958, and essentially what the magazine did is it supported black students, writers and aspiring politicians who were on the left and who could be persuaded to oppose communism. In peter's mind, a magazine focusing on immigrants would make them feel more welcome and ease their integration into a British society. So subtle propaganda. The company was set up under Carlton Publishing and the person who produced the magazine was a gentleman from Dominica and his name was Edward Scobie, and he was recruited as the editor. In addition, they also published Feline, which was a soft porn magazine aimed at the black community. Hey, jesus, scobie's attitude to journalism was relaxed and it's said that there were many attractive young West Indian party girls often found themselves hanging out around the magazine's offices. However, there is no evidence regarding Edward Scobie knowing about the MI6 founding or investment.
Speaker 1:But I use this history to further compound our ethnic ethics and why it's important to know the founder and or owner no-transcript who we have being one of our quote unquote leading outlets for showcasing our diverse culture. Or are we saying that Shea Burren now is black British popular culture and we no longer want to be informed, educated and entertained, we just want entertainment? And I question is this the future that we want for black British journalism institutions? A black version of a red top newspaper essentially a black top, if you will. Black version of a red top newspaper essentially a black top, if you will. And to me that's assimilated culture. That's British culture, that's not our culture. When black Brits came here, that's not what our journalists were writing about. That's not what our journalism institutions were writing about. For a deeper dive, I advise reading a book called A Century of Black Journalism in Britain by Lionel Morrison, obe.
Speaker 1:Our history starts with Celestine Edwards, who left his native Dominica once again, pick up all my Dominicans in the 1870s and worked odd jobs on ships for a few years. He then went to the States and Scotland and finally in London to study theology at King's College London. Edward was never ordained into the Church of England and remained a Methodist. After his time at King's, however, edward was never ordained into the Church of England and remained a Methodist. After his time at King's, however, he became a well-known speaker for the Christian Evidence Movement. Later he founded two magazines, one called Weekly Christian Evidence Journal and that was a paper in Lux in 1892, and the other was an anti-racist fraternity in 1893. And the other was an anti-racist fraternity in 1893 or later.
Speaker 1:We can look at Dusey Muhammad Ali, who was born in 1866 in Alexandria in Egypt. His father was Egyptian and his mother was Sudanese. Ali came to England to write and to act at King's College London once again, and he was many things. He was an actor, a political activist. He was known for his African nationalism, a playwright, historian, but of course we're focusing on his journalism and his work as an editor and publisher.
Speaker 1:In 1911, ali with the help of a journalist from Sierra Leone I love the African connection, you know him being from Egypt and working with another journalist from Sierra Leone. In 1912 they founded the African Times Orient Review in London and what was beautiful was to see the African and Asian solidarity at the time, and essentially what they did is they highlighted abuse of colonial rule and, as a result, he and his newspaper were disliked and feared by the foreign office and the Asian office at the time. The journal advocated for pan-African nationalism and it became a forum for African and other intellectuals and activists from around the world. It attracted numerous contributors, one of which you may recognize from school, the name HG Wells. He is a prolific writer and he wrote War of the Worlds and Time Machine, as well as many other books. Another name that you may recognize is Marcus Garvey, who briefly worked for Ali and contributed to an article in the journal in the October 1913 issue. The young Marcus Garvey, then studying in London from Jamaica, frequently visited the Fleet Street office and was actually mentored by Ali. Mentorship, big up mentorship, building up the next generation.
Speaker 1:The journal covered issues in the US, the Caribbean, west Africa, south Africa and Egypt, and the journal ceased publishing in October 1918, during the First World War, after it was banned by the British government in India and British colonies in Africa in order to prevent unrest. You see, this is real shadow ban. This is not. You're posting too many times a day. This is real shadow ban. This is that you have so much credibility. This is you have so much reach. This is you have so much power in your pen that we believe that if your messages get out to those in the diaspora, that they're actually going to uprise. That's real shadow banning, that's real power.
Speaker 1:The paper ended in 1920 and in 1921, following the demise of the african and orient review, ali traveled to the us and nigeria, never returned to britain, and in the us he actually briefly worked for marcus garvey, which is a wonderful full circle moment and in the 1930s he was residing in Nigeria and was contributing to the Nigerian Daily Telegraph. So I lay down all of that history to state this is where we are coming from, this is whence we came to quote James Baldwin, not only just those case studies that I use, but also Caribbean News, the Gleaner, the West Indian World and all of the other papers I mentioned before. Now we have Shade Borough and the Voice newspaper and, god forbid, something happens to the Voice and we're left with just things like Shade Borough, going back to the example of Marcus Garvey and Duse Ali. If something was to happen to the Voice newspaper, where would our journalists, our black journalists, get their start. Earlier, I mentioned the UK's only race correspondent being Nadine White, and she worked and came through the Voice, and I'm sure there's many other examples. So I say all of that to conclude our ethnic ethics needs to include a face for accountability. Our black British journalism institutions need to have a stance or a cause and, further to that, they need to have intellect and a career background, like I highlighted with so many examples during this podcast.
Speaker 1:Lastly, I actually bought the June edition of the voice newspaper and I thoroughly enjoyed it. You know, one of the handy things it has in there was the event listing celebrating windrush. It had updates regarding stories from back home. It had the entrepreneurship of a mother and a daughter creating an app focusing around afro hair. And, just a disclaimer, no one has paid me nor contacted me to even say this, but I get a physical copy of the Voice around the Black British calendar. So dates namely like Windrush or Carnival or Black History Month, and I genuinely find them insightful and important for the culture. And if we are going to do both, then let's do both. Let's follow the Voice newspaper, let's amplify them, because without them, as an institution, we are left with gossip, meme pages and white media. So let's be proactive rather than reactive. Let's make sure we're building a generation and building a people of black britains that are questioning ethnic ethics within our black british journalism institutions. I'm ken k Kawasaki and thank you for listening to the Black Wash.