Rep. Hank Johnson tells Biden: Show Black-Owned Media The Money!
Georgia Representative Hank Johnson is calling out the Biden Administration over the lack of federal funding toward minority-owned media.
In a letter, Representative Johnson and several other lawmakers point out a recent Government Accountability Office study from 2016 that found over a five-year period, the federal government spent more than 5- billion dollars on advertising but Black-owned businesses received only 51 million dollars or 1.02 percent of those funds.
The letter reads;
“Dear President Biden:
We write to bring to your attention the major failings of many federal departments and agencies to do business with Black-owned media and advertising firms. An article in “Black Enterprise” highlighted this problem with respect to the failure of the federal government to spend a significant amount of the COVID-19 advertising program funds with Black-owned media and advertising firms. As you know, there has been a great deal of reluctance and concern within the Black community about getting the COVID-19 vaccinations. Educating our communities should have been a very high priority of that advertising program. Unfortunately, the failure of the federal government to spend COVID-19 advertising dollars with Black-owned media and advertising firms is simply the continuation of a problem that has existed for years. We appreciate that your administration met with leaders in Black-owned media to discuss this topic in early 2021, however we are not aware of any action that resulted from this meeting and the problem continues to undermine Black-owned businesses. Therefore, we are requesting that you reinstate President Clinton’s Executive Order 13170 and conduct an audit of contracts funded by COVID-19 response legislation …”
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