Lott’s Appearance Could Be a Redefining Moment for BET

All day, chat rooms that cater to black Americans buzzed with anger.

Some urged a boycott of Black Entertainment Television’s interview with besieged Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) -- upset with a network, now owned by the global media giant Viacom, that has already canceled the very public affairs show airing the interview.

Others seemed more offended that Lott would seek out a black audience for his latest mea culpa for remarks at Sen. Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday party, in which he suggested that the country would have been better off if Thurmond’s 1948 presidential platform of segregationist policies had prevailed. “Why is BET giving him the luxury of addressing black Americans?” wrote one correspondent. “Why hasn’t he been on BET before?”

Beneath the turmoil is a long history of distrust of BET’s founder, Robert L. Johnson, by those who believe he is more interested in making money with hip-hop and rap than in nurturing black talent in public affairs -- or even in entertainment.

“The network has had shaky credibility in the African American community in the areas of news and information,” said Condace Pressley, president of the National Assn. of Black Journalists. “This offer to Sen. Lott from BET is more of a publicity stunt to move the discussion away from the cancellation of the network’s news and public affairs programs.”

But others say the Lott interview is a signal moment, a recognition that BET is now part of the media landscape, as shameless in grabbing headliners as any of the major networks.

“Any network in the country would take an exclusive interview with Trent Lott about now,” said Tavis Smiley, who hosts a talk show on National Public Radio and was himself fired from BET during an earlier round of belt-tightening. “I don’t demonize the black network for doing what CNN or ABC or any of the others would have done.”

BET was born in the early years of cable television’s promise, the brainchild of a businessman who was the only one of his family’s 10 children to graduate from college. In fact, after graduating from the University of Illinois, Johnson also received a master’s degree in international affairs from Princeton. Then he came to Washington as a lobbyist for the cable industry, where he met cable television pioneer John C. Malone.

Johnson borrowed $15,000 in seed money, Malone invested $500,000 and in 1979, BET began its odyssey with an odd mix of movies, gospel, sports and a few music videos. Before long, Johnson had shifted emphasis largely to music, off-color comedy and lots of gyrating women draped around gun-toting male rappers.

African American fraternities and sororities protested, urging BET to drop some of the more titillating rap videos as exploitative. But the number of subscribers, particularly in urban areas, exploded. Johnson took BET public in 1991, bought it back for $1.3 billion in 1998 and then sold it for double that in 2001. Along the way, he became America’s first black billionaire -- and a controversial figure among blacks.

“The problem is how BET represents black people,” syndicated radio talk show host Thomas Joyner told Forbes magazine after the sale to Viacom last year. “Shaking that booty in a video is fine, but you need a lot more than that.”

Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, is not one of those who faults Johnson for putting BET on the cultural map.

“Robert Johnson made a dream into reality,” he said. “I don’t think he should be punished for making money.”

But he and other members of the caucus have written Viacom, urging that shows like “BET Tonight with Ed Gordon” be restored. “That’s what BET should do more of,” Meeks said.

It was Gordon who conducted Monday night’s interview in which Lott spoke of the closed society in which he grew up. “That society was wrong; it was wicked,” he said. “I didn’t create it, and I didn’t really understand it.”

Lott’s attempt to rescue his career may or may not benefit from the appearance on BET, particularly since much of the network’s 74-million-home audience is young and antipolitical.

“Is Sen. Lott trying to reach young African Americans interested in hip-hop music video?” asked Pressley, who in addition to being president of the black journalists association is assistant program director at WSB radio, a news and talk station in Atlanta. “I suspect more African Americans will see the Lott BET interview in news excerpts on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC than will actually watch it on BET.”

To Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles), the debut on the nation’s only black television network of a man who just this week renounced his previous attempts to keep blacks out of the mainstream is filled with irony.

“It’s a privilege he doesn’t deserve -- getting the opportunity to go on a show he’s never wanted to be on before,” she said. Explaining that she is a “fierce defender of freedom of speech” in part because her own outspokenness sometimes prompts others to wish for a muzzle, she added of Lott’s appearance: “I don’t like it, but I would never oppose it.”

With some delight, Waters noted that the Lott controversy is prompting what she considers a healthy debate about America’s shameful racial record. And if that puts Lott on BET, she said, bring him on.

“The whole debacle is causing a lot of odd things to happen,” she said. “I heard today that if the Democrats move to censure Lott, the Republicans will amend the bill to include Sen. Robert Byrd.” Byrd, a Democrat from West Virginia first elected to the Senate in 1958, used a racial slur during a television interview last year.

“It’s about time America had this debate,” she said. “Let’s have it. Whatever happens, happens.”

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Times staff writer Aaron Zitner contributed to this report.