CNN’s Documentary or Defamation? The Kobe Bryant Smear

What we’re seeing here is nothing new—just another example of the white media’s long-standing practice of using Black men as their go-to punching bags, especially when they can no longer defend themselves. The pattern is predictable: build them up while they’re making money for the system, then tear them down the moment they’re no longer profitable or, in Kobe’s case, after they’ve passed on and can’t clap back. This is the same playbook they ran on Michael Jackson, Muhammad Ali before he was sanitized, and even Dr. King.

CNN isn’t interested in justice, truth, or even journalism. If they were, they’d be asking questions about the people in their own circles—executives, politicians, and media moguls—who have been caught up in real scandals with actual convictions, not an accusation that was dismissed two decades ago. But the rules are different when the target is a Black man. The goal is never to inform but to reinforce the idea that no matter how successful or admired a Black man becomes, he must always be remembered through the lens of criminality, suspicion, and controversy.

And where’s the so-called “Black elite” in all of this? Silent, as usual. Too many of them are too busy trying to stay in good graces with the very media machine that would chew them up and spit them out the moment they step out of line. This is what happens when you allow yourself to be controlled from the time you enter the system—when your agents, your coaches, your managers all serve the same interests that are fundamentally opposed to you. The moment these athletes become too successful or too powerful on their own terms, the white media reminds them who really calls the shots.

This isn’t about Kobe. It’s about the message they want to send to every Black man watching: No matter how high you rise, we can drag you back down whenever we choose. And unless we build our own institutions, our own media, and stand up for our own, this cycle will continue. The question is, how long are we going to let them get away with it?

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