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9/11 Was a Test for Black Journalists

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‘No Second Chance’ When Big Story Comes Along
Allison Payne, Chicago Anchor, Dies at 57
Bill Church, Japanese American, Named in Raleigh
Ida B. Wells Society Aims to Boost J-Pipeline
Slow Progress on Broadcast Ownership

DuJuan McCoy Expands Reach of Indy TV Station
Death of Michael K. Williams Inspires Tributes
Taliban Violently Attacking Journalists
Nominate a J-Educator Who Promotes Diversity

Short Takes: bilingual Hurricane Ida reports; R. Kelly; Neal Scarbrough; Lulu Garcia-Navarro; Morgan State’s David Wilson; Latin American autocracies; racist comment by Spain sports commentator; Kenyan disinformation for hire; Journal-isms position.

Homepage photo: People flee across the Brooklyn Bridge from Lower Manhattan on Sept. 11, 2001, part of a winning Pulitzer Prize package from The New York Times. (Credit: Andrea Mohin/New York Times)

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The New York Times won the Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography “for its consistently outstanding photographic coverage of the terrorist attack on New York City and its aftermath.” This entry from the package shows two women making their way through the ash-covered streets of lower Manhattan in the immediate aftermath of the crumbling of the World Trade Center tower. (Credit: Justin Lane/New York Times)

‘No Second Chance’ When Big Story Comes Along

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For all the historical significance of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 — 20 years ago — the day was also one in which Black journalists were tested as never before.

Sonya Ross (pictured) was covering President George W. Bush for the Associated Press on what was supposed to be a quiet day.

“I said — and no offense to anyone — but the hell if anybody’s going to knock me out of this story while I’m doing it, and I am not about to become a cautionary tale of why you don’t let Black people do things,” Ross told a Zoom forum this week at Howard University (video). “And I certainly am not going to operate in any way that would give anyone in this industry the belief that another Black girl couldn’t come behind me and do this same thing.”

Keith L. Alexander (pictured) was at the Washington Post, chosen to help anchor its coverage because of his expertise on the aviation beat. “I’ve been in the newsroom since I was 16 years old, and when big news happens, the editors often don’t pick journalists to cover them who look like me . . . and I was very accustomed to that, not being picked to cover the big story . . .,” Alexander said. “Unfortunately, in those big stories, in those clutch situations, you only get one shot. You only get one shot to prove yourself, or one shot to fail. And unfortunately, editors have a long memory. And when a big story happens, you have to show up. and you’ve got to show out. Because, unfortunately, they won’t see you again if you don’t.

“I remember Vanessa Williams, who is a colleague of mine . . . she was in the newsroom, over in Metro, and she sent me an email that said, ‘Thank You,’ in the subject line. And I didn’t know what she was talking about, and so I said, ‘What do you mean, thank you?’ And she responded, you really are the only black journalist here at the Post who is anchoring  and leading the coverage, and so thank you for that.    

“I didn’t recognize it really; I was in that mode of cranking and cranking and cranking, trying to prove that, yes, I can be that journalist that you can come to in a clutch, on a big breaking story. You can come to someone who looks like me.”

Over at CNN, Jennifer Thomas (pictured) was in her producer’s role. “I was the only Black producer at the time . . .  I was the only Black female, then when I was promoted, I was the only Black producer for any of the news networks. You don’t think of the enormity of that. . . but you know that you bear a great responsibility. I don’t have a choice. I don’t have an opportunity to mess up. When they’re going around doing specials, no one’s coming to me, to ask me . . .  I was there, but no one’s necessarily coming to me. . . but you’re doing your job and you’re doing it well, and then you recognize the significance of it later . . . “

Ross, Alexander and Thomas were part of a panel Thursday called “Reporting While Black: Covering 9/11” sponsored by the Department of Media, Journalism and Film in Howard’s Cathy Hughes School of Communications.

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They were joined by Hazel Trice Edney (pictured), founder of the Trice Edney News Wire; independent journalist Clem Richardson, then a columnist at the Daily News in New York, and independent journalist Melanie Eversley, who reported from New York as a Washington correspondent for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution/Cox Newspapers. Yanick Rice Lamb of the Howard journalism faculty moderated.

Elsewhere, other journalists of color were offering their perspectives on what 9/11 meant for the nation, the world and for themselves.

“What was also really striking was . . . I’m an Arab American, and I never really knew that until 9/11,” Vivian Salama (pictured), a national security reporter at The Wall Street Journal, said on PBS’ “Washington Week” Friday. “I’m a New Yorker, born and raised, and I never thought of myself as anything else. And suddenly I was a hyphen. My family members, relatives were all of a sudden getting criticized in public. For no reason, just because of their names or the way they look, and suddenly everything that I knew to be true about who I was seemed different . . . ”

In 2001, Salama was a young producer in New York for NBC-TV’s owned-and-operated WNBC.

Juan Gonzalez (pictured), then a columnist for the Daily News in New York, was among the first to expose the public health and environmental crisis at Ground Zero. On “Democracy Now!,” which he co-hosts, Gonzalez said Tuesday that the intense backlash from the mayor’s office and federal officials “cowed” the newspaper, but he has no regrets. “My only mistake was believing that it would take 20 years for people to get sick. It took about five years for the deaths and the severe illnesses to really become apparent.”  

​ Leonard Pitts Jr. (pictured), syndicated columnist for the Miami Herald, won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 2004 after writing viscerally about the terrorist attacks in a widely circulated piece.

Pitts returned to the subject this week, writing, “That day tapped a deep seam of xenophobia and fear in the American psyche, making possible the election of a man who campaigned on ‘a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States’ — even as white nationalist terror cells were training in the woods. Before Sept. 11, Trump’s presidency — and the myriad catastrophes proceeding from it — would have seemed the stuff of some bizarre, outlandish fiction.

“But we have become a nation of truths stranger than fiction, a nation where satire must run to keep up with reality. As we go forward from this moment, we find ourselves contending for the very soul of America — something none of us could have imagined 20 years ago. Which is why it must be said, tragically, that the terrorists succeeded beyond their dreams in inflicting damage on this country.”

Another photo from the New York Times Pulitzer-winning entry: From about half a mile north, near Canal Street, people’s expressions and gestures bore witness to the sight they beheld: the collapse of 2 World Trade Center. (Credit: Angel Franco/ New York Times)

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The testimony of the Howard panelists on their responses as Black journalists stood out for those in the profession or studying to be.

“Most of that day was a challenge for me,” Ross explained. “I said, I am going to outperform, I am going to perform beyond the level that’s expected. As it was, that particular trip for the president had been declared a news-free zone, and treated like a ‘scrub trip,’ what they call a ‘scrub trip.’

“You know, there was supposed to be a big economic address by the president the following week,” so most were preparing themselves for that moment. “And they treated this trip like it’s a nothing trip to Florida. So ‘put a secondary person on that, because you’re needed for this bigger thing later.’ “

Ross continued, “I wasn’t about to let anybody say that that Black girl didn’t do that job that day, that I didn’t make the first use of this pool the best of its magnitude, you know.

“I reported absolutely everything. I nailed down everything, even if it was just the timeline. What time was it when such-and-such happened? I made sure I knew the answer to that question. And I made sure that I could sneak and turn my cell phone back on whenever I could . . . and pick up information. I made sure I had a question anytime anybody came back into the press cabin on Air Force One. . . . . questions that, honestly, people did not have an answer for, but it wasn’t going to be for lack of a question. I had to make sure that they understood that they would have to find an answer for me before I would sit there with absolutely nothing to say.

“I bring that up because it does bother me a bit when I watch journalists of today, and so many don’t seem to have a question, and that should not be. I had to set my emotions aside, I had to set any concerns that I had aside, all the talk about surface-to-air missiles hitting the plane, and it might take us down, and it would just be ‘President Bush and 15 others perished,’ and I’d be in the 15 others, but I was going to go down in ‘the 15 others’ asking the questions and doing my job.”

Edney was working then under the late George Curry, long affiliated with the National Newspaper Publishers Association News Service, who wanted Edney to find a Black person to interview. She talked with a custodian who was in the kitchen at the Pentagon. He went outside and went back in to get permission to leave. Edney had just returned from South Africa, and she related the custodian’s story to that experience. The newspaper The Sowetan carried a cartoon about the United States’ reluctance to attend the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance. Colin Powell, then secretary of state, is portrayed saying to Bush, “Massa, can I go?”

“It’s so crucial to put faces, human faces, onto any tragedy,” Edney said. “But, specifically, because we are so often left out, stories of Black people are always going to be important because they are the ones who need to be comforted. Remember, ‘afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted’? We are the ones who are so often the afflicted . . . we were all under attack that day, but the ones who got the least attention, etc., etc., is usually us.”

Wall Street workers show their identification to the National Guard to get to their workplaces. A total of 5,000 Guard troops were mobilized in the New York City area, The New York Times reported. (Credit: Angel Franco/New York Times)

The panelists were asked what advice they would give students and their own peers.

Alexander urged becoming an expert on a topic. Richardson said to ask more experienced reporters how they do what they do.

Ross said, “There are two things that will make you golden, beyond asking questions. . . . The first is follow up. . . . When you pitch your stories, give ’em the story. Don’t just give the idea, give them the story. They’re more likely to accept what you offer if you can give ’em a whole story or as close to a whole story as possible. So, do those things: Follow up, and when you pitch a story, have that story. Don’t ask for permission, say ‘can I do this story?’ and then go out to do the story. Have that story reported by the time you tell somebody you want to do it. I did that often and it worked.”

Edney responded, “I must say that we must take care of ourselves. I think that’s one thing that’s come out of this conversation. I happen to also be an ordained minister, so that has helped me; my prayer life has helped me through these moments. These great moments when, like I say, I was called the N-word to my face. Having to cover an electrocution and all that kind of stuff, and everything from a Black perspective, can be very, very painful.

“And so, whatever it takes for you, then do that thing. You know, take a weekend vacation. Make sure that you’re resting your mind, because the editors will be like, go-go-go, and like, 20 years later, like now, I’m feeling sensations that I never felt before, from just this night of remembrance. . . . “

Allison Payne, Chicago Anchor, Dies at 57

“Allison Payne, the longtime TV news reporter anchor for Chicago’s WGN, died on September 1 at age 57, WGN reported,” Thom Geier wrote Saturday for the Daily Beast.

“The Detroit native joined WGN in 1990 at the age of 25 and established herself quickly on major stories. She traveled to Kenya to trace the family roots of then-Senator Barack Obama and joined the Rev. Jesse Jackson on a trip to Ivory Coast.

“During her 21 years at WGN, she won nine Emmys and co-anchored both the station’s primetime newscast as well as the midday news show.

“She also suffered a series of health issues over the years, taking a medical leave of absence in 2008 after a series of mini-strokes as well as bouts of depression. ‘It was brutal getting out of the house, I couldn’t get out of bed,’ Payne told the Chicago Tribune.

“Payne parted ways with WGN in September 2011 to return to Detroit.

“Tributes quickly poured in for Payne. . . .”

Bill Church, Japanese American, Named in Raleigh

“Bill Church (pictured), who started his newspaper career covering high school sports for an Oklahoma weekly and most recently helped oversee 150 newsrooms across the nation, will be the new executive editor of The News & Observer and The Herald-Sun,” Martha Quillin reported Friday for The News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C. The Herald-Sun is in neighboring Durham.

“Robyn Tomlin, vice president of local news for McClatchy, announced Church’s hire Friday.

“ ‘His unique mix of skills, experience and talents make him the perfect person to take the lead of these news organizations at this moment of growth and opportunity in our newsroom and community’ said Tomlin, who served as the N&O’s executive editor as well as Southeast regional editor for McClatchy before her recent promotion.

“Church is a Japanese-American, born on an Air Force base in Japan while his father was serving overseas. He will be the first person of color to serve in the newsroom’s top leadership role in The News & Observer’s 156-year history. . . .

“Church is a longtime member of the Asian American Journalists Association and is a recipient of the News Leaders Association’s Robert G. McGruder Award for Diversity Leadership.

“After GateHouse merged with Gannett in 2019, Church took on the role of vice president of news and director of standards and staff development with Gannett until his departure last fall. . . .”

Church is the latest editor of color to be appointed at McClatchy.

Sharif Durhams, who is African American and president of NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ Journalists, was named managing editor at The News & Observer and The Herald-Sun in December.

Rana Cash, executive editor of the Savannah (Ga.) Morning News and a Black journalist, was named executive editor of the Charlotte Observer in August.

Monica R. Richardson, a Black journalist who was senior managing editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, was named executive editor of The Miami Herald in December.

Justin M. Madden, another Black journalist, was named senior editor/general manager of the Sun News in Myrtle Beach, S.C., in September.

“This grant will help the Society create a pipeline of talent for the media industry that is reflective of the country we live in,” said co-founder Ron Nixon. “That pipeline of diverse talent is a potent force for combating racial injustice in this country.” (Credit: Ida B. Wells Society)

Ida B. Wells Society Aims to Boost J-Pipeline

The Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting outlined Thursday how it plans to use a $1 million grant from the Black Community Commitment announced in May by basketball legend Michael Jordan and the Jordan Brand.

“With the help of the Black Community Commitment grant, the Society intends to expand its existing internship program for college students and recent college graduates, partnering budding talent with major news organizations like The New York Times, the Miami Herald, ProPublica, the Associated Press and the USA Today Network around the United States,” the society said.

“The Society also plans to launch an All-Star Investigative Summer J-Camp, starting in July of 2022, that will bring students from majority-Black and Latino and historically disadvantaged schools together for an immersive, multidisciplinary training program in partnership with an historically Black college.

“This fall, the Society will also launch a yearlong high school journalism class ‘adoption’ project. With assistance from the North Carolina Scholastic Media Association, the Society will partner with a journalism class at a majority Black and Latino public high school in Durham, North Carolina. The Society will bring in top-level investigative reporters from the Triangle area and from around the country to Durham to provide ongoing mentorship and coaching throughout the year as students work on long-term investigative projects. . . .”

Slow Progress on Broadcast Ownership

“The FCC has released its fifth report on broadcast ownership, according to FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks (pictured) and there is some slight improvement in the number of women and minority-owned stations, but the emphasis is on the ‘slight,‘ ” John Eggerton reported Thursday for nexttv.com.

Starks said in his statement:

“I have been talking about these ownership numbers for a long time, in particular about the need for this Commission to take action to address the lack of progress toward increasing the diversity among broadcast station owners to include more people of color and women.

“Although the numbers show some slight improvements in majority ownership of full power commercial broadcast television stations by African Americans (up from 12 in 2017 to 18 stations in 2019), the percentage of ownership still rounds to an anemic 1%. Moreover, that number significantly worsened for Asian American owners (from 9 full power TV stations in 2017 to four stations in 2019).

“Women had majority ownership in four more full power TV stations in 2019 (77) than in 2017, but that is still only 5.6% of 1,369 total stations, far below their representation in our overall population. The numbers don’t lie – we must ensure that ownership at broadcast stations better reflects the rich diversity of the communities that they serve.

“We still have work to do, and we have to do better. That is why I strongly support initiatives like Congressman G.K. Butterfield’s renewed efforts to increase opportunities for diversity in broadcast ownership and viewpoints by reintroducing H.R. 4871, the Expanding Broadcast Opportunities Act of 2021, which would promote diversity of ownership in the broadcast industry by reestablishing the FCC’s Minority Tax Certificate Program.“

DuJuan McCoy Expands Reach of Indy TV Station

“DuJuan McCoy (pictured) owner, president, and CEO of Circle City Broadcasting, and Gregory Phipps, president of Metro Video Productions, today announced an agreement to broadcast Circle City’s CW affiliate WISH Indianapolis (News 8) news live in the Fort Wayne, Ind. (DMA 111), on Metro Video’s WLMO-LD,” TVNewsCheck reported Tuesday.

“WLMO will carry more than 80 weekly hours of News 8 broadcasts in the Fort Wayne and Northeast Indiana region. The expansion will bring WISH-TV’s News 8 to more than 800,000 Hoosiers in 11 counties: Adams, Allen, DeKalb, Huntington, Kosciusko, LaGrange, Noble, Steuben, Wabash, Wells and Whitley.

“ ‘This is a continuation of my goal to bring the quality and legacy of WISH-TV’s News 8 from the capital city of Indianapolis to all television markets in the state of Indiana,’ said McCoy, an Indianapolis native and graduate of Butler University. ‘There are still an estimated 405,000 Hoosiers that currently receive their local news from non-Indiana television stations including 16 counties in Southeast Indiana (Cincinnati and Louisville DMAs), and we are working toward closing that gap soon.’ . . . ”

Death of Michael K. Williams Inspires Tributes

The death of actor Michael K. Williams struck such a chord with journalists that he earned an editorial from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, though there was no obvious local angle. It began:

“ ‘Man’s gotta earn a living’ — Michael K. Williams as Omar Little on ‘The Wire.’

“When he died on Sept. 6 face down on the floor of his Brooklyn apartment, Michael K. Williams, 54, was already acknowledged as one of the best actors of his generation.

“That consensus didn’t come about because Mr. Williams took on a range of roles like Robert De Niro or Tom Hanks. He wasn’t a chameleon. One might lament, as Mr. Williams often did, that he was usually offered roles that seemed to confirm his gift for playing outsiders, gangsters, hoodlums, desperate men — whatever scary American archetype was required by directors eager to tap into his charisma for their own purposes.

“Though ambivalent about being typecast as an urban antihero, no one was better at portraying such a fearsome mix of eloquence, charm, hilarity and urban menace. Instead of bemoaning his fate, Michael K. Williams gave what could’ve been tedious stereotypes the dignity of distinctive voices. . . .”

Taliban Violently Attacking Journalists

“A spate of violent attacks on Afghan journalists by the Taliban is prompting growing alarm over the freedom of the country’s media, with one senior journalist declaring that ‘press freedom has ended‘,” Emma Graham-Harrison and Peter Beaumont reported Thursday for The Guardian.

“As images and testimony circulated internationally of the arrest and brutal flogging of two reporters who were detained covering a women’s rights demonstration in Kabul on Wednesday, Human Rights Watch and the Committee to Protect Journalists raised concern over the recent string of attacks.

“In just two days this week, the Taliban detained and later released at least 14 journalists covering protests in Kabul, with at least six of these journalists subject to violence during their arrests or detention, the CPJ reported.

“Other journalists, including some working with the BBC, were also prevented from filming the protest on Wednesday.

“The Taliban authorities also briefly detained a Tolonews photojournalist, Wahid Ahmadi, on Tuesday, confiscating his camera and preventing other journalists from filming the protest he was covering.

“The renewed threats against the media have coincided with the announcement by the new Taliban interior ministry that it was banning unauthorised protests. . . .”

 

Nominate a J-Educator Who Promotes Diversity

Mei-Ling Hopgood, 2020 recipient

Beginning in 1990, the Association of Opinion Journalists, now part of the News Leaders Association, annually granted a Barry Bingham Sr. Fellowship — actually an award — “in recognition of an educator’s outstanding efforts to encourage minority students in the field of journalism.”

Since 2000, the recipient has been awarded an honorarium of $1,000 to be used to “further work in progress or begin a new project.”

Past winners include James Hawkins, Florida A&M University (1990); Larry Kaggwa, Howard University (1992); Ben Holman, University of Maryland (1996); Linda Jones, Roosevelt University, Chicago (1998); Ramon Chavez, University of Colorado, Boulder (1999); Erna Smith, San Francisco State (2000); Joseph Selden, Penn State University (2001); Cheryl Smith, Paul Quinn College (2002); Rose Richard, Marquette University (2003).

Also, Leara D. Rhodes, University of Georgia (2004); Denny McAuliffe, University of Montana (2005); Pearl Stewart, Black College Wire (2006); Valerie White, Florida A&M University (2007); Phillip Dixon, Howard University (2008); Bruce DePyssler, North Carolina Central University (2009); Sree Sreenivasan, Columbia University (2010); Yvonne Latty, New York University (2011); Michelle Johnson, Boston University (2012); Vanessa Shelton, University of Iowa (2013); William Drummond, University of California at Berkeley (2014); Julian Rodriguez of the University of Texas at Arlington (2015) (video); David G. Armstrong, Georgia State University (2016) (video); Gerald Jordan, University of Arkansas (2017), Bill Celis, University of Southern California (2018); Laura Castañeda, University of Southern California (2019); and Mei-Ling Hopgood, Northwestern University (pictured) (2020).

Nominations may be emailed to Richard Prince, Opinion Journalism Committee, richardprince (at) hotmail.com. The deadline is Oct. 15. Please use that address only for NLA matters.

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Richard Prince’s Journal-isms originates from Washington. It began in print before most of us knew what the internet was, and it would like to be referred to as a “column.” Any views expressed in the column are those of the person or organization quoted and not those of any other entity. Send tips, comments and concerns to Richard Prince at journal-isms+owner@groups.io

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