Only CNN Rejected Commercial From the Beginning

U.S. Slow to Act Against White Nationalists

An Issue Devoted to Race, the Press, Untold Stories

Younger Newsroom Staffers Show Greater Diversity

System Discourages Young People From Voting

Is National Geographic Back to Outdated Tropes?

Short Takes

Only CNN Rejected Commercial From the Beginning

“Facebook on Monday pulled down advertisements from President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign that sought to fire up conservative voters in two midterm battleground states with an ad deemed ‘racist’ by major television broadcasters,” Lachlan Markay reported for the Daily Beast.

“The company’s decision came after CNN, NBC, and Fox News had all pulled down the ad, which features a convicted cop-killer who was deported multiple times before he shot and killed two California sheriff’s deputies. The ad was released as a video by the Trump campaign last week. . . .”

That the ad aired at all on NBC and Fox, and appeared on Facebook — only CNN never ran the ad — is disgraceful, some critics said.

“It’s tempting to credit these organizations for reaching the right decision,” Erik Wemple wrote Monday for the Washington Post. “But such temptation should be resisted here.

“The flow of the ad itself — knitting together the horror of murder with images of Central American migrants — leaves little room for interpretation. It’s prima facie racism — worse, even, than the famous ‘Willie Horton‘ ad from George H.W. Bush’s presidential run in 1988.

“On this front, CNN continues to speak with clarity: ‘Facebook has stopped the Trump campaign from running its racist anti-immigration commercial as an ad on the site,’ reads the lead sentence in its story on the social media giant’s approach to the backlash.

“Another consideration is timing. When the Trump people launched the ad, the clear intent was to reach folks on the weekend before the midterms. These organizations assisted in that effort. NBC’s audience for the ‘Sunday Night Football’ clash between two top National Football League teams fetched a generous 21 million viewers. The ad aired as well on MSNBC.

The Hollywood Reporter reports on decisions to pull Trump commercial. (video)

“So these pullbacks come a bit late. . . .”

Wemple also wrote, “Take a close look at the statements from the organizations that have now rejected the ad. NBC cited the ad’s ‘insensitive nature’; Facebook cited ‘sensational content,’ as befits a tech titan; Fox News didn’t characterize the ad. As with all corporate statements, these examples are carefully lawyered, carefully PR’d. The companies aren’t calling the ad ‘racist,’ even as they bail on it.

“To do so would be to admit that they’ve profited from racism. Far preferable to profit from ‘sensational content.’ ”

• Christine M. Flowers, Philadelphia Inquirer: Anchor babies away? Why Trump shouldn’t mess with birthright citizenship 
• Michael M. Grynbaum and Niraj Chokshi, New York Times: Even Fox News Stops Running Trump Caravan Ad Criticized as Racist
• Sam Stanton, Sacramento Bee: Fact check: Trump’s claim that Democrats let cop killer stay in U.S. is false
• Margaret Sullivan, Washington Post: Defensive, caravan-fixated and Trump-obsessed, the media blow it again. Just not as badly.
• Cleve R. Wootson Jr., Washington Post: Racist ‘magical Negro’ robo-call from ‘Oprah’ targets Stacey Abrams in Georgia governor’s race

A crowd approaching 3,000 blanketed the Cathedral of Learning lawn on the University of Pittsburgh campus Monday to remember victims of the Tree of Life synagogue mass shooting and, more broadly, to decry hate. (Credit: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) (video)

U.S. Slow to Act Against White Nationalists

“White supremacists and other far-right extremists have killed far more people since Sept. 11, 2001, than any other category of domestic extremist,” Janet Reitman wrote Saturday for the New York Times Magazine, in what is to be its print-edition cover story. It is headlined, “U.S. Law Enforcement Failed to See the Threat of White Nationalism. Now They Don’t Know How to Stop It.”

“The Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism has reported that 71 percent of the extremist-related fatalities in the United States between 2008 and 2017 were committed by members of the far right or white-supremacist movements. Islamic extremists were responsible for just 26 percent.

“Data compiled by the University of Maryland’s Global Terrorism Database shows that the number of terror-related incidents has more than tripled in the United States since 2013, and the number of those killed has quadrupled.

“In 2017, there were 65 incidents totaling 95 deaths. In a recent analysis of the data by the news site Quartz, roughly 60 percent of those incidents were driven by racist, anti-Muslim, anti-Semitic, antigovernment or other right-wing ideologies. Left-wing ideologies, like radical environmentalism, were responsible for 11 attacks. Muslim extremists committed just seven attacks.

“These statistics belie the strident rhetoric around ‘foreign-born’ terrorists that the Trump administration has used to drive its anti-immigration agenda.

“They also raise questions about the United States’ counterterrorism strategy, which for nearly two decades has been focused almost exclusively on American and foreign-born jihadists, overshadowing right-wing extremism as a legitimate national-security threat. According to a recent report by the nonpartisan Stimson Center, between 2002 and 2017, the United States spent $2.8 trillion — 16 percent of the overall federal budget — on counterterrorism.

“Terrorist attacks by Muslim extremists killed 100 people in the United States during that time. Between 2008 and 2017, domestic extremists killed 387 in the United States, according to the 2018 Anti-Defamation League report.

“ ‘We’re actually seeing all the same phenomena of what was happening with groups like ISIS, same tactics, but no one talks about it because it’s far-right extremism,’ says the national-security strategist P.W. Singer, a senior fellow at the New America think tank. . . .”

• John Broich, the Conversation: How Journalists Covered the Rise of Mussolini and Hitler (Dec. 11, 2016)

Jelani Cobb of Columbia Journalism School discussed race and the news media with HuffPost Editor-in-Chief Lydia Polgreen; Errin Haines Whack of the Associated Press; Atlantic staff writer Adam Serwer; Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of Columbia Journalism Review; and former CJR Delacorte Fellow Karen K. Ho. (video)

An Issue Devoted to Race, the Press, Untold Stories

“Unfinished.” That’s the title of CJR’s latest print issue, released today, which focuses on race in journalism and “the stories left untold in America’s newsrooms,’ ” Jon Allsop reported Monday for Columbia Journalism Review.

“The Race Issue features a range of perspectives on the continued under-representation of people of color in the media — situating the problem in its historical context, sizing up its statistical scale, and outlining the holes in coverage that result.

“Contributors include Vann R. Newkirk II, a staff writer at The Atlantic; Errin Haines Whack, the Associated Press’s National Writer for Race and Ethnicity; and Rebecca Carroll, special projects editor for WNYC and a critic-at-large for the LA Times.

“Also in the issue, Gustavo Arellano tackles the uncertain fate of Spanish-language news networks, E. Tammy Kim reflects on lopsided US media coverage of the Koreas, and Eric Deggans interviews David Simon, creator of The Wire, on how journalists could better cover the race beat.

“CJR’s website will roll out all the columns and features in the issue over the next two weeks. First up this morning, Guest Editor Jelani Cobb, a New Yorker staff writer and director of Columbia University’s Ira A. Lipman Center for Journalism and Civil and Human Rights, discusses ‘the cost of the status quo’ when it comes to race in the media.

“At a launch event at Columbia Journalism School later today, Cobb will sit down with HuffPost Editor-in-Chief Lydia Polgreen (who serves on CJR’s Board of Overseers) following a roundtable discussion featuring Haines Whack, Atlantic staff writer Adam Serwer, CJR Editor and Publisher Kyle Pope, and former CJR Delacorte Fellow Karen K. Ho.” The event was streamed and can be seen here.

In another piece released online, Gabriel Arana writes, “Among the editors in chief at media outlets that have succeeded in cultivating diverse staffs — and in turn, telling rich stories about life in America that draw broad audiences — the key, they say, is leadership. . . .”

Arana quotes newsroom and/or diversity leaders Karen Pensiero of the Wall Street Journal, Melissa Bell of Vox Media, Lydia Polgreen of HuffPost, Tracy Grant of the Washington Post, Carolyn Ryan of the New York Times, Ben Smith of BuzzFeed News, Keith Woods of NPR, Yvette Miley of MSNBC, Kevin Lord of Fox News, Ramon Escobar of CNN, David Remnick of the New Yorker and Julia Turner of Slate.

• CBC News: ‘My heart sank’: Canadian news leader reacts to journalist’s call for more diversity

Younger Newsroom Staffers Show Greater Diversity

“Newsroom employees are more likely to be white and male than U.S. workers overall,” Elizabeth Grieco reported Friday for the Pew Research Center.

“There are signs, though, of a turning tide: Younger newsroom employees show greater racial, ethnic and gender diversity than their older colleagues, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data.

“More than three-quarters (77%) of newsroom employees — those who work as reporters, editors, photographers and videographers in the newspaper, broadcasting and internet publishing industries — are non-Hispanic whites, according to the analysis of 2012-2016 American Community Survey data. That is true of 65% of U.S. workers in all occupations and industries combined.

“Newsroom employees are also more likely than workers overall to be male. About six-in-ten newsroom employees (61%) are men, compared with 53% of all workers. When combining race/ethnicity and gender, almost half (48%) of newsroom employees are non-Hispanic white men compared with about a third (34%) of workers overall. . . .”

System Discourages Young People From Voting

“To vote in the United States, you can’t simply go cast a ballot,” Jamelle Bouie wrote Monday for Slate. “In most states, you first have to register. If you’ve registered, you have to have state-issued identification to then actually vote.

“If you don’t have identification, you might have to pay a fee to obtain it. If you don’t live in an early voting state — or one with flexible absentee rules — you have to take time from work to cast your ballot. If you live in states like Georgia or Florida, you may have to wait for hours before you can step into a voting booth. If you can’t drive or aren’t mobile, you may have to find a ride.

“If you’re middle-aged with a stable job and a fixed-address, this is straightforward. If you’re anyone else, it’s less so. And if your life is defined by instability — in location, in housing, in employment — any single obstacle might be enough to discourage you from voting altogether. That might be why turnout for the youngest voters in the electorate is lower than most other groups. . . .”

Bouie also wrote, “It’s not a difficult one to solve. Automatic, universal registration would obviate the need for any action from individual voters, who would be registered upon contact with state agencies like the DMV; pre-registration of older teenagers would prepare the youngest voters for political participation; and Election Day registration would open the doors to anyone eligible to cast a ballot.

“If bundled with vote by mail (with a stamp provided by the government), states could eliminate most obstacles to participation, with no obvious downsides. (Voter fraud, after all, is practically nonexistent.) . . .”

• Wayne Bennett, the Field Negro: Modern day voter suppression.
• Igor Derysh, Salon: Federal judge rejects lawsuit, lets North Dakota disenfranchise Native American voters
• Editorial, Philadelphia Inquirer: Our voting survey results: Most of you are voting. Why the rest of you should
• Renée Graham, Boston Globe: Your excuses for not voting are lame. I used to make them, too.
• Prachi Gupta, jezebel.com: ‘They’re Using the Same Tactics’: Carol Anderson on the 2018 Midterms and America’s Long History of Trying to Suppress the Black Vote
• Veda Morgan, Louisville Courier Journal: It took years for African-Americans to have a voice. Shame on us if we don’t vote
• Rochelle Riley, Detroit Free Press: On Tuesday, vote for or against hate
• Javier Tovar with Laura Bonilla, Agence France-Presse: Will Trump’s America wake up Latino vote in midterms?
• Matt Viser, Washington Post: Midterms test whether Republicans not named Trump can win by stoking racial animosity
• Michael Wines, New York Times: Why So Many Kentuckians Are Barred From Voting on Tuesday, and for Life

From National Geographic’s November issue. (Credit: vox.com)

Is National Geographic Back to Outdated Tropes?

“This month’s cover of National Geographic depicts a lone white cowboy looking out over the American West, with the question: Whose land is it anyway?” Kainaz Amaria wrote Nov. 1 for vox.com.

“The Instagram promotion of the cover juxtaposes the American cowboy and the words ‘Battle for the American West’ with a Native American, dressed in full regalia in front of a Utah state building.

“This visual framing — the heroic white savior versus the savage native — is not new to the American imagination or to the magazine. For decades, National Geographic has been criticized for its colonialist approach to nonwhite cultures, specifically indigenous communities. Critics argue that it has been peddling visual tropes of ‘savage’ or ‘uncivilized’ brown and black people for more than a century.

“As part of the magazine’s April 2018 ‘The Race Issue,’ Susan Goldberg — the publication’s first woman and first Jewish editor-in-chief, since its founding in 1888 — flatly denounced National Geographic’s troubled history. Her mea culpa was headlined, ‘For Decades, Our Coverage Was Racist. To Rise Above Our Past, We Must Acknowledge It.’

“As part of the story, Goldberg hired John Edwin Mason, a University of Virginia professor specializing in the history of photography and the history of Africa, to examine how the magazine pushed readers toward racist stereotypes and tropes. . . .

“I corresponded with Mason to inquire about his work with the famed publication, whether he sees progress, and how he felt when he first saw the magazine’s November cover. . . .”

Mason said, in part, “I was as disappointed by what the cover didn’t do as by what it does. The magazine missed an opportunity to disrupt entrenched ways of seeing the West. Why didn’t it use a portrait of a Native American? Or if you wanted to stay with the theme of conquest, why not an image of a white pioneer woman? At least it would be a reminder that the West wasn’t simply a white man’s world. Or if the theme of the cowboy was important, why not a dark-skinned cowboy? . . .”

Short Takes

• “In the first nine months of his presidency, [President] Trump made 1,318 false or misleading claims, an average of five a day,” Glenn Kessler, Salvador Rizzo and Meg Kelly reported Friday for the Washington Post. “But in the seven weeks leading up the midterm elections, the president made 1,419 false or misleading claims — an average of 30 a day. Combined with the rest of his presidency, that adds up to a total of 6,420 claims through Oct. 30. . . .”
• “Over the past three months, right-leaning guest panels on the five major Sunday political news shows have outnumbered left-leaning panels 33 to six,” Lis Power and Gabby Miller reported Friday for Media Matters for America. “Nearly half of all guest panels titled right, meaning they had more right-leaning than left-leaning guests; by comparison, less than 10 percent of the panels tilted left. Forty-three percent of the panels were ideologically balanced. By a wide margin, the show with the most imbalanced panels overall was NBC’s Meet the Press, where 85 percent of all panels tilted right. . . .”
• “A Chicago Reporter investigation has found a troubling pattern of Chicago police officers charging people they’ve assaulted with aggravated battery to a police officer, aggravated assault of a police officer, or resisting arrest,” Jonah Newman reported for the publication on Oct. 23. “Defense attorneys call these ‘cover charges’ and say it’s a way to cover up bad behavior or justify their excessive use of force. . . .” Newman was interviewed by WVON-AM
• In St. Louis, “A familiar face from 5 On Your Side and a talented photojournalist in the bi-state area received a much-deserved honor Saturday night. Art Holliday and Wiley Price were recognized as living legends by the Greater St. Louis Association of Black Journalists for being role models and leaders in the community.” KSDK-TV, where Holliday is a reporter, said Sunday. Price is a longtime photojournalist with the St. Louis American.

• 

  Cristian Farias, who has been a columnist at New York magazine, is joining the New York Times editorial board while Jesse Wegman is on book leave, the Times said Monday.

• “A Cook County judge has granted a July motion filed by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and a coalition of six media organizations to unseal court documents that shed light on the case of three Chicago police officers facing obstruction of justice and other charges related to the shooting death of teenager Laquan McDonald,” the Reporters Committee announced on Monday.
• “The Tampa Bay Times confirmed this week that it had reduced the newsroom staff by 16 through a series of job eliminations of full- and part-time employees,” Barbara Allen reported Friday for the Poynter Institute, which owns the newspaper.

• “Fox News talks about billionaire philanthropist George Soros a lot,” Jackie Wattles wrote Sunday for CNN. “He is a favorite bogeyman of the right. . . . But the head of Soros’s philanthropic group said the conservative network won’t let him on air to rebut the wild accusations. Patrick Gaspard, president of Soros’s Open Society Foundations, told CNN’s Brian Stelter on ‘Reliable Sources’ Sunday that Fox News producers ‘refuse to have us on.’ . . . .” Born in the Democratic Republic of Congo to Haitian parents, Gaspard was executive director of the Democratic National Committee and ambassador to South Africa during the Obama administration.
• “In specific response to Pilar Marrero’s October 31 Latino Rebels story about why the Los Angeles Times published different political endorsements in English and Spanish, a November 2 post by the Times issued a formal apology about the confusion such endorsements caused readers,” Latino Rebels reported Saturday. “The post then explained how the LA Times has a LA Times en Español version and also owns Hoy Los Angeles. The Hoy Los Angeles endorsements were mistakenly printed in the LA Times en Español. . . .”
• In Canada, “Two recent University of King’s College journalism graduates have started an independent news agency that will investigate stories focusing on issues that affect the African-Nova Scotian community,” Sherri Borden Colley reported Monday for the CBC. “Sandra Hannebohm and Tundè Balogun are the founders of The Objective News Agency. . . .”
• “At the request of Reporters Without Borders (RSF), the Eiffel Tower’s lights were turned off for a minute at 6:30 p.m. today on the eve of the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists to pay tribute to Saudi newspaper columnist Jamal Khashoggi and all the other journalists in the world whose murders have so far gone unpunished,” Reporters Without Borders said Thursday, updated Friday.
• In Sudan, “the State Security Prosecution conducted investigations [of] three journalists and correspondents of news agencies because of their meeting, among other journalists, with Western ambassadors in October,” the Amsterdam-based Radio Dabanga reported on Thursday.
• “Indian authorities should thoroughly investigate the killing of reporter Chandan Tiwari and bring those responsible to justice,” the Committee to Protect Journalists said Thursday. “Tiwari, a reporter for the Hindi daily Aj, was abducted on October 29, and found badly beaten the following day, according to NDTV. He later died in a hospital, according to reports. . . . At a press conference today, police identified three people — Pintu Singh, Jamuna Prasad and Musafir Rana — whom they said are suspected of abducting and killing the journalist. . . . The police said they believe that Tiwari was targeted for exposing the alleged financial irregularities of Singh, who is a private contractor, according to a report in Dainik Bhaskar. . . .”

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• Journalist Richard Prince w/Joe Madison (Sirius XM, April 18, 2018) (podcast)
• Richard Prince (journalist) (Wikipedia entry)
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• Book Notes: Best Sellers, Uncovered Treasures, Overlooked History (Dec. 19, 2017)
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