Articles Feature

Trump Called ‘Apprentice’ Contestant the N-Word, Show’s Co-Producer Says

by richard07473

Book Describes Experiences of Two Blacks on Show

Bob Johnson Lauds Trump, Says Dems Too Far Left

No Pay, and Then Ebony Changed Their Passwords

Readers Pick Up Defender’s Last Print Edition

Latino Reporter Free After 15 Months — for Now

Castañeda Wins as Educator Championing Diversity

Brooks Chosen for NABJ’s Ida B. Wells Award

Florida International Tops for Hispanic J-Students

Nearly Half of Ga. Station’s Employees Are of Color

Twitter’s New Rules Target Farrakhan Tweet


Donald J. Trump repeats a familiar defense in 2011: “I am the least racist person there is.” (Credit: Talking Points Memo) (video)

Book Describes Experiences of Two Blacks on Show

Donald Trump used the N-word to describe a finalist on his show “The Apprentice,” and the finalist subsequently did not win, according to a co-producer quoted in a new book on Trump.

“All of our sources [are] saying this is what Trump said about why he chose a white guy to win the first season and NBC probably has a lot to answer for,” co-author Allen Salkin said Sunday on CNN’s “Reliable Sources.” NBC was a partner in the show.

Salkin has covered Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner for two decades at the New York Times and New York Post.

Kwame Jackson
Kwame Jackson

“The Apprentice” was a reality show that ran in various formats for 15 seasons starting in January 2004. The show judged the business skills of a group of contestants.

“It had come down to two finalists,” (video) Salkin and co-author Aaron Short, also a New York-based journalist who has reported on Trump, write in “The Method to the Madness: Donald Trump’s Ascent as Told by Those Who Were Hired, Fired, Inspired — and Inaugurated.” The book, published Tuesday, promises on its cover, “No anonymous sources.” It names more than 100 “contributors.”

“Kwame Jackson was a graduate of Harvard Business School and a former investment manager at Goldman Sachs,” the authors write. “He is African American. Bill Rancic owned a cigar business in Chicago. He is Caucasian. Jackson’s task was producing a concert at the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City. Rancic ran a celebrity golf tournament at a Trump-owned club north of New York City. The final episodes would air in April 2004, but the challenges were taped months earlier.”

Co-producer Bill Pruitt tells the authors, “Two rival teams had done their tasks and now we were in ‘task resolution.’ “ Carolyn Kepcher, a Trump employee, is advocating for Jackson. ” . . . Trump says, ‘But will America buy a — [Pruitt would not repeat but did confirm Trump’s use of the word ‘nigger’] ‘winning’ He’s staring right at Carolyn, who is standing in silence. Her alabaster skin turned a deep shade of red. We were hanging on her words, and she says nothing. . . . ”

The authors say that Kepcher denies the account. “I assure you if I heard the N-word being used I would remember, and I’d be disgusted,” the book quotes her as saying. “I do not remember such an incident.”

However, the authors note that in November 2018, Vanity Fair reporter Emily Jane Fox wrote that former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen recounted a late 2000s conversation with Trump about past ‘Apprentice’ winners: ‘Trump was explaining his back-and-forth about not picking Jackson. He said, ‘There’s no way I can let this black fag win.’ . . .”

Cohen is serving a three-year sentence in federal prison after pleading guilty to tax evasion, making false statements to a bank and campaign finance violations in service to Trump.

Jackson tells the “Method to the Madness” authors, “Now, if I were going to . . . try to get inside Trump’s head, Trump had no experience with understanding someone like me. Because he probably never even met with somebody like me, which is Harvard pedigree, Goldman Sachs, better schools than he had gone to, better professional experience than him, and confident with who I am. I’m a 6-foot-3 inch, dark-skinned African American man named Kwame. I think that was a bit of a shock for Trump. . . . ”

In a second such anecdote, Salkin and Short tell the story of Randal Pinkett, a 34-year-old African American who won “The Apprentice” season 4.

Randal Pinkett
Randal Pinkett

However, “In the finale, Trump hired him but simultaneously suggested breaking with protocol and also hiring the runner-up, financial journalist Rebecca Jarvis, a 23-year-old white woman,” the authors write. “Pinkett protested, and Trump dropped it.”

Pinkett says in the book, “I can only reconcile such a move if I give him the benefit of the doubt — which I don’t — [and] say he’s racially insensitive. If I do not give him the benefit of the doubt, then he’s a racist. He didn’t want to see an African American win his show, not outright.

“I was not aware until I joined the Trump Organization that there were absolutely no ethnic minorities in any executive capacity for any of his companies. . . .”

Pinkett concludes, “I worked for Trump Entertainment Resorts, which was his casino holdings at the time. All white. So when I look at the Central Park Five. I look at housing discrimination. I look at his leadership team. I look at his treatment of me on the show — and that’s all before he ran for president, right?

“If I layer on top of that his campaign and his administration, to me, there’s no room for ambiguity. It’s crystal clear, at least to me.”

Bob Johnson Lauds Trump, Says Dems Too Far Left

“America’s political establishment is riven with partisanship that has become ‘very wicked and very mean,’ said entrepreneur and media mogul Robert Johnson, who added that the Democratic Party has become too liberal for his liking,” Holly Ellyatt reported Tuesday for CNBC.

Robert L. Johnson
Robert L. Johnson

“ ‘The party in my opinion, for me personally, has moved too far to the left,’ Johnson, the founder of cable network BET and RLJ Companies business network, told CNBC’s Hadley Gamble Tuesday.

“ ‘And for that reason, I don’t have a particular candidate (I’m supporting) in the party at this time,’ he said. ‘I think at the end of the day, if a Democrat is going to beat Trump, then that person, he or she, will have to move to the center and you can’t wait too long to do that.’

“Johnson described himself as a long-time centrist and Democrat. He publicly supported Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election. However, he has since expressed admiration for some of Donald Trump’s policies, particularly those related to the economy.

“ ‘I think the economy is doing great, and it’s reaching populations that heretofore had very bad problems in terms of jobs and employments and the opportunities that come with employment … so African-American unemployment is at its lowest level,’ Johnson said. . . .”

No Pay, and Then Ebony Changed Their Passwords

“Joshua David hadn’t seen a paycheck in nearly two months and had gotten nearly the same amount of answers from the brass at the venerable Ebony Magazine,” Jay Scott Smith wrote Tuesday on medium.com.

“David, who had been the magazine’s Los Angeles-based social media director and had started as a volunteer with the magazine two years ago, had received an e-mail on May 31 from the magazine’s human resources department that led him and others on their staff to their limits.

Joshua David
Joshua David

“ ‘As a result of a delay in receiving expected capital this week, in payroll this pay period,’ the e-mail said. At that moment, the staff — which had also been working often for no pay or late pay for months — had finally had enough.

“ ‘A company told us ‘we don’t know when you’re going to get paid,’ David said in an exclusive interview. ‘Not even that they wouldn’t be paying us. We never got a date.

“ ‘There was no confirmed date [of when to expect payment],’ he added. ‘So we had no choice but to do a work stoppage.’

“Jasmine Washington, who had just started writing for Ebony in March after previous stints with Juicy Magazine and BET, had also not been paid for nearly a month. She along with other reporters and the social media crew, went on the work stoppage.

“ ‘We issued a work stoppage on May 31,’ Washington said. ‘We were supposed to be paid on the 31st and they e-mailed us on the 30th saying that we wouldn’t be paid [because] of a delay. When we found out that they wouldn’t be paying us, we said we will not work until you pay us.’

“The staff heard nothing from the company regarding pay for nearly two weeks and would only hear from HR on June 5 when the staff received another e-mail stating that the company would be shutting down its office in New York City that week. The e-mail says that they wanted staff to begin working remotely.

“A few weeks earlier, the print staff in the magazine’s home base in Chicago was let go. On June 7, the ax fell on Josh in L.A.

“ ‘So multiple days go by and it’s silent,’ David says. ‘The only people in communication are the digital staff. I go to tell my entire team that [Ebony] suddenly changed all the passwords.

“ ‘I got an alert on Thursday that all of our passwords were changed,’ he adds. ‘By Friday morning, we’re locked out of our e-mail accounts and each of us [gets] a phone call from HR — one after the other.’ . . . ”


(Credit: WBBM-TV)

Readers Pick Up Defender’s Last Print Edition

Timuel Black, a 100-year-old civil rights activist and historian, and the Rev. Jesse Jackson were among the many readers stopping by the Chicago Defender’s offices Wednesday to pick up a copy of its final print edition as it becomes an all-digital product, Chicago’s WLS-TV reported.

Black sat down with WBBM-TV (video) to offer his remembrances.

Reader Lawrence Keenon told WLS-TV, “We grew up with the Defender, It is a primary icon in the black culture. It hurts me to my heart.”

Jackson said, “Ida B Wells wrote for the Defender. It covered our humanity.”

In an interview with the BBC, Roland S. Martin, a digital journalist formerly with CNN, TV One and other outlets, said the Defender would not be in its current predicament had its owners listened to him when he edited the publication from 2004 to 2007.

“The newspapers did not shift with those times; did not figure out how to remain relevant,” Martin told the BBC. “The Defender goes into the 1980s, crippled. [Publisher and owner] John Sengstake dies [in 1997], leaving the paper in horrible shape. People were calling it the Chicago Offender because of the errors. It was just a bad product until the paper gets sold. . . .” Real Times, formed by a group of African American businessmen, bought the paper in 2003.

Roland Martin
Roland Martin

The BBC asked Martin what his hopes are for the Chicago Defender online.

“Very simple,” he replied. “That is, will the owners of the paper literally have the vision to keep up in a changing landscape? The Chicago Defender, much like many legacy black media outlets, [was] not wholly prepared for a digital world. They were late to the game. They resisted the efforts and they also didn’t understand the changing landscape. The owners wanted to keep it as a small, community newspaper, and I said, ‘Well that’s not what I am interested in,’ and so I left.

“This decision actually should have taken place five years ago. I know people are lamenting no longer having a printed edition of the Chicago Defender. But because it didn’t make any sense when I was there, either. Again, this was 2004, 2007. We were only printing 25-30,000 copies. This in a city with the third-highest concentration of African Americans in America, with around 1.5 million. Will they have the staff who can quickly operate in a changing world? I’m not sure they can actually have that.

“I’m not tooting my own horn, but I can tell you this: Had the owners of the Chicago Defender got out of the way and listened to me, when I ran that paper 15 years ago, I can guarantee you, they would not be in the position they are in today. And now they’re playing catch-up and it might be too late.”

Perhaps one of the most unexpected tributes to the Defender came in an editorial in the Savannah (Ga.) Morning News. The News noted Thursday that the Rev. John H.H. Sengstacke, whose family later founded the Defender, “published the Woodville Times in the basement of the Pilgrim Congregational Church in the late 1800s. The publication centered its coverage around advocacy for Savannah’s black residents during the Jim Crow era.

“Among the Woodville Times’ reporters was Sengstacke’s stepson, Robert Sengstacke Abbott. He would go on to found one of America’s most respected African-American newspapers, the Chicago Defender, and over his professional lifetime helped shape national African-American culture. . . . Count us among those rooting for The Defender’s success. . . .”

Latino Reporter Free After 15 Months — for Now

“Spanish-language reporter Manuel Duran has been released from immigration detention in Alabama after more than 15 months behind bars, and family members were driving him back to Memphis, one of his attorneys confirmed Thursday afternoon,” Daniel Connolly wrote Thursday for the Memphis Commercial Appeal.

Manuel Duran (Credit: Southern Poverty Law Center)
Manuel Duran (Credit: Southern Poverty Law Center)

“The release occurred about 2 p.m., said Gracie Willis, an attorney with the Southern Poverty Law Center. She was one of several supporters present at the Etowah County Detention Center in Gadsen, Alabama, when he walked out.

” ‘I mean it was incredibly emotional,’ she said. ‘To see him reunite with his family was just about the best outcome we could hope for.’ . . .”

Connolly also wrote, “A native of El Salvador, Duran, 43, had worked for years as a broadcaster for Spanish-language radio stations in the Memphis area. More recently he was running his own Spanish-language news outlet, Memphis Noticias.

“He was covering an immigration protest at the criminal justice center at 201 Poplar on April 3, 2018. Some of the demonstrators had blocked a street elsewhere in Memphis earlier that day.

“When a group of demonstrators slowly began crossing Poplar Avenue, Memphis police began making arrests. Duran was arrested too. Though local charges against him were quickly dropped, he was transferred to immigration custody based on a deportation order that had been issued against him when he missed an immigration court date in 2007. . . .

“Duran’s immigration case is not over. He still faces deportation proceedings, but the recent appeals board ruling means that those proceedings will restart. . . .”

Castañeda Wins as Educator Championing Diversity

“Laura Castañeda, a professor of professional practice at the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, is the 2019 recipient of the Barry Bingham Sr. Fellowship, awarded by the American Society of News Editors,” ASNE announced on Tuesday. Journal-isms readers contributed nominations.

Laura Castaneda
Laura Castaneda

“The $1,000 award, given in recognition of an educator’s outstanding efforts to encourage students of color in the field of journalism, will be presented at the inaugural News Leaders Association News Leadership Conference, Sept. 9-10, in New Orleans, Louisiana,” the announcement said.

“A merger of ASNE and the Association of Opinion Journalists, which originated the fellowship, was completed in 2016. The American Society of News Editors and the Associated Press Media Editors are now joining forces to become NLA, the News Leaders Association.

“Castañeda was nominated for this fellowship by Amara Aguilar, associate professor of professional practice at USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.

” ‘During her almost two decades at Annenberg, she has been an advocate for diversity of all kinds when it comes to recruitment and mentoring of faculty and students, research and writing, curriculum revisions, and teaching,’ wrote Aguilar.

” ‘Prof. Castañeda was a diversity advocate even before she became an academic. As a news reporter, columnist and editor at the AP in San Francisco, New York, and Mexico; the Dallas Morning News, and the San Francisco Chronicle, she always covered stories that pertained to underrepresented communities.

“She also co-wrote a book titled ‘The Latino Guide to Personal Money Management’ for Bloomberg Press in 1999 that was published in Spanish by Seven Stories Press a year later. She continues to work as a freelancer, and has published stories about Latinos as well as people with invisible disabilities such as dyslexia and ADHD in publications ranging from theAtlantic.com to USA Today’s Hispanic Living magazine. . . . ”

Brooks Chosen for NABJ’s Ida B. Wells Award

Sheila Brooks
Sheila Brooks

Sheila Brooks, founder of the National Association of Black Journalists’ Student Multimedia Projects, former NABJ board member and CEO of SRB Communications, an advertising, marketing and public relations agency, will receive NABJ’s 2019 Ida B. Wells Award, the association announced Thursday.

“The annual honor is given to an individual who has made outstanding efforts to make newsrooms and news coverage more accurately reflect the diversity of the communities they serve. It is named in honor of Ida B. Wells, the distinguished journalist, fearless reporter and feminist who led an anti-lynching crusade in the United States in the 1890s,” a news release said.

“According to NABJ President Sarah Glover, Brooks’ influence in the media industry has impacted countless students and professionals. . . .

“ ‘She has displayed an unwavering commitment to diversifying the industry through teaching and mentorship and is also a great example of the power of entrepreneurship and service to the community,’ said Glover. ‘Through the years, she has invested her time and talent into NABJ and the future of journalism and communications, including creating a scholarship for media entrepreneurs.’ . . .

“Before starting the company in 1990, Brooks built a distinguished television career as a reporter, anchor and news director at CBS, NBC and PBS TV affiliates across the country. She worked as the documentary executive producer for WTTG Reports at the FOX station in Washington, D.C. . . .”

Journalism students at Florida International University. (Credit: FIU)
Journalism students at Florida International University. (Credit: FIU)

Florida International Tops for Hispanic J-Students

With Hispanics accounting for 65 percent of its degrees granted for communication, journalism and related programs in 2017, Florida International University ranks No. 1 in a tally of “top communication and journalism schools,” Hispanic Outlook on Education reported in its June issue.

Hispanics accounted for 520 of the 798 degrees that FIU granted in the field. The magazine, citing data from the National Center for Education Statistics, said 118 were Latinos and 402 Latinas.

In April, the school in North Miami, Fla., began offering its Spanish-language journalism master’s program online. Bilingual graduate courses are to be available in the fall.

The rest of the top 10 schools for Hispanics were, in order, California State University-Fullerton; California State University-Northridge; University of Texas at Austin; California State University-Long Beach; California State University-Los Angeles; Texas State University; University of Florida; University of Central Florida and San Jose State University.

In all, the magazine listed the top 25 schools for Hispanics in communication, journalism and related programs.

Jennifer Valdez says, "'I’m the only Hispanic and female chief meteorologist in all of Atlanta. " (Credit: WGCL-TV)
Jennifer Valdez says, “‘I’m the only Hispanic and female chief meteorologist in all of Atlanta. ” (Credit: WGCL-TV)

Nearly Half of Ga. Station’s Employees Are of Color

“CBS Atlanta affiliate WGCL-TV (CBS46) has seen its share of regular turnover in programming and top management for many years,” Lericia Harris wrote Monday for Rolling Out. “However, upward momentum has sparked fast, sudden change. A once squeaky, revolving door at CBS46 has become stationary with a touch of WD-40 in the form of steady leadership and diversity.

“CBS46’s news director, Steve Doerr — who began leading the team two years ago — noticed the station’s progression within the first six months on duty. He credits support from the station’s owner, the Meredith Corporation, and the ‘advocacy’ branding strategy introduced by new CBS46 vice-president and general manager Lyle Banks for the surge in viewers and digital users. . . . ”

Harris also wrote, “Diversity is a marathon that continues universally but CBS46 has configured a way to resemble the audience it targets. ‘Steve and Lyle walk the talk. They were determined to turn things around by being true to what makes us strong as Americans, diversity,’ stated Rashad Richey, CBS46 political analyst and longtime cultural observer.

“A recent audit of the station shows minorities make up at least 49 percent of its staff. A rarity in major market newsrooms and possibly the only news agency with this level of internal and on-air diversity.

“ ‘We’re relatable and it’s refreshing,’ chief meteorologist Jennifer Valdez stated. ‘I’m the only Hispanic and female chief meteorologist in all of Atlanta. We don’t follow the norm and that’s why people can relate. We are our viewers.’ . . .”

Twitter’s New Rules Target Farrakhan Tweet

“Twitter said on Tuesday that it was requiring Louis Farrakhan, the controversial Nation of Islam leader, to delete a 2018 anti-Semitic tweet that the company said now violates a new rule prohibiting the dehumanization of religious groups,” Oliver Darcy reported for CNN.

“Farrakhan’s tweet, which compared the Jewish people to termites, had long prompted widespread outrage directed at Twitter, which had maintained the tweet did not violate its previous set of rules.

“But on Tuesday, Twitter introduced new rules against hateful conduct, prohibiting ‘language that dehumanizes others on the basis of religion.’ . . .”

In an Oct. 14 speech in Detroit, Farrakhan said, “When they talk about Farrakhan, call me a hater, call me an anti-Semite; stop it I’m anti-termite.

“I don’t know anything about hating anyone because of their religious preference. But just like they called our ancestors in the 1930s ‘voodoo people,’ they figure ‘anti-Semite’ would be a good thing to put on us. . . .

“You cannot find one Jew that one who follows me has plucked one hair from his head. You haven’t found us defiling a synagogue. Our Qur’an teaches us if we see something like that stop it. . . .”

 

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