Ads, “Good Performance” Cited for Winfrey’s Network
Carole Simpson Recalls the Sexism, the Racism, the Triumphs
NAHJ Executive Board Asserts Its Actions Are Transparent
Internet Beats TV as News Source for Those Under 30
David Paterson Ties “Accidental Governor” Label to Race
Judge Sets Trial in Claim of Double Standard on “N-Word”
Obama Administration Tries to Foil “Obamacare” Searchers
Series Relates Nomadic Migration and Skin Color
Oprah Winfrey took viewers behind the scenes of the “Oprah Winfrey Show” for its final season. (Photo credit: Oprah.com)
Ads, “Good Performance” Cited for Winfrey’s Network
“Discovery Communications expects Oprah Winfrey’s cable channel to achieve profitability in its first year,” Brian Stelter reported Tuesday night for the New York Times.
“Discovery and Ms. Winfrey flipped the switch on OWN, short for the Oprah Winfrey Network, on New Year’s Day. The new channel enjoyed heavy sampling among viewers over the weekend, though executives have cautioned that they expect a bumpy ratings ride in the beginning.
“Brad Singer, the chief financial officer for Discovery, said at an investors’ conference Tuesday that OWN should be ‘Ebitda positive’ in 2011 ‘because of ad acceptance and good performance.’
“Ebitda is shorthand for earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, and is a standard measure of operating profitability.
“Discovery had previously told analysts and reporters not to expect the joint venture to turn a profit before 2012 or 2013.
“Nielsen data showed that about 770,000 people tuned in for the first hour of OWN on New Year’s Day, and almost 1.2 million watched two prime-time episodes of ‘Season 25: Oprah Behind the Scenes,’ a reality show about the last season of her talk show.”
“Programs that did not feature Ms. Winfrey did not fare quite as well, but OWN said that ‘Ask Oprah’s All Stars,’ a special featuring Dr. Phil McGraw and others, attracted 968,000 viewers on Sunday night.”
- Eric Deggans with Neal Conan on “Talk of the Nation,” NPR: OWN: What Do You Want From Oprah?
- Jenée Desmond-Harris, theRoot.com: OD’ing on OWN
- Greg Evans, Bloomberg: Oprah Network Delivers Doomed Hoarders, Laundry-Cuddling Wife
- Toni Fitzgerald, medialifemagazine.com: OWN: Celebrating all things Oprah
- Tonya Garcia, PRNewser: OWN: A Test of the Oprah Brand, An Opportunity for Other Brands
- Demetria Lucas, essence.com: Sound-Off: Black Women on Oprah’s OWN Network
- Richard Prince, Meg James and Rochelle Larkin Ford with Richard Cooper on “The Karamu with Dr. Richard Cooper,” WURD-AM, Philadelphia: Discussion of OWN
[swf file=”Dr_Richard_Cooper_010511 .mp3″] - Bob Sassone, tvsquad.com: Journal of a Couch Potato: A Day with the Oprah Winfrey Network
- David Wild, Huffington Post: “Make Your OWN Kind of Music”: A Playlist for Oprah’s New Network
Simpson Recalls the Sexism, the Racism, the Triumphs
Former ABC News anchor Carole Simpson declares in a new memoir that “I was denied opportunities more often because I was female than because I was African American” and details examples of sexual harassment from male co-workers and her race-related battles with ABC News.
Recalling in “News Lady” how she was pushed out the door after a 25-year career battling racism and sexism, Simpson says, “It struck me that a white woman and a black man were the two people who first began to cast doubts on my talent. I felt both of them owed their jobs to me. I put my own career on the line to get more women and minorities into positions of authority, the kind of authority they exercised against me.
“Fortunately, I have been around long enough to see many of the people, who tried to hurt me, experience their own declines and falls. Both of them suffered that fate.”
Writing about the book on Monday for the Daily Beast, Howard Kurtz said, “What’s most striking about the book is that some of the most cringe-inducing incidents occurred not just in the early phase of her career, when black women were a rarity in the senior ranks of television news, but years after you would assume that the fried-chicken jokes had stopped. Even if Simpson is enlarging these episodes through the mists of memory, her anger — and sometimes her tears — shows they left an indelible mark.”
After recounting comments such as “Boy, if you weren’t married, I could spin you around the world and you know on what,” Simpson tells readers, “I talked to other women and they had similar experiences but they didn’t seem as crude as mine. The myth of the ‘easy’ black female, I believe, prompted them to display their most stupid and juvenile behavior.”
Kurtz wrote, “Interestingly, Simpson is bringing out the book through the self-publishing firm AuthorHouse. She says she began sending her proposal to literary agents before leaving ABC. ‘All of them turned me down over a three-year period and said things like, “it wasn’t sexy enough,” “I could get sued and publishers are fearful of that,” and similar rejections . . . I think there was concern about the people and institutions I criticized.’ So she decided to do it herself.”
Contemporaries of Simpson, born in 1940, will relate to her recollections of being admonished not to seek a career in the mainstream media because “they aren’t going to hire a Negro girl to work for the Chicago Tribune, except maybe to sweep up,” as she quotes her mother saying. She also recounts her shock at the achievement level of the products of Alabama’s segregated schools. She worked at Alabama’s Tuskegee Institute after her 1962 graduation from the University of Michigan. “When they turned in writing assignments, it was the rare surprise to find a complete sentence or a sensible thought,” she wrote.
Kurtz wrote, “Despite the setbacks, slights, and outright racism, Simpson had a remarkably successful career.” But he acknowledged, “The obstacles she faced have not entirely disappeared; there are still no black hosts in primetime cable news, and the only African American to have broken the barrier on the network evening newscasts, Max Robinson, was part of an ABC triumvirate in the late 1970s and early ’80s.”
NAHJ Executive Board Asserts Its Actions Are Transparent
Reacting to an “open letter” from a board member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists criticizing the organization’s leadership for “working against transparency and accountability,” the executive board of NAHJ issued its own statement Wednesday saying that just the opposite is true.
“We respect and practice transparency. The claims of a lack of board transparency are unfounded,” it said. “For the first time an NAHJ president routinely gives an account of each major vote, usually within 48 hours of passage by means of a website posting. Those messages are still available on nahj.org. The messages were also e-mailed to all members. Members are able to communicate with the president or the members of the board at any time to raise questions or make comments. Contact information for the president and e-mail addresses for each of the board members are posted on http://www.nahj.org/2009/07/board-of-directors/.
“When it comes to communications with the media and the public at large, however, it is the policy of the NAHJ, like that of many other organizations, to have one or more designated spokespersons. In the case of NAHJ, the spokespersons are the president and the executive director and not individual directors. The reason for this policy is not to restrict the flow of information. Rather, it reflects the consensus of the board of directors who feel that it is important to ensure that the information that’s released to the media and the public at large is correct and contextual and presents a coherent image of the organization.”
The New Year’s Day open letter from Patricio G. Espinoza, the board’s at-large online officer, came in the wake of a projected $240,000 deficit for the organization. “A fiscal crisis has now turned into ‘thug tactics’ to silence the voice of those of us speaking on behalf of our membership,” Espinoza said. “Now NAHJ Financial Officer, Russell Contreras, is actively seeking my removal . . . ” he wrote.
The executive committee response was praised by former president Rafael Olmeda, who told Journal-isms in a message, “The executive committee crafted a reasoned, professional statement that handled a difficult situation with diplomacy and tact. Board politics can be difficult and strained at times, and it’s disappointing when those strains are put on public display. Mature leaders seize on these opportunities to remind themselves and each other who and why they’re serving. The executive committee showed mature leadership. I won’t second-guess Patricio Espinoza’s need to pen his open letter, but the response to it could not have been handled better.”
[Espinoza messaged Journal-isms on Thursday, “Speaking as an NAHJ member, I would agree NAHJ’s response is well crafted but the response from only 5 board members out of 15 elected clearly fails to address what we the members need to hear: a plan of action and change. ‘Diplomacy and tact’ are a good start but actions speak louder than words.”]
President Michele Salcedo told members in a Dec. 22 message that the NAHJ board had approved in a Dec. 18 conference call a $25,000 bridge loan to be taken from its stock fund. The vote was 8-4.
The revelation of the board vote and the extent of the deficit came in the sixth and seventh paragraphs of a “Season’s Greetings” message.
Word of the conference-call vote reached Journal-isms on Dec. 20, but NAHJ officers declined to confirm on the record that such a vote was taken.
Board members then received a strongly worded message from Contreras that ” ‘leaking’ info about NAHJ isn’t being noble. It’s pathetic. This ain’t wikileaking inform about the war in Iraq. . . . We’re not trying to hide anything. . . . where I come from, snitches get stitches.”
Conference calls are presumably limited to board members, so the “Season’s Greetings” message was apparently the first notice to NAHJ members.
A similar situation took place when in a conference call on Thursday, Aug. 12, the board authorized a bridge loan from an investment fund of up to $50,000 to be tapped as needed to cover up to two payroll cycles. Salcedo and Executive Director Ivan Roman did not respond to requests for comment, but Salcedo issued a statement Aug. 16 after news of the conference-call vote appeared in this column. The two are said to have scolded board members for what Salcedo called “this public sharing of internal information.”
She announced, “Fortunately, a sponsor payment arrived in the office on Friday making it unnecessary to activate the bridge loan.”
Issues of transparency have also been raised in the other journalist-of-color organizations.
During last year’s campaign for the presidency of the Asian American Journalists Association, unsuccessful candidate Neal Justin wrote:
“You should know that I’m proposing that an independent reporter will be present at every board meeting and write a story for members that will be unedited by [the] executive director or anyone on the board. I hope that will help members feel like we’re being more open.”
The National Association of Black Journalists had such a practice but abandoned it. The communications issue arose again recently when some members complained that they did not know that NABJ had proposed a split of the proceeds from the 2012 Unity convention. These members suggested that the NABJ proposal could work to the disadvantage of other groups in the coalition.
Internet Beats TV as News Source for Those Under 30
“The internet is slowly closing in on television as Americans’ main source of national and international news,” the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press reported on Tuesday.
“Currently, 41% say they get most of their news about national and international news from the internet, which is little changed over the past two years but up 17 points since 2007. Television remains the most widely used source for national and international news – 66% of Americans say it is their main source of news – but that is down from 74% three years ago and 82% as recently as 2002.
“. . . An analysis of how different generations are getting their news suggests that these trends are likely to continue. In 2010, for the first time, the internet has surpassed television as the main source of national and international news for people younger than 30. Since 2007, the number of 18 to 29 year olds citing the internet as their main source has nearly doubled, from 34% to 65%. Over this period, the number of young people citing television as their main news source has dropped from 68% to 52%.”
“The public never treated me this way,” former New York Gov. David Paterson said of the label “accidental governor,” but he said the press did.
David Paterson Ties “Accidental Governor” Label to Race
Former New York Gov. David Paterson, who ascended to the position in 2008 after the resignation of Eliot Spitzer amid a sex scandal, says the print media consistently characterized him as “an unelected or accidental governor.
“I have sometimes wondered if this wasn’t the media playing to fears relating to affirmative action,” said Paterson, the state’s first African American governor. “In other words, here was a person who is in a job he should not be in or in a position they don’t deserve to be in . . . and I’ve never eliminated the possibility that’s what it was.”
Paterson made the comments on “Conversations with Allan Wolper” on WBGO-FM, the NPR jazz station in Newark, N.J. The station plans to excerpt 19 minutes of the interview on Friday night’s “The WBGO Journal,” but a podcast is available.
“Every two years, on average, a lieutenant governor moves up to governor, but none of them were referred to as accidental governor as consistently as I was,” he said.
“When I made this statement publicly, the print media wrote that I was wrong,” he continued. “That in some book somewhere, President Johnson was known as the accidental president. Sure, in one sentence, but not every day, as if to mislead the public into thinking this person should not be governor.”
Paterson challenged aspects of the New York Times’ reporting of a Feb. 5, 2010, phone call between Paterson and Sherr-Una Booker, a woman allegedly assaulted by Paterson’s then-aide, David Johnson. The call took place the day before a scheduled court date that Booker ended up skipping.
“The clear implication was that the Governor may have engaged in witness tampering by pressuring Booker to not go to court for an order of protection against Johnson,” the website nytpicker wrote at the time.
Paterson said on the show, “The woman called me, I didn’t call her,” and said telephone records confirm that. “That’s never been printed anywhere,” he said.
- Thomas Maier, Nieman Watchdog: Newsday’s striking coverage of the NY governor’s race
Judge Sets Trial in Claim of Double Standard on “N-Word”
“A federal jury will be asked to decide whether it is acceptable for an African American person, but not a white person, to use the ‘n’ word in a workplace,” Michael Klein reported Wednesday for the Philadelphia Inquirer.
“U.S. District Judge R. Barclay Surrick has ruled that former Fox29 reporter-anchor Tom Burlington’s lawsuit against the station, claiming a double standard and alleging that he was the victim of racial discrimination, may go to trial. However, Surrick denied Burlington’s claim of a hostile work environment.
“Burlington, who is white, was fired after using the ‘n’ word during a June 2007 staff meeting at which reporters and producers were discussing reporter Robin Taylor’s story about the symbolic burial of the word by the Philadelphia Youth Council of the NAACP.
“Burlington, who began work at the station in 2004 and is now working as a real estate agent, was suspended within days and fired after an account of the incident was published in the Philadelphia Daily News. He alleges that he ‘was discriminated against because of his race,’ according to court documents. He claims in his lawsuit that at least two African American employees at Fox29 had used the word in the workplace and were not disciplined.
” ‘Does this mean we can finally say the word n-?’ Burlington asked colleagues, according to depositions.
“Nicole Wolfe, a producer and one of the three African American employees among the nine people at the meeting, exclaimed: ‘I can’t believe you just said that!’ “
Obama Administration Tries to Foil “Obamacare” Searchers
The Obama administration has bought “ObamaCare” as a sponsored search term on Google in an attempt to foil those who coined the word as a disparagement of health-care reform, NPR reported on Wednesday.
Clicking on the term takes the user to healthcare.gov, a federal government website managed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
“I talked to administration aides and they say it’s not the first time the government has spent money to direct people to federal websites by purchasing search terms,” NPR’s Julie Rovner reported. “This one’s costing about a dollar a click, which is not that expensive as these sorts of things go.
“What’s not clear, however, is whether this is the first time the government has tried to redirect people who are searching for a term used by people who don’t like what it is the government’s offering, or as one aide said to me, ‘We’re taking their term and we’re turning it against them.’ “
Republicans, who on Wednesday took control of the House of Representatives, have said they would repeal the administration’s health-care law and labeled it “Obamacare.” Most journalists have resisted the term, which has been spelled various ways in print.
- Sam Fulwood III, Center for American Progress: Gearing Up for the Health Care Showdown
- Eugene Robinson, Washington Post: A health-care fight Democrats should welcome
- Julie Rovner, NPR: The Many Lives Of The ‘Death Panel’
- Jennifer Rubin, Right Turn blog, Washington Post: Why doesn’t the left like ‘ObamaCare’?
- Bob Ray Sanders, Fort Worth Star-Telegram: Frank talk about advance planning for end-of-life decisions
- Cynthia Tucker blog, Atlanta Journal-Constitution: GOP’s ‘lie of the year’ on health care law
Series Relates Nomadic Migration and Skin Color
In a four-part public radio series that is part of “The Color Initiative,” Phillip Martin has posted an exploration of nomadic migration and skin color. The series, which airs on Public Radio International’s “The World,” is a collaboration among PRI, the BBC and WGBH Boston.
“Malta is the smallest of the twenty-seven EU nations, and it is under siege,” Martin’s summary begins.
“With other routes to continental Europe closed off, thousands of African immigrants in recent years have steered closer to Malta in their torturous and risky journey north from Libya on the waves of the Mediterranean. But most of the approximately 8,000 asylum seekers that have reached Malta in recent years are ‘accidental tourists’. Few ever intentionally land on the island nation of 400,000. Rather, it is leaky boats and lack of sea-know-how that LANDS them there.
“Once in Malta, some are detained for nearly two years, essentially living between where they come from and where they’d like to go.
“And many of them believe — rightly or wrongly — that their skin color plays a role in their ultimate fate.
“In the following multi-part series, I interview desperate asylum seekers, a detention camp warden, the new US Ambassador to Malta, fishermen who saved lives at sea and another who said he was instructed not to stop, courageous Maltese naval men, Somali women and children, Malta’s Justice Minister, social workers, a Jesuit priest-advocate whose car was firebombed and Maltese who feel they’re being overrun by refugees (given the size of their island nation).
“We also travel to Geneva to speak with a representative of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), and to Italy to speak with residents of Pozzallo and Taormina, Sicily, in this exploratory series.”
Short Takes
- Employees of the Gannett Co.’s U.S. Community Publishing division, formerly known as the Newspaper Division, will be taking one-week furloughs, according to a memo Tuesday from division president Robert J. Dickey published on the Gannett Blog. “During the first quarter, non-union USCP employees will be furloughed for five business days. Exempt, salaried employees must take one full payroll week within the pay period, to be completed by Sunday, March 27. Outside sales people will take five days that can be completed at any pre-approved time before the last weekend in March. Non-exempt, hourly employees will also take five days at any pre-approved time, before the last weekend in March.”
- Salman Taseer, the governor of Pakistan’s northeastern province of Punjab who was gunned down Tuesday in the capital, Islamabad, was also owner of the English-language Daily Times, Urdu-language Daily Aaj Kal and the TV station B-Plus. “He was shot by one of his own bodyguards, who reportedly said it was because of the influential editor’s opposition to Pakistan’s blasphemy law,” Reporters Without Borders said. “After a year in which 11 journalists were killed in Pakistan, more than in any other country, 2011 has begun tragically for the Pakistani media.”
- Rick Sanchez, the CNN anchor who was fired in October after disparaging late-night comedian Jon Stewart and linking Jews to positions of power at CNN, is holding a public dialogue with Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, “America’s Rabbi,” in New York on Jan. 13, according to the “Friends of Rick Sanchez” website.
- WABC-TV weatherwoman Heidi Jones stood silently before a judge Wednesday as she was formally charged with falsely telling cops a Hispanic mystery man attacked her in Central Park, Melissa Grace reported in the New York Daily News. ” ‘I did make this up. I made it up for attention. I have so much stress at work, with my personal life and with my family. I know there is no justification for it,’ Jones told cops Dec. 13, according to the court papers.”
“Elle Magazine is being accused of lightening the skin color of Aishwarya Rai Bachchan who appears on their January cover,” Tara Lohan reported Monday for AlterNet. “Bachchan, a Bollywood actress and former Miss World, is considering taking action if the claims turn out to be what they appear. This sad story gets even sadder because this not Elle’s first time doing this — they were also accused of lightening their cover pic of “Precious” star Gabourey Sidibe (although they denied this too . . .)”- Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, a Russian-born 24-year-old Chicago-based online film critic for mubi.com, has been named to replace co-host Elvis Mitchell opposite the Associated Press’ Christy Lemire on public television’s “Ebert Presents at the Movies,” Phil Rosenthal reported Tuesday for the Chicago Tribune. “Mitchell, who’s associated with public radio’s KCRW-FM, taped a pilot episode with Lemire, an AP critic for a dozen years who in 2004 became the news cooperative’s first full-time movie reviewer. But it was announced last month that he will not be with the program going forward.”
- “Tucker Carlson raised some eyebrows last week when he said that NFL quarterback Michael Vick should have been executed, rather than imprisoned, for his role in a dog-fighting ring,” Patrick Gavin reported Tuesday for Politico. “He took to Fox News’s ‘Hannity’ Monday night and clarified his remarks, saying that he ‘overspoke’ and was ‘too emotional’ at the time (while still maintaining that he was ‘disgusted’ by Vick’s actions.)”
“NBC News has named Michael Chen president of its strategic initiatives group. In his new role, Chen will be tasked with overseeing a number of business development initiatives for NBC News, including Education Nation, NBC learn and many of the company’s digital investments,” Alex Weprin reported Tuesday for TVNewser.
- “Based on reports of users in the country, Tunisian authorities appear to be modifying web pages on the fly to steal usernames and passwords for sites such as Facebook, Google and Yahoo, Danny O’Brien wrote Wednesday for the Committee to Protect Journalists. “Unknown parties have subsequently logged onto these sites using these stolen credentials, and used them to delete Facebook groups, pages, and accounts, including Facebook pages administrated by Sofiene Chourabi, a reporter with Al-Tariq al-Jadid, and the account of local online video journalist Haythem El Mekki. Local bloggers have told CPJ that their accounts and pictures of recent protests have been deleted or otherwise compromised.”
- “Longtime news vet and former Univision correspondent Armando Guzmán returns to the airwaves in TV Azteca’s renewed effort at U.S. news,” Veronica Villafañe reported Tuesday for her Media Moves site. “He’ll be the Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief and correspondent for Noticiero Azteca América. TV Azteca launched the newscast yesterday. It will air Mon-Fri at 5 pm EST, 4 pm CST.”
- Eddie Price Richardson, a community leader and co-publisher of the Southwest Digest in Lubbock, Texas, died Dec. 19 after an apparent heart attack, the Southwest Digest, a black community newspaper in Lubbock, reported in its Jan. 6 edition. He was 71. “He marched in the March on Washington, fought against racism in Louisiana against the Klu Klux KLAN, and any issue facing the lives of Black people and others, Eddie P. Richardson was there. He stood against any issue which would affect the lives of people,” the front-page story said.
- Kejal Vyas and Ezequiel Minaya have joined Dow Jones Newswires’ Caracas bureau, Charlie Roth, the assistant managing editor of Latin America for Dow Jones Newswires, announced in a memo published in Talking Biz News. “Before joining Dow Jones in early 2008, Kejal worked at the Newark Star-Ledger . . .” Minaya “worked at the Los Angeles Times; McClatchy newspapers in Fresno and Modesto; and The Press-Enterprise near Los Angeles. He also reported for the Houston Chronicle.”
- Kyle Hightower, who covered the Orlando Magic and other sports news at the Orlando Sentinel, has joined the Associated Press as a news and sports reporter in the news cooperative’s Orlando bureau, the AP announced on Tuesday. “He replaces Antonio Gonzalez, who is transferring to a sports reporting position in the AP’s San Francisco bureau.”
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