Maynard Institute archives

Journalism 7/6

by richard0571

Attention to Anthony Trial Raised Questions of Race, Class

U.S. Believes Pakistani Spy Agency Ordered Killing

CBS Report Leads to Policy Change on Military Suicides

Women Writers Debate Race, Sex, Privilege and Haiti

More Than 422,000 at Essence Festival

Short Takes

The Anthonys’ nanny, Zenaida Fernandez-Gonzalez, sued Casey Anthony for defamation, providing the Latino-oriented mun2 website with fodder for “A Tale of Two Latinos.”

Attention to Anthony Trial Raised Questions of Race, Class

Tuesday’s surprise verdict from Orlando that Casey Anthony was not guilty of murdering her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee, was followed by predictable but valid questions about the role of race and class in what had become a national cable television soap opera.

Not just people of color were raising the questions. Howard Kurtz wrote in the Daily Beast:

“Sadly, many children are killed by parents in the United States each year  , and most barely merit a short story in the local paper. If they’re African-American, they are barely on the radar. Casey Anthony is white, middle-class and attractive — the trifecta for producers and bookers.”

Kiri Blakeley of Forbes magazine didn’t wait for the verdict, writing on June 28:

“In September of last year, four-year-old Marchella Brett-Pierce was found beaten and starved to death in her Brooklyn home. She’d been tied to her bed and weighed only 18 pounds. Her mother and her mother’s boyfriend, her grandmother, and even two child welfare workers who had falsified visitation documents were all arrested. Katie Couric did a small piece on it for CBS News, but there was no national outcry along the lines of what Caylee Anthony is getting.”

She went on to list similar crimes with African American victims.

Others saw parallels with the unpopular verdict in the 1995 O.J. Simpson criminal trial in its unpopular verdict. “The parallels are that there’s a trial that gripped the nation, compelling personalities involved, a good-looking person whose behavior certainly looked guilty and attractive & sympathetic victims,” wrote Cheryl Contee, who uses the pen name Jill Tubman, on jackandjillpolitics.com.

“. . . The reaction to the Casey Anthony case, however, is universal. Mothers of all races had trouble understanding Casey’s behavior and most Americans seem to link Casey’s lies with someone guilty of…something.”

The website mun2.tv, part of Telemundo Cable, owned by NBCUniversal, presented a slide show, “the Casey Anthony murder trial: a tale of two Latinos“

“, One of the two was Zenaida Fernandez-Gonzalez, a nanny whom Casey Anthony originally accused of kidnapping Caylee. the other was lawyer Jose Baez, Casey Anthony’s key defense attorney. Carolyn Salazar profiled Baez for Fox News Latino.

For added African American interest, Rhetta Peoples of the Florida Sun profiled Chief Judge Belvin Perry Jr., of the Ninth Judicial Circuit Court, in May.

On theGrio.com, under the headline “If Casey Anthony were black would the verdict be different?” Imani Perry urged readers to look at the case more broadly:

“We don’t serve the interests of children or racial equality by being angry that Anthony wasn’t convicted of murder. We better serve the interest of children to use this case to think about how we reorganize child welfare and public education to better protect and nurture kids and their families,” Perry wrote.

“We better serve the interest of racial justice by demanding that prison no longer be used as a punishment for being black and poor, and a death sentence for one’s participation as a citizen. We better serve the interest of both children and our vision of racial equality to open our eyes to the every day violence that goes along with being a poor child of color in the United States, with minimal access to healthy food, adequate education, high quality child care and mental health services for overburdened families.

“These are all forms of violence against children in a country as wealthy as ours. With our casual acceptance of gross inequality and poverty, the United States creates perpetrators and victims every single day.”

U.S. Believes Pakistani Spy Agency Ordered Killing

“Obama administration officials believe that Pakistan’s powerful spy agency ordered the killing of a Pakistani journalist who had written scathing reports about the infiltration of militants in the country’s military, according to American officials,” Jane Perlez and Eric Schmitt reported Monday for the New York Times.

New classified intelligence obtained before the May 29 disappearance of the journalist, Saleem Shahzad, 40, from the capital, Islamabad, and after the discovery of his mortally wounded body, showed that senior officials of the spy agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, directed the attack on him in an effort to silence criticism, two senior administration officials said.”

Imran Gardezi, spokesman for the Pakistani embassy in Washington, said on Tuesday, “The report is highly speculative as it is based on suggestions by unnamed sources — it appears to be part of an ongoing campaign targetting the Pakistani intelligence agency ISI,” the Associated Press of Pakistan reported

CBS Report Leads to Policy Change on Military Suicides

Elaine Quijano“A report on the CBS EVENING NEWS WITH SCOTT PELLEY (6:30 PM, ET) which was broadcast on Tuesday, June 28, has prompted the White House to change a policy regarding military families,” CBS News announced on Tuesday.

“CBS News correspondent Elaine Quijano reported that under a decades-old policy, some military families whose loved ones died while serving their country did not receive condolence letters signed by the President.

“Previously, military families who lost relatives in war zones, either in combat or in accidents, received a signed letter from the President. But families of those who committed suicide or were killed in stateside training accidents were not sent a letter.

“Quijano spoke to Gregg Keesling, a military father who did not receive a letter from President Obama after his son’s suicide in Iraq in 2009. Since then, Keesling has been fighting to get the government policy changed.

“Today, CBS News has learned the President will now send letters to all military families who have lost loved ones in the war theater, including the families of suicide victims.”

Women Writers Debate Race, Sex, Privilege and Haiti

Thirty-six female journalists and researchers who have lived and worked in Haiti have signed an open letter protesting a piece in Good magazine about sex and their native country.

“GOOD magazine recently ran a piece written by Mother Jones reporter Mac McClelland in which she details her disturbing experience in Haiti, subsequent PTSD, and her healing process,” the letter reads. “The crux of her story — that engaging in violent sex helped aid her recovery — is deeply personal, complicated, and unsettling. But so is PTSD, and recovery is never simple,” referring to post-traumatic stress disorder.

“For all of its raw honesty, however, there’s a real issue with the article: a lack of context. In absence of any real details about McClelland herself, it is all too easy to conclude that it was Haiti itself that pushed her over the edge. The dark and violent imagery she uses only serves to further that conclusion.”

The letter ran on the Jezebel website.

In the Atlantic on Saturday, Elspeth Reeve defended McClelland in a piece headlined, “Reenacting Rape Is Fine, Just Don’t Call Haiti a Hellhole.”

Marjorie Valbrun, one of the 36 who signed the open letter, wrote a response first on slate.com, then Sunday on theRoot.com that portrayed the story in racial terms: “I’m betting that this self-promotion-as-therapy angle will get her a book deal in no time because, after all, there aren’t enough books out there written by white journalists “undone by black people’s tragedies,” as one friend put it.”

Writers to the comments section of each website joined in the debate.

 

More Than 422,000 at Essence Festival

New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, left center, and Darren Walker, far right, with the New Orleans Department of Public Works, present Michelle Ebanks, right center, president of Essence Communications, Inc., and Constance White, far left, editor of Essence Magazine, a street sign that officially renames a street located alongside the Mahalia Jackson Theater in honor of the festival. (Credit: New Orleans Times-Picayune)

 

Short Takes

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