Final Call Editor Quits After Retracting Story
The editor of the Nation of Islam’s weekly newspaper has resigned in the wake of the publication of a story that included a sentence asserting that the family of Martin Luther King suspects that the Rev. Jesse Jackson was “complicit” in the 1968 assassination of the civil rights leader, Steve Miller reports in the Washington Times.
“James G. Muhammad submitted his resignation after issuing a public apology, ending his 11-year tenure at the Final Call, the paper published by Louis Farrakhan and his Nation of Islam. Mr. Muhammad declined to talk about the retraction yesterday.
“The retraction and apology appeared in this week’s edition of the Final Call.
“The article, written by Eric Ture Muhammad and Donna Muhammad, ran as the lead story.”
On its Web site, the Final Call ran the original story and this retraction: “In our August 19, 2003 edition of The Final Call newspaper, Vol. 22, Number 46, our front page cover sub-headline stated: ‘SCLC, King family seek to set the record straight about King assassination’ with the front page headline: ‘Ye Shall Know the Truth.’ There was an accompanying photograph of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. also on the cover.
“On page 3 of that edition, the headline reads: ‘SCLC returns to Memphis,’ with the sub-headline: ‘To reclaim civil rights legacy and free the future, Dr. King?s children say truth of his assassination must be made known.’
“The published story on page 30, column 2 under the caption ‘Thin theory?’ included the following statement: ‘On April 8, 1998, Mrs. Coretta Scott King, her son Dexter King, Reverend Walter E. Fauntroy and former UN Ambassador Andrew Young met with then-U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno for two-and-a half hours. They demanded a new federal investigation into the King assassination, based on new evidence that had come to their attention. The family alleges that the Reverends Jesse L. Jackson and Samuel Billy Kyles are complicit in the assassination of Dr. King.’
“The statement that, ‘The family alleges that the Reverends Jesse L. Jackson and Samuel Billy Kyles are complicit in the assassination of Dr. King’ was wrongfully and erroneously attributed to the King Family.
“The Final Call retracts this statement as having no basis in fact or proof.
“The Final Call deeply regrets this error in the publishing of the story, and extends our sincere apologies to The King Family, Reverend Jesse L. Jackson and Reverend Billy Kyles.
“The Final Call hopes that the stories in this edition will aid in the correction of this erroneous allegation.”
Media Put Coverage of March Anniversary Online
Some of the weeklong coverage of the 40th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington is available online:
- ABC-TV’s “Peter Jennings Reporting” plans a special, “I Have a Dream” airing at 10 p.m. Eastern time Thursday, and in the meantime an essay is on the ABC News Web site.
- BET.com has pieces by writer Askia Muhammad and activist Florence Tate; a timeline providing historical context; pieces on the music and black writing of the era and a place to share first-hand experiences. Today and tomorrow, “BET Nightly News,” which airs at 11 p.m. Eastern on television, plans to “include conversations with civil rights leaders who walked along side Dr. King on that historical day.”
- CNNfn has online the fruits of its partnership with Black Enterprise, a four-day series on “Market Call” produced by Alturo Rhymes billed as taking an in-depth look at the collective progress and financial pitfalls facing African Americans over the past 40 years. After each segment, a member of the Black Enterprise editorial team weighs in with additional analysis. The segments are on the black middle class; how the glass ceiling for black executives leads many to open their own businesses; how one town is coping with black vs. Hispanic tensions; and black caution about the stock market.
- National Public Radio’s coverage includes a report by Juan Williams on Curtis Mayfield’s song “People Get Ready,” which was inspired by the march; behind-the-scenes looks at the struggles over staging the event; interviews with participants who traveled to Washington from around the country and a story on how the “I Have a Dream” speech has been sampled and used in songs in recent years.
- Pacifica radio has soundbites from various “progressives,” from Kim Gandy of the National Organization for Women to Jay Winter Nightwolf of the Echota Cherokee Tribe in Alabama, in addition to having covered Saturday’s march live.
Black Columnists Weigh in on March Anniversary
Members of the William Monroe Trotter Group of African American columnists are also weighing in on the March on Washington anniversary:
- George E. Curry, BlackPressUSA.com:
“In the words of Dr. King: Where do we go from here?
“First, quickly convene a meeting of national leaders ? a similar meeting should be arranged at the local level ? and develop what civil rights activist Ron Daniels likes to refer to as operational unity.
“Second, call an immediate moratorium on all national marches. . . . Let?s have a real one or not suffer the embarrassment of announcing a rally and then have so few people show. If we resume the marches, make sure the major players are there, with their bands and not their quartets. And if they aren?t there, let?s make them explain why they are MIA.
“Finally, let?s re-examine our basic civil rights thrust. In our efforts to broaden the ‘civil rights coalition,’ we run the risk of becoming such a smorgasbord of everything that we end up standing for nothing.”
- Joe Davidson, BET.com:
“While the outward signs of racism have long fallen, the more subtle ways of protecting White privilege remain alive and well. To help those ways prosper even more, a Black man in California, Ward Connerly, is pushing a state referendum that would prevent the state government from collecting racial or ethnic data.”
- Eugene Kane, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
“As with many excerpts from famous speeches, the best part of King’s address often gets ignored.
“I always liked the part where he described the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence as ‘a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.’
“He continued:
“Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check; a check which has come back marked ‘insufficient funds.’ We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation.
“Is it any wonder the man’s words can still send a shiver down your spine?”
- Les Payne, Newsday:
“The . . . morning train I took 40 years ago Aug. 28 was choked with purposeful warriors of a festive bent. . . .The Hartford contingent wore no bitterness.
“It fell to Malcolm X, as it always did in those far-off days, to fix the perspective. The march was a ‘picnic,’ he said, ‘a circus, with clowns and all. The White Establishment controlled it so tight they told the Negroes what time to hit town; how to come; where to stop; what signs to carry; what songs to sing; what speech they could make and what speech they couldn’t make – and they told them to get out of town by sundown. And every one of those Toms was out of time by sundown.’
“Dusk did indeed find our train, groaning with Toms, shuffling its way back to Hartford.”
- Tonyaa Weathersbee, Black America Web.com:
“I hope, on this week of the 40th anniversary of the historic March on Washington — a week in which some organizers said they are focusing on people aged 18 to 30 ?- that young blacks will tap into the rage of John Lewis. I hope they will learn to question what they buy into. I hope that like SNCC, they look for ways in which to make their empathy — and their anger — count for positive change.”
“And make it count before it?s too late.”
- DeWayne Wickham, Black America Web.com:
“The view conservatives have of King?s thinking is rooted in either ignorance or blind passion. In ‘Why We Can?t Wait,’ which was published 11 months after the 1963 March on Washington, King took a position in support of both affirmative action and reparations. . . .
“Put into proper context, the dreams that King spoke of in his March on Washington speech were a longing for something he knew could not be achieved before this nation settles its debt with blacks. The dreams he talked about were just that: dreams.
“The real world that blacks faced back then King addressed in ‘Why We Can?t Wait,’ a book that deserves far more attention that it has gotten over the years.”
China Frowns on U.S. Network Serving Chinese
“Occupying 6,000 square feet of space on the top floor of a small office building on 20th Street in [New York’s] Chelsea, just below Midtown, New Tang Dynasty Television, or NTDTV for its initiates, has grown into a satellite network that broadcasts Western-style news and entertainment 24 hours a day in Mandarin and Cantonese to Chinese communities in the United States, Western Europe, Australia, and parts of Asia,” reports Szabolcs Toth in the Boston Globe.
”The idea was to create a PBS-type station that would serve mainly overseas Chinese communities,” said Zhong Lee, NTDTV president.
However, the Globe continues, ” ‘The People’s Republic of China right now simply does not want to tolerate any independent TV broadcast,’ said Arthur Waldron, a specialist on China who is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania.”
Coverage of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks by China’s state-run CCTV motivated Lee to launch the business, the Globe said, saying that Lee considered CCTV to have ”a totally different version of the story; the commentary was very sarcastic.”
”We had people here who really wanted an independent TV: mostly businessmen who are both passionate about Western democracy and preserving ancient Chinese culture,” Lee said.
“Earlier this month, two New Tang Dynasty Television reporters filed a complaint with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination, saying the Chinese organizers had not allowed them to cover an anti-SARS benefit concert in Sudbury, an event attended by the Chinese consul general from New York.”
”This TV is run by Falun Gong people advocating the Falun Gong fallacy,” Sun Weide, a spokesman at the Chinese Embassy in Washington, said in a telephone interview, speaking of the religious group that is the object of brutal repression in China.
More Women in J-School Doesn’t Translate to Jobs
“As students make their annual migration to college campuses in coming days, something will be very obvious in journalism schools: women,” writes Mark Jurkowitz in the Boston Globe.
“Crowning a trend that has built for a quarter-century, the proportion of females in undergraduate journalism and mass communications programs hit a high-water mark in 2002, according to research from the University of Georgia. Women now represent 64.1 percent of journalism and communications undergrads, and occupy two of every three seats in the classrooms that train people for careers as reporters, editors, producers, and anchors.
“And though the pipeline is full of women, the newsroom remains a male-dominated province that presents significant barriers to their success. The new American Journalist Survey found that in the past two decades, the overall percentage of women journalists (33 percent) had actually dropped by about a point,” Jurkowitz reports.
Suarez, Salinas to Co-Moderate Democratic Debate
Ray Suarez, senior correspondent for “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer” on PBS, and Maria Elena Salinas, co-anchor of Univision Network’s national nightly newscast, “Noticiero Univision,” will co-moderate the first Democratic presidential candidate debate of the post-Labor Day campaign season, a news release announces.
The debate, which is to feature all nine Democratic candidates, is to air live from Albuquerque, N.M., on PBS on Thursday, Sept. 4, from 8 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. ET.
Univision Network airs the program completely in Spanish on Saturday, Sept. 6, from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. ET/PT (10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. Central/Mountain Time). It is the first in a series of six debates facilitated by the Democratic National Committee. The debate is co-produced by Univision Network and MacNeil/Lehrer Productions.
Ivan Roman Named NAHJ Executive Director
Veteran newspaper reporter Iván Román has been named executive director of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, effective Sept. 15, the association announces.
Román, San Juan, Puerto Rico, bureau chief for the Orlando Sentinel, was chosen by the NAHJ board of directors in a unanimous vote that followed a national search. He succeeds Anna Lopez, who resigned June 30 to become executive director of Unity: Journalists of Color, Inc., NAHJ said.
Román has worked as a reporter at the old Rochester (N.Y.) Times-Union, the San Juan Star, El Nuevo Herald and the Miami Herald. Among his many journalism achievements is a 1987 First Place Award from the Overseas Press Club of Puerto Rico for a series in the San Juan Star, “Immigrants, Alien Smuggling:Scandalous Racket.”
Román is a black Puerto Rican, which he told Journal-isms “shapes my perspectives on things like racism among Puerto Ricans, Hispanics, and in the Caribbean,” and he says he plans to renew his membership in the National Association of Black Journalists.
NAHJ also notes that “from 1995 to 1998, Román was executive director of the Center for Integration and Improvement of Journalism at San Francisco State University. A member of NAHJ since 1986, he has been elected to five different terms on its board of directors, and has been responsible for organizing the track of all-day professional development workshops at several NAHJ conventions.”
Nancy Baca Is City Editor of Albuquerque Tribune
Nancy Baca, a past president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and in 2000 of Unity: Journalists of Color, has been named city editor of The Albuquerque Tribune, the city’s 32,000-circulation evening paper.
Baca has been Albuquerque resident for most of her life, and her father’s family has been in Santa Rosa, N.M., for more than four generations, the paper said.
She worked as a reporter and editor at the dominant Albuquerque Journal from 1988 to 2000 before joining the Arizona Republic in Phoenix.
Baca was elected president of NAHJ in 1998 and served on the NAHJ board from 1993 to 2001 on a variety of committees, the Tribune said.
The paper has an editorial staff of about 50 journalists, according to its Web site.
New Spanish-Language Daily for Orlando Area
“A new Spanish-language daily newspaper will soon join a media stampede catering to Central Florida’s exploding Hispanic population,” the Orlando Sentinel reports.
“The paper, El Nuevo Día, hopes to find an audience in the Orlando area’s increasingly diverse Hispanic community, offering a mixture of local and international news augmented by reports from Puerto Rico’s El Nuevo Día, the publication’s namesake and the island’s largest and most influential daily newspaper.
“The paper is owned by Grupo Ferré Rangel, which also owns Puerto Rico’s El Nuevo Día.”
Jaime Segura, the new paper’s general manager, said the paper would debut Sept. 2 with a press run of about 25,000 papers, will be a Monday-through-Friday tabloid that will cost 50 cents, will be distributed at grocery and convenience stores, and initially would have a staff of 40, including 13 in the editorial department, the story said.
Tribune Co. Promotes Two at Chicago’s Hoy
Tribune Co. promoted Digby Solomon Diez to vice president and general manager and Alejandro Escalona to editor in chief of Hoy’s new Chicago edition, Editor and Publisher reports.
“The pair currently manage Exito, Tribune’s Spanish-language weekly in Chicago that will be replaced in early September by Hoy, the same name for Tribune’s Hispanic daily in New York.”
Asian Editor: Program Taught Him Assertiveness
Michael James Rocha, features design editor at California’s San Diego Union-Tribune, says he was “a living, breathing Asian American stereotype” until he encountered the Asian American Journalists Association’s Executive Leadership Program.
“I was never one to rock the boat,” Rocha writes on the Poynter Institute Web site. “I was always reserved. I respected my elders. I aimed to please. I never questioned authority. I refrained from tooting my own horn. My work should speak for itself, I often thought. Work hard, and the next day, work even harder. Suffer in silence. The needs of others come before mine. Succeed in everything, fail at nothing.”
AAJA’s Executive Leadership Program “trains mid-career journalists and teaches them to take charge of their careers, to make solid and sound decisions, free of fear and self-doubt,” and it “showed me how some aspects of my upbringing as an Asian American might be preventing me from reaching my fullest potential,” Rocha continues.
“Two days into the four-day ELP session, I had one of those a-ha moments: The things that I thought made me a good person, a good journalist, were the very things that were holding me back in the newsroom.
“I was playing by my cultural rules when everyone else was playing with another set of rules. . . . ELP showed me that I needed to be my own person. My actions needn’t be dictated by the demands and expectations of my cultural upbringing.”
Rocha co-chaired the 2003 AAJA National Convention in San Diego two weeks ago.
Colorado Honoree Once “Majored in Dropping Out”
John Temple, editor, publisher and president of the Denver Rocky Mountain News, devotes a column to sports columnist Sam Adams after Adams was named print journalist of the year by the Colorado Association of Black Journalists:
“Sam spent two years at Kent State University, where he ‘majored in dropping out.’ The best thing about college was the late-night radio show he stumbled into: ‘Sammy Dee — the midnight master of mellow madness.’
“Eventually, he really did drop out and went to work doing odd jobs until he heard good things about Denver and got on a bus heading West.
“Greyhound lost his bag with his good clothes, so when he went to a temp agency to find work he was wearing the only things he owned: a blue sweat suit and tennis shoes. But he promised them he could type. And type he did, faster than anybody in the office.
“Sam could type so fast that he could get his insurance company work done in six hours, which left him another two to work on his own little sports newsletter, something to share with the guys he talked sports with at lunch.
“In 1986, he predicted the New York Mets would beat the Boston Red Sox in the World Series and one of his buddies dared him, ‘You think you know so much, why don’t you go write for a newspaper?’,” Temple writes. Of course, the saga doesn’t end there.
Kathryn Bogle, Prolific Portland Journalist, Dies at 96
Kathryn Hall Bogle, one of the earliest and most passionate advocates of racial diversity in Portland, Ore., died Thursday at age 96, reports the Oregonian.
“Bogle leaves behind a legacy of writing that continued well into her 80s and earned her a lifetime achievement award from the Portland Association of Black Journalists in 1993.
“Since the 1930s, Bogle had been one of the city’s best-known independent journalists, writing on a wide variety of topics for both the African American and mainstream media.
“Her many contributions to The Oregonian began in 1937, when she met with editors to protest the newspaper’s meager coverage of the local African American community. Black people make the news only occasionally, she said, and when they do, it is usually in a story about crime.
“Armed with several months’ worth of clips to prove her point, the editors invited her to tell her own story — in print.
“The result was a 2,000-word Sunday piece titled ‘An American Negro Speaks of Color,’ a courageous, groundbreaking article that captured black life in 1930s Portland,” the newspaper wrote.
“It was the first of many articles Bogle would write for The Oregonian, as well as numerous other publications, including the Pittsburgh Courier and the Chicago Defender, both leading African American newspapers of the 1930s and ’40s. She also wrote for the Seattle-based Northwest Enterprise newspaper, The Portland Observer and The Skanner.
Bogle was born on Christmas Eve 1906, on a reservation in the Oklahoma Territory, and arrived in Portland in 1911 with her mother, the newspaper said.
