Vegas Staffers Didn’t Get the Memo on Blackface
“Life continues to be difficult for management at KVVU Channel 5, the Las Vegas Fox affiliate,” reports Timothy McDarrah in the Las Vegas Sun.
“The station’s latest controversy centers on two accounting department staffers who dressed in blackface on Halloween during a Village People skit.
“News director Marc Weiner quickly realized the skit, performed at the Fox office in Henderson, was in poor taste, witnesses say, and he immediately ordered a segment about the party — complete with a tape of the duo — pulled from Friday evening’s newscast lineup.
“Several Fox staffers contacted us to report the incident, but none would go on the record.
“The station has had no black on-air reporters since morning anchor Richelle Carey was fired over the summer. She is now a morning anchor at the CBS affiliate in St. Louis, KMOV Channel 4.
“Susan Lucas, vice president and general manager of the Fox affiliate, said in a written statement, “This was an unfortunate incident that was not intended to be offensive to any group. I’ve discussed the issue with the employees involved and they have assured me they meant no offense.
“‘Nonetheless, I have informed our staff that this incident reflected poor judgment and these actions will not be condoned in the future.’
“Last week we reported MGM Mirage veep Alan Feldman blasting the station for being more concerned with promoting itself than accurately reporting the Roy Horn tragedy,” the item continued.
Horn, one-half of the illusionist team Siegfried & Roy, was mauled by one of his tigers Oct. 3 during the team’s nightly show. The tiger bit him in the neck and dragged him off stage, as the Associated Press reported at the time.
“Broken English” a Term in Need of Fixing?
In the middle of the World Series last month, reporter Tom Goldman described the action to host Bob Edwards on National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition”:
“Ruben Sierra’s pinch-hit triple tied the game suddenly in the ninth inning,” he said. “Perhaps Roger Clemens‘ special night wouldn’t end in defeat, but after three more innings of edge-of-the-seat tension and a riveting duel between New York and Florida relief pitchers, Alex Gonzalez smacked his game-winning home run in the bottom of the 12th. Afterwards, in broken English, he said at first he didn’t think he hit the ball far enough.”
Broken English?
NPR ombudsman Jeffrey A. Dvorkin reports that at least one listener objected.
“First, Gonzalez’ English is not ‘broken’ — it is just heavily accented. His grammar and syntax are not egregiously incorrect,” wrote Rosalind Smith. “‘Broken English’ is a term that was used many years ago to stigmatize people whose first language is not English. It’s like a lot of other seemingly innocuous terms, such as ‘inner city’ and ‘disadvantaged,’ that are actually quite racist and loaded with hidden meanings . . . Fifty or more years ago, when journalists routinely identified people by race, ethnicity, etc., I would have expected a reporter to say someone speaks in ‘broken English.’ Not nowadays. That phrase needs to be consigned to the linguistic trashcan.”
Dvorkin introduces her comment by noting that, “a recent spate of phrasings and pronunciations has some listeners asking if the usual attention to detail is slipping.”
Nader, Jackson, Juan Gonzalez Talk Media Reform
“The dark side of concentrated media power has resonated so deeply with the public that the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Al Franken and Ralph Nader insisted they be included in this weekend’s on National Conference on Media Reform on the UW-Madison campus,” writes Judith Davidoff in The Capital Times of Madison.
Not to mention Bill Moyers, the veteran journalist and host of the PBS series “NOW With Bill Moyers“; Amy Goodman, host of Pacifica Radio’s “Democracy Now!”; Commissioner Michael Copps of the Federal Communications Commission and Juan Gonzalez, president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.
“Conference organizer Bob McChesney, founder of Free Press, the main sponsor of the conference . . . .said his organization originally thought they’d get about 200 registrants willing to brave Wisconsin’s chilly fall weather, but recently closed registration at 1,400,” reports Davidoff.
Salaries Leaked at Fox Cable Networks
“Executives at the Fox Cable Networks Group threatened criminal charges against staffers who disseminated an email sent Monday listing the take-home pay of everyone in the division from Fox Sports head David Hill on down,” TV Week reports.
“After word of the email leaked, Dan Fawcett, general counsel for the unit, sent a darker email to staffers that said that the company was aware that some staffers had already forwarded the email. ‘You will be reprimanded and possibly terminated.’ Mr. Fawcett also warned that violators would be ‘turned over to law enforcement officials.'”
Not a Story for the P.R. Director to Handle
“Metropolitan police have spent the last few days searching a rowhouse in Northwest D.C. that may have been at the center of a fencing operation,” began a story on Washington’s WRC-TV, an NBC owned- and operated station.
“Some of the seized items include more than 20 bicycles, dozens of televisions and stereos, two guns with ammunition, about 80 grams of drugs and an assortment of tools and building materials.”
And then the kicker:
“The rowhouse is owned by Angela Owens, the director of press and publicity for WRC-TV. Police said there is no evidence Owens is connected to any criminal wrongdoing, but they do want to talk to her about the conditions in the home.”
“WRC news chief Vickie Burns said yesterday that her station reported the story as they would any other,” noted Lisa de Moreas in the Washington Post.
“With any story, you go through a process of gathering the facts, and we reported that Angela Owens is the owner of the property in question,” she told the Post.
Sniper Suspect’s Dad Talks to D.C. Broadcaster
Fox affiliate WTTG-TV (Channel 5) will devote half of its 10 p.m. newscast Friday to a report on sniper suspect Lee Boyd Malvo, including a rare interview with his father,” reports Chris Baker in the Washington Times.
“‘We wanted to know how a kid who wanted to grow up to be an astronaut ended up on trial for these shootings. Where was the missing link?’ said WTTG anchor Tracey Neale, who handled the reporting for the half-hour special.
“‘Malvo: The Search for Answers’ features interviews with Mr. Malvo’s friends and relatives, including his father Leslie, whom Ms. Neale said was once believed dead. “He is basically an uneducated construction worker. He breaks down [in front of the camera],” she said.
“According to Ms. Neale, some of the people she interviewed believe Mr. Malvo’s mother sold him to the other sniper suspect, John Allen Muhammad.”
Ex-Colleague Remembers Trahant, “Tomahto” Man
Mark Trahant, Maynard board chair and editorial page editor at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, was invited by the University of Arkansas’ journalism department to participate in a Newspapers-in-Residence program that brings journalists of color to campus for a few days of teaching students and sharing insights on diversity.
But unlike most participants in such programs, Trahant became the subject of an editorial page column in the local paper even before he spoke.
“I was directing the [Arizona] Republic’s investigative team back in 1987 when Mark and fellow veteran reporter Chuck Cook were chosen to launch what would become our exhaustive investigation into wholesale and chronic corruption within the U.S. Indian programs,” recalled Mike Masterson in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Their pairing, Masterson says, was somewhat an attraction of opposites.
“Mark, even in his youth, was an intellectual journalist who reveled in a cup of morning tea on his balcony with The New York Times,” writes Masterson. “I seldom read the Times and was most gratified by digging into the next gritty story of fraud and abuse. Put another way, Mark would most likely have said ‘tomahto’ while I was saying ‘tomato.’
“Yet we fit.”
And, he says, “The 34-page series we ultimately produced, ‘Fraud in Indian Country: A Billion-Dollar Betrayal,’ prompted immediate hearings by the Senate Indian Affairs Committee and wound up being selected as a finalist for the 1987 Pulitzer Prize in national reporting.”
J-Dean Won’t Cooperate on Jayson Blair Movie
“Screenwriter Jon Maas (‘America’s Prince: The John F. Kennedy Jr. Story’) is having a rough time with his latest assignment: nailing down details about [ Jayson] Blair’s student years at the University of Maryland’s Merrill College of Journalism,” writes the Washington Post. “When Showtime greenlighted Maas to write a script (as yet untitled) about the disgraced former New York Times reporter, Maas hit the ground running, trying to gather as much information as possible.
“But now he’s stuck. When Maas called Tom Kunkel, dean of the journalism college, he was told not to expect any help from the school.
“‘They will not talk,’ Maas told The Post’s Paul Farhi.
“Kunkel said specifically that he just wants this project to go away, which asks more questions than answers. Questions such as, why is the journalism department stonewalling? Did the school recommend Blair to the Times, even though, according to Maas, it was aware of his reporting inconsistencies?
“When we asked Kunkel yesterday to explain his position to us, he said: ‘He called me several times and as a courtesy I called him back and said, ‘I have no intention to talk about Jayson Blair to you or anyone else.’ I think it’s deplorable that there is a movie about this that will just add further notoriety to this terrible situation.
“‘Look, I’m obligated to talk to journalists — and I have — but we’re talking about a movie here. I feel no obligation to talk to a Hollywood producer about a situation that I find repugnant. I understand why he’s upset,’ Kunkel said, ‘but I don’t care,'” the item concluded.
Miami Herald’s Ibarguen to Chair PBS Board
“Alberto Ibargüen, publisher of The Herald, has been named chairman of the board at PBS, the governing body for the nation’s public broadcasting stations,” the Miami Herald reports.
“Ibargüen, who also chairs the Miami Herald Publishing Company, has served for six years on the PBS board, which has 35 members.”
Mamma Mia! An Obnoxious Black Journalist
A film by director Ettore Scolan that just opened the 20th Europa Cinema festival in Viareggio, Italy, advances the novel notion that black journalists can be obnoxious.
In a review in Variety of “People of Rome” (“Gente di Roma”), Deborah Young mentions “the long-winded opener on a bus, where an obnoxious black journalist (Salvatore Marino) tries to forcibly interview an indifferent Roman youth (Valerio Mastrandrea) about racism.”
On the Web page of the International Federation of Film Critics, Eva Zaoralovà tells us more:
“An important role in the film is given over to the phenomenon of the Roman attitude to immigrants: The scene where an established immigrant explains to a fellow bus passenger how racism manifests itself in Rome, culminating in the statement that Romans claim ‘we aren’t racist, it’s just that you’re black’, is truly compelling. On the other hand, Ettore Scolan (who is not a native of Rome but has spent almost all his life here), emphasises the fact that, here, racism does not smack of aggression as in other places, since Romans have been accustomed to barbarian invasion from way back, and so they perceive outsiders more with indifference; without being aware of it, they assume certain traits of the cultures of immigrants who are themselves thus able to become integrated among them much more easily than elsewhere.”
The words in blue (on most computers) are links leading to more information.
