Sex Abuse and Sports Pages

Duke U. Accusation Raises Coverage Questions

An African American college student working as an exotic dancer says she was raped and beaten by white members of the Duke University lacrosse team at a party on March 13. The university president announced a suspension of the team’s season while the charges are investigated.

Is this a sports story?

It depends. The story, which broke last weekend, has continued as front-page news in Raleigh and Durham, N.C., the area where the event occurred, and was on the front page of the New York Times this week. It has been discussed on national news broadcasts.

Yet in many papers, it has been played on the sports pages — display that some have charged over the years trivializes sexual abuse.

“It’s certainly more than a sports story,” editor Bob Ashley of the Durham Herald-Sun told Journal-isms today, “though it involves athletes at a university of national ranking, and although it involves a sports team.” He acknowledged that readers and viewers farther from the Triangle area might think differently.

Ashley listed the dimensions of the story in his area:

• “You have the antipathy of the neighbors to Duke students who live off-campus.
• “There is the question of gender and disrespect of women—athletes who think they can have their way with women.
• “You have white guys and a relatively lower middle-class African American woman, and the whole historical 300 years of privileged whites” and their dealings with blacks.
• “Is Duke some elite cosseted institution that everyone loves to hate?”

“It’s really roiled the community,” he said.

Some news outlets have explored those angles.

In the Los Angeles Times today, Richard Fausset wrote from Durham:

“Professor Isaac Robinson, 65, an African American who teaches in the department of social work, said the alleged attack is ‘part of a historical pattern I understand perfectly well. I am the last generation who remembers the era of American apartheid. Part of that was the absolute defenselessness of black women, where their families, their husbands, their relatives couldn’t protect them in the white community.'”

“The incident,” Rick Lyman wrote today in the New York Times, “straddling at once the quintessential social flashpoints of race, class and gender, has led community and university leaders to fear that the progress they have made in recent years in improving their relationship will be swept away in the storm.”

“Think the Alleged Rapists at Duke Bought into the ‘Oversexed Black Woman’ Image?” asked the headline over a column by the Baltimore Sun’s Gregory Kane on BlackAmericaWeb.com.

But to some, it’s still a sports story. “By and large, we have a philosophy that if it has a sports angle, it goes into the sports section,” Glen Crevier, sports editor at the Star Tribune in Minneapolis, said, “unless it goes on A1.”

In the case of Kobe Bryant, the Los Angeles Lakers player who was accused of raping a hotel worker in Colorado in 2003, all Star Tribune stories except those reporting that Bryant had been charged and acquitted were in the sports section, said Crevier, who is also president of the Associated Press Sports Editors.

Going back further, coverage of the 1994 killing of Nicole Brown Simpson, ex-wife of O.J. Simpson, a story that led to the “trial of the century,” also began in many sports sections.

At the New York Times and Washington Post, editors said the Duke stories could appear in either the A section or sports. If the story is “about the team no longer being allowed to play, it’s a sports story,” Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, the Post’s assistant managing editor for sports, told Journal-isms. “If it’s the city of Durham and its black residents vs. the university, a sociology piece, that’s the A section. A lot depends on what the originating desk is, and reporter availability. It’s not a set policy,” said Garcia-Ruiz, a 1989 faculty member at the Maynard Institute’s Summer Program for Minority Journalists. The Post’s stories so far have been in the sports section, but a story planned for Saturday was to run in the A section.

Tom Jolly, New York Times sports editor, said reporters from the sports, metro news and national news desks have all had a hand in the coverage, noting that some of the Duke players are from the New York metro area. The Times ran a story on page one Wednesday by sportswriters Viv Bernstein and Joe Drape. “Every section should be out to cover the news of the moment,” Jolly said.

The editor of another large newspaper that has run the story in the sports section noted privately that more space is available there and that no charges had been filed, though he said he had not given the issue much thought.

The developments seem to have legs: On Wednesday, staffers at the Campus Echo, student newspaper at North Carolina Central University, where the alleged rape victim went to school, received calls from MSNBC, Bryant Gumbel‘s “Real Sports” on HBO, the New York Times, Time, ABC, NBC and the syndicated “Inside Edition.” Adviser Bruce dePyssler wrote tonight by e-mail, “The list of nat’l media contacting us is growing to absurd proportions.”

However, the story has not yet been on the “CBS Evening News.”

“Ask yourself, where did the executive producer of CBS Evening News and the president of CBS News go to college?” a tipster wrote to MediaBistro.com.

CBS spokeswoman Sandra M. Genelius confirmed that producer Rome Hartman and CBS News President Sean McManus are both Duke grads, but denied the implication. “We have been tracking the story,” she told Journal-isms, and are waiting for the results of the Duke athletes’ DNA tests.

• Coverage by Raleigh News & Observer
• Student Editors Speak About Duke Rape Case (Abrams Report, MSNBC)
• Jeff Barker, Baltimore Sun: Issues at Duke Spark Debate
• Fiona Morgan, Independent Weekly, N.C.: Black Female Students at Duke Say They Feel Constantly Under Attack
• Sal Ruibal, USA Today: Assault scandal highlights divide for Durham, Duke
• The Smoking Gun: Search warrant details exotic dancer’s assault claim

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Diversity “Retrenchment” on Sunday Talk Shows

A study of the Sunday morning television talk shows released last summer by the National Urban League found that only 8 percent of guests over 18 months were African Americans, with three people accounting for the majority of those appearances — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, former secretary of state Colin L. Powell and Juan Williams, a journalist and regular panel member on “Fox News Sunday.”

This week, in its “State of Black America” report, the Urban League said it had expanded its survey to cover an additional six months, and “the full two-year follow-up study showed no significant progress. . . Indeed, in some areas there has even been retrenchment.

“For example, despite the extensive coverage of the preliminary report, the percentage of broadcasts with no black guests increased from 60 percent to 61 percent and the percentage of programs with no interviews with black guests went up from 78 percent to 80 percent.”

The study, “Sunday Morning Apartheid,” was written by Stephanie J. Jones, executive director of the Urban League’s Policy Institute in Washington. “Sunday morning talk shows are more than a mere source of news; they are a crucial staple in the public discussion, understanding and interpretation of politics and government and other public policy issues in the United States,” she wrote. “Each Sunday, these programs signal what is considered important news and determine who are the newsmakers.”

As examples, the report notes that the death of Ronald Reagan in June 2004 was discussed with all-white lineups on two of the five shows. No show discussed with an African American the use of the Senate filibuster, the death of Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist, the impending retirement of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and the nominations of John Roberts and Samuel Alito to succeed O’Connor and Rehnquist. “Only one program—Fox News Sunday — included a black participant in its roundtable to discuss Supreme Court nominations, and he was a regular commentator on the program,” a reference to Williams.

When Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., made his first Sunday talk show appearance on ABC’s “This Week,” Obama’s comments about race and poverty in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina were “dismissed . . . out of hand” by roundtable regular George Will without challenge, the report said.

Among other findings:

• “Sixty-one percent of all the Sunday morning talk shows featured no black guests.
• “Eighty percent of the broadcasts contained no interviews with black guests.
• “Eight percent of the more than 2,800 guest appearances have been by black guests.”

The overall “State of Black America” report was edited this year by George E. Curry, editor of the National Newspaper Publishers Association News Service.

• Dwight Lewis, Nashville Tennessean: No way to sugarcoat black status in economy
• Errol Louis, New York Daily News: Blacks need a culture war

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NABJ Adds Voice Against “Illegal Alien” Term

The National Association of Black Journalists joined the National Association of Hispanic Journalists “in its plea that newspapers, television and radio outlets avoid using the term ‘illegal aliens’ in the context of the current debate” on immigration. “It is inaccurate and susceptible to misinterpretation,” NABJ said today.

“The debate is not just one focused on Hispanics, added Ernie Suggs, NABJ vice president for print and a reporter at the Atlanta Journal Constitution,” a news release said. “‘At the same time blacks faced discrimination in the South, Hispanics â?? particularly Mexicans â?? faced similar discrimination in the Southwest,’ Suggs said. ‘This is an issue for all of us.'”

The Asian American Journalists Association previously endorsed the Hispanic journalists’ position.

Meanwhile, black journalists were debating the consequences of the immigration issue for African Americans.

“If Congress now has the political will to tackle the illegal immigration issue — not by a crackdown that would punish offenders for slipping across the borders and committing fraud to obtain employment, but by offering up a backdoor amnesty that will allow millions of illegal immigrants to become American citizens — then why can’t we do the same for young black males who once worked in the drug trade?” columnist Mary Mitchell asked Thursday in the Chicago Sun-Times.

“In many states, these men can’t vote, they can’t work in most professions, they can’t live in public housing, they can’t get student loans, can’t even find a job picking fruit or mopping floors. When they leave prison in their 30s or 40s, they will leave without any real hope of finding employment.”

• Carlos Guerra, San Antonio Express-News: Immigrants help pave the way for our comfortable lifestyles
• “News and Notes With Ed Gordon,” National Public Radio: Blacks, Latinos and the Immigration Debate (audio)

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“TV anchor’s choice: God or Ch. 7 job”

“When Channel 7 fired news anchor Frank Turner in 1998, it followed revelations of crack cocaine addiction and thousands of dollars in telephone sex line charges,” Paul Egan wrote today in the Detroit News.

“Now Turner’s lifestyle choices have the anchor and the TV station going to the mat again — but the circumstances could not be more different.

“Turner, a born-again Christian who returned to the 5 p.m. anchor desk in 2000 a changed man, has filed a complaint against WXYZ-TV with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for refusing him permission to host an evangelical radio program in his spare time.

“Experts say the case is a unique one and could be an important test of the protection of religious rights under the Civil Rights Act of 1964.”

The News is surveying online how readers feel.

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Short Takes

• “Antitrust regulators are reviewing the McClatchy Co.’s proposed $4.5 billion takeover of Knight Ridder, including its plan to sell 12 newspapers it is acquiring,” Mark Sherman reported for the Associated Press Thursday. “While the decision to investigate the effect on competition and prices is fairly routine given the size of the deal, the government also apparently is interested in who might buy the Knight Ridder papers McClatchy plans to sell.”
• “What are black writers to do when a black publication, Savoy Magazine, refuses to pay its writers?” Lawrence C. Ross Jr. asked Tuesday on the Journal-isms message boards. “Hermene Hartman, the publisher, has refused to pay the writers (and photographers) of Savoy’s last issue, and yet continues to operate her local newspaper.” Ross followed up with some suggested steps. Savoy went on “hiatus” after its June/July issue. “I was underfinanced from the get-go,” Hartman said then. “I’m waiting on some dollars to come in.”
• “The St. Louis NAACP is encouraging CH Holdings’ local news/talk/sports outlet KTRS (the Big 550) to reconsider its firing of host David Lenihan,” Chuck Taylor reported Thursday in Billboard Radio Monitor. “On March 22, a media grenade was launched after he accidentally referred to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as a ‘coon’ instead of calling her potential hiring as NFL Commissioner a ‘coup.’ He had been with the station only two weeks. ‘This is an event that the press has blown out of proportion,’ said NAACP chapter president Harold Crumpton.” Sylvester Brown, columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, agreed, saying, “this issue may delegitimize real racial issues in the future.”
• The State Department investigated whether the New York Times violated American sanctions against Sudan by publishing an advertising supplement last week touting investment in the country, Anthony Weiss wrote in the New York Jewish newspaper the Forward. “In an e-mail to the Forward received after press time, the Treasury Department stated that the publication of an advertisement would probably not constitute a violation of U.S. sanctions,” the Forward’s Web site added.
• “FX thought it had just the right topic with “Black.White.,” taking a black and a white family and letting them walk more than a mile in the others’ shoes,” Abigail Azote reported Wednesday for Medialife magazine. “But after a big March 8 debut, as one of the top shows on basic cable that week, the show has fallen off drastically.”
• With the hiatus of Aaron McGruder‘s “Boondocks” comic strip, other cartoonists of color “worry publishers and public hear only ‘Boondocks’ angry voice coming from their strips,” in the words of a headline over a story March 22 by Lori Price of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
• Ann Simmons will staff the Los Angeles Times’ temporary bureau in New Orleans, “for at least the next year. My brief will be to cover everything to do with the rebuilding, or lack thereof, of New Orleans,” she wrote to Wayne Dawkins, who reported the message in the April issue of Black Alumni News, published for graduates of Columbia Journalism School.
• “On March 31, Marquita Pool-Eckert, ’69, closes out a 31-year career at CBS. She was in her 16th year as senior producer of CBS News ‘Sunday Morning.’ Before that Pool-Eckert was a long time producer for ‘CBS Evening News with Dan Rather‘ and she produced stories on economics, politics, and other national and world news,” Wayne Dawkins reported in the April issue of Black Alumni News, published for alumni of Columbia Journalism School.
• Gary Fields of the Wall Street Journal won a James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism from Hunter College for exposing problems in the prison system arising from 20 years of “get-tough” sentencing, the college announced Monday. Former New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis and syndicated writer Molly Ivins received lifetime achievement awards.
• Toni Coleman, formerly at Gannett News Service in Washington, has joined Diverse: Issues in Higher Education as associate editor, and Christina Asquith, most recently a freelance correspondent in Iraq, becomes senior editor, Diverse Editor Hilary Hurd Anyaso told staffers today.
• Ann Jordan and her husband, Vernon Jordan, the power lawyer and Friend of Bill, held a dinner at their Washington home Thursday for William Raspberry, commemorating Raspberry’s retirement as a syndicated Washington Post columnist. In attendance were Post executives and colleagues Leonard Downie Jr., Robert G. Kaiser, Bo Jones, Deborah Heard, Eugene Robinson, Courtland Milloy, Fred Hiatt and E.J. Dionne, as well as lawyer Vinnie Cohen; the Rev. Samuel Lloyd, dean of the Washington National Cathedral; Peter Edelman of Georgetown Law Center; Alma Brown, wife of the late commerce secretary Ron Brown; Janet Lockhart and her husband, Clinton defense secretary William S. Cohen; Roger Wilkins of George Mason University; Paul Delaney, retired New York Times editor; and Natwar M. Gandhi, the District of Columbia’s chief financial officer. About 40 were at the Jordans’ “sumputous” house off Embassy Row, Raspberry said. He ended his column in November after having written it since 1966.
• “Some 17 months after learning he was being replaced at WNYW/Ch. 5 by Ernie Anastos, Len Cannon has landed a full-time anchor job – in Houston,” Richard Huff reported today in the New York Daily News. “Cannon will head to Texas early next month, followed later by his wife, Bernadette Verzosa, an award-winning freelance producer at WCBS/Ch. 2.”
• Don Rojas, whose resume includes general manager at Pacifica station WBAI-FM in New York and founder of the Web site The Black World Today, is now media manager of Oxfam America in Washington.
• “CNN International’s Zain Verjee will move to Washington, D.C., to report for CNN/U.S.,” CNN announced today. “Verjee, who was born and raised in Kenya and educated in Canada, previously served with CNN International (CNNI) at the network’s global headquarters in Atlanta, where she co-anchored CNNI’s Your World Today with Jim Clancy, simulcast on CNN/U.S. each weekday.”
• “White trash . . .” wrote columnist Chuck Darrow Sunday in the Courier-Post in Cherry Hill, N.J. “As offensive language goes, I find this just as ugly, racist and hurtful as the N-word or any other. . . . To me, it’s as demeaning as any other ethnic slur.” He was commenting on a March 5 piece by Kevin Ferris, commentary page editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer, in which Ferris used the phrase.
• “A Thai newspaper said Thursday it was shutting down for five days, after it was forced to apologize over an alleged insult to the country’s revered king,” Rungrawee C. Pinyorat reported Thursday for the Associated Press.