Journalists Push Back at Critic Ishmael Reed
Ishmael Reed, the African American social critic and novelist, took on several leading journalists of color in a column Friday headlined, “How the Media Uses Blacks to Chastize [sic] Blacks: The Colored Mind Doubles,” and some black journalists pushed back in return.
“Clarence Page and others are regularly blaming the victim. Harvard’s Orlando Patterson is also brought in by the Neo Con op-ed editors at the [New York] Times to characterize the problems of African-Americans as self-inflicted, using the kind of argument that would be ripped to shreds in a freshman class room,” Reed wrote in an essay published on the CounterPunch Web site.
“Even Bob Herbert, a liberal and the token black on the New York Times’ Neo Con editorial page, has to take the brothers and sisters to the woodshed from time to time in order to maintain credibility with his employers. He too says that Gangsta Rap is the cause of society’s woes. (David Brooks, who promotes some of the same ideas as David Duke, but has a more opaque writing style, even blamed the riots in France on Gangsta Rap).
“For these writers, black peoples’ style is the irritant. If we could only get Rep. Cynthia McKinney to a new hair stylist.
“Michelle Martin, who was assigned to beat up on Ms. Mckinney by the producers of ‘Nightline,’ spent half the interview on Ms. McKinney’s hair even though Ms. McKinney has been outspoken on a number of serious issues. Can you imagine Ms. Martin conducting an interview with Trent Lott, the last person on the planet to use Wild Root Cream Oil, or Joe Biden, and spending half the time on his hair?”
Among others Reed named were television anchor Connie Chung, syndicated columnists Cynthia Tucker, Michelle Malkin and Ruben Navarrette Jr. – all portrayed unfavorably – and, favorably, columnists Barbara Reynolds, Emil Gulliermo and the team of Patricia Gonzales and Roberto Rodriguez.
Reed’s comments were challenged on the listserve of the National Association of Black Journalists. “Are there no black officials or individuals who are ever wrong?” asked National Public Radio’s Michel Martin today, noting that Reed misspelled her name in discussing the piece she did for “Nightline.”
“If an African American attains public office he or she is immune from criticism? That would be news to Condi Rice. But even assuming Reed really means that no black officials of the left are ever to be criticized, it is still a standard that does not bear scrutiny, which does not serve the interests of the community, and which I very much doubt Reed has ever observed himself. By that standard we have no right, as voters, as citizens, as taxpayers, to determine if these individuals are serving the interests of the people who elected and support them.”
Eric Deggans, media critic at the St. Petersburg Times, said, “It is the easiest thing in the world to chastise black columnists for criticizing black people and black culture — often, those are the cuts which hurt most, because they come from those who know us best.
“That said, I will also admit that he has a point, in talking about black columnists gaining credibility by criticizing black people.”
In 2002, the National Conference of Editorial Writers discussed whether columnists of color should represent mainstream thinking among people of color.
Many argued that it was cogency and provocativeness of argument that led them to choose certain black columnists over others, not whether they were conservative. Others said black “liberals” still predominate.
However, one editor messaged, “I almost hate to do this, but the fact is from my 42 years in journalism, the majority readers want newspapers to feature `conservative’ commentary from other races in order to justify their own `conservative’ feelings, or vice-versa. My white readers have, for instance, insisted that I buy conservative black columnists who, to those readers, appear to agree with them. I usually bought on the basis of quality writing, but I admit that I also occasionally bought on the basis of `equality’ of philosophy. But shouldn’t we represent as many points of view as possible on our editorial pages and op-ed pages, without sacrificing quality but with sacrificing our own philosophies?”
Text of Martin’s response to Reed at the end of today’s posting.
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Ishmael Reed, Pulitzer Juries Overlooked Les Payne
Overlooked in Ishmael Reed’s critique, as well as by a succession of Pulitzer Prize judges, are such general-circulation columnists as Les Payne of Newsday, whose sharply worded racial commentary often ventures where others choose not to tread.
“Last week theaters featured Tyler Perry humiliating all 6 feet, 6 inches of his ‘Mad Black Woman’; in ‘Madea’s Family Reunion,’ Payne wrote in Sunday’s column about comedian Dave Chappelle. “Earlier, the crowds lined up for creepy Martin Lawrence in the ‘Big Momma’s House’ series and the goofy Wayans brothers in ‘White Chicks.’
“Such comedic humiliation increasingly features a black man in a dress mocking elderly, overweight women in movies. (This blunt motif in Hollywood films is also ripe with overtones of emasculation and self-emasculation, but that treatment will have to hold for another session.)
“This aspect of Chappelle’s resistance to Hollywood’s casual attempts to get him into a dress was overlooked by the news media in reporting on the Oprah interview. ‘I see that they put every black man in the movies in a dress at some point in his career,’ Chappelle said.
Payne went on to describe how Chappelle stood his ground, and related that stance to his retreat from his show on the Comedy Central cable channel.
“The funnyman found himself in the hands of young, white writers, producers and handlers with no clue about the essence of his comedy, to say nothing of his commitment,” Payne wrote, quoting Chappelle:
“I don’t want black people to be disappointed in me.”
[Added April 21: Newsday Editor John Mancini’s office confirmed today that Newsday nominated Payne for a Pulitzer this year.]
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Apprehension Over Change in Metpro Program
The Tribune Co.’s Metpro program, which has trained 240 journalists of color over the last two decades as reporters and copy editors, is being reorganized in a move that has some graduates apprehensive.
Instead of the reporting program taking place for 10 months at the Los Angeles Times and 14 months at a second Tribune Co. newspaper, the trainees are to spend six months at the Times and 18 months at a second newspaper.
The same will hold true for the copy editing portion of the program, where the trainees spent their first 10 months at Newsday. Trainees will spend six months at the Long Island paper, and then 18 months at a second Tribune Co. outlet.
In addition, as an experiment, two of the 10 Tribune papers – the Chicago Tribune and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel – will not send trainees to the Los Angeles Times at all, but will train the journalists at their own papers.
“What the editors were asking for,” Gerry Kern, the Tribune Co.’s vice president for editorial, told Journal-isms today, “was to place the Metpro fellows sooner in the first year. They needed to have them in place sooner.”
But the change is being met with apprehension by some Metpro graduates, who are sharing the news by e-mail. “Part of the fear is that now . . . the program will no longer have centralized and uniformed instruction as a main component,” Joanna Hernandez, a graduate of the 1991 copy editing class, told Journal-isms. “And who knows what’s going to happen to the classroom training, how many complaints will we now have to hear about the under-experienced journalists of color?” Hernandez is also a regional director for the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and a feature editor with the New York Times Regional Newspapers.
“Looks to us like the program is falling apart,” she said.
Metpro, started under the old Times Mirror Co., is an acronym for Minority Editorial Training Program.
Kern said the changes were made after a discussion by a committee of Tribune Co. editors over the last year. In addition to a desire to get to the trainees sooner, he said, some editors wanted the freedom to develop candidates for disciplines other than reporting and copy editing, such as graphics or the Internet. There is to be one reporting trainee per paper and a total of two copy editing trainees. The changes take effect with the next class in October, Kern said.
“Newsday is very committed to the Metpro program and to the copy editing program in particular,” Newsday’s Mira Lowe, who directs the copy editing portion of Metpro, said today, “and we will move forward under the restructured plan.”
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Wall St. Journal’s Narisetti Leaving for India
Raju Narisetti, who as a deputy managing editor is the highest-ranking person of color at the Wall Street Journal, is leaving the paper after 13 years to head editorial operations for a new business newspaper in his native India.
Narisetti, based in Brussels, was given expanded responsibilities only in December, directing all Journal reporting teams and coverage from Europe and the Middle East and serving as editor of the Wall Street Journal Europe.
Hindustan Times Media Ltd. announced from Delhi Thursday that Narisetti will head editorial operations of a new “English-language business daily newspaper and website, aimed at its enlightened readers.” The paper is apparently as yet unnamed.
In an e-mail interview Friday with the South Asian Journalists Association, Narisetti, 39, said, “Just as my coming to WSJ; my becoming editor of the European edition or becoming the Deputy Managing Editor of WSJ in the US suggested that being South Asian is no hurdle or bar to get there, I hope my leaving suggests that good journalism can be pursued in many places. It also perhaps says something equally strong about India and its future as a place to do great journalism.”
As reported a year ago, when he was promoted to editor of the Wall Street Journal Europe, Narisetti met his African American wife, Kim Narisetti, while at the Dayton Daily News in Ohio. She is a freelancer who has been an editor at Advertising Age, the Source, theStreet.com and the Journal.
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Boston Herald “Can Hardly Blame” Those Who Leave
Boston Herald pop music writer Sarah Rodman is jumping over to the Boston Globe, she said today, leaving the financially troubled tabloid with only one African American journalist, statehouse reporter Kimberly Atkins.
“Obviously, I don’t like it. But we can hardly blame people for taking an opportunity to leave,” Managing Editor Kevin Convey told Journal-isms, describing the paper’s precarious financial status. “It’s disturbing and a situation we’d like to rectify.”
However, Convey said, the newspaper is not filling any vacancies, “and certainly, we’re not going to do any hiring before the close of the fiscal year in June.”
Last June, Mark Jurkowitz wrote in the Boston Globe: “Two months after Boston Herald publisher Patrick J. Purcell said he was seeking deep newsroom cuts in an effort to find $7 million in savings at the financially troubled tabloid, a massive exodus is in full swing, one that involves some of the paper’s best known and most seasoned journalists.
“According to Herald managers and union officials, 30 to 35 of the 145 unionized newsroom staff members have already left or are expected to leave soon. The vast majority have applied for a buyout, and a handful were laid off. The same managers and officials also estimate that 10 to 12 of the paper’s 52 nonunion newsroom employees — editors, columnists, and staff members working under contract will have departed by the end of the month. A small number of employees recently left voluntarily, without being laid off or taking a buyout.”
Herald reporter Brian Ballou was one of three remaining black journalists at the Herald when he left ast month for a similar job at the Globe, covering city and community issues. Rodman said she’ll be covering pop music at the Globe, where veteran critic Steve Morse took a buyout. She said took the job offer because “it’s just a great opportunity.”
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Pulitzers Trigger Emotions from Pride to Disgust
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“It only took 36 years and The Washington Post to do it, but a fashion critic has finally been awarded the Pulitzer Prize,” Sara James of Women’s Wear Daily wrote Tuesday in reporting on Robin Givhan’s Pulitzer Prize for criticism.
But, “On his national radio program today, William Bennett, the former Reagan and George H.W. Bush administration official and now a CNN commentator, said that three reporters who won Pulitzer Prizes yesterday were not ‘worthy of an award’ but rather ‘worthy of jail,'” Editor & Publisher reported Tuesday.
“He identified them as Dana Priest of The Washington Post, who wrote about the CIA’s ‘secret prisons’ in Europe, and James Risen and Eric Lichtblau of The New York Times, who exposed the National Security Agency’s domestic (a.k.a. terrorist) spy program.”
On “The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer,” Jay Harris, who resigned in 2001 as publisher of the San Jose Mercury News after saying he could not implement further budget cuts, said “the effects of news organizations being owned by large corporations which exist and have as their primary goal the acquisition of profit for shareholders. . . . has really had a deleterious effect on news organizations. You’ve seen their capacity, the fundamental capacity for excellent journalism, weakened by cuts in the news room.
“That said, there’s still excellent investigative work being done out there, but it’s being done as much as anything because of individual journalists and editors who are concerned that this work be done. Even with the budget cutbacks, they are doing it out of dedication to the best of what journalism is.”
Online, the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz told readers today, “when I looked at the coverage in some of the winning papers, I was, well, embarrassed. Some of them simply ignored, or all but ignored, the Pulitzers won by others.” He pointed to the New Orleans Times-Picayune, the Biloxi (Miss.) Sun Herald, the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, the Oregonian in Portland, the San Diego Union-Tribune and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The Daily Princetonian at Princeton University recalled that at the confirmation hearings for successful Supreme Court nominee Joseph Alito, “Robin Givhan ’86” “described Martha-Ann Alito’s gold tweed suit as being made of the same fabric as La-Z-Boy chairs, but Givhan received more criticism for calling Concerned Alumni of Princeton ‘an organization notable for its displeasure over the admittance of women and minorities to the university.’
“Alito supporters complained that she had mischaracterized the group but, as Givhan told the Washingtonian, a monthly magazine, in February, ‘I went to Princeton. I was there in the ’80s. I know all about that group.'”
Continuing in Women’s Wear Daily, James wrote, “The Pulitzer has been around since 1917, but criticism was not a category until 1970. Not a single fashion critic has been named as a finalist or won the award since then, according to archives kept on Pulitzer.org.
“So what did Givhan do immediately after hearing the news? ‘Of course, I went shopping,’ she said. . . . Givhan, who has already enjoyed a higher profile in the past year, thanks in part to a humorous appearance on Comedy Central’s ‘The Colbert Report,’ in which she poked fun at Jack Abramoff’s fedora, said she hoped host Stephen Colbert had taken notice of her win. ‘Maybe this will get me invited back,’ she said. ‘I’ve got my fingers crossed.'”
- Dave Astor, Editor & Publisher: Kristof Hopes Pulitzer Will Draw Attention to Darfur
- Rem Rieder, American Journalism Review: Winning Winners
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Short Takes
- The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians last week became the most recent Native sovereign nation to protect the freedom of the press and the autonomy of its tribal newspaper, the Cherokee One Feather, the Native American Journalists Association reported Monday. It said the band’s council reaffirmed the tribe’s commitment to the free press provisions of the federal Indian Civil Rights Act.
- The Seventh Annual Native American Journalism Career Conference began Tuesday in Crazy Horse, S.D., with 134 students, 20 of them in college, coming from at least 27 schools and nine states, including Alaska, Jordan Dresser reported for Reznet News. Organizers said snowy conditions and winds gusting to 33 mph kept two school groups away.
- “The Denver Post plans to reduce the size of its newsroom staff by about 8 percent, the newspaper told employees Tuesday,” Aldo Svaldi reported in the paper today. “The Post has targeted a voluntary reduction of 25 positions out of around 300. ‘As of today, there are no plans for layoffs,’ said Post editor Gregory L. Moore.”
- “The Covenant with Black America,” a collection of essays by African Americans that examines issues such as education, health care and judicial disparities, jumped to No. 1 on the New York Times’ April 23 list of nonfiction paperback books, a news release announced Monday. The book, published by Third World Press, is introduced by media personality Tavis Smiley and is the first nonfiction book by an African American publisher to reach and top the best-seller list.
- The Overseas Press Club Tuesday named the late Knight Ridder journalist Yasser Salihee and two colleagues, Hannah Allam and Tom Lasseter, winners of the Hal Boyle Award for best newspaper reporting from abroad for “Iraq: America’s Failing War.” Allam is a past Journalist of the Year of the National Association of Black Journalists.
- “With all the chatter about Barry Bonds over the past few months, including a bestselling book detailing his alleged steroid use and Major League Baseball’s investigation into the allegations, you’d expect a show called ‘Bonds on Bonds’ to do quite well,” Toni Fitzgerald wrote today for Media Life Magazine. “But in fact ratings for ESPN’s new limited-run reality show about the San Francisco Giants slugger have been stunningly mediocre.”
- “Sports writers don’t do near enough legitimate investigative journalism, and the reporting on the Barry Bonds-steroids issue and Duke lacrosse rape controversy are prime examples of the sports media’s failure to do our real job,” columnist Jason Whitlock of the Kansas City Star wrote Sunday. He spent much of the previous week at the Poynter Institute, the journalism school for professionals.
- “More than 200 Nepalese journalists have been detained since April 4 while participating in pro-democracy protests to demand press freedom or while covering the nationwide demonstrations, according to information compiled by the Federation of Nepalese Journalists,” the Committee to Protect Journalists reported Tuesday.
- “I’m happy to break down barriers and be a role model, but I don’t want that to be the only thing people talk about,” said Gwen Ifill, who in 1999 became the first woman and first person of color to be moderator of “Washington Week,” PBS’s longest-running public affairs program. “At some point, you have to move past it,” she told Gail Shister in today’s editions of the Philadelphia Inquirer. “I try not to play into it. I’ve had this job for a while.”
- “A row consisting of about eight white audience members got up and left” as Ms. Dupree of radio’s syndicated “Tom Joyner Morning Show” began joking about the N-word at Tougaloo College’s annual black-tie fund-raiser, Jamesetta Walker wrote Sunday in a Jackson (Miss.) Clarion-Ledger column.
- Blogger Khary McGhee of the Fayetteville (N.C.) Observer on Monday nominated Black Entertainment Television in the entertainment category for his whimsical “The Most Embarrassing Black People Awards Show.” “Maybe it was the fact that the network didn’t air any of the Coretta King funeral live. Or maybe it was its decision to not play Little Brother’s video for ‘Lovin’ It’ because it was too intelligent for BET’s audience. Or maybe it’s ‘Uncut,’ BET’s late-night video show showing music videos that are nothing more than soft-core porn set to crappy hip-hop music,” McGhee wrote.
- “Don Fitzpatrick, once one of TV’s top headhunters and perhaps the industry’s first blogger, died over the weekend. A longtime friend, Scott Tallal, says Fitzpatrick was found dead in his Alexandria, La. home shortly after being treated for intestinal bleeding at a local hospital,” John Higgins reported Monday in Broadcasting & Cable.
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Michel Martin’s Response to Ishmael Reed
Here is an edited version of Michel Martin’s response to Ishmael Reed’s column, “The Colored Mind Doubles.”
I was among the many people Ishmael Reed decided to trash in a screed posted on the NABJ listserve titled “The Colored Mind Doubles: How the Media Uses Blacks to Chastise Blacks.” Since I was only one of the many people Reed took issue with, I wasn’t going to respond. But then a friend reminded me of something I told her: that silence equals assent. And since I got into this business in part because, like Reed, I wanted to be part of shaping the narrative of our lives in this country, I decided I would share some thoughts about what he said.
OK, it’s a small thing but we’ll start with this: My name is Michel Martin. That’s M-I-C-H-E-L. . . One E and one L. Just like I can figure out how to spell his name, maybe Ishmael Reed could have figured out how to spell mine. Why do things like that matter? They matter because, unlike Reed, I am a journalist, and I care about things like accuracy. I care about things like balance and, to the degree possible, in this hyperventilated media universe, I care about nuance. I care that the people who hear, read or watch my stories can understand what I – or the people I cover – are trying to say. Which is to say: I’m not just in this for myself and my little club of self-appointed race vigilantes who presume to decide what all 33.4 million African Americans in this country should think or care about. Which is one of the things that sets me apart from Ishmael (that’s I-S-H-M-A-E-L, not Ismail, the director) Reed.
For those of you who don’t know, I am a contributing correspondent at “Nightline,” where I worked for nine of my 13 years at ABC News, and I recently left full-time work there to go to National Public Radio, where I am developing a new African American-oriented radio program, which I will host. I have an arrangement where I will be freelancing for ABC over the course of the year. That’s why I interviewed U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney for a “Nightline” piece about her much discussed confrontation with a Capitol Hill police officer, which aired on April 14.
Apparently, Reed didn’t like the piece, or me, but as I said, I don’t take it personally, because the hateration went on at some length. But what I do find bizarre is that he lumped me and other journalists in with all these politicians like Harold Ford Jr., and academics like John McWhorter Jr. He also decided that a fearless reporter like CNN’s Jeff Koinange – a man who has faced death many times to bring the world stories of the suffering of black people most people couldn’t care less about – well, he just won’t do either. Reed doesn’t like Bob Herbert, who has written about police brutality, health disparities and economic inequality as consistently as anyone – and Cynthia Tucker, a finalist for a Pulitzer this year – who has done as much as any columnist to address with subtlety and care the complexities of modern race relations. Who does he like? I guess nobody out here who still has a job is truly authentic.
That’s the gist of it, isn’t it? If we have jobs and a paycheck and are reasonably successful, we can’t be real? Why does he say this? Reed takes instruction from the fact that Barbara Reynolds lost her position as a columnist for USA Today because, as she understood it, she didn’t appeal to the “white, male demographic.” By definition, therefore, those who remain must appeal to that demographic or they’d be gone too. Can anybody spell self-serving?
I don’t know if Barbara Reynolds is right or not, all I know is this: I respect her work, I liked her column and I read it. But I also know there is no constitutional right to a column in a newspaper. I know that that newspaper still publishes folk like Julianne Malveaux, who pulls punches for no one, and DeWayne Wickham. And I know that ABC News dropped Bill Kristol, a white male conservative, as one of the commentators on the Sunday morning talk show, long before they dropped me. And frankly, are we all in this business just to talk to ourselves? Isn’t speaking truth to power in part about being heard by the people who have it?
Even more to the point: Are there no black officials or individuals who are ever wrong? If an African American attains public office, he or she is immune from criticism? That would be news to Condi Rice. But even assuming Reed really means that no black officials of the left are ever to be criticized, it is still a standard that does not bear scrutiny, which does not serve the interests of the community, and which I very much doubt Reed has ever observed himself. By that standard we have no right, as voters, as citizens, as taxpayers, to determine if these individuals are serving the interests of the people who elected and support them.
As to me, Reed was critical of me because he claims “I just sat there” when a reporter named Joe Klein said something Reed didn’t agree with when Klein and I were on a talk show together. Reed must either be deaf or have no understanding of the fact that it is customary to allow other people to finish speaking before responding to them. This is an effort to ensure that one’s own comments will actually be heard. Perhaps in Reed’s world, I should have reached over and choked him; I don’t know. And here’s the thing – Maybe I just don’t agree that whatever Klein said needed a response just then. Maybe I was saving my time for something I considered more important. And maybe, just maybe, I don’t think Reed’s point of view on something represents the sum totality of wisdom in the universe.
That’s the thing: There are a lot of African Americans in this country and we don’t all have to see things the same way at the same time. But one thing I do know: I was lauded many, many times by viewers for bringing the perspective of African Americans and women to that show in a way that has not occurred since I left it.
He also didn’t like the McKinney interview. Let’s be clear. By the time I interviewed Cynthia McKinney, she had subjected herself to several interviews on CNN, FOX, all the morning talk shows and several radio shows, most of them live, most of them hostile. My purpose in interviewing her after all that was to allow her to talk in a calmer fashion about some of the deeper issues involved in the incident with a Capitol Hill police officer, which she did do to an extent; I would have appreciated it if I had had more time to talk some other issues, such as her early championing of human rights in Africa; issues she took on when nobody else did. I would have appreciated it if she had allowed me or another African American reporter to conduct the first interview with her – rather than the eighth – so that the issues we know to be significant could have become part of the dominant narrative of the event sooner. But what I was able to do in that interview is allow her to articulate a perspective on being an African American woman in public life in a way I don’t think she was able to do elsewhere.
Which brings me to hair. He didn’t like the fact that toward the end of the interview, exactly one minute was spent talking about her hair. (Of course, he exaggerates and says it was half the interview; it was not.) Reed may not be aware of this, but hair is a very sensitive issue for many African American women, especially those in public life. Think of Lani Guinier being excoriated in the New Republic, of all places, for her “weird hair.” I, for one, appreciated the opportunity to know from Rep. McKinney that she too had been caused pain by criticism of her hair. And she appreciated the opportunity to talk about that, which she said in the interview.
At the end of the day, I think what Cynthia McKinney wanted, which I believe I gave her, was respect. Which is not the same as agreement. And that, in the end is what is wrong with so much of the media. We as black people do not feel respected in our humanity, the fullness of our identities. That is why so many of us long for and are seeking out alternate outlets that will allow us to express the full range of our ideas and identities. Reed is right about one thing: There aren’t enough places for us to say what we need to say. But the self-righteous, mean-spirited attacks on anybody who doesn’t meet his narrow definition of “authenticity” is just putting us in another prison, one we are creating for ourselves.
Michel Martin is a journalist who is creating an African American oriented program for National Public Radio. She is also a contributing correspondent for ABC News and she has proudly worn her hair natural throughout her career . . .
