Maynard Institute archives

No Retreat on Mascot Issue

by richard0431

New Challenge Filed Against NFL’s Redskins

“American Indians have filed a new challenge to the Washington Redskins’ trademark, saying the NFL team’s name is racially offensive, speakers at the Native American Journalists Association national convention said Friday,” the Associated Press’ Shaun Schafer reported today from NAJA’s convention in Tulsa, Okla.

“A petition to cancel the trademark has been filed with a board of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, said Suzan Shown Harjo, president of the Morning Star Institute, a Washington-based nonprofit organization that advances Indian causes.” Harjo is a past NAJA board member.

“‘There is no compromise with racism,’ Harjo said. ‘Power concedes nothing. You have to go in and make change happen,'” Schafer reported.

“The office’s Trademark Trial and Appeal Board backed a similar petition filed in 1992. That decision was overturned on appeal, but the door was left open for another attempt to invalidate the trademark, Harjo said.

“Bernard Franklin, an NCAA senior vice president, said his organization remains committed to stamping out racist images tied to sporting events. The association prohibits schools with offensive mascots from hosting championship events. By Aug. 1, 2008, those images also have to be removed from team uniforms, cheerleading and band outfits.

“Harjo said that in the 36 years since the University of Oklahoma dropped its sideline-dancing ‘Little Red’ mascot, more than 2,000 schools have followed. Still, some 900 remain, including many in Oklahoma, she said.”

In 2003, NAJA called on newspapers across the country to stop using team names and mascots that it said were offensive to American Indians.

As reported in March, The Wausau Daily Herald, a 25,000-circulation Gannett newspaper in Wisconsin, this year became the sixth paper to adopt a policy against using team names with Indian nomenclature.

Redskins spokesman Karl Swanson told Washington Post columnist Marc Fisher in 2002: “Frankly, we don’t hear much from fans about this. Words take power from their usage. We don’t use funny mascots. We don’t have tomahawk chops. We’ve always used the word in a respectful way, to mean tradition, courage and respect.”

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Sadly, Plenty of Training for Terrorism Coverage

“Within a 10-minute period yesterday, CNN offered viewers reports that ranged from a live update in London on the alleged terrorist plot, to an analysis from New York by Valerie Morris on how the stock market was reacting to the news,” David Zurawik wrote today in the Baltimore Sun. “In between, the coverage segued to Washington for a report on political fallout from correspondent Andrea Koppel, and to John F. Kennedy International Airport for a segment on how travelers were coping.

“Each report was done with so much context, confidence and calm that America’s pioneering 24-hour cable news channel nearly could have been mistaken for its venerable counterpart, the standard-bearer of international crisis reporting, the BBC.

“That was no accident, Jon Klein, president of CNN/U.S., said yesterday. His network has been getting more on-the-job training in terrorist-related and crisis coverage than anyone could want.

“‘Unfortunately, in the past year or so, there has been ample opportunity for our reporters to hone their craft against major world incidents and tragedies: Katrina, the Pakistan earthquake, the war in the Middle East, the Iraq war ongoing,’ Klein said.

Meanwhile, “WBBM-Channel 2 news anchor Diann Burns and Antonio Mora, who were scheduled to fly to New York Thursday morning to tape promos with new ‘CBS Evening News’ anchor Katie Couric, unexpectedly found themselves in the middle of a news story at O’Hare Airport,” Robert Feder reported today in the Chicago Sun-Times.

“When news broke of the latest terrorist threat and heightened airport security, Burns called in to the CBS station’s morning newscast with a first-hand account of what travelers were experiencing.”

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Dallas, Cleveland Papers Trimming News Staffs

“The Plain Dealer in Cleveland today announced a voluntary employee buyout plan, one day after the Dallas Morning News said it was seeking 85 newsroom cuts via the same route,” Editor & Publisher reported today.

“Editorial and business office workers 50 and older with at least 20 years’ service are eligible for a payment equal to 2-1/2 years of salary, the Plain Dealer revealed this morning.”

Jennifer Saba reported Thursday in E&P that the Dallas paper said it was cutting 85 jobs in the newsroom, about 17 percent of the editorial staff, in preparation for a major restructuring.

“Executives are offering voluntary buyout packages to all employees. However, if not enough people apply, management could resort to laying off staffers,” she wrote.

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Only Half of Black-Campus Papers Publish Regularly

“If The Meter at Tennessee State University and The Hilltop at Howard University are indicators, student newspapers at historically Black colleges and universities have taken giant strides since 2000, when Black Issues In Higher Education found many Black campus papers struggling and inadequate,” Pearl Stewart wrote in yesterday’s issue of Diverse: Issues in Higher Education.

“. . . Today, The Hilltop is published five days a week. And even with the accelerated production schedule, the staff has produced in-depth stories, including a critical examination of Howard University Hospital’s emergency care. The Meter, which was published every two weeks in 2000, later became weekly and plans to move to a twice-a-week publication this fall.

“. . . But editors and advisers at other HBCUs sigh in amazement when they hear about daily papers, staffers working through the night and Web sites with streaming video. As impressive as these achievements are, they do not represent the norm.

“Most of the 90 four-year HBCUs report having some sort of student-produced newspaper, but only about half actually produce the publications on a regular basis, and only 25 of those publications are online.”

Stewart’s piece is part of a “Diversity in the Newsroom” issue of the publication. Another piece by Stewart is headlined, “Hampton Journalists Successful, Yet Critical of Their Alma Mater.”

In another article, Joie Chen of CBS News, Russ Mitchell of CBS News, Claudio Sanchez of National Public Radio, Mark Trahant of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and Cynthia Tucker of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution “discuss how they got started in the business and offer advice to aspiring reporters.”

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Sharpton’s Used Even “Negative Media” for Attention

“Media is like electricity. It could be good and light up the world or it could be bad and burn it down. So you have a media strategy in every fight you do,” activist Al Sharpton said today on National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition.”

“Yes, I’ve always tried to have the media strategy, even when it was negative media, to put light on situations that would not have gotten light. Sometimes that means they’re going to burn you, and they’re going to distort you and attack you. But your job is to get the attention.”

Sharpton was interviewed as part of the program’s weeklong series on black leadership, which began Monday with an interview with NPR senior correspondent Juan Williams, who is promoting his new book, “Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America – and What We Can Do About It.” As reported Monday, Williams said of Sharpton, “For the most part, it’s about personal ambition.”

Sharpton replied today, “I don’t know the commentators, most of whom have never talked to me, and some of the people they attack. They’re trying to sell books. And let them sell books . . . The real question becomes why these guys cannot explain why victims come to us and why we have built a following and an organization that has sustained past all of them.”

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Immigrants Said Not to Be Taking Jobs Away

“High levels of immigration in the past 15 years do not appear to have hurt employment opportunities for American workers, according to a new report,” Kim Hart wrote today in the Washington Post.

“The Pew Hispanic Center analyzed immigration state by state using U.S. Census data, evaluating it against unemployment levels. No clear correlation between the two could be found.

” . . .Some economists expressed reservations about the technique yesterday, arguing that such broad statewide data do not give an accurate picture of immigration’s effects on the labor market.

“‘There’s an age, gender and educational component to this story that this report does not address,’ said Andrew Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University.

“Between 1990 and 2000, he said, immigrant workers did not take jobs away from American workers ‘because the strong economy was creating enough jobs to employ everyone who was looking for work.’ But in the past five years, a subset of the workforce – native-born men age 16 to 24 with high-school diplomas – have in fact been displaced by immigrants, he said.”

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Katrina Responses Figure in NAHJ’s Annual Awards

The ñ awards, top honors bestowed by the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, go this year to Editorial Televisa’s Tu Dinero magazine; owner Ernesto Schweikert and the staff of New Orleans’ KGLA Radio Tropical; videographer Tony Delgado of KHOU-TV in Houston; Rocky Mountain News city columnist Tina Griego and Daniel Hernandez, a writer with L.A. Weekly, the organization announced Thursday.

Tu Dinero magazine is to be honored “for its pioneering efforts to guide the Latino community towards financial literacy.” KGLA provided “the region’s Spanish-speaking community with crucial information in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina” and served “as the link between displaced residents and their relatives abroad.” Delgado provided “creative visual storytelling of events as varied as Hurricane Katrina and crimes in cattle ranches.”

Griego was praised “for her yearlong work documenting the pitfalls for Hispanic youth in the city’s public education system, which spurred meaningful reforms while giving young Latinos a voice to express their perspective on potential solutions.” Hernandez, Emerging Journalist of the Year, had a “distinct cultural take on the people and events of Los Angeles, graced with wonderful writing.”

In addition, 14 Journalism Awards are to be given at an Oct. 5 gala at the Capital Hilton in Washington.

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Threats Stop El Paso Writer’s Juarez Reports

“By 1999, when the El Paso (Texas) Times’ Diana Washington Valdez began reporting on a string of murders of young women across the border in Juarez, Mexico, the killings had been going on for six years,” Barbara Bedway reported today for Editor & Publisher. “But the level of U.S. media frenzy generated when a young blonde woman goes missing somewhere was notably absent in Juarez, even as the number of victims – most of them poor, attractive girls attending school or working at one of the city’s many large assembly plants – steadily grew into the hundreds.

“Valdez, who now covers health and environmental issues, can no longer report from Juarez ‘because of the serious threats against me.’ The FBI calls her every once in a while to see if she’s all right. She has alternated in her career between editing and writing, but she says, ‘I always keep going back to reporting, because I like being out there, and I get bored sitting at a desk all day.’

“Her updated, English-language book based on her coverage, ‘Harvest of Women: A Mexican Safari,’ is due out this month (a Spanish edition, ‘Cosecha de Mujeres,’ came out in 2005). There’s a new documentary film about her probe. Also in production are two Hollywood movies partly based on the killings, with Jennifer Lopez starring in one and Minnie Driver in the other. An HBO film and numerous plays and books are also planned.”

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Raúl Castro Urged to Free Independent Journalists

“Reporters Without Borders called today on Cuba’s acting leader, Raúl Castro, to immediately and [unconditionally] release all the country’s independent journalists who are in prison,” the organization announced Wednesday.

“We are waiting for a gesture of clemency towards the 23 journalists who have been in jail since the crackdown in 2003,” it said. “They are living in dirty cells with contaminated water, are ill-treated and visits to them are restricted. They are not getting proper medical care and the health of most of them is deteriorating each day.

“It is urgent for the new head of government to act. Cuba is the world’s second biggest prison for journalists. Harassment and threats of jail must also stop so the freedom to report and think differently from the government can be restored,” it said.

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“Didn’t Have Space” for Oprah in Gallup’s TV Poll

Many news outlets ran a story this week about a Gallup Poll released Tuesday in which Diane Sawyer topped a popularity list of 17 TV news and talk personalities. The poll also showed that Star Jones Reynolds, who left “The View” last month after being told her contract wasn’t being renewed, was viewed unfavorably by 70 percent of the people who had an opinion. Geraldo Rivera was also viewed negatively.

But what the stories didn’t point out was that the list wasn’t intended to be all-inclusive. As Mike James said on his NewsBlues Web site:

“So, like, where was Oprah (the richest and most powerful woman in TV) in yesterday’s stunning Gallup telephone survey of 1,001 adults on the likeability of 17 ‘television news and talk personalities?’ Oprah, who?”

“Our primary goal in initiating this particular project was to measure some of the personalities involved in this summer’s musical chairs on the Today and Good Morning America Show, on the CBS and ABC evening news shows, and on the View,” Frank Newport, editor in chief of the Gallup Poll, told Journal-isms via e-mail. “We added in some additional personalities to provide context. We didn’t intend for the list of the 17 we measured to be comprehensive or exhaustive. I’m sure Oprah would have tested very well; she was just one of many that we didn’t have space to include.”

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John Quincy Adams, Notable Black Journalist

 

Photo credit: Minnesota Historical Society

John Quincy Adams

Dick Parker, a copy editor at the Star Tribune in Minneapolis, does a weekly feature called “Retro” for the paper in which he highlights a local figure from the past. This week it was John Quincy Adams – a black journalist, not the nation’s sixth president.

“This particular newspaper was one of the leading newspapers in the country, in terms of black newspapers,” Parker said of Adams’ Western Appeal.

His piece began: “Journalist and civil-rights advocate John Quincy Adams arrived in St. Paul on Aug. 6, 1886, to take the helm of the Western Appeal, a newspaper founded in June 1885. Owners Thomas H. Lyles and James K. Hilyard, a barber and a used-clothing dealer respectively, recruited Adams from Louisville, Ky., where he was editor of the Louisville Bulletin.

“Minnesota history notes that Lyles and Hilyard and their wives were instrumental in strengthening the Twin Cities black community by inviting professionals to move here.

“The Western Appeal attained national prominence for its stands against discrimination and injustice, and Adams’ home in St. Paul was visited by such notables as Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Dubois. The newspaper also was a powerful advertising vehicle for black businesses growing in the Twin Cities in the latter years of the 19th century.”

The story was supposed to run last Sunday, on the anniversary of Adams’ arrival in St. Paul, Parker said, but, alas, was held for space reasons. It ran Aug. 10.

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Short Takes:

  • The Chicago Tribune apologized Thursday for running a story confusing the “former NBA All-Star Eddie Johnson” who was charged with sexually assaulting an 8-year-old girl with “Eddie Johnson, 47, a 6-foot-7-inch forward from Westinghouse High School and the University of Illinois, the Eddie Johnson who went on to a 17-year pro career with seven NBA teams.” The accused athlete was not Chicagoâ??s Eddie Johnson, who now lives in Phoenix and works as a television analyst for the Suns, his former team. The man arrested was Atlanta Hawks All-Star Eddie Johnson, 51, “a 6-2 guard from Auburn who had a 10-year career with three NBA teams and has been in and out of trouble with the law since he quit playing in 1987,” the Tribune editor’s note said.
  • Sandy Close, Reginald Stuart and Ben Bagdikian have been named Fellows of the Society of Professional Journalists, “the highest honor SPJ bestows upon a journalist for extraordinary contributions to the profession,” SPJ announced. Close founded New California Media, which “became New America Media this year, reflecting the growing national influence of ethnic print and broadcast outlets.” Stuart, a former SPJ president, “has brought countless people of color into the business” as a recruiter. Bagdikian, a former dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley, is “known as the Paul Revere of the journalism world,” having alerted the country to “”the increased concentration of media consolidation and the effects it would have on the quality of journalism,” SPJ said.
  • “Africa is mulling setting up a 24-hour television news channel that would portray the continent in positive perspective on the global platform and promote a development agenda, officials said on Wednesday,” Sapa-AFP reported from Nairobi, Kenya, on Thursday. “They said the channel, which will resemble pan-Arabic television al-Jazeera, could be in place by next year.”
  • Israel’s Foreign Ministry “is under pressure from Israeli citizens to resume its boycott of the BBC and to withdraw credentials from its reporters due to ‘one-sided’ reports on the war in Lebanon, Israeli diplomatic officials said Wednesday,” Gil Hoffman reported Thursday in the Jerusalem Post.
  • “The network once pilloried by conservatives as a leading voice of the ‘liberal media’ is offering an expansive platform to the nation’s leading spokesman for anti-immigration hardliners,” Daphne Eviatar wrote in the Aug. 28 issue of the Nation, referring to CNN’s Lou Dobbs. A former CNN news staffer says on condition of anonymity “that whenever Dobbs’s producers contacted the bureau for stories, ‘they would request stories that would fit their agenda. . . . We wanted to provide a balanced view. But people on Dobbs’s show would look at the script and ask for changes. If we gave too much of a balanced view, they would kill the story.'”
  • Bill Cosby today attacked the Washington Post for running an op-ed piece by Cosby critic Michael Eric Dyson, complaining about Dyson’s “groundless labeling of my ‘callouts’ as ‘rigged.'” Post Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr. replied, “The columns Mr. Cosby cites are part of the reaction to our project and to what Mr. Cosby said at the forum and elsewhere on this subject. The writers’ opinions are their own.” Downie was referring to the Post’s series, “Being a Black Man,” and a forum held to discuss it at which Cosby was a panelist.
  • Street Roots, a Portland, Ore., paper produced by the homeless, “has been trying in recent years to become more marketable – with some success – by broadening its 16-page editions beyond homelessness to include other local, national and international news,” Jake Thomas of Willamette Week in Portland reported today.
  • Vibe magazine announced four new hires on Wednesday, according to Fishbowl NY: Dwayne Shaw, 37, rejoins as creative director after two and a half years in the People magazine art department; Jon Caramanica, 30, joins as music editor, having been senior contributing writer at XXL; Keith Murphy, 34, formerly editor of Blaze Magazine Online, becomes senior associate editor; and Damien Scott, 20, recently music editor at Mass Appeal magazine, joins as a reporter.
  • “Angela Pace will leave the WBNS-TV (Channel 10) anchor desk at the end of the month, concluding 27 years as a Columbus newscaster,” Tim Feran reported today in the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch. “She will become the station’s director of community affairs on Sept. 6, WBNS announced yesterday.”
  • Reporter/weekend anchor Charles Perez is leaving WABC-TV in New York; two candidates to take his anchor spot are Jeff Pegues and Joe Torres, Richard Huff reported today in the New York Daily News. “Perez will leave Ch. 7 the weekend of Sept. 9 and head to a Miami outlet, according to station sources,” Huff wrote.
  • “The Palestinians, who are supported by many African-Americans as a result of their being the underdog, should protest this cartoon” of Condoleezza Rice being pregnant with a monkey,” novelist Ishmael Reed writes in the summer issue of his magazine Konch. “The explanation we’ve heard, that the monkey represented a symbol in Arab folklore doesn’t wash.”
  • “In a first for Comcast SportsNet Chicago, the regional sports network will present a five-part documentary on White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen entirely in Spanish with English subtitles,” Robert Feder reported today in the Chicago Sun-Times. “‘A Mi Manera’ (‘My Way’) will air in five half-hour segments at 4:30 p.m. on successive Sundays, starting Aug. 20.”
  • “Authorities said that organized crime was likely behind the killing of a veteran investigative reporter in an area across the border from Texas plagued by violent drug mobs,” the Associated Press’ Olga R. Rodriguez reported today from Monterrey, Mexico. “The body of Enrique Perea Quintanilla, publisher of the magazine Dos Caras, Una Verdad – or Two Faces, One Truth – was found Wednesday on a dirt road.” The Committee to Protect Journalists is investigating whether Perea’s murder is related to his work, the committee said Thursday.
  • “The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns a murderous attack against the Kaieteur News printing plant that came amid a series of violent episodes in Georgetown, Guyana’s capital, on Tuesday night,” the organization said Wednesday. “Masked assailants with automatic weapons killed four printing staff employees execution-style, the newspaper’s owner told CPJ today. A fifth printing plant employee was critically wounded, he said, and a security guard was injured.”
  • Delegates to an international media conference in Nairobi, Kenya, that attracted more than 100 delegates from 25 countries recommended that state-owned broadcasters should become independent, the East African Standard in Nairobi said today.
  • National Public Radio plans a multi-part series, “Katrina: Where The Money Went,” airing Aug. 27-30 throughout the NPR News program schedule. It examines “the trail of personal, private and public money that has become intertwined with the natural disaster,” the network announced on Thursday. “The series features a cross-section of NPR journalists reporting from Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas.”

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