Racism Unplugged

Signal Drops Out on CNN Show About Bigotry

“With much anticipation, some Vidorians waited to see yet another television special about dealing with the stigma of its racially charged history,” Dee Dixon wrote Wednesday in the Beaumont (Texas) Enterprise, referrring to nearby Vidor.

“Instead, Paula Zahn’s program on CNN — or the lack of the relevant portion — raised eyebrows.

“That’s because when it came time for the Vidor segment, television screens of Time Warner Cable customers across Southeast Texas went blank for about five minutes — about the entire duration of the segment.”

Conspiracy?

“Is your cable company censoring shows?” asked newspaperman Ron Franscell on his “Under the News” blog, to which 319 other blogs were linking.

It reminded some of the days when Southern stations would refuse to show network programming featuring blacks in a favorable light.

“I think there was someone in the office there who decided that Vidor, Texas, and this area ain’t going to watch it. So, they hit the button,” a white Vidor resident, Paul Byers, told CNN.

Vidor was known as a “sundown town,” where blacks were in danger if they were spotted after sundown. Byers spoke on a follow-up “Paula Zahn Now” show on Wednesday night, part of its “Skin-Deep: Racism in America” series. Keith Oppenheim, the reporter who went to Vidor, sought the source of the missing signal.

“George Perrett of the regional Time Warner Cable offices took us to the technical operations center where the trouble happened,” Oppenheim told viewers.

“Perrett told me and CNN engineer Ray Schulz,” who is African American, “that a technician was trying to fix a totally different problem. The cable shopping channel, QVC, had gone off the air locally.

“Perrett said, when the technician tried to swap out the faulty piece of equipment, he inadvertently unplugged a strip that powered the equipment that was broadcasting CNN and the Lifetime Channel.”

CNN rebroadcast the segment on the Wednesday Zahn show, which included features on a Ku Klux Klan meeting in Indiana, on profiling by the perceived race behind a telephone voice, the school busing controversy in Seattle now before the Supreme Court, and grade school children’s comments on how much they think about race. In between, Zahn lobbed e-mailed questions at studio guests Roland Martin, editor of the Chicago Defender, the Rev. Joe Watkins, identified as a Republican consultant; and Melanie Campbell of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation.

As for Vidor, Mayor Joe Hopkins insisted “we would love to see more folks move to Vidor — don’t care what color they are, just that they’re good citizens.”

But Vidor resident Peggy Fruge said on camera,”I don’t mind being friends with them, you know, talking and stuff like that. But, as far as mingling and eating with them and all that kind of stuff, I mean, that’s where I draw the line.”

• Keith Oppenheim, CNN: Texas city haunted by ‘no blacks after dark’ past,
• Video of Vidor segment

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N.Y. Daily News Wins; Sign Honoring Radicals to Go

N.Y. Daily News Tuesday’s front page

“For 17 years, the small suite of offices on the City College of New York’s Harlem campus has borne the names of Guillermo Morales, a Puerto Rican separatist involved in a series of bombings in the city in the 1970s, and Assata Shakur, who escaped from prison while serving time for the 1973 killing of a New Jersey State Police trooper,” David B. Caruso reported Wednesday for the Associated Press.

“Radical student groups picked the name after they began using the space following 1989 sit-ins over tuition increases, and the name stuck without interference from college administrators until Tuesday, when the Daily News published a front-page article calling the name ‘a punch to the gut’ to crime and terror victims.

“A City College spokeswoman initially defended the students’ right to pick their own name, but on Tuesday the hammer fell.

“City University of New York Chancellor Matthew Goldstein wrote to City College President Gregory H. Williams requesting that the ‘unauthorized and inappropriate’ sign over the center’s door be taken down. Only CUNY’s trustees, Goldstein said, have the authority to name college facilities.

“By midday, City College said it intended to comply.”

The Daily News went after the name with both a front-page story and an editorial on Tuesday, and employed the same tone in its story declaring victory on Wednesday.

“A day after The Daily News revealed a City College campus center had been named in honor of a convicted cop killer and a terrorist bombmaker, the school’s chancellor ordered students to remove the sign,” its Wednesday story read.

“But angry students said yesterday they may sue to block the move, characterizing the two as wrongly convicted freedom fighters who deserve praise.”

Among other distinctions, Shakur has been described as the aunt of the late rap icon Tupac Shakur, though others have written that she was simply a friend of the family.

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In Op-Ed, White L.A. Cop Urges Blacks to Join Force

As outrage over police killings of civilians rises in such cities as New York and Atlanta, the Los Angeles Times ran an op-ed piece by a white cop in South Central urging more people of color to join the police force.

“Here’s my totally unauthorized recruiting pitch: If you believe justice belongs to the pauper as well as the prince, if the life of the untouchable is as sacred to you as the life of the Brahmin, if you believe safety is a civil right owed both the gated community and the blighted one, then take the LAPD written exam. Hey, come work the south end. We’re still fighting an uphill battle, and we could sure use the help,” Will Beall, who is also author of the novel “L.A. Rex,” wrote on Wednesday.

“I know a lot of black people still don’t trust cops. Can’t say I blame them. For generations, police were the street-level enforcers of segregation and miscegenation laws. We were the guys with the dogs and water hoses at Selma. Little wonder the relationship between the black community and law enforcement in this country remains badly broken.”

• Jabari Asim, washingtonpost.com: A Heartbreaking Tradition Continues

• BET.com: Mysterious ‘Fourth Man’ In Groom Shooting Says He Wasn’t The Man
• Cary Clack, San Antonio Express-News:Walking While Black can be dangerous — just ask 24-year-old

• Stanley Crouch, New York Daily News: Killing makes police the perps now
• Juan Gonzalez, New York Daily News: No dragnet for ‘fourth man’

• Juan Gonzalez, New York Daily News: Black and targeted by NYPD
• Bob Herbert, New York Times: Badges, Guns and Another Unarmed Victim
• Eugene Kane, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Race relations still need some work

• Rochelle Riley, Detroit Free Press: N.Y. Shooting should be fed case

• Ruben Rosario, St. Paul (Minn.) Pioneer Press: Don’t let frightening crime statistics fool you
• Sherrel Wheeler Stewart, BlackAmericaWeb.com: Atlantans Hope Johnston Shooting Will Result in Renewed Focus on Community, Seniors
• Cynthia Tucker, Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Time is ripe to overhaul city’s drug war

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L.A. Times Questioned on Hate-Trial Coverage

David Mills, a former reporter at the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and Washington Times, and now an Emmy-winning TV writer, with credits on “The Wire,” “Kingpin,” “NYPD Blue,” “ER,” “The Corner” and “Homicide,” is wondering aloud why the trial of black youths accused of beating up three white women isn’t getting more coverage in the Los Angeles Times.

“We have in Los Angeles an ongoing case study of what happens when a major American newspaper is confronted with an event outside of its politically correct comfort zone. The LAT isn’t doing itself proud,” Mills wrote to the Romenesko forum pages on the Poynter Institute Web site.

“On Halloween night, in an upscale neighborhood of Long Beach called Bixby Knolls, three young white women were surrounded and severely beaten by about 30 black youths, who allegedly punctuated their assault with comments like ‘We hate white people, f— whites.’ One of the victims suffered multiple facial fractures; reportedly she was struck with a skateboard. Ten black kids, ages 12 to 17, are currently on trial for felony assault. Eight of them are charged with a hate-crime enhancement. Nine of them are girls.

“The LA Times made no mention of the mob attack until November 7, several days after the Long Beach Press-Telegram had published a chilling account of the beatings based on an interview with the victims. The Times might have ignored the incident entirely if the Press-Telegram weren’t so aggressively covering it.

“. . . The first four trial stories by reporter Joe Mozingo included mention that the case has drawn ‘national attention.’ This seems to be untrue. When Mozingo first mentioned this, the AP had just started covering the trial. But as far as I can tell, the only major newspapers to pick up the AP accounts were the San Francisco Chronicle and the Mercury News. There’s been no reference to the Long Beach beatings on cable news channels, for example. Where was this ‘national attention’?”

Mills, who is African American, told the Web site FishBowl LA on Monday: “I’ve been sending emails to the Times’ ombudsman (or ‘readers’ representative’), and more recently to Times editorial writers, hoping that the Times might engage in a little public self-examination on the issue. The result? I was invited to write an ‘Outside the Tent’ piece for the Sunday Current section. I declined, because I’d rather see the Times deal with this ‘inside the tent.'”

• Earl Ofari Hutchinson, syndicated: Hate And Justice on Trial in Long Beach

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Granite Files for Bankruptcy Reorganization

Black-owned Granite Broadcasting Co. announced Monday that it had filed petitions for reorganization under chapter 11 of the bankruptcy code.

“Under the reorganization process Granite will continue to operate its businesses in the ordinary course, and its stations will continue to serve their local communities, including their viewers and advertisers,” an announcement said.

W. Don Cornwell, chairman and chief executive officer, put a positive spin on the development, saying in the announcement, “We operate competitive and profitable television stations, and despite our need to restructure our corporate balance sheet, we have continued to successfully grow the business.”

Granite owns and operates, or provides programming, sales and other services to 23 channels in San Francisco, Detroit, Buffalo, Fresno, Calif., Syracuse, Fort Wayne, Ind., Peoria, Ill., Duluth, Minn.-Superior, Wis., Binghamton, N.Y., Utica, N.Y. and Elmira, N.Y.

• Matthew Wurtzel, Dealscape: UPN-WB merger topples Granite

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NAHJ Urges Diversity Advocates to Write FCC

“The National Association of Hispanic Journalists is calling on journalists, communities of color and those who believe in diversity in media to tell the Federal Communications Commission to protect minority broadcast ownership by preventing further media consolidation,” the organization said in a statement Wednesday.

“The FCC is currently considering whether to loosen our nation’s broadcast ownership regulations. NAHJ is concerned that the FCC has not considered the impact of media consolidation on minority broadcast owners and on communities of color.

“According to a new report by the non-profit group Free Press, people of color own just 3.26 percent of all TV stations in the nation. The study shows that figure has declined since 1996 as a result of consolidation.

“NAHJ filed comments with the FCC in October opposing media consolidation. The association believes it is irresponsible for the FCC, an independent regulatory agency, to allow further consolidation without considering its impact on people of color who make up 33 percent of the U.S. population.”

The deadline for comments is Dec. 21.

In Nashville Monday, about 400 activists, students, citizens and journalists filled Belmont University’s Massey Performing Arts Center to hear from songwriters and performers about radio consolidation during a daylong session on media ownership rules, the Nashville Tennessean reported.

But journalists were split, according to the Tennessean story and Ira Teinowitz, writing in TV Week.

Ellen Leifeld, publisher of the Gannett-owned Tennessean, “said she didn’t believe cross-ownership would result in a less competitive environment, and that the idea that newspapers and TV stations would speak with one voice was contrary to fundamentals of journalistic autonomy. ‘Despite the emotional rhetoric about big media, at its core local media exists to serve its community,’ Leifeld said,” according to the Tennessean.

“‘Cross-ownership of major media properties is a bad idea,’ said Alex Jones, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who now is director of the Shorenstein Center at Harvard University. ‘The news of politics, public affairs, comes from newspapers and local television. It is talk that is in ready abundance [on the Web], not the news.’

“He warned that further combinations would give individual owners too much power.”

• Jeffrey Yorke, Radio & Records: Report: Big Radio Is Fewer Formats, Smaller Audience

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Short Takes

• Associated Press Television News cameraman Aswan Ahmed Lutfallah, 35, was gunned down Tuesday by insurgents while filming clashes between Iraqi police and insurgents in the al-Karama neighborhood in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, the Associated Press reported. Police Brig. Abdul-Karim Ahmed Khalaf said insurgents spotted Lutfallah filming, approached him and then fatally shot him, according to the AP.
• “Ousted Los Angeles Times Editor Dean Baquet is considering taking a top management position at the New York Times as prospects fade for his return to the Los Angeles paper, according to several of Baquet’s confidantes,” James Rainey reports in Thursday’s editions of the Los Angeles paper. “The editor has not accepted a position and has been telling associates for weeks that his preference would be for a new owner of the Los Angeles Times to restore him to his old post.”
• A 12-page tabloid supplement inside the Arizona Daily Star on Wednesday featured 12 stories by reporter Carmen Duarte examining the history, culture and the modern lives of Arizona’s 21 Indian tribes.
• Todd S. Burroughs, a black media historian, wrote what appears to the the first review of a collection by 23 black columnists in the Trotter Group, including two pieces from this column. Burroughs’ review Monday of “Black Voices in Commentary” says, “If the platform-shoe-d journalistic generation fails to inspire its multi-platformed media successors . . . it can at least pass into eldership knowing it succeeded in telling important African-American stories to, and for, teachers, churchgoers, politicians, bakers, dentists and supermarket cashiers back when the authority of a major metropolitan newspaper still meant something.”
• The endowment of the Native American Journalists Association has reached $100,000, reaching a milestone for the 22-year-old organization, the association announced on Monday. “NAJA received $5,676 from interest from the fund in 2006 and used [the] money to help fund two student members in internships at CBS’ headquarters in New York, as well as general operational tasks, such as Web site maintenance,” it said.
• Former president Jimmy Carter, author of a new book on Palestine, wrote in a Los Angeles Times op-ed piece on Monday, “It would be almost politically suicidal for members of Congress to espouse a balanced position between Israel and Palestine, to suggest that Israel comply with international law or to speak in defense of justice or human rights for Palestinians. . . . What is even more difficult to comprehend is why the editorial pages of the major newspapers and magazines in the United States exercise similar self-restraint, quite contrary to private assessments expressed quite forcefully by their correspondents in the Holy Land.”
• Carleton Bryant, a black journalist who is metropolitan editor of the conservative Washington Times, has been promoted to assistant managing editor, the paper announced Wednesday. “Mr. Bryant, 46, is a 17-year veteran of The Times’ newsroom, where he has worked as a reporter, assistant national editor and features editor,” the paper reported.
• “AOL told 500 employees at the company’s Dulles headquarters today that their jobs would be eliminated, as part of plans announced this summer to trim its workforce and change the business strategy.” Sara Kehaulani Goo reported Wednesday on the Washington Post Web site. AOL spokesman Andrew Weinstein did not reply to a question about whether the cuts affected AOL Black Voices and AOL Latino.
• Unity: Journalists of Color joined Monday in condemning “The View” co-host Rosie O’Donnell’s attempts to mimic the Chinese language, saying her attempt “reflects poorly on ABC Daytime and the show’s producer, ABC News correspondent Barbara Walters.”
• In Florida, “Golden Beach Town Manager Bonilyn Wilbanks-Free resigned tonight, hours after a private investigator concluded in a report that Wilbanks-Free used a racist term to refer to her assistant,” the Miami Herald reported on Wednesday. “Wilbanks-Free, 57, who is white, called Assistant Town Manager Barbara Tarasenko, 55, who is black, a ‘mammy’ in front of two department heads in October,” Carli Teproff and Evan S. Benn reported. The incident had been cited in a column by the Herald’s Ana Menendez in discussing rants by comedian Michael Richards and others.
• Fern Shen, formerly of the Washington Post, Marc Steiner of Baltimore’s WYPR public radio and Sean Carton, an executive with id5, a Baltimore interactive marketing consultancy, hope to launch a pioneering online news site in Baltimore in the spring, Nick Madigan reported Monday in the Baltimore Sun. “Shen and Steiner have secured a grant of $5,000 from the Abell Foundation to help design a prototype for the site, with Carton’s aid,” Madigan wrote.
• PBS’s Gwen Ifill, moderator and managing editor of “Washington Week” and senior correspondent for the “Newshour with Jim Lehrer,” will receive the Sol Taishoff Award for Broadcasting Excellence, the National Press Foundation announced.
• Johnson Publishing Co. has hired another writer from the mainstream press. Adrienne Samuels of the Boston Globe becomes a senior writer at Ebony next year, Samuels told Journal-isms. Since Bryan Monroe became editorial director in July, Sylvester Monroe, formerly of Time, has joined the company as a correspondent, and Eric Easter, formerly of Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, has been named chief of digital strategy.
• “A Chinese journalist jailed for nearly eight years after exposing government corruption said after being released early for good behavior that he should never have been sent to prison,” Agence France-Presse reported on Tuesday. “‘I have mixed feelings,’ Gao Qinrong, 51, who was sentenced to 13 years in jail in 1999, told AFP by telephone about how he felt to finally be free.”
• “Thousands of people rallied in Burkina Faso’s capital, Ouagadougou, on Wednesday to demand an end to impunity and mark the death of journalist Norbert Zongo, whose murder eight years ago led to constitutional changes that were supposed to improve human rights in the country,” the U.N. Integrated Regional Information Networks reported on Wednesday. “Who Killed Norbert Zongo?” is the cover story (PDF) in the Committee to Protect Journalists publication, “Dangerous Assignments.”