Immigration Marches Touted as Precursor to Vote
If the predictions come true for a record turnout Tuesday for Texas’ political primaries and caucuses, especially among Hispanics, you can give some of the credit to the news media.
A spot check of Spanish-language media found a strong desire to educate Latinos, many of them first-time voters, about the election process, building upon the pro-immigration rallies of 2006 and 2007 and capitalizing on a disposition to support Sen. Hillary Clinton in her fight for the nomination.
“Two years ago, there were massive rallies saying, ‘Today we’re marching; tomorrow we’re voting,'” Alfredo Carbajal, editor in chief of Al Dia, the Spanish-language publication of the Dallas Morning News, told Journal-isms. “We’re trying to say, ‘now is the time to fulfill your citizen responsibilities to the political advancement of Latinos.'”
At La Voz de Houston, weekly Spanish-language product of the Houston Chronicle, Aurora Losada agreed. “For the first time, many have understood that it’s very important that they vote. You can march in the street, but if you don’t vote, you have no power. She said of election coverage, “As journalists, we need to do it better than any other thing,” said Losada, the Chronicle’s assistant managing editor for Spanish publications.
La Voz devoted space in its print edition to explaining how the U.S. electoral system works, and online plans updates every hour or more on primary day. Its two reporters plan to blog, and La Voz is sending one of them to a caucus, Losada said.
In Corpus Christi, Victor Lara Ortegon, who has worked for 50 years in Spanish-language radio, said he is seeing excitement that hasn’t been witnessed in the United States. He said that former president Bill Clinton was in seven Texas cities in one day, Monday.
“For the first time, the Latinos, we know we have power, and the message is very simple,” Ortegon said. “I don’t have nothing against African Americans, but we’re the biggest minority in the United States. The reason people are going to Hillary Clinton is that if [Barack] Obama goes to the White House, that means African Americans will be on the top. The Anglos will be second, and we, the Latinos, will be on the bottom.”
Ortegon says his radio station, KMIQ-FM in Robstown, Texas, does not endorse candidates. He said he was simply relaying what he hears during the “open mike” segment of his daily 15-minute “Comendarios,” or commentary segment.
In El Paso, Alberto Ponce de Leon, assignment editor at the weekly El Diario de El Paso, said he had heard the same comments about the pecking order of African Americans and Latinos. In addition, he said the Bill Clinton years were remembered as those when illegal immigrants were granted amnesty.
In a Sunday tracking poll conducted for the Houston Chronicle, Reuters and C-SPAN by Zogby International, Hillary Clinton’s support among Hispanics increased by almost 4 points to 56.1 percent, while Obama’s fell to 34.5 percent from 37.8 percent, the Chronicle reported.
“Zogby said Clinton maintained her strong lead in heavily Hispanic South Texas and that Obama had taken a ‘very slight lead’ in East Texas, which could decide the popular vote,” the Chronicle story said.
Austin pollster Ralph Bordie said on Monday that in polling conducted Thursday and Sunday, Clinton led Obama 49 percent to 46 percent in the state.
“Bordie found Clinton ahead 56 percent to 38 percent among whites and 64 percent to 30 percent among Latinos. Obama leads Clinton 86 percent to 13 percent among African Americans,” the Austin American-Statesman reported.
Former Clinton Cabinet officer Henry Cisneros, a onetime mayor of San Antonio, was on the airwaves touting Clinton, as were three local congressmen, Ortegon said. Veronika Placencia, assignment editor at El Paso’s bilingual KINT-TV, snagged the candidate herself for a one-on-one interview, translating her remarks to Spanish. Obama seemed outnumbered in the surrogate department; his most visible supporter was Christine Chavez, granddaughter of farmworker legend Cesar Chavez, the Spanish-language journalists said.
Most Spanish-language outlets said they were too small to have editorial boards, and thus did not endorse candidates. But the American-Statesman, Corpus Christi Caller-Times, Dallas Morning News, El Paso Times, Fort Worth Star-Telegram and Houston Chronicle, all mainstream papers, have endorsed Obama.
The campaign has been a boon for television outlets. Jay Root wrote on the Web site of the Star-Telegram Monday that Obama and Clinton “are taking to the Texas airwaves with a barrage of TV advertisements. . . . Obama has cut a feel-good two-minute ad, four times the usual length — and four times the typical cost, too. Clinton has a 30-second ad slamming Obama on the foreign policy front.”
And as Bill Mitchell noted at the Poynter Institute, “visitors to a number of news Web sites in Ohio and Texas have discovered a common theme proclaimed, megaphone-style, at the top of the page: ‘Vote for Barack Obama.’ . . . The red, white and blue banner dropping down into the home pages of such papers as the Akron Beacon Journal and the Houston Chronicle was paid political advertising.”
For the Spanish-language journalists, though, the priority has been education, they said. Al Dia planned an editorial for Tuesday on the importance of voting. KINT prepared packages and individual stories on how to register, what a primary is, the purpose of a caucus and how to find a precinct.
“We try to do a story more than once, just to try to get it across,” Placencia said.
Armando Acuña, Sacramento Bee: Bee’s bid to be neutral confounds photo selection
Margaret Bernstein, Cleveland Plain Dealer: The urban agenda of the candidates
Mary C. Curtis, Charlotte (N.C.) Observer: Candidates imitate art imitating life
Terry Glover, ebonyjet.com: With Friends Like These…how does a candidate finesse an awkward endorsement?
Jean Han, AsianWeek: The Value of Asian Voters
Bob Herbert, New York Times: A Nominee? Or a Debacle?
Nick Jimenez, Corpus Christi (Texas) Caller-Times: We have to look past the campaign rhetoric
Colbert I. King, Washington Post: A Double Standard on ‘Reject and Denounce’
Howard Kurtz, Washington Post: ‘Soft’ Press Sharpens Its Focus on Obama
Rhonda Chriss Lokeman, Kansas City Star: Mail fraud in the presidential race
Deborah Mathis, blackamericaweb.com: Is America’s First Black President Going to Be the One Making the Nation’s Apology for Slavery?
Mary Mitchell, Chicago Sun-Times: Why Obama ‘denounced’ Farrakhan
Clarence Page, Chicago Tribune: Obama’s changing battlefield
Frank Rich, New York Times: McCain Channels His Inner Hillary
Roland Roebuck and Ricardo Ramirez, “Talk of the Nation,” National Public Radio: The Latino Vote: Pro-Clinton or Anti-Obama?
MESSAGE BOARDS: Feel free to send an e-mail about this column.
Columnist Charged With Driving Under Influence
Boston Globe Metro columnist Adrian Walker was arraigned Monday on a charge of operating under the influence, the Globe reported on Tuesday.
“Walker, who entered a plea of not guilty, was arrested early Sunday morning by Transit Police in Dorchester while driving a company vehicle, which was impounded. Walker said he had taken the car to an interview Saturday afternoon, but had not returned it to the Globe. The paper’s policy allows its vehicles to be used for work purposes only,” the story said.
“According to the police report, an officer followed the vehicle speeding on the Southeast Expressway before stopping the car on Morrissey Boulevard. The report alleges that Walker failed field sobriety tests and says he declined a breathalyzer test. Walker told police he had been at Silverstone Bar & Grill in Downtown Crossing. The case was continued until later this month.”
Boston media critic Dan Kennedy wrote, “Walker is one of the good guys in local media. A respected Statehouse reporter, he landed a columnist’s spot following the Patricia Smith/Mike Barnicle meltdown of 1998. As a columnist, Walker has emphasized substance over flash. There are no verbal pyrotechnics in his pieces, but you generally learn something new.”
Walker’s lawyer, Michael Doolan, released a statement saying: “My client pleaded not guilty today in court. We look forward to trying this case in front of a jury of his peers, and we hope and expect he will be acquitted,” according to Jessica Van Sack, writing on the Boston Herald Web site. [Added March 4.]
MESSAGE BOARDS: Feel free to send an e-mail about this column.
Case Raises Issue of Identifying Teen Suspects
Should 14-, 15- and 16-year-old boys accused of raping a 12-year-old girl have their names and photos in the newspaper?
That’s what happened in a case unfolding on Maryland’s Eastern Shore that could represent a clash between journalistic ethics and the codes of the legal system.
The code of ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists states, “Be cautious about identifying juvenile suspects or victims of sex crimes” and journalists should “show compassion for those who may be affected adversely by news coverage. Use special sensitivity when dealing with children and inexperienced sources or subjects.”
But under Maryland law, anyone 14 years or older charged with a crime for which the penalty can be life in prison is treated as an adult, according to prosecutor Jonathan G. Newell, state’s attorney for Caroline County, Md.
As a result, photographs, names and addresses of the five African American youths charged in the rape were published in the Easton (Md.) Star Democrat, and their identifying information in the Baltimore Sun as well. Editors at both papers told Journal-isms that since the teenagers were charged as adults, the rules about shielding juveniles no longer apply.
This doesn’t sit well with David Honig, executive director of the Minority Media and Telecommunications Council, which lobbies on telecommunications issues affecting people of color. He lives in the area.
“The public didn’t need to know the ‘information’ conveyed in these identifications,” Honig told Journal-isms. “Knowing it would have added no greater understanding of the story. The principal information embedded in a photograph of a child who is otherwise a stranger to the reader is the child’s race. The only information embedded in the children’s names is, in this case, that most of the children have ethnic names. And the only information embedded in these children’s street addresses is that the children live in a segregated, poor neighborhood. But since there’s no correlation between race and the prevalence of this kind of incident (it can happen to anyone), and this wasn’t a racial hate crime (the paper didn’t publish the race of the girl), what is the possible justification for these identifications — especially where a wrong identification could ruin the child’s life?
“And many of these identifications are wrong,” he added. “In child rape cases involving child ‘perpetrators’ (not the cases involving adult perpetrators, including religious authorities) often some of the children had been subjected to peer pressure. In a small clique and a small town, some children may have had to go along with the program in order to avoid being ostracized by their best friends. That doesn’t justify the alleged crime or immunize the State of Maryland from its duty to help these children and protect others, but why does it merit a life in prison charge? Why didn’t the newspaper ask that question?”
As the Baltimore Sun story explained on Feb. 26, “According to charging documents, the girl told police she went to [a baseball] park Feb. 9 planning to have sex with her 15-year-old boyfriend but changed her mind. She was then attacked by other youths, who had been watching the couple, the documents say. The girl told her parents about a week later.
“The girl and the five suspects all live in or around Federalsburg, a town of 2,600 along the Marshyhope Creek that was once a trading center and still is a hub for rural northern Caroline County.
“The Sun does not name alleged victims of sexual assault.
“The boys have been charged as adults, and each faces 11 separate counts, including first- and second-degree rape, sodomy and perverted practice.
“County State’s Attorney Jonathan G. Newell said some of the youths, students at nearby Colonel Richardson High, were heard bragging about the incident last week.”
Complicating matters is that a judge could decide that the case belongs in juvenile court after all, as Newell conceded. The factors influencing that decision, he said, would include the boys’ ages, their physical and emotional maturity, the degree of their alleged participation, whether they were amenable to treatment in a juvenile facility and the public safety.
If that should happen, the papers could stop naming them, but their identities have already been published. As Baltimore Sun Metro Editor Howard Libit acknowledged, “You can’t unring the bell.”
The Easton Star Democrat defended its actions in an editorial on Sunday. “We believe a story of this magnitude is definitely something the Mid-Shore community should know about and that the seriousness of the charges should not be shrouded in secrecy,” it said. “The teenagers were identified in our news pages because the seriousness of the charges warrants each of them to being treated as adults. That decision was not made by us, but by the prosecutor.”
Editors at both papers also said they had named white juveniles who had been charged as adults.
Andy Schotz, who chairs the SPJ’s Ethics Committee, adds this about its ethics guidelines: “The way the code is written, it’s very broad. What’s ethical for one community and one person might be different somewhere else.”
MESSAGE BOARDS: Feel free to send an e-mail about this column.
Staffers at Southern Calif. Papers Lose Colleagues
“Friendly Fire readers will surely have noticed in recent days that the postings have been light,” Mariel Garza wrote Friday on his Los Angeles Daily News blog. “There’s a very good reason for this. Or, rather, a very bad one. The staff of the Daily News was reduced about 20 percent over the last two days due to the [ever]-crapifying state of corporate print journalism in the United States. We’ve all been dealing with the loss of good friends and talented journalists, all while wondering if we were the next to be called into the editor’s office for the last talk.”
On Saturday, Kerry Cavanaugh delivered tributes to departing colleagues on her “Paper Trail” blog, which says it is independent of the newspaper and its union.
Meanwhile, a blog produced by employees of the Long Beach (Calif.) Press-Telegram began this way on Friday:
“Twenty-three unionized staffers have been directly affected by the so-called ‘reduction in force’ as Denver-based MediaNews continues its dismantling of our once-great hometown newspaper.
“The company will eliminate the design department and all copy desk positions, moving the work to the non-union Torrance Daily Breeze, effective next week. Twenty-one designers and copy editors were ‘invited’ to apply today for twelve available positions at The Breeze. Interviews will be conducted over the weekend. Nine of us will face lay off by the end of next week.”
MESSAGE BOARDS: Feel free to send an e-mail about this column.
Chinese-Language Paper Ordered to Pay $5.2 Million
“One of the nation’s largest Chinese-language newspapers was slapped with a federal court order to pay $5.2 million to past and current employees who were forced to work 12-hour days without breaks or overtime pay,” Tiffany Hsu reported Saturday for the Los Angeles Times.
“The Chinese Daily News, based in Los Angeles and New York, must pay more than $3.5 million in damages and penalties in addition to more than $1.5 million in interest to the workers, according to an order issued late Thursday by U.S. District Judge Consuelo B. Marshall in Los Angeles. Lawyers said Friday they learned about the ruling by e-mail.
“‘It’s been a long fight, and it’s a great victory,’ said Randall Renick, a plaintiffs’ lawyer.
“The Chinese Daily News will appeal, said Steven Atkinson, a lawyer with the newspaper’s defense firm. He said he expected the verdict to be reversed.
“Marshall’s decision ends the trial stage of a battle that has gone on since 2004, when three former reporters filed a class-action lawsuit to halt the alleged abuses. They won a jury verdict last year.
“They contended that they often were forced to work 12-hour shifts six days a week while writing two to five stories daily, without breaks for meals or rest, and were not permitted to submit to the company accurate records of time they worked.
“The suit grew to include 200 reporters, advertising sales staffers and hourly employees from the Monterey Park and San Francisco offices. The newspaper, known in the Chinese community as the World Journal, reaches about 30,000 readers nationwide.” ??MESSAGE BOARDS: Feel free to send an e-mail about this column.
Curry Steps In as Acting Editor of Afro-American
George E. Curry, who formerly ran the National Newspaper Publishers Association News Service, is serving as acting executive editor of the Afro-American newspapers. He said he has the job for a month so that Publisher John J. Oliver Jr. can secure a successor to Ron Harris, who left to become director of communications at Howard University.
Curry said he had no interest in continuing in the position. “I am far too busy and satisfied being a public speaker, media trainer and writing two columns to accept the job,” he said. Anyone interested in the editor’s job should send a letter of application, clips and references to Curry at the Afro, 2519 N. Charles St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Curry said he would screen all applicants and hoped to present two or three final candidates to Oliver.
MESSAGE BOARDS: Feel free to send an e-mail about this column.
Peace in Kenya Restores Program at K.C. Star
“The good news in Kenya is good news for Kansas City,” columnist Rhonda Chriss Lokeman wrote Saturday in the Kansas City Star. She was referring to an agreement in principle that would allow Kenyan rivals to share power in the wake of bloody violence that has raged since a disputed December election.
“It means the unique partnership involving The Star, the Alfred Friendly Press Fellowship in Washington, D.C., and Kenya’s Nation Media can proceed,” Lokeman continued. “The program stalled after its first year because conditions in Kenya became unstable and unsafe.
“Each year of the three-year program, a Nation journalist works for six months at The Star to be followed by a Star journalist working in Kenya. This improves cross-cultural understanding and the quality of journalism here and abroad.
“In 2007, the pilot year, I was mentor to Nation journalist James Mugumo Munene. Munene, an exceptional Kenyan journalist, worked in several departments at The Star before returning home to train journalists there. In September, I also went to Kenya to train journalists there and in Tanzania. The promising news from Kenya means the 2008 Kenyan candidate, Samuel Siringi, is expected in Kansas City for six months, starting in April.”
Inter Press Service: Interview with Peter Mutie, chair of the Media Council of Kenya’s ethics and publicity subcommittee.
MESSAGE BOARDS: Feel free to send an e-mail about this column.
Short Takes
Rhoda McKinney Jones, managing editor of the Trumpet Newsmagazine, and author of an article on the Nation of Islam’s Louis Farrakhan in its November/December issue, says she has “watched in disbelief as seasoned journalists and not-so-well-intentioned bloggers have attributed to Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., pastor emeritus of Trinity United Church of Christ, the last three words of my first person, introductory piece on Minister Farrakhan. Those words are now familiar to you, especially after Tuesday night’s debate and Tim Russert’s use of them — ‘truly epitomized greatness.’ Dr. Wright, never said, wrote or uttered those words. Those words are mine and mine alone.” Wright is pastor to Sen. Barack Obama.
Lori Waldon, news director of WISN-TV in Milwaukee, “has been at the helm of Channel 12’s news operation for a little more than a year, and that tenure could run a long, long time. She already has broken a major barrier, becoming the first person of color to lead a Milwaukee TV newsroom,” Tim Cuprisin reported last week in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Veronica Villafañe, a former reporter and anchor at the San Jose Mercury News and immediate past president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, is becoming a monthly columnist at Latin American-oriented Poder magazine. “I will be writing about California politics and business. The first column was about the California primary outcome and how the rejection of Prop 93, which would have redefined term limits has termed out many legislators, including Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez. I interviewed him for the column,” she told Journal-isms.
“MOVES magazine — a sports industry glossy financed by Reggie Bush, Spike Lee, NFL Hall of Famer Jim Brown and Matt Leinart‘s agent, Mike Ornstein — has failed to pay employees since December and has been padding circulation numbers, according to an aggrieved ex-employee who’s preparing a lawsuit against the magazine’s publisher,” the Page Six column of the New York Post reported. “Dirk DeSouza, who claims he was hired last October by Florida-based Moves to ‘turn the company around,’ left on Jan. 30.”
The Nielsen Co. has announced that it has assembled an 11-member national Hispanic/Latino Advisory Council, an independent advisory group that is to help and inform the company’s efforts to recruit, measure and accurately report on U.S. Latino TV households. The advisory group of industry, community and business leaders from around the country plans to hold its first meeting on Tuesday in New York, Nielsen said, Della de Lafuente reported last week for Marketing y Medios.
Eyobong Ita, a reporter for seven years at the Kansas City Star,
has joined the Springfield (Ohio) News Sun as assistant city editor. The city editor is Ismail Turay, a Liberian-born journalist, meaning two African-born journalists are running the city desk. The Nigerian-born Ita is president of the National Association of African Journalists and Turay is treasurer.
“Julie Chang, a correspondent for WPIX/Ch. 11’s ‘CW11 Morning News’ has left the station,” Richard Huff reported Monday in the New York Daily News. “Chang, who covered news and did fun participatory pieces, exited after Friday’s telecast. She said she’s ‘taking some personal time off to travel’ and ‘looks forward to waking up after sunrise.'”
The Chicago Sun-Times has started a blog devoted to Oprah Winfrey, written by Mark Bieganski, “an online content guru for the Chicago Sun-Times and RogerEbert.com” who “follows the Oprah phenom like it’s a religion.”
Eight university students who have shown promise in the field of business journalism were awarded $4,000 scholarships from the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism last week. They are Jason Borseth of the University of Missouri; Eliot Caroom of City University of New York; Charles Cutter of Indiana University; Amanda Getchel of Ball State University; Wee Sui Lee of New York University; Ashley Macha of Arizona State University; Carlos Macias of Baruch College; and Brigitte Yuille of Florida International University, the Talking Biz News Web site reported.
MESSAGE BOARDS: Feel free to send an e-mail about this column.
Feedback: Use Common Sense on Identifying Teens
Re: “Case Raises Issue of Identifying Teen Suspects.” These are my comments and not those of the National Association of Black Journalists:
There is always a slippery slope when covering controversy. Consider the potential to inflame readers. Newspapers across the country have refrained from publishing the names of rape victims. Court documents have the names of witnesses of crimes. They also are published in court records. Does the community benefit from their faces and addresses being listed and subjected to potential intimidation by those who perpetrated a crime?
Let’s use some common sense.
This is a heinous crime, the alleged rape of a young girl by multiple assailants. We have a moral obligation to get the story right, not to pass judgment. A court of law will determine the outcome, not the court of public opinion, inflamed by the publishing of names, faces and addresses.
