In Penn State Case, Some Language Understates the Crime
With Chelsea Clinton Hire, NBC Confuses Expertise With Fame
Pittsburgh Photographers’ Site Celebrates Positive Black Images
Occupy Movement Puts Mainstream Media in the Middle
Columnist Explains Why a Section 8 Family Can Make Others Nervous
Group Rebukes Warrior Who Claimed to Be Journalist
In Penn State Case, Some Language Understates the Crime
“As the Jerry Sandusky case at Penn State University shows, reporting on allegations of sex crimes poses a challenge not only to get the story right but to deliver it in language that puts the facts in the proper light,” Arthur S. Brisbane, New York Times public editor, wrote on Sunday.
“Some readers, responding to The New York Times’s first reports on the case, strongly objected to wording in the articles that, in their view, either underplayed the details or wrongly applied the language of consensual sex to the narrative.
“The objections focused on the most severe of the accusations against Mr. Sandusky, a former Penn State assistant coach. According to the grand jury report, he subjected a boy estimated to be 10 years old to ‘anal intercourse’ in locker room showers at the university in 2002.
“Jennifer Crichton, a reader from Manhattan, said The Times’s initial article on Nov. 5 missed the mark when it described the testimony of a Penn State graduate assistant about the incident. As The Times put it, he told the grand jury that he saw Mr. Sandusky ‘sexually assaulting a boy in the shower.’
“ ‘Why is this described as “sexual assault” and not as ‘rape’ “? Ms. Crichton wrote.
” . . . It is common for newspapers to use terms like ‘sexual assault’ and ‘sexual abuse’ and ‘have sex’ when reporting on sex crimes. Perhaps, though, it’s time that The Times and other news organizations take another look at the language they use. Victims’ advocates echo what the readers told me in their e-mails: language in news media reports — and, for that matter, in the court system itself — consistently underplays the brutality of sex crimes and misapplies terms that imply consent.”
- Colbert I. King, Washington Post: Penn State scandal veering off track
- Darryl E. Owens, Orlando Sentinel: Sex-abuse cases also do harm to mentoring
With Chelsea Clinton Hire, NBC Confuses Expertise With Fame
“Ask me to name a television journalist I admire and I won’t pause to answer: Ann Curry. I watch her most every morning on NBC’s Today,” Ana Veciana-Suarez wrote Saturday in the Miami Herald.
“She inspires trust, an essential ingredient in the news biz. She knows what she’s doing, and she’s worked hard to get where she’s at. And in journalism, as in almost every field, experience in the line of fire adds priceless depth and context.
“So why would NBC News hire Chelsea Clinton as a full-time correspondent? There’s her marquee name, which admittedly goes a long way in this star-obsessed society. But Clinton is a news neophyte who has spent her life avoiding the media. Yet here she is with a job every broadcaster I know would covet.
“. . . I wish Clinton well. I hope she takes this opportunity and runs with it. To their credit, the celebrity progeny who have preceded her haven’t had any oops moment yet. Still, most viewers won’t be tuning in for the knowledge these quasi-reporters bring to the camera, and it’s disingenuous for the network to suggest otherwise.
“NBC may believe it can buy authority by hiring celebrity names, but, like many other media outlets, it confuses expertise with fame, news with entertainment. And the news-consuming public is poorly served by it.
- Michael Calderone, Huffington Post: Chelsea Clinton’s Hiring At NBC News Prompts Skeptical Reactions From Media
- John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable: Meghan McCain Joins MSNBC as Contributor
Pittsburgh Photographers’ Site Celebrates Positive Black Images
“Still going on.
“Six years ago, a group of Black photographers, inspired by the legacy of the late Pittsburgh Courier photojournalist Charles ‘Teenie’ Harris, organized to record and celebrate contemporary life in Pittsburgh’s African-American communities,” Erv Dyer writes on the Community Voices section of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette website.
“Now, that exhibition and collection of images, titled ‘Feel Like Going On,’ will live on and be expanded in a community blog with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette newspaper.”
“ ‘Feel Like Going On’ was founded by journalists and former Post-Gazette reporters Ervin Dyer and Monica Haynes. They saw the project as a way to respond to the lack of positive images of Blacks in mainstream newspapers. It was also a way to celebrate the legacy of Mr. Harris — a prolific photographer whose early 20th Century iconic images of celebrities and regular folks earned him a 2005 Hall of Fame honor with the National Association of Black Journalists and whose photography is now garnering national attention in a retrospective of his work at the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh.
“The ‘Feel Like Going On’ blog, in addition to showcasing the 40 images that were a part of the original exhibition, will allow a core group of photographers to regularly contribute fine art images, news images, and photographs of life as it unfolds in Black Pittsburgh’s churches, communities, workspaces, playgrounds etc.”
Occupy Movement Puts Mainstream Media in the Middle
“As police officers cleared protesters last week from Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan, the birthplace of Occupy Wall Street, they made sure most reporters were kept blocks away, supposedly for their own protection,” Brian Stelter wrote Sunday for the New York Times.
“But in almost every other respect, mainstream news media outlets have been put right in the middle by the movement.
“Newspapers and television networks have been rebuked by media critics for treating the movement as if it were a political campaign or a sideshow — by many liberals for treating the protesters dismissively, and by conservatives, conversely, for taking the protesters too seriously.
“The protesters themselves have also criticized the media — first for ostensibly ignoring the movement and then for marginalizing it.
“Lacking a list of demands or recognized leaders, the Occupy movement has at times perplexed the nation’s media outlets.”
- Lewis W. Diuguid, Kansas City Star: Time to get hungry for U.S. poverty solutions
- David Freedlander, Politickerny.com: In Light of ‘Occupy’ Arrests, New Group ‘To Monitor NYPD/Press Relations’
- Juan Gonzalez, Daily News, New York: Occupy Wall Street protests aren’t over by a long shot
- Douglas C. Lyons, South Florida SunSentinel: The rich continue to get richer; as for the rest of us…
- Eugene Robinson, Washington Post: Occupy: Out of Zuccotti Park and into the streets
- Albor Ruiz, Daily News, New York: Whole world watches city’s shameful response to Occupy Wall Street protest
Columnist Explains Why a Section 8 Family Can Make Others Nervous
Conflicts between the black middle class and the black poor are rarely a topic for mainstream media discussion, but Erin Aubry Kaplan took on the subject Sunday in a column for the Los Angeles Times:
“In my Inglewood neighborhood, we always tend to keep an eye out for trouble. But few things have occasioned more hand-wringing than the recent arrival of a family whose rent is subsidized by the federal program known as Section 8,” it began.
” ‘Oh, Lord,’ said one neighbor, a stoic, civic-minded, churchgoing woman who looked more unsettled than I’d ever seen her. ‘Here we go.’ Another neighbor who is also religious and similarly unflappable looked deeply troubled. Standing out on her lawn and surveying the newly occupied corner house as if it were haunted, she only shook her head, as if there were no words to describe this turn of events.
“Both of my neighbors are active stewards of our block club, and one of its functions is delivering a housewarming gift of a plant or flowers to welcome new residents and send an early message of community. No gift was delivered this time, or even discussed.
“While I didn’t approve of a rejection of these folks that felt almost preemptive, I also understood. We live in a neighborhood that, though not luxurious, is stable and well maintained, with tidy homes, kids skateboarding, people walking dogs. But it’s a mostly black neighborhood, and its residents are keenly aware of how little stands between its aspirations and chaos.
“Poverty makes all homeowners nervous, but black poverty is terrifying, existing on a whole different scale in the American imagination. When it appears in a neighborhood, middle-class people don’t think about tolerating it; they just move somewhere else. It is a historical constant that has driven housing patterns in L.A. and other cities for generations.
“Black people are no exception to this kind of flight. My neighbors and I live in Inglewood partly by necessity, partly by choice, but we have the same anxiety about black poverty and its attendant pathologies as people safely ensconced in suburbs. In fact, we have even more because we are so familiar with struggle.”
Group Rebukes Warrior Who Claimed to Be Journalist
“Matthew VanDyke returned home last week from Libya, arriving at the Baltimore airport still dressed in combat fatigues. ‘I went there to support the revolution,’ VanDyke declared. ‘My family did not know that when I left. You don’t tell your mother you’re going off to fight a war,’.” Joel Simon, executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, recounted on Friday.
“What troubles us is that VanDyke told his mother that he was going to Libya to be a journalist. So when he was captured on March 13 near Brega, that’s what she told us.
“. . . In many parts of the world, journalists who are captured by rebels or governments are accused of being spies. CPJ has condemned government intelligence agencies that use journalists as informants or allow their agents to use journalism as a cover. Even the CIA has pledged not to do this because it recognizes the risk it poses to the work of journalists in conflict zones.
“We do not know exactly what VanDyke told his captors. He did not respond to our emailed questions after his release. Still, the next time a journalist is captured and swears that he is not a spy his captors may be more skeptical. And they may be less inclined to believe CPJ or other press freedom organizations because of the example posed by VanDyke.
“VanDyke told reporter Bruce Goldfarb, who interviewed him at the Baltimore airport, that he ‘appreciated’ the work that CPJ did on his behalf . . .
“Well, Matthew VanDyke may appreciate us but we don’t appreciate him. Pretending to be a journalist in a war zone is not a casual deception. It’s a reckless and irresponsible act that greatly increases the risk for reporters covering conflict.”
- Associated Press: Matthew VanDyke, American Journalist Who Joined Libyan Rebels Returning To US (Nov. 5)
- Tara Bahrampour, Washington Post: With Gaddafi dead, Matthew VanDyke, who joined Libyan rebels, finally returns to Md. (Nov. 5)
