Columnist Richard Cohen Hoist With His Own Petard
“$200 for Every Red-Skin Sent to Purgatory”
Black Press Group Says NFL Neglects Black Businesses
Philippines Knocked Off Some Far East Front Pages
Tanzina Vega Named to New N.Y. Times Race Beat
LatinoVoices Picks 13 “Top Young Latinos” in Newsrooms
AAJA Wants to “Remain Engaged” With Ex-Unity Groups
China Joins Critics of Kimmel Show; Disney Should Worry
Columnist Richard Cohen Hoist With His Own Petard
In the end, it did not seem to matter whether Richard Cohen, the Washington Post columnist, was a victim of poor wording and poor editing. His past spoke more loudly.
Cohen, 72, has been a columnist at the Post since 1976, more than enough time to have built up a reservoir of comments viewed as anti-black. That overshadowed his protests that he is no racist and that his comments about interracial marriage have been willfully misinterpreted.
“There are four, and only four, Richard Cohen columns,” Alex Pareene wrote Tuesday for Salon in an essay headlined, “Richard Cohen: Please fire me.”
“1. Boring conventional political column
“2. Inscrutable, unfunny joke column
“3. ‘I am scared of black people’ column
“4. ‘I am shocked and outraged that people called me racist/idiotic/humorless’ column.”
In a commentary Monday about New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, Cohen included this paragraph about the ideological perspective of conservative Republicans:
“Today’s GOP is not racist, as Harry Belafonte alleged about the tea party, but it is deeply troubled — about the expansion of government, about immigration, about secularism, about the mainstreaming of what used to be the avant-garde. People with conventional views must repress a gag reflex when considering the mayor-elect of New York — a white man married to a black woman and with two biracial children. (Should I mention that Bill de Blasio’s wife, Chirlane McCray, used to be a lesbian?) This family represents the cultural changes that have enveloped parts — but not all — of America. To cultural conservatives, this doesn’t look like their country at all.”
“I don’t understand it,” Cohen told the Post’s Paul Farhi in a story about the furor the column drew, particularly for its characterization of “people with conventional views.”
“What I was doing was expressing not my own views but those of extreme right-wing Republican tea party people. I don’t have a problem with interracial marriage or same-sex marriage. In fact, I exult in them. It’s a slander” to suggest otherwise. “This is just below the belt. It’s a purposeful misreading of what I wrote.”
Fred Hiatt, the Post’s editorial page editor, took some of the blame. “Anyone reading Richard’s entire column will see he is just saying that some Americans still have a hard time dealing with interracial marriage,” Farhi quoted Hiatt as saying. “But Hiatt takes some of the heat himself, saying, ‘I erred in not editing that one sentence more carefully to make sure it could not be misinterpreted,’ ” Farhi wrote.
In fact, Hiatt was not the column’s only editor. “He is edited first by the Washington Post Writers Group, which then sends his column to subscribing newspapers, including ours,” Hiatt told Journal-isms by email. “We then have copy editors who review. But ultimately I am responsible for what appears on our oped page.”
Hiatt said that “a couple” of other journalists during the day asked for comment, nowhere near the number of writers who condemned Cohen without asking whether they read what they thought they did.
Nor did the 60 clients who receive Cohen’s column from the Washington Post Writers Group, according to Alan Shearer, its chief executive officer and editorial director. “Asked at the staff meeting and we haven’t yet heard anything from client editors or readers,” Shearer told Journal-isms by email Wednesday. “It might be early because frequently clients publish columns later in the week. No way of knowing how many have published it so far.”
It could be that Cohen’s self-admitted poorly worded passage got past editors because it seemed consistent with his previous views.
“This latest column isn’t his worst transgression,” Post reader A’Lelia Bundles, an author and former network news producer , wrote on Facebook. “His column last week about ’12 Years a Slave’ was just as bad because he sounded so uninformed and perhaps willfully unenlightened.
“Really? Seeing that movie was the first time he understood how horrible slavery was? Hard to believe that a man who has written so much about the Holocaust didn’t make at least a little pivot to find some parallels between these two crimes against humanity. And then there are the other columns that reflect a rather retrogressive view of women, young black men, etc. I’d be interested to know what part of the Washington Post readership is clamoring for him to stay. My guess is not many, though he’ll get some newfound defenders, not because they really agree with most of his views, but because they resent the accusation of racism.”
There have been other dust-ups. Farhi noted in his piece, “Cohen, for example, got a vehemently negative reaction this summer when he touched on George Zimmerman’s shooting of Trayvon Martin by writing: ‘I don’t like what George Zimmerman did, and I hate that Trayvon Martin is dead. But I also can understand why Zimmerman was suspicious and why he thought Martin was wearing a uniform we all recognize.’
“Perhaps his most infamous column was one in the Sunday Magazine in 1986 — Cohen has been writing a column for The Post since 1976 — that suggested that Georgetown store owners were justified in locking out young black customers because they were afraid of being robbed. That column helped inspire a campaign by local radio personality Cathy Hughes in which outraged readers dumped copies of the magazine at The Post’s front door.”
For Mother Jones, Matt Connolly listed “Richard Cohen’s 10 Worst Moments, Counted Down.”
Connolly overlooked Cohen’s columns linking the New York Times scandal over Jayson Blair’s plagiarism and fabrications to Blair’s race. “The answer appears to be precisely what the Times denies: favoritism based on race,” Cohen wrote in a 2003 column headlined “Blind Spot at N.Y. Times.” “Blair is black, and the Times, like other media organizations, is intent on achieving diversity. Sometimes this noble and essential goal comes down to a parody of affirmative action. That seems to be the case with Blair. . . .”
The Cohen column controversy even found its way into Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show” on Comedy Central Wednesday night, in a skit called “Racist or Not Racist?” . It also landed on Stephen Colbert’s “The Colbert Report” . On Twitter, a hashtag was created, #firerichardcohen.
If any good is to come from the latest brouhaha, perhaps one aspect is a discussion of the acceptability of interracial marriage. “A July poll from Gallup finds that 87 percent of Americans approve — up from 4 percent in 1959,” Ezra Klein wrote for the Post. But TaRessa Stovall, a biracial journalist who blogs at www.blackandblewish.com, says not to be misled.
“I will challenge everyone every chance I get for acting like the sight of an interracial couple or family or their offspring automatically generate a flood of warm-and-fuzzy feelings,” she wrote to her Facebook friends. “Puh-leeze! It is still controversial. Still pushes buttons. Still freaks folks out. Many folks. I’m not pointing fingers at individuals; growing numbers of folk don’t like it but are reluctantly accepting. Others are truly either neutral or indifferent. But not the majority, and it has nothing to do with party affiliations, tea or otherwise. Just be real, please. These issues are too, too urgent and the consequences far too serious for anything else. Thank you!”
A second takeaway might be the importance of good writing and editing, increasingly — and unfortunately — viewed as optional in the Internet age. The Cohen flap comes a week after CNN anchor Don Lemon was excoriated over a “Tom Joyner Show” radio commentary about New York’s stop-and-frisk policy. Lemon said his position was misinterpreted.
Journal-isms asked members of the Association of Opinion Journalists last week if they had advice for Lemon.
“This piece needed an editor,” messaged Jay Jochnowitz, editorial page editor of the Times Union in Albany, N.Y. “If he isn’t working with an editor, he should find a colleague he can at least bounce pieces off and trust to give him honest feedback.
“Second (and an editor or colleague might or might not have told him this), sometimes what you think is a great line is not. ‘Would you rather be politically correct or safe and alive’ is a snappy byte — if you’re defending stop and frisk. It is a loaded question that implies that the commentator looks down on political correctness. No wonder he found himself taken to task on social media by people who misinterpreted his opinion.
“I’d add that everyone needs an editor; I’m an editor but I write any number of editorials a week and always have another editor read them, not just for typos and errors but the whole range of critique including clarity of message.”
- Matt Bors, medium.com: Richard Cohen Apology Cartoon
- Dylan Byers, Politico: Soledad O’Brien to Richard Cohen: ‘Seriously?’ (July 18)
- Ta-Nehisi Coates blog, the Atlantic: Richard Cohen in Context
- Jelani Cobb, the New Yorker: Who’s Still Afraid of Interracial Marriage?
- ebony.com: The Interracial Marriage Gag Reflex?
- Garance Franke-Ruta, the Atlantic: Richard Cohen, Meet Helen Thomas
- Kristen Hare, Poynter Institute: Richard Cohen will keep writing ‘until Gawker sends over a hit man’
- Jason Linkins, Huffington Post: Here’s A Crazy Idea I Just Had: Someone Should Maybe Edit The Washington Post
- Greg Mitchell, the Nation: Richard Cohen’s ‘Conventional’ Racism at ‘The Washington Post’
- Hamilton Nolan, Gawker: Richard Cohen Has Written Something Insane About Interracial Marriage
- Charles P. Pierce, Esquire: Stop This Man Before He Writes Something Again
- Rashad Robinson, ColorOfChange.org: The Washington Post Urged to Fire Columnist Richard Cohen for Deeply Racist de Blasio Editorial (2nd item)
- Adam Serwer, MSNBC: WaPo’s Richard Cohen misses the mark on race — again
- Sally Steenland, Center for American Progress: Faith in Values: Americans See Opportunities in Rising Diversity (Oct. 30)
- Cenk Uygur, “The Young Turks”: Washington Post Writer’s Racist Rants (video)
- Jack White, The Root: Richard Cohen’s Racial ‘Groundhog Day’ (Nov. 14)
“$200 for Every Red-Skin Sent to Purgatory”
” ‘It was only five generations ago that a white man could get money for one of my grandfather’s scalps,’ writes Dallas Goldtooth on a Facebook post,” Rachael Johnson wrote Wednesday for Indian Country Today Media Network. “At this time…it was ‘Redskin’ that was used to describe us.’
“To the left of Goldtooth’s words, a newspaper clipping from 1863 advertises a reward, ‘The State reward for dead Indians has been increased to $200 for every red-skin sent to Purgatory. This sum is more than the dead bodies of all the Indians east of the Red River are worth.’
” ‘The ‘Redskins’ they were talking about were my ancestors,’ Goldtooth said during a phone interview. ‘Here in front of me was the evidence.’ . . .”
- indianz.com: Shoni Schimmel calls for end to racist sports mascot
- Eugene Kane, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Stop using offensive nicknames
Black Press Group Says NFL Neglects Black Businesses
“The chairman of the National Newspaper Publishers Association, a federation of more than 200 Black-owned newspapers, says the Washington Redskins’ team — under fire from a Richmond, Va. publisher — is in sync with the entire National Football League in its apparent oppressive treatment of Black businesses and consumers,” Hazel Trice Edney reported for her Trice Edney News Wire.
” ‘It’s almost a slave mentality. They put us on the field and we entertain the master but we’re not reaping any benefits from the business side of it,’ [Cloves] Campbell says. ‘It’s not just the Redskins. If you look around the country, the NFL as a whole pretty much neglects Black businesses and the Black community,’ said Campbell, publisher of the Arizona Informant Newspaper.
“He continued, ‘Here in Arizona, our Arizona Cardinals does zero with the Black community. Every now and then they might show up for a token Black event. But, I don’t see our African-American newspaper here in Phoenix or in Arizona being supported by the Arizona Cardinals. I believe if you called other newspapers that have [teams] in their markets, I don’t believe they’re doing much for them either. I believe the NFL as a whole takes the Black community for granted although we are their major product on the field.’
“Campbell was responding to questions pertaining to a conflict between NNPA member Ray Boone, editor/publisher of the award-winning Richmond Free Press, and the Richmond-based Washington Redskins Training Camp, which is partially owned by Bon Secours Health System.
“In a letter to NAACP Chairman Roslyn Brock and CC’d to Campbell, Boone states that the team contracted no business with Black-owned or locally owned businesses at its first Richmond training camp between July 25 and August 16. . . .”
- J.R. Gamble, the Shadow League: Dolphins Fall Without Gentle Jonathan and N-Word Crusader Incognito
- Tom Joyner, Black America Web: Bruised Feelings Vs. Bruised Brains
Philippines Knocked Off Some Far East Front Pages
Although the Philippines typhoon left thousands dead after striking on Friday and created the need for a massive relief effort, it is no longer the biggest news in the Far East, according to daily newspapers in the region.
“Protests in the city. And a world court decision to give disputed Thai/Cambodian land to Cambodia means Typhoon is no longer a big story even in Asia. Not front page in Bangkok. Wasn’t in Korea,” columnist Emil Guillermo, who traveled from the San Francisco Bay area to Thailand, messaged Journal-isms on Wednesday.
“Granted these are aftermath stories, but on the Wed ‘Nation,’ one of the English dailies it was A4.
“In the Tuesday Bangkok Post, another English daily it was A7…on Tuesday.
“But there’s big news here, major public demos against amnesty for ousted leader Thaksin, and a world court order giving disputed Thai/Cambodian land to Cambodia.
“I didn’t see any papers in Korea, I was only in the airport briefly, but didn’t feel much buzz about the storm. . . .”
The Associated Press reported Wednesday that the death toll rose to 2,357, according to a national tally kept by the disaster agency. The report said 600,000 people were displaced.
- Emil Guillermo, CNN: For Filipinos, despair and prayers
Tanzina Vega Named to New N.Y. Times Race Beat
The New York Times is moving staff reporter Tanzina Vega to its national desk, where she will cover a new beat — race and ethnicity. Vega announced the news on Twitter, Chris O’Shea reported Wednesday for FishbowlNY.
In a memo to the staff, Times National Editor Alison Mitchell and Deputy National Editor Ethan Bronner said, “Tanzina covered the controversy over whether the actress Zoe Saldana, who is light skinned, should be playing the darker skinned Nina Simone. She told of the difficulties the broadcast networks are having drawing American Hispanics away from Spanish-language networks. And she wrote a profile of Eva Longoria who was positioning herself as the Hollywood power player on Latino issues at the same time that she was drawing some criticism for producing a show about Latina maids.
“In a country experiencing profound change in its racial and ethnic fabric, these kinds of stories seem like fertile ground for the national desk. So we are delighted to announce that Tanzina is joining us to pioneer exploring America’s new diversity and its tension points . . . .”
- Christine Haughney, New York Times: Three Journalists at The Times Are Departing
LatinoVoices Picks 13 “Top Young Latinos” in Newsrooms
“So much is changing so fast in Latino media,” Pablo Manriquez wrote Tuesday for HuffPost LatinoVoices. “What began with the launch of FOX News Latino in 2011 created a booming new ethnic media market, as Huffington Post, NBC, CNN, ESPN, and others quickly followed suit. Late last month, Univision joined ABC News to launch the most significant investment in Latino media to-date: Fusion, a 24-hour cable news channel with a target audience of English-speaking Hispanic millennials.
“During the early years of this decade young Latinos have been arriving motivated and succeeding quickly in American newsrooms. It is now up to the rising class of young newsroom Latinos to keep moving in and moving up as mentors and facilitators for others. While there is still a lot of work to do, below are 13 top young Latinos in American newsrooms (listed alphabetically by first name) who are leading the way. . . .”
Listed were Adrian Carrasquillo, BuzzFeed; Alejandra Oraa, CNN en Español; Alicia Menendez, Fusion; Arelis Hernandez, Orlando Sentinel; Bryan Llenas, Fox News; Francisco Cortes, Fox News Latino; Julio Varela, Al Jazeera; Enrique Acevedo, Univision; Marie D. De Jesus, Houston Chronicle; Nick Valencia, CNN; Roque Planas, Huffington Post; Russ Contreras, Associated Press; and Sandra Garcia, New York Times.
Manriquez concluded with, “Surely this list is not all-inclusive. Who is missing? Let me know in the comments or tweet them at @vato.”
China Joins Critics of Kimmel Show; Disney Should Worry
“With big plans for China, the Walt Disney Co. (DIS) can’t afford a long fight over the now-infamous segment on Disney-owned ABC last month in which a little blond-haired boy told Jimmy Kimmel that the U.S. should fix its financial problems by killing all the people in China,” Bruce Einhorn reported Tuesday for Bloomberg Businessweek.
“Gee, don’t kids say the darndest things? The comedian didn’t help matters by following up the tot’s comment by asking the other children on the panel, ‘Should we allow the Chinese to live?’ Chinese-Americans are understandably upset and have demanded apologies from Kimmel and ABC.
“Now the Chinese government is getting in on the umbrage action, with a spokesman yesterday calling on the network to ‘respond to the Chinese community’s demand in a sincere way,’ the official Xinhua news agency reported. According to Xinhua, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang added that ‘spreading racism and hatred goes against the media’s social responsibility.’
“In a worrisome sign for Disney, the call for an apology came after ABC had indeed apologized. . . .”
- Arthur Dong, Asian Week: Kimmel’s Shameful “Kill Everyone In China” Remarks
Short Takes
- In San Antonio, “Eight people were arrested Tuesday afternoon in protest of a judge’s ruling that allowed the demolition of the rest of the 1955 Univision building, 411 E. César E. Chávez Boulevard, last home to KWEX-TV,” Benjamin Olivo reported for the San Antonio Express-News. “The peaceful standoff started soon after Judge Janet Littlejohn ruled in district court to dissolve a temporary restraining order that had halted the razing of the building last week. But by that time, more than half the structure had been reduced to rubble.” Olivo also wrote,”The building is the birthplace of Spanish-language broadcasting in the nation. The Westside Preservation Alliance and the San Antonio Conservation Society had been fighting for months to get the mid-century building labeled as historic. . . .”
- “E.W. Scripps Co. (SSP)’s Scripps Howard News Service, which fed syndicated stories to papers across the U.S. since World War I, plans to shut down, becoming the latest symbol of readers’ shift away from print media,” Nick Turner reported Wednesday for Bloomberg News. “McClatchy-Tribune Information Services, a joint venture of McClatchy Co. (MNI) and Tribune Co. (TRBAA), will take over Scripps Howard’s clients, according to a statement yesterday. The transition is expected to be completed by January, the companies said.” Mizell Stewart III, E.W. Scripps Co.’s VP/content, newspapers, messaged Journal-isms, “It is too early to say exactly who will be affected. Seven positions associated with Scripps Howard News Service will be eliminated, but all will be considered for the 10 new positions in the digital operation. Interviews will begin shortly.” More in Scripps Co. release.
- Al Jazeera America turns three months next week. Network president Kate O’Brian told Jordan Chariton of TVNewser, “We are executing on the mission that we set out when we put this thing together. And that is to give a voice to the voiceless parts of the country and stories, report the under-reported stories that our competition is not doing, and to really go deep into some of the more interesting and unknown parts of this country, and frankly of the world. And we’re doing that literally every day. . . .”
- “Broadcaster Julie Chen recently admitted she got eyelid surgery when she was 25, after a news director told her she wouldn’t get ahead without it. An agent reaffirmed that belief,” Ko Im, a reporter at WUSA-TV in Washington, wrote Monday for the Huffington Post. “I had blepharoplasty, too, but before I entered the broadcast industry. It was like a graduation gift, one my parents supported financially and otherwise. The size of my eyes did not significantly change. . . . But like Chen, I wonder: Had I not gone under the knife, would I be where I am today? . . .”
- “The International Press Institute (IPI) today welcomed indications that Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta will not sign a controversial media bill that was approved by parliament last month,” the press-freedom institute reported Tuesday. It also said, “A presidential advisor told the Daily Nation that Kenyatta declined to sign the legislation on grounds that it conflicted with constitutional protections for press freedom. . . .”
- “The board of the Pacifica Foundation on Monday appointed Summer Reese executive director of the five-station radio network, a position she has held on an interim basis since August 2012,” Mike Janssen reported Monday for Current.org.
- In a column for Britain’s Guardian newspaper, Orville Lloyd Douglas wrote, “A lot of black men don’t want to acknowledge the feelings of disgust we have for ourselves. It is considered emasculating to even admit the existence of such thoughts. I think my own self-hated manifests from the exterior, from the outside world. It is born out of the despair and the unhappiness I see within a lot of young black men. I can honestly say I hate being a black male.” Douglas based his thoughts on his experiences in Canada.
- “For every Syrian who escaped the civil war in his or her homeland by crossing international borders, there are three more displaced within the country,” Andrew Lam wrote Wednesday for New America Media. He also wrote that worldwide, “For the majority of the displaced population, their stories aren’t told. But their numbers are increasing. According to the [U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees], there are 26.4 million internally displaced people in the world in 2011. But some organizations estimate that the actual number of [internally displaced persons] is easily twice the number of internationally recognized refugees, if not triple that amount. The figure can fluctuate due to the sudden outbreak civil war or a natural disaster such as an erupting volcano, tsunami or earthquake. . . .”
Follow Richard Prince on Twitter @princeeditor
Facebook users: “Like” “Richard Prince’s Journal-isms” on Facebook.
