Maynard Institute archives

S.C. Newspapers Play Role in Flag Debate

by richard0616

The State Out Front; Black Paper Most Hardline

Obama’s Mention of N-Word Gets Bleeps, Headlines

“Meet the Press” Blunders With All-Black Inmate Video

Derrick Jackson Taking Buyout from Boston Globe

Lester Holt Starts New Role; Max Robinson Would Approve

NPR Reveals WWII Experiments on Enlisted Men of Color

Facebook Wants Applicant of Color for Each Open Position

MTV, Vargas Plan Film on Young Whites’ Racial Identity

Cari Champion Promoted to Anchor of “SportsCenter”

Puerto Rican Day Planners Accept Daily News Statement

Short Takes

The State Out Front; Black Paper Most Hardline

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s call for removal of the Confederate battle flag from the state Capitol grounds Monday continues a decades-long fight in which the state’s newspapers have played a role, though it was not always clear whether they were leading or reflecting public opinion.

“Two decades ago, [The State’s] editorial board began a campaign to remove the Confederate flag from the State House dome, when the issue divided the Republican and Democratic candidates for governor. Our argument was two-fold: It was flying inappropriately in a position of sovereignty, and it was needlessly dividing our people,” the State, based in the state capital of Columbia, editorialized in October.

Haley, a Republican, was for keeping the flag; state Sen. Vincent Sheheen, a Democrat, favored taking it down.

While the flag issue was not the main focus of the campaign, seven general-circulation newspapers backed Sheheen, and two Lowcountry newspapers chose Haley, the Associated Press reported at the time.

The AP report said, “The Post and Courier of Charleston applauded Haley’s views on government streamlining and reduced government spending.”

Charles Rowe, editorial page editor of the Post and Courier of Charleston, part of Lowcountry, went further back.

He told Journal-isms by email, “One of our predecessors, the Evening Post, under Arthur Wilcox wrote in 1969 that the flag should come down. He later took the same editorial position with The News and Courier after he became editor there. The Post and Courier subsequently supported the legislative compromise in 2000.”

Not all Post and Courier columnists agreed. On Oct. 3, Brian Hicks advised candidate Sheheen, “Here’s a little free political advice: Look away, look away, look away. This is Dixieland. . . . He should just let sleeping Confederates lie, or else his campaign might end up looking like Columbia after Sherman rolled through town.”

According to Charleston’s International African American Museum, South Carolina is the only state founded exclusively as a slave colony. Nearly 80 percent of African Americans, it said, can potentially trace an ancestor who was brought through Charleston.

“South Carolina was the last state to fly the Confederate battle flag from its Capitol dome until in 2000 it was moved to a 30-foot flagpole in front of the building,” the Times and Democrat of Orangeburg noted in a story Friday on Charleston’s race relations.

“Pat Sullivan, a professor of history at the University of South Carolina, noted that the flag is prominently placed in the city near where [mass shooting] suspect Dylann Roof was living. The flag was hoisted above the Statehouse in 1962, at the height of the civil rights movement.

” ‘The flag flying on the Statehouse property is in a place of honor,’ Sullivan said. ‘In the ’60s it came up in that space in defense of segregation.’ . . . “

Moving the flag from the Capitol dome to a flagpole in front of the building was part of a compromise that the State newspaper “could live with,” Cindi Ross Scoppe, associate editor of the State and its one-person editorial page department, told Journal-isms by telephone. “Our position was it was much less bad” than having the flag atop the Capitol. But “we would have been perfectly happy” with its complete removal, she said.

The Charleston Chronicle, a 6,000-circulation black newspaper, has taken a harder line, Managing Editor Tolbert Smalls Jr. told Journal-isms by telephone.

The Chronicle also wants the removal of the downtown statue of John C. Calhoun (1782-1850), the South Carolina senator and U.S. vice president who championed state’s rights and slavery. “Anything that reflects slavery should come down, starting with the Confederate flag,” Smalls said.

A protester apparently agreed. On Sunday, police noticed that a Confederate monument in White Point Garden in Charleston’s Battery was vandalized with messages that included “Black Lives Matter.”

On Monday, Haley changed her mind on the battle flag.

Amid the national visibility of the issue given the flag by shooting suspect Roof, whose car bore the Confederate symbol, Haley called for its removal from the Statehouse grounds, saying the killings of nine churchgoers at Emanuel AME in Charleston last week mandated a change in the state’s heart.

“Haley was flanked by members of the Legislature, Charleston Mayor Joe Riley, the heads of both major political parties in the state and U.S. Sens. Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott, and U.S. Reps. Jim Clyburn and Mark Sanford, . . . .” the Post and Courier reported.

In an editorial posted Monday night, the Post and Courier agreed. “It’s clear that the compromise hasn’t succeeded,” it said, referring to the flag’s 2000 move to the Capitol grounds.

It added, “Some critics view it as a confirmation of South Carolina’s adherence to the failed policies of bygone years — slavery, secession, Jim Crow, segregation and the state’s initial opposition to federal civil rights laws.

“Advocates of the flag say that it represents the struggle of this state during the nation’s Civil War — a war in which more than 20,000 South Carolinians died. It was a war fought by the ancestors of many of today’s South Carolinians, and it reminds those descendants of the gallantry and sacrifice during that bloody conflict.

“For other South Carolinians, however, the flag has nothing but dire associations that reflect the race hatred and lawlessness of those, such as the Ku Klux Klan, who appropriated it for their own purposes. Flag opponents include black and white South Carolinians. . . .”

The editorial concluded, “The Legislature has the opportunity to remove the flag before the end of this month’s extended session. It can revise the terms of the session, and vote to bring the flag down.

“Do it to honor the nine people who were killed at Emanuel AME Church.

“Do it now.”

Confederate symbols are embedded in other Southern flags, among them those of Alabama, Arkansas and Mississippi.

Obama’s Mention of N-Word Gets Bleeps, Headlines

“In President Obama’s interview with comedian Marc Maron for Maron’s WTF podcast, which was posted Monday, Obama made a vague but worthwhile point about racism in America,” Dara Lind wrote Monday for vox.com. “Some kinds of explicit racism might be considered bad manners now, but that doesn’t mean underlying problems have been addressed:

” ‘Racism, we are not cured of it. And it’s not just a matter of not being polite to say “ni**er” in public. That’s not the measure of whether racism still exists or not. It’s not just a matter of overt discrimination. Societies don’t, overnight, completely erase everything that happened 200 or 300 years prior.

“This statement can be interpreted as a critique of the media, as much as anything. There’s much more interest in covering discrete incidents of outright racism than there is in covering subtler but still influential ways that racial bias shapes society. Donald Sterling got pushed out as owner of the LA Clippers for telling his girlfriend not to bring black men to games, not for his history of lawsuits over racist housing practices.

“So how did the media respond to Obama’s critique? By leading with his use of the n-word . . .”

Tom Kludt wrote Monday for CNNMoney.com, “Fox News and MSNBC debated Obama’s use of the word but bleeped it in news reports. 

“CNN, the owner of this website, initially did the same thing, but executives soon decided it should be aired without any editing. (Producers were advised to air it judiciously, only when the full context is included.)

“Similarly, CNN.com spelled out the word in its story about the interview but not in the headline. The New York Times printed the word, while Politico covered it with dashes and some media outlets revisited their initial coverage decisions as the day wore on. . . .”

On the evening news, NBC bleeped the word, but a CBS spokesman said that his network did not. Nor did CNN, a spokeswoman said.

On the “PBS NewsHour,” co-anchor Gwen Ifill messaged Journal-isms, “We did not bleep. We warned viewers in advance. But we used it as a launching pad for a broader discussion about domestic terrorism — not about the word.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said, according to NPR, “The president doesn’t regret using the word, because now more people are listening.”

NPR reported the story with this addendum: “Language advisory: Quotes in this story contain potentially offensive language.”

“Meet the Press” Blunders With All-Black Inmate Video

” ‘Meet The Press’ is taking heat for a video the program aired about gun violence,” Adam Goldberg reported Sunday for the Huffington Post.

“In the wake of the Charleston church shooting, host Chuck Todd introduced a video on Sunday morning featuring testimonies of convicted murderers, calling the issue ‘color-blind.’ Inmates at New York’s Sing Sing Correctional Facility opened up about the regret they had after using guns. However, only black prisoners were shown.

“The homogeneous racial makeup of the video struck some viewers as inappropriate, especially given the apparently racially-motivated killings by a white man this week of 9 black victims at the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in South Carolina.

” ‘Meet The Press’ panelist and Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson pointed out the apparent disconnect.

” ‘I thought that was a very powerful piece,’ he said. ‘One small thing I would mention, because I haven’t seen the whole piece, . . . there wasn’t a terribly diverse set of people who were talking. Right now, we’re talking about a horrific crime committed by a white man. We’re talking about the search for two escaped murderers who are white men. So, we should point out that this is not just an African-American problem.’

“Todd responded that ‘it wasn’t intended to be that way.’

“Almost immediately after the segment aired on Sunday, the network started receiving negative feedback,” Hadea Gold wrote Monday for Politico. “Todd also apologized for the segment on Twitter.

” ‘We’ve heard you. We clearly got it wrong and we are sorry,’ Todd wrote.

“According to Mediaite, Todd re-did the intro to the video when it aired in later markets, adding a disclaimer: ‘The circumstances you are about to see are very different from the racist violence in Charleston. In this case the inmates are African-American that you’ll hear from. But their lessons remain important. We simply ask you to look at this as a colorblind issue that’s about simply gun violence.’ “

NBC spokeswomen did not respond when asked by email whether there were consequences for the person responsible for the video.

Derrick Jackson Taking Buyout from Boston Globe

Derrick Z. Jackson, a columnist for the Boston Globe whom President Obama has said he read while a student at Harvard, has told friends and colleagues that he is taking a buyout and leaving the Globe at the end of the month, his friend Les Payne, a former Newsday editor and columnist, told Journal-isms on Monday.

Jackson, 59, winner of several awards, has been a Globe columnist since 1988. He is the latest black columnist to leave his post since September. Also retiring or taking buyouts have been Bob Ray Sanders at the Star-Telegram in Fort Worth, Texas; Eugene Kane at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel; Merlene Davis at the Lexington (Ky.) Herald Leader; Fannie Flono at the Charlotte (N.C.) Observer; Rodney Brooks of USA Today; and Douglas C. Lyons at the SunSentinel in Fort Lauderdale.

Asked who would fill the void Jackson leaves, Ellen Clegg, editorial page editor at the Globe, said by telephone, “I don’t have any comment right now.” Some columnists, such as Kane, made arrangements to continue writing even though they had left the payroll. Kane eventually left altogether. Brooks joined the Washington Post.

Jackson was a 2001 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in commentary, a two-time winner and three-time finalist for commentary awards from the National Education Writers Association and a five-time winner and 12-time finalist for political and sports commentary from the National Association of Black Journalists, among other honors. He came to the Globe from Newsday and is a co-founder of the William Monroe Trotter group of African American columnists.

Jackson often wrote about nature and the environment. In May, Yale University Press published “Project Puffin: The Improbable Quest to Bring a Beloved Seabird Back to Egg Rock,” written by Jackson and Stephen W. Kress of the National Audubon Society.

Lester Holt opened Monday’s “NBC Nightly News” with a report about the Confederate flag controversy. (video)

Lester Holt Starts New Role; Max Robinson Would Approve

“It was hardly Lester Holt’s first time anchoring NBC Nightly News, but tonight was a moment nonetheless: for the first time, Holt was anchoring his Nightly News, free of the uncertainty, and complete with his name attached to the newscast in the open and all of the graphics,” Mark Joyella wrote Monday for TVNewser.

” ‘As of tonight,’ he said at the close of the broadcast, ‘this program has a new name. And I’m honored to say, a new anchor. Your loyalty and viewership during a difficult time has been appreciated by all of us on this program, and I want to express my sincere thanks to my friend and colleague Brian Williams for his kind words and support.’ “

Meanwhile, Laura M. Holson, writing in the New York Times’ Sunday print edition, introduced younger readers to an earlier “first,” Max Robinson.

“When NBC announced on Thursday that Lester Holt would replace the beleaguered Brian Williams as anchor of ‘NBC Nightly News,’ it was widely applauded,” Holson wrote.

“Mr. Holt, 56 and African-American, was hailed on Twitter as a trailblazer — the ‘first black news anchor’ — by Beverly Johnson, a groundbreaker in her own right as the first black model to appear on the cover of Vogue.

” ‘It’s about time!’ Richard Prince, a columnist who writes on media and race, told CNN Money. And the National Association of Black Journalists called Mr. Holt’s new role ‘thrilling’ and ‘historic’ in a statement.

“But few news reports mentioned or did more than give a passing reference to the pioneering journalist who predated Mr. Holt in the anchor’s chair: Max Robinson, who died in 1988 from complications of AIDS. He was the first African-American to co-anchor the news on a national network, on ‘ABC World News Tonight,’ more than 35 years ago. . . .”

Holson also wrote, ” ‘Lester Holt is in a more enviable position than Max,’ said Barbara Matusow, a journalist and author of ‘The Evening Stars,’ a behind-the-scenes look at network news. ‘Everyone is pulling for Lester Holt. That wasn’t the case for Max Robinson.’ . . .  ‘Max, himself, felt a victim of racism,’ she said. ‘He had his ideas and they didn’t take to them. Instead it was, ‘Here, read your copy.’ She added, ‘I think it was a shock to go to a network that looked down on you.’ . . .”

NPR Reveals WWII Experiments on Enlisted Men of Color

“As a young U.S. Army soldier during World War II, Rollins Edwards knew better than to refuse an assignment,” Caitlin Dickerson reported Monday for NPR.

“When officers led him and a dozen others into a wooden gas chamber and locked the door, he didn’t complain. None of them did. Then, a mixture of mustard gas and a similar agent called lewisite was piped inside.

” ‘It felt like you were on fire,’ recalls Edwards, now 93 years old. ‘Guys started screaming and hollering and trying to break out. And then some of the guys fainted. And finally they opened the door and let us out, and the guys were just, they were in bad shape.’

“Edwards was one of 60,000 enlisted men enrolled in a once-secret government program — formally declassified in 1993 — to test mustard gas and other chemical agents on American troops. But there was a specific reason he was chosen: Edwards is African-American.

” ‘They said we were being tested to see what effect these gases would have on black skins,’ Edwards says.

“An NPR investigation has found evidence that Edwards’ experience was not unique. While the Pentagon admitted decades ago that it used American troops as test subjects in experiments with mustard gas, until now, officials have never spoken about the tests that grouped subjects by race.

“For the first time, NPR tracked down some of the men used in the race-based experiments. And it wasn’t just African-Americans. Japanese-Americans were used as test subjects, serving as proxies for the enemy so scientists could explore how mustard gas and other chemicals might affect Japanese troops. Puerto Rican soldiers were also singled out. . . .”

An editor’s note added, “This is Part 1 of a two-part investigation on mustard gas testing conducted by the U.S. military during World War II. The second story in this report will examine the failures by the Department of Veterans Affairs to provide benefits to those injured by military mustard gas experiments.”

MTV, Vargas Plan Film on Young Whites’ Racial Identity

Jose Antonio Vargas in the preview of “White People” (video)

“MTV has teamed with filmmaker Jose Antonio Vargas to create a documentary focusing on how young white people perceive their racial identity in an increasingly multiracial America,” R. Thomas Umstead reported Monday for Multichannel News.

“White People — part of MTV’s ‘Look Different’ anti-bias campaign — will air July 22 on MTV as well as via MTV.com, the MTV App, MTV’s Facebook page and its YouTube channel, said network officials. The documentary will follow the lives of five young white people from varying backgrounds who participated in conversations at their local schools and community centers about race, said MTV.

” ‘Whiteness often remains unexamined in conversations about race in this country, even as it acts as the implicit norm against which other racial identities are judged,’ said Stephen Friedman, President of MTV. ‘By shining a spotlight on whiteness, we hope White People will serve as a powerful conversation starter that encourages our audience to address racial bias through honest, judgment-free dialogue.’

“Added Vargas: ‘Race is a sensitive subject no matter who you are and our goal with the documentary is to treat each person, story and community featured in the documentary with the utmost respect, all while exploring what race means to them.’ . . .”

Cari Champion Promoted to Anchor of “SportsCenter”

“ESPN’s Cari Champion has received a promotion in every sense of the word, moving from host of hot-take incubator ‘First Take’ on ESPN2 to the newest anchor of ‘SportsCenter,’ Matt Bonesteel reported Friday for the Washington Post.

“According to Debbie Emery of the Wrap, which first reported the news Thursday, Champion will begin her morning ‘SportsCenter’ duties in mid-July and will take part in a series of ‘interactions’ about sports and entertainment with the crew at ‘Good Morning America,’ which airs on ESPN sister station ABC.

” ‘Being in the middle of Stephen A. [Smith] and Skip Bayless: not an easy challenge,’ Champion said on her ‘Be Honest’ podcast. ‘If you were to ask anyone, I probably had the toughest job in the building.’

” ‘First Take’ has grown from mere midday filler on ESPN2 to critically reviled midday filler that has become a success in the ratings department. It probably should be noted that most of the critics’ ire is directed at the show’s two main personalities — Stephen A. Smith and Skip Bayless — and a debate-everything format that quickly grows tiresome, not at Champion. . . .”

Puerto Rican Day Planners Accept Daily News Statement

The National Association of Hispanic Journalists and one organizer of the National Puerto Rican Day Parade were critical of a weekend editorial in the Daily News of New York explaining the News’ photo of two scantily clad women in Times Square holding a Puerto Rican flags with the words ‘Borricua’ and ‘Pto Rico’ painted on their behinds.

However, the parade committee issued an official statement Monday calling the News’ response “fair and appropriate.”

“We acknowledge the New York Daily News for providing the editorial space to correct the inaccurate reporting, and misrepresentation of our Parade and our people,” the committee said on its Facebook page.

“It is a strong and honest step to rectify a mistake, recognize the community’s reaction, and respond in a kind, fair and appropriate manner. The Daily News’ editorial is proof that the community has been heard, and a reminder of the need for accurate, serious and responsible news reporting.”

Organizers said previously that they had severed all ties with the News.

Short Takes

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