Maynard Institute archives

“Media Throng” Follows Cosby to Court

by richard0723

Returning Jan. 4, barring breaking news

Daily News Cover: “He Said-She Said” 55 Times Over

N.Y. Times Says a White Tamir Rice Would Be Alive Today

. . . Media Want Cameras for Officer’s Murder Trial

Demographer: Changing U.S. Demands Attention to Diversity

In Twin Cities, It’s Back to the Future on Media Distrust

No Full-Time Black Political Cartoonists at Major Dailies

Animated “Bordertown” Series Debuts on Sunday

Giago Signs Agreement to Buy Historic Wounded Knee

Afghan Journalist Now the Voice of ISIS

Short Takes

Daily News Cover: “He Said-She Said” 55 Times Over

“A media throng” followed Bill Cosby on Wednesday as he reported for his arraignment outside Philadelphia on a charge of felony indecent assault, reviving a decade-old allegation that he drugged and sexually attacked a former Temple University employee.

No cameras were allowed in the courtroom, but Philadelphia television stations streamed Cosby’s arrival, the network evening news programs led with the story and social media related the Cosby case to racial issues and the criminal justice system. CNN posted video of its story on Twitter.

“Reporters waited for hours outside the small courthouse in Elkins Park, where Cosby arrived in a black-and-white hooded sweater on Wednesday afternoon for his arraignment,” Abby Ohlheiser, Niraj Chokshi and Paul Farhi reported for the Washington Post.

In an early version of the story for the Philadelphia Inquirer, Jeremy Roebuck and Laura McCrystal reported, “Amid a media throng, Cosby arrived in a black Chevy Suburban Wednesday afternoon for an initial appearance before a magistrate district judge in Elkins Park.

“Looking frail, he was guided by defense lawyer Brian McMonagle into the small courtroom, where a judge informed him of the charge and set his bail at $1 million, of which Cosby must post 10 percent. Then he headed to Cheltenham Township police for booking.

“The charge against the 78-year-old, a television celebrity once celebrated as ‘America’s Dad,’ followed more than a year of claims by scores of women who said Cosby had sexually assaulted them — sometimes after drugging them — during a span of four decades.

“Cosby has repeatedly denied assaulting anyone, including Andrea Constand — the woman at the center of the emerging criminal case. . . .”

Philadelphia’s WCAU-TV reminded viewers that “NBC10 Investigators reporter Harry Hairston was first to report that Cosby was expected to face criminal charges.” WCAU’s Rosemary Connors reported that while Cosby ignored all questions, “as you see, we captured his every move.”

On “NBC Nightly News,” substitute anchor Kate Snow narrated an excerpt of her October “Dateline” interview with more than two dozen other Cosby accusers.

The “CBS Evening News” interviewed former Boston Globe staffer Renee Graham, who explained that the magnitude of the story stemmed from such a large “fall from grace.”

Several websites posted the 23-page complaint [PDF].

At about 6:30 p.m. ET, the Daily News in New York tweeted an early version of Thursday’s front page, which referred to its editorial inside. The front page headline was, “After 55+ Allegations, Cosby Finally Busted.”

That line was followed, in larger type, by, “He Said-She Said”and then 17 lines of descending type size that repeated “she said” 55 times.

“While sentiment on social media weighed heavily against Cosby, many of the hottest threads featured fierce debates over the often-diverging outcomes of U.S. criminal investigations depending on whether alleged perpetrators are white or black,” Angela Moon and Melissa Fares reported Wednesday for Reuters. “Cosby is black.

“On the heavily trending #BlackLivesMatter hashtag on Twitter, for example, many users contrasted the willingness of the Pennsylvania district attorney to charge Cosby without a grand jury indictment while a number of other U.S. prosecutors have not pursued a similar path when white police officers stood accused killing black men and youths. Just this week, a grand jury in Ohio declined to bring charges against two Cleveland police officers involved in the 2014 shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice.

“Twitter user Tony McKnight (@williecaine) said: ‘So no grand jury for “the Coz*.” If only he’d been nicknamed “the Cop.” ‘ *notintendedasanendorsementofrape’

“Another Twitter user Barbara E. Allen (@BA1245) wrote: ‘Why is it that Bill Cosby can be charged but the cop who murdered Tamir Rice’s can’t? #TamirRice #BlackLivesMatter’ . . .

Moon and Fares added, “More than two thirds of the total mentions of Cosby on Twitter, Facebook and Google ranked as negative, according to social media analytics firm Zoomph, with just 10 percent rated as positive.

“Another 20 percent were scored as neutral. . . .”

In the Daily Beast, Jay Michaelson told readers, “Bill Cosby would never have been arrested today were it not for a determined victim, intrepid reporters, a D.A. ready to take the case, and a judge who wouldn’t let him off the hook.”

He added, “Cosby might have avoided prosecution today were it not for the efforts of the Associated Press to unseal those 2005 and 2006 statements” from a civil suit filed by Constand but settled out of court.

“In a letter to the court holding the documents, the AP argued that, in light of the new accusations, the public interest in the Cosby case (reignited by [comedian Hannibal] Buress) outweighed Cosby’s interest in his privacy. . . .”

N.Y. Times Says a White Tamir Rice Would Be Alive Today

In a strongly worded editorial, the New York Times editorialized Tuesday that “Tamir Rice of Cleveland would be alive today had he been a white 12-year-old playing with a toy gun in just about any middle-class neighborhood in the country on the afternoon of Nov. 22, 2014.

“But Tamir, who was shot to death by a white police officer that day, had the misfortune of being black in a poor area of Cleveland, where the police have historically behaved as an occupying force that shoots first and asks questions later. To grow up black and male in such a place is to live a highly circumscribed life, hemmed in by forces that deny your humanity and conspire to kill you.

“Those forces hovered over the proceedings on Monday when a grand jury declined to indict Officer Timothy Loehmann in the killing and Timothy McGinty, the Cuyahoga County prosecutor, explained why he had asked the grand jurors to not bring charges. Mr. McGinty described the events leading up to Tamir’s death as tragic series of errors and ‘miscommunications’ that began when a 911 caller said a male who was ‘probably a juvenile’ was waving a ‘probably fake’ gun at people in a park.

“The fact that those caveats never reached Officer Loehmann — who shot the child within seconds of arriving on the scene — was more than just an administrative misstep. It reflects an utter disregard for the lives of the city’s black residents. That disregard pervades every aspect of this case . . .

Meanwhile, “Protesters again took to the streets of downtown Cleveland Wednesday” to protest the grand jury’s decision not to indict,” Patrick Cooley reported for cleveland.com.

“Demonstrators called for the resignation of Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy J. McGinty, as well as the resignations of Timothy Loehmann — the officer who fatally shot Tamir within seconds of arriving at the Cudell Recreation Center on Nov. 22, 2014 — and Loehmann’s partner, Frank Garmback.

“Demonstrators plan to gather at the Justice Center again on Thursday at 9 p.m. for another protest and march they hope will ‘shut down the city.’ . . .”

. . . Media Want Cameras for Officer’s Murder Trial

“Let’s see the whole trial,” the Chicago Sun-Times editorialized on Wednesday.

“Let’s see and hear the opening arguments, the testimony of every eyewitness and expert witness, and all the physical evidence. Let’s see every courtroom exhibit. Let’s see and hear the closing arguments.

“The coming trial of Police Officer Jason Van Dyke, accused of first-degree murder in the shooting death of Laquan McDonald, first and foremost must be about determining with scrupulous fairness Officer Van Dyke’s guilt or innocence. But also on trial will be the integrity of the entire criminal justice system in Chicago and Cook County, a system in which police-involved shootings are all too common and accountability is all too rare.

“A jury will likely pass judgment on Van Dyke. The people of Chicago, sure to follow this trial closely, will pass judgment on what the proceedings say about the larger criminal justice system. The public should be allowed to watch on TV, gavel to gavel.

“WGN-TV, on behalf of all local media, has filed a request to cover the trial live on camera, as well as to cover all pre-trial and post-trial proceedings. The decision to allow cameras now lies with Cook County Judge Vincent Gaughan, who was assigned Tuesday to hear the case. . . .”

The editorial also said, “Let’s be blunt. At the heart of the distrust that many Chicagoans, especially African-Americans, have of the police is a conviction that no cop will ever call out another cop — that blue code of silence — on the street or on the witness stand.

“A televised trial would offer all Chicago a civics lesson, revealing perhaps not only the failings of our justice system when it comes to police-involved shootings, but also reminding us of the harrowing split-second decisions cops must sometimes make. . .”

The editorial concluded, “When Officer Van Dyke goes on trial, so does the Chicago Police Department. Allow cameras in the courtroom. Shelter nobody from the good, the bad or the ugly. Hide nothing.”

Demographer: Changing U.S. Demands Attention to Diversity

The fact that people of color are becoming a larger percentage of the U.S. population provides a compelling argument for programs to help them succeed and for increased attention to diversity, William H. Frey, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a population studies professor at the University of Michigan, wrote Tuesday for the Los Angeles Times.

“The younger population of the U.S. is now highly diverse,” Frey wrote.

“Racial minorities, who are not always from the middle class, represent roughly half of the students in the nation’s K-12 public schools. That level of diversity is destined to increase: . . . By 2023, whites will comprise less than half of the U.S. population under age 30. More important, the entire white working-age population will decline by 12 million over the next 15 years because of aging and retirement; that means young Latinos, blacks, Asians and other minorities must take their place.

“This new diverse majority of young people will have far fewer advantages compared with the white-majority boomers in the ’60s. Although high school dropout rates among young black and Latino students have been falling, four-year college enrollment is well below whites’, a situation compounded by high attrition rates.

“Should these patterns continue, the nation will see an absolute drop in college graduates after 2020. Moreover, income inequality is hitting the younger minority generations particularly hard, as evidenced by their continuing high rates of child poverty. It is still the case that many blacks and Latinos attend highly segregated, under-resourced public schools and lack the finances and guidance to get into postsecondary programs that are the best pathways to the middle class.

“These facts, and America’s inevitable demographic future, put recent campus protests into sharp perspective. The complaints voiced by black, Latinos and other minority students (and their white allies) strongly indicate that a racially prejudicial environment still exists at four-year colleges, which remain more white (61%) than the students in the K-12 pipeline.

“Yet it is imperative that minority students succeed at these colleges. These slow-to-change institutions must successfully invest in diversity, making minorities’ contributions, voices and concerns central to their educational mission.

“The message needs to be heeded beyond college campuses as well, by public officials, corporations, even city police forces: Investing in the success of today’s diverse youth is critical for the entire nation, which needs a productive labor force and its attendant contributions to Medicare, Social Security and other programs.

“The baby boomers in particular need to hear the message. Now in their 50s and 60s, too many of them are more concerned with lowering their taxes than investing in the younger generation. . . .”

In Twin Cities, It’s Back to the Future on Media Distrust

A Minneapolis forum to discuss coverage of the fatal shooting by police last month of Jamar Clark, a 24-year-old black man, demonstrated how little has changed in relations between the mainstream media and many in black communities.

Minnesota Public Radio posted audio of the Dec. 17 discussion last week. It was hosted by the Twin Cities chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists and moderated by MPR News reporter Brandt Williams.

“We can no longer rely on the white media to serve us,” Adja Gildersleve of Black Lives Matter Minneapolis said, as she and others complained about “parachute journalism” in their community. Nekima Levy-Pounds of the Minneapolis NAACP said, “Some reporters I refuse to work with” because of how they have decided to frame their stories. “You’re not going to use my voice” to validate that framing, she recalled telling the reporter.

Charles Hallman of the black-owned Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder, one of the panelists, who were all African American, complained that many blacks do not support his newspaper, though it offers a missing perspective and is now a 24/7 operation, with the weekly print edition just one of its products. Hallman wrote his own story on the event.

“Levy-Pounds said, ‘It feels sometimes like the mainstream White media is the media arm of the City of Minneapolis and the police department. Oftentimes they are one-sided narratives that don’t include the voices of color.’

“Gildersleve reiterated that she, other BLM members, and other protesters did not trust the mostly White local media: ‘They were trying to find stuff that was more entertaining [rather than] dig deeper into the larger context, the reason why we were out there in the first place,’ she explained.

“As a result, they only talked to reporters of color. ‘We wanted to uplift media and journalists of color because usually the reporters that show up are White reporters, and they don’t understand our experience. They [act like] they are entitled to our story and our space,’ said Gildersleve.”

Such sentiments were commonly heard in the 1960s and 1970s, when race relations were considered more explosive.

Hallman added that Maria Reeve of the Star Tribune, president of Twin Cities Black Journalists, “argued that her paper’s reporters are in the community ‘talking to people in the neighborhood, reporting on the issues of the day. We have a room full of reporters — people of color and non-people of color — who understand the issues. We have considerable resources.’ . . .”

Also at the forum were Al McFarlane of Insight News and KFAI-FM, a community volunteer radio station; and Bishop Richard Howell of Shiloh Temple International Ministries. Jonathan Blakley, MPR News program director, introduced the event.

No Full-Time Black Political Cartoonists at Major Dailies

“AS A LIGHT-SKINNED man fled the sharp sting of a police officer’s weapon, the assembled crowd of a thousand or so let out the loud, full-throated sound of mass laughter,” Michael Cavna wrote for his Comic Riffs column Tuesday for the Washington Post.

“That’s because right next to him was a black man, gun muzzle pressed against his spine as he begged a cop to be simply tased, and the visual jolt that had the crowd smiling was pure electric recognition. This was deep catharsis in the heat of 2015.

“On stage, narrating the action, was Keith Knight, an African American cartoonist who had drawn this scene.

“And in his sure satiric hands, this Saturday-in-summer audience, gathered in downtown Washington to hear from a panel of editorial artists, felt safe to find humor in Knight’s small panels of profound absurdities, which riddle the larger pattern of national tragedy. Knight flipped to a new cartoon, in which a black man asks a white officer why the police’s target-practice figures are black; told that they’re dark because they’re silhouettes, the civilian replies: ‘I’m talking about the afro and the FUBU logo across the chest.’ The crowd again howled. The listeners were in the hands of a master.

“Knight has been drawing comics about police brutality and bias for nearly a quarter-century, since the 1992 Rodney King riots, and as the visual commentator likes to note, he was spoofing the racism he witnessed well before he began lampooning presidents.

“But in some ways, it is only more recently [that] some audiences have truly caught up to Knight and the realities he renders in his new cartoon slide show, ‘They Shoot Black People, Don’t They?’ Given the coverage that police shootings from Los Angeles to Ferguson to Cleveland to the Carolinas now garner in a world of smartphone cameras and social media, many readers laugh at Knight’s cartoons because they are finally fully cognizant of the context — and because they realize that his satiric bull’s-eyes are painted uncomfortably close to the truth.

“Even here, though, rests a pesky professional truth that sits offstage, waiting in the wings. On one hand, cartoonists who can articulate firsthand racism are a valuable voice in the national conversation; indeed, Knight rightly received an NAACP History Maker award this year for his police-prejudice comics.

“Yet on the other hand, in this era of raised voices for Tamir and Trayvon and Freddie Gray, one journalistic stat stands out to me: Not a single full-time staff political cartoonist on a major American daily newspaper is black, according to the industry’s national professional organization. . . .”

Giago Signs Agreement to Buy Historic Wounded Knee

“Tim Giago, Lakota, renowned journalist, publisher and founder of publications such as the Lakota Times, Native Sun News and Indian Country Today, has told ICTMN he has signed an agreement to purchase the historic site of Wounded Knee from James Czywczynski for $3.9 million,” Vincent Schilling reported Tuesday for the Indian Country Today Media Network.

“Giago told ICTMN, ‘I signed an agreement to be the sole purchaser of Wounded Knee. The reason is that it has been sitting there idle and doing nothing for over 40 years.’

“Giago, who says he grew up and lived at Wounded Knee, where his father worked at the Trading Post and played with JoAnn Gildersleeve, the daughter of Clive and Agnes (the owners of the Wounded Knee Trading Post), is making the purchase for the benefit of the nine Sioux tribal nations.

” ‘I am 81 years old and I am at that age where I am not looking for any personal gain. I figure the best place for Wounded Knee to be is not just owned by the Oglala, It should be owned by all of the nine tribes of the great Sioux nation.

” ‘I am going to raise the money, buy it from Czywczynski and then put the land and trust for the tribes of the great Sioux nation,’ says Giago. . . .”

The massacre of Wounded Knee took place took place Dec. 29, 1890 — 125 years ago Tuesday, and “saw federal soldiers descend on the Native American settlement near South Dakota’s Wounded Knee Creek and slaughter roughly 300 Lakota men, women and children,” Jon Levine explained Tuesday for mic.com.

“Twenty-five U.S. soldiers lost their lives, and 20 others were awarded the Medal of Honor. It was the last major engagement between the United States and Native American tribes. . . .”

Afghan Journalist Now the Voice of ISIS

“The voice of a journalist who until recently used to work at radio stations in Afghanistan’s eastern Nangarhar province can now be heard in the provincial capital, Jalalabad, and neighboring districts as the voice of Islamic State’s new ‘caliphate radio,’ ” Noor Zahid reported Dec. 22 for the Voice of America.

“Former colleagues are quick to recognize the voice of Sultan Aziz Ezam, who worked for three local radio stations over the course of a decade, covering primarily land issues.

“Now, that voice is issuing death threats.

“Local newsmen hear their former colleague — or some imitator — accusing them of ‘working for foreigners’ and saying they are on the IS death watch list for their reporting practices.

” ‘I know the addresses of houses of all those journalists who are working with different media organizations in Jalalabad, and will find them and will kill them,’ he declares.

“VOA could not independently confirm the identity of the IS radio anchor. But local Afghan journalists say they are alarmed by the threats and are taking them seriously, because they recognize the voice.

” ‘All journalists in Jalalabad are aware of the threats and are very scared,’ one local journalist told VOA. . . .”

Short Takes

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