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A Wake-Up Call on Race, Artificial Intelligence

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Why High Error Rates Should Concern Newsrooms
Impeachment Covered Through Alternative Facts
Andrew Yang Sees Media Slight Over His Race
Blacks Trust Media More Than Latinos, Whites
Black Female Journalists Were Fierce in 1800s

NPR Renews Pledges on Diverse News Sources
Lincoln Michel Joins Indian Country Today
How to Survive Christmas as a Muslim

Photog Gives Freed Inmate the Shoes on His Feet
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“Machines learn from humans so the finding that so-called smart systems are prone to the same fallacies, assumptions and errors of our societies when it comes to race and gender should be unsurprising ,” says Columbia Journalism School’s Raju Narisetti. (Credit: AlienCat — StockAdobe.com)

Why High Error Rates Should Concern Newsrooms

“Facial-recognition systems misidentified people of color more often than white people, a landmark federal study released Thursday shows, casting new doubts on a rapidly expanding investigative technique widely used by law enforcement across the United States,” Drew Harwell reported for the Washington Post. Use of the technique is also taking place in newsrooms.

“Asian and African American people were up to 100 times as likely to be misidentified than white men, depending on the particular algorithm and type of search,” the story continued. “Native Americans had the highest false-positive rate of all ethnicities, according to the study, which found that systems varied widely in their accuracy.

“The faces of African American women were falsely identified more often in the kinds of searches used by police investigators, where an image is compared to thousands or millions of others in hopes of identifying a suspect. . . .”

Harwell wrote, “The study could fundamentally shake one of American law enforcement’s fastest-growing tools for identifying criminal suspects and witnesses, which privacy advocates have argued is ushering in a dangerous new wave of government surveillance tools.”

But the study also has implications for the news media, according to veteran digital news executive Raju Narisetti (pictured above), professor of professional practice at Columbia Journalism School and director of its Knight-Bagehot Fellowship in Economics and Business Journalism.

“In a way, this broad finding should be intimately familiar to people of color in American newsrooms who know that seeming layer of invisibility and non-recognition when it comes to leadership roles and opportunities over several decades,” Narisetti wrote by email. “Nor is it dissimilar to newsrooms [whose] staffing doesn’t reflect the diverse audiences in their own current and potential audiences.

“Machines learn from humans so the finding that so-called smart systems are prone to the same fallacies, assumptions and errors of our societies when it comes to race and gender should be unsurprising. This finding is also yet another wake-up call, especially for journalists typically prone to automatically give the benefit of doubt to technologies, algorithms and tech-laden institutions, to be far more skeptical and questioning of the outcomes of machine learning, beyond just focusing on the more recently popular privacy concerns.”

Charlton McIlwain (pictured), professor in New York University’s Department of Media, Culture, and Communication in its Center for Critical Race and Digital Studies, noted that some newsrooms are already using facial technology, at times to the detriment of people of color.

“I do believe we need to be paying more attention to how controversial and socially destructive technologies like facial recognition are being used in journalism,” McIlwain, author of the recent “Black Software:The Internet and Racial Justice: From the AfroNet to Black Lives Matter,” said by email.

“For one reason, news media — print, television, digital — traffic in, and produce troves of images that can be used to feed and train facial recognition systems, which raises questions about the complicity of news outlets in helping to develop these technologies that disproportionately and negatively affect people of color, and African Americans in particular.

“News media — often motivated by the need to ‘understand’ new technologies — also use facial technology in ways that can perpetuate those same biases and compromise personal privacy, as this recent story discussed regarding the NYTimes’s use of facial recognition technology to identify event goers. Again, one of the primary concerns has to do with the ways that such practices mirror what news media and journalists have done for years — to use facial imagery of black and brown people to aid and abet criminal justice enterprises that frequently and disproportionately arrest black and brown ‘suspects’ in error. . . .”

As screen shows House impeachment debate, at left, Fox News’ Juan Williams says “Fox and Five” was parroting Republican talking points. (Credit: Mediaite)

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Impeachment Covered Through Alternative Facts

“Fox News’ Juan Williams clashed with his co-hosts on The Five today as the impeachment debate in the House continued, saying at one point they’re engaging in ‘Republican blindness,‘ ” Josh Feldman reported Wednesday for Mediaite.

“As Williams and Jesse Watters went back and forth arguing about the polls, Watters said he’s not being honest with their audience about where the numbers are trending. Williams said to the audience, ‘What you hear from my colleagues here is a request for you, the audience, to one, not treat it as a historic thing, even though it’s just the third U.S. President who is going to be impeached. Secondly, ignore it. ‘It’s the Democrats, oh, they’re so wrong… It’s the media!’

“ ‘The Democrats made this history! Donald Trump made a phone call!’ Watters shot back.

“Williams said there’s a ‘clear case of abuse of power,’ but Watters said Trump will win reelection and have a huge mandate when he does.”

(Pictured: The New York Post, its front page predicting the impeachment vote would backfire on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, left no doubt about where it stood.)

Media writer Oliver Darcy of CNN asked Princeton historian and CNN political analyst Julian Zelizer for his perspective on the historic Wednesday, when the House voted for impeachment on a near party-line vote.

Zelizer wrote, in part: “For all the talk on the television panels about this being a historic moment and feeling the weight of this day, partisan positions will only harden and it’s not clear that this will change political feelings in any dramatic way.

“The fault lines that have remained stable throughout this presidency won’t go away. One of the main reasons that this case has to do with a media that will interpret the historical moment through the lens of partisan conflict and to translate the events as just another example of how the parties operate. It’s unclear whether our news media even has the capacity to convey to the public momentous occasions any more or whether the news cycle collapses everything — even something as grandiose as impeachment — into the ongoing saga of partisan conflict that floods our daily news.”

Darcy also wrote, “Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham spent Fox’s prime time hours recycling their usual anti-impeachment talking points. Carlson wondered if the Democrats have psychological problems. Hannity said it was part of a ‘disgusting pattern that has gone on for three straight years.’ And Ingraham compared it to a ‘lame circus’ and ‘cheap traveling carnival that never leaves town.’

“Chyrons on the screen matched the hosts’ bombastic and deceptive rhetoric. ‘DELUSIONAL DEMOCRATS WALK OFF IMPEACHMENT CLIFF,’ one read while Hannity ranted. A chyron on Ingraham’s show stated, ‘LEFT’S IMPEACHMENT LIES EXPOSED.’ “

‘Democratic presidential contenders in Thursday’s debate. (Credit: Los Angeles Times)

Andrew Yang Sees Media Slight Over His Race

With only seven candidates, the contenders who qualified for the Democratic presidential debate in Los Angeles Thursday each received more time. That was good for Andrew Yang, who had complained that he was being slighted by the media in part because he is Asian American.

“For months, Andrew Yang and his supporters have criticized the news media for not paying more attention to his presidential campaign,“ Kimmy Yam reported Dec. 12 for NBC. “In an interview with NBC News, Yang said he thinks his race may have something to do with it.

“ ‘Race might enter into it in the sense that my candidacy seems very new and different to various media organizations,’ said Yang, who is Asian American. ‘I think you can make an argument that it’s somehow intersecting with some other dynamics.’

“One news organization that has come under particular fire from Yang’s supporters, known as the ‘Yang Gang,’ is MSNBC (which is owned by NBCUniversal, the parent company of NBC News) for having omitted the candidate’s name from polling and fundraising graphics on several occasions, even though Yang has polled better than others in the field who have appeared on screen. CNN has done the same, and Yang has also been misidentified and misnamed several times by other outlets. . . .”

On Dec. 1, Marie Myung-Ok Lee, writer in residence at the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race at Columbia University, wrote in the Los Angeles Times that the issue is bigger than Yang.

“Asian Americans are often invisible in American culture, and judging by the experience of presidential candidate Andrew Yang, even more so in politics,” she wrote.

“Many Asian Americans will relate: White people regularly cut ahead of me in line and then are surprised when I call them out. My Korean American assistant recently reported that a man tried to walk through her on the sidewalk as if she wasn’t there. An invitation on Facebook to talk about such invisibility filled up within minutes, with many Asian Americans saying that being ignored or dismissed happens on a daily basis. . . . “

Three of the four moderators Thursday were women. Like the other women, all from the “PBS NewsHour,” Yamiche Alcindor is African American, while another, Amna Nawaz, is the daughter of Pakistanis. “I think we’re now at the point where when you don’t have a diverse group of moderators, it looks out-of-place,” moderator Judy Woodruff told Stephen Battaglio of the Los Angeles Times.

Woodruff continued, “Because journalists have become more conscious of how important it is to look like the country. We may be late in journalism, but we’ve finally come around. To have a lineup of moderators that is all cookie-cutter, lookalike — that just wouldn’t happen. . . .”

Alcindor asked the candidates their views on violence toward transgender women, many of whom are of color.

Blacks Trust Media More Than Latinos, Whites

“Black Americans generally have higher support for and trust in the news media than Hispanic Americans and especially white Americans,” Jeffrey Gottfried, Galen Stocking, Elizabeth Grieco, Mason Walker, Maya Khuzam and Amy Mitchell reported Dec. 12 for the Pew Research Center.

“For example, 57% of blacks say journalists have high or very high ethical standards compared with 49% of Hispanics and 41% of whites. Also, 41% of black adults say news organizations are fair to all sides when covering political and social issues, 10 points higher than Hispanics (31%) and 19 points higher than whites (22%). . . .”

The survey authors also said, “The link between the public’s approval of [President] Trump and views of the news media is clear in evaluations of journalists’ ethics. . . .”

As reported in November, 85 percent of African Americans believed Trump should be impeached, the highest of any ethnic group, according to an NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll. Fifty-seven percent of Hispanics felt the same way, but only 41 percent of whites did.

A collage of the art commissioned for the New York Review of Books. Clockwise, from top left, the artists are Johnalynn Holland, Andrea Pippins, Erin Robinson, Elise R. Peterson, Adriana Bellet and Xia Gordon. The subjects are, clockwise from left, Lillian Parker Thomas Fox (1854–1917); Lucy Wilmot Smith (1861–1889); Mary Virginia Cook-Parrish (1862–1945); Victoria Earle Matthews (1861–1907); Dr. Mary Ellen Britton (1855–1925); and Katherine Davis Chapman Tillman (1870–circa 1922).

Black Female Journalists Were Fierce in 1800s

“How many black women journalists from the nineteenth century can you name? For many, the list starts and ends with Ida B. Wells, the pioneering newspaperwoman and activist whose anti-lynching crusade galvanized a movement,” Maya Millett wrote Nov. 23 for the New York Review of Books. “Wells was celebrated in her own lifetime, and for good reason -— she inspired people on both sides of the Atlantic to pay attention to the atrocities inflicted on black Americans.

“But far from acting alone, she was part of a much larger network of black women journalists who dared to wield their pens in the names of truth and justice. At a time when all women were discouraged from engaging in ‘unladylike’ activities like politics, the women of the black press were boldly writing about racial justice, gender equality, and political reform. . . .

“I started Race Women on Instagram as a way to celebrate pioneering black feminists too often buried by history —- women who, as the name ‘race women’ suggests, devoted their lives to furthering the freedom of the men and women of the race. . . .

“The six journalists profiled here represent just a sample of the constellation of black women in the field who were making significant contributions during this critical time in American history. Gloria Wade-Gayles, a scholar of black women’s history, determined that between 1886 and 1905, nearly fifty black women journalists were reportedly working across the country. . . .”

NPR Renews Pledges on Diverse News Sources

“Back in FY 2013, white voices made up 80% of sources heard on NPR,” Elizabeth Jensen, NPR’s ombudsman, wrote on Tuesday. “That dropped to 73% in FY 2015, and in FY 2018 jumped back up, to 83%. In the latest tracking, the share of Latino voices remained flat from FY 2015 at 6%, while black voices fell to 8% from 11% and Asian voices fell to 6% from 8%.

“The weekend newsmagazines, particularly Weekend Edition Sunday and Weekend All Things Considered, talked to more racially and ethnically diverse sources than did the weekday newsmagazines.

Jensen also wrote, “The people most often called on to comment fall into categories largely dominated by white men, as well: political or government officials, other journalists, corporate or nonprofit officials or well-known academics and other experts.

“The areas where NPR has the most diverse sources, such as in its education coverage, have the smallest percentage of the overall content. (Arts coverage is an exception; it’s the second-largest slice of the topics pie and also one of the most diverse.) ‘We are doing our best where we are doing our least in content,’ Woods said,” referring to Keith Woods, NPR’s vice president of newsroom training and diversity.

” ‘If we don’t change the proportions and we keep increasing the percentage of stories we’re doing about politics and that chunk of our content either remains the same or grows,’ then the source diversity results are unlikely to fundamentally improve, he said. . . .

“Another of Woods’ takeaways: When stories are primarily about race, ‘there is a far greater percentage of people of color. But most of that increase in people of color is black sources. And when the story is not primarily about race, the percentage of people of color on some shows drops drastically, which means that we are defining diversity of sources as primarily being in stories about race, and not spread more broadly across story topics.”

In an addendum, Jensen wrote, “After we posted this column, we heard back from Cara Tallo, executive producer of All Things Considered, who joined the show in November. She said via email: ‘We are working now with Keith, and a small group of show staff, to create a structure that keeps intentional engagement of diverse sources as a daily priority.

” ‘We are looking to rethink the way we pitch stories, who we have at the table to pitch, and where we look for sources in daily booking. We’re also developing a system to track our progress over time, so that we can hold ourselves accountable going forward.’ “

Lincoln Michel Joins Indian Country Today

“Indian Country Today will start 2020 with Karen Lincoln Michel (pictured) taking on the role of president of the non-profit company,” the publication announced Tuesday. “Lincoln Michel is Ho-Chunk and is currently the publisher and executive editor of Madison Magazine in Madison, Wisconsin.

” ‘I am excited to be part of a news organization that is innovative and is setting a new standard for news coverage of indigenous communities,’ says Lincoln Michel. “Much of my career has been in legacy media, and although I have advocated for fair and accurate coverage of communities of color in each of my roles, I will now have the amazing chance to focus all of my energies on an enterprise that is all about serving Native audiences. . . .’

“ ‘She’ll be in charge of all the business operations,’ says Mark Trahant, editor of Indian Country Today. The company has a 2020 fundraising goal of $2.5 million as it prepares to launch its national newscast. . . .”

Trahant told Journal-isms that Lincoln Michel, like Trahant a former president of the Native American Journalists Association, will be based mostly “in Wisconsin, but she will be in our Phoenix, DC, and Anchorage offices on a regular basis.”

Egyptians celebrate Christmas on Jan. 7, as Eastern Orthodox Christians do, but the author, a Muslim now in America, does not. He offers tips on how to make the most of the holiday without listening to a single jolly ol’ cheer. (Credit: YouTube)

How to Survive Christmas as a Muslim

“Celebrating Christmas wasn’t allowed in my house,” staff writer Aymann Ismail Monday told Slate readers in a piece republished Wednesday in the Dallas Morning News.

“My family is Muslim, the kind that thought saying ‘Merry Christmas’ meant accepting Jesus Christ as your lord and savior. So when we got together as a family during those precious days off from school and work, finding things to do that didn’t involve that fat burglar with the beard was the mission. . . .

“My parents had both immigrated from Egypt in the 1970s, where, I should note, Christmas is very much a thing, except Egyptians celebrate it on Jan. 7, as Eastern Orthodox Christians do, with the big trees and everything.

“But in raising their American kids, they were deathly afraid that they would fail to pass down their own Muslim traditions. They went all out. They enrolled us in an Islamic school where we had days off for the Islamic holidays, too. They enrolled me in Islamic karate classes. And when Christmas time rolled around, they taught me to make the most of my days off by doing absolutely anything except celebrate the reason for them.

“It turned into a kind of game. When we watched TV, we’d strategically change channels to avoid Christmas commercials. When we strung lights in the house, back when Ramadan and Eid were around Christmastime, we avoided the green and red combo. When Christmas carolers would show up to our front door … just kidding, there were never carolers in my tough Newark, N.J., neighborhood. But had there been, we’d have shut off the lights and pretended no one was home.

“As I got older and awakened to the political reality of being a Muslim in America, my refusal to do the Christmas thing became a sort of protest. . . .

“So if you’re like me and spending time with folks who’re more interested in the vacation than the holiday, this Muslim has some tips on how to make the most of it without listening to a single jolly ol’ cheer. . . .”

He needed them more than me. It’s cold out here,” Tulsa, Okla., photographer Jerome Akintunde said after giving a freed ex-inmate his shoes. (Credit: FTV Live).

Photog Gives Freed Inmate the Shoes on His Feet

‘”KOTV Photographer Jerome Akintunde was doing a live shot outside the Tulsa County Jail with Reporter Reagan Ledbetter,” Scott Jones reported Wednesday for FTV Live.

“We’ll let Ledbetter pick up the story and the selfless act by Akintunde.

“Here is what Ledbetter posted to social media.

“I have a story I want to tell…. He doesn’t know I’m posting this (I’m sure he doesn’t want me to because he doesn’t want the attention) but I am going to brag on my photographer and friend.

“I just witnessed true KINDNESS. This morning at 7:30 my photographer and I finished up our last live shot of the morning (very cold morning) at the Tulsa County Jail. Like any morning we started to put away the lights, the camera and the rest of the gear in the car, so we could hop inside and warm up.  

“All of a sudden my photographer started walking towards the entrance of the jail (I thought he was throwing away some trash). After I put the gear in the car I look over and I see him talking to a man in shorts and a t-shirt, with no shoes on…just socks. He just got out of jail minutes earlier. It was 25 degrees outside.  

“That’s when all of a sudden I noticed my photographer take his shoes off… then he slid them over to the shivering man. The man put them on. I saw him say ‘thank you’ and my photographer walked back to our car. As he walked up, I looked at him and said ‘did you just give away your shoes?’ … he looks at me and says ‘he needed them more than me. It’s cold out here.’ . . .”

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