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Anchor Out in Dispute Over Gabby Coverage

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‘No Word on How Heated the Discussion Got’
Despite Critics, CBS News Still Hypes Gabby Story
Disney Suits Deny Kim Godwin’s Wish for Probe:
ABC Leader’s Bid for Openness ‘Is Not Happening’
News Director Fired After Wearing Afro Wig
Photographer Says He Didn’t See Whippings
Sports Editors Awarded B+ on Racial Diversity
COVID-19 ‘False Alarm’ on Set of ‘The View’

‘Election Subversion’: Journalists, Speak Up!
Byron Allen Wants Local Stations, Bids for Tegna
Lee Hill Named Executive Editor at Boston’s WGBH
Taliban Rules Alarm Journalists

Short Takes: “Alien” term; Raquel Amparo; Gary Estwick; R. Kelly; Upscale magazine; Terence Blanchard and Charles M. Blow; Boston Globe and the nonprofit Boston Black News radio; Telemundo in Cleveland; Flavie Fuentes; students’ petition to bring back slavery;

Tucker Carlson; Boston Globe Spotlight team; Yewande Komolafe, Genevieve Ko and Eric Kim; Word In Black; Claire Hao and Michigan Daily; “PBS NewsHour,” Robert Lugo and Frederick Douglass; Bowdeya Tweh; “News for the Rich, White, and Blue”; Global Health Crisis Reporting Forum; injured Palestinian photojournalist; attacks on journalists in Algeria.

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Frank Somerville of KTVU in San Francisco is the adoptive father of a Black teen daughter.

‘No Word on How Heated the Discussion Got’

“KTVU news anchor Frank Somerville again has been removed from the air, but this time a newsroom spat — not an on-air meltdown — appears to be the reason,” Chuck Barney reported Friday, updated Saturday, for the Bay Area News Group.

“According to station sources, Somerville, 63, has been ‘suspended indefinitely’ by Channel 2 management after a disagreement with news director Amber Eikel over coverage of the Gabby Petito homicide case.

“The disagreement, said sources, occurred earlier in the week after the body of Petito was discovered in Wyoming. Petito, 22, had been reported missing earlier this month while on a cross-country camping trip. The FBI has issued an arrest warrant for Brian Laundrie, Petito’s 23-year-old fiancé.

“KTVU was prepared to air a news report detailing the latest developments in the case. Somerville wanted to add a brief tagline at the end of the report that questioned the extraordinary level of media coverage devoted to the story. Sources said he wanted to point out that the U.S. media often disproportionately covers tragedies involving young White women, while largely ignoring similar cases involving women of color and Indigenous people.

“Somerville is the adoptive father of a Black teen daughter.

“The veteran anchor was told that the tagline was inappropriate and he apparently pushed back on it. There was no word on how heated the discussion got. . . .”

Rachel Swan added Sunday in the San Francisco Chronicle, “According to . . . two people, who were granted anonymity in accordance with The Chronicle’s policy on confidential sources to discuss a sensitive personnel matter, the dispute at KTVU unfolded last Tuesday afternoon (paywall).

“Somerville sought to add the 46-second tag to the end of an update about Petito, who was slain during a cross-country van trip with her fiance, Brian Laundrie, whom authorities have identified as a ‘person of interest.’ Both are white.

Amber Eikel was chosen Broadcasting and Cable’s “News Director of the Year” last December. (Credit: Fox Television Stations)

“Somerville wanted to bring in context on domestic violence and coverage of it, according to the two station sources.

“ ‘When it comes to domestic violence the numbers are off the charts,’ the original tag said, according to a copy obtained by The Chronicle. It went on to cite statistics on deaths, showing that Black women are far more likely to be killed, ‘but their deaths are rarely reported and almost never get the kind of national attention that Gabby Petito’s death is getting.’

“Somerville also quoted a professor who was critical of the media’s tendency to overlook stories about missing and slain women of color.

“Ten minutes before the 5 p.m. broadcast, Eikel told Somerville she planned to cut the tag, indicating that the topic warranted a separate, broader story with visuals, the station sources said. One of the sources said newsroom editors had approached Eikel before the broadcast, expressing misgivings about the tag, including that it seemed to suggest police had concluded Laundrie killed Petito.

“In a series of messages sent over the station’s internal messaging system, Somerville protested the cut but was overruled, the two station sources said. A producer who was not involved in the initial conversation then saw that an amended, 26-second version of the tag was in the broadcast script prepared for the 6 p.m. show, according to one of the sources.

“The producer expressed concerns to the newsroom, the source said. Producers cut the tag again, and that day’s coverage of the Petito case ran without tags in all KTVU broadcasts. The shorter version of Somerville’s address did not include the quote from the professor, the copy obtained by The Chronicle shows.

“The next day, a human resources manager told Somerville he was suspended for defying a decision made by supervisors, the two sources said. . . .”

Despite Critics, CBS News Still Hypes Gabby Story

News media might be chronicling the rising chorus protesting the disproportionate coverage of “Missing White Woman” Gabby Petito compared with others who are lost, but CBS News seems to be paying little heed.

The network devoted a special to the topic, “What Happened to Gabby Petito?” Saturday night. ” ’48 Hours’ goes inside the disappearance of Gabby Petito and the hunt for Brian Laundrie. CBS News national correspondent Jericka Duncan reports Saturday, September 25 at 10/9c on CBS and Paramount+,” read an announcement.

Jeremy Barr wrote for The Washington Post on Wednesday, “In a seven-day period ending Wednesday, Petito had been mentioned 398 times on Fox News, 346 times on CNN and 100 times on MSNBC, according to a Washington Post tally, with coverage across news programs and opinion talk shows. Television networks have sent reporters on the road and leaned on their pool of former law enforcement officials to provide commentary about the investigation.”

Paul Farhi, Washington Post media writer, tweeted Thursday, “It’s not just Missing White Women that gains the news media’s and public’s attention. It’s a certain kind of missing white women — young, attractive, thin, often blonde. If Gabby Petito had been 45 years old, would her story have rated a fraction of the attention?”

Also on Thursday, Brian Laline, executive editor of the Staten Island (N.Y.) Advance, wrote to readers, “America’s news media is obsessed with missing white women, especially if they’re considered attractive – and have money. It’s as simple as that, and in no way disparages the missing white woman, despite how some twist it to defend their obsession.

“It’s a plain fact that people of color who go missing do not get the same media attention.

“Virginia’s William & Mary Law School published an exhaustive study on just this last year. It found that 35 percent of missing children’s cases involve Black children, but newsrooms devote only 7 percent of their time to the stories.”

Laline continued, “America has been patting itself on the back since the tragic murder of George Floyd and subsequent Black Lives Matter protests. We see more people of color on TV commercials and in newspaper/website ads. Police departments are making changes and guilty cops are being held accountable. ‘Finally, the culture of America is changing,’ we hear people say.

“Yes, on the surface we see change. But the overwhelming reaction to the case of missing and murdered Gabby Petito says a lot about who we are, still.

“We ought to keep that in mind because changing the way America deals with race is an extraordinary challenge and not one solved by changing the face of a TV ad.”

Disney Suits Deny Kim Godwin’s Wish

Kim Godwin, president of ABC News, left, and Rashida Jones, president of MSNBC, appear at the summer convention of the National Association of Black Journalists, albeit virtually. Late Sunday, Alexandra Steigrad reported for the New York Post, “MSNBC staffers are panicking over the direction of the left-leaning news network under newly-minted President Rashida Jones, fearing that she’s gearing up for a costly and potentially disastrous battle with CNN, The Post has learned.” (Credit: Twitter)

ABC Leader’s Bid for Openness ‘Not Happening’

Despite ABC News President Kim Godwin’s request for an independent probe into the network’s handling of sexual harassment allegations at the network, her bosses at the Walt Disney Co. say that’s not going to happen (paywall), Joe Flint reported Thursday for the Wall Street Journal.

Simone Swink, the executive producer of “Good Morning America,” “said during a staff meeting on Monday that an outside probe into the departure of Michael Corn as senior executive producer of the top-rated morning news program ‘is not happening at this time,’ according to a recording of the meeting,” Flint wrote.

Flint added, “The decision not to move forward with an investigation was disclosed to Ms. Godwin, Ms. Swink and other top ABC staffers in a meeting last Friday held by Peter Rice (pictured), who in his role as Disney’s chairman of general entertainment content oversees the news unit, according to the recording.

“ ‘Peter said it was beyond his sphere of influence to ask for an outside investigation of the Walt Disney Company,’ Ms. Swink told ‘GMA’ staffers in the Monday meeting.

Godwin joined ABC News as its president in May, becoming the first African American to lead a major, general-interest television network news division.

In what has been described as her first major challenge in the job, Godwin told staffers on Aug. 26 that she had asked her superiors for an independent investigation. It was the day after ABC became a defendant in a lawsuit alleging that Corn sexually assaulted a current ABC News staffer and a former staffer in separate incidents.

“We can’t have us investigating us. We need an independent person,” Godwin told the staff, according to a recording of the conference call, Flint wrote. “The process has to be independent.”

Flint also wrote, “Ms. Godwin also told the unit that she wouldn’t be ‘sweeping this under the rug.’

“ABC staffers were cheered by Ms. Godwin’s request and remarks, people at the meeting said. However, her superiors at the network and Disney were caught off guard by both the request and her decision to go public about it, people familiar with the matter said. . . .”

Oliver Darcy wrote Sept. 2 for CNN, “ABC News President Kim Godwin hasn’t even been on the job for six months, but she has already infuriated her bosses over at Disney.

“When Godwin called for an independent, third-party probe into how allegations of sexual assault against former ‘GMA’ boss Michael Corn were handled (allegations Corn denies), Disney General Entertainment Content Chairman Peter Rice was angered. That’s according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke to me on Wednesday. Also upset with Godwin: Disney General Counsel and Executive Vice President Alan Braverman, according to one of those sources.

“Worth noting: They’re not upset over how she handled the allegations when they first surfaced, because she wasn’t even at ABC when that happened. When you do the math, and look at who was in charge when a formal complaint was made, you start understanding why they’re not happy. . . .”

News Director Fired After Wearing Afro Wig

“KATV-TV, Channel 7, News Director Nick Genty has been fired by Sinclair Broadcast Group amid outrage from the National Association of Black Journalists over a pattern of behavior in the ABC affiliate’s newsroom,” Kyle Massey reported Friday for Arkansas Business.

“Anchor Chris May and meteorologist Barry Brandt have apparently been sidelined after appearing in curly black wigs during a segment in the 10 p.m. newscast Sept. 16 linking the return of temperatures to the 70s with a throwback theme of the 1970s. That episode, NABJ President Dorothy Tucker said, came in the wake of a ‘Mammy doll’ being left in the newsroom to greet a new Black anchor. Tucker’s Twitter timeline included a picture of the doll, in stereotypical handkerchief headdress.

” ‘The News Director @KATVNews has been fired,’ Tucker said on Twitter Thursday evening. ‘We hope this is an indication of [Sinclair’s] commitment to provide a newsroom that values and respects Black employees.’

“John Seabers, Sinclair’s senior group manager for Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas, confirmed the firing to Max Brantley of Arkansas Times on Friday morning. Attempts to reach Genty by regular phone and email channels failed. . . .”

Photographer Says He Didn’t See Whippings

 “The photographer behind images depicting Border Patrol agents on horseback told KTSM things are not exactly what they seem when it comes to the photos,”  Natassia Paloma reported Thursday for KTSM-TV in El Paso, Texas.

“The photographs, which were taken Sunday, appear to show agents on horses with a whip in hand. The photos caused outrage because from certain angles, it appears to show Border Patrol whipping migrants, but photographer Paul Ratje said he and his colleagues never saw agents whipping anyone.

“ ‘Some of the Haitian men started running, trying to go around the horses,’ Ratje said.

“Ratje is a photographer based in Las Cruces and has been in Del Rio since Friday. He said took the photographs from the Mexican side.

“ ‘I’ve never seen them whip anyone,’ Ratje said. ‘He was swinging it, but it can be misconstrued when you’re looking at the picture.’

“The photos drew immense criticism from many on social media and the White House said it will investigate. . . .”

Stephen A. Smith, left, Molly Qerim and Max Kellerman on the set of ESPN’s “First Take” in New York. Richard Lapchick’s report said that without ESPN, sports journalism’s racial diversity figures would be much worse. (Credit: Joe Faraoni/ESPN Images)

Sports Editors Awarded B+ on Racial Diversity

The leading report card detailing race and gender representation in sports media has found that for people of color, “there was improvement in all racial categories since 2018,” when the last survey was taken.

“For the first time, no racial grade fell below a B.”

The “Sports Media Racial and Gender Report Card: Associated Press Sports Editors (APSE) Racial and Gender Report Card,” was conducted by Richard E Lapchick (pictured) of The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport. He wrote that “APSE earned a racial grade of a B-plus, an improvement from the B in 2018, while its gender grade remained an F. The overall grade of a C was an improvement from the D-plus in the 2018 study.

“The report released Wednesday evaluates the racial and gender hiring practices of more than 100 newspapers and websites across all circulation sizes. These are [the] same outlets that determine what stories to cover, when to cover them and how they are portrayed. Diversity, equity and inclusion among the staff in our media is crucial to news being representative of our society. . . .

“Some notable findings include:

The study also said, “if ESPN were removed from the data completely, five of the analyzed racial categories, including total APSE staffs, would suffer. Sports editors would decrease from 20.8% to 18.9%, assistant sports editors from 27.7% to 22.7%, columnists from 22.9% to 18.1%, reporters from 22.9% to 22.5% and total staffs from 23.5% to 22.0%. . . .

“Collectively, the industry has seen slight improvements since the inaugural 2006 APSE Report Card. The percentage of reporters of color has risen from 12.5% to 22.9%. Likewise, the percentage of women as columnists has risen from less than 7% in 2006 to 17.8% today. . . .”

Joy Behar said, “So since this is going to be a major news story any minute now, what happened is that Sunny [Hostin] and Ana [Navarro] both apparently tested positive for COVID. No matter how hard we try, these things happen, they probably have a breakthrough case, and they’ll be okay, I’m sure, because they are both vaccinated up the wazoo.”

COVID-19 ‘False Alarm’ on Set of ‘The View’

“This may have been the mother of all false alarms (scroll down),” CNN’s Brian Stelter wrote Friday in his “Reliable Sources” newsletter.

” ‘The View’ was flipped on its head Friday morning when Sunny Hostin and Ana Navarro’s Covid tests turned up positive mere seconds before VP Kamala Harris was supposed to walk on stage for her first in-person visit to the show.

“The show’s hosts are tested twice a week, I’m told, and there was an extra test on Friday due to the VP interview. Joy Behar and [Sara Haines] tap-danced for nearly half an hour and then the VP finally joined the show via remote from somewhere else in the building.

“An unforgettable ‘View’ moment, to be sure, but maybe a misfire? Oliver Darcy and I reported later in the day that two subsequent tests came back negative for both women. Navarro said on ‘AC360’ that she is waiting for yet another test result. Both women are fully vaccinated, of course, along with every other person in the building.

“So I rolled my eyes at the blind quotes on the Daily Mail website calling this a ‘monumental failure’ by the producers and a ‘national security risk’ given the VP’s presence. Give me a break. Even if the co-hosts actually had Covid, the danger for fully vaccinated adults is so low that cooler heads should prevail. If this incident proves anything, it’s that we need more and more rapid testing. David Leonhardt called out America’s testing shortcomings earlier this week. . . .”

The issue of election subversion “is urgent, but it is hard to explain because the risks are a few years down the road and hard to see until it is too late. It’s a lot like climate change,” law professor Richard Hasen told Journal-isms. (Credit: Kathy Huertas/Texas Monthly)

‘Election Subversion’: Journalists, Speak Up!

“The United States faces a serious risk that the 2024 presidential election, and other future U.S. elections, will not be conducted fairly, and that the candidates taking office will not reflect the free choices made by eligible voters under previously announced election rules,” warns Richard L. Hasen of the University of California, Irvine School of Law.

Hasen (pictured) appeared Friday on public radio’s “On the Media,” originating at WNYC in New York.

Hasen continues in a paper written Sept. 18 and updated Friday, “The potential mechanisms by which election losers may be declared election winners are: usurpation of voter choices for President by state legislatures purporting to exercise constitutional authority to do so, possibly blessed by a partisan-divided Supreme Court and acquiesced to by Republicans in Congress; fraudulent or suppressive election administration or vote counting by law- or norm-breaking election officials; and violent or disruptive private action that prevents voting, interferes with the counting of votes, or interrupts the assumption of power by the actual winning candidate.

“Until recently, it would have been absurd to raise the possibility of such election subversion or a stolen election in the United States. Few cases have emerged in at least the last 50 years in the United States of actual election subversion by election officials, leading to an election loser being declared the election winner, despite other unique pathologies of American election administration.”

Needless to say, voter suppression and what Hasen calls election subversion efforts will target communities of color.

Asked what journalists should do, particularly those concerned about such communities, Hasen messaged, “there needs to be pressure on Congress right now to pass laws to make election subversion much less likely. Communities of color would be on the wrong end of attempts to subvert American democracy. It is urgent for those communities and for every community concerned about free and fair elections.”

Haden is not the only one sounding this alarm. Washington Post contributing columnist Robert Kagan’s “Our constitutional crisis is already here” has been the most-read piece on washingtonpost.com for several days.

On CNN’s “Reliable Sources” Sunday. Timothy Snyder, Richard C. Levin Professor of History at Yale University, said that journalists should stop writing about political parties as parties, and “make democracy the story itself.”

The Grio reported, “When discussing how Fox recently saw ‘$2.4 billion in revenue while NBCUniversal saw just over . . . $2 billion,’ Allen shared, ‘That’s why I’m buying TV stations, they’re a great business. You want to be in both national and local business. It’s good, smart diversification.’ ”

Byron Allen Wants Local Stations, Bids for Tegna

“Byron Allen has submitted a bid for TEGNA, a local TV news company that currently has 64 stations in 51 markets,” Jared Alexander reported Wednesday for The Grio, which is owned by Allen’s company.

“The business mogul, owner of theGrio and CEO of Allen Media Group, has begun to set his sights on local TV news stations, theGrio previously reported. Back in January, it was revealed that Allen Media Group had plans to invest billions into TV station groups in 2021.

“He shared in a statement at the time, ‘We are looking to deploy more than $10 billion on Big Four affiliates this year…don’t be surprised if you wake up and find an [owned-and-operated] group being sold.’

“Now it seems Allen is making good on his statement as he has submitted a bid for local TV new company TEGNA. . . . Allen has submitted a joint bid with alternative investment firm Ares Management, according to The Hollywood Reporter.”

Lee Hill Named Executive Editor at Boston’s WGBH

“Following a nationwide search, GBH has named Lee Hill (pictured) the first Executive Editor for GBH News,” Boston’s WGBH public radio, which markets itself as “GBH,” announced Thursday.

“An award-winning journalist with a deep background in public media, Hill is the executive producer for The Takeaway at WNYC in New York, overseeing editorial strategy, production, and planning of content across platforms for the daily national news program. Hill will join the GBH News team in November.

Hill began his broadcasting career in public radio. When he left NPR in 2011, he wrote his colleagues, in part:

“I first walked through these doors eight years ago as Doug Mitchell’s Next Generation Radio intern. Doug can attest that my early appetite was insatiable (and maybe a little strange) for learning this place inside out — from making myself a student of the corporate structure here that keeps this place out of trouble (on most days) to becoming as intimate as possible with the signature journalism that makes NPR … what it is.

“My trajectory here has been far from usual. I can now say my early days in Government Relations (now Policy & Representation), Communications and later Member & Program Services did more than just make my head spin. My time outside the news division made me a believer in public broadcasting as the gold standard for creating a more informed public, and for its potential to more capably serve a diverse world.

“… And this brings me to my pride and joy, Tell Me More. I’m proud to be a founding producer (I was there when it had the working title of The New Show with Michel Martin ). Back in 2006, we had a not-so-modest vision to build a program that would lift the curtain on the production process, challenge conventional wisdom about what diversity really is, and carefully report stories that would lead people outside their comfort zones. And with Michel Martin (aka journalism’s bionic woman) at the wheel, we’ve done just that. The audience is growing and is the most ethnically diverse of any NPR program. . . .”

Hill left for Colorado Public Radio. “Tell Me More” ended production in 2014 amid a projected NPR deficit.

Journalist Nemat Naqdi was beaten badly by Taliban authorities for reporting protests in Kabul. (Credit: Zaki Daryabi)

Taliban Rules Alarm Journalists

Reporters Without Borders said Wednesday, updated Thursday that it is “very disturbed by the ’11 journalism rules’ that the Taliban announced at a meeting with the media on 19 September.

“The rules that Afghan journalists will now have to implement are vaguely worded, dangerous and liable to be used to persecute them.

Working as a journalist will henceforth mean complying strictly with the 11 rules unveiled by Qari Mohammad Yousuf Ahmadi, the interim director of the Government Media and Information Centre (GMIC). At first blush, some of them might seem reasonable, as they include an obligation to respect ‘the truth’ and not “distort the content of the information.” But in reality they are extremely dangerous because [they] open the way to censorship and persecution. . . .”

Separately, “One of the journalists who was beaten by Taliban forces nearly two weeks ago has lost an eardrum and nearly half of his vision in his left eye, local reports say,” the London-based New Arab reported Thursday.

“Nemat Naqdi, an Etilaat Roz journalist, was beaten after covering women’s protests following the Taliban’s defeat of government forces and subsequent takeover of Afghanistan. Images of his bruised and beaten body raised global concern.

“According to The New York Times’ Afghanistan correspondent Sharif Hassan, citing Zaki Daryabi, the newspaper’s publisher, Naqdi has reportedly damaged one of his eardrums beyond repair and lost 40 percent of the vision in his left eye. . . .”

Short Takes

The investigative “Spotlight” team at the Boston Globe was featured in the 2015 film of the same name. The movie won the Academy Award in 2016 for “Best Picture.” The team won the Pulitzer Prize for public service in 2003. (Credit: Globe staff illustration)
Abolitionist publisher Frederick Douglass is one of Robert Lugo’s subjects. (Credit and copyright: Roberto Lugo / Wexler Gallery)
Clockwise, from top left: Alexandre; Orrico, Paul Adepoju, Stella Roque, Fadwa Kamal, Kossi Balao and Desiree Esquivel.
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Richard Prince’s Journal-isms originates from Washington. It began in print before most of us knew what the internet was, and it would like to be referred to as a “column.” Any views expressed in the column are those of the person or organization quoted and not those of any other entity. Send tips, comments and concerns to Richard Prince at journal-isms+owner@groups.io

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