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Journalisms 6/30

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Surprise at Spy Charge Against El Diario Columnist

N.Y. Times Wants “Newsroom That Knows America . . Firsthand”

NBC, Comcast Pledge More Hispanic Programming, Hiring

Kagan Reiterates Support for Cameras at Supreme Court

Clarence Thomas Gives Voice to Black Gun-Rights Supporters

Short Takes

 

Surprise at Spy Charge Against El Diario Columnist

“Vicky Pelaez was not one to pull punches,” Jorge Fitz-Gibbon, Shawn Cohen and Jonathan Bandler wrote for the Journal News in White Plains, N.Y., on Wednesday.

“The fiery activist and columnist for the Spanish-language El Diario newspaper railed against Arizona’s controversial immigration law and U.S. human rights abuses, and once likened the nation’s jail system to slavery.

“The Yonkers resident was a featured speaker at a May Day rally at Union Square Park in New York City, and was as politically passionate with friends as she was in print.

“Nothing, however, prepared friends and colleagues for the federal complaint filed this week against Pelaez and her husband, Juan Lazaro, who taught political science at Baruch College, in New York City.

“The Yonkers couple were among 10 people charged as part of an alleged spy ring that investigators said had been selling information to Russia.

“‘I can’t believe it,’ said freelance journalist Lilliana Bringa, a close friend of Pelaez’s. ‘When I heard, I went right to El Diario to hear from the editor if it was true.”

In the New York Daily News, columnist Juan Gonzalez wrote, “Of the accused Russian spies the FBI nabbed this week, none surprised more people than Spanish-language journalist Vicky Pelaez.

“The others, after all, even Pelaez’s husband, Juan Lazaro, were obscure figures.”

Mary Zerafa, a spokeswoman for ImpreMedia, the Spanish-language media company that owns El Diaro, told Journal-isms the company had no statements to offer about Pelaez and that El Diario was covering the story as it covers others

“Gerson Borrero, a columnist and former editor-in-chief of the paper, wrote (in Spanish) that Pelaez was fearless and outspoken but never wrote about Russia or the former Soviet bloc,” Ben Smith reported in Politico.

” ‘I am as surprised and perplexed by the [charges] of Russian espionage as everyone else. But I confess that when I learned of them, I laughed aloud,’ he writes, going on to attack the FBI as ‘discredited’ since the days of J. Edgar Hoover.

On New York’s WNYC Radio, a host asked reporter Marianne McCune what people who know Pelaez were saying.

“Well, they are not supposed to be saying anything. Everything is being directed to the press person for the paper’s parent company. But, I have spoken to some of her current and former colleagues and they’re saying that they’re completely surprised – and many are in total disbelief. A court reporter there, Candida Portugues, says she’s been working with Pelaez for seven years, and admires her work, admires that she speaks frankly about what she believes. And you could hear in our phone conversation how blown away she is by this arrest.

“Portugues said she agreed to talk to me because she’s afraid no one will take it upon themselves to stand up for Pelaez. She says she is a serious journalist, a lover of painting – she takes painting classes two or three nights a week – and a very involved mother. Her younger son is a pianist.

N.Y. Times Wants “Newsroom That Knows America . . Firsthand”

In light of Monday’s report in this space that this year’s New York Times summer interns include no African Americans, Abbe Serphos director of public relations for the New York Times Co., forwarded these remarks about diversity delivered by Times Executive Editor Bill Keller to the Times newsroom in staff meetings on June 3:

“Our preoccupation with the business of journalism in recent years has meant that some important subjects have been crowded to the periphery of these meetings. One of them is diversity.

“There was some worry, based on the experience of other news organizations, that the two rounds of staff cuts and a virtual hiring freeze might represent a setback for diversity. Thankfully that was not the case if you look at the big picture. In overall numbers, our minority representation ‚Äî a little over 18 percent ‚Äî is as high as it has ever been. But that number disguises a serious problem: The representation of African-Americans in American journalism ‚Äî and especially in the upper ranks ‚Äî continues to be a serious rebuke to the industry’s professed commitment to diversity. While the numbers of Asian-Americans and Latinos at The Times have grown, the number of African-Americans has declined ‚Äî a trend that holds true across the industry, according to the tracking of the ASNE and NABJ.

“I‚Äôve said in the past that diversity is not simply about addressing legal and historical imbalances, or assuaging liberal guilt, or juggling numbers. It is not mainly about being morally right or politically correct. The point is not, as Bill Clinton once said of his cabinet, that we want a newsroom that looks like America. The point is, we want a newsroom that knows America, in all of its variety, from firsthand experience. In other words, The Times needs a staff diverse enough to speak not only to the Washington foreign policy establishment and the political leadership in Albany, but fluent in the cultures of all of America’s communities, Latino and Asian, black and white, rural and urban, military and civilian, devout believer and skeptic, so that we can reproduce those voices with as much fidelity as possible. That imperative ‚Äî that journalistic imperative ‚Äî has only grown as the country itself has become more diverse.

“We have to do better.

“There are some factors that make it harder.

“When the newsroom normally hired 50 or 60 people a year, we could actually make a recruiting and hiring plan, and move the needle on diversity. Now we hire only very rarely, generally for jobs we can‚Äôt fill from within or because we have a chance to poach an extraordinary talent from a competitor. The outside hiring is ad hoc, and it‚Äôs harder to develop a strategy. Moreover, a good deal of our hiring is for technical specialties, especially in new media, where African-Americans are grossly under-represented. Among the handful of people we have hired since the first of the year, we have added no minorities to our staff.

“Again, we have to do better.

‘Dana Canedy now chairs a group, including Jill, John, Bill Schmidt and Susan Edgerley, that is focusing on several aspects of diversity. One is tracking some of our more talented editors and reporters of color to ensure their career development. I will not get into specific names, but there will be several announcements in the coming days and weeks that, I hope, will show you this effort is bearing fruit. [The references are to Senior Editor Dana Canedy; Jill Abramson and John M. Geddes, managing editors; Deputy Managing Editor William E. Schmidt and Assistant Managing Editor Susan Edgerley.]

“Second, since we have not been doing much hiring in the last year or so, our recruiting and hiring pipeline has gone pretty dry. So Dana is now involved in a project, with the full support of senior management, to entirely rethink and rebuild that structure to ensure, among other things, that when we DO have the opportunity to hire, we will be hiring from the most talented and most diverse pool of candidates possible. Given the state of the industry, there is a lot of talent out there, looking for a new home. If people on our staff are aware of great candidates ‚Äî particularly candidates of color ‚Äî they should share their names with us, and make sure we have them on our radar.

“It‚Äôs important that The Times continues to be an industry leader, as far as reaching out to communities of color in an effort to develop journalistic talent, and not just for The Times. At the end of May, we wrapped up our eighth institute in New Orleans for young African-American journalists, a program that brings in college students from across the nation, including a cohort from the historically black colleges mostly in the South, for a two-week long hands-on session, producing a two-section newspaper and a daily website. Don Hecker, who runs the program, tells me that since it began in 2003, more than 305 young people who been trained by a group of faculty drawn from our staff, and the staffs of The Globe and the regional newspapers as well. Many of them now work at websites and newspapers across the country, including more than a dozen who have been employed within The Times family. And in January, we also do a similar program for Latino college students, alternating each year between Miami and Tucson.

“I thank the many of you who have participated in these training sessions, and I solicit your ideas for how we do better.”

 

NBC, Comcast Pledge More Hispanic Programming, Hiring

“Comcast and NBC Universal are agreeing to step up Hispanic programming and hiring as part of an agreement to help win Hispanic groups OK of their $30 billion deal,” Ira Teinowitz reported Wednesday for theWrap.com.

“Comcast has come in for criticism for underrepresentation of Hispanics on its board, while NBCU has drawn criticism for not having enough Hispanic execs.

“The agreement was announced Wednesday with the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda, the Hispanic Association for Corporate Responsibility and the National Hispanic Media Coalition. Some of the groups have previously questioned the deal.”

Among the additions to previously announced concessions:

The National Association of Hispanic Journalists opposes the merger.

On cameras in the Supreme Court, nominee Elena Kagan said, “it would be a great thing for the institution, and more important, I think it would be a great thing for the American people.” (Video)

 

Kagan Reiterates Support for Cameras at Supreme Court

“You want forthcoming? Well, the Kagan hearings so far haven‚Äôt mimicked the confessional tone of MTV‚Äôs ‘The Hills,’ but they‚Äôve revealed a bit more than did last year‚Äôs hearings involving Sonia Sotomayor,” Nathan Koppel wrote in the Wall Street Journal.

“For starters, Kagan Tuesday morning didn‚Äôt hedge when asked her opinion of cameras in the courtroom. ‘I think it would be a great thing for the institution and for the American people’ to have cameras, she said, adding ‘I‚Äôm open to being persuaded I‚Äôm wrong.’ Wow. A far cry from David Souter‚Äôs cameras ‚Äúover my dead body‚Äù proclamation.”

In a C-SPAN poll on the Supreme Court [PDF], 63 percent of voters said they support TV camera coverage of the Court’s oral arguments.

Clarence Thomas Gives Voice to Black Gun-Rights Supporters

Some African Americans have long been in favor of gun rights. In 2005, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that her black minister father “and his friends armed themselves to defended the black community in Birmingham, Ala., against the White Knight Riders in 1962 and 1963. She said if local authorities had had lists of registered weapons, she did not think her father and other blacks would have been able to defend themselves,” Barry Schweid of the Associated Press reported then.

It was not until Monday’s Supreme Court decision on gun rights from Chicago, in which a 5 to 4 vote gave Otis McDonald, a 76-year-old black man from Chicago, the right to buy a handgun, that African Americans who oppose gun control received much media attention.

Washington Post columnist Courtland Milloy Wednesday pointed out the voice given this point of view by Justice Clarence Thomas:

“He hardly ever speaks during oral arguments, often appearing asleep on the bench. But in his written opinion Monday supporting the right to bear arms, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas roared to life.

“Referring to the disarming of blacks during the post-Reconstruction era, Thomas wrote: ‘It was the “duty” of white citizen patrols to search negro houses and other suspected places for firearms.’ If they found any firearms, the patrols were to take the offending slave or free black ‘to the nearest justice of the peace’ whereupon he would be ‘severely punished.’ ” Never again, Thomas says.

“In a scorcher of an opinion that reads like a mix of black history lesson and Black Panther Party manifesto, he goes on to say, ‘Militias such as the Ku Klux Klan, the Knights of the White Camellia, the White Brotherhood, the Pale Faces and the ’76 Association spread terror among blacks. . . . The use of firearms for self-defense was often the only way black citizens could protect themselves from mob violence.’

“This was no muttering from an Uncle Tom, as many black people have accused him of being. His advocacy for black self-defense “is straight from the heart of Malcolm X. He even cites the slave revolts led by Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner — implying that white America has long wanted to take guns away from black people out of fear that they would seek revenge for centuries of racial oppression.”

 

Philadelphia’s WDAS played a significant part in the civil-rights movement. From left, DJ Georgie Woods, the Rev. Ralph Abernathy, reporter Ed Bradley, Martin Luther King Jr., Bob Klein and Cecil B. Moore. (Bob Klein Archives/Philadelphia Daily News). See item below.

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