Accuracy Varies in Describing Site of Mosque
Fareed Zakaria Jumps From Newsweek to Time
Blagojevich Verdict Attributed to Lack of Smoking Gun
Hispanic Immigrants Found to Hold Idealized Views of U.S.
Ishmael Reed Takes on N.Y. Times, Asian-on-Black Crime
Accuracy Varies in Describing Site of Mosque
“There is no mosque being built on the site of Ground Zero. It’s a simple fact, but one that news consumers can be forgiven for missing,” Michael Calderone wrote Monday for Yahoo News.
“In covering the growing controversy over the proposed Islamic community center in lower Manhattan, the national media, led by the big cable networks, have by default shaped the increasingly heated debate by repeatedly referring to the project as the ‘Ground Zero mosque.’ An MSNBC spokesman said that describing the project is a ‘show-by-show decision,’ while a CNN spokesperson said the network guides anchors in written copy to refer to the project as ‘an Islamic center that includes a mosque that is near Ground Zero, or is two blocks from Ground Zero.’ Of course, political pundits may stray from the network’s phrasing and inaccurately describe the location of the planned building at the center of the furor.
“But Phil Corbett, the New York Times’ standards editor said, ‘Given how politically volatile this discussion has been, we think it’s important to be accurate and precise,’ in explaining the paper’s consistent references to the planned structure being two blocks from the Ground Zero site.
“The ‘Park51’ project, as it’s officially dubbed, is in fact planned for a site two blocks from where the World Trade Center towers fell, amid other lower Manhattan establishments whose names have never featured the words ‘Ground Zero.’ If built, the 13-story community center and mosque project will be one of hundreds of buildings located within blocks of Ground Zero – a densely populated area that already includes a couple of mosques, along with less ‘hallowed’ institutions, like strip clubs, bars and Off Track Betting operations.”
- Neda Bolourchi and Zuhdi Jasser with Michel Martin on “Tell Me More,” NPR: Planned NYC Islamic Center Draws Muslim Critics
- Peter Hart, Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting: Back When the “Ground Zero Mosque” Was a Good Idea
- Alex Kane, Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting: Bigot or Colorful Activist? Washington Post is Neutral on Islamophobes
- Dr. Wilmer J. Leon III, theGrio.com: Obama should stand by principles, and his comments on mosque
- Joel Meares, Columbia Journalism Review: Statistician Says Obama’s Mosque Comments Not So Risky
- Thomas Sugrue, Ta-Nehisi Coates blog, the Atlantic: Hallowed Ground
Fareed Zakaria Jumps From Newsweek to Time
Newsweek columnist Fareed Zakaria will join Time as editor at large on Oct. 1. He will have a regular column and contribute cover stories and features in the magazine and on TIME.com, Time Managing Editor Richard Stengel announced on Wednesday.
“The departure of Mr. Zakaria, a well-known columnist and television presence, is another blow to Newsweek, which was sold to Sidney Harman, an audio equipment mogul, at the beginning of the month . Several prominent writers and editors have left the magazine recently, including the editor, Jon Meacham; a columnist, Evan Thomas; and an investigative reporter, Michael Isikoff,” David Carr wrote in the New York Times.
Zakaria has also been the editor of Newsweek International since October 2000.
“In addition to his new role at TIME, Mr. Zakaria has renewed his association with CNN, where he will continue to work on his weekly show, ‘Fareed Zakaria GPS,’ and, in addition, will produce several special reports a year. He will also serve as a consultant for HBO‚Äôs documentary unit. TIME, CNN, and HBO are all owned by Time Warner, and the company plans to utilize Mr. Zakaria‚Äôs expertise across these platforms,” an announcement said.
Jon Klein, president of CNN/U.S. said in the release, ‚ÄúFareed has brought unparalleled insight to CNN‚Äôs Sunday morning programming, and his voice will now resonate like that of no other journalist in the world ‚Äî globally, in print, online, and in longform ‚Äî thanks to the unmatched resources of Time Warner. We’re looking forward to continuing to blaze new trails with Fareed and our partners at Time and HBO.”
Zakaria said: “I’m excited at the prospect of writing for TIME’s vast and important audience. Rick Stengel has a compelling vision for the magazine and website and I’m delighted to be a part of it. I will also be doing more at CNN as well as HBO, where I have had wonderful experiences already. This is a unique opportunity to bring together on a common platform, my work on television, print, and the web. I’m grateful for the vote of confidence and look forward to getting to work.”
Dorothy Tucker of WBBM-TV follows Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich to Chicago’s Ravenswood Manor neighborhood after the verdict. (Video)
Blagojevich Verdict Attributed to Lack of Smoking Gun
The Chicago media generally received good marks for its coverage of the jury verdict Tuesday in the case of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who was found guilty of lying to federal agents. The jury was deadlocked on the other 23 counts, including a charge that he tried to sell President Obama’s former Senate seat.
The verdict “was surprising to some, it was not surprising to me,” Chicago Sun-Times columnist Mary Mitchell said on NPR’s “Tell Me More.” “I must say, all along, I’ve said that the problem here was going to be no smoking gun. You know, 500 hours of wiretap information, tapes that people can listen to that clearly show the governor, if nothing else, had a very foul mouth and said some pretty damaging things.
“But, no, you couldn’t connect that to anything that he received. He didn’t get an ambassadorship. He didn’t get any money into his campaign coffers. He didn’t the government could not show what he got for the corruption. So I think that’s very that was very critical in his case because it was so complicated, juries had to see what did he get? And they could not find it. And I think that was the major problem here.”
“While the jury of Rod Blagojevich‚Äôs peers may have left a lot of people disappointed, Chicago‚Äôs big five television news organizations performed their duties admirably, blanketing the airwaves with live, compelling and, for the most part, commercial-free coverage for close to three hours Tuesday afternoon,” media critic Robert Feder wrote.
The Chicago Defender, the city’s historic black newspaper, had nothing about the verdict on its website on Wednesday, continuing to spotlight last weekend’s 81st Bud Billiken Day parade.
“Those who attended the 81st Annual Bud Billiken Parade and Picnic Saturday said it lived up to its reputation as being fun and exciting,” it said.
Hispanic Immigrants Found to Hold Idealized Views of U.S.
“An Associated Press-Univision poll of more than 1,500 Latinos finds that Hispanic immigrants, many of whom faced huge problems in their homelands, have more idealized views of the United States than Hispanics who were born in America do,” Ileana Morales and Nancy Benac reported Tuesday for the Associated Press.
“It’s an oft-told story in U.S. history, one of immigrants drawn to the land of opportunity and happy with the contrast to their old life. But it’s also one of ethnic groups that settle in only to confront social and economic hurdles that persist from one generation to the next.
“The poll, also sponsored by The Nielsen Co. and Stanford University, turned up stark differences between the hopes of immigrant parents and U.S.-born Hispanics for their children: 77 percent of foreign-born Hispanic parents believe it will be easier for their children to find a good job, compared with 31 percent of U.S.-born Hispanics. Likewise, far more Hispanic immigrants believe it will be easier for their children to buy a house and for their children to raise a family than do Hispanics born in the U.S. . .
“The country’s economic downturn has taken an especially harsh toll on Hispanics, according to the poll, with 6 in 10 saying it’s hard for them to get ahead financially and nearly half or more expressing intense worry over losing their jobs, paying bills or saving for college.”
Ishmael Reed Takes on N.Y. Times, Asian-on-Black Crime
Ishmael Reed, the novelist, poet and media critic, is criticizing the Bay Citizen, a San Francisco-based nonprofit, “public media organization” that 
“You’d think that with its classy reputation that The New York Times would be different from the trashy representation of Oakland favored by the local press, whose marketing strategy seems to be that of coddling and entertaining its targeted sales demographic by embarrassing blacks,” Reed wrote on his sfgate.com blog. As an example, he cited a new farmers market that went uncovered. “The only food stores available to me and my neighbors are liquor stores disguised as grocery stores.There is an important urban farming movement happening in Oakland,” he wrote.
Jonathan Weber, editor of the Bay Citizen, replied, “we report news . A nice farmers market is not news. With all due respect your criticism comes off as the standard type of complaining of that journalists always hear when they don’t report on things the way a particular interested party would like them to. The perception that there is a lot of crime in Oakland is a function of the fact that there is a lot of crime in Oakland. Sorry, but we did not create that fact. And we certainly report lots of news out of Oakland that has nothing to do with crime. If you want to critique The Bay Citizen that’s great but please save your stereotypes.”
In a subsequent post, Reed replied to bloggers who criticized him on racial grounds. “I’m a bigot for pointing out that some Asian American criminals operate in Oakland’s black neighborhoods?” Reed wrote. “The leader of a gang that terrorized my neighborhood for four years was a Vietnamese kid whose activities not only erupted occasionally into gunfire, but he went about calling black middle class women, members of our Neigborhood Crime Watch, by the B word. He was murdered around the corner last year. Do some Asian American criminals bring drugs onto our block? Yes. Do I cast collective blame on the entire Asian American community, 38 culturally distinct groups, for the actions of a few as Oakland’s black American community was blamed for the actions of four blacks, who have been accused of assaulting Chinese Americans, ACTIONS THAT I CONDEMNED IN PRINT!! No! . . . “
Short Takes
- “As we arrive at the five-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina this month, the news nets are prepping special coverage to mark the occasion,” Kevin Allocca wrote Wednesday for TVNewser, offering preliminary plans by NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC and PBS.
- ABC News veteran Portia Robertson is joining NPR’s “Tell Me More” in September as supervising senior editor, NPR spokeswoman Anna Christopher confirmed on Wednesday. She spent “24 years at ABC, where she worked on ABC Radio, World News Tonight, 20/20 and ABC News NOW. During her time at ABC, she contributed to the network’s duPont-Columbia and Peabody Award-winning coverage of the September 11th terrorist attacks,” Christopher said.
- “AOL‚Äôs Patch network, which started with news websites in three communities when it was launched in 2009, added a Patch site in Morristown, N.J., this week, its 100th site. AOL says it will expand the Patch network to more than 500 neighborhoods in 20 states by the end of the year and hire 500 journalists to serve as local editors. Patch will be the largest hirer of full-time journalists in the United States this year, AOL says,” Jeff Clabaugh reported for the Washington Business Journal.
- The newspaper and magazine industries could potentially realize $3 billion in revenue by 2014 if they produced interactive periodicals, according to the digital publishing consortium Next Issue Media, Jason Fell reported for Folio magazine.
- “Business journalists in the United States make a median salary of $65,000 to $70,000, according to an informal poll of nearly 400 business reporters and editors conducted by the Society of American Business Editors and Writers,” Chris Roush, who conducted the survey, wrote for Talking Biz News. “The median salary for a business reporter was between $60,000 and $65,000, while the median salary for a business section editor was between $75,000 to $80,000. An editor of a business print publication makes a median salary between $95,000 and $100,000.”
- “Gannett today announced HighSchoolSports.net . . . launching hyperlocal, co-branded high school sports microsites across its network of more than 100 local media websites and the national high school sports pages on USATODAY.com,” TVNewscheck reported on Wednesday. “HighSchoolSports.net is a subsidiary of Gannett and part of the Gannett Digital Network. Leveraging the depth and breadth of Gannett’s sports content for consumers and advertisers, the HighSchoolSports.net microsites are expected to collectively reach approximately 9.4 million unique monthly visitors.”
- Sarah Gonzalez of San Diego, a graduate of Mills College in Oakland, Calif., who produces “Morning Edition” on KPBS in San Diego, and Hansi Wang of Glen Mills, Pa., a native Chinese speaker who worked as a refugee housing coordinator in Philadelphia and attended Swarthmore College, are among three Joan B. Kroc Fellows at NPR. Now in its sixth year, the Fellowship program selects three to participate in an intensive, year-long training program at NPR and member stations.
- In Mexico City, “Hundreds of Mexican journalists conducted a silent protest to demand that the federal government do more to protect journalists from increasing violence,” Mexico’s La Jornada reports. “The journalists, from diverse media, also called for investigations into the homicides of more than 60 reporters and the disappearance of 12 others.”
- Former Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, who died in an Alaska plane crash last week at age 86, “was just Uncle Ted in Western Alaska, where his work led to development of the Native corporations that help power Alaska¬°¬Øs economy today, and the Denali Commission, that has poured $1 billion into rural Alaska in a dozen years, building tank farms, clinics and other facilities,” Alex Demarban reported Tuesday for Alaska’s Tundra Times.
- DeWayne Wickham of USA Today and Gannett News Service was among journalists at a two-hour off-the-record luncheon Wednesday with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at State Department. Other attendees were David Ignatius of the Washington Post, Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, Christiana Amanpour of ABC News and Fareed Zakaria of Newsweek.
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