Blogger Says Network “Caved,” Progressives Cheer

Blogger Says Network “Caved,” Progressives Cheer

ABC News withdrew its invitation to conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart to be part of its Election Night coverage Tuesday, saying Breitbart claimed he was to have a larger role than was the case.

Breitbart’s website headlined the development, “ABC News Caves Completely to Intolerant Left, Cancels Breitbart Election Night Appearance.”

James Rucker of ColorofChange.org, one of the lead organizations protesting Breitbart’s appearance, said that, “By rescinding their offer to Breitbart, ABC News has taken a giant step in helping to wash our collective hands of the fear mongering and race-baiting that have no place in our political discourse.”

ABC’s letter to Breitbart, which it time-stamped at 4:07 p.m., read:

“We have spent the past several days trying to make clear to you your limited role as a participant in our digital town hall to be streamed on ABCNews.com and Facebook. The post on your blog last Friday created a widespread impression that you would be analyzing the election on ABC News. We made it as clear as possible as quickly as possible that you had been invited along with numerous others to participate in our digital town hall. Instead of clarifying your role, you posted a blog on Sunday evening in which you continued to claim a bigger role in our coverage. As we are still unable to agree on your role, we feel it best for you not to participate.”

It was signed by Andrew Morse, executive producer for ABC News Digital.

ABC invited Breitbart to as part of ABC.com’s election-night “digital town hall,” participating from the Arizona State University campus in Phoenix.

But Breitbart wrote Sunday night on his BigJournalism.com blog, “I can state with absolute certainty that the verbal pitch to me to participate was punctuated by the opportunity to appear as part of ABC News’ broadcast television for the night,” though he added, “I was also aware that the majority of my participation — seven long hours — would be online.”

It was Breitbart who this year released the edited tape that made Agriculture Department manager Shirley Sherrod seem like a bigot, sparking a chain of events in which Sherrod resigned and an embarrassed President Obama and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack apologized for the federal government’s foul-up.

Last year, his BigGovernment.com posted videos made by conservative activists supposedly showing employees of the community-organizing group ACORN counseling the activists, who were ostensibly pretending to be a prostitute and a pimp, on how to avoid paying taxes and other illegal activities. In the fallout, ACORN lost congressional funding.

Breitbart said of ABC’s decision on Tuesday, “This is about cowardice and caving into what was an overwhelming onslaught by Media Matters, The Huffington Post, TalkingPointsMemo and Daily Kos,” according to Politico’s Andy Barr.

Media Matters CEO David Brock said in a statement, “I’m pleased that ABC finally came to its senses and realized that nothing good can come from associating in any way with Andrew Breitbart. I still don’t understand why they ever thought it would be a good idea to host a racist right-wing hoaxster like him, but cooler heads have prevailed. The man is poison. Hopefully their experience with Breitbart’s reputation and erratic behavior will serve as a warning to other outlets before they too gamble with their credibility.”

Asked why Breitbart was invited to appear on any ABC platform, Jeffrey W. Schneider, senior vice president of ABC News, told Journal-isms on Monday, “We went through a broad range of people to participate in this digital town hall with opinions and thoughts across the spectrum, and he was one of those people.”

Buffalo News Announces Steps to Address Black Animosity

Monday, November 1, 2010

Buffalo News Announces Steps to Address Black Animosity

. . . Watson: I Want to Break Down the Wall

At Rally, Stewart Says the Fired Rick Sanchez Is No Bigot

Muslim Congressman Wants to Talk With Juan Williams

“Mallard Fillmore” Strip Plays Part in Culture Wars

CNN en Español Employees Told to Reapply for New Jobs

Short Takes

At a Sept. 1 forum, an animated community member, Aaron Jackson, asks Buffalo News Editor Margaret Sullivan whether the newspaper explored the criminal backgrounds of suburban victims. (Video)

Coverage of Shooting Exposed Paper’s Estrangement

The Buffalo News, which so angered members of the city’s black community over the summer that some burned copies of the newspaper, announced steps Sunday to attempt to repair the damage.

About 700 people “shared their grievances” with Buffalo News Editor Margaret Sullivan at a Sept. 1 community meeting after the News followed up on the shootings of eight people at a downtown restaurant with a front-page story about the criminal records of the victims. Four died in what the News called “one of the bloodiest shooting attacks in the region in recent decades.”

“I feel that we were victimized twice,” said Cheryl Stevens, mother-in-law of Danyelle Mackin, one of the four killed in the shooting, the News reported.

In a column Sunday, Sullivan wrote, “I can say, without exaggeration, that I left that meeting both shaken and changed. I still believe The News was right to publish the story because it exposed an important piece of the puzzle about that tragic shooting. But its timing and placement should have been handled more sensitively and more respectfully. (Those decisions were essentially mine.)”

Sullivan announced “just a few of the things that we plan to do:

• “Form a diversity advisory council to give us feedback on our coverage of minorities. The group will be made up of community members — some prominent people and some ‘ordinary citizens.’ Editors and reporters will meet with the group quarterly. (If you’d like to be considered for a role on the council, please write to me or to Rod Watson at The News.)” Watson, the urban affairs editor, is a black journalist who writes a weekly column.
• “Start a speakers’ bureau to get our reporters and editors out to meet people in the community. (If a group would like a speaker, it can request one through Watson.)
• “Conduct diversity training in the newsroom. Our newsroom is reasonably diverse, with about 12 percent minorities, which reflects the racial makeup of Western New York as a whole. Black journalists work as editorial writers, assigning editors, photographers and beat reporters. Despite that, I’m sure we can learn from some professional training.
• “Conduct a public opinion poll to gauge perceptions of The News among members of the black community. (This was a particular request of the East Side ministers and activists.)
• “Begin a regular, every other week feature in the City&Region section that highlights positive or constructive news from the East Side, or simply describes neighborhoods and community activities.”

Some greeted Sullivan’s statement with skepticism.

“She still did not apologize to the community, nor to the families,” George K. Arthur, retired chairman of the Buffalo Common Council, told Journal-isms on Monday. “She just softened her position somewhat.” Sullivan had invited Arthur to speak at the Sept. 1 forum specifically to offer a historical perspective on grievances about the News’ coverage of the black community.

Arthur also questioned the selection of Watson, who also heads the Buffalo Association of Black Journalists, as the point person.

“He’s never been a member of the NAACP, never been active in the community,” and the black journalists group had “never uttered one word” about the now-infamous Sunday story, Arthur said. “In fact, he was kind of defending the News.”

Chris Stevenson, a Buffalo-based syndicated columnist, told Journal-isms via e-mail, “I wrote a couple pieces on how the News is years ago when I was doing a column for the Buffalo Criterion,” a black community newspaper. “I said back then that the Buffalo News biggest problem is that they are always ‘out to get someone.’ It runs across the board here, the News and most of our white politicians are technically democrats, but when it comes to the East side, they act like republicans. As for the article, time will tell (and it won’t take long).”

. . . Buffalo News’ Watson: I Want to Break Down the Wall

Rod Watson, asked to expand on Buffalo News Editor Margaret Sullivan’s comments in her column on the News’ black-community outreach and to respond to comments by George K. Arthur, told Journal-isms, in part:

“Though she didn’t mention it Sunday, we also plan to have News editors hold periodic meetings out in the community so that we can explain how and why we do what we do and get feedback from those we cover.

“The overall aim is to break down the wall that has long existed between The News and the African-American community. My goal is to have the black community develop the same sense of ‘ownership’ in The News that other communities have, so that blacks feel like they can impact The News and, by extension, public policy. The reality is that, for the most part, we don’t write letters to the editor, we don’t write ‘my view’ columns, and our organizations don’t meet with the editorial board. All of those actions help shape the public agenda, mold public perception and help focus the newspaper’s coverage and its editorial policies — yet the black community has been MIA. I’ve been preaching that message for the past 20 years every time I address a community group, but to no avail.

“I certainly understand the historical reasons for this sense of alienation, and the reasons blacks regard the paper as just another alien institution. But the reality is that this estrangement has been bad for the community and bad for the paper. Now, thanks to the recent controversy, we finally have a window of opportunity to get the African-American community engaged with the paper and vice versa, for the betterment of both.

“As for George Arthur’s comments: As a journalist, I obviously don’t join the NAACP or any other organizations that deal with the issues I write about. When it comes to my involvement in the community, I’ll let my columns and recognition from African-American organizations speak for themselves.

“As for the Buffalo Association of Black Journalists, we’ve held forums and workshops to address some of these very issues and turnout has been disappointing, to put it mildly. I can recall one ‘accessing the media’ workshop in which we literally had more people on the panel than in the audience. A few years ago, we held a forum with news managers from the newspaper, the three TV stations and local conservative talk radio station. There were so many empty seats that I’d be hesitant to do it again because it sent entirely the wrong message: Looking out at the empty seats, the news managers probably thought they were doing a great job.

“Again, I understand the reasons for the sense of alienation, but we have to reach out to change that lack of engagement. This is the opportunity to do that. I understand George’s skepticism, and no words from me will change that. So I will say only: Judge us by what we do as this effort unfolds.”

Jon Stewart addresses a throng estimated at 215,000 on Saturday on the National Mall. (Video)

At Rally, Stewart Says the Fired Rick Sanchez Is No Bigot

Late-night satirist Jon Stewart, the target of complaints by then-CNN anchor Rick Sanchez that many characterized as anti-Semitic, said at his “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear” Saturday that it was “an insult” to call Sanchez a bigot.

“There are terrorists and racists and Stalinists and theocrats, but those are titles that must be earned,” Stewart said at the end of the rally on the National Mall.

“You must have the resume. Not being able to distinguish between real racists and tea partiers, or real bigots and Juan Williams or Rick Sanchez is an insult, not only to those people, but to the racists themselves, who have put in the exhausting effort it takes to hate — just as the inability to distinguish terrorists from Muslims makes us less safe, not more.”

Without stating a reason, CNN announced Oct. 1 that “Rick Sanchez is no longer with the company.”

In a satellite radio interview the previous day, Sanchez had asserted a glass ceiling for Latino journalists at CNN, and disparaged Stewart, calling him a “bigot” with a privileged worldview — later changing the term to “uninformed.” Asked whether Stewart, as a Jew, might also be considered a member of an oppressed minority group, Sanchez said, “I’m telling you that everybody who runs CNN is a lot like Stewart, and a lot of people who run all the other networks are a lot like Stewart, and to imply that somehow they — the people in this country who are Jewish — are an oppressed minority? Yeah.’

Sanchez’s firing was followed later in the month by that of Williams from NPR in what critics have called a string of overreactions by media companies.

Sanchez apologized to Stewart, who said Oct. 22 on CNN’s “Larry King Live,” “Should they have fired him? No. With the crap you guys have put on for the past 10 years … fire somebody if you think he is doing a bad job as a newsperson. I think it’s absolute insanity that people have to be accounted for [comments away from work] as far as their livelihood. Were you pleased with his jobs, or was this just an excuse” to fire him?”

(On his Twitter account Saturday, Sanchez wrote, “Just heard Jon Stewart’s Sanity rallly in DC. Humbled by his defense, and want to thank him for letting me write that into his speech.”)

An estimated 215,000 people attended Saturday’s rally, organized by Comedy Central hosts Stewart and Stephen Colbert, according to a crowd estimate commissioned by CBS News, Brian Montopoli of CBS reported.

Comedy Central said 2 million people watched the rally, with more than 250,000 attending in person, Eric Deggans reported on his St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times blog.

In the New York Times, David Carr took issue with Stewart’s closing message faulting cable news for the increasing polarization in the national discourse.

“Most Americans don’t watch or pay attention to cable television,” Carr wrote. “In even a good news night, about five million people take a seat on the cable wars, which is less than 2 percent of all Americans. People are scared of what they see in their pay envelopes and neighborhoods, not because of what Keith Olbermann said last night or how Bill O’Reilly came back at him.”

The Media Research Center network, a conservative organization dedicated to “documenting and exposing the Times liberal bias,” in turn criticized the Times for enjoying the rally too much. The organization said, “The Times also dropped its concern for racial diversity, with no mention of the predominantly white crowd at the Mall on Saturday, a mainstay of coverage of Tea Party gatherings and ‘Restoring Honor,’ which Kate Zernike described on August 29 as an ‘overwhelmingly white and largely middle-aged crowd.’ “

• Clarence Page blog, Chicago Tribune: A day of Sanity/ Fear with Stewart / Colbert

Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., right, took office in 2007 using a Koran once owned by Thomas Jefferson.

Muslim Congressman Wants to Talk With Juan Williams

Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., the nation’s first Muslim member of Congress, said Monday that “I personally plan on writing a letter to Juan Williams and inviting him to have a conversation with me, because I don’t think he has bad intention. I personally believe that, you know, we need to really promote the interfaith dialogue.”

Ellison was referring to Williams’ now-famous Oct. 18 comment on Fox News’ “O’Reilly Factor” that Muslims dressed in “Muslim garb” on planes made him nervous. NPR fired him two days later from his news analyst job on that network.

Ellison said on Pacifica Radio’s “Democracy Now!,” “I was a little bit upset by Juan Williams’ comment, not because I think he is a bigot — I don’t think he is — but I was just disappointed because I thought if anyone would know better, certainly, you know, the producer and author of ‘Eyes on the Prize’ would know better. But I just sort of now think that, you know, it would be great if maybe you or somebody else would interview Juan and say, ‘Look, let’s unpack your fear, unpack your worry, so that we can get down to some real humanity here.’ “

Williams wrote the companion book to the “Eyes on the Prize” television history of the civil rights movement.

Host Amy Goodman asked Ellison, “Did you think that NPR should have fired him?”

Ellison replied, “You know what? I have decided not to sort of weigh in on their personnel decisions. You know, if they would have kept him, would I have thought they made a mistake? No. That they fired him, did I think they made a mistake? No. It’s their prerogative. But I do think that Juan’s comment offers us an opportunity for a conversation. I would point out to Juan Williams and people who think like him that the people who boarded those planes on 9/11 did everything they could do to not look Muslim. They weren’t wearing Muslim garb, whatever that may happen to be in Juan Williams’ mind.”

Meanwhile, Williams apparently rejected a meeting with NPR CEO Vivian Schiller, according to NPR spokeswoman Anna Christopher.

Asked by e-mail whether it was known whether Williams responded to a letter Schiller sent him, Christopher replied, “Yes.”

Asked whether they will meet, she said, “No.”

Christopher was also asked about instances recounted on “Fox News Sunday” in which others working for NPR had offered their opinions elsewhere. Schiller had said Williams had crossed the line permitted a “news analyst” by opining in his “O’Reilly” appearances.

“Some are trying to connect the lines between what happened with Juan Williams and every other reporter or commentator that appears elsewhere,” Christopher replied. “We are not going to get into parsing every comment.”

She also said no decision had been made about replacing Williams, who was awarded a three-year contract worth nearly $2 million at Fox News. “It’s important to remember, too, that Juan Williams did not have a staff position — he was part-time, and had a contract,” Christopher said.

• Ta-Nehisi Coates blog, the Atlantic: Where Bigotry Can Be Taken Pure, Without The Base Alloy Of Hypocrisy (video)
• Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting: Don’t Defund Public Broadcasting — Improve It

“Mallard Fillmore” Strip Plays Part in Culture Wars

“The Oct. 9 ‘Mallard Fillmore’ comic strip in the Express-News and scores of U.S. newspapers featured a drawing of a news photographer, camera in hand, telling the protagonist duck:

” ‘I shot this authentic grainy video of the legendary “Muslims who repudiate violent Islamic groups,” ‘ and Mallard replied: ‘I don’t see anything,’ meaning, I suppose, that few Muslims have repudiated Muslims who commit violence, e.g., 9-11,” Bob Richter, public editor at the San Antonio Express-News, wrote on Oct. 24.

“That’s telling it like it is, eh? Clever? Satirical? Some readers didn’t see it that way. . . .”

” ‘Mallard’s’ artist, Bruce Tinsley, repeated the same slur Wednesday, showing, to me, that he’s an agitator, and drawing this observation from Dawn Kleborn-Curuk, a self-described mulatto, Catholic, wife of a Muslim businessman and mother of three Muslim children, including twins who turned 10 Saturday.

” ‘Your paper has insulted my family,’ she told me. ‘What do I tell my 9-year-old, who reads the comics? ‘Mallard Fillmore’ is telling him he doesn’t exist.’

“Speaking to someone intimately about herself and her family helped me see the light,” Richter wrote. “I can defend Tinsley’s right to insult President Barack Obama — who chose his occupation — but why insult an entire religion?”

Richter quoted Express-News Features/Niche Products Editor Terry Scott Bertling, whose jurisdiction includes the comics as saying:

“Frankly, I’d rather choose strips that can be consistently funny without insulting anyone’s religion. . . . I think most readers look to the comics pages hoping to get a respite from the negativity they sometimes find in the news and just need a chuckle to help them through the day.”

On Sunday, Richter told readers he had received more than 150 e-mails, some 60 telephone calls and 53 online comments in reaction.

“About 70 e-mailers and 35 callers defended the Bruce Tinsley cartoon, saying Mallard is amusing, clever, patriotic, beloved, thought-provoking, not politically correct, ‘tells it like it is’ and acts as a counter-balance to the liberal Doonesbury.”

And yet, Richter said, “without much effort, I found four stories published in the Express-News since 9-11 that did what Tinsley said Muslims haven’t done. . . . “

“What reader Charles Bigelow called ‘the Mallard Kerfuffle’ is a microcosm of the political scene in America — groups who have many reasons to be united, but who see even a silly cartoon character as either good or evil — no retreat, no surrender.”

CNN en Español Employees Told to Reapply for New Jobs

On Thursday, management at CNN en Español, under the new leadership of Cynthia Hudson-Fernández, “called employees to an impromptu staff meeting where they were told that all positions in Atlanta were being eliminated,” Veronica Villafañe reported Friday for her Media Moves column.

“Staffers were told new positions were being created and that all current employees would have to reapply for the new jobs. Those jobs will be posted starting this Monday. Sources tell me that staffers will be told within the next 2-3 weeks, who will stay and who will be given a [severance] package.”

Spokeswomen for CNN en Español did not respond to messages on Monday. As reported Friday, the network has announced it is adding three new anchors — Fernando del Rincón, Mercedes Soler and Camilo Egaña, and is planning “the most comprehensive channel reface in its history.”

In an Oct. 20 interview with Laura Martinez of Multichannel News, Hernandez said, “More than a reface this is really an evolution. We continue to be the news network for Latin American and for the U.S. Hispanic but we are going to be adding more programming to the mix, when before we were only una rueda de noticias [the typical news reel]. We would be every half hour or every hour repeating the same stories on a daily basis. But now we are becoming more about programming; more analysis, more context. We do the ‘what’ is happening very well. But we will be doing more of the ‘why’ is happening.”

Short Takes

• “John Howard Griffin, a native of Dallas who grew up in Fort Worth, was white. And he had the audacity in 1959 to darken his skin and spend several weeks in the Deep South as a black man,” Bob Ray Sanders recalled Sunday in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. “Some of his closest friends and family would not know what he did until his story was first told in a five-part series in Sepia magazine, a national publication headquartered in Fort Worth that rivaled Ebony.” “‘Uncommon Vision: The Life and Times of John Howard Griffin’ by filmmaker Morgan Atkinson premiered Thursday night before a standing-room-only crowd at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. Griffin’s family and some of his former neighbors were in the audience.” Next year marks the 50th anniversary of ‘Black Like Me,’ ” the book about Griffin’s experience.
• Cristina Saralegui planned to bid a star-studded farewell Monday to her Univision show “El Show de Cristina,” and the 12-time Emmy winner already has landed a new job, which she can’t disclose until her contract with Univision ends Dec. 31, Maria Elena Fernandez reported Monday for the Los Angeles Times. “But she says she will be back on TV in March.”
• Essence magazine “announced several additions to its fashion editorial team: Marielle Bobo is now the senior fashion editor and Zandile Blay takes the title of Essence.com’s fashion editor. In addition, Toccara, of ‘America’s Next Top Model’ fame, will [join] Essence as a contributing style editor,” Alex Alvarez reported Friday for Fishbowl NY.
• In Los Angeles, a 65th anniversary party for Ebony magazine “was a who’s who of Hollywood,” Ebony reported on Monday. “Samuel L. Jackson (wearing gym shoes!), actress Loretta Devine, music mogul Clarence Avant, film producer Jeffrey Katzenberg, actress and activist Holly Robinson Peete, producer and writer John Singleton, Princess Gloria Von Thurn und Taxis, Candy Spelling, ‘Secret Life of Bees’ writer Gina Prince Bythewood, society favorite Charles King and Ebony cover girl Nia Long were just a few of the famous faces in the audience.”
• Debra Lee, CEO of Black Entertainment Television, was among the honorees last week at the Broadcasting & Cable Hall of Fame ceremonies in New York. NBC’s “Today” Show was also honored, represented by on-air personalities Hoda Kotb, Natalie Morales and Al Roker.
• Azam Ahmed of the Chicago Tribune and Ben Protess of the Huffington Post Investigative Fund will join the New York Times’ DealBook team and Business Day, Times business editor Larry Ingrassia and DealBook blog editor Andrew Ross Sorkin announced on Friday, according to Talking Biz News. “Azam has worked at the Tribune since 2006, where he most recently has covered education.”
• Moroccan authorities have indefinitely suspend Al-Jazeera’s reporting in Morocco, withdrawing accreditations from Al-Jazeera staff, the Committee to Protect Journalists reported on Monday. The Ministry of Communications “conducted ‘a comprehensive assessment’ of Al-Jazeera’s news reports and programs on Morocco and found that its coverage ‘seriously distorted Morocco’s image and manifestly damaged its interests, most notably its territorial integrity’ — an allusion to Western Sahara, a territory in dispute between Morocco and the Algerian-backed Polisario Front.”

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