Program Aims to Integrate Executive Producer Ranks
ABC News is ready to move on improving its low number of network decision-makers of color, with executives agreeing to set up a mentor program that would bring promising producers of color into the ranks of those who green-light news segments, according to Jim Avila, senior law and justice correspondent for the network.
Avila told Journal-isms of the development Friday night at the annual awards banquet of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, where he was named Broadcast Journalist of the Year.
A study of network decision-makers released in July by the National Association of Black Journalists found that of the executive producers at ABC, six were white, two were Asian American and none was African American, Native American or Hispanic.
CBS had eight white executive producers, one Hispanic, and no African Americans, Asian Americans or Native Americans.
NBC had seven white executive producers, and no African American, Hispanic, Asian American or Native Americans at that level.
“The NABJ study showed little diversity among an elite group of managers (executive producers) who oversee news from sunrise until prime-time,” NABJ said.
In the NAHJ awards presented at the National Press Club, Avila won in the 
“television — breaking news, large market” category for “the Faceless Victims of the California Fires,” describing the plight of undocumented farmworkers in the path of the wildfires that burned thousands of acres around San Diego. “It became a fine line they had to walk between staying safe from smoke and flames, keeping their field jobs and steering clear of border patrol while in search of food and safety,” NAHJ said of the farmworkers.
That the story aired shows “how important it is for Hispanics to be in the room where the decisions are made,” Avila told the audience of 220. When the news managers were talking about an instant special for “20/20,” he said, “there wasn’t much talk about what farmworkers were doing. It’s not that they don’t want to do these stories, they just don’t think of them.”
Avila said later that ABC News President David Westin and Executive Vice President Robert Murphy acknowledged the lack of diversity in the top producer ranks — “largely white and largely male” — at a meeting with the network’s journalists of color at the Unity convention in July. The executives agreed then to set up the mentor program, he said.
While the number of Latinos in network management is small, Avila reminded the audience that their plight in the news business has been worse. In accepting his Broadcaster of the Year Award, he recalled not being able to get a job at Chicago’s WBBM-TV because, he said he was told, the station already had a Hispanic in John Quinones.
He then went to rival WLS-TV, which did have a Hispanic journalist. But the other Latino was fired as soon as Avila came on board, he said.
The awards gala grossed $110,000, Executive Director Iv?°n Rom?°n said, meaning it would likely net about $50,000. Individual tickets were $150 for members and $200 for nonmembers.
As in previous NAHJ awards programs, immigration was a leading story topic, but so was treatment of poor and working-class Latinos in the United States and in Latin America.
A story by Dunia Elvir of Telemundo won in the television investigative category, telling of a couple whose newborn died as a result of an infection the child acquired from a poorly disinfected hospital laryngoscope.
Tena Rubio of the National Radio Project told of how immigrant workers were transforming New Orleans. Sarah Batista of WBTV-TV in Charlotte, N.C., agreed to do her own camera work so she could go with city officials to Mexico to report on the effects of immigration on Mexican families and schools. “They gave me the oldest camera and the heaviest tripod,” she said. “The oldest member of the school board carried my tripod.” Still, she said, the experience was worth it.
Rachel Dissell of the Cleveland Plain Dealer wrote about the teenage survivor of a gunshot to the face. The series prompted a rush of letters from teenagers who don’t normally read the paper but who identified with the riveting tale of teenage domestic violence, she said. “I was like that,” a teenage boy wrote of one of the perpetrators.
John Diaz, editorial page editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, had told readers about ending up on the government “watch list” through a misidentification.
Veteran journalist Maria Hinojosa, of “Now” on PBS and “Latino USA” on National Public Radio, won NAHJ’s Leadership Award. It comes just as she completed a piece on “Women, Power and Politics” around the world, which airs Sept. 19.
She noted the coincidence. “Because we are on television, people assume we are powerful,” she said. “I say, this is what I do with my power. I give it back, hopefully to young journalists.
“If I had fire in the belly” when starting out, she continued, “there is a volcano erupting now. There is fear. They don’t know when the knock will come at the door. If they’re from the Department of Homeland Security or ICE,” Immigration and Customs Enforcement, “they can come in without a warrant.
“There is no such thing as an illegal human being. I learned that” not from some Latino activist, but from Elie Wiesel, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and Holocaust survivor, “who said that when you declare an entire population illegal, it opens the door for other things.”
Texas Coast Journalists on Job as Others Evacuate
Journalists on the Texas Gulf Coast were doing their jobs Friday morning — making use of the Internet — as “a sprawling and strengthening Hurricane Ike steamed through the Gulf of Mexico . . . on a track toward the nation’s fourth-largest city, where authorities told residents to brace rather than flee,” in the words of the Associated Press.
“Most of the island has been evacuated,” Heber Taylor, editor of the Galveston County (Texas) Daily News, told Journal-isms Friday morning. But he said his staff of 20 was scattered about, and “We’ll ride out the storm.”
He reiterated at 5:30 p.m. local time, speaking from his office, “We intend to report through the storm. We’re updating the Web as best we can. We’re having technical difficulties.”
One of his reporters, Sarah Foley, blogged from an evacuee shelter in Austin. She wrote Friday that she was being asked to leave.
”It makes us very uncomfortable for a reporter to be inside,’ one volunteer, who appears to be one of the ones in charge, told me,” Foley wrote.
In Houston, KTRK-TV, the ABC affiliate that is the market leader in news, was live streaming its coverage on its Web site.
The Houston Chronicle’s Web site featured extensive storm coverage. “We’re up to our eyeballs,” a staffer said Friday morning.
The print edition published a note to readers declaring, “As Hurricane Ike takes aim at the Houston area, we are working to bring you the most complete news possible, in print and online . . . We will not deliver newspapers to areas under mandatory evacuation orders. Papers will be delivered as soon as communities are reopened.” Houston is the nation’s fourth-largest city.
For the duration of the storm, the Chronicle offered free access to its e-edition.
“Ike’s eye was forecast to strike somewhere near Galveston late Friday, but the massive system was already buffeting Texas and Louisiana,” the Associated Press said.
“The National Weather Service warned residents of smaller structures on Galveston they could ‘face certain death’ if they ignored an order to evacuate; most had complied.
“Evacuation orders also were in effect for low-lying sections of the Houston area. Authorities urged homeowners to board up windows, clear the decks of furniture and stock up on drinking water and nonperishable food.”
The Chronicle told readers on Friday, “This morning it appears as if Houston remains on target to take a direct hit by Hurricane Ike. The official forecast has changed little other than increasing landfall intensity from 110 mph to 115 mph, at landfall.
“At whatever strength Ike comes ashore, it’s going to be a nasty, nasty storm for coastal dwellers in southeast Texas and southwestern Louisiana.”
On Saturday, the newspaper reported, the danger had passed. Attention turned to assessing the damage and to rescue efforts. “At 10 p.m. today, the National Weather Service said, Ike, now downgraded to a tropical storm, had moved north of Texarkana and was on a path to Arkansas with maximum winds of 40 mph,” the story said.
At least 940 people have been rescued, most from Orange and Galveston counties, and about 40,000 people found refuge in 250 shelters all over the state, it continued.
“By any measure, it was a huge storm,” Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said on Saturday night. [Updated Sept. 13]
- Coverage by KHOU-TV Houston
- Coverage by KPRC-TV Houston
- Keith Boykin, thedailyvoice.com: In the path of a hurricane
- Editorial, Houston Chronicle: What were the thousands who ignored orders to flee from Ike’s near-certain destruction thinking? [Sept. 13]
- Lolis Eric Elie, New Orleans Times-Picayune: Evacuees do have some rights
- Davd Steele, Baltimore Sun: Postponing game the right call [Sept. 14]
After “Tie,” Joyner Names Pair to Succeed Smiley
“Jeff Johnson and Stephanie Robinson were named the newest commentators for ‘The Tom Joyner Morning Show’ Thursday morning, after voting by the public ended in a dead heat,” Jackie Jones reported Friday for Joyner’s BlackAmericaWeb.com.
“With the song ‘Give the People What They Want’ playing in the background, radio personality Joyner told listeners that after 50,000 votes and an extended deadline, the voting twice ended in a tie.
Separately, Robert Feder reported in Friday’s Chicago Sun-Times that journalist Roland Martin, “who’s had a starring role on Midway Broadcasting news/talk WVON-AM (1690) for three years — including the last two as morning personality — is leaving to join the cast” of Joyner’s radio show as a commentator. 
The story did not say when Martin’s commentaries would air.
Johnson is to provide his on Tuesday and Robinson on Thursday at 8:10 a.m.
”I am honored to be part of the TJMS family. This is truly a bridge-building opportunity as Stephanie and I bring a gender balance to commentary,’ Johnson said in a news release. ‘This is also a great moment in time to bring those younger listeners, who make me what I am, into the family as well,” Jones reported. Johnson is 35.
“Johnson, a Washington, D.C.-based award-winning journalist, social activist and political commentator who merges politics and pop culture, is the managing editor/host of the BET talk show, ‘The Truth with Jeff Johnson.’ He has served as senior advisor for media and youth outreach for People for the American Way, national youth director for the NAACP and vice president for the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network.
“Robinson is the founding president and CEO of The Jamestown Project, a national think tank that focuses on democracy. She is a lecturer on law at Harvard Law School and former chief counsel for Sen. Edward M. Kennedy and a recognized expert on social policy, women, race and family.”
“Johnson and Robinson were selected by TJMS listeners after the show began a two month on-air search to replace contributor Tavis Smiley, who left the program in June after 12 years.”
Federa added that “At CNN this weekend, Martin will kick off a series of specials on the presidential race.
“The first one, ‘Seven Weeks To Go,’ airing at 7 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, will feature a panel of experts discussing how age, race and gender bias will affect the outcome of the election.”
- David Person, Huntsville (Ala.) Times: Smiley preaching truth to power
Purported E-Mails Describe Reporter-Source Affair
“Just a day after he was selected to lead Miami-Dade public schools, Alberto Carvalho said he was the target of a ‘smear campaign’ suggesting he had an improper relationship with a former Miami Herald education reporter and that he tried to undermine outgoing superintendent Rudy Crew,” the Miami Herald began a story Friday, written by Carol Marbin Miller, Michael Sallah and Scott Hiaasen.
Reporter Tania deLuzuriaga, now a reporter at the Boston Globe, covered Miami-Dade schools for the Herald last year. Caravalho worked in the school system.
“Contacted in Boston, she declined to discuss the e-mails Thursday,” the story continued.
“The purported e-mails between the two veer from light banter to The Herald’s schools coverage to relationship angst. Other messages appear to show her planning trips with Caravalho to Boston and Portugal.”
The Miami New Times weighed in later Friday:
“What was in the e-mails? You wouldn’t know from reading the Herald article which refrained from directly quoting the salacious and highly embarrassing exchanges between the reporter covering the school beat and one of her subjects. You can read the e-mails here.
“The first string of e-mails began on July 19, 2007 whilst deLuzuriaga was on a 40-mile bike ride. Subject line: ‘Fuzzy.’ She wrote: ‘It occurred to me while I was riding that I seem to have forgotten to bathe the past two days. I also haven’t shaven since I left Miami. Thought you might like that image. If you say you’d still go down on me I’ll call you a liar. Hope your day is wonderful. I love you.” His reply: ‘Don’t shave.'”
Later in the day, WFOR-TV reported, “Carvalho acknowledged to CBS4 News that he had a ‘playful’ relationship” with deLuzuriaga but still denied that he had an affair.
The Herald wrote: “‘There are long-standing and very clear standards when it comes to relationships with the people we cover,’ Herald Executive Editor Anders Gyllenhaal said. `If these e-mails are real, this violates some of the most basic rules of our profession.’
”’The paper will report most aggressively on this case and determine exactly what happened,’ he said.”
Black Sports Director Out After “N-Word” Incident
A black sports director at a Madison, Wis., television station has been let go after repeatedly using the N-word to describe a pedestrian — and himself — in the wake of a police stop, Bill Novak reported Friday in Madison’s Capital Times.
“I’m really sorry for the way I acted,” George Johnson of WISC-TV told Novak. “I accept the responsibility for my unprofessionalism that day.”
He said he was “caught up in the emotion” of the moment and reacted, Novak reported.
Johnson, 48, was stopped by Sgt. Dave McClurg of the Madison Police Department on Saturday after apparently failing to yield to a pedestrian, the story said. McClurg was notified of the traffic violation by another officer working on a pedestrian safety operation along Monroe Street.
“According to the report filed with the citation, Johnson told McClurg he didn’t know why he was stopped, and after the officer explained the reason, Johnson started commenting about the situation.
“‘Was it that n—- in the street?’ Johnson asked, according to the report. ‘You can tell that n—– he is a sellout n—–. I’ll be coming for that n——.’
“He apparently wasn’t finished.
“‘You white people going to shoot all us n—–,’ the report said.
“Johnson is an African-American. McClurg is white.”
“Johnson was hired as the WISC-TV sports director in the summer of 2005, after stints in Washington, D.C., as a freelance reporter for BET News and as a play-by-play announcer for Black College Football.
“I hope I’ve learned from it,” he told the newspaper. “Once I’ve made that step I can come to grips with myself and my Lord. Life’s about learning lessons.”
