Most Women Pictured Seem to Be Wearing Wigs or Weaves
Obama Answers a Rare Question About the Poor
Bill Burton Leaving White House to Start Consulting Firm
Defector Who Fabricated Iraq’s WMDs Admits He Lied
Black Businesses Increase at Triple the National Rate
Female Correspondents Are Targets in Lawless Places
Uptown Magazine Plans Quarterly “Uptown Professional”
CNN Examines Allegations of Ernest Withers’ Dual Role
White House, WETA to Honor Motown Sound
Most Women Pictured Seem to Be Wearing Wigs or Weaves
The new issue of Essence magazine, delivered during Black History Month, might as well be renamed “Wigs and Weaves.” The overwhelming number of images show black women wearing hair that isn’t naturally theirs or doesn’t seem to be.
The good news is that Essence says not to judge the magazine by March’s “Black Women in Hollywood Awards” issue.
Essence replied to an observation from Journal-isms about the March issue that concluded, “in leafing through it, one theme comes through: A black woman isn’t considered beautiful unless she is wearing a wig or a weave, or looks like it. Her own natural hair doesn’t get it.” It noted the “stark difference between the look of the women . . . in this issue of Essence and the variety . . . on the streets of Washington, D.C. . . . The diversity among the women in the ‘On the Streets’ feature seems to be exception, not the rule.
“Granted, much of this is due to the advertising Essence runs, but together with the editorial matter, they combine to articulate a point of view.”
Essence spokeswoman Dana Baxter replied, “Making such a broad generalization based on just one issue of the magazine obscures the brand and its inclusiveness over the past 40 years. At the core of Essence’s mission is highlighting Black women’s inner and outer beauty, as well as celebrating her in all of her diversity, which we do every month in ESSENCE and everyday on essence.com.”
Essence became the nation’s largest-circulation magazine targeting African Americans at the end of 2010 as Ebony, the perennial leader, dropped further in circulation.
Both as a black-owned product and later as part of Time Inc., Essence, founded in 1970, has long helped to shape the tastes of impressionable black women. But it strove to celebrate black women “in all of her diversity,” as Baxter’s statement said. In an issue from exactly a decade ago, the March 2001 edition is introduced by Publication Director Susan L. Taylor, in her trademark braids, and Editor-in-Chief Monique Greenwood, in her natural twists. The rest of the magazine featured hairstyles from straight to curly.
In the current March’s “Black Women in Hollywood” issue, there is no Whoopi Goldberg, with her dreadlocks, nor Halle Berry, with her relatively short ‘do.
Instead, the images seem guaranteed to bolster the $247.7 million American market for ethnic personal care products — which comprise the majority of the Essence advertisers.
Danielle Belton, who writes “The Black Snob” blog, has worn many kinds of hairstyles and had this observation for Journal-isms: “No matter how many people shout ‘It’s just hair,’ hair issues run pretty deep with black people. Mostly because you can economically change your hair. Other features black people battle with, like having wide noses or dark skin, can’t be fixed in two-to-four hours at the salon for under $100. Or with a $40 wig from a Korean-run black hair care shop. Because hair is a something you can actually ‘do’ something about if you don’t like it, you’re going to get a wide range of reactions to things like this with one side wanting to point out the problems in it and the other [wanting] to laugh it off.
“. . . I have my own hair issues which most people are surprised by considering I have a lot of hair and it’s long. But I have some of the same issues. I was raised that my natural hair texture wasn’t as nice as it would have been if it were straight. People have ALWAYS made a big deal about my hair to the point where I thought I would be ugly without it and that all my beauty was tied to it. I’ve had guys date me simply because of my hair (which is weird in itself). I have a love/hate relationship with it, largely because I love having long hair, but I hate putting all the work into it that my hair takes to maintain. It would honestly be so much easier to cut it and wear it short, but at the end of the day I like having long hair.
“The wigs and weaves … I suppose that’s just ‘fantasy’ hair. But it’s an unobtainable fantasy. The ‘highest’ compliment anyone thought they were giving me was that my hair was so thick that it ‘looked’ like a high quality wig. When the hair you grew is getting compared to a wig, which is fake, and it’s a compliment something has gone terribly, terribly wrong.”
“You got to find out how he feels and where his head and heart was,” said April Ryan of American Urban Radio Networks. (Video)
Obama Answers a Rare Question About the Poor
“When was the last time anyone in the White House press corps asked the President a question about the poor?” a blogger for the Congressional Black Caucus asked on Wednesday. “At an unscheduled press conference set up by the White House to get out in front of criticism of his budget, Urban Radio Networks correspondent April Ryan quotes CBC Chair Emanuel Cleaver’s press release of yesterday and asks President Obama about cuts important to the Congressional Black Caucus. President Obama spent most of his answer focused on his proposed cuts on Pell Grants but did address other concerns.”
Ryan began by asking, “Mr. President, I want to focus in on the least of these.
“You started your career of service as a community organizer. And now we are hearing from people like — organizations like the CBC saying rebuilding our economy on the backs of the most vulnerable Americans is something that is simply not acceptable, like the cuts to community service block grants, Pell Grants, heating oil assistance and freezing salaries of federal workers.
“Now, Roderick Harrison of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Study says it’s not good to make these type of cuts at a time of recession, instead of doing it at a time of recovery.”
Obama replied that in the case of Pell Grants and heating oil assistance, he had actually increased the amount of money available but now must cut back.
“Now, we’re in a budget crunch. The take-up rate on the Pell Grant program has skyrocketed. The costs have gone up significantly. If we continue on this pace, sooner or later what’s going to happen is we’re just going to have to chop off eligibility. We’re just going to have to say that’s it, we can’t — we can’t do this anymore; it’s too expensive,” he said.
“So instead what we did was how do we trim — how do we take a scalpel to the Pell Grant program; make sure that we keep the increase for each Pell Grant, make sure that the young people who are being served by the Pell Grant program are still being served, but, for example, on the summer school thing, let’s eliminate that.
“That will save us some money, but the core functions of the program are sustained.
“That’s how we’re approaching all of these cuts.”
But that wasn’t the answer that most struck Ryan, she told Journal-isms. It was when the president mentioned the 10 letters he reads every day from the public. “Sometimes I’m also just frustrated by the number of people out there who are struggling and, you know, you want to help every single one individually,” Obama said.
“And I —you know, you almost feel like you want to be a case worker and just start picking up the phone and advocating for each of these people who are working hard, trying to do right by their families. Oftentimes through no fault of their own they’ve had a tough time, particularly over these last couple of years. So, yeah, it — it’s frustrating.”
Said Ryan, “You got to find out how he feels and where his head and heart was, and we saw a little bit of that.”
- Marisa Treviño, Latina Lista blog: Latest political poll shows Latinos see two Obamas: the Man and the President
Bill Burton Leaving White House to Start Consulting Firm
“Bill Burton, who was the principal deputy press secretary to Gibbs, revealed in an e-mail that he is leaving President Obama’s staff at the end of the week to start a new political and strategic consulting firm with Sean Sweeney, an ex-adviser to two former White House chiefs of staff, Rahm Emanuel and Pete Rouse.
” ‘I will never forget the hardworking and decent people I worked with here — and I am so thankful for the opportunity to have been a part of it,’ Burton wrote in the e-mail to colleagues and members of the White House press corps.’
“Burton, whose wife Laura is expecting the couple’s first child this spring, said he had an epiphany this weekend as he prepared their Washington home for the new baby’s arrival.”
Burton was the highest ranking person of color in the White House press office. As for describing his racial identity, he told Journal-isms by e-mail last month, “I’m biracial because I’m african american and polish american.” He added, “But I basically only have to refer to myself as one of those things in response to emails from you!”
Defector Who Fabricated Iraq’s WMDs Admits He Lied
“Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, codenamed Curveball by German and American intelligence officials who dealt with his claims, has told the Guardian that he fabricated tales of mobile bioweapons trucks and clandestine factories in an attempt to bring down the Saddam Hussein regime, from which he had fled in 1995.
” ‘Maybe I was right, maybe I was not right,’ he said. ‘They gave me this chance. I had the chance to fabricate something to topple the regime. I and my sons are proud of that and we are proud that we were the reason to give Iraq the margin of democracy.’
“The admission comes just after the eighth anniversary of Colin Powell’s speech to the United Nations in which the then-US secretary of state relied heavily on lies that Janabi had told the German secret service, the BND. It also follows the release of former defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s memoirs, in which he admitted Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction programme.”
Janabi made the statements “in a series of meetings with the Guardian in Germany where he has been granted asylum,” the newspaper said.
“In the only other at length interview Janabi has given he denied all knowledge of his supposed role in helping the US build a case for invading Saddam’s Iraq.”
- Ed Pilkington, Helen Pidd and Martin Chulov, the Guardian: Colin Powell demands answers over Curveball’s WMD lies
Black Businesses Increase at Triple the National Rate
“From 2002 to 2007, the number of black-owned businesses increased by 60.5 percent to 1.9 million, more than triple the national rate of 18.0 percent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Survey of Business Owners. Over the same period, receipts generated by black-owned businesses increased 55.1 percent to $137.5 billion,” the Census Bureau reported on Tuesday.
“Black-owned businesses continued to be one of the fastest growing segments of our economy, showing rapid growth in both the number of businesses and total sales during this time period,” said Census Bureau Deputy Director Thomas Mesenbourg.
“These new data come from the Survey of Business Owners: Black-Owned Businesses: 2007. The survey provides detailed information every five years for black-owned businesses, including the number of firms, sales and receipts, number of paid employees and annual payroll.”
The bureau did not say how many were media companies.
- Frank McCoy, theRoot.com: Black Businesses Grew at 3 Times the National Rate: A lack of capital and connections still hampers success for African-American entrepreneurs.
In this CBS News photo, former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak is thought to be the man waving before leaving Cairo by helicopter for Sharm el-Sheikh on Feb. 11. CBS said the photo would appear on Wednesday’s “CBS Evening News With Katie Couric” and that additional photos would be revealed on Thursday’s “The Early Show.” (Credit: CBS)
Female Correspondents Are Targets in Lawless Places
“The photographer was a seasoned operator in South Asia,” [PDF] began an article by Judith Matloff in the May/June 2007 issue of the Columbia Journalism Review. “So when she set forth on an assignment in India, she knew how to guard against gropers: dress modestly in jeans secured with a thick belt and take along a male companion. All those preparations failed, however, when an unruly crowd surged and swept away her colleague. She was pushed into a ditch, where several men set upon her, tearing at her clothes and baying for sex.
“They ripped the buttons off her shirt and set to work on her trousers. ‘My first thought was my cameras,’ recalls the photographer, who asked to remain anonymous. ‘Then it was, “Oh my God, I’m going to be raped.” ‘With her face pressed into the soil, she couldn’t shout for help, and no one would have heard her anyway above the mob’s taunts. Suddenly a Good Samaritan in the crowd pulled the photographer by the camera straps several yards to the feet of some policemen who had been watching the scene without intervening. They sneered at her exposed chest, but escorted her to safety.
“Alone in her hotel room that night, the photographer recalls, she cried, thinking, ‘What a bloody way to make a living.’ She didn’t inform her editors, however. ‘I put myself out there equal to the boys. I didn’t want to be seen in any way as weaker.’
“Women have risen to the top of war and foreign reportage. They run bureaus in dodgy places and do jobs that are just as dangerous as those that men do. But there is one area where they differ from the boys — sexual harassment and rape. Female reporters are targets in lawless places where guns are common and punishment rare. Yet the compulsion to be part of the macho club is so fierce that women often don’t tell their bosses. Groping hands and lewd come-ons are stoically accepted as part of the job, especially in places where western women are viewed as promiscuous.”
President Obama on Wednesday telephoned Lara Logan, the CBS chief foreign affairs correspondent who was sexually assaulted in Cairo on Feb. 11 while covering Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak’s resignation, the Hollywood Reporter reported. Details of the conversation were not released.
- Alex Alvarez, Mediaite: ABC News Correspondent Miguel Marquez Beaten In Bahrain
- Jon Friedman, Marketwatch.com: Kelli Arena: Why media blew it in Egypt
- Foster Kamer, esquire.com: Lara Logan Assaulted in Egypt: Notes from the Night Before
- Tae Jin Kim, Korea Daily: Watching Egypt, Dreaming of Reform in North Korea
- Howard Kurtz, Daily Beast: Lara Logan’s Egypt Nightmare
- Mark Memmott, NPR: Why Have Many Comments About The Attack On Lara Logan Been Removed?
- Julie Millican, Media Matters: Logan’s Sexual Assault Brings Wave Of Blaming The Victim And Other Ugliness
Uptown Magazine Plans Quarterly “Uptown Professional”
“. . . The first issue, poly-bagged with UPTOWN Magazine, will be available on newsstands and in bookstores in March as well as distributed through major corporate employee affinity and network groups.
“The inaugural issue features a detailed look at the top 100 African American, Latino and Asian business executives in the US. Thought leaders profiled include Eugene Kelly/Colgate-Palmolive, Greg Hinton/U.S. Cellular, Thomas Harvey/AT&T, Rodney Adkins/IBM, Ingrid Saunders Jones/Coca Cola, Van Sapp/ PepsiCo, Kenya Jackson/Target, James Bell/Boeing, Don Thompson/McDonald’s, Rohini [Anand]/Sodexo, Jimmie Paschall/Marriott, Moheet Nagrath/Procter & Gamble and Linda Jimenez/[WellPoint] among others. The full list is available at www.uptownpromag.com.”
CNN Examines Allegations of Ernest Withers’ Dual Role
“An overflow crowd came to see a sneak preview Thursday night of CNN’s upcoming documentary on Ernest Withers, “Pictures Don’t Lie,’ ” John Branston wrote Friday for the Memphis Flyer.
“The upstairs viewing room at the National Civil Rights Museum was full so latecomers watched the 30-minute segment in the downstairs auditorium. The total crowd was well over 100 people. The documentary will debut on Sunday, February 20th, on CNN. It is narrated by Soledad O’Brien.”
“The piece, called Pictures Don’t Lie, was screened in Nashville Tuesday and does not specifically prove or disprove Withers’ connection.”
In Nashville, WTVF-TV reported, “Withers’ son, Billy Withers, was on hand at the screening and asked viewers to keep an open mind when watching the piece.
” ‘I just want to say to these who saw this piece — and you know this is the second time I’ve seen it and it still sort of shakes me — but to remember the time and era that these men were in and under,’ said Billy Withers.”
Ernest Withers, who died in 2007 at age 85, was widely honored in life as one of the foremost photographic chroniclers of the civil rights movement.
In September, the Memphis Commercial Appeal reported that numerous reports showed Withers also to have been an informant for the FBI. Earl Caldwell, a co-founder of the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education who was reporting from the Lorraine Motel the night in 1968 when Martin Luther King Jr. was killed, is interviewed for the report.
White House, WETA to Honor Motown Sound
The White House and Washington public television station WETA are collaborating to produce “The Motown Sound: In Performance at the White House,” a concert celebrating Black History Month and the legacy of Motown Records, the White House announced on Wednesday,
“The event will include legends from Motown’s golden age and performances by artists from today, all in tribute to Motown’s 50-year legacy. Performers include Smokey Robinson, Natasha Bedingfield, Sheryl Crow, Jamie Foxx, Gloriana, Nick Jonas, Ledisi, John Legend, Amber Riley, Mark Salling, Seal and Jordin Sparks with Greg Phillinganes as the night’s music director,” the announcement said. The celebration takes place Feb. 24 for broadcast on public television stations on March 1 at 8 p.m. Eastern time. WETA is producing in association with Bounce Event Marketing, a division of Anschulz Entertainment Group, and the National Black Programming Consortium,
Kate Kelly, a spokeswoman for WETA, said that while Robinson is the only Motown veteran scheduled to perform, others will be in the audience. In addition, Robinson and Motown founder Berry Gordy Jr. are to participate in a daytime workshop for high school students.
“The First Lady will welcome more than 100 students from California, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, Minnesota and Washington, D.C. to take part in an interactive student workshop event: ‘The Sound of Young America: The History of Motown.’
“Beginning at 1:30 p.m. in the State Dining Room, The GRAMMY Museum’s Executive Director Bob Santelli will lead the students in a discussion about the history of Motown’s long-lasting legacy, ranging from its beginnings in the city of Detroit to its effect on the music industry. Featured performers from the evening event will share their experiences as well as answer student questions about the music and entertainment world. ‘The Sound of Young America’ will stream live on www.whitehouse.gov, www.pbs.org/whitehouse, www.grammymuseum.org and www.blackpublicmedia.org,” the announcement said.
Short Takes
- Discarded by the CW network after three years, “The Game” was revived on Black Entertainment Television last month after a two-year hiatus, Toni Fitzgerald reported for Media Life. “After debuting to an enormous audience, 7.7 million viewers, ‘[The] Game’ has fallen off to 4 million and change, but it’s still drawing a bigger audience than it ever did on broadcast. Last week ‘Game’ was one of just three shows to make the weekly top 10 among adults 18-49, 18-34 and 25-54 on cable, averaging at least 1.8 million in each demo.”
- “We need to reset our minds to being entrepreneurs — even if we are still collecting a big media paycheck and especially if we’ve already been downsized out of those gigs,” Retha Hill, director of the New Media Innovation Lab at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, wrote Friday for the Media Shift Idea Lab. “I say ‘reset’ because as a student of history I know that it is in our DNA. We forget sometimes how pioneering journalists of color were over the years because movies aren’t made about our social networks.”
- Responding to a question about recent content-sharing agreements between news organizations, Garry D. Howard, editor-in-chief of the Sporting News, said “alliances” — not the least of which being the Sporting News’ new relationship with AOL FanHouse — are “the future right now.” The occasion was a panel discussion, “Sports Journalism: Where is it going?” held on the Indiana University campus and hosted by the National Sports Journalism Center. It was part of the Associated Press Sports Editors yearly judging conference, Zach Osterman reported Tuesday for the sports journalism center.
- Michael Holley, midday co-host on Boston’s sports radio station WEEI, has landed a higher-profile gig alongside Glenn Ordway on the station’s afternoon drive program, “The Big Show,” Chad Finn reported Wednesday in the Boston Globe. Holley joined the midday show at WEEI in 2005. He was a columnist for the Boston Globe and the Chicago Tribune and appeared on ESPN’s “Around the Horn” and later on Fox SportsNet’s “I, Max.”
- “In just four days, a coalition of media watchdog and progressive groups, including MoveOn.org, CREDO and Free Press, have collected more than one million signatures opposing the Republican plan to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting,” the advocacy group Free Press reported on Wednesday. However, Katy Backman reported for Mediaweek, “Public broadcasting executives appreciate the support — to a point. . . . several who spoke with Adweek wish MoveOn would have stayed quiet. They’re concerned that the group’s support will help opponents paint public broadcasting as a tool of the left wing, rather than a thoughtful, educational and often high-brow approach to news and culture.”
- Sophia A. Nelson, reporting for Jet magazine and
- Retired CNN anchor Bernard Shaw says the best advice he offers to journalists is to “practice basic journalism. And that means learning how to write. People in radio and television must respect the written word as the essence of journalism. But the skill that is most important is the ability to listen (especially) for what isn’t said.” Jackie Jones profiled Shaw Wednesday for BlackAmericaWeb.com as part of its “Living Legends” series for Black History Month. “The best reporters,” said Shaw, “will always be excellent listeners.”
- “On Wednesday morning’s The View, Whoopi Goldberg apologized for her lengthy criticisms on Monday’s show of a New York Times piece about black Oscar winners,” Ken Tucker reported Wednesday for Entertainment Weekly. ” ‘I’m going to apologize to The New York Times for calling their reporting “shoddy,” ‘ said Goldberg. ” ‘I personally found the article really confusing, and I also was quite hurt that Cuba Gooding Jr., Louis Gossett Jr., and myself were not included in this expose about black Hollywood,’ she said. ‘But for saying it was shoddy reporting, I apologize, New York Times.’ ” (Video)
- Referring to Mexico, Reporters Without Borders welcomed a joint announcement by MVS Radio and news anchor Carmen Aristegui that Aristegui is to resume hosting her morning news program on Feb. 21, two weeks after her controversial dismissal for referring on the air to opposition claims that President Felipe Calderón had an drinking problem. “MVS Radio accused Aristegui of violating professional ethics by “broadcasting rumours” when it fired her on 6 February, two days after she referred in her programme to allegations by opposition legislators that the president was an alcoholic,” the press freedom group explained on Wednesday.
- “The University of Colorado should eliminate its standalone journalism degree and create both a new school of information and an institute to study the ‘global digital future,” according to documents released Tuesday by the Boulder campus,’ Brittany Anas and Erica Meltzer reported Tuesday for the Daily Camera in Boulder. “Chancellor Phil DiStefano, in a letter released Tuesday, suggested that CU’s standalone bachelor’s degree in journalism no longer be offered to new students after the fall 2012 semester. Students, however, still will be able to make journalism a secondary pursuit through a double-major or minor.”
- The Maryland Historical Society is extending the Black History Month release of a collection of photographs from African American photographer Paul Henderson produced during the height of the civil rights movement. They can be found on the MdHS Tumblr site,” the society announced on Wednesday. MdHS will add additional Henderson photos to the site in coming months, the society said. “Henderson was a photographer for the Richmond Afro-American Newspaper until moving to Baltimore ’s Druid Hill Park area in 1940. He died in 1966.”
- Veteran journalist Carole Simpson tells her story of battling racism and sexism in order to report for the national news divisions of NBC and ABC on C-Span’s “After Words,” airing Saturday at 10 p.m. Eastern and Sunday at 9 p.m. and midnight. She talks with Nia-Malika Henderson of the Washington Post.
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