South Sudan’s Independence Leads to Crackdown in North
Only All-Asian American Anchor Team on Mainland
Journalists in Two Cities See Contrasts With Anthony Trial
TV Stations Producing Record Amount of Local News
AP’s Russell Contreras Moving From Boston to New Mexico
South Sudan’s Independence Leads to Crackdown in North
“Within a few hours of South Sudan’s independence, the north Sudanese government ordered the closing of the popular Arabic daily paper Ajras Al-Hurriya and the suspension of five English-language titles,” Roy Greenslade reported Thursday for Britain’s Guardian newspaper.
“Sudan’s national press and publication council explained that the papers were closed because the owners and publishers are from South Sudan. Under the country’s press law, publishers must have Sudanese nationality.
“It was, as the Arabic Network of Human Rights Information (ANHRI) remarked, a worrying start to the relationship between north and south.
“The five suspended English-language papers are the Khartoum Monitor, Juba Post, Sudan Tribune, The Advocate and The Democrat.
“According to Index on Censorship correspondent Abdelgadir Mohammed Abdelgadir, ‘all the banned papers criticised the government and reported on corruption and human rights violations.’
“Some journalists fear much tighter restrictions on press freedom under a new constitution in the north, where the government has also threatened to reinforce sharia law.
“. . . . But the media landscape in South Sudan also looks dark. Local journalists say they are facing the same challenges as they did under the control of Khartoum – raids on media offices, arrests, intimidation and other restrictions on media freedom.”
Only All-Asian American Anchor Team on Mainland
Last week’s announcement that veteran journalist Janelle Wang will anchor the “NBC Bay Area News at 5” on KNTV-TV means that Wang and Raj Mathai will become the only U.S. team of Asian American main news anchors outside of Hawaii, the Asian American Journalists Association said on Wednesday.
“This move clearly demonstrates NBC Bay Area’s strong commitment to diversity and to creating a newsroom that reflects the communities it serves. We hope that other newsrooms will follow NBC Bay Area’s example, and AAJA is ready to help in any such diversity efforts,” AAJA said.
Wang is a Bay Area native who has worked in San Francisco television news for the past eight years, the station said.
Journalists in Two Cities See Contrasts With Anthony Trial
“As the nation fixated on the Casey Anthony trial last week, a health care worker living in Rockford, Ill., fixated on the fact that scant national attention has been paid to the trial of serial-killing suspect Anthony Sowell,” columnist Phillip Morris wrote Tuesday in the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
“It bothered her that she had to hunt for news on Sowell, while all she had to do was turn on any number of channels to instantly get news of Casey Anthony.
“To be completely objective, though, Martha McKenzie-Jones is more than a casual observer of Sowell. She has closely followed the story, partly because the accused is her first cousin.
“But it gets more personal.
“The real irony for McKenzie-Jones is the history she shared with one of the women found buried on Sowell’s property. She said she used to hire Janice Webb as a baby sitter when Webb was 18-years old. That’s part of what makes this awful story so intensely personal — and infuriating — for her.
“But last week, she could not help but marvel at the nation’s continued fixation on Casey Anthony and the complete media circus the Orlando case attracted in the days leading up to the verdict.
“How, she wondered, could the trial of the woman charged with killing 2-year-old Caylee Anthony, totally eclipse the story of a man charged with raping, killing and burying 11 women on his property?
Keith L. Alexander, a courts reporter at the Washington Post, had similar thoughts.
“The contrast to the story of 2-year-old Caylee Anthony, who also died in 2008, and whose face has graced numerous magazine pages and prime-time television specials, could not be more stark,” he wrote in the Outlook section of Sunday’s Post.
“Banita Jacks, now 36, the mother of the four girls found dead in Washington, was convicted of her daughters’ murders and sentenced to 120 years in prison. Caylee’s killer has not been convicted, though prosecutors charged her mother, Casey Anthony, 25, with her daughter’s slaying. A Florida jury acquitted her of the murder charge this past week, and she will spend a handful of additional days in prison for lying to the police.
Prior to Jacks’s conviction, she was known by few outside Washington. A Google search revealed about 26,000 hits for stories mentioning Jacks, vs. more than 73 million hits, and growing, for Anthony.
How is it that the tragic death of one little girl could attract so much more attention than the tragic deaths of four sisters?
The easy answer is that the disparity in coverage is about race and class. . . . but there were other reasons that Caylee became a household name and Aja and her sisters did not. The way the Anthony case unfolded in the courts — and especially the way the state of Florida handled the prosecution — has a lot to do with the outcry now in the court of public opinion.
- Allen Johnson blog, Greensboro (N.c.) News & Record: Runaway Bride: The Sequel
- Clarence Page, Chicago Tribune: Sometimes justice is hard to take
- Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism: Casey Anthony Verdict Top Story for Public and Social Networkers
- Elmer Smith, Philadelphia Daily News: Don’t like the verdict in the Casey Anthony trial? Don’t blame the jury
TV Stations Producing Record Amount of Local News
“The second part of the annual RTDNA/Hofstra University study found the average local station produced a record 5.3 hours of news a day in 2010, up 18 minutes from 2009. The network affiliate average is even higher, recording 5.6 hours of news daily,” Merrill Knox reported Thursday for TVSpy.
“Almost 35 percent of stations added a newscast last year — most often [occurring] in the 4:30 a.m. timeslot on weekdays, RTDNA/Hofstra finds. The majority of stations — 58.9 percent — recorded the same number of newscasts in 2010 and 2009, and only 6.5 percent of stations cut a newscast.”
AP’s Russell Contreras Moving From Boston to New Mexico
“Russell Contreras, an Associated Press newsman in Boston covering immigration and minority affairs, has been hired as the AP’s law enforcement reporter in Albuquerque,” the AP reported on Thursday
“The appointment was announced Thursday by West regional editor Traci Carl and Arizona-New Mexico Bureau Chief Michael Giarrusso.
” ‘Contreras has all the elements we were looking for in an AP newsperson for New Mexico,’ Giarrusso said. ‘He knows the state and he’s worked here before. He is a multi-format journalist who is as comfortable shooting video and photos as he is interviewing subjects or writing stories. He will fit in well with our team, and will make an immediate impact for members in the state.’
“Contreras, 37, has worked in the Boston bureau since 2008, covering several stories including the deaths of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy and Eunice Shriver and the case of a medical student accused of killing a woman he met through Craigslist. He also works as a videographer”
Contreras is also vice president/print and financial officer of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.
“It’s a loss for Boston,” said media watcher Callie Crossley, who offers commentary on WGBH’s “Beat the Press” and other venues. “He made it his business to be out front on issues of people of color. In some ways,, he’s his own little Unity.”
Short Takes
- April Ryan, White House correspondent for American Radio
Networks, became only the third African American to be elected to the board of the White House Correspondents’ Association, best known for its annual televised dinner at which the president appears. Also elected were Carol Lee of the Wall Street Journal, Michael Scherer of Time, Doug Mills of the New York Times and Steven Thomma of McClatchy Newspapers. Sonya Ross of the Associated Press and the late Bob Ellison of American Urban Radio Networks were the African Americans previously elected.
- CNN special correspondent Soledad O’Brien and her husband, Brad Raymond, introduced the Soledad O’Brien & Brad Raymond Foundation at a reception in Atlanta Wednesday, Chris Ariens wrote for TVNewser. The foundation’s goal is “to provide young women with a bridge between obstacles and opportunity, giving them the experiences, education and resources to overcome unexpected barriers to success.”
“Yesterday we reported that anchor Frances Rivera was leaving Boston’s WHDH for a job in New York. Now we can report that the job is with WPIX,” Andrew Gauthier wrote Friday for TVSpy. “A WPIX spokesperson confirmed to TVSpy this morning that Rivera is set to join the Tribune-owned station at the end of August. She will join Sukanya Krishnan at the morning anchor desk, replacing Chris Burrous, who moved to KTLA this spring.”
- ESPN’s “30 for 30″ series will receive the National Association of Black Journalists’ Best Practices Award at the association’s annual convention next month, NABJ announced on Thursday. ” ’30 for 30′ is a series of documentaries airing on ESPN and its sister networks. The series, which premiered in October 2009 and concluded in December 2010, chronicles 30 stories from the ‘ESPN era,’ each of which detail the issues, trends, people, teams, or events that transformed the sports landscape since the sports network was founded in 1979. . . . The films in totality represent something never seen on TV before through a team of diverse storytellers,” NABJ said.
- “Florida has a new Spanish-language regional network, Veronica Villafane reported Tuesday for her Media Moves site. “Cable TV company Brighthouse Networks has combined the resources of Tampa’s Bay News 9 en Español and Central Florida’s News 13 en Español to create InfoMás, a 24-hour news and information channel, which debuted today.”
- “Shaquille O’Neal, the future Hall-of-Fame center with nearly as many nicknames as career points, has joined Turner Sports as an NBA analyst, Richard Deitsch reported Thursday for Sports Illustrated. “He becomes a permanent member of the studio show hosted by Ernie Johnson, and will be part of the network’s playoff and All-Star weekend coverage.”
- Lynne Adrine, director of the Washington Program for Broadcast and Digital Journalism for the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, is among 11 producers, reporters and educators selected to become journalism fellows in Germany this fall as part of an ongoing relationship between the Radio Television Digital News Foundation and the RIAS Berlin Kommission.
- The success of the the MLK National Memorial Project Foundation Inc. in raising $114 million of the $120 million needed to complete a memorial to Martin Luther King Jr. on the National Mall should prompt Chicagoans to right the wrong done to the efforts to honor Emmett Till, Mary Mitchell wrote Thursday in the Chicago Sun-Times. Till, 14, was brutally murdered in 1955 while visiting family in Money, Miss. allegedly for whistling at a white woman.”Although donations were solicited for the “Emmett Till Historical Museum and Mausoleum,” there is no proof that any money was collected. Indeed, Till’s original casket was found deteriorating in a shed,” Mitchell wrote.
- “Four American journalists were arrested on Monday while filming anti-government protests in Egypt, according to CNN.com,” the International Press Institute reported Tuesday.”Producer and former Al Jazeera journalist Jason Mojica, Egyptian-American energy consultant Sherif Helwa and two unidentified crew members had been covering the unrest in Suez for Vice magazine when they were handed over to military intelligence by Egyptian citizens.”
- In Honduras, “Nery Jeremías Orellana, 26, the manager of Radio Joconguera in the town of Candelaria, in the western department of Lempira, was gunned down yesterday morning, bringing the number of Honduran journalists killed since the start of the year to three,” Reporters Without Borders reported on Friday. “A total of 12 journalists have been killed in the past 18 months in Honduras without any of their murders being solved.”
