Which ABC Journalists Made Racist Remarks?
In his new memoir, “Only Son” (Warner Books), former New York City television anchor John Johnson describes covering Arab-Israeli peace talks in Madrid for New York’s ABC-owned WABC-TV. But he doesn’t name the ABC journalists — he calls one “the Big Gun” – who gave him a hard time.
Educated guesses invited at rprince@maynardije.org.
Johnson writes:
“In late October 1991, I flew to Madrid for the story of the hour, the first face-to-face peace talks between Israel and its Arab neighbors, including the PLO. Soon I was running on fumes. In addition to my three daily spots on WABC, I did live reports for network affiliates across the country . . .
“One of the network’s brightest stars – a name familiar to any habitue of Nightly News Land – arrived on location with half a dozen producers in tow. As I wrapped a feed in front of the palace where the talks were being held, he complained about sharing equipment with a ‘local’ correspondent. When informed that camera positions were at a premium, and that ABC had but one, the Big Gun pitched a fit.
“Inside an hour, a second camera – an aging, portable field unit for quick remotes and stand-ups – was set on a tripod next to the studio model coveted by the Big Gun. This was where I would work henceforth. The critical difference: The second camera could not be cued with a TelePrompTer. As a result, my live reports would need to be memorized or ad-libbed, a dicey proposition when you’re logging twenty-hour days and find yourself fumbling for the name of of an anchor in Dallas or San Diego. The Big Gun, meanwhile, would read his brief script on tape before slipping off to a three-hour dinner at Madrid’s finest restaurant.
“He had won, but it wasn’t enough for him to win. As I stood by later that day, my countdown sounding in my earpiece, the Big Gun barked out, ‘Don’t you have something to do do in Bedford-Stuyvesant?’ It was a clear attempt to rattle me on the air, and it nearly worked.
“By then I’d offended a second network luminary by scooping him on his turf. As he and the Big Gun walked off, he said, ‘Why don’t you go back to your shoeshine stand?'”
Clue: A database search shows that reporting from Madrid for ABC’s “World News Tonight” on Oct. 31, 1991, were anchor Peter Jennings and reporters Dean Reynolds, Pierre Salinger and John McWethy.
NBC-Telemundo Station Connects With Hispanic Viewers
Telemundo Los Angeles flagship KVEA — newly part of the NBC fold — is on a roll with news viewers, reports Daily Variety. NBC’s deal to acquire Telemundo closed about eight weeks ago.
According to just-released Nielsen demographic data, KVEA tied dominant rival KMEX for first place among adults 18-34 in the fiercely competitive 11 p.m. news race. It’s the first time KVEA has challenged Univision-owned KMEX.
KVEA’s ratings surge follows a relaunch of the station’s news shows in November under the slogan “Mejorando su vida” (Making Your Life Better).
Teri Lane, VP of marketing and strategy for the Telemundo Group, told Daily Variety that research showed that Hispanic viewers “look to news to figure out, ‘How do I get along in the U.S.? How do I buy a car? Do my kids need vaccines?’ “
KVEA initiated community outreach efforts, such as scholarship and literacy programs, as well as a fire safety event following a string of preventable fire-related deaths in L.A.
This is “obviously good for the Hispanic market,” noted one Hispanic broadcasting insider, who pointed out that KVEA’s added viewers are not just being pulled from other Spanish-lingo stations but also from the general market stations.
As part of NBC, KVEA management will have additional guidance from news veteran Paula Madison, just named head of NBC’s three stations in the market. She has supervised newsrooms in both New York and Los Angeles. “Suddenly we have access to 25 live trucks when we had three, and there’s a helicopter and a plane,” said Al Corral, news director of KVEA and KWHY. “That can certainly help.”
Arab-American Vendors Boycott New York Post
Word has it that these days it can be difficult to buy a copy of the New York Post in some New York neighborhoods, reports Arab News. Some Arab-American newsstand vendors are boycotting the newspaper because they say the daily paper is publishing false information about Muslims, and turning American society against them. Arab storeowners, even those who continue selling the Post, are considering severing all ties with the publication. They say the paper “curses them” by supporting Israel in the war with Palestine and by placing anti-Islamic editorials.
SPJ Offers Multicultural Rolodex for Reporters
The Society of Professional Journalists has launched a resource for journalists seeking to broaden their story sources beyond the “usual suspects.”
The Rainbow Sourcebook is “designed to make it easy to report beyond the narrow demographic band most of us usually consult,” writes Sally Lehrman, a free-lance writer and chair of SPJ’s Diversity Committee, in an article about the sourcebook. The sourcebook database can be searched by topic (65 subjects ranging from transportation and prisons to finance and immigration) and by state.
U. of Maryland Seeks Journalist Organizations of Color
The Knight Foundation announces a $3 million gift to the University of Maryland to establish a new, $30 million journalism center that will house a number of journalism organizations, the American Journalism Review and the offices of the National Association of Black Journalists. “The College also hopes to attract a number of other headquarters offices of national organizations representing journalists of color,” the foundation says.
Cuba Holding Conference of War Correspondents
The José Martí International Institute of Journalism and the War Correspondents’ Club, affiliated with the Journalists’ Union of Cuba, announce a 3rd World Encounter of War Correspondents to be held in Havana Oct. 7-11. Conferees will “share reflections on the painful end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st, marked by terror and death.”
The stated themes are:
- High-risk journalism and people’s right to information. Covering wars, natural catastrophes, corruption and drug trafficking.
- Truth as the first victim. Innocent lives as collateral damage.
- The language of the press in face of 21st-century conflicts: an encouragement for global fear? Taking sides or being neutral in reporting violence.
- Journalism as a way to promote justice, against all terrorism and all terrorists.
- International humanitarian law. Journalist’s ethics and risks in scenes of conflict. Missing and murdered colleagues. Conflicts that are overlooked by the press.
- The role of the alternative and regional media in face of globalized journalism.
For more information, contact Luis M. Fernandez, spokesman for the Cuban diplomatic mission in Washington.
Black Columnists Report from Cuba
A group of African American columnists, organized as the William Monroe Trotter Group recently spent a week in Cuba, traveling under the auspices of the Institute for Advanced Journalism Studies at Delaware State University. Here are some of their reports:
Betty Baye, Louisville Courier-Journal
Castro or not, Cuba would have had a revolution in race relations
WHILE in Havana last week, it occurred to me that even without Fidel Castro‘s revolution, Cuba had been ripe in 1959 for a civil rights revolution possibly modeled after our own.
A dialogue with Afro-Cubans
HAVANA — Getting to Cuba from the U.S. hasn’t been easy for decades, so you can imagine how difficult it has been since the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
George E. Curry, National Newspaper Publishers Association
The Backroads of Havana, Cuba
HAVANA – El Moro is not a neighborhood where tour buses stop. The dirt roads are filled with loud noise and teeming people, many of them children. The kids are able to avoid the antiquated cars that race up and down these backroads, but they cannot escape the dire poverty that is evident everywhere.
A Reverse Commute to Cuba
HAVANA – It was only a 45-minute plane ride from Miami, but my first trip to Cuba was in many ways a trip into history. When Christopher Columbus sailed across the Atlantic Ocean in the late 15th Century, claiming to discover people in places where they were already living, he stopped here. Many slave traders also stopped in the Caribbean before heading to North America.
Nisa Islam Muhammad, the Final Call:
My interview with Assata Shakur
From exile with love
Former Black Panther Assata Shakur speaks to America from Cuba
HAVANA,Cuba–Assata Shakur is a Black American folk hero. She is a freedom fighter that escaped the chains of oppression. She made it to the other side. She is a sister that defied the definitions of expected behavior by a Black woman. Her life is the subject of books, movies and poetry. In her own words, she speaks on Cuba and terrorism, differences between Blacks in Cuba and the U.S., living in exile and her hopes for a new world.
Black journalists get close-up view of Cuba
Clarence Page, Chicago Tribune
Race issue has different color in Cuba
HAVANA — Most people in Cuba or outside of it tend to talk about race as a big non-issue on the island.
They’re right, up to a point. If race isn’t much of an issue here anymore, color still is.
Cuba’s double vision: dollarized socialism
Cuba’s recent transformation has turned the island into two separate worlds, jostling each other to occupy the same real estate–and state of mind.
James Ragland, Dallas Morning News
Contrasts are stark in Cuba
HAVANA – There is something odd, something the mind can’t readily reconcile, in seeing a royal palm tree standing in the midst of squalor. It seems so out of place.
Trek to Cuba affords glimpses of the squalid and the sublime
HAVANA – One place Cuban officials are more than happy for foreigners with cash in their pockets to see is Varadero, the island’s most popular beach resort. I left a few bucks there.
In Cuba, surprises await my every step
As soon as the chartered plane on which I was traveling touched ground in Cuba, passengers began clapping. “This is normal,” explained a Miami resident, who was going to visit her fiance’s relatives in Havana. “Cubans always celebrate safe landings with applause.”
Tonyaa Weathersbee, Florida Times-Union
Perils of life without a free press are evident in Cuba
During my travels to Cuba, I swore never to become one of those writers who apes shopworn tales of Cubans mired in misery and then come home to rhapsodize about how lucky we are to live in America and not Cuba. I figure we already know that, and if we don’t, the Cuban-Americans will remind us.
Again and again and again.
There is a plus side to the Cuban struggle for food
HAVANA — Each time I visit Cuba, I find myself fast-forwarding to the day when the end of the embargo and free market reforms will lead to the makeover it so desperately needs.
DeWayne Wickham, Gannett News Service
U.S. blind to true colors of Cuba’s problems
HAVANA – Gloria Rolando‘s short film, Roots of My Heart, ought to be required viewing in the White House.
Made without the support of the government-run organization that sanctions and finances much of this island’s movie industry, her film is the story of the massacre of more than 6,000 people on this Caribbean island, a brutal episode that took place long before Fidel Castro came to power.
Varela Project offers false hope of change in Cuba
HAVANA – Roberto Alarcon didn’t just anticipate the first question he got during a news conference with some black journalists from the United States; he relished the chance to answer it.
History, race must be factored into Cuban equation
MIAMI – Cuba is just 90 miles off the southern tip of Florida. But the distance between this country and the one that Fidel Castro has ruled for the past 43 years can be best measured in terms of warped history, not miles.
