Flawed “Coloring the News” Honored by National Press Club
William McGowan‘s factually challenged “Coloring the News: How Crusading for Diversity Has Corrupted American Journalism” has won the National Press Club’s book award for press criticism. It was the only entry in the category, said John M. Donnelly, editor of Defense Week and chairman of the three-person judging panel, which included no people of color.
Donnelly said the panel planned to issue this statement when it awards the prize: “Whether one agrees with McGowan’s view that the drive for ‘diversity’ has caused more problems than it has solved in American newsrooms, his book is thoroughly researched, well written and, above all, thought-provoking and so deserves recognition for having stimulated debate.”
Black journalists have criticized the book as anything but thoroughly researched, while most white reviewers, with the notable exception of the Washington Monthly, have embraced it. Other journalist-of-color organizations have been largely silent, with some members saying they feared giving McGowan more publicity.
In a letter to the Washington Post, Condace Pressley, president of the National Association of Black Journalists, noted that the Post’s review “makes no reference to the book’s half-truths, spin and inaccuracies.” She observed that “The Post itself is criticized throughout for ‘political correctness,’ apparently based on a 1995 article by Ruth Shalit in the New Republic. The Post found more than 30 factual errors in what is here called Shalit’s ‘controversial expose.'”
Writing in Savoy magazine, Blair S. Walker called the book “a flatulent smorgasbord of meandering anecdotes and lightweight, pseudo-analysis masquerading as a trenchant, even-handed examination of how American journalism is allegedly being ruined by diversity initiatives.”
Also in the Washington Post, Jack E. White, retired columnist for Time magazine and a member of NABJ’s Media Monitoring Committee, complained that McGowan had distorted his comments. “Whatever readers think of William McGowan’s complaints about the impact of diversity on American journalism, they should be aware that he is a sloppy writer who twists facts out of context or reports them incompletely in order to advance his argument,” White wrote.
The award winners will be recognized at a dinner July 22 in Washington.
Oneida Indians Ban Syracuse Paper from Territory
The Oneida Indian Nation of New York has banned all Syracuse Post-Standard reporters from its news conferences and territory, because of what it considers to be negative coverage of the tribe. Spokesman David Hollis said the Oneidas took the action after Post-Standard reporter Glenn Coin wrote a series of articles that “took positive accomplishments by the Nation and cast them in a negative light.” Executive Editor Michael J. Connor said that the newspaper will continue to cover Oneida news conferences.
Haitian Journalists Face Intimidation, U.S. Journalists Find
After a three-day fact-finding mission, a delegation from the Committee to Protect Journalists found that journalists in Haiti face a troubling atmosphere of intimidation and fear.
Haitian journalists have told CPJ of violent attacks and threats that largely remain unpunished. Some have felt obliged to censor themselves, go into hiding, or even leave their country
A young “voodoo rock” musician from Connecticut who runs Port-au-Prince’s Hotel Oloffson tells Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page that he approves of CPJ’s fact-finding mission. “After all,” he observes, “after they come for the journalists, the musicians are next.”
In a letter to Mario Dupuy, Haiti’s Secretary of State for Communications, the Committee expresses concerns about the government’s plan to develop a legally enforceable code of ethics for the press.
Sosa to Reporter: “What Are You, My Father?”
Sammy Sosa was annoyed with the manner in which Sports Illustrated columnist Rick Reilly interviewed him about steroid use.
”He didn’t come to me the professional way,” Sosa said of the interview at Wrigley Field, reports the Chicago Sun-Times.
Reilly wasn’t satisfied, Sosa said, when the National League home-run leader told him–as he has told everyone else–that he will be first in line for steriod testing should Major League Baseball and the players association agree on how to conduct it. Reilly probably suspected Sosa’s answer wouldn’t waver, so he came prepared with a twist.
He took out a piece of paper, wrote down an address and told Sosa that he wanted him to go to a clinic about 45 minutes from Wrigley and test for steroids. Reilly told him, Sosa said, that it was the only way he could stop all the speculation and clear his name.
”What are you, my father?” Sosa angrily asked Reilly.
Sosa ended the planned interview at that point.
Thais Protest; Bar Owner Kills Ad Embellishing King’s Photo
A Philadelphia bar owner has decided to retire an ad in the Philadelphia City Paper that the government of Thailand found offensive.
“This has all been fun, but it was just getting too bizarre,” Sherry Levin, proprietor of St. Jack’s restaurant, told the Philadelphia Inquirer. “I don’t think now would be a wise time to run the ad again, unless I really wanted to agitate people, and that was never my intention.”
The small ad, which ran twice, was based on a vintage photograph of King Bhumibol Adulyadej, embellished to show him wearing gem-encrusted sunglasses, bleach-streaked hair, and stripes shaved into his head.
Thai diplomats, alerted to the ad by residents of Philadelphia, demanded an apology and withdrawal, saying the depiction insulted their 74-year-old monarch. Levin said that she never meant the newspaper ad to be offensive and had grown weary of fielding calls from disgruntled Thai diplomats.
Columnist Says He Didn’t Write “Dog-Eating” Headline
Chicago Sun-Times columnist Mark Brown says “A lot of Koreans and Korean Americans are mad at me. They didn’t like my column poking fun at dog-eating, which I pegged to the recently completed World Cup soccer tournament in South Korea.
“They found it offensive and want me to apologize.
“How’s this?
“I’m sorry, but I’m not going to apologize for making fun of dog-eating–or soccer.”
He says he didn’t write the headline, “Nation of dog-eaters turns us off to World Cup.”
Final World Cup Game Scores Big for Univision
The World Cup final Sunday piled up huge numbers for Spanish-language Univision and respectable figures for ABC, according to Nielsen Media Research’s Nielsen Station Index and Nielsen Hispanic Station Index reports. Univision drew an average 18.8 rating/66 share in Spanish-language homes, equating to 2.88 million viewers for the Brazil-Germany match, reports the Hollywood Reporter.
“BET Awards” Garner BET’s Second-Highest-Ever Entertainment Ratings
The second annual “BET Awards” bagged 4.4 million viewers Tuesday, beating UPN and WB from 9 to 10 p.m. That makes it the second-most-watched entertainment program in Black Entertainment Television’s 22-year history, behind only the show’s debut last year, which garnered more than 5 million viewers, reports the Washington Post.
MSNBC has canceled the five-month-old “Alan Keyes Is Making Sense” — the final telecast was Thursday night — when he refused to move his show to a late-afternoon slot, according to a network spokeswoman, who said MSNBC wanted to move Keyes from his 10 p.m. ET slot to daytime because of his low ratings.
The Hollywood Reporter says that in May, the former GOP presidential candidate averaged 258,000 viewers, compared with 773,000 for Fox News Channel’s “On the Record With Greta Van Susteren” and 720,000 for CNN’s “Newsnight With Aaron Brown.”
Media watcher Andrew Tyndall, publisher of “The Tyndall Report,” said there was no mystery why Keyes failed to find an audience. “He’s not very good at television,” he said. “I don’t think it was his (ultraconservative) ideology. It’s a format where nonmainstream ideology is quite acceptable. He’s just not a very good interviewer; he’s more like a monologuist than an interviewer.”
Birmingham Talk Show Host Oliver Brewer Dies at 50
Talk show host and midday disc jockey Oliver Brewer of WBHK-FM in Birmingham, Ala., a founder of the Birmingham Association of Black Journalists died in his sleep Monday. He was 50, the Birmingham News reported.
Telephone lines at 98.7, known as Kiss, were clogged with callers, many weeping, as they remembered “The Masta Brewer.”
Brewer was one of the top-rated DJs at Cox, and his Sunday night show was a staple in the black community. He hosted many of Birmingham’s most influential blacks on his talk show, including scores of politicians and musicians.
“It is a big loss,” said Sherrel Stewart, president of the Birmingham Association of Black Journalists. “He was always there.” When the organization was getting started in the 1980s and needed money to give students scholarships, Mr. Brewer suggested an old-fashioned fish fry, Stewart said. He sold lots of fish sandwiches for the scholarship fund, she said.
The Italian-American Defense Association in Chicago has dropped its lawsuit that accused HBO of offending Italian-Americans by depicting them as mobsters on the hit series “The Sopranos.”
The Illinois Appellate Court upheld a ruling of a Cook County Circuit Court judge who dismissed the suit last September.
Todd Burroughs, who received his Ph.D. last year from the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism, won an honorable mention award from the American Journalism Historians Association for his dissertation, “Drums in the Global Village: Toward an Ideological History of the Black Media.”
Greg Tate, writer at New York’s Village Voice, won the first place award for arts criticism in the 2002 Alternative Newsweekly Awards Tate’s essays during the judging period included “Triple Threat” about three biographies: of Amiri Baraka, Richard Wright and Frantz Fanon; “Intelligence Data” a review of Bob Dylan‘s album “Love and Theft;” “The Golden Age: An Interview with Studio Museum’s Thelma Golden;” a review of Missy Elliott‘s album, “Miss E . . . So Addictive;” and a review of Terry McMillan‘s book “A Day Late and A Dollar Short.”
