Women Still “Tokens” at Top in Media Firms
Women are often “significantly underrepresented” throughout such firms as Fox Entertainment Group, USA Networks, AOL Time Warner, Walt Disney Co., Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, General Electric/NBC, Clear Channel and AMC Entertainment, a study by Pennsylvania University’s Annenberg Public Policy Center concludes.
“With few exceptions, we have not moved beyond tokenism,” said Susan Ness, Annenberg project director and former member of the Federal Communications Commission. The study concluded that the glass ceiling has been fortified by consolidation, since there are fewer and fewer rungs at the top of the ladder.
Among the findings:
— In the seven commercial broadcast television and cable networks, women account for 32 percent of news executives.
— Among presidents and chief executive officers of more than 120 broadcast television and cable networks (or channels), only 16 percent are women. Four out of five heads of local cable systems are men, as are more than four out of five heads of local television stations.
— Among publishers of more than 1,450 daily newspapers in the top 210 media markets, 14 percent are women. Women are proportionately more often found among magazine publishers: they head 28 percent of more than 550 magazines.
— Communication companies with no women executives listed in their 2001 annual report include Adelphia Communications, Alltel Corporation, Fox Entertainment Group, Knight Trading Group, NTL, USA Networks, Inc., and WorldCom International, Inc.
— Communication companies with no women board members in the 2001 annual report: Adelphia Communications , AMC Entertainment, Ameritrade Holding Corporation, Clear Channel, CNet, DoubleClick, E Trade Group Inc., Freemarkets Incorporated, IDT, Knight Trading Group, NTL, Washington Post, and Yahoo.
Reporter Says He Was Fired Probing Criminal Allegations
Demetrius Patterson, the reporter who says General Motors pressured Gannett into firing him, says he was working on a story about allegations of criminal activity by white GM executives when he was sacked.
A lawsuit filed in Wayne County, Mich., Circuit Court charges General Motors with aiding and abetting the Gannett-owned Journal-News in Westchester County, N.Y., to discriminate against Patterson. The suit charges General Motors with “tortious interference with Mr. Patterson’s employment relationship,” which ultimately led to his termination.
Journal editors falsely accused Patterson of plagiarism as their pretext for firing him in retaliation for a 1997 investigative piece detailing sabotage against many of GM’s black auto dealers, the lawsuit charges.
The Black World Today has been one of the few news organizations to report on the lawsuit. Reporter Linn Washington wrote that GM spokespersons vigorously denied the charges in Patterson’s lawsuit. A Journal-News spokeswoman has not responded to a request for comment today by Journal-isms.
Patterson, 36, is now unemployed and living in Chicago. He told Journal-isms that the allegations he was investigating involved the theft of cars and money by GM executives. At the recent Milwaukee convention of the National Association of Black Journalists, he said he passed out a press packet on his case, along with his resume and clips. Most who looked at the packet thought it was impressive and liked the clips, he said. Once recruiters read the packet, however, he says, they became hostile, asking “How do you know it’s true?” about GM pressuring Gannett to get rid of him. “I know it’s true because I lived through it,” he says he replied.
“No one believed in the free press and was more idealistic about the press in America than me. I used to hear stories about things like this happening, and I thought that’s just what they were — stories,” he said.
Patterson urges other journalists to get a copy of the original story from the Journal-News, read it, ask questions of Gannett and General Motors, and have a discussion about his case. He can be reached at demepatterson@hotmail.com.
Fired White Philly Anchor Files Bias Complaint
Hell hath no fury like an anchor scorned, writes Gail Shister, Philadelphia Inquirer TV columnist.
Rich Noonan, who is white, says he was fired by Philadelphia’s Channel 29 so the Fox-owned station could replace him on the “Ten O’Clock News” with an African American anchor.
Noonan, represented by local heavyweight lawyer Richard Sprague, confirmed that he had filed a complaint July 10 against Channel 29 with the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission.
Dave Huddleston of Minneapolis’ WCCO was hired in May as Ten O’Clock News coanchor, with Dawn Stensland of KYW. Huddleston, who is African American, debuted June 24.
WTXF general manager Roger LaMay categorically denied that race played any role in Noonan’s departure or Huddleston’s hiring.
Meanwhile, a suit filed by KYW’s Beverly Williams, 55, who is African American, against the station, CBS, and CBS’s owner, Viacom, alleging race, sex and age discrimination is expected to go to trial, according to CBS insiders.
Greg Moore Hires Away 3 for Denver
The Denver Post’s Gregory Moore has hired away Newsday’s enterprise editor, Mark Rochester, the Raleigh News and Observer’s design director, Damon Cain, and Jeffrey Taylor, senior business editor at the Chicago Tribune, as Moore reorganizes the newsroom, the Associated Press reports.
Rochester is a board member of Investigative Reporters and Editors and one of the few African Americans specializing in that field. He previously was assistant managing editor for projects at The Indianapolis Star. At the Denver Post, where he starts in September, he will be assistant managing editor for Sundays.
J. Damon Cain, who becomes managing editor of presentation and design, told Journal-isms he was recommended to Moore by Will Sutton, deputy managing editor of the N&O and immediate past president of the National Association of Black Journalists.
Taylor was named assistant managing editor for local news. In other changes, sports editor Kevin Dale was named assistant managing editor for sports, and news editor Kay Jarvis was promoted to deputy managing editor of operations.
“These individuals bring considerable expertise and experience from large newspapers,” said Moore, who became the Post’s first African American editor in May. “Their talents and skills will be put to good use.” The changes are part of a plan to bolster news coverage and update the appearance of the newspaper.
When Is a Riot a Riot?
A riot is another of those things people think they know when they see it. But if you’re in TV news, there are certain moments when a sense of civic responsibility trumps knee-jerk reportorial emotion, and you call a riot by another name, writes media columnist Brian Lambert in the St. Paul Pioneer Press.
Take the “melee” and “disturbance” in North Minneapolis last Thursday evening. To some talk-show listeners, avoiding the word “riot” meant there had been a new outbreak of the most fearsome, debilitating affliction of our time — “political correctness.”
” ‘Riot,’ ” said KSTP-TV’s news director, Scott Libin, “has the potential to be a very inflammatory word. And having had a good look at a similar situation down in St. Petersburg (Fla.) in 1996, I wanted to be sure that we didn’t say or do anything that made a bad situation worse.” (Libin was on the faculty of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies at the time.) He agreed that, by most definitions, it was possible to describe the North Minneapolis disturbance as a “riot” as it was happening.
Same-Sex-Union Items Rare Even When Accepted
A Boston Globe study of major papers finds a patchwork of hazy policies on publishing same-sex union announcements, or a lack of them. Even where announcements of the unions are accepted, such notices rarely, if ever, appear.
Representatives of several organizations involved in the issue say a major problem is that gay and lesbian couples simply haven’t been in the habit of submitting announcements.
After The New York Times decided this month to begin publishing reports of same-sex unions in September, there has been an intensive effort, most notably by the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, to build on that momentum.
Jackie Mason Axes Palestinian Scribe-Turned-Comic
A Chicago comedian and former reporter scheduled to open for comic Jackie Mason was told hours before the show he couldn’t perform because he is of Palestinian descent, Mason’s manager said.
Ray Hanania, 49, fledgling comic and a columnist for the Chicago Daily Herald, was supposed to open for Mason’s Tuesday night show at Zanie’s comedy club in Chicago. Instead, the club phoned him a few hours before to tell him his act was canceled, the Chicago Tribune reports.
“It’s not exactly like he’s just an Arab-American. This guy’s a Palestinian. We were not told about it ahead of time,” said Jyll Rosenfeld, Mason’s manager. “Jackie does not feel comfortable having a Palestinian open for him. Right now it’s a very sensitive thing, it’s just not a good idea.” Hanania is a founder of the Chicago-based National Arab Journalists Association.
News Outlets Win in Court over Secret Hearings
The Detroit News, Detroit Free Press and Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., won a victory when the Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the government cannot hold secret deportation hearings for a Lebanese man with suspected terrorism ties.
AOL Time Warner Exploitive, Sharpton Charges
With a lawsuit pending against HBO, the Rev. Al Sharpton added more ammo to his contention that AOL Time Warner, which owns HBO, was dead set on attacking black leadership and “exploiting the black community,” reports Herb Boyd in The Black World Today.
During his weekly forum from the National Action Network, of which he is president, Sharpton said that giant communication corporation was determined to “remove those in the way” in order “to exploit the black community.”
“I Have the Greatest Black Paper in Europe”
Last month, when a friend suggested to Val McCalla that he should have been formally honored by the Queen, he shook his head and replied: “I have the greatest OBE [Order of the British Empire] of them all – I have The Voice, the greatest black paper in Europe”, reports the Times of London.
Launched in 1982, when inner-city race riots were fresh in people’s minds, The Voice set about tackling such issues as racism and police brutality head-on, in a style not seen before in the black press.
By the early 1990s the punchy black tabloid was selling more than 50,000 copies a week.
As reported in Monday’s posting, McCalla, founder and publisher of The Voice, born Oct. 3, 1943, died Aug. 22. He had an esophageal hemorrhage.
The Times says that legend had it that in the paper’s earliest days, McCalla would bring in fewer salary checks than there were employees, to be dished out on a first-come, first-served basis. Of course, everybody did eventually get paid, but certainly staff were kept on their toes.
Often adopting the style of The Sun or Daily Mirror, the Voice courted controversy and faced accusations of sensationalism.
When rioting broke out the day after it reported the death in custody of Wayne Douglas, a young black man, some people, including the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Condon, blamed the paper, writes the Times.
But McCalla never wavered in his belief in his paper’s mission. And while sole ownership of a newspaper by an individual may seem old-fashioned, he resisted all attempts to buy it. He opened doors for black people at a time of limited opportunities and many black journalists in Britain and the Caribbean started out on the Voice newsdesk, before going on to bigger things.
But McCalla could also be ruthless with anyone who crossed him, and no one was immune from sudden sacking.
And he was a very shrewd businessman. When a former assistant editor launched Black Briton to appeal to a more upmarket audience in 1991, McCalla responded by starting the broadsheet Weekly Journal. Unable to compete, Black Briton folded a year later, the Times said.
Hispanic Broadcasting to Buy 5 Stations in New Mexico
Hispanic Broadcasting Corp., the No. 1 U.S. Spanish-language radio broadcaster, said in Dallas it will buy five radio stations in New Mexico for about $22.5 million as it increases its coverage of the Latino audience in the Albuquerque area, MediaWeek reports.
The company owns and operates 55 radio stations in 14 of the top 20 Hispanic radio markets. In June, Univision Communications, the largest Spanish-language TV company, announced it would acquire Hispanic Broadcasting for $3.5 billion in stock.
8 Who Changed Careers Get Their Assignments
Eight new journalists, graduates of the inaugural Freedom Forum Diversity Institute program to develop a new pool of journalists of color from people who wanted to change careers, have their assignments:
Roxye Arellano is community news reporter and editor of the YES page at the Greeley (Colo.) Tribune; Margaret Bailey, reporter at the Savannah (Ga.) Morning News; Monica Bryant, a reporter covering west Marion County, Fla., for the Ocala Star-Banner; Shiloh Crawford III is staff photographer for the Dayton Daily News in Ohio; Shawna Kelsch is reporter for the Communities section of Florida Today in Melbourne; My-Ly Nguyen is business reporter at the Binghamton (N.Y.) Press & Sun-Bulletin; Diane Tinsley is graphic artist for the Record in Hackensack, N.J.; and Alonzo Weston is a beat reporter covering mental health, and a columnist, for the St. Joseph (Mo.) News-Press.
4 Students Win $2,500 Unity Scholarships
UNITY: Journalists of Color, Inc., has awarded $2,500 non-sustaining scholarship grants to four college students majoring in journalism or mass communication. These awards are dedicated to the founding members of UNITY: Journalists of Color, Inc.
The winners are Nzinga Moore, a radio and television major at San Francisco State University; Hong Dao, who is pursuing a B.S. in communication with an emphasis on journalism and political science at Biola University in La Miranda, Calif.; Luis Perez, a journalism major at Brooklyn College in New York, and Jessica Delos Reyes, who is majoring in mass communication at Bemidji State University in Minnesota and pursuing a second major in psychology.
