An NABJ Wedding — Is TV Movie Next?
Is this a TV movie?
Adaora Udoji and Ron Allen, television news correspondents, were married Saturday by the Rev. Kenneth W. Phifer at the First Unitarian Universalist Church in Ann Arbor, Mich., the New York Times reported.
“Ms. Udoji, 34, will keep her name. She covers Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Africa for ABC NewsOne, a news service for affiliates of the ABC Television Network, and is based in London. . . .
“Mr. Allen, 45, works for NBC News and is based in London. He covers stories in Europe, the Middle East and Africa for ‘NBC Nightly News’ and the ‘Today’ show. . . .
“Ms. Udoji and Mr. Allen met in 1995, while covering the O.J. Simpson trial for ABC. The friendship that followed took a sudden turn in the summer of 1999 during a convention of the National Association of Black Journalists in Seattle.
“‘It was spontaneous combustion,’ Ms. Udoji said. ‘Sparks flew.’
“In the summer of 2001, Mr. Allen, who had begun working for NBC News, had bought a ring and was planning to ask Ms. Udoji to marry him. On Sept. 10th of last year he hid the ring in their London apartment, and began thinking about a special time and place to propose.
“Then the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were attacked.
“Mr. Allen was immediately ordered to Islamabad, Pakistan. By Sept. 18, Ms. Udoji had also been assigned to Islamabad, where they saw each other almost daily.
“The couple didn’t return to London until December, whereupon, Mr. Allen said, he ‘dusted off the ring,’ and proposed.
“‘I was trying to create some special moment to propose,’ he said. After three months on the road, he decided that the most special place would not be in an exotic locale, but in the intimacy of their home.
“‘It was our living room,’ he said. ‘A comfortable and familiar place.'”
The 1999 NABJ convention was, appropriately, a part of “Unity.”
Gaines: Will Media Re-Examine Murder Coverage?
Last month, the public learned that semen found on the sock of the victim in New York’s notorious Central Park jogger case 13 years ago was conclusively linked by DNA tests to a convicted murderer-rapist serving a life term. The finding cast doubt on the guilt of at least three of the five youths who had been convicted in the case.
Then there were the cases of the death-row inmates in Illinois freed after DNA and other evidence came to light.
The incidents prompted this thought from former Washington Post reporter Patrice Gaines, who told Journal-isms: “Generally, the media accounts of these crimes were the police versions of what occurred. Do the media need to take a better look at the way in which they cover crimes, especially murders? The bottom line is — in most of the cases that have been overturned, the media were duped also. We need to ask ourselves: Why? Within the answer may come some interesting discussions about a change in our attitudes, or approaches to the work. Surely, we have to realize we are a part of these cases also, and look at our role.”
Gaines, in fact, sees similarities between the Central Park Jogger case and one she spent six years tracking: On Oct. 1, 1984, Catherine Fuller, 48-year-old cleaning woman and mother of six, had set off to get a prescription with $50 in cash in a change purse tucked in her bra. She wound up, minus the cash, in an alley just off a busy Northeast Washington street kicked and beaten to death. Gaines’ piece in the Post on May 6, 2001, raised questions about whether the right people were convicted.
She is still seeking more public interest in the Fuller case, is free-lancing, working on a novel and serving as a motivational speaker.
Frank Trejo, “Dean of Hispanic Journalists in Texas”
Frank L. Trejo, once known as the dean of Hispanic journalists in Texas, died Sept. 29 of pneumonia, the San Antonio Express-News reported. He was 95.
When Trejo joined the San Antonio Light in 1947, he was one of a handful of Mexican American journalists employed on a daily newspaper in the Lone Star State.
A popular feature of the newspaper for years, his “Frank Talk” column was a mixture of items about people and community projects. That column and “Around the Plaza” gave a voice to groups and people who might not ordinarily have made headlines. For example, when he publicized the League of United Latin American Citizens’ School Shoe Committee’s drive to purchase footwear for kids whose families couldn’t afford them, people sent in donations.
Thanks to Trejo, thousands of youngsters received free shoes.
When he retired in April 1986, his Hispanic colleagues at the Light gave him a plaque that read: “With gratitude for paving the way for Hispanic journalists.”
White Sports Director’s Lawsuit Settled
A lawsuit alleging age and race discrimination by white former KHON Honolulu Sports Director and anchor Bob Hogue is over, reports the Honolulu Star-Bulletin.
“We reached an amicable agreement. Due to the terms of the settlement, I can’t say anything more,” Hogue said.
Hogue was terminated in October 1999 when he was 46.
In the suit, Hogue alleged that he was informed in a meeting with then-News Director Jim McCoy and then-General Manager Kent Baker that his position was vulnerable, in that on the air “We are too old and too white.”
A younger, ethnically mixed Ron Mizutani later replaced Hogue as sports director and anchor.
In its defense, the station’s counsel gathered statements questioning Hogue’s leadership of the sports department as well as the amount of time he spent away from the station.
Asian American Journalists Stage Film Festival
Lee Ann Kim, best known as a news reporter and weekend anchor for San Diego’s KGTV Channel 10, produces the third San Diego Asian Film Festival along with other Asian American journalists, reports the San Diego Union-Tribune.
The four-day festival is long on shorts, only 20 of the 117 films (taken from over 200 submitted) being features. But Kim says the shorts are “very popular, because they let people see so many aspects of their culture, beyond the usual stereotypes of mainstream media.
Union Urges Ad Boycott to Aid Telemundo Reporters
The union representing some 3,000 Chicago television and radio broadcasters says it will ask advertisers to boycott Telemundo Network’s local affiliate unless parent NBC agrees to boost pay and benefits for the Spanish-language TV station’s reporters, reports Crain’s Chicago Business.
The American Federation of Television of Radio Artists says NBC pays the nine on-air reporters and anchors who work for WSNS-TV Channel 44 significantly less than those with similar jobs at NBC’s English-language station, WMAQ-TV Channel 5.
Blacks Urge Boycott of Houston TV Station
In the wake of news stories about alleged wrongdoing by prominent African Americans in Houston, black leaders called a boycott of KTRK-Channel 13 newscasts during sweeps week next month and other acts of protest, the Houston Chronicle reports.
The television station’s investigation of Kid-Care Inc., a social service agency that provides food for children, is indicative of a wider trend to hold black leaders to a higher standard than whites, speakers told a town hall meeting.
Minister Robert Muhammad of the Nation of Islam said local leaders planned to deliver a minimum of 100,000 complaint letters to the Federal Communications Commission office in Washington, D.C., in January.
Media Criticized for Coverage of 3 Muslim Students
Miami-Dade County’s Community Relations Board is criticizing the news media and a local hospital for their reactions to the Sept. 13 detention of three Muslim medical students on Alligator Alley, the Miami Herald reports.
Adora Obi Nweze, the board’s chairwoman, expressed concern about the detention of the students for more than 17 hours due to an invalid report to law enforcement, and about the overly intense media coverage of the incident. The board consists of neighborhood activists, clergy, educators and business people.
The students were cleared of any wrongdoing. Since the event, media organizations have been criticized for jumping to conclusions in their coverage.
Entravision Eyes New Hispanic TV Markets
As the Hispanic TV audience continues to grow in markets across the U.S., Entravision Communications is making plans to expand into new markets where those populations are burgeoning, Media Week reports.
Walter Ulloa, chairman and CEO of the Santa Monica, Calif.-based broadcaster last week cited Portland, Ore., Salt Lake City and Seattle as three markets where the company hopes to buy stations in the near future. Entravision owns the largest number of Univision and Telefutura affiliates and has sizable radio and out-of-home media holdings.
Entravision’s moves come as broadcasters and advertisers continue to realize the size, spending power and aggressive media consumption of Spanish-language audiences. For example, in eight markets with large Hispanic communities, including Corpus Christi, Texas, and Reno, Nev., more adults 18-34 watch Univision than any other general-market station.
Harsh Reminders of the Work Still to Do
“Every time I find myself actually listening to some conservative ideologue on a tear about liberal obsession with race,” writes David Hawpe, vice president and editorial director of The Louisville Courier-Journal, “I pull out my latest copy of Advocate, the national fair housing newsletter published in Louisville.
“Those who would have you believe that race no longer matters so much — that racial barriers have come down and thus no longer should rivet our attention — might read the July edition, which records that an administrative judge just ordered a Mississippi man to pay a black family and a real estate agent a total of $135,040 for threat and intimidation. The couple wanted to move in next door,” Hawpe says in News Watch, a project of the Center for Integration and Improvement of Journalism of the San Francisco State University Journalism Department.
The “Pernicious Myth of Black Incompetency”
Newsday columnist Les Payne, commenting on lawyer Johnnie Cochran Jr.‘s threat to unleash a windmill of lawsuits against the NFL, sees a parallel with newsrooms:
“‘Entering’ the craft had made all the difference for the white journalists,” Payne writes.
“Yet this very access was precisely what newspapers were hell-bent on denying other young reporters on the unproven and – unprovable – grounds that as ‘non-whites’ they were ipso facto lacking qualifications. This selfsame strawman of ‘qualifications’ is erected nowadays to lower black expectations artificially. Both sides unfortunately buy into this nonsense, only to ill-affect black performance, and to allow management to unfairly block promotions and undercompensate employees.
“This pernicious myth of black incompetency – with the obverse side of white supremacy – is one of the most virulent social pathogens eating silently away at the muscle mass of the republic. Its tentacles extend even into the area of sports, where it is generally assumed that African-Americans have proven their competency beyond doubt. Yet on the management level, black job applicants still face the specter of ‘incompetency’ as unproven, and unprovable, as ever,” writes Payne.
