Sniper Suspects’ Race Surprises Talking Heads
The fact that the two suspects in custody in the Washington, D.C., area sniper killings are African American has made monkeys of a variety of talking heads.
“There’s probably two skinny kids out there who have made a pact with each other,” former New York City homicide detective Bo Dietl told the New York Times last week.
Dietl “never in a million years” would have guessed that the two people arrested would turn out to be African American, he told the Washington Post.
Shepard Smith, a Fox News Channel anchor, quoted Seattle stations as reporting that “the sniper is an American of Hispanic extraction,” reported the Los Angeles Times.
Forensic psychologist N.G. Berrill spoke of a “Caucasian . . . a loner” on ABC, Newsday noted.
When challenged on the frequently cited likelihood that the sniper was Caucasian, MSNBC analyst Pat Brown said on the air, “I’m not surprised . . . There are hundreds of black serial killers.” Newsday added that “actually, 84 percent of serial killers are white.” Scott Thornsley, an assistant professor of criminal justice administration at Mansfield University in Pennsylvania, told the New York Times that “one study indicates that 13 percent of serial killers are black and the other says that about 16 percent of American serial killers are black.
George Curry of the National Newspaper Publishers Association, itemized the African Americans engaged in mass killing sprees.
In 1972, Mark Essex, a 23-year old Navy veteran from Emporia, Kan., killed a grocer and a police cadet before driving to the downtown Howard Johnson Hotel, killing guests along the way as he ascended to the roof of the hotel. When he was killed by police marksmen riding in helicopters 12 hours later, Essex had killed nine people – five of them police officers – wounded 19 others and had caused more than $1 million in damage.
Wayne Williams was labeled the “Atlanta Child Murderer” and linked to almost two dozen deaths that occurred over a two-year-period that began in 1979, though he was only convicted of killing two adults. He is imprisoned in Sparta, Ga., serving a double life sentence.
On Dec. 7, 1993, Colin Ferguson entered a Long Island Rail Road commuter train during rush hour and opened fire, killing six people and injuring 19 others. He is serving six consecutive life sentences.
But it has been whites, in large measure, who have committed the most heinous crimes, Curry continued, naming Ted Bundy, David Berkowitz, John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Kaczynski and Timothy McVeigh.
The Baltimore Sun and New York Times were among those doing stories on the African American reaction to the arrests.
Washington Post Didn’t Bite on “Olive Skinned” Description
On Oct. 15, the Washington Post was scooped by all its competitors, both local and national. Every other news outlet, it seemed, had beaten the Post on a juicy detail about the previous night’s sniper attack at the Home Depot in Fairfax County, Va., reports the Washington City Paper.
The New York Times wrote, “Initial reports of a van fleeing the scene said there may have been an olive-skinned man at the wheel.”
The Washington Times wrote, “[Police] would not comment on reports going out over police radios that they were looking for an olive-skinned man armed with a semiautomatic weapon.”
A New York Post headline on Oct. 16 blared: “THE PSYCHO SNIPER – 3 CLUES: *VAN PLATES ID’D; *BURNED-OUT LEFT TAILLIGHT; *KILLER SAID TO BE ‘OLIVE SKINNED.'”
Other outlets went a step further, saying the sniper was described as a man of Hispanic or Middle Eastern origin.
The Post steered clear of skin color not because it had missed the olive-skinned description. According to the paper’s editors, its reporters heard that same claim on the scene, over police radios, and on all the TV stations that were parroting the chatter surrounding the Home Depot parking lot.
“The decision had to do with whether or not we thought it was accurate,” says Post Executive Editor Leonard Downie. “We literally had license plate numbers also relayed over police radios as lookouts. A lookout on a police radio is not sufficient for us.”
Publishers Group: “Our Diversity Program Will Continue”
Regardless of whether Toni Laws, the Newspaper Association of America’s senior vice president for diversity, accepted a buyout offer, “our diversity programs will continue and we will make the appropriate personnel” changes, John Sturm, president and CEO of the Newspaper Association of America, said today.
As reported Wednesday, Laws was one of two senior staffers at NAA who had until Thursday to make a decision. Sturm would not say what Laws’ decision was because Laws would not have had time to inform her staff, he told Journal-isms.
NAA, the newspaper publishers trade association, promotes diversity in both the editorial and business sides of newspapers with a regular publication on diversity called “People and Product,” and with mentoring programs, conferences and services that help newspapers become better equipped in serving “emerging, niche markets.” It is coping with “significant revenue decreases” prompted by an advertising slump after 9/11.
NAHJ Seeks to Double Percentage of Newsroom Latinos
The National Association of Hispanic Journalists called on the news industry this week to increase dramatically the employment of Latino journalists during the next five years. NAHJ unveiled plans to create several new programs to spur that increase.
NAHJ says it will seek to work with the news industry to double the percentage of Latinos employed by daily newspapers from the current 3.8 percent to 7.8 percent and to boost the percentage of Latinos working for local English-language television stations from the current 6.1 percent to 9.0 percent by 2008.
The centerpiece of the plan is a “Parity Project.” NAHJ seeks to identify cities with significant Latino populations where Latinos are underrepresented in the newsrooms of local media outlets. In those cities, NAHJ plans to offer to work jointly with existing print and broadcast outlets, area journalism schools, foundations and Latino community leaders to develop comprehensive model programs that will increase Latino newsroom presence and influence.
The Parity Project will focus mainly on medium-sized cities. Recent studies by the Brookings Institution and the Pew Hispanic Center found that during the 1990s Latinos migrated to the suburbs and medium-sized cities faster than any other ethnic or racial group in the nation’s history. Media outlets in those cities have historically been the “weak link” in minority newsroom employment.
In addition, NAHJ plans to create a leadership institute for Latino journalists and to publish a Spanish-language style book in In 2004, the organization expects to launch a professional development program for Spanish-language media.
Kweisi Mfume Scolds Newspaper Editors on Diversity
Kweisi Mfume, president and CEO of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), accused newspapers of not doing enough to recruit and retain minorities and urged editors meeting here this week to “support opportunity” for journalists of color, reports Editor & Publisher.
Mfume, a former Baltimore-area congressman, made his remarks during the annual Associated Press Managing Editors conference. He also urged editors not to think of the NAACP only for stories related to so-called “black issues.”
“Often times, the NAACP is relegated to the civil rights reporter and coverage is generated by what happens in the black community,” Mfume told a crowd of about 300 editors on Wednesday afternoon. “We are larger than that. We deal with issues such as national security, health care, education, and others.”
“Buckwheat” Caption Prompts Boycott of U. Michigan Paper
The Michigan Student Assembly voted to support a boycott against The Michigan Daily, the student newspaper, that was prompted when a photograph of a black contestant on the “American Idol” TV show was captioned “Buckwheat Sings.”
The caption writer “was playing off the Eddie Murphy skit” on “Saturday Night Live,” student editor Jon Schwartz told Journal-isms. “He said his hair resembled it,” referring to contestant Justin Guarini. It was a joke. It was obviously a terrible error.”
While Schwartz said the staff has talked about the “error,” which ran in the first issue of the school year, there has been no correction or retraction because “we have to be very careful that what we say doesn’t come back to hurt us.” Schwartz said his staff is about 20 percent “minority,” though he said he couldn’t identify the number of African Americans.
The Daily reported that at the student government meeting, Minority Affairs Commission Co-Chair Ed McDonald said he agreed with the boycott because of the representation of black males.
“Depiction of black males is negative. The only time they mention black male is about crime,” McDonald said.
The story reported that “at last night’s meeting every seat in the house was full and the walls of the MSA chambers were lined with students. Most came to give their personal opinions of the Daily.”
The story said that two minority staff members of the Daily also spoke, asking MSA not to support the resolution and saying that the minority leaders speaking in favor of the boycott were not representing them. They said the Daily was making improvements internally by drafting an internal mission statement and discussing the issues addressed in the boycott with staff members.
Schwartz identified the two staffers at Shabina Khatri and Sravya Chirumamill.
Pittsburgh Anchor Sentenced to Community Service
Gina Redmond of Pittsburgh’s WPXI was sentenced to community service after pleading no contest to starting a bar fight in August and slapping her former producer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports.
But hours after District Justice Charles A. McLaughlin sentenced her, Redmond called the newspaper and said she wanted to appeal.
“I didn’t fully understand what was taking place in court,” Redmond said. “Had I known evidence was going to be presented, we would have presented evidence as well and we fully plan to appeal the magistrate’s ruling.”
A plea of nolo contendere, or no contest, is not an admission of guilt, but is treated as a guilty plea for sentencing purposes.
The private complaint against Redmond was filed by Roberta Petterson, a WTAE producer who formerly worked at Channel 11.
Sprewell Sues New York Post
Latrell Sprewell was suspended Monday by the New York Knicks for not following the team’s instructions for rehabilitating his broken right hand. The same day, Sprewell’s agent announced a $40 million lawsuit against the New York Post for its account of how he was injured, the Associated Press reports.
Named in Sprewell’s lawsuit, filed in New York State Supreme Court, was Post staff writer Marc Berman, who quoted two anonymous sources in an Oct. 4 story that said Sprewell was injured when he hit a wall while throwing a punch at a man whose girlfriend vomited aboard Sprewell’s yacht.
“Those accounts are false and contributed to a breakdown in relations with the team, and contributed to the size of the fine,” said Gist, who claimed that Sprewell’s injury occurred when the player fell on the yacht.
Berman defended his story, saying it was accurate.
Asian Journalists Seek Scholarship Applicants
The Asian American Journalists Association is accepting applications until Feb. 3 for its Siani Lee Broadcast Internship for Television and its New Media Internship Grant. Recipients of the internship and the grant will each receive a $2,500 stipend to defray the costs of travel and lodging.
The program places one college student in a summer internship at CBS affiliate KYW-TV in Philadelphia. The Siani Lee Broadcast Internship for Television places one college student in a summer internship at CBS affiliate KYW-TV in Philadelphia.
In November 2001, AAJA named the internship in honor of Siani Lee, Philadelphia’s first Asian Pacific American news anchor. Lee, then an anchor at KYW-TV, died in a car accident on Oct. 28, 2001.
Applications are available online at http://www.aaja.org and must be received by Feb. 3. For more information, e-mail national@aaja.org or call 415-346-2051.