Black Caucus Issues Threat Over Cable Ownership
“Members of the Congressional Black Caucus are turning up the heat on the cable TV industry, demanding more opportunities for minorities, particularly when it comes to owning cable TV networks,” TelevisionWeek reports.
” ‘We want more minority-owned networks on the air,’ said Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., who is leading the charge on the cable industry for the caucus.
“Cable’s minority profile is of sufficient concern that 37 of the caucus’s 38 members recently signed a letter that threatens severe regulatory consequences and the possibility of new legislative initiatives if cable’s prospects for minorities don’t improve significantly.”
In an interview, Scott said the caucus decided not to release the letter officially because cable TV industry representatives agreed to discuss possible solutions to the diversity issues behind the scenes.
“But the letter was being circulated in industry circles last week,” the story said.
Douglass Newspaper, 1800s Race Stories Online
Articles from issues of the historic Frederick Douglass’ Monthly, William Garrison’s abolitionist paper The Liberator and 19th century coverage of racial issues in Harper’s Weekly are available for the first time online, thanks to a management consultant who took up the project in retirement.
John Adler, 75, recently won the $50,000 Gettysburg College E-Lincoln Prize for his Web site, launched last year, that publishes the full contents of 47 periodicals from 1860 to 1865, Editor & Publisher reported last week. Adler told Journal-isms that he spent “many millions of dollars” putting together the site, www.harpweek.com, and is looking for a sponsor to make more pieces available to the online public. “It’s the most complete scan-able run that’s out there,” he said of the Douglass material, which includes three issues from 1860. The 1860 collection of the Liberator, a weekly, includes 52 issues.
Some of the Web pages come with a warning, such as:
“Website visitors should be warned that several of the words, descriptions, and images from Harper’s Weekly are considered racially offensive by today’s standards. The materials are presented in order to give a true historical picture of the leading 19th-century newspaper’s view of black Americans. We at HarpWeek hope this site will serve as a valuable resource which provides an important perspective on the multifaceted history of black Americans, generates a deeper understanding and respect for the subject, and sparks further interest in its study and discussion.”
Randall Kennedy of Harvard Law School, author of the book “Nigger,” was solicited for his opinion, and his approval of publishing the material unedited appears on the Web site.
The site writes of the Douglass material:
“Douglass’ Monthly was published by Frederick Douglass, the noted abolitionist who was born into slavery, in Rochester, NY from August 1860 through August 1863. It was preceded by Douglass’ weekly newspaper which began publication in 1847 as Northstar, with the name changed in 1850 to Frederick Douglass’ Paper. When his publication reduced its frequency, Douglass explained that he could put his time to better use in traveling and speaking than he could by publishing every week and he also complained about his subscribers not paying up.”
Articles from Douglass’ Monthly
Harper’s Weekly stories on race
Station’s Probe Leads to Freedom for Rape Suspect
Josiah Sutton, a Houston teenager when he was convicted of a rape he might not have committed, stepped outside prison walls for the first time in more than four years after an investigation by KHOU-TV into errors at the Houston Police Department DNA lab questioned the lab’s performance. The stories asked whether innocent people were going to prison or guilty people were being set free, the Houston Chronicle reports.
“After praying at a mosque and enjoying a jubilant family reunion, one of Sutton’s first destinations was the mall.
“Sutton, who already has a GED, wants to go to school. He would like to revive an old talent that earned the family extra cash when he was a teen, cutting hair, and may one day open his own barbershop,” the Chronicle reported. He was the eldest of five children in a single-parent home.
“A year ago, Sutton himself submitted a request for new DNA testing of the evidence used to convict him, but it was not granted until problems at the lab had been exposed.
“During Sutton’s trial, [a Houston Police Department] examiner testified DNA from the rape was an exact match for Sutton, when, in reality, the profile she found would have matched any 1 in 16 black men. New tests released Monday concluded that Sutton’s DNA was not present in the evidence, though the profiles of two unidentified males were,” the Chronicle reported.
Gannett’s “Diversity Page” Chooses a Bad Example
The good news is that the Gannett Co. set up a “Diversity Page,” now marking its first anniversary, “where nearly 300 good examples of diversity coverage from Gannett newspapers have been posted and archived,” in the words of George Benge, a Gannett corporate news executive who is also a Cherokee Indian who writes a Gannett column on Native affairs.
The bad news is the example of “diversity” the most recent page highlights. “White teens hip to black style,” from the Asbury Park Press in New Jersey, is another piece about whites picking up on black culture — some have called such kids “wiggers.”
It contains this paragraph:
“So that unlike [John] Travolta’s character in ‘Saturday Night Fever,’ who had a contentious relationship with minorities in the movie, or fans of Elvis Presley, the rock ‘n’ roll icon who drew greatly from black artists, today’s white youth have a greater tolerance for African-Americans, some experts say.”
Rap-Video Watching Linked to Risky Behavior
Teenage girls who watch long hours of rap music videos are more likely to be arrested, have multiple sex partners, use drugs or hit a teacher, according to a study by Emory University researchers published in the Journal of Public Health.
In one of the first studies of the potential influence of rap music videos on teens, researchers tracked 522 teenage black girls from poor neighborhoods for one year, the Associated Press reports.
The researchers did not respond to an inquiry today to clarify which came first — the risky behavior or the videos.
Hispanic Papers Offered Free Web Sites
In a partnership with Hispanic PR Wire, the National Association of Hispanic Publications is offering member newspapers and other publications free Web sites, Editor & Publisher reports.
“More than half of NAHP’s 214 publications now have no Web site, said Robert Armband, the association’s vice president of marketing and associate publisher of La Raza in Chicago:
” ‘What’s keeping them from going on line is, first, the cost of buying software . . . and, second, the time it takes to keep the system maintained. With this Hispanic Digital Network, we’ll give them a manual en espanol, a program easy to get familiar with, and enough tech support that our publishers will feel comfortable migrating online.’
“The local content from Hispanic papers will distinguish the network from existing Spanish-language and bilingual portals, Armband said: ‘It’s unprecedented in creating a network of Hispanic publications that allows advertisers a digital buy.’ Three of the Web templates offered by the program are posted at http://www.hispanicprwire.com/templates. “
Hispanic Anchors Number One in Miami
Two Hispanic news anchors are at the top of the ratings race in Miami, reports Daisy Pareja, CEO and founder of Pareja Media Match, and publisher of a newsletter on Latino journalists.
“WFOR-TV, the CBS affiliate in Miami, had the number one rated 11 p.m. English-language newscast in the recent February sweeps. Anchors Eliott Rodriguez and Maggie Rodriguez are the only Hispanic anchor team on an English-language television in Miami. WFOR-TV’s number one ranking marks the first time in three years that NBC affiliate WTVJ has not been number one at 11 p.m. in the South Florida market.”
Black Paper Calls Staff Multicultural Model
Lawrence C. Lee, 29-year-old president and CEO of SacObserver.com, the online version of the Sacramento Observer newspaper in California, calls his paper “a model for what other newsrooms should look like.”
He tells the Journalismjobs.com Web site: “Yes, it’s a black newspaper. Yes, the publisher is black. But at the Observer, whether it’s advertising, sales, design, writing, editing, there’s diversity. You might have two blacks, two whites, two Asians in a department. Ideally we’d like to have someone who thinks covering our community is important. I wouldn’t want anyone black, white or any other ethnicity to not feel comfortable covering the black community. We’ve had white managing editors, white reporters and white photographers who understand how important what we’re doing is.”
Responding to complaints from activists, Internet auction giant eBay said it will caution sellers against describing items using a racial slur, the Associated Press reports. A number of African American commentators had pressed eBay on the issue.
“When a seller uses the n-word in an item description, a new box will automatically pop up on the computer screen. It will tell the seller that the listing contains a word which may be ‘highly offensive to many in the eBay community’ and could violate the company’s policy against racially offensive items,” AP writes.
” ‘It’s a small victory, but it also sends a good message that corporations have to be sensitive to communities of color,’ said Earl Ofari Hutchinson, president of the National Alliance for Positive Action, a racial and social justice group that worked with eBay to bring about the changes.”