Rodgers Wants Cathy Hughes for Role at Network
Veteran broadcaster Johnathan A. Rodgers, named today as president and CEO of the new Radio One-Comcast cable network targeting African Americans, said he would ask Radio One founder Cathy Hughes to head its public affairs programming.
That’s one way to protect the public affairs budget, Rodgers indicated to Journal-isms. He said that board chairman Hughes, if she accepts, would work closely with actor-producer Tim Reid and his New Millennium Studios. Hughes, a former talk-show host at Washington’s WOL-AM, founded the 66-station network, the nation’s largest that is African American-owned, in 1980, starting with community investors. Her son, Alfred Liggins, is CEO. Together they control most of the Radio One’s stock. The company went public in 1999.
Rodgers defined public affairs as non-prime-time programming, such as interviews and talk shows, as opposed to documentaries. Were the network on now, Rodgers said, “we would be all over the war. What our representatives in Congress have to say about it, how it affects our community . . . our own special spin.” Reparations would be another topic, “an important issue in the African American community” not given much coverage in the general media.
Because news is expensive to produce, Rodgers said, a newscast would not be produced until about six months after the network launches. The starting date was originally this summer, but Rodgers told the Washington Post he was pushing it back at least seven months.
The network is tentatively known as TV-One, but a contest on Radio One’s affiliate stations will determine its name, Rodgers said.
Rodgers became president of the Discovery Networks, U.S. in March 1996 and retired from Discovery last March. Discovery Networks includes the Discover Channel, TLC (The Learning Channel), Animal Planet and the Travel Channel. In his 20 years with CBS, he was an executive producer, news director, general manager, and in 1988, became president of the CBS owned and operated stations.
Angela Dodson Heading Black Issues Book Review
Angela Dodson, a former New York Times senior editor and a faculty member at the Maynard Institute since 1983, has been named executive editor of the Black Issues Book Review.
Dodson, who had been working as an editor with the magazine, succeeds Evette Porter, formerly of the Village Voice, who had assumed the job in January 2002. Dodson becomes the third editor of the glossy magazine.
Dodson told Journal-isms that she planned to restore some of the features begun under founding editor Susan McHenry, who works with both Black Issues and Essence, such as “Rhythm ‘n’ Books,” about music books. She said she plans to cover university presses and galleries (which sell art books); inaugurate a “books-in-demand” list; cover trends in children’s publishing and “focus more on writers and writing — the art of writing, conferences, writing seminars. We’ve not targeted writers as readers,” she said.
Black Issues Book Review claims a circulation of 65,000 and is a product of Cox Matthews & Associates of Fairfax, Va., which publishes Black Issues in Higher Education. William E. Cox is president and editor-in-chief. The Borders chain is its largest advertiser and major supporter, and has been from the start, the New York Times said in a March 2000 article on the book review.
In addition to being a Maynard faculty member, Dodson has been a consultant, a graduate “of at least one seminar,” a presenter with Maynard’s Fault Lines project, and a speaker at the Maynard management program. She also teaches a course in media issues at Mercer County Community College near her New Jersey home.
African Comments on Iraq Getting Little Attention
You might not realize it from reading the U.S. news media, but Africans, too, have been speaking out on the war with Iraq. Nelson Mandela received some attention in January when he said in a Johannesburg speech, “What I am condemning is that one power, with a president who has no foresight, who cannot think properly, is now wanting to plunge the world into a holocaust.”
The Inter Press Service News Agency reported March 18 that “Most African contributions to U.N. debates on Iraq have pushed the same themes: concern about a regional conflagration, the devastating impact on Africa of rising fuel prices, and the shrinking of aid budgets for Africa as resources go elsewhere.”
In Kenya, columnist David Makali wrote Saturday in The Nation that “the fact is that the current war against Iraq is a direct product of the Arab-Israeli conflict from which both Saddam Hussein and George Bush find their insidious motivation — Saddam to liberate the Palestinians and Bush to protect the Israelis.” In a commentary dated tomorrow, March 25, columnist Macharia Gaitho denounces “disgusting media lies on the war.”
On Wednesday, The Post in Zambia wrote in an editorial, “What we are seeing today is nothing but the development of a whole philosophy aimed at sweeping away the UN Charter and the principle of national sovereignty. . . . Bush is more dangerous than Saddam, he has the capacity — and a destructive mind — to destroy the world several times over.”
The same newspaper reported that the African International Youth conference, meeting in Kenya, called on the United Nations to disarm the United States and thereafter pass a strong resolution on the destruction of all weapons of mass destruction. The youths represent organizations from Zambia, Angola, Burundi, Congo, Kenya, Mozambique, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, South Africa, Lesotho and Uganda.
The Inter Press Service also reported on the conflicted feelings of Americans living in southern Africa.
Allafrica.com reported that Northern Nigerians were supporting Saddam Hussein out of Muslim solidarity.
And the national weekly Mail and Guardian in South Africa on Friday condemned the U.S. and British “war of whores” against Iraq.
Well, the U.S. Congressional Black Caucus’ statement opposing the war didn’t get much press, either.
Arab American Editor Becomes Media Darling
“Dearborn’s Osama Siblani cringes when he discusses American news media,” reports the Metro Times of Detroit.
“The editor and publisher of the Arab American News, the nation’s largest and oldest Arab-American newspaper, says mainstream reporters in general, and TV reporters in particular, are guilty of shallow coverage that fails to probe government policies as the United States prepares to invade Iraq.
“For his stance is rarefied in the world of televised debate, compassionate to Arabs, critical of U.S. foreign policy and Israel’s Siblani, 48, has become an international media darling. He’s interviewed constantly, appearing recently on everything from “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer” and “Crossfire” to “The O’Reilly Factor.” Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, Siblani has become a leading voice of the nation’s Arab community — a group some 3 million strong.”
S.F. Chronicle Subscribes to Al-Jazeera Network
“When the U.S. invades Iraq, journalists in the San Francisco Chronicle newsroom will not only be monitoring the war via CNN, Associated Press feeds, and their own oversees correspondents, but also through an unlikely news source: the controversial Al-Jazeera news network,” Editor & Publisher reports.
Columnist Looks “Suspicious” in Jittery D.C.
“The sign above the highway leading into the nation’s capital advised motorists to ‘Report Suspicious Activity’ and gave an 800 number for the Office of Homeland Security. As a reporter, I figured this was right up my alley and set out yesterday to report on things that struck me as suspicious,” writes columnist Courtland Milloy in the Washington Post.
“For instance, near the Jefferson Memorial, I saw a five-foot-tall metal box that was hooked up to an electrical outlet and equipped with a high-tech antenna and chrome-dome receptor. What was it?”
After Milloy asked a few questions, police became suspicious.
“What I really wanted to know was why my questions about the box had made me suspect. Or was it that an African American — whom someone may have mistaken for a Middle Easterner — was asking them?
“The only way to get to the bottom of this, I thought, was to ask more questions.”
He continues his story: “Even knowing I’d never get a straight answer, I pointedly asked whether I had been detained because I was African American or whether I looked Middle Eastern. The officers just smiled wryly. A Park Police detective would later say that ‘a tourist’ had reported me to police.”
Speakers of Color Wanted for FCC Hearing
Federal Communications Commissioner Commissioner Michael Copps is looking for people of color living in the North Carolina or neighboring states to testify at a hearing he is sponsoring at Duke University on March 31.
The hearing will focus on the effect of media consolidation on localism and local news coverage. Copps seeks to hear the perspectives of people of color on the effect of media consolidation on diversity of voices, localism and the public interest. Those who wish to speak at the forum may call Jonathan Goldstein in Copps’ office at (202) 418-2005.
