Fox Makes Fun of Antiwar Protesters
When 500 antiwar demonstrators staged a “die-in” during the morning rush hour near Manhattan’s Rockefeller Center, home to such media giants as the CNN, NBC, and Fox networks, reports the Record of Bergen County, N.J., “the news ticker rimming Fox’s headquarters on Sixth Avenue wasn’t carrying war updates as the protest began. Instead, it poked fun at the demonstrators, chiding them.”
” ‘War protester auditions here today . . . thanks for coming!’ read one message. ‘Who won your right to show up here today?’ another questioned. ‘Protesters or soldiers?’
“Reached for comment Thursday afternoon, Fox spokeswoman Tracy Spector was unaware of the messages on the news ticker and said she would look into it. Spector said the network ‘didn’t mean to insult anyone.’
“Media experts said what Fox did Thursday morning was not shocking – Fox was openly hawkish about the war long before it began. But, they said, the display – tagged with the Fox News logo ? threw journalistic objectivity out the window and also ridiculed the First Amendment right to freedom of speech.”
Meanwhile, Paul Farhi reports in the Washington Post that broadcast news consultants have been advising news and talk stations across the nation to wave the flag and downplay protest against the war.
Missing Newsday Photographer Peruvian-Born
Moises Saman, one of two Newsday journalists missing in Baghdad, was born in Peru, to which his grandfather, a Palestinian named Hanna Saman Hanune Nozrala, had immigrated in 1912 from a town in what is now the West Bank, Beit Jala, Newsday reports. His family moved to Barcelona, Spain, when he was 1.
Saman, 29, the oldest of four boys, had always dreamed of going to school in America. His mother, Mercedes Saman, of Mataro, a town near Barcelona, wouldn’t let him leave until he was 18, she said. “He’s always been a boy that always knew exactly what he wanted,” she said in Spanish in a telephone interview. On Sunday, the families of Saman and correspondent Matthew McAllester asked the Rev. Jesse Jackson to help locate their loved ones and secure their release, the newspaper reported . Newsday said it believes the two have been detained by Iraqi authorities. “The families called me and asked for help,” Jackson told the Associated Press today in a telephone interview from the Chicago offices of his Rainbow/PUSH Coalition. “And I said I would do my very best.”
900 At Black-Owned Broadcasters Gala
More than 900 people gathered in Washington last week to eyeball Diana Ross, Muhammad Ali, Motown founder Berry Gordy, hip-hop star LL Cool J, singer Audra McDonald, former labor secretary Alexis Herman, actress Ruby Dee and emcee Kim Coles at the National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters dinner, the Washington Post reports. Ross and Ali were honored for lifetime achievement.
“NABOB was founded in 1976, when only a handful of radio stations were owned by African Americans. The organization now includes 220 radio and commercial television stations,? the story continues.
” ‘The biggest issue for us is the struggle to maintain minority ownership,’ said dinner chair Lois Wright. With the FCC set to lift more restrictions on broadcast ownership, NABOB is fighting to preserve smaller stations and independent owners. ‘One company could control an entire market,’ Wright said. ‘We think it’s a disgrace that [fewer than] 300 radio and television stations [are] owned by African Americans and that one company from Texas, Clear Channel, owns 1,200.’ “
FCC’s Powell Might Face “Dogfight” Over New Rules
Although Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael K. Powell last week brushed aside calls that he slow down the agency’s review of media ownership rules, and said he would call for a vote on proposed reforms by June 2, the Los Angeles Times reports, ” Powell could face another bureaucratic dogfight similar to the high-profile FCC battle that Powell waged — and then lost — over telephone deregulation.”
The Times says “some commissioners are complaining that Powell is withholding key details about potential rule changes and playing favorites by giving some commissioners more information than others.”
Fired Reporter Sues Hartford Courant
Ann-Marie Adams, a former Hartford Courant staff writer, has filed an employment discrimination lawsuit against The Courant, charging disparate treatment and retaliation, announces her lawyer, Cynthia Jennings of Bridgeport, Conn., state chair of the NAACP Legal Redress Committee.
Adams “claims the discrimination and retaliation occurred on a continuous basis and intensified after she made statements about the paucity of minority journalists in newsrooms. The comments were included in the National Association of Black Journalists? ?Voices of Anger, Cries of Concern? document on the NABJ Web site, a news release said.
Adams said black journalists were leaving newsroom because of ?racial attitudes of co-workers.? The suit also claims that for an extended period of time, Adams was subjected to a racially hostile environment, and charges that The Courant later terminated Adams after she filed a complaint with the Commission of Human Rights and Opportunities.
Adams was president of the Connecticut chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists, but the national organization declined to intervene with the Courant on her behalf and withdrew recognition of her as president of the chapter, NABJ President Condace L. Pressley said in a column on the NABJ Web site.
“Ms. Adams engaged in inappropriate actions on behalf of the chapter in blatant non-compliance with the chapter?s original governing documents. Also, there were questions about Ms. Adams eligibility to serve following her termination by The Hartford Courant in 2002. Ms. Adams sought intercession by NABJ following her termination, but upon review of documentation provided by Ms. Adams [to] the NABJ Executive Committee– and subsequently, the full board of directors– determined that Ms. Adams?s situation was one where NABJ intercession was not warranted,” Pressley wrote.
Boston Gets First Spanish TV Newscast
Tuesday night at 6, “to the delight of many in the community, Univision affiliate WUNI is launching the area’s first Spanish-language newscast,” the Boston Globe reports. “The regional show will be aired throughout most of Massachusetts, southern New Hampshire, and Rhode Island, as well as in Connecticut on sister station WUVN-TV (Channel 18).
“The 30-minute show, called ‘Noticias Univision Nueva Inglaterra,’ or Univision News New England, is a milestone for the market, which, according to Nielsen Media Research, includes about 200,000 Hispanic homes with TVs.” Angel Salcedo will anchor the newscast, alongside Sara Suarez, a former anchor and assistant news director at the Univision affiliate in Denver.
Atlanta Radio Reporter Benjamin Perry Dies at 76
Benjamin Perry Sr., who kept Atlanta radio listeners informed on the civil rights movement with his on-the-scene reports, died March 27 of complications from pneumonia, the Associated Press reports. He was 76.
“Perry was hired as a reporter for WAOK radio in 1963. He covered events including the civil rights march in Washington in 1963 and the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968.
“In 1972, Channel 11 TV hired Perry to be its community affairs director, making him `one of the few African-American men in Atlanta history to go from radio to TV,’ said Ron Sailor, who was hired by Perry who later succeeded Perry as WAOK news director.
“Perry also co-hosted a public affairs show called `Ebony Beat Journal’ and in 1981 launched a twice-monthly newspaper produced from his home called The Orion,” AP reported.
Scholarships Available to Potential Copy Editors
The American Copy Editors Society is honoring its “godfather,” Merv Aubespin, with an annual $2,500 scholarship named after him. The scholarship was announced April 27, 2002, during the ACES conference in Louisville, Ky. Aubespin provided the impetus behind ACES, as the chairman of the Human Resources Committee of the American Society of Newspaper Editors in the mid-1990s. Aubespin, associate editor for development at the Courier-Journal in Louisville, before retiring, was also an early president of the National Association of Black Journalists, serving from 1983 to 1985.
The Aubespin scholar will be the top applicant each year among all applicants for ACES scholarships. Students who are not chosen as an Aubespin scholar are automatically eligible for ACES’ other scholarships, at $1,000 each.
All ACES scholarships are for potential professional copy editors. The scholarships are open to students who will be juniors, seniors or graduate students in the fall, and graduating students who will take full-time copy editing jobs or internships. Details at http://www.copydesk.org/scholarships.htm