Black Paper’s Piece Looks Exactly Like N.Y. Times’
Media critic Mark Jurkowitz of the Boston Globe wrote last week about the different perspectives black journalists were offering on the war with Iraq, writing:
“While much of the nation’s media treated the destruction of the Saddam Hussein statue in Baghdad as a moment of liberation and vindication, a report on the website of The New York Beacon, an African-American newspaper, offered a different perspective.
“‘A dismayed hush’ fell on the crowd as a US serviceman placed an American flag over the head of the statue, the story noted. That ‘was exactly the image most likely to offend the Muslim world.’ “
Adam Clayton Powell III, the former general manager of Howard University’s WHUT-TV who is now a visiting professor at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication, was preparing for an appearance on today’s “Tavis Smiley Show” on National Public Radio when he noticed that the exact same wording appeared in an April 10 New York Times story by Alessandra Stanley.
In fact, the entire story seemed to be the same. Powell mentioned this on Smiley’s show this morning in a segment called “Black Media and the War.”
Willie Eygir, managing editor of the New York Beacon, said “I have to take a look at it,” referring to the story on his Web site.
Jurkowitz told Journal-isms that he would write a clarification. “Had I known what I know now, I wouldn’t have used that example,” he said, though it wouldn’t change the point of his piece. “This was not a one-source story,” he said. New York Times writer Stanley wasn’t at her desk this morning. Eygir said his paper, which changed its name from “Big Red” in 1985, had been around for 30 years and had a circulation of 60,000.
The revelation comes on top of allegations of plagiarism at another African American paper, the Tri-State Defender in Memphis.
Brazil’s “‘Hood” Film Has Budding Journalist as Hero
The Brazilian movie “City of God” has been getting rave reviews from U.S. film critics, but it’s been difficult to find any commentary by journalists of color. That’s surprising because not only does the film have a majority-black cast, but its hero is a budding black journalist, a photographer through whose eyes this tragic story is told.
In a scene reminiscent of the story of the integration of U.S. newspapers, the photographer from the “‘hood” — here known as the City of God — is hired by the Brazilian paper because the nonblack staff is unable and afraid to penetrate this mostly black community. The photographer comes up with sensational images.
“City of God” portrays a world so amoral and violent that it seems like a Brazilian version of “Superfly,” “New Jack City” and “Menace II Society.” Some will say “been there, seen that.” But the film is based on the true story of three decades of a Rio de Janeiro ghetto as it is taken over by locals who become drug lords. It is not a documentary, but it portrays a world unknown even to middle-class Brazilians, and a reminder that there is more than the war in Iraq that merits foreign-news coverage. It is also confirmation that life in the ‘hood has much in common whether South Central, Bed-Stuy or the City of God.
In Brazil, the film was an expose, playing a role in the victory last fall of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
“We were having elections (in October) and one of the candidates (Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, popularly known as Lula) asked to see the movie, and then he began to talk about the movie in his speeches. ‘You must see City of God. This reveals the real Brazil. This is what we have to take care of.’ And this became a subject of the campaign,” director Fernando Meirelles told the Ottawa Citizen.
Wrote the London Telegraph:
“Although the film was criticised by some politicians for failing to condemn the lives of the gang leaders portrayed in the movie (many of whom are folk heroes in the favelas), it was actually the incumbent centre-Right president, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who did much to raise the film’s profile by convening a pre-release screening of it for the Brazilian parliament.
“It was also during Cardoso’s eight-year administration that a viable Brazilian film industry was established. Thirty percent of the budget for City of God came from public subsidy (largely derived from the state power companies, Petrobras and Electrobras).
“Cardoso managed to get the whole of Brazil behind the idea that having a national film industry was as important as having a national football team,’ says [co-producer Donald] Ranvaud. “It created jobs and stimulated interest in our country. The fact that it raised contradictory ideas about what was going on in society created a dynamic that helped society to grow.'”
E&P Tells Story of Prize-Winning Immigration Series
“A long way from anywhere, on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande, two police officers approached Sonia Nazario, with their guns drawn. Having heard stories about brutal officers attacking would-be migrants in the remote borderlands, the Los Angeles Times feature writer was only too happy to be able to whip out a letter from the personal assistant to the president of Mexico,” writes Editor & Publisher.
“The letter urged authorities to cooperate with Nazario in her attempt to document the experiences of child migrants making the long, vicious, and even deadly, journey north in search of their mothers. It was an attempt that paid off last week when she won the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing.” Thus begins E&P’s story-behind-the-story of Nazario’s series.
Reporters Subpoenaed in Sniper Case
Lawyers for sniper suspect John Allen Muhammad have issued subpoenas to police and FBI detectives and to four reporters from the Washington Post, seeking to find the source of law-enforcement leaks to the newspaper.
The Post has broken several stories since suspects Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo were captured in late October, reports the Chicago Tribune.
Nominate a J-Educator Who’s Helped Diversity
The National Conference of Editorial Writers annually grants a Barry Bingham Sr. Fellowship– actually an award — “in recognition of an educator’s outstanding efforts to encourage minority students in the field of journalism.” The educator should be at the college or university level.
Since 2000, an honorarium of $1,000 has been awarded the recipient, to be used to “further work in progress or begin a new project.”
Past winners include James Hawkins of Florida A&M University (1990); Larry Kaggwa of Howard University (1992); Ben Holman of the University of Maryland (1996); Linda Jones, Roosevelt University, Chicago (1998); Ramon Chavez, University of Colorado, Boulder (1999); Erna Smith of San Francisco State (2000), Joseph Selden of Penn State (2001) and Cheryl Smith, director of the Dallas-Fort Worth Association of Black Communicators Urban Journalism Workshop and adjunct professor at Paul Quinn College (2002).
NCEW is ready to consider nominations for 2003. For those who know of a worthy candidate, now is the time to speak up. The procedure is that someone nominates the educator and then provides letters of recommendation from others.
The NCEW Diversity Committee makes the recommendation to the NCEW Foundation board. The committee will need the nomination materials by May 15. E-mail NCEW Diversity Chair Richard Prince at princer (at) washpost.com
Lester Holt’s Ultimate Tribute: A Song About Him
MSNBC anchor Lester Holt has hit the big time — now that he’s had a song written about him, writes Michael Starr in The New York Post.
“Todd Pettengill, half of [New York radio station] WPLJ’s ‘Scott & Todd’ morning duo, wrote the ode after noting on the air how he had been watching Holt’s seemingly nonstop anchoring of MSNBC’s war coverage.
“Todd recorded the tune himself, crooning it karaoke-style over folk-singer Joni Mitchell’s ‘Big Yellow Taxi.’
“The lyrics read:
“Stuck all day, in front of my TV
And I get mad at most of the folks I see /
And I think Dan Rather is nuts, and Peter Jennings,
man what a klutz
“If you want my vote, you should watch Lester Holt . . . .
“Scott & Todd booked Holt to appear on their show and surprised him by playing the song as an introduction to their interview with him.
“And he loved it,” Starr’s item continues.
” ‘We thought it would be a great idea to have the song as the intro,’ Pettengill said. ‘Al Roker called a few days later and said the song was being e-mailed all over NBC — and that Lester was playing it at his desk.’
“Don’t get me wrong, I’m not gay /
But I tell you man, if I were that way /
It’d be paradise, just me and Lester Holt /
Champagne on ice and double-lock the dead bolt
“Pettengill said he chose ‘Big Yellow Taxi’ because the tune ‘just jumped out’ at him – and went well with the lyrics,” Starr wrote.
Feminist News Service Reaching Out in Arabic
“When Women’s eNews, the New York-based feminist news service, examined data last summer identifying the location of its visitors, the United States was the No. 1 country of origin, followed by Britain, Australia, Canada and Saudi Arabia, a country where women’s activities are restricted by the government,” the New York Times reports.
“Women’s eNews was working this month to begin an Arabic site aimed at Arab and Muslim women in the Middle East and the United States (www.awomensenews.org).
“Two Harvard Law School researchers last summer reported that of 64,557 Web pages they examined, the Saudi government was blocking 2,038, including women’s health sites and offerings like the Women in History section of Encyclopaedia Britannica Online (www.women.eb.com); a Planned Parenthood site (www.teenwire.com); and iVillage.com.”
Even TV’s “Friends” Goes for Diversity
After 11 a.m. Sunday, America’s “next most segregated hour is 8 p.m. on any weekday, when the clock strikes prime time and the nation observes its second favourite religion – watching television,” writes black journalist Gary Younge, who covers the United States for the Guardian newspaper in England.
“And now Friends is preparing for the arrival of the first major non-white character to its cast in its nine-year history. This is truly symbolic of developments both on screen and in front of it, as it signifies how little has changed and how long that little has taken to come about.
“When Aisha Tyler appears on Friends next week as a fossil expert torn between Ross and Joey, she will face the familiar dilemma of black professionals in an all-white environment,” Younge writes.
Meanwhile, Greg Braxton reports in the Los Angeles Times that “UPN, the only network with a block of series featuring mostly African American casts, is adding a new ingredient to its urban-flavored programming: white people.
“Leslie Moonves, president and chief executive of CBS, whose mandate includes oversight of UPN, acknowledged earlier this year that the network — with shows ranging from the departing ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ to ‘WWE Wrestling’ to ‘Star Trek: Enterprise’ — has suffered from a lack of focus: five different audiences on five different nights.
“‘There was the black-sitcom audience,’ Moonves told television reporters in January. ‘Then there’s the “Buffy” audience. There’s the wrestling audience, the “Star Trek” audience and the action-movie audience. What we’re trying to do slowly with a show like “Platinum” is to sort of bridge Monday and Tuesday nights.’ Moonves said he also wanted to make ‘more of our casts interracial’ to expand beyond an African American audience.”