Reporter Apologizes for Paula Madison Rumor
Paula Madison, president and general manager of NBC-owned and operated KNBC-TV Los Angeles and one of the highest ranking women of color in television, was the subject of a rumor today that she had been fired and replaced by Bruno Cohen, a onetime veteran of NBC operations in New York, where Madison formerly worked. “Tell them it’s not true,” Madison told Journal-isms.
The rumor apparently sprang from an on-air report to that effect by Sam Rubin , an entertainment reporter on KTLA-TV, the Warner Bros. affiliate in Los Angeles, that was then picked up in cyberspace on the NewsBlues.com Web site, which began its item: “PAULA GONE KNBC-4 General Manager Paula Madison is out.”
Rubin apologized to viewers this morning and to Madison yesterday, he said. “I said very carefully that we had an unconfirmed report,” Rubin told Journal-isms in his defense. “I was clear when I did the story that I said I had heard this, that this was the buzz. It was from a source who had been very accurate in the past.”
“If that’s journalism, we’re in bad shape,” said Madison, who said no one had called her or her public relations department to check the rumor before making it public.
The NewsBlues report went on to say that one count against Madison was her membership in the Nation of Islam, without saying that she left the Nation in 1977 after three years. Text of Sam Rubin’s apology at the end of today’s posting.
Senate Committee Votes Rollback of FCC Move
The Senate Commerce Committee on Thursday moved to reverse much of the Federal Communications Commission’s recent relaxation of media ownership rules, casting bipartisan votes to restore limits on TV network size and prohibitions on cross-ownership of newspapers and broadcast stations, Media Week reports.
“As part of the same bill, senators voted to force radio companies to sell stations that exceed new local market limits proposed by the FCC, even if the stations were legally acquired under the looser guidelines in effect until the FCC’s June 2 ownership decisions.
“The action sends the issue to the Senate floor, where supporters are hopeful of passage. No legislative action is final without concurrence of the House, and it appeared the measure faced a tougher road there. Rep. Billy Tauzin, R-La., chair of the Commerce Committee that would handle the legislation, has voiced support for the FCC’s action,” Media Week said.
Tom Shales commentary: Senate Panel Cuts Big Media Down to Size
Sulzberger to Speak at NAHJ, AAJA
Fresh from criticism of the New York Times’ diversity initiatives, prompted by the Jayson Blair scandal, Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr., is scheduled to participate in panels on diversity at both the National Association of Hispanic Journalists convention next week in New York and at the Asian American Journalists Association meeting Aug. 13-16 in San Diego.
At NAHJ, Sulzberger appears in a plenary session on “Journalism Ethics and Diversity in the Wake of the Jayson Blair Scandal,” Friday, June 27, from 10:30 a.m. to noon at the Marriott Marquis Hotel, says an NAHJ news release. Other panelists include Condace Pressley, president of the National Association of Black Journalists, and Ernest Sotomayor, president of UNITY: Journalists of Color.
AAJA plans a plenary session on “Diversity: Politically Correct or Jeopardizing Good Journalism?” “The Aug. 14 session will explore the questions of whether or not diversity has led to biased news coverage; if the continuing media crusade for diversity has made journalism weaker, particularly on complex stories involving race, gay rights, feminism, affirmative action and immigration; or if added diversity in newsrooms has improved coverage and led to a better understanding of the complex issues in the media and in the community,” says a release from AAJA.
Other panelists include Knight Ridder CEO P. Anthony Ridder, “Coloring the News” author William McGowan, KNBC president and general manager and NBC/Telemundo Los Angeles regional general manager Paula Madison, and The Oregonian executive editor Peter Bhatia, who is also president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors.
Reporter Blair resigned from the Times after having been found to have fabricated stories. That he is African American led to a criticism of the newspaper’s diversity efforts by conservatives who accused the Times of lowering its standards, and from others who accused the paper of giving diversity a bad name by indulging him.
In other developments:
— “Word from inside The Times yesterday was that former national editor Dean Baquet, who now has the No. 2 job of managing editor at The Los Angeles Times, turned down Sulzberger’s offer to return to New York,” reported Paul D. Colford in the New York Daily News. Colford did not specify which job — executive editor or managing editor — Sulzberger was supposed to have discussed with Baquet. Although some consider Baquet African American, he resisted that categorization while at the New York Times. An ad taken out by the L.A. Times in last year’s NABJ convention program, “Shared Diversity Goals,” had the photos of nine L.A. Times staffers, all black, asking the question, “Can you see yourself at the Times?” Baquet was not among those in the ad.
— Boston magazine reports that, “While New York Times top editors Howell Raines and Gerald Boyd were being drummed out of the newsroom by the Jayson Blair controversy, the Boston Globe found a less painful way to purge itself of the infamous fabulist.
“After the Globe discovered falsifications and instances of plagiarism in the 85 stories Blair wrote for the paper before he went to the Times, someone removed every one from its electronic archive. All but 11 he had coauthored were yanked from Lexis-Nexis, a news database. When we asked about this, Globe editor Martin Baron said he wasn’t aware of the deletions, which a spokesman later blamed on a well-intentioned librarian. Baron promised that the paper would put Blair’s Globe stories back online, preserving the work that launched the career of journalism’s most notorious practitioner.”
BET Says It’s Not Just for 18-24 Crowd
BET Founder and CEO Robert Johnson has told advertising executives that recent promotional statements claiming that BET caters only to viewers ages 18-24 are not true, according to a BET news release.
“Johnson specifically refuted claims that BET fails to serve adult African-American viewers made by TV One executives during last week?s NCTA (National Cable & Telecommunications Association) Cable Show in Chicago. Johnson said it was a poor means of trying to make a case for the new channel, which will launch in 2004 from a joint venture between cable giant Comcast and radio station conglomerate Radio One,” the news release said.
“Johnson noted some important BET facts from Nielsen Media Research that further contradict claims that the network is only youth focused, including:
“– BET is the Number 1 cable network among African-American adults ages 18-34 and 18-49 in total day viewing; and
“– BET is the Number 1 cable network among African-American adults ages 18-34 and 18-49 in viewership during primetime.”
Johnathan Rodgers, CEO of TV One, has said on more than one occasion that “we are a complement, not a competitor” to BET because the two are going after different demographic groups. He could not be reached for comment.
Smiley’s Show Fast-Growing, But Some Squirm
Tavis Smiley’s show on National Public Radio “is attracting both the fastest growing audiences in public radio . . . and some of the most intense and visceral reactions — both pro and con,” writes NPR’s ombudsman, Jeffrey A. Dvorkin.
“The perspective is overwhelmingly African American.
“And it is precisely that perspective that has some listeners expressing their astonishment that this would be a program on NPR. . . . The program is something new — even radically new — for many public radio listeners. The program’s producers shouldn’t underestimate that there is a ‘squirm factor’ for many listeners.”
Dvorkin concluded that “NPR News needs to find ways in which those interviews done by Tavis Smiley can be part of NPR newscasts, or excerpted on the main newsmagazines, such as Morning Edition and All Things Considered.”
Smiley landed at NPR after a falling out with BET founder Robert Johnson while at BET.
Alcohol Advertising Targets Young Blacks
Young blacks see far more than their share of the $333 million worth of advertising placed in major magazines by the nation’s alcohol industry, says a report by Georgetown University’s Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth. It said:
— Alcohol advertising was placed on all of the television programs most popular with African American youth.
— Alcohol advertising in magazines overexposed African American youth compared to other youth. Fifteen alcohol brands accounted for more than half of the magazine advertising reaching underage African-American youth.
? Alcohol advertising on radio overexposed African-American youth compared to others, and was concentrated in two formats and five markets.
Spike Lee Wins Another Round Against Viacom
Director Spike Lee scored a major victory in his fight against Viacom when a New York appellate court upheld an injunction barring the company from renaming TNN “Spike TV,” TV Week reported.
The court also ruled that Viacom could appeal in September. In a prepared statement, a Viacom spokesman said the case ‘is far from over’ and said the case had ‘far-reaching First Amendment implications that go well beyond the significant financial damage our network has incurred,'” TV Week said.
New York Supreme Court Justice Walter Tolub noted the allegation in Lee’s complaint that TNN President Albie Hecht admitted in media interviews that the affinity with Lee was one reason the defendants chose the name, the story continued.
Ventura County Editor Admits Slighting Latinos
“Sí Se Puede,” the project between the E.W. Scripps Co. and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists to improve coverage and hiring of Latinos, came to its second newspaper, California’s Ventura County Star.
Editor Tim Gallagher wrote Sunday that “what we heard from the Latino community is that we do not include them in our coverage as often as we should” and said that “we will be establishing a task force of citizens and Star co-workers to guide us.”
“We have determined that our coverage of Latinos (including them in articles on general interest or covering Latino issues specifically) falls below the one-third they represent,” Gallagher added. He had met in a “town meeting” with Latinos the previous Tuesday.
“Large numbers of our Latino readers said they read only about Latinos when they are arrested. The Star can demonstrate that is not true, but it is a perception we should address.
“. . . We cannot serve the community of Ventura County well if our coverage minimizes the lives of nearly a third of our neighbors.”
Miami DJs Play Prank on Fidel Castro
“Two Miami disc jockeys, who made international headlines with their prank phone call to Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez in January, say they played a similar practical joke on Cuba’s Fidel Castro on Tuesday,” the Miami Herald reports.
“In January, they pretended to be Castro to get Chávez on the line. This time, they pretended to be Chávez, Castro’s close friend and protégé.
“The man said to be Castro spewed a few choice expletives when he learned the callers were really Enrique Santos and Joe Ferrero, hosts of El Vacilón de la Mañana on WXDJ-FM (95.7) El Zol, a Spanish-language salsa station.
”’It was not the response we were expecting,’ said Santos, who was besieged by Latin American and European media on Wednesday. `It was the first time the mass media has heard him express himself like that,”’ reported the Herald.
RTNDA Names 6 Winners of RTNDA/Unity Awards
The Radio-Television News Directors Association has announced the winners of the fourth annual RTNDA/Unity Awards, honoring six news organizations “for their ongoing commitment to covering the cultural diversity of the communities they serve.”
The winners, who will receive their awards at the RTNDA Awards Dinner on Oct. 13 in New York:
Television
— ABC News 20/20 Downtown, for “Linguistic Profiling” (network)
— KPIX-TV, San Francisco, for “Muslims in America” (large market)
— KTBS-TV, Shreveport, La., for a compilation of work (small market)
Radio
— Latino USA, Austin, Texas, for a compilation of work (network)
— WNYC Radio Rookies, in New York, for “Flushing and St. George” (large market)
— KUSD-FM/South Dakota Public Radio, for “Native Perspectives: Stories From Indian Country” (small market)
The RTNDA/Unity Award was developed by RTNDA and Unity: Journalists of Color.
Features Editors Award 7 “Diversity Fellowships”
The American Association of Sunday and Features Editors has chosen seven winners of diversity fellowships, enabling them to attend the group’s annual convention, held this year in St. Petersburg, Fla., Sept. 17-20.
The fellowships are awarded to editors, copy editors and writers of color in the United States and Canada who work in features departments, or who are interested in pursuing careers in features. Fellowships cover roundtrip transportation, hotel accommodations and most meals. The fellowship program was launched to promote diversity in newsroom staffs and make them more representative of the multicultural communities journalists cover today.
The winners are: James H. Burnett III, features general assignment reporter at the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel; Jewel Bush, a staff writer at The Courier in Houma, La.; Steve Echeverria Jr., who writes a local entertainment column at The Record in Stockton, Calif.; Andrew Guy Jr., feature writer at the Houston Chronicle; Dorothy Parvaz, a reporter with the Seattle Post-Intelligencer; Marc Ramirez, a staff reporter at The Seattle Times; and Doris Truong, a copy editor at The Dallas Morning News.
Text of Sam Rubin’s On-Air Apology
“Hey, yesterday right here about this time something happened on the air during this report for which I am both responsible and for which I am sorry.
“We told you yesterday what we termed, on the air, an unconfirmed report in several weeks that the woman who runs Channel 4 would no longer have that job and I named the man who I was told would be her replacement. Now I told you that story ’cause the source who provided it has been very accurate in the past. Additionally, we did not check with NBC. In the past, NBC representatives have denied stories to us that we know and that have proven to be true, such is not the case here. The man I named to be the replacement was indeed at the NBC lot in Burbank but he was not there to talk about a new job ’cause there’s no new job for him at KNBC.
“Paula Madison, who has a very long and distinguished career at NBC, continues in her general manager role at Channel 4. And we told you, well we have been told, I should say by NBC, that there is quote, ‘not one scintilla of truth to any report or rumor that she’ll be leaving her position.’
“So I am doubly sorry to Ms. Madison and as importantly to you ’cause we want these reports to be informative and entertaining and most importantly we want them and you expect them to be right and yesterday that wasn’t the case.”