Bush’s Africa Visit, Liberia Provide Columnist Fodder
Columnists of color are finding rich material in President Bush’s visit to Africa and in the Liberian crisis:
- Loretta Green, San Jose Mercury-News:
“In 1980, 13 members of the Liberian government were tied to stakes and shot to death on a beach in the capital, Monrovia. Reporting and visual images of the monstrous event were swift because members of the press had been invited to watch.
“The brutality of that military coup in which the ousted government was so publicly disposed of not only shocked the world, but had an excruciating effect on Sunnyvale [Calif.] resident Larry Hooper and his family.”
- Derrick Z. Jackson, Boston Globe:
“Calling slavery evil is as old as the Founding Fathers. It would be original to tell America that the white privileges bestowed by the tragic mistake of the Founding Fathers are over. The reason one of the greatest crimes in history has not yet resulted in a great apology is because the reward for the crime remains too great.”
- Norman Lockman, Wilmington (Del.) News-Journal:
“So why Liberia and why now? . . . The Bush administration needs two things: One is a quick humanitarian rescue of a small helpless nation, this time going along with international pressure, to prove it can be a multilateral good guy too.
“The other is scoring some points with other western African nations, principally Nigeria, which by 2010 are likely to become the United States’ major suppliers of crude oil, reducing the petroleum dominance of the Middle East.”
- Norman Lockman, Wilmington (Del.) News-Journal:
“Social conservatives have been telling me this country has no historic responsibility for the cultural devastation of slavery. Bush laid it out in religious terms that should be familiar to them. He called slavery a national sin that requires national propitiation, and he blamed ‘Christian men and women [who] became blind to the clearest commands of their faith and added hypocrisy to injustice.’
“Bush has killed the ‘who me?’ defense. Now, please bury that rotting corpse.”
- Guillermo I. Martinez, South Florida Sun-Sentinel:
“Where the president has lost a major opportunity is in our continent, in Latin America and with the growing Hispanic community in this country. . . . Many Hispanic voters this side of the border need to see the president return to his promises.”
- John Moru, Weekly Trust, Kaunda, Uganda:
“We must as a people ask the American president to lean on multinational oil corporations in Nigeria to clean up their acts. . . .
“We must make it clear that Africans understand why Mr. Bush is visiting. He is interested in building support for the international war against terrorism. He aims to push forward the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), and he would talk about the advantages of this initiative. However, would he tell Africans that the benefits of this market access would be eroded by the US farm subsidies, notably payments to US cotton farmers, which are larger than many African economies and three times the level of US bilateral aid to Africa?”
- Clarence Page, Chicago Tribune:
“As Bush’s safari shows, he learns quickly. His Africa tour hits the right themes. Now let’s see how well he follows through.”
- Les Payne, Newsday:
“The very language of Bush’s remarks reflect the contortions of a sinner in denial. He discussed the unpardonable sins of slavery as if they were not those of the country over which he presides. Who indeed were these ‘captors’ with the ‘corrupted’ spirit? What about the descendants of the ‘tyrants and masters,’ who indeed added ‘hypocrisy to injustice’? And how exactly can a young nation that imprisons millions of innocent men, women and children really be ‘a republic founded on equality’?
“Until the republic addresses reparations for the victims of slavery, Bush’s Goree Island talk is just old-time, white-Christian, fundamental-Texas hooey.”
- Robert Steinback, Miami Herald:
“One doesn’t hear any fiery presidential speeches about the need to deliver freedom to the Liberian people. No declarations about the need to rid the world of an evil man who kills his own people and commits unspeakable atrocities. No rhetoric about how establishing a working democracy in Liberia could help spread democracy throughout West Africa.
“Why not? Liberia isn’t sitting on an ocean of oil and it isn’t in a geopolitically strategic location — the real reasons Bush invaded Iraq.”
- Mark Trahant, Seattle Post-Intelligencer:
“The president recently promised $15 billion to fight AIDS — along with other significant U.S. efforts.
“But at the same time we support an international finance system and trade policy that helps keep Africa in poverty. We don’t do enough to reduce the overwhelming debt burden on many developing countries. Much of the region’s debt was run up by despots no longer in power, but the financing cost is now some $40 million in repayments due every day.
” . . . It would even help if we redirected our investments in Africa. Most of it now goes into oil, mining or some other natural resource project. What if our investments focused on developing a manufacturing base or, even better, information technology?”
George E. Curry reports from Nigeria for black press
Miami Herald’s Top Managers Heavy on the Anglo
“The Herald on Monday announced a senior management team of veteran and prize-winning journalists to lead the newsroom and expand news-gathering operations toward a multimedia future,” the Miami Herald reported, but a look at who they are shows that Anglos will predominate in this culturally fractious market.
“Four managing editors will head The Herald’s news operations, reporting to Executive Editor Tom Fiedler,” the story continued.
“The four — Judy Miller, Liza Gross, Rick Hirsch and Dave Wilson — were chosen for their strong journalism talent as well as their leadership skills, Fiedler said.”
Of the four, only Gross appears to have a Latin background. A Spanish-language at-large board member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, she’ll be managing editor/presentations and operations, and comes from El Nuevo Día, Puerto Rico’s largest daily newspaper. An Argentine native, she has been executive managing editor at El Nuevo Dia since 2001.
The Herald’s photos accompanying the story included special projects editor Manny Garcia, 43, who replaces Miller as assistant managing editor/Metro.
Elsewhere in the building in news-related positions, Joe Oglesby, who is African American, remains editorial page editor, and Alberto Ibarguen, who is half-Puerto Rican, half-Cuban, remains publisher.
Fiedler did not return a phone call seeking comment. The Herald’s parent company, Knight Ridder, distributes buttons that say, “Diversity. No Excuses.”
Race Affecting Gay-Murder Coverage?
“A 15-year-old girl returning with four friends from a party in Manhattan was fatally stabbed at a bus stop here early Sunday morning during a scuffle with two men whose advances the girls rebuffed, the police said today,” began a story by Ronald Smothers in the New York Times of May 13.
“The Newark police said they were treating the incident as a bias crime. They said witnesses reported that one of the girls had told the men they were not interested in them because the girls were gay.”
The victim’s name was Sakia Gunn, and vigils, rallies and marches in her name have taken place elsewhere in the country since the May 11 incident.
On June 22, Hugo Kugiya wrote in Newsday: “Relative to other murder victims in Newark — the city of 237,000 has one of the highest murder rates among the nation’s large cities — Gunn has received a lot of attention. Relative to other victims of bias crime, such as Matthew Shepard, she has not gotten very much. Gunn is African-American. And to other gay African-Americans, her death proves that even in the gay world, race matters.”
There are other suspected victims of bias whom we hear little about; they are chronicled on the Web site of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. But Prof. Kim E. Pearson of the English Department at the College of New Jersey in Ewing, N.J., agrees with the view in the Newsday story. She is chronicling coverage of the case on her blog.
N.Y. Post, Variety Get to the Race Card
The New York Post and Daily Variety are the first to mention the race of New York Times reporter Lynette Holloway, whose July 7 story on a loan dispute between Prudential Securities and one of the nation’s largest independent record companies became the subject Monday of 2,175-word “corrective article.” And, of course, the two publications mentioned her in connection with the disgraced Jayson Blair.
Wrote the New York Post: “Early indications point to sloppy reporting and factual errors in Holloway’s stories.
“Blair’s offenses, which resulted in his forced resignation in May, were the product of fabrication, plagairism and dateline fraud along with garden variety factual errors.
“The scandal and how it was handled eventually toppled Executive Editor Howell Raines and his Managing Editor Gerald Boyd.
“The Blair scandal led to criticism that Raines had protected Blair despite a poor record because Blair is African-American and Raines was trying to improve diversity in the newsroom.
“Holloway’s problems could lead to similar questions, since she is also African-American.
“Like Blair, she had caught the attention of Raines, who put her in the media section of the paper, insiders said.
“‘She was a Howell appointment,’ said one insider. ‘He wanted to increase coverage of hip-hop music.'”
Said Daily Variety:
“As for Holloway suffering the fate of the now unemployed and book-shopping Blair, as of Monday she was still on the Times’ payroll. The two African-American journos were pals at the Times; unlike the whippersnapper Blair, Holloway has been there since 1992.
“‘We’re looking in to it basically,'” a Times editor said. ‘We’re just getting our hands around it, asking how did it happen?’
“Sounds familiar.”
Alison Stewart on TV in Addition to Radio
No sooner had we announced Monday that Alison Stewart, formerly a news correspondent for ABC’s “World News Now,” CBS News’ “Sunday Morning,” and MTV, had been named an on-air afternoon host at New York’s WNEW-FM, than MSNBC announced that Stewart was joining the cable network as a political commentator.
“Alison will add wit and spark to MSNBC’s discussions of the hot topics of the day, and offers a unique perspective,” said Mark Effron, vice president, live news programming, in a news release.
Stewart previously served as an anchor for “World News Now” from 2000 to 2002, and was a contributor for ABC’s “20/20 Downtown” and “Good Morning America.” Before ABC News, she was a correspondent for CBS News’ “Sunday Morning,” also reporting for “48 Hours,” “Weekend News” and “Public Eye with Bryant Gumbel.” Stewart began her career with MTV News, reporting and producing for MTV’s “Choose or Lose” election coverage in 1992 and 1996. She won a Peabody Award for her work producing MTV’s first election coverage, according to the news release.
A Plea for a Blair Book by a Black Journalist
“The publishing world has a habit of giving fat contracts to white male writers for books about poor blacks, while African American newspaper journalists covering inner-city blacks get no attention. Recent reports that two white male journalists have made deals to write nonfiction books about the Jayson Blair scandal at the New York Times got me to thinking about those questions,” writes Amy Alexander on africana.com, in a piece that received top billing yesterday in Jim Romenesko’s Media News.
Seth Mnookin and William McGowan have book contracts to write about the Times in the wake of the Jayson Blair affiair, and it’s true, Alexander writes, that the two “were out front on the talk show circuit during the month-long Times imbroglio — another comment on the insularity of the media world, in that a race relations scandal draws coverage featuring predominantly white commentators — their insta-book contracts point out an unfortunate kind of cultural myopia on the part of the publishing industry.”
As reported July 2, an agent for George E. Curry, editor-in-chief of the National Newspaper Publishers Association news service, has been gauging interest in an anthology by black journalists.
Michael Savage: Now It’s About Jews
The left-leaning media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) adds the latest charge against talk-show host Michael Savage its July/August issue: that Savage “is virtually the only national talk jock targeting progressive Jews with ugly ethnic slurs and stereotypes,” as David Hinkley puts it in the New York Daily News.
“In an article by Steve Rendall, FAIR says that last Dec.6, Savage made this remark about Jerry Springer: ‘He invites the lowest white trash he can dig his hands on . . . and he makes a mockery of them and makes a living on it with his hooked nose. . . .”
Meanwhile, St. Petersburg Times media writer Eric Deggans delights in Savage’s firing last week by MSNBC:
“It’s not often a critic gets a chance to say, with real satisfaction, ‘I told you so,'” Deggans writes. “It’s even rarer when a column may have actually helped right a wrong. But I got to savor a little of both experiences upon learning that MSNBC had finally decided to can its resident bigot and homophobe, Michael Savage.”
Deggans draws three lessons from the Savage fiasco: (1) “Not-so-thinly veiled bigotry rarely works, fortunately.” (2) “Conservatives can be their own worst enemies,” and (3) “It’s television, stupid. There’s a reason that most radio stars work in radio.”
Joining in the fun, San Francisco Chronicle columnist Annie Nakao wrote “An open letter to Michael Savage, victim.”
However, Savage isn’t through. As Media Week reports:
“Michael Savage may be too controversial for MSNBC, but he’s just what the talk radio doctor ordered for KNEW-AM in San Francisco, which premiered Savage in afternoon drive on July 7, the same day the host was fired from his weekly MSNBC show for making anti-gay remarks.”
Clear Channel Must Sell Some Radio Stations
“Radio giant Clear Channel Communications Inc. will have to bid adios to much of its clout along California’s southern border,” the Los Angeles Times reports.
“Under provisions in the fine print of last week’s federal order establishing new media ownership rules, the San Antonio-based company must reduce the number of stations it owns or controls in the San Diego listening area during the next two years, either by cutting ties to some of its five affiliated Mexican stations or selling some of its seven U.S.-licensed stations,” the Times said.
Meanwhile, the fight over ownership rules on television stations continues.
“A bipartisan group of U.S. Senators on Tuesday announced a measure to nullify the Federal Communications Commission’s sweeping deregulation of media ownership laws, but forecast a tough road toward passage,” reports Media Week.
“The lawmakers, including Senators Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.) said they could obtain a vote in the Senate. But even if successful there, they said their resolution could face difficulties in the House, where a Republican leadership supports the FCC’s June 2 decision to relax limits on ownership of daily newspapers and TV and radio stations.”
D.C. Bids to Become Headquarters of TV One
“D.C. officials are cobbling together an incentive package to lure the corporate offices of a high-profile new TV network, offering hope and possibly millions of dollars to the beleaguered local production industry,” reports the Washington Business Journal.
“City officials are working to find 30,000 to 50,000 square feet of office and studio space for TV One, says Michael Hodge, D.C.’s director of revenue bonds and enterprise zones. Like BET, TV One — created by Comcast and Lanham [,Md.]-based Radio One — will target African-American and urban viewers.
“TV One CEO Johnathan Rodgers wants to find a permanent location soon, and he anticipates moving about 65 employees to that location in the second quarter of next year.”
Scholarships From Bradley, Simpson, Foreman
The Radio and Television News Directors Foundation has named 14 journalism students as winners of tuition scholarships.
Jonathan Michael Martin from Auburn University is to receive the Ed Bradley $10,000 Scholarship. Bradley, a “60 Minutes” correspondent at CBS News, endowed this annual award in 1993 to support introducing students of color to the communications career field.
Mario Roldan from the University of Texas at Austin is the recipient of the George Foreman Tribute to Lyndon B. Johnson $6,000 Scholarship, established by the former heavyweight champion.
Deanna Garcia from New Mexico State University is to receive the Carole Simpson $2,000 Scholarship. Simpson, an ABC News senior correspondent, was the first among her peers to develop an award with RTNDF to encourage students of color to overcome obstacles in their career paths, RTNDF says.
Ashleigh Leake from Salt Lake Community College won the Mike Reynolds $1,000 Scholarship, established by friends and associates of the late managing editor at KCCI-TV in Des Moines. It goes to a student with strong writing ability, excellent grades and dedication to the news business.