Will Kobe Bryant Trial become a Media Circus?
With NBA superstar Kobe Bryant’s confession of adultery but denial of sexual assault, covered live Friday night, some might have cause to wonder how wide the floodgates have opened in this made-for-cable-and-tabloid story.
“Here we go again,” wrote Phil Sheridan in the Philadelphia Inquirer .
“O.J. Simpson. Mike Tyson. Mark Chmura. Ray Lewis. Rae Carruth.
“And now Kobe Bryant.”
In the Los Angeles Times, Sam Farmer wrote that “All over the country, and especially in Southern California, people expressed their gut reactions on TV, radio call-in shows and online to the news Friday that the Laker guard had been charged with sexual assault in Colorado.”
ESPN won plaudits from Mike Penner in the L.A. Times, who wrote that “If sports coverage is the toy department of journalism, ESPN is FAO Schwarz.”
“With every element of this developing story, ESPN responded promptly and even-handedly.”
The tabloid press were in their element, with New York’s Daily News and Post both bannering weekend headlines about Bryant’s “troubled marriage,” but the Kobe story was front-page news even in the broadsheets.
Meanwhile, the Vail Daily in Vail, Colo., seemed to be setting a different standard, writing on July 7:
“We at the Daily decided early that the fairest, most responsible tact for us would be to see whether a warrant were issued, an arrest made or charges otherwise filed before running a story on the allegations against Bryant. Sure, it was very tempting to run a story Thursday or Friday that an investigation was under way, based on anonymous sources. But would that be fair to anyone concerned if the accusations turned out to be unfounded?”
Last week, the paper reported it had quietly gone to court asking “for dispatch records to the address of the woman accusing Los Angeles Laker guard Kobe Bryant of sexual assault.”
Michael Powell Rumored to Be Leaving FCC
Time magazine and the New York Post are quoting “sources” as saying that Michael Powell plans to step down as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, but also are reporting his denial that he is stepping down.
In discussing a backlash to a loosening of media-ownership rules that Powell pushed through the commission, Time says:
“Now it appears that the chief architect of those rules, FCC chairman Michael Powell, may not stick around for the fight. According to industry sources, the son of Secretary of State Colin Powell has told confidants he’d like to leave by fall, and three of his four top staff members are putting out job feelers. (Powell has denied he’s leaving soon.) His most likely replacement, sources say, is either Rebecca Klein, who is head of the Texas public-utility commission and was on the staff of Governor George W. Bush, or FCC commissioner Kevin Martin, who helped the Bush team count votes in Florida in 2000.”
“Should he ultimately decide to step down as FCC chairman, the possibility of nabbing another job in the Bush administration now seems like a long shot, observers say,” adds the New York Post.
Paul Mason to Produce New “Primetime” at ABC
Longtime ABC News producer Paul Mason will be executive producer of a series of new Monday editions of “Primetime,” ABC News President David Westin announced to employees today.
The program, which debuts Sept. 15, is to originate from a different city each week, including Miami, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Nashville, New Orleans and New York. “In addition to the on-location installments, Paul will also executive produce other primetime projects, including Elizabeth Vargas specials and primetime specials on the presidential election next year,” Westin’s announcement said.
Mason, who is African American, has been at ABC News for 22 years, currently as executive producer of “Weekend World News Tonight,” “where he has proven his ability to run a broadcast and to reach out for stories that we otherwise might not learn about,” Westin said.
As reported July 2, Mason was one of three finalists for the executive producer’s job at “World News Tonight,” a position that went to Jon Banner.
Celebrating “Crutch Quota,” Late-Blooming Hispanic
To commemorate what some, but not everyone at the Miami Herald says is its 100th anniversary, reporter Gene Miller put together some anecdotes for a piece in the paper’s special section yesterday, and a couple were about diversity.
“Like newsrooms everywhere in America, the zeal for diversity altered the composition of The Herald to reflect more accurately the community,” goes the first one. “Odd things happened along the way. Terry Jackson, rejected repeatedly for employment here while working in California, contacted Glenn Garvin, an old friend keenly aware of newsroom nuances. ‘Diversity in the workforce extends beyond females, Hispanics, Afro-Americans, gays and lesbians,’ Garvin pointed out.
“Jackson, a white heterosexual male, wondered what his contribution to diversity might be? Then it hit him. ‘I had polio as an infant, and I have a back that twists like 40 miles of mountain road, and I limp along with a cane.’ Alas, the ‘crutch quota,’ he deadpanned. He got the job.”
The second:
“Photographer Albert Coya became The Herald’s first post-Castro Cuban staffer in 1962 and flourished over the years as Miami turned Hispanic. Twenty-five or so years later, reporter Edna Buchanan noted the change. ‘`Gee, I remember when Albert Coya spoke English.'”
Knight Ridder Responds to Item on Miami Herald
On July 16, we ran an item headlined, “Miami Herald’s Top Managers Heavy on the Anglo,” noting that Editor Tom Fiedler had named four managing editors to head The Herald’s news operations, and all but one appeared to be Anglo.
Larry Olmstead, vice president of staff development and diversity for the Herald’s parent company, Knight Ridder, responds with a letter citing other Knight Ridder appointments of people of color, saying, “these are high-quality personnel moves, and there will be many more.” Text of his letter at the end of today’s posting.
Reader Rep Protests Hartford Cartoon
A cartoon by the Hartford Courant’s editorial cartoonist, Bob Englehart, “did more than insult a community,” wrote reader representative Karen Hunter. “It insulted the newspaper and some of the people who work here with its depiction of a black couple telling a black police officer that they would be ‘acting white’ if they gave up the names of known criminals in their neighborhoods.
“Beyond the complete disregard for the reality of fear of retaliation was the outrageous implication that black people in Hartford don’t value the safety of their children and their neighborhoods as much as white people do.”
Hunter, who is herself African American, wrote that, “To tell you the truth, I heard more disgust over the cartoon in the newsroom than from readers.”
Privacy Act Hindered Coverage of Porch Collapse
While journalism organizations protested patient-privacy regulations that took effect April 14 under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, a few privacy advocates in the news media attempted to defend them.
But now, reports Mark Fitzgerald in Editor & Publisher, “In this real-life test in Chicago, the rule proved every bit the hindrance to coverage that journalists had feared.”
In the June 29 porch collapse at a Chicago apartment building in which 13 young adults were killed, the rule “undermined their ability to cover accidents by forbidding the disclosure of patient information that hospitals had released routinely,” Fitzgerald wrote.
“Though 57 partygoers were injured in the porch collapse, Chicago readers learned the names of almost none of them because reporters were unable to identify anyone treated at area hospitals, unless those victims sought out the papers.”
News Media Guild Approves AP Contract
Members of the News Media Guild have overwhelmingly approved a new three-year contract with The Associated Press that calls for wage increases and other benefits, including the addition of domestic partner coverage in the health insurance plan, the Associated Press reports.
As reported June 4, the Guild “got the company to engage us more often on diversity issues,” according to Tony Winton, president of the Newspaper Guild-Communications Workers of America Local 31222, the News Media Guild.
Chriesman Goes From TV News Director to Publisher
Willie Chriesman, news director at WVTM in his home town of Birmingham, Ala., from 1997 to 2001, began publishing a weekly newspaper in Alabama on July 4, using his own money, reports the Birmingham Business Journal.
The paper, The SouthTown Express, is “aimed at the vast over-the-mountain suburbs between Red and Double Oak mountains,” the Business Journal says. “To spread the word, 10,000 to 15,000 free copies of The SouthTown Express are randomly being distributed each week to residences and businesses in over-the-mountain communities.” The staff is “fewer than 10 people.”
Chriesman, who now runs a media consultant company, was one of the few African American news directors. He has worked at NBC, Hearst-Argyle, Post-Newsweek, ABC, CNN and Fox, according to his Web site.
Ex-Editor Elliott Unsentimental About Con Man
David Hampton, who conned members of New York’s white elite 20 years ago as a teenager by posing as Sidney Poitier’s son, inspiring the play and movie “Six Degrees of Separation,” died at age 39 after having been in an AIDS residence.
Instead of an obituary, the New York Times alerted readers to his death in an “About New York” column by Dan Barry, “He Conned the Society Crowd but Died Alone,” which noted that the play “includes the singular moment when Osborn Elliott, a former editor of Newsweek, and his wife, Inger, evicted Mr. Hampton after finding their charming houseguest in bed with a man he had smuggled into their apartment.” Hampton, who claimed to have been mugged and to need a place to stay, accepted spending money from his hosts and took property from their homes, the Times reported at the time.
Elliott also was dean of the Columbia School of Journalism in the 1980s and today is chairman of the Citizens Committee for New York City, a nonprofit private charity.
One woman in Barry’s column said Hampton “gave enjoyment, even when he did bad.” But Elliott wouldn’t go that route.
“I have nothing to say about him,” Elliott told Journal-isms. “I don’t think there are any great moral lessons to be learned. I would have done the same thing today.”
Dreyfuss: People Don’t Want Race Subtleties
Writing on Africana.com, Amy Alexander asked why book contracts to write about disgraced reporter Jayson Blair aren’t being extended to black journalists.
In a reply on the same Web site, veteran journalist Joel Dreyfuss, one of the founders of the National Association of Black Journalists, offers one answer.
“A lot of us are convinced that poor management had a lot more to do with Blair’s meteoric rise and fall than his color. This doubt is one major deterrent to pitching a book about Blair and The New York Times. Another cause for hesitation is the simplistic level of the debate. Entering the Blair discussion is a lot more like agreeing to be on The Jerry Springer show than being interviewed on All Things Considered. At one end of the row of chairs are demagogues like William McGowan, who found in Blair the smoking gun that most minority journalists are incompetent or dishonest; at the other end are well-meaning liberals like Seth Mnookin, who see a story built on white guilt and a secret black support network (Gerald Boyd is black so he must have protected Blair).
“. . . In this age where we have shouting matches about affirmative action, who wants to hear about the subtleties of race in 2003; about how there are still good people and bad; about institutions where equal opportunity works better than in others, about racism more often expressed with condescension than an epithet?
“At its core, the Jayson Blair story is about how the relationship between a powerful institution and the people who work for it, about hubris and disdain, about seduction, corruption and the public’s growing unease with American media organizations that continue to claim to have no ideology. The racial aspect can deepen issues like the ways news organizations choose, judge and use people. But this black journalist is not interested in throwing chairs around on a stage. So my book proposal stayed unwritten.”
Knight Ridder Defends Record on Diversity
A letter to Journal-isms:
Thanks for your recent item mentioning The Miami Herald and Knight Ridder’s recruiting efforts [“Miami Herald’s Top Managers Heavy on the Anglo,” July 16].
Your readers should know that Publisher Alberto Ibarguen has assembled one of the newspaper industry’s most diverse — and effective — leadership teams. His general manager, chief financial officer, general counsel and VP/circulation are all people of color. There are black and Hispanic managers throughout the ranks of The Herald’s business-side divisions. (His retail and classified advertising directors, for example.) Not to mention the leadership and staff of our hugely successful Spanish-language daily newspaper, El Nuevo Herald.
In the newsroom, you mentioned editorial page editor Joe Oglesby and newly named assistant managing editor Manny Garcia. You didn’t mention that people of color occupy other key supervisory roles throughout the newsroom, including the other assistant managing editor slot; features editor; director of photography; director of design; city editor in hotly competitive Broward County; deputy sports editor and others. Also, the managing editor of the 40,000-circulation International edition of The Herald, Tony Espetia, is Hispanic.
Knight Ridder’s slogan, “Diversity – No Excuses,” doesn’t mean we think we have achieved perfect staff balance. It means we hold ourselves accountable for continuous improvement. The Herald will continue to seek outstanding diverse talent, just as throughout Knight Ridder we are aggressively bringing more diversity to top management.
Just yesterday, in a letter to employees, CEO Tony Ridder reported that women now are in the top editor roles at five of our eight largest papers (Detroit, Philadelphia, San Jose, Saint Paul, Charlotte), and that in calendar 2003 we have doubled the number of people of color in managing editor or executive editor jobs in KR, from five to 10.
We are thrilled that Liza Gross has joined The Herald, just as we are happy with the recent appointments of Chris Lopez as managing editor in Contra Costa, CA; Carolina Garcia as editor in Monterey, CA; Debra Adams Simmons as managing editor in Akron, OH; Tonnya Kennedy as managing editor in Columbia, SC; Bryan Monroe as assistant VP/news at Corporate; Mizell Stewart as executive editor in Tallahassee, FL, and others. These are high-quality personnel moves, and there will be many more.
Larry Olmstead
VP/Staff Development and Diversity, Knight Ridder