Tavis Smiley to Host Late-Night PBS Show
Tavis Smiley will host a late-night talk show for PBS originating from Los Angeles that will debut in January, KCET-TV Los Angeles announced today.
“It will be a hybrid of news, issues and entertainment, featuring interviews with newsmakers, politicians, celebrities and real people,” a news release says. “Our mission is to empower people,” explained Smiley in the release. “Our series will cover everything — politics, money, relationships, race, class, culture and more. If it’s being discussed — or better yet, if it’s not — we’ll be talking about it and we’ll be breaking news.”
Jacoba Atlas, PBS co-chief of programming, said, “Tavis’ reputation for diverse viewpoints, alongside the ever-popular and engaging Charlie Rose, will deliver a strong line-up coast-to-coast of provocative interviews and high profile guests on PBS late night.”
Smiley will continue with “The Tavis Smiley Show” on National Public Radio, which NPR reports is carried by 67 stations in nine of the top 10 markets, as of today. Neal Kendall will be executive producer of the PBS show and Mary Mazur will be its executive producer at KCET, the news release said.
Laurel Lambert, a spokeswoman for KCET, told Journal-isms that PBS won’t know how many affiliates will pick up the show until it is offered to them in November.
Sam Fulwood Creating Buzz With Blackout Column
Sam Fulwood is creating buzz today with his Cleveland Plain Dealer column explaining why the newspaper didn’t include a photo of Mayor Jane Campbell in its blackout coverage.
“To be honest, we and everyone else across the city had more pressing matters on our minds than remembering to celebrate your accomplishments: Fifty million people were without power. Hundreds of thousands of Northeast Ohioans were without water. Traffic was a dangerous mess at nearly every intersection. Uninformed, and lacking immediate communication, a lot of us worried about terrorism. We were in the dark. Literally and figuratively.
“And your press secretary calls to demand face time for you?”
The metro columnist said he was making up for the oversight by headlining his own column, “Mayor Takes Complete Control.”
Jim Romenesko led his column on the Poynter Institute site with an item about Fulwood’s piece for a while today; a veteran black journalist messaged friends that “Fulwood became a star with this column.”
Helen Zia Wins AAJA’s First $5,000 Ahn Prize
“Award-winning journalist, author and longtime activist Helen Zia was presented the first Suzanne Ahn Award for Civil Rights and Social Justice Friday night by the Asian American Journalists Association,” reports AAJA Link, the student newspaper that covered the just-concluded AAJA convention in San Diego.
“At last year’s AAJA national convention in Dallas, Ahn contributed $100,000 — the largest individual donation ever in the organization’s 21-year history. The purpose of the gift was to promote the fight for justice and fairness, and to motivate journalists to step up to the challenge through the award.
“Zia was awarded a $5,000 prize for the impact of her 2001 book, ‘Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People.’ The book documents Asian American struggles from the 17th century to the 20th century. In addition, it highlights progress toward social justice for Asian Americans and recognizes the diversity of the population.”
Writer: Media Missed Significance of Rice Speech
“For such a blockbuster announcement, it received precious little media attention. I picked it up on only one weekend newscast,” writes Joel Belz in World magazine, which “helps readers think biblically about the world around them.”
“Admittedly, it was only about the reshaping of the whole Middle East. In an address to the National Association of Black Journalists, President Bush’s National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, sketched the outlines of an ambitious blueprint to do for the 22 nations of that region what the United States and NATO did for Europe after World War II.
“Integral to the concept is that it be seen not just as a mopping-up effort after a war?but rather as the restructuring of the roots of the culture itself. It’s with that in mind that some critics say the European analogy is all wet, and that the whole assignment is hopelessly out of reach.”
More on NABJ convention:
- Africana.com: Gerald Boyd was thoughtful and sincere; Condoleezza Rice is a liar who showed her cynicism.
- Gregory Clay, Knight Ridder Tribune: Variety of NBA issues debated during intense panel discussion
- Derrick Z. Jackson, Boston Globe: America’s worst side in Iraq
- Steve Penn, Kansas City Star: Rice keeps her plans to herself
Black Network CEO Says Freelancers Will Be Paid
Freelancers who complained about not being paid by MBC, the Major Broadcasting Cable Network, will be compensated in five to 10 days, CEO Willie Gary told Journal-isms today.
“These are tough times,” Gary said. “We’re in the process of taking care of that. Tough times don’t last; tough people do.”
He pledged that from now on, freelancers will be paid no later than five to 10 days after the date they were promised. Journal-isms reported Friday that according to the News Blues Web site, some freelancers were now demanding to be paid up front, or refusing to work for the network at all.
Gary said his was the first and only black-owned network to offer two hours of news segments daily and said MBC was available in 30 million homes in 3,000 cities in 48 of the 50 states. His four-year-old network keeps costs down, with total bills of less than $5 million, he said. “It’s a struggle, but there [are] tough times in America,” Gary said. An all-news spinoff network is to be launched next year.
Bursting a Stereotype About Watermelons . . .
“Finally, definitive answers (sort of) to those burning summertime questions: Who eats watermelon? And why?,” writes pollster Richard Morin in the Washington Post.
“Asians and Asian Americans top the list of watermelon lovers, according to the National Watermelon Promotion Board’s latest survey of more than 2,800 consumers, followed by Hispanics, non-Latin whites and, finally, blacks. (The sound you just heard was yet another racial stereotype going kersplat! )
“Overall, nearly eight in 10 Asians — 78 percent — had bought a watermelon in the previous year, compared with 76 percent of all Latinos, 67 percent of all non-Latin whites and 65 percent of African Americans, the survey showed. More than half of all Asians and Hispanics were ‘heavy purchasers’ who bought watermelon two or three times a month or more, compared with fewer than half of all blacks and non-Latin whites, the board reported.”
. . . But Being Aware of the Stereotype Nonetheless
Meanwhile, Keith M. Woods of the Poynter Institute writes about a six-week internship in Poynter’s summer fellowship program in which the fellowship team decided to include in a photo spread “11 wet watermelons, which might not have raised an eyebrow but for the nature of the event: It was Juneteenth, the annual remembrance of the day the last of America’s enslaved black people learned of their freedom.
“Since the earliest days of plantation slavery, the caricature of the dark-skinned black child, his too-red lips stretched to grotesque extremes as they opened to chomp down on watermelon, was a staple of racism’s diet,” Woods explains. “Over time, the watermelon became a symbol of the broader denigration of black people. It became part of the image perpetuated by a white culture bent upon bolstering the myth of superiority by depicting the inferior race as lazy, simple-minded pickaninnies interested only in such mindless pleasures as a slice of sweet watermelon.
“. . . We wrestled with the issue a little longer,” Woods continued. “It was the sort of conversation that should happen in all newsrooms whenever journalism reaches the ethical intersection where truth meets racial stereotype. There are rarely clear-cut answers to such dilemmas. But our discussion suggested some guidelines for getting there,” Woods continued, listed the guidelines as knowing the stereotype, listening to trusted voices and considering context.
In the end, the photo stayed. “It tells a story all its own and contributes to a larger tale. Yet, it’s more than that. It’s a simple picture: Eleven variegated watermelons on wet cement. And it’s proof that good conversations on matters of race can bear fruit.”
Ombudsman: In Writing About Gays, Think Tolerance
With gay issues increasingly in the news after such events as the Supreme Court’s ruling striking down sodomy laws and the Episcopal church’s approval of a gay bishop, public editor Michael Arrieta-Walden of the Portland Oregonian articulated guidelines for approaching these issues in his Sunday column.
“Most discussions among journalists at The Oregonian and nationwide involving gay issues have focused on how journalists can treat gay and lesbian subjects with respect by avoiding stereotypes and offensive language. They focus on questions of whether gays are adequately and accurately portrayed in the newspaper or whether pictures of gay couples should appear on the front page,” he wrote.
“That is valuable, but incomplete.
“Journalists first must declare that they start from the premise that every person has the same equal, inherent dignity as a human being.
“For journalists seeking the broadest perspectives, they also must discuss revisiting a value most embrace: that increasing tolerance is a virtue that trumps other values.”
Houston Anchor Trades 10 p.m. Show for Family
“Linda Lorelle will vacate her 10 p.m. News 2 Houston Nightbeat anchor seat on Monday, leaving Bill Balleza and Dominique Sachse to sail on without her,” the Houston Chronicle reported Friday.
“Lorelle will join Sachse for the 5 p.m. newscast and keep her 6 p.m. co-anchor spot with Balleza. She goes out with a minimarathon today, anchoring the 4, 5, 6 and 10 p.m. newscasts.
“It’s something that sooner or later every working mother in television has to think about. And I’ve been thinking about it for years. My daughter’s 9. Frankly I just got tired of driving back to work feeling guilty and in tears many nights,” the story quotes Lorelle as saying.
“Leading Academic Racists of the 20th Century”
In case you were wondering who they were, the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education has a piece on the leading academic racists of the 20th century.
And by way of introduction, author William H. Tucker defines his term.
“Unfortunately, the term ‘racist’ is invoked all too frequently and much too imprecisely, regularly applied to persons whose only offense is to have taken a position believed to be disadvantageous to what are perceived as blacks’ interests. Like curse words, which have become so common in contemporary society that we have lost the power to shock, calling someone a racist loses the power to generate moral outrage if it becomes the preferred descriptor for every opponent of affirmative action. Over-usage has also produced the strange situation in which both sides in some controversies ? such as the debate over Proposition 209 in California ? call their opponents racist.
“In his recent book, Racism: A Short History, historian George M. Fredrickson proposes the definition that I find most compelling. He maintains that there are two components to racism, both of which must be present for the term to be warranted: difference and power.
“First is the belief that there are, in some personal characteristics, innate differences between races that are permanent and unbridgeable, defining a racial essence beyond the visible, physical traits on which informal classifications are based. Although such a view essentializes differences, by itself it does not constitute racism. Rather it is what Kwame Anthony Appiah refers to as racialism, and although Appiah finds it a false doctrine, he concludes — correctly, I believe — that racialism is ‘a cognitive rather than a moral problem’; people can be wrong without being racist.
“It is only when these essentialist racial categories become the basis for social and political structures in which one group dominates or excludes another, argues Fredrickson, that racialism progresses to racism. The use of differences, perceived as hereditary and hence immutable, to justify racial hierarchy is thus the core of racism.”