L.A. Times Media Writer Decries “Identity Politics”
A Los Angeles Times media writer is decrying “identity politics” — a term generally used by conservatives to disparage those who group themselves by race, sex, ethnicity or sexual orientation, writing that, “There are few rules in life that admit no exceptions. Here is one: The pursuit of identity politics ends in an intellectual swamp that inevitably drains into a moral sewer.”
Tim Rutten’s comment was prompted by the California recall campaign and Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante’s membership, while a student at Fresno State in the 1970s, in the nation’s largest Latino student organization, Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan (MEChA).
“Critics have pounced on Bustamante’s participation in the group, calling MEChA a racist organization that promotes the return of the southwestern United States to Mexico. State Sen. Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks), a candidate in the recall election, equated the group with the Ku Klux Klan,” reporter Matea Gold explained in an Aug. 30 L.A. Times story.
“Ralph De Unamuno, a UCLA graduate student who served as an advisor to the university’s chapter, called those charges ‘extremely slanderous,’ ” Gold continued.
“‘It makes everyone feel pretty bad because, if you talk to most people in MEChA, most of their time is spent mentoring high school students or doing cultural events on campus,’ he said.”
In an editorial, the Dallas Morning News joined in the criticism Sept. 5, writing that:
“Mr. Bustamante wants to be able to play ethnic identity politics without having to pay the price for it with voters in his diverse, multicultural state. Californians shouldn’t have to worry that their next governor lacks the backbone to stand up to racialist radicals, or any other Latino group pushing for policies harmful to the state as a whole.
“Finally, it’s instructive to consider whether a white politician could get away with fondly recalling a youth spent in a racialist milieu. He couldn’t. And neither should Mr. Bustamante.”
FCC to Approve Merger of Spanish Broadcasters
The government will approve Univision Communication Inc.’s $2.8 billion purchase of Hispanic Broadcasting Corp., a Federal Communications Commission official said today, according to Media Week.
“The five members of the Republican-dominated commission were submitting their votes and an official announcement was expected by the end of the day, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The two Democrats on the commission have opposed the deal,” reported Media Week.
No Cameras at Kobe Bryant’s Pretrial Hearing
Cameras will be banned from the courtroom during the preliminary hearing in Kobe Bryant’s sexual assault case, a judge said today, according to the Associated Press.
“Court rules specifically prohibit cameras at pretrial hearings in criminal cases except for initial advisements and arraignments, Eagle County Judge Frederick Gannett said in a one-page decision.
“Court TV, The Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News had requested permission for cameras in the courtroom during the Oct. 9 hearing.”
CBS, Not Fox, Called Most “Positive” on War News
“Fox News, widely viewed as an unabashed cheerleader for the Bush administration, was not the most positive network during those weeks of combat” in Iraq, according to a study from the Center for Media and Public Affairs, reports Howard Kurtz in the Washington Post.
“CBS’s coverage of the so-called ‘Showdown With Saddam‘ was more positive than Fox’s, while ABC, by a substantial margin, was the most negative on the war.
“It’s not a matter of what the reporters say; it’s the sources they put on the air,” Robert Lichter, president of the Center, was quoted as saying.
“The group examined 1,131 stories on the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts and Fox’s ‘Special Report With Brit Hume‘ from March 19 to the fall of Tikrit on April 14. CNN and MSNBC were not included for budgetary reasons,” Kurtz wrote.
Susan Mango Curtis Heads News Design Group
Susan Mango Curtis, Medill School of Journalism assistant professor and former assistant managing editor for graphics and design at Ohio’s Akron Beacon Journal, was elected the next president of the Society for News Design over the weekend, according to the Web site of the National Association of Black Journalists.
Mango Curtis, who had been SND’s first vice president, is the first African American to lead the 25-year-old organization of visual journalists, formerly known as the Society for Newspaper Design. Her term begins Jan. 1, NABJ said.
Business Week’s Jim Ellis Wins Missouri Medal
Jim Ellis, chief of correspondents at Business Week magazine in New York, is one of the winners of the Missouri Honor Medal for Distinguished Service in Journalism, awarded by the Missouri School of Journalism “in recognition of his nearly three decades in journalism as a reporter and manager; his continuing leadership in business reporting; [and] his high standards of ethics and integrity.”
Ellis manages the magazine’s global network of correspondents in 22 domestic and international news bureaus. He started his career at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and joined Business Week in 1980.
“Ellis specialized in covering the airline, aerospace, defense, packaged-food and soft-drink industries” and earned his bachelor of journalism degree from the Missouri School of Journalism in 1976, according to the school.
Jayson Blair Story Goes Hollywood
“Jayson Blair is coming to a television screen near you,” writes Howard Kurtz in the Washington Post.
“Hollywood filmmaker John Maas is finalizing a deal with Showtime for a TV movie about the disgraced New York Times reporter. Maas, who has bought the rights to a Newsweek profile by Seth Mnookin, says he hopes to get Blair’s cooperation but will try to produce an accurate film even without it.
“‘For a story on a guy whose veracity has to be questioned, you have to be careful about your own,’ he says. ‘I don’t want to do a “Jayson Blair” on my own Jayson Blair story.’
“Maas says the tale doesn’t have broad enough appeal to be a broadcast network movie, but is ‘a great human-interest story’ about ‘why somebody in this position would do something like this,'” Kurtz wrote.
Columnist Asks: What About Shoshana Johnson?
Former New York Times reporter Rick Bragg’s book with Jessica Lynch is due to be published in November, “right around the time that a made for TV movie of her story is expected to show up on the tube,” notes columnist DeWayne Wickham on BlackAmericaWeb.com.
“Sadly, there is no indication thus far that Hollywood or the publishing industry has any interest in telling the story of Shoshana Johnson, the 30-year-old black single mother who was the other female soldier taken hostage during the fighting in Iraq,” Wickham writes. “She was shot in both legs. Nobodyï¿œs raised any doubts about that or the trauma she suffered [unlike with Lynch]. Remember the eerie television image of her being interrogated by her captives that showed up on the news?
“Lynch, who was more of ‘patient of war,’ was held in a hospital 10 days before she was rescued. Johnson and the three male soldiers captured along with her were classic prisoners of war. They were held more than four weeks before being rescued.
“Their guards kept them in cells and moved several times as U.S. forces advanced on Baghdad. On at least one occasion they reportedly could hear bombs falling nearby as U.S. warplanes attacked Iraqi targets ï¿œ- a harrowing near-death experience. Despite all of this, a movie about what Johnson went through is not on the fall TV schedule -ï¿œ and so far no publishing company has offered her a dime to for her story.”
With spotlight on Lynch, war heroes left in dark (Mary A. Mitchell, Chicago Sun-Times)
Charlie Chan Film Back on Fox Again
A Charlie Chan film festival that was canceled this summer by Fox Movie Channel after complaints from Asian American groups that the Chan movies stereotyped them will return to the Fox channel this month “with wraparound segments featuring panel discussions on racial insensitivity,” the Hollywood Reporter says.
The four restored films — “Murder Over New York,” “Charlie Chan at the Opera,” “Castle in the Desert” and “Charlie Chan in Honolulu” — will begin airing Sept. 13.
“We believe that the introductory piece and follow-up discussion will help promote understanding of the issues many Asian-Americans have with these films,” Karen Narasaki, president and executive director of the National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium, was quoted as saying.
Film Loosely Based on Journalist Who “Passed”
“Anatole Broyard wanted to be a writer ï¿œ and not just a ‘Negro writer’ consigned to the back of the literary bus,” writes editorial writer Brent Staples in the New York Times. “He followed the trail blazed by tens of thousands of light-skinned black Americans. He methodically cut ties with his family (including a mother and two sisters) and took up life as a white man with a white wife in white Connecticut. By the late 1980’s, he had been ‘white’ for 40 years, with two adult children who were unaware that they were part of a large black family that included an aunt who lived an hour away in Manhattan.”
“This was raw meat for Philip Roth, who may have known the outlines of the story even before Henry Louis Gates Jr. told it in detail in The New Yorker in 1996. When Mr. Roth’s novel about ‘passing’ ï¿œ- ‘The Human Stain’ ï¿œ- appeared in 2000, the character who jettisons his black family to live as white was strongly reminiscent of Mr. Broyard.”
The movie, starring Anthony Hopkins, opens Oct. 3 in New York and Los Angeles. One wag said that Hopkins “bears a bit of a resemblance to John Howard Griffin, author of Black Like Me, as he appeared during his time disguised as an African-American.”
The connection to Broyard is a loose one. Jerome Weeks, writing in the Dallas Morning News, described the book’s plot this way in 2000:
“Its main character is a classics prof who was actually a black New Jersey kid who coulda been a boxing contendah. Instead, he pretended to be Jewish and became a sharp academic, but was forced out by campus liberals for what ironically was taken as a racist slur. In his bitter retirement, he’s rediscovered himself through a scandalous affair with an illiterate woman whose ex-husband, a crazed Vietnam vet, blames her for the deaths of their children.”
Cesar Aldama Moves from Miami to Philly’s KYW
Cesar Aldama, most recently managing editor at Miami’s WFOR-TV, is the new assistant news chief at KYW-TV in Philadelphia. “Aldama, born and raised at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo, Cuba, replaces Casey Clark, who resigned July 4 to join WBAL in Baltimore, his hometown,” reports Gail Shister in the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Deiah Riley from Atlanta to Tampa
Deiah Riley arrives today as WFTS-TV Tampa’s new morning news anchor, “though she probably won’t appear on the air until the week after,” reports Eric Deggans in the St. Petersburg Times. Riley last anchored at WXIA-TV in Atlanta.
Tonight: McGinty’s “O’Reilly Factor-Meets-Nightline”
Executives at Washington’s WUSA-TV “promise that viewers who tune into the station’s newest newscast at 7 p.m. will see a program free of the cliches that plague local television news,” writes the Washington Times.
“No reports on house fires, shootings or other random acts of mayhem.
“No lengthy weather segments that force viewers to wait to the end to find out if they will need an umbrella.
“No silly, feel-good stories about water-skiing squirrels.
“‘Everyone says their news is going to be different. This really will be,” said Derek McGinty, the program’s sole anchor and a former radio talk show host and ABC news reader.
The half-hour “USA Tonight,” debuting tonight, “will mark the first local newscast on a broadcast station in the Washington area at 7 p.m., a time slot traditionally reserved for network news, game shows and sitcom reruns,” the Times continued.
“WUSA executives say the program will be geared toward commuters who arrive home too late to see its 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. newscasts. But the CBS affiliate also is treating the show as an opportunity to take a more ‘serious’ approach to local news,” the paper wrote.
The Washington Post wrote yesterday that “McGinty describes his vision of ‘USA Tonight’ as ‘a combination of the “O’Reilly Factor” meets “Nightline.” But it can’t be as slow-paced as “Nightline,” and it has to be as energetic as “O’Reilly” but not as loud.’
“For McGinty, the show also meant a chance to come back to the Washington area, where his parents and brother live. Since March 2001, he had anchored ABC’s ‘World News Now,’ the network’s overnight news show, broadcast from New York.”