Fox Said to Outmaneuver BET for Dems’ Debate
The debate by the Democratic presidential candidates sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus Institute aired last night on the Fox News Channel rather than Black Entertainment Television simply because “Fox’s proposal was better than BET’s just all around,” Doug Thornell, communications director of the Congressional Black Caucus, told Journal-isms.
“They offered a better package, they could incur more of the costs of the debate. It was just an overall better package.” A Fox spokesman said information on how much it cost to stage the event was “proprietary.”
A story today on the Web site of the National Newspaper Publishers Association, representing the black press, begins, “Many people were surprised that Tuesday night?s presidential debate, sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), was aired on a Right-wing network that frequently opposes everything that the organization stands for.”
It quotes Ronald Walters, a political science professor at the University of Maryland-College Park, saying, ?Fox has their record of being Right-wing and even racist where Blacks are concerned. And so, the contradiction is that they [CBC] would choose Fox to do this. But the other thing is that Fox saw a moment of opportunity themselves to cover their behinds. They can always say, ?Well, we hosted the Congressional Black Caucus.? So it?s on both sides, as far as I?m concerned, a negative.?
Thornell said the Caucus had been talking with BET for “three-four-five weeks,” and that during that time, “they had an opportunity to close the deal . . . for some reason that didn’t happen.”
He noted that USA Today ran a story Feb. 28 that the Caucus planned “to host four debates among Democratic candidates before year’s end,” so any network could have come forward and bid to host them.
It wasn’t until the Radio-Television Correspondents Dinner in Washington on June 4 that Fox came into the picture, Thornell said. There, Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes invited Caucus Chair Elijah Cummings, D-Md., to sit at his table, and during the conversation Cummings proposed that Fox air the debates. Ailes got back to Cummings in three days, said Thornell. “They were willing to put the weight of Fox News Channel behind the debates. Mr. Cummings felt Fox was very, very serious about putting it on.”
The broadcast was followed by Fox commentators taking aim at the Democrats who debated, particularly former Vermont governor Howard Dean.
“Obviously we’re strong supporters of BET. Mr. Johnson is a friend of the Caucus and we respect the network,” Thornell continued, referring to BET founder Robert Johnson.
The debate, which took place at Morgan State University in Baltimore, was hosted by Brit Hume of Fox News Channel, who is white, and three African American journalists: Juan Williams of National Public Radio and Fox News; Ed Gordon, formerly of BET and introduced as a contributing editor of Savoy magazine; and Farai Chideya, formerly of ABC and CNN and introduced as being with The Beehive.org, described on its Web site as “to be the place to go for information and resources around the things that matter in our lives: money, health, jobs, school and family.”
A number of news organizations, including the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Baltimore Sun, Washington Post, and even Fox News Channel’s Web site, incorrectly identified Gordon today as still with BET. He left there months ago, however, and as a Savoy contributing editor, he interviewed hip-hop impresario Russell Simmons in the April issue.
The next Caucus-Fox debate takes place in Detroit on Oct. 26. The panelists have not been chosen, but will be selected by Reps. Cummings, Carolyn C. Kilpatrick, D-Mich., and Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., Thornell said.
Calif. Candidates Questioned by Multicultural Panel
While the Democratic presidential candidates were answering questions from black journalists on the East Coast, in California, candidates in the recall campaign responded to televised questions from a multicultural panel of journalists in Los Angeles.
“The debate was sponsored by the Greenlining Institute, a liberal organization, and drew the three most liberal of the leading candidates to replace [Gov. Gray] Davis ? [Lt. Gov. Cruz] Bustamante, [Green Party candidate Peter] Camejo and Arianna Huffington. Missing from the debate were [Republican candidate Arnold] Schwarzenegger, Davis and Republican state Sen. Tom McClintock,” as the Los Angeles Times noted.
It was moderated by Emil Guillermo, urban affairs writer for the Stockton Record, a columnist for Asian Week and Philippine News.
Panelists were: Chauncey Bailey, news director of Soul Beat Television KSBT, who also writes for the Oakland Tribune; Jay ?Stone? Shih, host and founder of ?China Crosstalk,? a Mandarin-language TV talk show airing on KTSF and the International Channel; Rolando Nichols, 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. news anchor for Univision 34 KMEX Los Angeles; Jamal Dajani, host and founder of Worldlink TV’s ?Mosaic?World News From The Middle East? and President of the Arab Cultural and Community Center of San Francisco; Odette Keeley, news anchor and executive producer of Balitang America, a news program on ABS-CBN, an internationally broadcast Filipino TV channel; and Gabriel Lerner, state and national news editor of La Opinion, the country?s largest Spanish-language daily newspaper.
Cleveland Editor on White Male’s Bias Claim: “False”
A white 46-year-old male sportswriter who says he has dreamed since his 20s of writing for the Cleveland Plain Dealer is suing the newspaper, claiming he didn’t get the job because of his race and gender, the Cleveland Scene newspaper reports.
“False,” Plain Dealer Editor Doug Clifton told Journal-isms today.
Marty Gitlin told writer Pete Kotz, “The basic problem here, to my knowledge, is that The PD has not hired a white male sports writer — full-time, from outside The PD — since 1989.”
“By his calculations, the 10 or so openings have all gone to blacks or women — save for the hiring of columnist Bud Shaw. He estimates that ’80 percent of sports writers nationwide are white males. That indicates policy to me,’ ” Kotz wrote.
Clifton, who came to Cleveland in 1999 after being executive editor of the Miami Herald for eight years, said that Gitlin’s figures about the Plain Dealer’s hires are correct — “It does reflect an interest in having a diverse workforce” — but he notes that some of those hires have left for other papers.
He went on to agree with this quote of Gitlin’s in the Scene story:
“I’ve always been in favor of affirmative action. If you have two people of equal merit, then you can use it as a tie-breaker. You simply don’t base hiring on the basis of race, creed, or color.”
Clifton told Journal-isms: “We support that as well. Our position is that in looking for people, we want to have a genuinely competitive field of three people, and one will be a woman or a minority. So it would be wonderful to be in the position that the minority candidate is the one to be hired. Sometimes, to make progress, you take the minority candidate who is equal, and sometimes we’ve done that.”
Gitlin said in the Scene: “When I was young, in my 20s, I wanted to be a sports writer at The Plain Dealer. I didn’t want to be at The New York Times or Sports Illustrated. I wanted to be at The Plain Dealer.”
The story continued: “He did his time well, winning more than 40 awards from the Associated Press and the Ohio Prep Sports Writers Association. It quoted Giltin as saying, “I feel to a great extent that it [the discrimination] cost me my career.”
The story added: “He’s now pursuing work as a nursing-home administrator.”
Blair Reportedly Gets Six-Figure Book Deal
Disgraced reporter Jayson Blair has sold his memoirs to Los Angeles publishing house New Millennium Press, the New York Post and Variety both reported today. Later in the day, Publishers Weekly quoted Michael Viner, chairman, publisher and co-founder of New Millennium, as saying that Blair got a mid-six-figure advance.
Variety said: “Tentatively titled ‘Burning Down My Masters’ House,’ the book ‘tells the arc of a life,’ said Blair, who spoke with Daily Variety from New York. Half of the book has already been written, Blair said, in anticipation of a publication date next March.”
“It’s going to be the good, the bad and the ugly,” he said. “You’ll have a hard time finding a purely bad guy or a purely good guy in the story — including me.”
“Blair described the book as ‘therapy’ and said he hoped some good would come of its publication,” Variety continued.
“‘Often when people find themselves in trouble, they take their shame and they hide in a corner, and rob us of the opportunity to learn from their experience,’ Blair said. ‘While I feel a tremendous amount of shame, I think that it would be a disservice for me to take what I’ve learned from this experience and hide it from people.’
“As the book’s racially charged title implies, race will be a theme of the book, Blair said. “It is more John Nash than it is angry black man,” a presumed reference to the schizophrenic mathematician played by Russell Crowe in “A Beautiful Mind.” “At times there’s a very angry young black man, at times a very idealistic young black man.”
“The book also will cover the efforts by Blair and agent David Vigliano to place his book with a New York publishing house. Blair had become such a radioactive figure following the scandal that a number of publishers declined to consider his book proposal,” Variety said.
Publishers Weekly said the first printing would be 200,0000 to 250,000 copies.
It also reported that:
“Just last week . . . New Millennium Enterprises filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after losing a multi-million breach-of-contract suit.
“Viner, chairman, publisher and co-founder of New Millennium, tells PW NewsLine that his company filed for reorganization to avoid putting up a bond, which would likely have run into the millions, while it appeals the court ruling. The case involved an anthology of mystery stories, ‘The Mighty Johns,’ edited by noted publisher and bookseller Otto Penzler, who contended his reputation was harmed when New Millennium released a shoddy version of the book without giving him an opportunity to proof the pages. In August, a Los Angeles jury agreed, awarding Penzler $2.8 million in damages.”
Al Siegal Named Times “Standards Editor”
The New York Times announced today that Allan M. Siegal, assistant managing editor, has been named standards editor, effective immediately, filling a position proposed by a committee Siegal headed to examine what led to the Jayson Blair affair.
“Mr. Siegal, 63, will retain the title of assistant managing editor and membership in the masthead, the newsroom’s leadership group,” a Times announcement said.
In accepting the committee’s report on his first day on the job July 30, Executive Editor Bill Keller said:
“We will be reinventing a role that has been handled primarily by Al Siegal — a masthead-level position responsible for upholding our high standards. Where the public editor will be primarily an auditor of the things we have published, the standards editor will be involved in the day-to-day production of our journalism, and will have responsibility not only for developing the rules, but for educating the staff on matters of accuracy and ethics.”
Can Times Be Sued for “Journalistic Malpractice”?
“Should The New York Times have to pay damages to readers who were duped by its decision to publish the fraudulent work of Jayson Blair?” asks Cynthia Cotts, media writer in New York’s Village Voice.
“So say Clay Calvert and Robert D. Richards, two lawyers who teach in the College of Communications at Pennsylvania State University, in an article that will appear in the fall 2003 edition of the Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal.
“The article introduces the novel legal theory of ‘journalistic malpractice’ whereby, in the Times’ case, ‘the continued publication of Blair’s stories, despite the serious doubt about his work entertained and expressed by his direct supervisors, points to reckless disregard for the truth by key personnel at the newspaper,'” Cotts writes.
NAHJ’s Gonzalez Had Toxic Scoop on 9/11
New York Daily News columnist Juan González, who is also president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, “definitely had the scoop,” writes Cynthia Cotts in the Village Voice. “In October 2001, at a time when federal officials were telling us downtown was ‘safe,’ he obtained internal government documents that revealed toxic substances in the air and soil around ground zero, sometimes at levels far exceeding federal standards. It was shocking news then, and it seems prescient now, after the recent disclosure that the White House leaned on former Environmental Protection Agency chief Christie Whitman to downplay the dangers surrounding ground zero, and the EPA’s own admission that it didn’t have the facts straight.”
But, Cotts adds, there’s a back story:
“Now that the News has jumped on the EPA cause, newsroom gossips are buzzing about how [Executive Editor Michael] Goodwin was not always so crazy about González’s scoop. Indeed, sources say, Goodwin was running the newsroom in 2001 when News editors discouraged the columnist from pursuing the toxic story and buckled under pressure from federal and local authorities. González documented that intense newsroom struggle in his 2002 book Fallout: The Environmental Consequences of the World Trade Center Collapse.”
Michael Powell Blasts “Viewpoint Discrimination”
“Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael K. Powell took aim at his critics Tuesday, accusing them of exaggerating the effect of his media-ownership reforms to advance their own political agendas,” the Los Angeles Times reports.
Separately, the FCC exempted “The Howard Stern Show” from the agency’s equal-time rule, clearing the way for the New York shock jock to interview actor Arnold Schwarzenegger without giving air time to the 135 other California gubernatorial candidates.
“Powell suggested that opponents of his reforms ? from the National Rifle Assn. to antiwar demonstrators ? are motivated by a desire to see their own viewpoints better reflected on television and in the media.
“‘Beware ownership rules serving as a stalking horse for viewpoint discrimination,’ Powell said. ‘Are we really talking about concentration? Are we really talking about diversity? Or are we talking about the fundamental bias in the media? People love a monopoly if it’s your monopoly, if it happens to share the views you share.”
Boyd, Curry, Freeman Honored in St. Louis
Gerald Boyd, George Curry and the late Gregory Freeman were inducted into the Greater St. Louis Association of Black Journalists’ Hall of Fame at an awards ceremony Saturday night at Washington University,” the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports.
“Boyd is former managing editor of The New York Times. Curry is editor in chief of the National Newspaper Publishers Association News Service. Freeman was a former metro columnist for the Post-Dispatch. He died Dec. 31 from heart failure.”
The story also lists recipients of the association’s 2003 Excellence in Communications Awards.
Pam McAllister Johnson Seeking “Profit Centers”
Pam McAllister Johnson, the former Ithaca (N.Y.) Journal publisher who is now director of Western Kentucky University’s School of Journalism and Broadcasting, is about developing profit centers in her domain, according to the print edition of Editor & Publisher.
“The school has just moved into a brand-new $18.5 million facility, and it wants McAllister-Johnson to fill it with privately funded talent,” Mark Fitzgerald writes in a cover story on journalism schools in the Sept. 8 issue.
“My goal is to get a chair for the sequences,” she says in the piece. “But that’s not all,” Fitzgerald adds. “There’s naming rights to the building to be funded, and other profit centers to develop. Western Kentucky has already started a public relations agency and a photography studio that use, and pay, j-school students.”
As reported Aug. 1, the woman who in 1981 became the first black woman publisher of a general-circulation daily was named to the Western Kentucky post in July.