Hampton U. Task Force Finally Meets Tuesday
The Hampton University task force on the future relationship of the student newspaper to the school administration finally meets Tuesday at 5 p.m., chairman Earl Caldwell tells Journal-isms, including the three new faculty members appointed by Acting President JoAnn Haysbert last week.
Student editor Talia Buford has agreed to be part of the group despite the new members. Judith Clabes, president of the Scripps Howard Foundation, which is putting millions of dollars into the university to teach journalism, told Journal-isms that “we have a good task force,” and said of Haysbert, “I think she’s trying to do the right thing now.” Clabes is also a member of the Hampton board of trustees.
The administration confiscated the student newspaper on Oct. 22 after Haysbert demanded that a letter from her be placed on the front page and the students instead placed it on page 3, alerting readers to it on page 1.
The paper was republished in time for the following Saturday’s homecoming game, with both the letter from Haysbert and a large disclaimer from the students on the front page.
“In exchange, university officials promised to abide by the recommendations of a task force that will be established to determine the role of the student newspaper at the school,” the students wrote.
The task force was to meet last week, but the meeting was postponed in the uncertainty that resulted when Haysbert then said that “as Acting President, it is not within my purview to change the institutional model on which this outstanding paper was founded.”
Then Haysbert said that she meant only that it was not in her power to change the “model” of a paper that welcomed students other than those studying journalism, and Buford said last night that “I’m fine with the fact that we have the power to change what we need to change.”
Echoing the general sentiment that the overriding objective is to make sure no similar confiscation ever again takes place, Clabes noted that “we’re educators, too. Journalists have to explain and educate the public, and we have to educate the Hampton University community. The most important thing we can do is keep the dialog open.” The students, she said, “are getting an exceptional grounding in journalism.”
Caldwell said it would be inappropriate for him to comment “until we have a chance to bring everyone together and lay out our agenda and bring our issues” up. “This is a very serious matter and a very great responsibility that’s in our hands, so we need to all be on the same page,” said the veteran journalist.
Meanwhile, more published commentary has sided with the students against the administration:
- Barnie Day, Daily Press, Newport News, Va.:
“You go, JoAnn! How dare them? Why didn’t you just call up your Thought Police and your Speech Police and have them all lined up and shot? Anyone appointed Assistant Acting God, and willing to dispense with that little thing called the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America can do that, you know.
“More than anything, what Hampton has going for it is kids like Talia Buford, the student editor. I don’t know Buford. I’ve never had the pleasure of an introduction. But I know this. I’d put Talia Buford up against any kid in America.
- Editorial, The Daily Tar Heel, University of North Carolina:
“The Daily Tar Heel is an independently run newspaper and doesn’t receive any University money.
“By violating the integrity of the paper, as Haysbert and other officials did, they negated the ability of a student paper to present the news in an unbiased way.
“Any content that the paper puts out in the future will be cast in the dark cloud of suspicion imposed by the administration.
“The next hard-hitting story to be published will be read with doubt, leaving the reader wondering what degree of truth and spin were involved in the writing of the story.
“It is impossible to run any news publication this way, much less one that is run primarily by students.
“. . . No agreement should be made that does not grant the paper full power to govern itself. Anything less would lay a faulty foundation for the training of tomorrow’s journalistic leaders.”
- Ben Kennedy, The Flat Hat, College of William and Mary:
“It would be far too easy for me to espouse some sort of hard-line First Amendment, fight-at-any-cost-and-never-compromise philosophy. But it’s not necessary here, and the Hampton Script deserves credit for seeing that, both in their initial decision and their eventual compromise. Believing themselves to have editorial control, they made a decision that I believe is admirably consistent with journalistic integrity. I don’t believe any of that integrity was lost by making a compromise that will likely lead to increased editorial control. Knowing how to pick your fights is every ounce as important as having the courage to fight at all.”
NAJA Defends Board Member Fired as Editor
“The Native American Journalists Association is very concerned about the recent dismissal of Lori Edmo-Suppah, NAJA’s treasurer and former NAJA president, from her position as editor of the Sho-Ban News,” the NAJA board of directors says in a statement.
“Lori has not spoken with NAJA’s Board about her situation, saying she hopes to pursue the issue through the tribal grievance process. We respect her decision. However, we are concerned about a statement on the Sho-Ban News Web site, which says that tribal council members had objected to certain letters to the editor and to ‘quotes and news stories claiming a bad reflection on the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes organizations.’ This, at the least, gives the impression that freedom of the press may be in danger on the Fort Hall Reservation.”
“While tribal governments do their citizens a service by supporting professional newspapers, that service is devalued if the newspaper is not allowed to operate independent of tribal politics,” the statement reads, noting that Edmo-Suppah, who as the organization’s treasurer is a member of the board, abstiained.
Democrats Join Objections to Fox Carrying Debates
The Democratic Party has joined the chorus of those who object to the Fox News Channel’s involvement in the presidential candidates debates sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus Institute, according to the New York Times.
After the first Caucus-Fox debate Sept. 9, BlackPressUSA.com quoted Ronald Walters, a political science professor at the University of Maryland-College Park, as 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.?”
A second Caucus-Fox debate took place in Detroit on Oct. 26.
Now, the Times reports, “Democratic Party officials are so distressed that the Fox News Channel has sponsored two major primary debates that they are trying to block the network’s possible role in one in December. Party officials say they have asked ABC News to drop consideration of Fox as a partner for the sixth and final officially sanctioned debate, which ABC News is in the running to sponsor in New Hampshire.
“Given that Fox News is home to some outspoken liberal-bashing hosts, Democratic officials said, they doubted the network was TV Destination No. 1 for core primary voters,” the Times continued.
“‘It is fair to conclude that not a lot of Democrats watch Fox,’ one party official said.
“But Fox News officials said the network was likely to be involved in at least one more major forum because WMUR, the powerful ABC affiliate in New Hampshire, has an agreement to stage an event with Fox before the state’s primary.”
Memo at Fox Reportedly Confirms an Agenda
“A veteran producer this week alleged that Fox News executives issue a daily memorandum to staff on news coverage to bend the network’s reporting into conformity with management’s political views, refocusing attention on the partisan bias of America’s most watched cable news operation,” media writer Tim Rutten reports in the Los Angeles Times.
“The charges by Charlie Reina, 55, whose six-year tenure at Fox ended April 9, first surfaced Wednesday in a letter he posted on an influential Web site (www.poynter.org/column), maintained by Jim Romenesko for the Poynter Institute, an organization that promotes journalistic education and ethics.
“. . . Reina is out of television news these days, supporting himself in New York with a small woodworking business.
“Looking back on his time with Fox, his greatest concern is for its young staff. ‘Many of them wanted to be on television but not necessarily in news. They haven’t had the benefit of traditional journalistic training, so they’re easily molded.
“‘Time after time I watched what management’s politics did to the young anchors. As they near the time to get their own show, the hair gets blonder and the bias gets clearer,'” the piece continued.
Army, Paper at Odds Over “War Crimes” Series
“A recent investigation by The Blade of Toledo, Ohio, revealing details of a 1967 slaughter of dozens of civilians in a Vietnamese village by a U.S. Army platoon has prompted Army officials to look again at its long-dormant investigation into the incident, the newspaper reported this morning,” reports Editor & Publisher.
“However, an Army spokesman, speaking to E & P, disputes the paper’s characterization of this as a re-opening of the case and takes issue with certain other aspects of the story.
“According to the paper, its series, which ran over four days last week and revealed that a 1970’s Army investigation concluded 18 soldiers committed war crimes between May and November 1967, including murder and assault, caused the military to reopen the case.”
Percentage of Blacks Dying in Iraq Same as in ‘Nam
Kernel of a story idea from an article Sunday by Elizabeth Becker in the New York Times:
“The military is better integrated today and more of a melting pot than it was 30 years ago. But the percentage of deaths of blacks in Iraq is also roughly the same as in Vietnam. (There was no category for Hispanic fighters in that era.)”
Su-Lin Cheng Nichols Leaves ABC for Publishers
“Su-Lin Cheng Nichols, most recently executive director of communications at ABC News in Washington, has been named senior vice president of communications of the Newspaper Association of America,” NAA announces.
“Nichols, who assumes her new post Dec. 1, has been in charge of the communications strategy for ABC News from its Washington bureau since 1996. Serving as spokesperson for the programs ‘Nightline’ and ‘This Week,’ Nichols was charged with message development, media relations and program publicity. She coordinated special events and onsite press centers for ‘Nightline’ town meetings, on-location programming for ‘This Week,’ political conventions, presidential primaries and ABC News-sponsored political debates.
“In her new role at NAA, Nichols will oversee the Association?s communications activities, which include publication of its monthly flagship magazine Presstime, public relations and media strategy, the NAA Web site, print services and the Information Resource Center,” NAA’s announcement says.
Business Editor Shifted at N.Y. Times
In another move of a New York Times editor who had an embarrassment take place on his watch, Glenn Kramon, business editor of The New York Times since 1997, last week was appointed associate managing editor for career development, a newly created post.
A July “Business Monday” story by Lynette Holloway on a loan dispute between Prudential Securities and TVT Records, one of the nation’s largest independent record companies, became the subject of an 188-word editors’note and 2,175-word story that amounted to a correction. Holloway later left the paper.
The embarrassment came on the heels of the Jayson Blair scandal, which unleashed a chain of events that cost executive editor Howell Raines and managing editor Gerald R. Boyd their jobs. In September, Jonathan Landman, the metropolitan editor whose memo stating “We have to stop Jayson from writing for The New York Times. Right now” — said to have been ignored — made him a hero to some in the Blair scandal, was appointed assistant managing editor for enterprise.
Leon Harris Didn’t Rock the Boat on His First Day
Former CNN anchor “Leon Harris’s WJLA debut on Thursday did not rock the Washington market,” writes Lisa de Moraes in the Washington Post.
“At 5 p.m., Harris made his Washington debut with co-anchor Kathleen Matthews; together they averaged 87,000 households. That put them in a distant second place to NBC’s WRC, though they did edge out the on-air gangs at Fox’s WTTG and CBS’s WUSA.
“At 6 p.m., Harris teamed with Maureen Bunyan. They averaged 75,000 homes, lagging behind both WRC and WUSA, as well as “The Simpsons” on WTTG.
“Maybe Washingtonians waited until 11 p.m. to catch Harris’s debut. About 125,000 homes tuned in — a 14 percent improvement compared with the previous day.”
“Native America Calling” Does Alaska
Public radio’s “Native America Calling,” produced by Anchorage-based Koahnic Broadcasting Corp., is valuable to Native Americans because “it’s real, it’s totally real,” said host Harlan McKosato to Joel Gay in the Anchorage Daily News.
“Listeners from reservations and cities, from the swamps of Florida to the Chukchi Sea coast, think of the host as an old friend and the show as a shared kitchen conversation,” Gay writes.
“Last week listeners heard attorney Heather Kendall Miller discuss the state of tribal sovereignty and Alaska Native hunters weigh in on subsistence versus sport hunting. On Thursday, McKosato took up the pending federal energy bill and its effect on Native Americans.
“Susan Braine, the show’s general manager, said the phones rang steadily every day while ‘Native America Calling’ was in Anchorage.” Gay continued.
Lori Edmo-Suppah, recently dismissed as editor of the Sho-Ban News, the tribal newspaper on eastern Idaho’s Fort Hall Indian Reservation, was scheduled as a guest on Thursday but canceled, saying she had been advised not to appear, McKosato told Journal-isms. A program on the California wildfires was put together instead.
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