Fox Gift to Howard U. Proves Controversial
A $100,000 check to the Howard University School of Communications presented last week by Fox News Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Roger Ailes — with Congressional Black Caucus Chairman Elijah Cummings, D-Md., looking on — has some wondering whether both the right-wing network’s gift and the caucus’ relationship with the network are appropriate.
The gift is to go toward the purchase of state-of-the-art television, film and radio production equipment, a news release says.
The Caucus also had entered into an agreement with Fox to sponsor two Democratic presidential debates. At that time, University of Maryland political science professor Ronald Walters said, ?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.?
In a Caucus news release, the Caucus called the gift “part of an ongoing partnership between the Congressional Black Caucus and the News Corporation,” which owns Fox.
“Quick, who are the high-profile anchors of color on Fox?” asked one member of the National Association of Black Journalists e-mail list.
“Isn’t this the same Fox News that buys into everything President Bush is putting out? Including his belief that affirmative access is more important than affirmative action?”
Another suggested that perhaps Howard grads could correct Bill O’Reilly, host of Fox’s “The O’Reilly Factor,” the next time he used the term “wetbacks.”
Sheila Stainback, a former Fox anchor, defended the grant, saying, “Day-in and day-out, the large majority of employees in the Fox newsroom are busily gathering news and putting it on the air without any thought of its political bent.”
But Harrison Chastang of KPOO-FM in San Francisco asked, “With the exception of technical people like sound and camera people, how can folks engaged in the editorial process engage in the process of producing programs without thinking about Fox’s political bent?
“Could a Fox news reporter or anchor feel comfortable not wearing a flag lapel pin? Could a Fox reporter or producer assigned to do a piece for Black History Month be free to produce stories on someone like Angela Davis, Sam Greenlee (who wrote ‘The Spook Who Sat by the Door’), former Black Panther Elaine Brown or Randall Robinson, all controversial, but important and interesting people in Black History, or would everyone be happy with the usual Black History pieces on folks Rosa Parks, Dorothy Height, Coretta Scott King and other non controversial African Americans?
“As they say, there are facts and there are facts, and the way Pacifica, NPR, the New York Times and Fox interpret the facts can be very different in regards to what to put in and to leave out, who to interview and who not to call. . . .”
The relationship with Fox is not new, according to the student newspaper, The Hilltop. It wrote: “It was nearly four years ago when Howard University commenced a partnership with FOX News that has now flourished into a remarkable relationship whereby Howard students gain competitive internships and apprentice positions with career opportunities.”
Unity Extends Deadline; 1,164 Registered So Far
Preliminary figures show that Unity: Journalists of Color registered 1,164 people for this summer’s convention by Sunday’s early-registration deadline, but that deadline is being extended until 5 p.m. Friday, Pacific time.
“Compared to 1999, we are doing extremely well with registration numbers,” Unity Executive Director Anna M. Lopez told Journal-isms.
“In 1999 we had a total of 246 registrants at the early bird deadline.
“The reason we extended the early bird until this Friday was because it being a holiday weekend and the deadline falling on Sunday there were some folks that had deleted the passwords they received in order to log-in as members and register at the membership rate and weren’t able to register.
“We expect that we will have approximately 1500-1600 final early bird registration numbers when everything is processed,” Lopez said.
L.A. Times Won’t Run Obit of an Ex-Op-Ed Editor
Dean Wakefield, who worked as an assistant op-ed editor at the Los Angeles Times and whose boss there, Janet Clayton, editor of the editorial pages, was quoted in an obituary of Wakefield that ran elsewhere, won’t be getting an obit in his old newspaper, a Times obituary writer says.
“We don’t run an obit on every one who’s worked at the paper, as a matter of policy,” the writer, who said he “wasn’t interested in being quoted,” told Journal-isms.
Wakefield, a 30-year journalist who worked for the San Francisco Chronicle and other dailies, died after a heart attack Feb. 9 after a battle with prostate cancer. He was 53 and a Los Angeles native.
His Feb. 12 obituary in the Chronicle, where he also worked, led the home page of the National Association of Black Journalists.
That obit said that at the L.A. Times, Wakefield helped develop “Voices,” a weekly page of written opinions from the community that he co-edited.
Wakefield “was very proud of that project because it allowed a wide array of voices into the newspaper,” Clayton was quoted as saying. “It’s important for people to see themselves in the paper. He was on a mission to see that they did.”
NAJA Urges Coverage of Outrage Over OutKast
“For more than a week now, Native people across the United States and Canada have expressed their outrage over the stereotyped Outkast performance at the 46th Grammy Awards,” the Native American Journalists Association says in a statement.
“This is news, this is a story — one quickly recognized by the Native media. But where was the coverage? Where was the inquisitive media, sensitive to the communities they cover? Native peoples are not artifacts living in a museum that can be trotted out to entertain. They are living peoples whose pain is alive and perpetuated by actions — and the confounding lack of reaction by those who claim to know better.
“The Native American Journalists Association is dedicated to the reporting of news in a clear and truthful manner. We call upon our brothers and sisters at like-minded organizations and news outlets everywhere to see the obvious and report what they see.”
2 South Asian Journalists Among Polk Winners
Two members of the South Asian Journalists Association — Somini Sengupta of The New York Times and Manjeet Kripalani of Business Week — are among winners of the George K. Polk Award for excellence in journalism.
In addition, the Chicago Tribune won for national reporting for a series, “Tossed Out in America,” that examined how men from Muslim countries were deported from the United States although they posed no security risks.
Sengupta won for foreign reporting. “Sengupta’s dispatches from the Congo, Liberia and other war-torn areas in West Africa lent both a political and human dimension to the horrific conflicts in the region that were not widely covered in the American press. She faced many dangerous logistical obstacles, often exposing herself to great personal risk in pursuit of her stories,” the awards committee said.
Kripalani, who is based in Bombay, India, is part of a three-person team that won for business reporting for “Is Your Job Next?” which showed how American corporations relocate white-collar jobs to developing countries where skilled workers are paid less.
Kripalani helped found SAJA in 1994; Sengupta has been active in SAJA conferences, leading workshops and panels, board members Sreenath Sreenivasan and S. Mitra Kalita told Journal-isms.
Savannah Burno, Retired Copy Editor, Dies at 52
Savannah Burno, 52, a retired copy editor at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, died Feb. 11 of complications from 28 years of diabetes, the Star-Telegram said.
“Born March 20, 1951, in Norfolk, Va., she earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism at Norfolk State University while raising a family.
“Her lifelong thirst for knowledge and insatiable curiosity led to her career as a copy editor — polishing stories to make them the best they could be.
“Savannah raised her children to be the best as well — taking them to concerts and museums as well as rodeos and flea markets, filling them with poetry as well as home-cooked meals, and teaching them the finest manners and diction. She was rarely without her dictionary or her Bible.
“She interned at the Oakland Press in Pontiac, Mich., before coming to the Star-Telegram in 1981. She retired on medical disability in 1998 but kept her wit sharp with daily newspaper reading, writing an online family newsletter and watching ‘Jeopardy,'” the newspaper said.
Journalists, others remember Savannah Burno
Tony Ridder Opines on Jay Harris Episode, Diversity
From an Editor & Publisher interview with Knight Ridder CEO Tony Ridder:
“Q. Now that the dust has settled from the Jay Harris episode, do you have any perspective on it that you didn’t have before? Do you still feel you got a bad rap in the resulting coverage?
“I think a lot of things that were said were not true, so I think the proof of what we stand for is how we conduct ourselves, the way we operate in our newsrooms. Not that you can’t find disenchanted people in our newsrooms, but . . . how we treat people who work for us, and having our newspapers be good places to work where people are treated fairly, are very important.
“Q. Was there anything you felt was particularly unfair in the Jay Harris coverage?
“Profits were falling, margins were falling, and people just accepted the statement that we were improving margins while revenues were falling. People were saying things like, ‘Knight Ridder has the highest margins in the industry,’ and a lot of people accepted it without bothering to find out the truth.
“Q. In the industry, production workers are aging, recruitment efforts by the business side have been scaled back, and minority candidates remain difficult for the news side to attract. What are your biggest staffing concerns?
“Finding talented people in all parts of the newspaper to come into the business, when there’s a lot of negative things written about the future of newspapers. About 30% of the United States is made up of people of color. The population of our company overall is about equal to that. But that doesn’t say that we’re 30% at every level of the company. So that’s the challenge for us, to develop people of color so that we are roughly comparable to the population at all levels of the organization.”
Military to Follow Up on Toledo Blade Vietnam Series
“In a case that has reached the top levels of the Pentagon, military investigators will begin interviewing former soldiers of an elite platoon accused of slaughtering scores of unarmed civilians in the Vietnam War,” reports the Toledo Blade.
“The move represents the first effort by the military to talk to soldiers since a Blade series in October revealed the platoon?s brutal sweep through 40 villages where civilians were tortured and killed,” continues the story by Michael D. Sallah and Mitch Weiss.
“The newspaper found that field commanders knew of the soldiers? actions, and in some cases, encouraged the violence.
“Though the Army spent 4 1/2 years investigating the special force starting in 1971 — substantiating 20 war crimes against 18 soldiers — the case never reached a military court and no one was charged,” the Blade reports.
Some Doubt Power of Hispanic Magazines
“Although Hispanic magazines are growing, especially Spanish-language spinoffs of mainstream magazines such as People, Shape and Glamour, their growth is hampered by some advertisers’ belief that the market of well-educated, well-heeled Hispanic readers is not large enough to warrant placing ads in them,” according to Samir A. Husni, a journalism professor at the University of Mississippi who studies the magazine industry.
Husni is quoted in a story in the Washington Post by Sabrina Jones.
“They feel they can still reach them through English-language magazines,” Husni said in Jones’ piece. “It’s not a market they want to reach via the upscale magazines. It’s a downscale market. The perception is bigger than reality. That’s the sad thing.”
More Than Half of New Magazines Quickly Fail
“Here’s the good news: some 900 magazines launched in 2003, about 30 percent more than the year before,” reports Lisa Granatstein in Media Week.
“The bad news: more than half failed to survive beyond the first year.” She quotes the same Samir Husni, the University of Mississippi journalism professor known for tracking start-ups.
100th Issue Milestone for “Atlanta Latino”
“Atlanta Latino, a bilingual newspaper based in Norcross, has published its 100th edition,” reports Rick Badie in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
“The free, 30,000-circulation weekly is available every Thursday at more than 1,000 distribution points in 15 counties.
“At least 10 Spanish-language newspapers and several Hispanic radio stations operate in Georgia. Their ties to the community haven’t gone unnoticed by politicians.
“Last summer, for example, Gov. Sonny Perdue met with the Spanish-language press to talk about issues important to Hispanics, who number nearly 500,000 statewide,” Badie reported.
Time Warner’s Richard Parsons Spotted in India
“When the world’s biggest media company’s (Time Warner Inc) chairman and CEO comes to India on a flying visit, it is reason enough to ask the question: what’s on the agenda?” asks indiantelevison.com.
“Especially, when it happens to be Richard D Parsons’ first trip to a country where the media and entertainment industry has been projected to grow at a rapid pace over the next five years.
The piece reports that “no official word was forthcoming from anywhere, speculation was rife” over the purpose of the visit.
“Was Parsons impressed with India’s media and entertainment industry and the opportunities it offered? We’d have to wait for the security veil to part open for information to trickle out. Sounds of silence, indeed!”
Tina Brown Suggests an Alibi for Janet Jackson
A writer in Media Industry Newsletter says former New Yorker and Vanity Fair editor Tina Brown was heard on the Monica Crowley program on New York’s WABC-AM.
When the host asked for her reaction to Janet Jackson’s breast baring during Super Bowl half-time, the writer says, Brown quipped, “Janet should declare that she is in support of breast-cancer awareness.”
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