Blacks Hardly Exist as Media Retell Reagan Story
As Ronald Reagan might say, “There they go again!” Column inch upon column inch, news segment upon news segment of adoring coverage of the life and death of the 40th president, and hardly any recognition that African Americans weren’t in the Amen Corner. It was as if, in the spirit of honoring the dead, we could pretend that people of color, primarily black people, didn’t exist.
Not that these news organizations couldn’t just look at the clips.
When Reagan ended his eight years in the White House in 1989, Lee May wrote in the Los Angeles Times a Jan. 20 piece headlined, “See Heavy Losses and Few Gains; Blacks Look Back With Anger at Reagan Years.”
The late Mary McGrory wrote in the Washington Post on Jan. 17, 1989:
“With regard to black America, President Reagan leaves office just the way he came in, with much rancor on both sides. Blacks are conspicuously dry-eyed, while the rest of the country puddles up over his departure.
“He professes to be baffled and hurt by black criticism.
“He has apparently forgotten his record.”
For that kind of clear-eyed remembrance of the Reagan years this weekend, by and large, one had to go to the Internet.
On BET.com, Joe Davidson dutifully noted some of Reagan’s achievements, then wrote, “So thorough was Reagan’s attack on programs of importance to African Americans, that the Citizens Commission on Civil Rights, an organization formed in the wake of Reagan’s attempt to neuter the official U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, said he caused ‘an across-the-board breakdown in the machinery constructed by six previous administrations to protect civil rights.'”
His piece, reviewing the Reagan record, is accompanied by colorful responses from readers.
Black America Today.com rounded up opinions from prominent African Americans, and BlackAmericaWeb.com topped a wire story on reactions to Reagan with comments from Mary Frances Berry, chairwoman of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, who said, “True, Ronald Reagan was a persuasive and funny personality. But it was also true that his policies were pernicious as far as African-Americans and anyone in subservient groups were concerned.”
“Reagan made racism respectable,” writes George E. Curry in his column for the National Newspaper Publishers Association, now on the BlackPressUSA.com Web site.
In newspapers, the Boston Herald appeared to be nearly alone in devoting a story to African American reaction to Reagan.
“After expressing their condolences, African-American leaders and activists in the Boston area reflected on the former president’s tenure with mostly disdain,” began the Sunday story by Brian Ballou.
In other papers, such as USA Today, the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Washington Post, African American reaction could be found if you ventured deeply into stories about what churchgoers or people in the street had to say.
The Detroit Free Press wrote that, “While many politicians respected the man, they did not agree with his politics. “‘He’ll have two different legacies,” said Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. ‘He’ll be cemented as the symbolic political leader of conservatives forever. It’s no secret that African Americans didn’t have a strong affinity for his policies. . . . But he also was a president of the greatest country in the world.'”
You were out of luck if you looked for reaction from South Africa, toward which Reagan adopted a “constructive engagement” policy and opposed sanctions on the apartheid regime, or the Caribbean, where Reagan ordered an invasion of Grenada. (Reuters did provide comment from representatives of both the Contras and Sandinistas, however.)
On the Sunday talk shows, it was mostly laughter and chumminess between journalists and former Reagan aides, as admiration for the Gipper was presumed to be near-universal.
At one point, however, Juan Williams said on “Fox News Sunday”:
“I must say, speaking as a black person, that he didn’t do a very good job of understanding race relations in the country. He did it by anecdote. He had black friends here and there and that kind of thing. And so what you get is a lot of talk about welfare queens, hostility. When he says government is not your friend, we’re going to shrink the size of government, he really did away with a lot of the support and the safety net that was there to help people who were in need.
“And then he creates the atmosphere that I think leads to Jesse Jackson’s campaign in ’84 when Jesse Jackson says, you know, a rising economy — Reagan said a rising economy will lift all boats — a rising tide will lift all boats. Jackson said, ‘Hey, look, they’re . . . just going to be further at the bottom unless you do something to help people.'”
Caesar Alsop, Philly Sports Editor, Dies at 53
Caesar Alsop, sports editor of the Philadelphia Daily News, died Saturday at 53, the newspaper reported today.
“His death followed years of suffering with a heart condition, as well as a recent hospitalization,” the paper said of one of the nation’s few African American sports editors at daily newspapers, a number now down to four.
“Every writer on the staff has a story of Alsop bailing them out after midnight, providing them with extra time to write after deadline or extra space for their stories. In 15 years as the Daily News’ Phillies writer, Paul Hagen had more of these encounters than anyone.
“Caesar was always so comforting,” Hagen said. “You’d be on the West Coast, and the game would be tied in the ninth inning, and the deadline would be approaching, and you would call and say, ‘Caesar, what are we going to do?’ And he would say, ‘Don’t worry about it, big boy. Just get it to me as quick as you can.’ He was just so unflappable.”
“Daily News sports columnist Bill Conlin said, ‘I am a frustrated jazz musician who settled for word flute, and Caesar never intruded on my solos. Once I hummed the first few bars for him, he indulged me my riffs and that is what great editors . . . have done to make it a great place to be a writer.'”
He was aces all the way (Dick Jerardi)
My golf buddy (Chuck Bausman)
Marysol Castrol Joining “Good Morning America”
“Four years after hanging up a teaching career, sexy Marysol Castro is jumping to the television big leagues,” reports Richard Huff in the New York Daily News.
“Castro, dubbed the sexiest newscaster in New York by Daily News readers, has landed a big-deal gig at ABC’s ‘Good Morning America.’
“That’s right, she’s bolting WPIX’s “WB11 Morning News” to work for ABC’s yet-to-launch weekend versions of ‘Good Morning America.'”
Less Diversity on Prime Time Next Season
“For the upcoming 2004-2005 season, there will be fewer scripted prime-time shows featuring all-African-American or all-Latino casts than in the season that concluded last week,” reports Suzanne C. Ryan in the Boston Globe.
“While some programs, such as ABC’s ‘George Lopez’ and ‘My Wife & Kids’ and Fox’s ‘The Bernie Mac Show,’ will be returning, a good number of others have been canceled, including NBC’s ‘Whoopi’ and ‘The Tracy Morgan Show,’ ABC’s ‘The Big House,’ and the WB’s ‘Like Family’ and ‘All About the Andersons.’
“The animated comedy ‘Hey, Monie’ has been cut on BET and PBS’s ‘American Family’ has also not been renewed. Meanwhile, Showtime’s drama ‘Soul Food’ and UPN’s comedy ‘The Parkers’ are now both off the air.
“‘I’m very fearful of the state of television,’ said Darrin Dewitt Henson, one of the stars of ‘Soul Food,’ which concluded a five-year run this week. “Everybody thought something big would happen after Halle [Berry] and Denzel [Washington]won the Oscars, but nothing did.”
“George W. and the (White) Texas Press”
The story in the May/June issue of the Columbia Journalism Review is headlined, “George W. and the Texas Press: Is the Honeymoon Over?”
But in multicultural Texas, the piece includes none of the African American or Latino press.
“In a state that is a third Hispanic, and one where Spanish-language TV stations routinely beat their English news counterparts among 18-34 year-olds, it’s plain old incomplete reporting to ignore what’s going on in Spanish,” said Javier Aldape, publisher of Diario la Estrella, an offshoot of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, and a board member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.
Gloria Cooper, CJR’s deputy executive editor, referred an inquiry to the author of the piece, Robert Bryce, who is based in Austin.
“I don’t know of any really prominent black or Latino newspapers in the state that have really even covered Bush,” Bryce told Journal-isms. “My effort was to look at the state’s biggest media outlets.”
Howard U. Holding William Brower Tribute
In addition to services in Toledo this week for William A. Brower Sr., the first black reporter at the Toledo Blade who died May 28 at age 87, a tribute to him is scheduled next week at Howard University in Washington.
Brower and his late wife, Louise, had moved to Washington from Toledo late in 2002 to be close to their son, William A. Brower Jr., and grandchildren, the Blade had reported.
The Toledo services are Wednesday at the Dale Funeral Home, from 6 to 8 p.m., with the funeral at 11 a.m. Thursday at All Saints Episcopal Church.
The Howard tribute is scheduled for Saturday, June 19, from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. in Rankin Memorial Chapel on the Howard campus.
“In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations be directed to either All Saints Episcopal Church or to the William A. Brower Scholarship c/o Northwest Ohio Black Media Association, PO Box 322, Toledo, OH 43697. Checks should be made payable to NOMBA Scholarships with a notation indicating Brower Scholarship,” writes Brower Jr.
“Reliable Sources” Guest List Called Narrow
The guest list for the CNN media show “Reliable Sources” “strongly favored mainstream media insiders and right-leaning pundits. In addition, female critics were significantly underrepresented, ethnic minority voices were almost non-existent and progressive voices were far outnumbered by their conservative counterparts,” according to an analysis of a year’s programs by the group Fairness and Accuracy in Media.
The story in the March/April issue, by Steve Rendall, said, “In a nation where news media are criticized from every imaginable direction, it?s reasonable to assume that a media criticism show would include guests offering a wide range of critical viewpoints. With that in mind, FAIR took a look at CNN’s Reliable Sources, studying its guestlist to see how many critical voices were heard on the program that claims to ‘turn a critical lens on the media.’
“Airing weekly for more than a decade, Reliable Sources is hosted by Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz. Built around guest interviews, with an average of three or four guests each week, the show also features a weekly commentary by its original anchor, journalist and former Reagan administration spokesperson Bernard Kalb.”
Steiger, Singh to Receive Top SAJA Awards
The South Asian Journalists Association is giving its “Journalism Leader Awards,” the group’s highest honor, to Paul Steiger, managing editor of The Wall Street Journal, and Jai Singh, editor-in-chief of CNet News.com, the organization announces.
The honors are to be presented at the group’s 10th Anniversary Convention and Job Fair June 17-20 at Columbia University.
Other headliners include Salman Rushdie, author; Fareed Zakaria, editor of Newsweek International; Indra Nooyi, president and CFO of Pepsico; Shazia Mirza, British standup comic.
Bill Cosby Writes His Own Op-Ed Piece
After three weeks of furious reaction to his remarks at Washington’s Constitution Hall on lower-income blacks and parenting, which he since revised to some lower-income blacks and parenting, Bill Cosby has written his own op-ed piece on the subject.
Headlined, “. . . And the Rest Is Up to the Parents,” the essay in Sunday’s Los Angeles Times said:
“Some media people or government people, who are already ethnically insensitive, cannot hurt us if we begin to address and act on what is already epidemic. We will then be empowered.
“Change can only be set in motion when families and leaders get together and acknowledge that a problem exists. Where are the standards that tell a child: ‘Stop! There is hope.’ This has to happen in the home. It reverts back to parenting.”
Meanwhile, a news story on reaction to Cosby’s original remarks, by Marcus Franklin in the St. Petersburg Times, says that, “News organizations requested the videotape of the entire speech, but Howard University, which cosponsored the May 17 function in Washington, won’t release it, saying the event was private.”
Ron Harris, reporting in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, examines the substance of Cosby’s comments, writing, “the truth is that education and economic indicators show that African-Americans are doing better than they’ve ever done, largely because of the gains made by those low-income blacks, according to data from ‘Black Americans: A Statistical Sourcebook.'”
And John W. Porter, editorial page editor in Portland, Maine, said he could hold back no longer:
“The risk to me as a white person is that, should I be seen as endorsing what Cosby had to say, I could be accused of excusing away the racism that has and continues to infect society. And, indeed, what I glean from many black commentators is that the danger in Cosby’s remarks is that they might detract from the issue of racism, taking away some of the urgency to combat it.
“Truth is, I don’t know how to test the veracity of Cosby’s comments except to listen to what other African Americans have to say about them.”
Other commentary:
- Fahizah Alim, Sacramento Bee: Area programs already aimed at Cosby’s complaints
- Sylvester Brown Jr., St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Much of debate appears to be finger-pointing
- William Jelani Cobb, africana.com: Past Imperfect: The Cosby Show
- Star Parker, president, CURE, Coalition for Urban Renewal and Education, Alameda (Calif.) Times-Star: Bill Cosby’s words enrage, but also enlighten
- David Porter, Orlando Sentinel: Obligation comes due; Cosby reminds us to reach back, help out
Nominate a J-Educator Who’s Helped Diversity
The National Conference of Editorial Writers annually grants a Barry Bingham Sr. Fellowship — actually an award — “in recognition of an educator’s outstanding efforts to encourage minority students in the field of journalism.” The educator should be at the college or university level.
Since 2000, an honorarium of $1,000 has been awarded the recipient, to be used to “further work in progress or begin a new project.”
Past winners include James Hawkins of Florida A&M University (1990); Larry Kaggwa of Howard University (1992); Ben Holman of the University of Maryland (1996); Linda Jones, Roosevelt University, Chicago (1998); Ramon Chavez, University of Colorado, Boulder (1999); Erna Smith of San Francisco State (2000), Joseph Selden of Penn State (2001), Cheryl Smith, Paul Quinn College (2002) and Rose Richard, Marquette University (2003).
Nominations are now open for the 2004 award.
The nomination consists of a statement about why you believe your nominee is deserving. Deadline: June 30.
The final selection will be made by the NCEW Foundation board and will be announced in time for this year’s NCEW convention in Chicago, Sept. 29-Oct. 2, when the presentation will be made.
Nominations should be e-mailed to Vanessa Gallman, editorial page editor, Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader, vgallman@herald-leader.com, or faxed to her at (859) 255-7236.