Originally published June 9, 2004
Darts Pierce Reagan Puff Pieces
Four days after Ronald Reagan died, the news media have begun to temper the orgy of celebratory stories about the 40th president and acknowledge that many considered his policies hurtful and damaging.
The front pages of the Chicago Tribune, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times today all feature news stories about Reagan’s critics.
The Washington Times did a similar piece Tuesday, and the Associated Press moved a story today from San Francisco by Beth Fouhy, “Despite accolades in death, Reagan legacy still troubles many.” However, the San Francisco Chronicle asserted, in a front-page piece by Marc Sandalow, Washington bureau chief, that “Reagan’s former foes put aside past battles; For now, respect instead of rancor.”
In the Philadelphia Inquirer, television critic Gail Shister wrote, “The tone of the networks’ Reagan coverage thus far has raised some eyebrows among media critics, who labeled it too soft on his sometimes controversial presidency.”
But she said the network television anchors differed on whether to include other than a rosy picture.
Dan Rather of CBS “says such analysis should be done only after Reagan is interred. (He prefers to call Reagan’s funeral ‘his farewell journey,’)” she wrote.
“When a twice-elected, two-full-term president dies, it’s not the time for a seminar on his strengths and weaknesses, in my opinion,” she quoted Rather as saying.
“To paraphrase Marc Antony, I think, by and large, that the good that men do should live after them, and the evil should be interred with their bones.'”
“[NBC’s Tom] Brokaw and [ABC’s Peter] Jennings don’t share Rather’s view. . . . Reagan ‘was a beloved American leader, but at the same time our journalistic obligation is to put his whole life and his political career in context,’ Brokaw says. ‘It’s a very delicate balancing act.’
“‘In a time of national mourning, let the first day or so pass, then go back and respectfully examine the person’s record. The Reagan legacy has some scandals — Iran-contra, his failure to recognize early on the AIDS epidemic. He made some controversial appointments,'” Shister quoted Brokaw as saying.
“In Jennings’ opinion, ‘If we waited for the president to be buried before doing a critical analysis, the world would move on quite a bit,'” Shister’s piece continued.
In a story in the Chicago Tribune today headlined, “Networks fear burnout of `wall to wall’ story,” reporter Steve Johnson noted that ABC’s “Nightline” tonight would look at the Reagan legacy, and quoted executive producer Leroy Sievers. He framed the question as, “To what extent do you honor the man and to what extent do you examine the presidency?”
“We’re not going to deify him or hammer him,” Sievers said in the piece.
One of the first television programs to countenance on-air criticism of Reagan aired on PBS Monday night. Among those participating in “Online NewsHour Special: In Memoriam: Ronald Reagan” was Roger Wilkins, professor of history at George Mason University, activist and former newspaper editorial writer.
“Well, Reagan was an incredible combination of a person who was very optimistic, upbeat, but underneath there were some really ugly parts of his politics,” Wilkins said on the show. “He went to Stone Mountain, Ga., where the Ku Klux Klan used to burn its crosses, and he said Jefferson Davis is a hero of mine,” Wilkins continued.
“He was rebuked by the Atlanta newspapers -? they said we don’t need that any more here. He went to Charlotte, N.C., one of the most successful busing-for-integration programs in the country, and he said I’m against busing and again the Charlotte papers rebuked him. And the impact of that plus his attacks on welfare women, welfare queens in Cadillacs, for example. And his call for cutting the government. He didn’t cut the government; the military bloomed in his time. But programs for poor people . . . diminished entirely and America became a less civilized and less decent place.”
Host Gwen Ifill then asked author-journalism professor Haynes Johnson: “Haynes, how does the Ronald Reagan that Roger is describing here conflate with the Ronald Reagan we’ve been reading and hearing about for the past 48 hours, the man who brought down the Berlin Wall, the man who brought freedom to the world?”
On Tuesday, the Associated Press provided an interesting response. A piece by Ted Anthony was headlined, “Reagan-era nostalgia plays well amid fears of terrorism and war.”
Other pieces touched specific communities. Giles Hewitt filed a piece from New York for Agence France Presse, “Reagan legacy a bitter pill for gay community,” noting that that community “still harbours bitter memories of the former president’s indifference to the emerging AIDs epidemic in the 1980s.”
“It wasn’t just that he ignored the AIDS crisis,” said Mark Milano, an HIV treatment educator who has been living with the virus since 1981, in the story. “What was so unconscionable was that he and members of his administration actually took a pro-active decision to do nothing about it.”
Writers for a number of Florida papers, such as Rafael A. Olmeda in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Mary Jo Melone in the St. Petersburg Times, and Fabiola Santiago in the Miami Herald, noted that “No other U.S. president touched Miami’s Cuban and Nicaraguan exiled communities more,” as Santiago wrote.
On CNN, a midday show anchored by Kyra Phillips discussed Reagan and race, with Joe Davidson, who had just written a critical piece on Reagan’s record for BET.com that was picked up by MSNBC, and Armstrong Williams, who had written an column for Tribune Media Services on Reagan’s kindness toward comedian Richard Pryor.
“What strikes me about the current evolution of Reagan coverage is that the learning curve is a bit faster than the last presidential reinvention — when the memorializing of Nixon threatened to gloss over the Constitutional crisis he nearly created through his illegal acts,” said Eric Deggans, television critic for Florida’s St. Petersburg Times and president of the Tampa Bay Association of Black Journalists.
“Now we’re already seeing stories on MSNBC, CNN and in some news services about how black people, gay people and advocates for the poor didn’t share the rosy picture of Reagan that the weekend’s deluge of memorials created. Black columnists are also adding to the mix, presenting their takes on how Reagan was often seen as an enemy to black people, regardless of his public image in the mainstream,” Deggans told Journal-isms.
“I still don’t understand mainstream media’s reluctance to point out the obvious: Reagan was a consummate politician who often said one thing and did another. He promised the country wouldn’t trade anything for hostages and then wound up recanting that promise months later in the wake of Iran/Contra.
“Similarly, he pledged allegiance to the ideals of the civil rights movement while moving to dismantle affirmative action programs, programs offering assistance to the poor and other governmental efforts aimed at erasing the historic effects of racism.
“Unfortunately, initial news reports on Reagan’s legacy relied mostly on his public statements, declining to adequately probe how his actions matched his rhetoric — I suspect because editors feared branding as liberal provocateurs. With any luck, the next time a controversial politician dies, the learning curve will contract further and we’ll get balanced coverage from the start.”
Reagan Commentary From Black, Latino Columnists
- Herb Boyd, The Black World Today: Reagan?s Legacy Among Blacks
- Desiree Cooper, Detroit Free Press: Charmed, I’m sure, but never an admirer; Lack of concern for poor a dubious legacy at best
- Lewis W. Diguid, Kansas City Star: Thoughtful leadership suffers under Ronald Reagan’s legacy
- Sam Fulwood, Cleveland Plain Dealer: President Reagan: a bad leading man
- Juan Gonzalez, New York Daily News: Not all mourn Gipper
- Earl Ofari Hutchinson, syndicated columnist: The racial paradox of the Reagan presidency
- jimi izrael, africana.com: What It Iz: Our First Hip Hop President
- Mary A. Mitchell, Chicago Sun-Times: Reagan wasn’t blacks’ choice, but he left valuable lessons
- David Person, BlackAmericaWeb.com: Ronald Reagan?s Benign Bigotry: Three Lessons
- Joe Rodriguez, San Jose (Calif.) Mercury-News: `He was a good man’
- Lester Kenyatta Spence, The Black Slate: Remembering Reagan
Not All Who Die Get “Feel Good” Treatment
The conventional wisdom has become that when people die, they’re entitled to an upbeat obituary.
In an online chat this week on washingtonpost.com, for example, Reagan biographer and former journalist Lou Cannon was asked by a reader, “Why can’t we mourn and still recognize both the good and the bad?”
Cannon replied, “Wait a while. To paraphrase Ecclesiastes, there’s a time for everything. I think the celebratory content of this week’s commentaries reflects the human reality that Ronald Reagan was a big part of our lives and that many Americans, including me, miss him.”
Malcolm X grew to be venerated by generations that followed after he was assassinated in 1965.
And the Washington Post’s Feb. 22 obituary, written by Ramon Geromia and headlined, “Victim Known as Articulate Negro Leader,” was sympathetic. “Malcolm X, shot to death in a New York hotel yesterday, ranked high on the list of the Nation’s Negro leaders,” it began.
However, a column by then-popular muckraker Jack Anderson, “The Washington Merry-Go-Round,” was headlined, “Klan, Black Muslim Methods Alike.” And a Feb. 23 editorial in the Post concluded, “There is not much in the career of the murdered man to comfort the country. As the second-ranking leader of the Muslims, he spoke for those Negroes, trapped in the slums of the great northern cities, who had lost all hope of achieving self-respect through peaceful assimilation. He was the spokesman of bitter racism. When he left the Muslims, it was to found a new movement, even more intemperate and intra[n]sigent. He once said that he meant his life to be a warning to Americans. His lamentable death now provides a more somber warning.”
Thirty-three years later, on Nov. 16, 1998, after Kwame Ture, the former Stokely Carmichael, died, the obituary by Michael T. Kaufman in the New York Times began, “Kwame Ture, the flamboyant civil rights leader known to most Americans as Stokely Carmichael, died yesterday in Conakry, Guinea. He was 57 and is best remembered for his use of the phrase ‘black power,’ which in the mid-1960’s ignited a white backlash and alarmed an older generation of civil rights leaders, including the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.”
Carolyn Milford Gilbert, founder of the International Association of Obituarists, which just concluded a meeting in Las Vegas, N.M., told Journal-isms that the rule was once “to say nothing ill of the dead.”
“Now there is more attention to the professionally written obit,” she said. “They are more in the mode of the investigative writer. Their job is to write and research and fact-check. It doesn’t leave much room for padding. That’s not to say they can’t be sensitive.”
But a president, she said, gets “a special type of obituary. In the death of a president, there’s kind of a duty-free zone.”
MBC to Change Name, Seeks Bob Reid as CEO
MBC, the Major Broadcasting Cable Network, an Atlanta-based effort whose initials are often confused with those of NBC, is changing its name and intends to hire Bob Reid, formerly executive vice president and general manager of the Discovery Health Network, as its CEO, trial lawyer Willie Gary, a co-founder of MBC, told Journal-isms today.
Reid told Journal-isms that “we don’t have a deal” for him to become CEO. But he said he had been an “unofficial consultant” since leaving Discovery in February. Gary said flatly that Reid “is going to be the CEO. We’re in the final stages of working that out,” and that the deal is 80 percent done.
The network’s new name, scheduled to take effect in October, is Black Family Channel. Reid said that was one of his first recommendations as he looked at the organization.
Last month, actor and comedian Robert Townsend was named president and CEO of MBC productions and immediately “launched into production” of nine new projects, according to the MBC Web site.
“It’s another piece in the puzzle of getting from A to Z,” Gary said. “When you’re good, you have to know you can be better; when you’re great, you know you can be greater. I tell people that the road to success is always under construction.”
Reid, an early president of the National Association of Black Journalists, worked with Johnathan Rodgers, another broadcast veteran, at Discovery. Rodgers was president of Discovery Communications from 1996 until last year, and is now CEO of TV One, another new African American cable network, based in Silver Spring, Md. Both say they are seeking a family audience; MBC already has a news department.
Gary said that the lesser-known MBC is on cable outlets in 3,700 cities and 47 states.
24 Native Students at Al Neuharth J-Institute
“Twenty-four Native American college students from 19 tribes in 12 states and one Canadian province are attending the fourth annual American Indian Journalism Institute, an intense academic program run jointly by the University of South Dakota and the Freedom Forum,” the Freedom Forum announces.
“The students, chosen from almost 90 nominees, are enrolled as special students at the university and are attending classes June 6-25 in the newly refurbished Al Neuharth Media Center.
“AIJI is the largest journalism program of its kind, designed to attract, train and mentor the next generation of Native American reporters, editors and photographers. The four-hour college course is sanctioned through the University of South Dakota Department of Contemporary Media and Journalism.
“‘Native Americans are the most under-represented group in journalism,’ said Jack Marsh, executive director of the Neuharth Center, which funds and administers the program, in the release.
Elizabeth Freeman, Widow of Greg Freeman, Dies
Elizabeth L. Freeman, widow of the late Greg Freeman, St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist and former board member of the National Association of Black Journalists, died Monday at her home in St. Louis after a brief illness, the Post-Dispatch reported today. She was 50.
NABJ members will remember her at last year’s convention in Dallas, where she accepted a lifetime achievement award given her husband posthumously. Greg Freeman died less than two years ago, on Dec. 31, 2002, at age 46.
Elizabeth Freeman’s “communications and public relations work in the St. Louis area spanned nearly 20 years,” the Post-Dispatch said.
“As a writer and media contact for some of the area’s biggest hospitals, she often worked side-by-side with television, radio and newspaper reporters to bring news and human interest stories to listeners and readers throughout the region.
“A family friend found her body around 6 p.m. Monday after her son, Will, had tried repeatedly to contact her by telephone. He had returned to school at Columbia College in Chicago on Sunday night after a visit home. He said she had been ill for several days and was scheduled to see a doctor on Tuesday.
“A cause of death has not been determined, pending an autopsy.”
On July 6, 2000, Greg Freeman recalled in his column that he and his wife attended Washington University together, and both were on the staff of Student Life, the school newspaper.
“We’d known each other for about a year before our friendship became romantic. I was charmed by her soul. I had never met anyone so caring about other people. (She bestowed that caring quality to our son. When he was younger, the two of them once found a pigeon on the street that had been hurt. Worried about the bird, they stopped the car, put the pigeon in a box and took it to a bird sanctuary. They even gave the bird sanctuary a contribution for helping the bird.)
“My wife and I gave the love that we share to our son. Now, as he approaches adulthood, we hope the love we gave him pays off and that he will be a more giving person because of it. Someday, if he’s as fortunate as I, he’ll find a woman as terrific as the one I married,” he wrote.
