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Tavis Smiley Joins ABC for Debate Analysis

Until the final presidential debate, Carlos Watson, a “political analyst” on CNN, was just about the only person of color allowed to join the immediate post-debate punditry. But on Wednesday night, ABC News added Tavis Smiley, the National Public Radio and PBS talk-show host, to the mix.

“I am a big Tavis Smiley fan. I would like to claim all credit; however, Peter Jennings is also a big fan. Peter made the suggestion,” Paul S. Mason, senior vice president of ABC News, told Journal-isms.

“There were I think, for me at least, two moments,” Smiley said as he joined Jennings and commentator George Will.

“One moment as an American voter. And might I add, another moment as an African-American voter. As an American voter . . . I think that Mr. [John] Kerry was very clear there is a growing number, a large number of Americans who do have an abiding faith. He went there first, and reminded us later in the debate that he had gone there first, number one. That’s my sense as an American voter.

“As [an] African-American voter, I was pleased that we finally, after four debates, albeit in the last 15 minutes of the debate, finally got to issues that matter to people of color. We live in the most multicultural, multiracial, multiethnic America ever, we’re deciding the leader of the free world, and it took us four debates, into the last 15 minutes to hear a discussion about issues that matter to people of color, beyond those other issues. And so, I was a bit disturbed by that. You go back to the vice presidential debate, Mr. Kerry, Mr. [John] Edwards rather, and Vice President Cheney asked by Gwen Ifill, a question about AIDS and people of color. Both of them were clueless. Tonight, at least, I finally got some conversation about things that mattered to me as a voter of color.”

However, Smiley left unchallenged Jake Tapper’s response to Jennings when he recalled that “Senator Kerry said that the president had never met with the Black Caucuses.”

Tapper said, “That is decidedly untrue. He’s met with the Congressional Black Caucus at least two times. Senator Kerry also said that President Bush had never met with civil rights leaders. That’s also not true. President Bush met with the Urban League very recently.”

Jennings replied, “Yes, in Detroit. I remember it very well. Senator Kerry made a speech there as well. Thanks, Jake, does us a great service on nights like this.”

NPR’s “Talk of the Nation” took the same approach the next day, playing Kerry’s statement about the Caucus and then a sound bite from the Urban League speech.

In fact, however, the Black Caucus has made no secret of its dissatisfaction with its lack of access to Bush, and addressing an Urban League convention cannot be considered the same as having a sit-down meeting with leaders.

A Washington Post “fact-check” of the same Kerry statement the next morning, by Glenn Kessler and Mike Allen, put it this way:

“Bush did meet with the Congressional Black Caucus during his first two weeks in office — on Jan. 31, 2001 — but Kerry’s overall charge was correct: Bush has repeatedly turned down requests to meet with the group since then. Caucus members have complained that not only has Bush refused to meet with them on specific issues, including his plans to attack Iraq, but also the White House often has not even responded to their letters. Bush dropped by a meeting that national security adviser Condoleezza Rice had with the caucus earlier this year.”

Smiley continued with debate analysis on his radio show the next day, with Democratic strategist Donna Brazile and J. Kenneth Blackwell, the Republican secretary of state of Ohio.

On debate night on CNN, Watson called Kerry the winner, but did not address any racial issues. In his column on the CNN Web site, he said, “Both candidates also missed a significant opportunity to lay out a compelling job creation plan as well as a simple but comprehensive domestic vision for the next four years.”

Columnists of Color on Debate, Latest Politics

Black America?s Questions for Kerry and Bush (BlackAmericaWeb.com)

GOP Ads Hit Black Radio in Key States

“The battle for the White House has spilled over onto black urban radio stations in key states with ads accusing Democrats of promoting abortions among blacks and siding with homosexual couples rather than married heterosexuals,” reports Charles Hurt in the Washington Times.

“‘Democrats say they want our votes,’ says one ad about the Democratic Party’s pro-choice stance. ‘Why don’t they want our children?'”

And in a conference call with reporters today, the Republican National Committee arranged for these Republicans of color to express “their deep disappointment with the Democratic National Committee’s blatant attempt to use race as a political wedge to divide our country”:

Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (Fla.); Bishop Keith Butler of Detroit’s Word of Faith International Christian Center, a former Detroit City Council member; and the Rev. Chester Berryhill of Rising Sun Baptist Church in Hernando, Miss. A note expressed the hope that the Rev. Joe Watkins, a Bush campaign adviser, and former Rep. J.C. Watts of Oklahama would join.

FCC Won’t Stop Anti-Kerry Broadcast

“The Federal Communications Commission will not seek to prevent Sinclair Broadcast Group from airing a documentary critical of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, the agency?s chairman said today,” reports Todd Shields in Media Week.

?Don?t look to us to block the airing of a program,? FCC Chairman Michael Powell told reporters after the FCC?s monthly meeting in Washington. Powell said action against the broadcast would violate free-speech guarantees, Shields reported.

But Ron Orol reported for The Deal.com that “Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc. is emerging as enemy No. 1 for critics of media consolidation. Reacting to Sinclair’s decision to schedule an anti-John Kerry documentary for its 62 television stations two weeks before the Nov. 2 presidential election, Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., is vowing to push for more stringent limits on mergers among TV, radio and newspaper companies.”

And David Callender reported in the Capital Times in Madison, Wis., that a “local business has decided to pull its ads from WMSN/Channel 47 in the wake of the station’s decision,” one of “several business owners who aid they have received numerous calls from patrons upset that they advertise on Channel 47,” a Sinclair station, Callender wrote.

Unlike Powell, former FCC chairman Reed Hundt, who served during the Clinton years, said, “Ordering stations to carry propaganda? It’s absolutely off the charts. Any FCC chairman, from the left or the right, would agree with me. I’d be shocked if you could find any other broadcast conduct like this in the history of American television,” according to Salon.com.

Among columnists of color, Eric Deggans said in the St. Petersburg Times that the Sinclair decision was “the nightmare many activists predicted would come of allowing one company too much media ownership.”

Black conservative columnist Joseph Perkins wrote in the San Diego Union-Tribune that the Democrats simply “wish they could go back 20 years ago ?- before Rush [Limbaugh], before FOX News, before Sinclair -? when they could count on the media to be almost exclusively on their side.”

Leonard Pitts Jr. in the Miami Herald noted that Sinclair “owns, programs or operates 62 television stations in 39 U.S. markets,” then wrote, “A responsible broadcaster does not use the public airwaves for propaganda, particularly just days before an election. And make no mistake: That’s what this is. Not ‘bias’ with its suggestions of subtlety and subjectivity, but propaganda, a tawdry attempt to swing an election.”

Kobe Bryant Accuser Identifies Herself

“Under orders from a federal judge, the woman accusing Kobe Bryant of rape identified herself by name Thursday in a revised version of the lawsuit she filed against the NBA star two months ago,” Jon Sarche writes for the Associated Press.

“The 20-year-old woman, who asked Eagle County prosecutors to dismiss the felony case against Bryant after deciding not to testify, had sought to remain anonymous in the federal civil case, though her name has been widely published on the Internet.

” . . . The Rocky Mountain News published the woman’s name in a story posted on the paper’s Web site Thursday night.

“Until now, the News has exercised its editorial judgment and has not named Bryant?s accuser despite the fact that her name was widely known. But today we are naming her, after she made the decision Thursday to re-file her lawsuit in her own name seeking money damages against Bryant,” News Editor John Temple said in the story.

“She had the choice not to go forward after Judge [Richard] Matsch said she couldn?t proceed anonymously. As a general rule, the News names plaintiffs in civil lawsuits. Here, both sides? personal integrity and credibility are at issue and the News believes fairness requires that both parties be named in reporting on this civil lawsuit.”

“The Black World Today” Back Online

The Black World Today Web site, down because of what Editor Herb Boyd had described as a “virus-like attack” generally defined as DDOS (Distribute denial-of-service), is back online, Boyd told Journal-isms today.

It leads with a piece by Ron Daniels, “Ballots Are Bullets for Black Voters.”

R. Kelly’s Lawyer Scolds Sun-Times

Chicago Sun-Times pop music critic Jim Derogatis, reviewing an R. Kelly concert in the Oct. 1 paper, wrote that Kelly “never directly addresses his pending trial for child pornography during his portions of the three-hour show with hip-hop giant Jay-Z.

“But the charges against Kelly — which stem from what the Sun-Times has called a pattern of having sex with underage girls — hang over the concert, and the singer refers to them indirectly many times, either playing his alleged crimes (which could land him in prison for up to 18 years if convicted) for laughs, or using them to evoke sympathy as someone who is being unjustly persecuted.”

Foul, cries Kelly’s lawyer.

“The article was incorrect — both on its face and in its failure to disclose that DeRogatis has been named by prosecutors in a court filing as a witness against Kelly in his criminal case,” wrote Edward M. Genson of Genson & Gillespie in an 865-word letter the tabloid published Wednesday.

Post Writers Give Glimpse of Research on Thomas

Kevin Merida and Michael Fletcher are on “book leave” from the Washington Post to write about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and last weekend they gave readers a glimpse of some of what they have come up with.

“What the two uncovered was a record of Thomas using his influence to help several up-and-coming African American jurists, conservative and liberal,” as Ta-Nehisi Coates reports in his “Press Clips” column in New York’s Village Voice.

“The discovery may be surprising, but not so much because Thomas is a conservative ?- Booker T. Washington was no slouch when it came to kingmaking. It’s more that so little is known about him, making any anecdote that drips out a prominent stroke in a relatively blank portrait. Thomas carries a serious grudge against the fourth estate, granting very few interviews. ‘He distrusts the media,’ says Fletcher, ‘and particularly the part that he would consider the liberal media. He’s engaging when you talk to him informally, but he’s wary. He can recite his own coverage chapter and verse.'”

About George H.W. Bush and the African Statuette . . .

This passage about former president George H.W. Bush might be one for the psychoanalysts, from Ted Widmer’s review in the New York Times of Kitty Kelley’s “The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty”:

“After moving to Texas in early adulthood, he quickly embraced the orthodoxies of his time and place, which included distrust of the government, misogyny and racism. It is startling to read Kelley’s account of Bush (whose father was relatively progressive on racial issues) campaigning hard against the civil rights movement and calling Martin Luther King ‘a militant.’ As president, Kelley says, he had an African statuette (male) in his private bathroom, and you can guess what anatomical protuberance he hung the toilet paper on.”

Journalists Who Faced Threats to Be Honored

The Committee to Protect Journalists plans to honor journalists from Belarus, Burma, Burundi and the United States who “have endured years of harassment, death threats, or imprisonment to report the news.”

Those chosen to receive 2004 International Press Freedom Awards in November are Svetlana Kalinkina (Belarus); Aung Pwint and Thaung Tun, also known as Nyein Thit (Burma); and Alexis Sinduhije (Burundi). Paul Klebnikov (United States) the slain editor-in-chief of Forbes Russia, who was gunned down in a contract-style killing in Moscow in July, is to be honored posthumously.

In addition, John Carroll, editor and executive vice president of the Los Angeles Times, will receive CPJ’s Burton Benjamin Memorial Award for lifetime achievement.

“He has served as the newspaper’s chief advocate ?- defending its Middle East coverage, for example, when readers organized a boycott ?- as well as its chief critic, reproving his publication for liberal bias in its coverage of an abortion story this spring. In 2004, five journalists at the Los Angeles Times won Pulitzer Prizes, prominently affirming the Times’ place as a top U.S. newspaper,” the committee said.

Unity’s Anna López Makes “Most Influential” List

Anna M. López, executive director of Unity: Journalists of Color, Inc. was named to the Hispanic Business “100 Most Influential Hispanics” list in the magazine?s October issue, Unity announces.

“Nominations for the list are made by individuals visiting the Web site, readers, contributing editors, magazine staff and writers.

“During the UNITY 2004 Convention, ‘A Powerful Alliance, A force for Change,’ this past August, López managed to raise $4.5 million in revenue and draw President George W. Bush and Democratic challenger John Kerry to the conference as featured speakers. The convention drew record numbers with over 8,000 attendees.”

López was formerly executive director of the National Associaton of Hispanic Journalists.

Florida Black Journalists Honor an NABJ Founder

Vince Sanders is an Orlando, Fla., native who spent 35 years in national radio and television.

“In need of advocacy and jobs, Sanders and 43 other men and women gathered in Washington on Dec. 12, 1975, to form the National Association of Black Journalists,” writes Tammy L. Carter in her Orlando Sentinel column.

“Now more than 4,000 members strong, NABJ is the largest group of journalists of color in the world. To recognize his achievement as an NABJ founding member and a pioneer among black journalists, the Central Florida Association of Black Journalists & Broadcasters will induct Sanders into its hall of fame. He and three former local journalists — Joan Fuller, Kenneth Gilleylen and Cathy Taylor — will be inducted Saturday night during the Central Florida organization’s 20th anniversary gala at Hard Rock Live.”

Carter is president of the Central Florida association.

“Jump Start” Turns 15, Renewed for 10 More

“‘Jump Start’ turns 15 this Saturday, and Robb Armstrong has signed with United Feature Syndicate to do the comic for at least 10 more years,” reports Editor & Publisher.

“The humor strip, which stars a middle-class African-American family, appears in more than 400 newspapers.”

More Testimony About Making Jet

“In mainstream America, you know who’s made it by looking at who makes it onto the cover of Time,” Betty Baye writes in the Louisville Courier-Journal.

“. . . in black America, the measure of whether you’ve arrived is getting yourself onto the cover of Jet.

“Tavis Smiley confirmed that during an appearance Tuesday on Tom Joyner’s radio show. Smiley joked that he didn’t hear squat from his nine siblings when Time named him one of America’s 50 most promising young leaders or when Newsweek included him as one of 20 people changing how Americans get their news.

“But now that he’s made the cover of Jet, they’ve all been calling, he said.”

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