2,000 Attend Event Sponsored by Black Journalists
It all started back in May, when Milwaukee Journal Sentinel columnist Eugene Kane criticized the comments that Bill Cosby made in Washington about “the lower economic people” not holding up their end of the bargain 50 years after the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision.
And it continued until Wednesday, when Cosby addressed a crowd of more than 2,000 in Milwaukee’s North Division High School auditorium, exhorting them to become more responsible parents.
In between were conversations between the columnist and the actor-philanthropist, and eventually an agreement that Cosby would visit Milwaukee. Kane helped arrange it as president of the Wisconsin Black Media Association, which sponsored the event in an example of what could be called “civic journalism,” though one doesn’t hear that term all that much anymore.
“At times, it’s been uncomfortable being a part of this news story. But it’s been worth it in terms of watching so many in town get excited not just over Cosby but his message,” Kane told readers in his column Thursday.
“After all the ticket requests that weren’t granted, the last-minute changes, the logistical nightmares and the grumbling from some about too much hope being attached to the event, Cosby finally made it to town, and he didn’t disappoint.”
The Journal Sentinel news story by Meg Kissinger and Mark Johnson indicated that Cosby backed down not a whit from his controversial comments:
“‘It’s not all right for your 13-year-old daughter to have a child,’ he said. ‘You should be arguing with her about why she didn’t pick up her socks.’
“The same goes for boys, Cosby said.
“‘Your 13-year-old son has no business thinking he can drop his seed and walk away and then call himself a man,’ he said.
“Cosby told the crowd he would have liked to have them look at him as a grandfather saying, ‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you.
“‘But we’re past all that now, ladies and gentlemen,’ he said. ‘We’re into an epidemic. People who don’t know right from wrong.'”
” . . . Cosby, who was criticized for comments last spring by some who thought he was too harsh on young African-Americans, saved much of his venom for the media. Looking at the scores of reporters in the crowd, he said:
“‘They won’t show up again until you kill somebody. They don’t show up and write about you until your test scores are so damn low and they can prove that you’re not smart. They don’t care about you.”
Journal-isms asked Kane how the event tied in with the mission of his association, the local chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists.
“Wisconsin Black Media Association is all about presenting the genuine perspective of African-Americans in Milwaukee and the state through the media,” Kane said.
“Bill Cosby’s message to black America has been largely ‘filtered’ through the mainstream or ‘white’ media in previous speeches, which always seemed to focus on his harshest criticism of black dysfunction while ignoring his stated love and respect for the poorest African-Americans struggling to find a way to best raise their children.
“The WBMA was glad to be able to allow him to present his message raw and uncensored to a black audience in Milwaukee, so that everybody could hear for themselves exactly what he has to say.”
Chicago TV Reporters Skip Station’s Parade Float
“The usually good-natured boss of WLS-Channel 7 exploded in anger when all but one of her on-air employees failed to show up on the station’s float in Chicago’s Columbus Day Parade,” Robert Feder writes in the Chicago Sun-Times.
“. . . Reporters who have covered controversial stories involving local ethnic or racial groups don’t care to become ‘moving targets’ through what could be a gauntlet of hostile spectators, they argued.”
He did not elaborate.
Feder wrote Thursday that, “In a two-page tirade that she asked not be shared ‘with the newspaper writers who love to print these kinds of internal memos,’ Emily Barr, president and general manager of Channel 7, wrote to all anchors, reporters and contributors: ‘I must tell each of you how terribly disappointed I have been of late in your attitude towards our viewers.’
“. . . To correct the situation, Barr ordered every on-air staffer to ride in ‘a minimum of two parades’ a year from now on, adding: ‘You are welcome to bring your children, spouses, friends, pets, whatever, but you personally must be there because it is you the public wants to see.’
“The one on-air employee who did ride on the Columbus Day float was reporter John Garcia, who was joined by three off-air people “who went along to help ‘fill out’ the float,” Barr was quoted as saying in the memo.
Feder followed up today with a column saying that other Chicago television executives rallied to Barr’s defense, saying that “the managers of three other top stations spoke out about the gravity of local news stars ‘pressing the flesh’ with various ethnic and racial groups.”
However, he reported that not all readers agreed. “I never realized that parade float attendance was so important until I read your column,” wrote Jeni Stewart. “Honestly, I had no idea that the professionals who report the news had to be part-time circus clowns.”
Black Caucus Chair Sides With Bob Johnson on Bush
The Democratic chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus is making common cause with Robert L. Johnson, founder of Black Entertainment Television, in urging President Bush to reconsider his decision not to accept Johnson’s offer to sit down for half an hour for an interview on BET.
Johnson, meanwhile, told New York Daily News gossip columnist Lloyd Grove that his appeal to prominent black Republicans to put pressure on the White House has yielded sympathy from one GOP official: “He said Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, another prominent black Republican, yesterday called him and offered to help,” Grove reported.
In addition, Pamela McLintock reported in Daily Variety today that “Bush will sit down with ABC News ayem anchor Charlie Gibson for a two-part interview to air in the final days of the race for the White House.
“Bush also has granted an interview with Spanish-language broadcaster Telemundo that was skedded to air Thursday.”
However, she noted, “Otherwise, Bush has been loath to grant many national TV interviews, even as the Nov. 2 election draws near. Recently, he’s appeared only on Fox News Channel’s ‘The O’Reilly Factor.'”
Black Caucus Chairman Elijah E. Cummings, D-Md., issued a statement Wednesday saying:
“I find it terribly disturbing that the President would continue his pattern of turning down invitations and opportunities to engage with African American elected leaders and African American people. Since I have been Chair of the Caucus, the President has not only avoided meeting with Members of the Caucus to discuss issues such as Iraq and the struggling U.S. economy, but he has also rejected numerous invitations from outstanding African American civic organizations, including the NAACP.
“If President Bush will not engage in candid and substantive dialogue with African Americans before November 2nd, why should African Americans have any confidence that the President will seriously consider their concerns after November 2nd? African Americans, and all Americans, have suffered long enough under this type of repressive, closed-door approach to governance.”
Johnson told Grove: “The Republicans are saying they’re trying to reach out to African-American voters around the country. So why wouldn’t he take advantage of that?” He noted that BET is watched in an estimated 10 million black households.
“If the President sat down with us for 30 minutes, he could make sure African-Americans know about his No Child Left Behind program, his views on same-sex marriage, his commitment to jobs and talk about all the other issues he pays lip service to. If they believe he has a good record, why wouldn’t he come on?”
Brett Pulley, whose “The Billion-Dollar BET: Robert Johnson and the Inside Story of Black Entertainment Television” was published earlier this year, gave Journal-isms this take on the situation:
“Just like the times when he was mistaken for a stable-hand on his own farm and a chauffeur inside of his own Jaguar, Johnson is once again being reminded that — although he’s rich, powerful and even has served on the president’s social security commission — he’s still a black man. More specifically, his network has a black audience. And as you know, this is an audience that Bush in the past has tried to stay away from because he considers it hostile toward him.”
“Largest Neglected Humanitarian Emergency”
“Shining the spotlight on what he called the world’s largest neglected humanitarian emergency, a senior United Nations relief official today called on the international community to get more involved in the nearly two-decade-old conflict in northern Uganda,” the U.N. reports via allafrica.com.
“Where else in the world have there been 20,000 kidnapped children? Where else in the world have 90 per cent of the population in large districts been displaced? Where else in the world do children make up 80 per cent of the terrorist insurgency movement?” said Jan Egeland, undersecretary general for Humanitarian Affairs and the UN’s Emergency Relief Coordinator, in the report.
Julia Scott Reed, Dallas Pioneer, Dies at 87
“Julia Scott Reed, the first African-American hired full-time by a major Dallas newspaper and one of the first blacks to work in the newsroom of a major daily in the South, has died 25 years after a stroke ended her career,” Joe Simnacher reports in the Dallas Morning News.
“For 11 years beginning in 1967, Ms. Reed wrote a Dallas Morning News column, The Open Line, that was a voice for black Dallas residents until she had a severe stroke Dec. 12, 1978.
“Ms. Reed, 87, died Tuesday.
“Ms. Reed was a role model and mentor to generations of black journalists, including Norma Adams Wade, who followed in her footsteps.
“Ms. Wade vividly recalls Ms. Reed speaking at H.S. Thompson Elementary School in South Dallas.
“‘She was the first and only black person I knew who wrote for a newspaper . . . the Dallas Express,’ Ms. Wade said Wednesday. ‘The first time I saw her in person was one of those moments frozen in memory. I was sitting in the auditorium in grade school in South Dallas. When she was introduced, I marveled that I was actually in the room with a writer I had heard about, who was black and lived in Dallas.”
“Her work for the Express included covering the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. She was present when Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald on Nov. 24, 1963. She also covered the Supreme Court ruling that brought an end to segregation on public transportation.”
“60 Minutes” Says Blacks Aided Emmett Till Killing
“One of the reasons Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of the bus in 1955 was because a black teenager was tortured and murdered in Mississippi for whistling at a white woman a few months before. No one ever paid for the crime, but 60 MINUTES has confirmed that the recently reopened investigation into the torture-murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till is focused on at least two people: the woman he whistled at and a man who witnesses say they saw on a truck with Till after his abduction,” reads a CBS news release.
Ed Bradley’s report on the case that helped galvanize the civil rights movement in America will be broadcast on 60 MINUTES Sunday, Oct. 24 (7:00-8:00 PM, ET/PT).”
“The woman Till whistled at, Carolyn Bryant, disappeared from view and was never arrested or charged in the crime. 60 MINUTES found her, now aged 70, living in Greenville, Miss., divorced and remarried and now known as Carolyn Donham. 60 MINUTES confirmed that Donham is a focus of the investigation. Neither she nor her son, Frank Bryant, would discuss Till or the reopened investigation and her involvement in it.
“Till, from Chicago, was visiting his cousin, Simeon Wright, when the incident occurred. Wright saw Byrant’s husband, Roy, and Bryant’s brother-in-law, J.W. Milam, take Till away from the Wright residence late at night. He tells Bradley that his father told him there was a woman in the truck who identified Till. ‘At the time, we believed it was Bryant’s wife [Carolyn]. And after 48 and some odd years, there’s nothing arisen to dispel that belief,’ says Wright.
Bryant and Milam were tried for the crime, but acquitted by an all-white jury after a one-hour deliberation, despite the testimony of Wright’s father and others.
“Blacks were also involved in the crime, according to witnesses. Wright says his father saw a black man on his porch that night with Bryant and Milam and other witnesses said they saw a black man on the truck with Till. The witnesses claimed they saw Henry Lee Loggins, a black man who worked for Milam at the time and who 60 MINUTES also confirmed is under investigation. 60 MINUTES found him living in Ohio. Now 81, Loggins denies the stories. ‘I can’t figure it out,’ he tells Bradley. ‘I wouldn’t sit here and tell you no lie. I don’t know nothing about that case.’
“The decision to reopen the case is due in large part to the efforts of Keith Beauchamp, a young, black amateur filmmaker from Louisiana who has devoted much of his life to telling the story of Till and who is producing a documentary on the case. He theorizes, in an interview with Bradley, that even if Loggins and other blacks were involved, it was under duress. ‘We believe that they were forced to participate in the crime. It was going to be either them or Emmett Till,’ he tells Bradley.”
Nobelist’s Comments on AIDS Escape Notice
When Wangari Muta Maathai of Kenya became the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize this month, some barbed comments that she made about AIDS escaped most American news stories.
But Robyn Dixon, filing for the Los Angeles Times from Johannesburg, wrote this then:
“Maathai, always outspoken and often controversial, recently was quoted in Kenya’s Standard newspaper as calling AIDS a biological weapon developed as part of an evil conspiracy to destroy black people.
“‘Do not be naive. AIDS is not a curse from God to Africans or the black people. It is a tool to control them designed by some evil-minded scientists, but we may not know who particularly did,’ the Aug. 31 article by reporter Amos Kareithi quoted her as saying at a workshop in Nyeri, in her district.”
The comment didn’t escape those working with neoconservative David Horowitz, however.
His Frontpagemag.com put this headline on a piece about the comments, written by its managing editor, Ben Johnson: “Nobel Hates Whitey.”
“Sovereignty” Answer Becomes a Commercial
President Bush’s halting answer to Mark Trahant’s question at the Unity conference about tribal sovereignty drew guffaws that contributed to a debate over the appropriate conduct of attendees.
“Tribal sovereignty means that, it’s sovereign. I mean, you’re a — you’re a — you’ve been given sovereignty and you’re viewed as a sovereign entity,” Bush said. “And therefore the relationship between the federal government and tribes is one between sovereign entities.”
Now those words are being used to illustrate a television commercial backing John Kerry, according to a news release.
“Jordin Mendelsohn . . . has created his own commercial,” the release says. “While it’s not unusual for private citizens with an axe to grind to take out full-page ads in major newspapers, Mendelsohn contends that this is the first time a private citizen has created and run a television commercial in support of a presidential candidate.
“It ends with a simple appeal to ‘Vote for John Kerry,’ the release continues. “It will run on local cable in Los Angeles during this coming Saturday’s USC Trojans-Washington Huskies football game, and on Monday, October 25th on CNN’s Larry King Live.
“‘People need to understand who and what they’re voting for,’ said Mr. Mendelsohn.”
Trahant, editor of the editorial page of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and board chair of the Maynard Institute, asked the question Aug. 6 on behalf of the Native American Journalists Association.
The video
Arizona Republic Adopts Latino Grade School
The Arizona Republic has launched a partnership with an elementary school that draws Mexican immigrants in an effort to get the students reading at grade level, the paper reports.
“Over three years, the newspaper will give the school grants and send volunteers to tutor this year’s first-graders, following them into second and then third grade,” said a story by Karina Bland, describing Creighton Elementary in Phoenix.
“The idea is to improve the reading skills of all first-graders so that, by the time they finish third grade, they will be reading at grade level.
“Of the more than 1,100 students in kindergarten through eighth grade at the school near 28th Street and McDowell Road, 95 percent qualify for the federal free and reduced-price lunch program. The majority of the students, 95 percent, are Hispanic, and 90 percent are learning to speak English.
“New students arrive every week from Mexico. For some, it’s their first time in school. Half of Creighton’s students eventually drop out of high school, usually in the first two years.”
Bay Area’s Belva Davis Honored on Both Coasts
Belva Davis, a pioneering California television journalist who in 1966 became the first African American television reporter on the West Coast, was honored on both coasts this month with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Women’s Media Foundation.
Though semi-retired, Davis, 71, is still special projects reporter with KRON-TV San Francisco and hosts “This Week in Northern California” on San Francisco’s KQED-TV.
Ceremonies for the foundation’s Courage in Journalism Awards and Lifetime Achievement Award took place in Los Angeles Oct. 14, when 350 attended, and in New York on Tuesday, when 625 were present, a spokeswoman told Journal-isms.
“Bill Cosby introduced Belva Davis, 72, a longtime friend,” reported Myrna Blyth in the New York Sun. “He recalled that he and his wife watched Ms. Davis on television in the 1960s, and admired her not only for being a role model, but for being a relaxed one. During a reception before the luncheon the old friends hugged, and Mr. Cosby declared, ‘Belva, you’re still cute!'”
Davis, who won the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Association of Black Journalists in 1999, has also been national vice president of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists and chair of its Equal Employment Opportunities Committee.
The mission of the International Women’s Media Foundation, founded in 1990, “is to strengthen the role of women in the news media around the world, based on the belief that no press is truly free unless women share an equal voice.”
Story on Latina Student Results in Full Scholarship
Free-lance journalist Marisella Veiga experienced one of those feel-good moments this year after she wrote a piece for the Washington Post Style section. It began:
“Cintya Renderos has been on a tight schedule.
“The senior honors student at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria juggles a paid internship and volunteer work during the week, and on the weekends takes care of her two brothers, Rene, 10, and Javier, 6. She’s their primary caretaker when her parents are at their weekend jobs.”
Two days later, according to the National Association of Hispanic Publishers, an anonymous donor gave Renderos a full scholarship and room and board for four years at the University of Maryland.
Veiga was awarded the Evelyn La Pierre Award for Journalism this month by Empowered Women International, a nonprofit based in Alexandria, Va., that works with immigrant and refugee women.
Veiga came to the U.S. from Cuba in 1960, and is a freelance writer and journalist, lecturer and translator, according to the Empowered Women’s Web site. “She regularly contributes columns to Hispanic Link News Service and to Hispanic Outlook in Higher Education. Recent articles have appeared in the Washington Post, Scholastic News and Women’s Independent Press. Recently, she was adjunct journalism faculty at Georgetown University.”
Haygood Gets ASCAP Award for Sammy Davis Book
Washington Post writer Wil Haygood, whose biography of Sammy Davis Jr. impressed actor-director Denzel Washington so much he plans to bring it to the screen, has won another award for the book, this time from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, the song-licensing organization known as ASCAP.
Haygood won the Timothy White Award for Outstanding Musical Biography in the pop music field for “In Black and White: The Life of Sammy Davis, Jr.” The award is named for the Billboard Magazine editor who died in 2002 after writing biographies of Bob Marley, Brian Wilson and James Taylor.
