Prosecutor Urges More Protection for Journalists
District Attorney Jim Hardin Jr. of Durham, N.C., announced Tuesday that he would not prosecute Raleigh reporter Demorris Lee, who had been charged with making harassing phone calls in the course of pursuing a story. His arrest drew condemnation from leading journalism organizations as a threat to press freedom.
“Hardin said in a written statement that he would file to have the charges against News & Observer reporter Demorris Lee dismissed, because, ‘The State of North Carolina cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt all the essential elements of this alleged crime’,” as Michael Petrocelli wrote in the Durham Herald-Sun.
“In his statement, Hardin also said a policy is needed that would require law enforcement officials to investigate any allegations made against a journalist in the course of gathering news before issuing an arrest warrant. Durham has a similar policy for complaints against law enforcement officers, emergency services personnel and school system employees, Hardin wrote,” Petrocelli’s story continued.
“I support such a policy and believe that it would provide the appropriate protection of a victim and alleged perpetrator, while still affording us all our rights granted by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution regarding free speech and a free press,” Hardin was quoted as saying.
“Lee was arrested Nov. 14 after Ruth A. Brown, a police property room technician, took out a warrant against him. The reporter was scheduled to appear in court today,” the story continued.
“Lee has said the incident occurred after he left two phone messages for Brown about an article concerning Erick Daniels, who was convicted of robbing Brown three years ago. Daniels, who was 14 when the crime occurred, received at least 10 years in prison, and Brown testified against him.”
Among the groups protesting Lee’s arrest were the National Association of Black Journalists and its local chapter, the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the Society of Professional Journalists, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.
In a note to the NABJ’s listserve today, Lee thanked members for their support and concluded, “But now, let’s get back to what got this thing started: a then 15-year-old may have been wrongly convicted of [a] crime and just turned 18 in prison. I’m still on that story and look for something real soon.”
On Paying Dues and Waiting to See the Windows
Demorris Lee also told his colleagues in the National Association of Black Journalists today, “for all of you who question why you pay dues, give me a call because you never ever know when you will be the reporter who needs the support of the organization.”
The day before, NABJ President Herbert Lowe wrote a column on the NABJ Web site in which he said, “Demorris, NABJ has your back ?- just as we do for every other member doing their job and fighting the fight for fairness, inclusion and opportunities in newsrooms.”
But Lowe also took aim at the recent round of layoffs and other newsroom turmoil, and questioned their impact on diversity.
“In many U.S. newsrooms, we barely even see the windows. Too few of us are sitting at the tables of power, running the news meetings or calling the shots. We have the talent, but we lack the opportunity. We are kept on the outside of the offices with glass walls,” he said.
Rather Leaves; White Male Anchors Still Rule
“Is the era of the white network-television anchorman coming to an end? Probably not,” writes Chris Baker in the Washington Times.
“Dan Rather announced plans yesterday to relinquish his ‘CBS Evening News’ anchor chair in March. By many accounts, the top candidates to replace him are White House reporter John Roberts and ’60 Minutes’ correspondent Scott Pelley.
“. . . more than likely, the evening newscasts on the major broadcast networks will continue to be anchored by white men for the foreseeable future. With few exceptions, it has been this way since John Cameron Swayze and Douglas Edwards anchored the first newscasts in the 1940s.
“This raises some questions.
“Should TV anchors reflect their audience’s makeup? Why are female and minority anchors more common in local television than at the networks? Does an anchor chair still represent the pinnacle of broadcast journalism in the era of the Internet and the 24-hour cable news channels?
“‘If you look at how far society has come in the last 20 years, it’s surprising that all three network newscasts are still anchored by white men. On the other hand, those jobs don’t open up that often,’ said Joe Foote, a University of Oklahoma journalism professor who is completing a 20-year study on women and minorities in network news.
“According to his research, between 1983 and 2002, the typical male correspondent on the network news spent about eight years on the job, compared with about five years for the average female reporter,” Baker continued.
“The less time a woman spends on a newscast, the fewer opportunities she has to be assigned to the big stories. ‘That’s the main thing working against women,’ Mr. Foote said.
“The number of white correspondents on the network news has dropped sharply, and the number of minorities has increased steadily, he said.
“Two women ?- Barbara Walters and Connie Chung -? and Max Robinson, the late black journalist, each took stabs at co-anchoring network news between 1976 and 1995, but none lasted more than a few years,” the story said.
Despite the gloomy forecast for women and journalists of color, some who sent e-mails to TV blogs today threw out such names as Russ Mitchell of CBS and Lester Holt of MSNBC, both black journalists, as potential candidates for the Rather seat.
AAJA’s Mae Cheng Elected Unity President
“Mae Cheng, an editor at Newsday and the outgoing president of the Asian American Journalists Association, has been elected president of the UNITY: Journalists of Color, Inc.,” Unity announces.
“Cheng, assistant city editor for the newspaper?s New York City edition, was selected Nov. 20 by the UNITY board of directors at its Fall meeting held in New York City.
“She succeeds Ernest R. Sotomayor, whose two-year term ends Dec. 31. Sotomayor, Long Island Editor with Newsday.com in Melville, N.Y., . . . did not seek re-election to the UNITY board of directors.”
Others elected were Bryan Monroe of the National Association of Black Journalists, vice president; Javier Aldape of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, treasurer; and Matt Kelley of the Native American Journalists Association, reelected as secretary.
Black Caucus Holds Bush to His Words at Unity
“While addressing a conference for journalists of color this summer, President Bush stated that he ‘support(s) colleges affirmatively taking action to get more minorities in their school,'” reads a statement by Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, D-Md., chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus.
“I challenge the President and the congressional Republican leadership to work closely with the Congressional Black Caucus and our allies to implement a national policy of affirmative educational empowerment.”
Cummings’ reference to Bush’s remarks at the Unity: Journalists of Color convention came in response to a front-page story Monday by Michael Dobbs in the Washington Post noting that a “decline in the number of incoming black students has been recorded at many state universities across the country, from California to Georgia to much of the Midwest.”
500 at Services for Charles W. Cherry Sr.
Five hundred family and friends attended a “home-going” ceremony in Daytona Beach, Fla., Tuesday for Charles W. Cherry Sr., 76, the entrepreneur, civil-rights activist, college professor, city commissioner and media owner who died on Nov. 16 from complications of colon cancer, Mark Harper reported in the Daytona News-Journal.
“The two-hour service at the Mary McLeod Bethune Performing Arts Center started with a standing ovation for the Georgia native and Korean War veteran who moved to Daytona Beach in 1952 and began his career in business and public service,” added Ludmilla Lelis in the Orlando Sentinel.
“Speakers only briefly touched upon the details of his long career, since attendees were given an eight-page edition of the Daytona Times, the newspaper he founded more than 25 years ago, which listed his many accomplishments as a college professor, politician, Realtor, union organizer, bail bondsman and newspaper publisher,” she wrote.
The family-owned Tama Broadcasting is the largest private black-owned media company in Florida.
Bobcats Commercials Suddenly Seem Tasteless
“An advertising campaign for the Charlotte Bobcats,” the team owned by Black Entertainment Television founder Robert Johnson, “could become a casualty of Friday’s brawl in Auburn Hills, Mich.,” the New York Times reported Tuesday. The commercials were scheduled to begin this week.
“The television commercials by Boone/Oakley, an advertising agency in Charlotte, N.C., were produced weeks ago. Created in a slapstick vein, they were to introduce an ardent Bobcats fan, the Ambassador, who appears around Charlotte with cardboard cutouts representing star players on teams the Bobcats will play this season, including Kobe Bryant, Yao Ming and Shaquille O’Neal.
“Under the care of the character, however, the cutouts are plagued by various exaggerated acts of mayhem that render them smashed, wrecked, soaked, buried or ruined. The O’Neal cutout falls into a barbecue grill at a cookout and is incinerated.
“‘In light of this past weekend’s events, the climate has changed and we have an obligation to review what we’ve done,’ Ed Tapscott, president of the Bobcats, said in a telephone interview yesterday.”
Condi Detractor Denounced; Will Imus Be Next?
“NAACP President & CEO Kweisi Mfume denounced critics of Secretary of State nominee Condoleezza Rice who have resorted to the use of racial stereotypes to describe her,” as BlackAmericaWeb and the Associated Press reported on Monday.
And columnist and author Earl Ofari Hutchinson, who is African American, issued a news release calling on station management at WYDT in Madison, Wis., to reprimand shock jock John “Sly” Sylvester for calling Rice “Aunt Jemima.”
Sylvester, his remarks published worldwide, felt the heat. He “is apologizing for calling secretary of state nominee Condoleezza Rice ‘Aunt Jemima.’ But he said he won’t back off his criticism of her, saying she is a ‘black trophy’ of the Bush administration,” as WISC-TV in Madison, Wis., reports.
Right-wing commentators and institutions continue to denounce “liberals” for not coming down hard on those Rice critics, though a growing number, such Mfume, Hutchinson and Warren Bluhm, former managing editor of Wisconsin’s Green Bay Chronicle, are doing so.
Meanwhile, media types continue to indulge talk show host Don Imus, who seems to have Teflon when it comes to racial and ethnic insults.
“A prominent national Islamic civil rights and advocacy group today called for an apology from the MSNBC cable television network over comments on its ‘Imus in the Morning’ program that referred to Palestinians as ‘filthy animals’ and suggested that they all be killed,” reads a Nov. 18 news release from the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
[Added Nov. 25: The Council announced Wednesday that MSNBC had apologized, but there was no indication that the Muslims had help from those who are denouncing the Rice critics.]
Question: Will Imus become a target for condemnation as well?
Weathermen May Have to Know About Weather
“A big change is about to take place in the world of broadcast weathercasting and it makes for an interesting story about those folks whom we all often take for granted,” Al Tompkins writes for the Poynter Institute.
“Starting in January, in order to hold the new American Meteorological Society Certified Broadcast Meteorologist Seal, meteorologists will have to take a test and then agree to undergo ongoing professional training as many other professions require.
“John Morales, meteorologist at Telemundo 51 in Miami, is also the Commissioner on Professional Affairs for AMS. He told me, ‘Many take us for granted. A lot of the general population would be better served by weather anchors and meteorologists who are truly well-educated in our field and continue to gather additional knowledge as the years go by. It is one thing to graduate in 1979 and never look at another meteorology book; it is another to get ongoing education that will serve the viewers. The public will be better served,’ Morales said.”
DeWayne Wickham Moves Institute to N.C. A&T
DeWayne Wickham, USA Today columnist and a former president of the National Association of Black Journalists, is moving his Institute for Advanced Journalism Studies from Delaware State University to North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro, N.C.
Wickham, who is also executive editor of the news content on BlackAmericaWeb.com, will become A&T’s distinguished professor of journalism and mass communications, Chancellor James C. Renick said in a news release issued as university trustees met Nov. 17.
Wickham created the institute “to stem the loss of black journalists to the profession by offering opportunities to enhance skills and involvements with reporting not normally available in newsroom.”
He led a delegation to Cuba under the Institute’s banner, for example, and undertook a project in which journalists examined African descendants in the Americas.
Wickham is planning a symposium that focuses on black White House news correspondents and continuing the Americas project, the news release said.
“The Institute will also put up a website early next year,” Wickham told Journal-isms. “It will contain our publications and information about two new programs we are launching: (1) Center for Pan African Journalism (a semester-long fellowship for black journalists from U.S. and abroad), and (2) Racial Justice Project (which will research and report on racial injustices that are largely unreported or underreported by media organizations).”
Wickham declined to disclose the Institute’s sources of funding, citing the competitive nature of the fund-raising business.
Montgomery, Ala., Paper Allows Blacks to Vent
Alabama’s Montgomery Advertiser gave primarily black West-side residents a chance to air grievances by sponsoring a “town meeting” in the newspaper building.
“The consensus among the more than 125 attendees was that the west side of the Capital City is being abandoned for growth in east Montgomery,” Crystal Bonvillian wrote in the Advertiser.
The meeting was held in the paper’s Freedom Room. Wanda S. Lloyd, a veteran black journalist, was named editor of the paper in June.
Armando Acuna Sacramento Public Editor
Armando Acuna, sports editor of Sacramento Bee and a 31-year veteran of the newspaper industry, was named Monday to be the newspaper’s new public editor, Sam Stanton reports in the paper.
“The position replaces the job of ombudsman at The Bee, which was last held by Tony Marcano, who left recently for an editing job in Florida.
“Acuñ¡¬ 53, said he hopes to bring a new focus to the position, and that the change in title from ombudsman to public editor will allow him to address a broader spectrum of issues involving journalism.”
“Strident” Michelle Malkin Loses Norfolk Outlet
“On daily newspapers’ opinion pages, columnists come and go. But the dumping of an increasingly popular conservative at the Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, Va., got more of a public airing than usual,” Editor & Publisher reports.
“The newspaper’s public editor, Marvin Lake, announced in a column responding to a reader’s complaint about editorial balance at the paper that Michelle Malkin, who had been added to give ‘another voice to the conservatives,’ had been dropped as a columnist because she was ‘too stridently anti-liberal.'”
Malkin is a Filipino-American who has denounced the concept of the Unity convention and defended the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.
?I was really put off by her penchant for name-calling and ad hominem attack. I think we can do much better,? said editorial writer Don Luzzatto in Lake’s column.
Thomas Fleming, 96, Honored as Living Legend
“A dedication ceremony Sunday will rename the library at New College of California, East Bay for a living legend among African Americans: Thomas C. Fleming, dean of California black journalists,” Chauncey Bailey reports in the Oakland Tribune.
The private college decided to honor Fleming because of his “exemplary career as a journalist dedicated to truth, justice and social progress,” said Ali Ar Rasheed, a college administrator and organizer of the event, in the story.
“Although he retired in 1997 after 53 years with The Sun-Reporter, a San Francisco weekly he co-founded in 1944, he still writes a column and editorials for the publication,” Bailey wrote.
Fleming turns 97 on Nov. 29.
Sportswriter George Leaves N.Y. Times for Denver
“Thomas George, the national pro football writer and columnist for The New York Times, is joining The Post as a Sports columnist,” the Denver Post reports.
“For 16 years, George, 44, has chronicled the NFL at The Times, in addition to covering events such as the NCAA men’s and women’s Final Fours, the NBA, Major League Baseball and college football.”
One Native Says Thanks for Having Survived
“You might think that Indians won’t be in a party mood come Turkey Day,” writes Mark Anthony Rolo for the Progressive Media Project, in a column picked up by a number of papers.
“After all, given the historical record of how the founders of this country treated the first people of this land, it does not take much cultural sensitivity to understand why some Indians don’t celebrate Thanksgiving.
“But there are those (myself included) who choose to find something to be thankful about during this season.
“We are still here.”