Time Inc. to Buy Out Essence (Jan. 4)
Shirley Chisholm’s Passing Recalls a Robust Era
You won’t find mention of Shirley Chisholm’s presidential bid in “The Boys on the Bus,” Timothy Crouse’s classic account of the 1972 campaign, but its significance as the first such effort by a woman — and a black woman — was nonetheless historic.
Consider the times: Documentary film maker Shola Lynch recalled for Journal-isms that two white American students decided to follow Chisholm around with cameras during the campaign, their curiosity piqued after seeing the era’s pre-eminent television anchor, Walter Cronkite of CBS, report that another politician had cast her “hat — er, bonnet” into the ring.
The capital’s Gridiron Club, where politicians and journalists meet and poke fun at each other at a storied annual dinner, was then an all-male group of 50 Washington bureau chiefs and editors.
Women had had enough of being excluded, and as Kay Mills wrote in “A Place in the News,” her history of women in the newspaper business, picketed in evening dresses. The outspoken Chisholm sent the club a telegram in 1973 announcing, “Guess who’s not coming to dinner?” Eventually, the club integrated.
Chisholm died Saturday night at age 80 after a series of strokes, as the New York Times reported. She was the first black woman to serve in Congress, having been elected from Brooklyn, N.Y., in 1968, as well as the first woman to seek the Democratic presidential nomination. She had shied from the spotlight in recent years, believing it was time for others to come forward.
Her passing recalls a time when the civil rights movement was taking on partisan politics, with the founding of the Congressional Black Caucus in 1969, a National Black Political Convention in Gary, Ind., in 1972, and several black politicians considering presidential bids that same year — all of this whetting the appetite of black journalists.
“Certainly, 1972 was the first time so many of us covered campaigns,” Paul Delaney, then a reporter in the New York Times Washington Bureau, recalled. “I don’t think you can credit Shirley; you can say the number of black pols out there and the number of black meetings at the time helped the few of us interested in black politics.”
He recalled quoting Julian Bond, then in the Georgia Legislature and now board chair of the NAACP, as saying: “There was a struggle over who was to be the broker for blacks. Mrs. Chisholm wanted to eliminate Walter Fauntroy and others and substitute herself. Some leaders wanted to eliminate her, and Imamu Baraka,” the activist writer, “wanted to eliminate all of them.”
“The beat went on and some things never change,” Delaney continued.
At the Washington Post, too, it was a story black reporters wanted told. “Why has there been no ongoing in-house coverage — only wire service and stringer coverage — of the activities in national black affairs since August 1971, when Robert C. Maynard left?” nine black metro reporters wrote to Executive Editor Ben Bradlee. “Why was a white reporter assigned to cover the Chisholm campaign after two black reporters suggested coverage and volunteered for the assignment?” The questions eventually led to a discrimination complaint before the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
The story of the Chisholm campaign is told in her own out-of-print book, “The Good Fight,” from 1973, but also by Lynch, now 35 but a child at the time, in “Chisholm ’72: Unbought and Unbossed.” The documentary airs on PBS on Feb. 7 and after that is to be available on DVD.
Tsumani Coverage Prompts Mea Culpa, Reflections
The editor of the Indianapolis Star admitted the paper erred in giving greater play to the Indianapolis Colts game instead of the tsunami tragedy Dec. 26, and others acknowledged that for readers, a local angle always makes foreign news more palatable. Some writers maintained again that the images in the Western media would not have been so graphic had the victims looked like the readers, but dissenters said it was those images that moved Westerners to action. Some commentary:
- Anderson Cooper, CNN anchor, quoted on the Digital Spy Web site:
“Yes, these images are terrible to look at, but look at them we should, because these bodies, these people are us. Death has defaced them. The water has done its worst, but in life they were like you or me, teachers and shopkeepers, students and parents, bakers and doctors. People struggling, as we all struggle.”
- Jon Friedman, MarketWatch.com:
“On ‘Meet the Press,’ Powell had insisted: ‘We have nothing to be embarrassed about,'” referring to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell.
“Powell was talking about the administration’s generosity, but he didn’t quite convince me. Happily, this time, the U.S. media community could make the same statement — and really mean it.”
- Daniel Henninger, deputy editor, Wall Street Journal editorial page:
“In a world of extreme images, what happens when we are asked to go to the wells of empathy so often? Two weeks ago, Scott Peterson; last week, the Mosul mess-hall bombing; this week, South Asia wiped out. Time was, we’d watch the scenes coming out of Asia ‘in horror.’ Now, I think, we mostly just watch.”
- Eugene Kane, columnist, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
“Even with the pictures, it’s still hard to comprehend. But without those images, I have a feeling most of us — and most of the nations who have responded with hundreds of millions of dollars in aid for victims — would never have been moved to swift action.
“If horrific images are necessary to move the world, the least we can do is acknowledge that each death was an individual life — no matter how many died in one day, or in what corner of the world.”
- David McCumber, managing editor, Seattle Post-Intelligencer:
“In order to fully inform, must we occasionally disturb? I believe so. While we are always cognizant of readers’ sensibilities as we weigh such decisions, news photos carry their own truth — they document, verify, give us the information we need to judge an event. That information is not always pleasant.”
- Manning Pynn, public editor, Orlando Sentinel:
“I wonder . . . if treating that tragedy as less consequential than an election or series of bad storms might have misled readers. This is a cataclysmic event, and reporting it truthfully likely will upset us all.
“When the history of the world is updated, both the election and the hurricanes will warrant mention. The South Asia tsunamis belong on another scale.”
- Dennis Ryerson, editor, Indianapolis Star:
“Monday’s Star . . . provided more Page-One space to Colts quarterback Peyton Manning’s NFL touchdown pass record than it did to Sunday’s epic disaster in Asia. . . . Looking back on it, I was wrong.”
- Dr. Michael Saba, Arab News (Jordan):
“The American media showed devastating pictures of destroyed cities and villages in Asia and videos of scores of unidentified dead bodies floating in the water. However, the stories about individuals lost in the tragedy were overwhelmingly about Americans and other Westerners. Profiles of fair-skinned victims were shown over and over again yet the darker skinned victims were just part of the mass deaths. Very few, if any, stories emerged about Asian individuals who died or suffered as a result of the disaster while the story of the Western super model who survived the flood was repeated many times. We were not exposed to the ‘humanization’ of the Asian victims.”
- Jeremy Seabrook, author of “Consuming Cultures: Globalisation and Local Life,” in the Guardian, London:
“One of the most poignant sights of the past few days was that of westerners overcome with gratitude that they had been helped by the grace and mercy of those who had lost everything, but still regarded them as guests. When these same people appear in the west, they become the interloper, the unwanted migrant, the asylum seeker, who should go back to where they belong. A globalisation that permits the wealthy to pass effortlessly through borders confines the poor to eroded subsistence, overfished waters and an impoverishment that seems to have no end. People rarely say that poor countries are swamped by visitors, even though their money power pre-empts the best produce, the clean water and amenities unknown to the indigenous population.”
- Noel Whelan, Irish Examiner (Ireland):
“In a tragically ironic sense, south-east Asia may be fortunate that it suffered this disaster in the one week of the year when most of the western world’s domestic newsmakers are on holidays. For the next few days at least the need for an international response to the devastation in south-east Asia will dominate our headlines.
“However, the sad reality is that what is disturbingly described as ‘disaster fatigue’ will soon kick in. Our news bulletins will be dominated instead by more proximate and localised concerns. The reality of the unequal world which humankind has created is that we in the west will move on and south-east Asia’s poor will be left to deal with the long-term problems caused by this disaster on their own.”
Reporting tips, resources on tsunami disaster (South Asian Journalists Association)
Somalia lacks “indigenous capacity to assess the damage” caused by tsunami (U.N. Integrated Regional Information Networks)
Indonesian Paper Prints, but 60% of Staff Missing
“The tsunami ripped through the offices of Aceh’s only newspaper with awesome force, picking up its two huge printing presses like toys and hurling them into the parking lot. The human toll was more terrible: 100 staff are feared dead,” began a dispatch today from Banda Aceh, Indonesia, by Chris Brummitt of the Associated Press.
“But just six days later, Serambi Indonesia — which has survived threats from both the government and separatist rebels for its hard-hitting coverage of this war-torn corner of Indonesia — was back in circulation.
” . . . ‘We were badly hit, but the spirit of our journalists got this edition out,’ said Ismail Syah, the paper’s Lhokseumawe bureau chief. ‘We need to give information to the people and allow our employees to get in touch with us.’
“. . . More than a week after the tsunami hit, it is still not clear exactly how many Serambi employees and journalists were killed. Tens of thousands of people are missing across the island, and officials have been filling mass graves with unidentified bodies to clear the streets of the dead.
“Syah said some 60 percent of the paper’s 270 staff remain unaccounted for. Editors are hopeful that many of them are still alive and just haven’t been able to check in with the paper. Phone lines are still down in many parts of the province.
“But Syah estimated the final death toll at the paper would be around 100.”
Chinese-American Journo Fears Identity Mix-Up
“The parents of a Chinese-American banker have all but given up hope of finding her alive after a giant wave flattened her beach hut on Thailand’s Phi Phi island,” Mike Corder reported from Bangkok, Thailand, for the Associated Press.
“Now, they just want their 25-year-old daughter Hannah Shi’s body back.
“‘We have been through many hospitals, community centers, we believe she probably passed away,’ Shi’s father Rong Shi, a New York journalist, said Saturday in a telephone interview from Phuket.
“But Shi said he fears his daughter’s Asian appearance may mean she is consigned to a grave with Thai victims of the disaster instead of being stored in refrigerated containers set aside for foreign tourists — making the task of tracking down her remains even more difficult.”
Hearing on Alberto Gonzales Nomination Thursday
The nomination of Alberto Gonzales to be attorney general comes before the Senate Judiciary Committee at 10 a.m. Thursday, with journalist groups expressing reservations but the National Association of Hispanic Publishers declaring support.
In a November statement, the publishers group, which says it represents 200 publications, declared its support for the nomination, calling him “a role model for the Latino community and a beacon of hope for the future of the country.” Gonzales would be the first Hispanic to hold the post, succeeding John Ashcroft.
The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press researched Gonzales’ performance as a judge on the Texas Supreme Court from January 1999 to December 2000 and as White House counsel since January 2001.
“Gonzales’ role as White House counsel reveals a penchant for strictly regulating access to government and executive-branch information, while his term on the Texas high court indicates a recognition of the First Amendment interests in newsgathering and reporting,” the committee reported.
Gonzales spoke in 2002 before the Associated Press Managing Editors conference in Baltimore, as Joe Strupp wrote. in Editor & Publisher. He “made it clear that the administration would not bend over backward to give journalists government information,” Strupp noted.
“You have a right to know what is going on in government,” Gonzales said at the time. “But we also believe such rights are not absolute.”
Meanwhile, A.S. Medellin, writing on the Web site of the organization La Raza Unida, came out in opposition:
“As Chicanos & Latinos, we must be cautious in supporting Latinos on the basis of being, well, Latino. Skin color and ethnicity only go so far,” he wrote.
“We demand policies that benefit us and the defense of our civil and human rights as Americans, no matter the color of the elected official that supports us. Why is it that Latino organizations so readily support Al Gonzales, who wholeheartedly supported the mistreatment and torture of jailed combatants from the Bush War? Why is it that Latino organizations are so ready to defend Al Gonzales, who defended the Bush doctrine of not allowing jailed combatants access to an attorney? And why is it that Latino organizations are so ready to support the nomination of a conservative who does not support pro-Latino policies, such as affirmative action, equal educational opportunities, and health care for all? The last thing Latinos need is a Bush Yes Man that ignores the needs of his own people,” Medellin continued.
Editor Defends “Boondocks” Christmas Strip
“It all started with the Dec. 18 comic strip, when the Uncle Ruckus character becomes a black Santa and immediately says to young Jazmine, ‘Your hair is nappier than a wolf’s butt in a windstorm!'” Mike Needs, public editor at Ohio’s Akron Beacon Journal, wrote Sunday.
“Later, the nasty and cynical Ruckus tells young Huey and Caesar to `just do drive-bys on each other and get it over with.’ At one point, Ruckus says, `Santa hates black people — can’t say I blame ‘im.’
“In the Christmas Day strip, Ruckus asks Huey and Caesar, `So what do you Negro hooligans want for Christmas? Rims? Gold Front? Huh?’
“As you would expect, readers reacted.”
However, Needs went on, “Beacon Journal editors were quick to defend publishing The Boondocks, without endorsing or advocating the language or approach used in it.”
“While some people have found McGruder’s tone and approach offensive during the past couple days,” said Editor Debra Adams Simmons, a graduate of the Maynard Institute’s management program,“he actually represents a diverse perspective not always found in mainstream newspapers.
“McGruder is a young African-American artist who attempts to provoke thought, improve racial discourse, expose and exploit stereotypes.”
Rights Expire for Airing “Eyes on the Prize”
“Eyes on the Prize, the landmark documentary on the civil rights movement, is no longer broadcast or sold new in the United States. It’s illegal,” Katie Dean reported on wired.com just before Christmas.
“The 14-part series highlights key events in black Americans’ struggle for equality and is considered an essential resource by educators and historians, but the filmmakers no longer have clearance rights to much of the archival footage used in the documentary. It cannot be rebroadcast on PBS (where it originally aired) or any other channels, and cannot be released on DVD until the rights are cleared again and paid for.
“‘It’s a scenario from hell,’ said Jon Else, series producer and cinematographer for Eyes on the Prize, and now director of the documentary program at the University of California at Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. ‘(Licensing agreements) are short because it’s all we can afford. The funding for documentaries in this country (is) abysmal.'”
“Blue States/Red States” Deemed Most Overused
“Blue states/red states,” “flip flop/flip flopper/flip flopping” and “battleground state” topped the 30th annual list of words that should be banished for for “mis-use, over-use and general uselessness,” compiled by Lake Superior State University.
“LSSU has been compiling the list since 1976, choosing from nominations sent from around the world,” a news release notes.
“This year, words and phrases were pulled from more than 2,000 nominations.” Most were sent through the school’s Web site: www.lssu.edu/banished.