Commentator Rejects P.R. Society’s Denunciation
The syndicated TV show “America’s Black Forum” and The State, the newspaper in the capital of Armstrong Williams’ home state, South Carolina, have dropped the commentator in light of the disclosure that Williams’ firm accepted $240,000 from the Education Department to promote the No Child Left Behind Act.
And, “in a rare rebuke, Judith T. Phair, the president and chief executive of the Public Relations Society of America for 2005, condemned the decision by Mr. Williams to, as she put it, promote the law ‘without revealing that his comments were paid for by a public relations agency under contract to the government,'” as Stuart Elliott wrote today in the New York Times.
However, Williams told Journal-isms today that his actions had nothing to do with public relations, adding that he did no lobbying. It was advertising, he said, echoing his official statement, which read: “In 2003 Ketchum Communications contacted a small PR firm that I own, Graham Williams Group, to buy ad space on a television show that I own and host. The ad was to promote The Department of Education?s No Child Left Behind plan.”
Williams also said that his efforts to self-syndicate his newspaper column, dropped Friday by Tribune Media Services, are “going well.” His hometown newspapers, the Florence Morning News, a daily, and the weekly Marion Star and Mullins Enterprise, also owned by the Media General chain, agreed to continue the column after Williams called the editor, reporter Kevin Tindall told Journal-isms.
“I was self-syndicated in Marion” in the 1980s, before any syndicate picked it up, Williams told Journal-isms. “I’m a pro at it now.” It was only in the 1990s that his column became syndicated by the Los Angeles Times, now part of Tribune.
Still, criticism rose, with headline writers having fun using such wordplay as “No Pundit Left Behind” and “Leave No Ethics Behind.”
Other conservative pundits were complaining that the scandal’s taint might affect them.
Writing about a Fox News television appearance Sunday with Linda Chavez, The Nation magazine’s David Corn related that, “Prior to going on air, she had complained that ArmstrongGate had caused some people to assume that she and other conservative commentators were also riding this gravy train. Since the story broke on Friday, she said, several people had asked her how much she had received from the Bush administration.”
The Sinclair Broadcast Group, whose television stations planned to air an anti-John Kerry documentary during last fall’s presidential campaign, is conducting an internal inquiry into an appearance Williams made on one of its news programs interviewing Education Secretary Rod Paige, as the Hollywood Reporter wrote.
An editorial in Minnesota’s Duluth News Tribune, where Robin Washington is editorial page editor. said of Williams, “while he’s being contrite, he might also explain why he found it appropriate to broadcast interviews with poet Maya Angelou and Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association, a pair who have little in common other than both Angelou and the NRA are listed as clients of Williams’ public relations firm.”
In response, Williams told Journal-isms that Angelou had not been a client of his since 1992 or 1993 and that the NRA sponsors his television show, “The Right Side.”
The outlets that dropped Williams cited ethical issues.
?Failure to disclose the potential conflict of interest has led to Mr. Williams? dismissal and has impaired his credibility as a commentator expressing his own views,? said Byron Lewis Jr., president and executive producer for “America?s Black Forum” in a statement Tuesday.
?As a respected television program with a 28-year history of presenting news and opinion, maintaining the journalistic integrity of our broadcast is our top priority.?
“I have known Mr. Williams for a decade, and I believe his apology is sincere,” wrote Brad Warthen, editorial page editor of The State in Columbia, S.C., in a signed column Tuesday.
“But in the end, that does not restore his credibility as a disinterested advocate for his views.”
Other commentary:
- Eric Boehlert, Salon.com: No pundit left behind
- Farai Chideya, popandpolitics.com: This Negro for Rent
- George E. Curry, NNPA News Service: Armstrong Williams: No Money Left Behind
- Editorial, Florida Today: Lacking ethics
- Editorial, Miami Herald: Commentator puts new spin on pay per view(s)
- Editorial, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: The Williams affair
- Editorial, San Antonio Express-News: PR contract taints pundit
- Eugene Kane, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Pundit shows his true color: Green
- John Kelso, Cox News Service: Kelso: Bush and his big shots left me behind
- Claude Lewis, Philadelphia Inquirer: Ethical ‘lapse’ a stain on media
- Dale McFeatters, Scripps Howard News Service: Taxpayer-funded propaganda
- Clarence Page, Chicago Tribune: Leave the payola pundits behind
- Andrew J. Rotherham, New York Times: No Pundit Left Behind
- Tom Teepen, Cox Newspapers: Feel like a sucker? You should, and you can thank Bush
- Wonkette.com: No Armstrong Williams Left Behind
News stories:
- George E. Curry, NNPA News Service: Williams? ?Payola? Was Part of a Covert Propaganda Campaign
- Aisha Jefferson, Black Enterprise: Williams Loses Another Contract
- Teresa F. Lindeman, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Link to columnist equals bad PR for Ketchum
CBS Says “Trust Us” on Management Diversity
The photos of the CBS executives that came out of the other big media scandal, the botched “60 Minutes” segment questioning President Bush’s military service, didn’t show much diversity. In fact, none was a person of color, to the relief of many.
However, since CBS has proclaimed its commitment to the concept of diversity, appointing a senior vice president who has that as her job description, and maintaining a Web page in which CEO Leslie Moonves declares, “As broadcasters, we aim to ensure that our national viewing audience is reflected in our programming and our people,” Journal-isms asked CBS how many people of color were in CBS News management.
“We have a policy about not disclosing numbers,” Josie Thomas, the senior vice president of diversity, said today. However, she added, “we’re proud of our numbers.”
Black Journalists Urge Boycott of Boston Tabloid
“Reacting to reports that executives with the Metro newspaper company had made racially crude remarks, several prominent local African-Americans said yesterday The New York Times Co. must change the culture of the company it plans on partnering with,” Mark Jurkowitz reported in the Boston Globe today.
“Times Co. said last week it is buying a 49 percent stake in the free daily tabloid Metro Boston. On Monday, mediachannel.org reported that Metro officials had twice made racially offensive remarks at company events overseas and there were allegations that the company fostered a culture of discrimination.
“Yesterday the Boston Herald — whose publisher Patrick J. Purcell has stated his intention to block the Times Co. deal with Metro on anticompetitive grounds — splashed the story on its front page.
“. . . The Boston Association of Black Journalists, headed by Herald columnist Howard Manly, issued a statement yesterday saying the publicized comments by Metro executives ”should give the New York Times [Co.] a huge red flag about the insensitive culture within its new business partner.” The association recommended a boycott of the Metro. Manly said the statement was written as a collaborative effort by members of the association, whose membership he estimated at 100. (Another local officer of the association, who was surprised by the statement, said the active membership is considerably smaller.)”
According to the original mediachannel.org story, the joke told on one occasion by Steve Nylundh, the global newspaper chain’s leading North America executive, “came in the form of a toast that centered on the length of the sexual organs of black males, whom he referred to as ‘niggers.'”
The Globe story continued: “As the controversy intensified yesterday, Globe publisher Richard Gilman released a statement saying: ‘Of course, the incidents that have been reported are reprehensible, and as we said yesterday, the Times Co. is discussing the allegations with Metro USA’s management. We are committed to fair treatment of all employees based on respect, accountability, and standards of excellence.'”
[Updated Jan. 13: 2 officials who made slurs resign (Boston Globe)]
SNCC’s James Forman Was Inspired by Black Press
James Forman, the executive secretary of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee who died Monday at age 76, had a long relationship with the black press that began when he was seven.
“From the time I was seven years old until I graduated from grammar school, I sold the Chicago Defender — the paper that carried on the tradition of the race and told what was happening to black people throughout the land, especially in the South,” Forman wrote in his 1972 autobiography, “The Making of Black Revolutionaries.”
“More important than the sale of the papers was my reading them and developing a sense of protest, a feeling that we as black people must fight all the way for our rights in this country. Each week the paper would contain the story of a new horror perpetrated against the race. I wanted to do something about these injustices, the lynchings here and beatings there, the discrimination everywhere.”
When Forman went in 1958 to Little Rock, scene of the infamous 1957 school desegregation battle, “Lee Blackwell, managing editor of the Chicago Defender, had given me press credentials and promised to pay for stories filed from Little Rock,” he wrote. Once there, he went to the offices of the Arkansas State Press, co-owned by Daisy Bates, the principal African American figure in the Little Rock crisis.
And during the Freedom Rides, Forman wrote, Blackwell “gave me the call letters of the Defender for direct collect Western Union messages. He saw the news value in the Freedom Riders’ presence and wanted to be kept informed.”
Forman became a full-time activist, but decades later would resume his relationship with newspapers. “Mr. Forman moved to Washington in 1981 and started a newspaper called the Washington Times, which lasted a short while,” Joe Holley wrote in the Washington Post today. “He also founded the Black American News Service.”
Other civil rights leaders also had a relationship with the black press. In 1931, when the NAACP’s Roy Wilkins joined the organization staff, he had been managing editor of the Kansas City Call. And Julian Bond, current NAACP board chair and SNCC’s communications director back in 1960, was managing editor of the Atlanta Inquirer in the early 1960s.
James Forman, former student civil rights pioneer and Defender reporter, dies(Chicago Defender)
Appreciation: Civil Rights’ Tower of Strength (Charles Cobb Jr., WashingtonPost)
Anglo-to-Hispanic Name-Change Game, Con’t
“What’s in a Nombre?” was the headline on a Newsweek article by Alan Zarembo in 2001. “With one in eight Americans Hispanic, TV reporters are changing their names to advance their careers.”
The latest to be so accused is Jim Castillo, formerly Jim Phillips, of New York’s WNYW-TV.
The NewsBlues TV insider Web site last week anointed Castillo a “looker,” then went on to disclose what it called his “dirty little secret.”
Castillo did not return calls from Journal-isms seeking comment, but NewsBlues followed up this week, writing that, “One of Castillo’s friends pointed us to a Sept.’03 article in Hispanic Times Magazine in which he claims to be an eclectic ‘mix of Spanish, Irish and American Indian-Cherokee and Dakota.’ They quote Castillo as saying, ‘I’m all American.’ In fact, we heard from his agent who claims Castillo also has some German blood.
“‘While Jim did change his name from Phillips to Castillo nearly 10 years ago,’ wrote agent Mark Pasetsky, ‘it is ridiculous to claim that one can succeed in the industry by simply changing his name,'” the item continued.
Philly’s Stephen A. Smith Gets ESPN Show
“Inquirer sports columnist Stephen A. Smith will get his own ‘opinion/personality’ television show, Quite Frankly, on ESPN2 at 6:30 p.m. weekdays, ESPN executive vice president Mark Shapiro announced yesterday at the Television Critics Association winter press tour in Los Angeles,” the Philadelphia Inquirer reported today.
“The show will start in June and originate in New York. Shapiro said Smith would appear before a live audience in a combination Bill O’Reilly–Phil Donahue format featuring hot-seat guests and one-issue sports commentary.” Smith will continue as an Inquirer columnist.
“Smith, 37, started at ESPN in October 2003 and is the network’s featured NBA analyst/insider for its NBA Shootaround show and has been a guest host on Pardon The Interruption,” the story continued.
South Asians Mobilize Against Philly Jocks
“Star and Bucwild, the hosts of a popular morning radio show in the United States, were suspended by their station for making an abusive and threatening call to a call centre employee in India,” Arun Venugopal reported from New York for the Indian Web site rediff.com.
“Power 99 FM in Philadelphia told rediff.com that it suspended the duo for a day, January 12, after receiving an unprecedented number of protest emails,” the story continued.
“The live segment occurred on December 15, 2004, when Star, whose real name is Troi Torain, made a call to inquire about a product known as Quick Beads.
“The call was handled by an Indian call centre employee who identified herself as Steena.
“Midway through the call, Star became abusive, calling Steena a ‘bitch’ and a ‘rat-eater’ before threatening to choke her. (For a complete transcript, visit http://www.edrants.com/reluctant/001697.html or hear the entire segment here: http://www.sideangleside.com/cgi-bin/redirect.cgi?dest=http://www.sideangleside.com/sas/media/power99_call_to_india.mp3)”
“There was little immediate fallout.
“It was only last week, after a station employee posted the segment on the station’s Web site, that listeners began to mobilise against the station.
“A number of blogs, including TurbanHead, DesiBlog and SepiaMutiny followed the story, as did members of the list serve for the South Asian Women’s Creative Collective, and posted contact information for the radio station’s personnel.”
The listenership of the Clear Channel-owned station is African American, Daniel Rubin noted in the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Fangs Sue Over Sale of S.F. Examiner
“The Fang family is suing P. Scott McKibben, the newspaper executive who helped them find a buyer for the San Francisco Examiner, and Denver billionaire Philip Anschutz, who purchased the Examiner and other assets last February, saying the pair defrauded the Fangs out of $11 million in the sale,” Suzanne Herel wrote in today’s San Francisco Chronicle.
“The lawsuit, filed in November in San Mateo County Superior Court, is in response to a lawsuit filed against the Fangs by McKibben shortly after the sale. In his suit, McKibben contends the Fangs owe him $1.2 million in commission for brokering the deal.”
Adam Powell to Explore “Integrated Media” at USC
“Adam Clayton Powell III, a longtime champion of new media who helped start and then ran Internet and technology programs for the Freedom Forum (formerly the Gannett Foundation) for seven years, will be the new director of the Integrated Media Systems Center (IMSC), in the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. The appointment is effective immediately,” according to a news release today from the University of Southern California.
“Building on the laboratories’ groundbreaking research in Internet multimedia communication involving immersive sights, sounds and touch, IMSC will pursue applications, prototypes and demonstration projects with partners in the U.S. and in other countries. Subject areas will include information, K-12 education, information design, and arts and culture, in association with museums, performance venues and a full range of arts institutions,” Powell said in a note to the National Association of Black Journalists today.
“IMSC will also work more closely than ever with other USC schools, including the Annenberg School for Communication and the Thornton School of Music. And video game technology, particularly education applications, will also be a major area of expanded activity.”
Howard University announced as 2003 began that Powell was stepping down as general manager of Howard’s WHUT-TV after only eight months. Powell was then appointed a visiting professor at the Annenberg school, asked to play a leading role in its Local Broadcast News Initiative, researching new ways that broadcast and other news media can increase the coverage of local communities.
Stories, Opinion Pieces Call Attention to Africa
For those who have wondered aloud about how Africa is faring amid the tsunami disaster, there are these stories and opinions:
- Africa — out of sight, out of mind (Dan Simpson column, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)
- Federal tsunami aid hits $425-million . . . as cash woes hurt African AIDS fight (Stephanie Nolen, Toronto Star)
- Haphazard Charity (Editorial, Washington Post)
- Tsunami-struck Somalia fears lack of attention (Valerie M. Russ, Philadelphia Daily News)
- Signe Wilkinson cartoon (Washington Post Writers Group)
