Inauguration Coverage Called “Submissive”
“President Bush was sworn in for his second term in an event covered by some broadcasters like an American version of a royal coronation. Reporters covering the event spoke on television with hyperbole and reverence,” reported Claudia Parsons of Reuters.
“Even for a historic day that has always been more about sentiment than scrutiny,” added Alessandra Stanley in the New York Times, “the network anchors were as submissive as the Republicans were dominant.”
Bryan Keefer, assistant managing editor of the Columbia Journalism Review, said the coverage was similar across the board. “Everybody wants to be respectful of the office and the ceremony and that leads people to dumb down the analysis,” he said in the Reuters report.
It was the five Pacifica Radio stations that emphasized the protests and the naysayers.
Among “Democracy, Now!” headlines for Thursday:
“Corporate America Pours in Millions to Fund President Bush’s Second Inauguration”
“Energy Secretary Nominee Calls for New Generation of Power Plants and Drilling in Alaskan Arctic”
“Lockdown in DC: Unprecedented Security For Bush Inauguration and Protests”
“Historian Howard Zinn: “Bush Represents Everything That Martin Luther King Opposed”
Today’s included:
“Bush Praises Liberty But Not Human Rights”
“Over 10,000 Protest Inauguration”
“Cheney Surprised By Slow Recovery in Iraq.”
Back on broadcast television, Stanley said in the New York Times, “Anchors and commentators were quick to warn that the few protests that rang out during the ceremony — and a snowball that hit the vice president’s car during the motorcade — should not be overemphasized. But they were slow to explain how any demonstrators — or ‘bohemian-type people,’ as reporter Molly Henneberg of Fox News put it — managed to get so close to the president under what the networks described as the tightest security in memory.”
BlackAmericaWeb.com posted a story headlined, “Blacks Deem Bush’s Inauguration Speech ‘Propaganda’,” but only three people were quoted.
Michael Powell Says He’s Leaving FCC in March
“Michael K. Powell, who has overseen the Federal Communications Commission during a period that witnessed significant deregulation at a time of the convergence of telephones, televisions and high speed internet services, announced today that he would be stepping down from the agency in two months,” Stephen Labaton reports today on the New York Times Web site.
“Administration officials and industry executives said that two leading contenders had emerged to succeed Mr. Powell.
“One is Kevin J. Martin, a Republican commissioner and former White House official who several times foiled Mr. Powell’s attempts to deregulate broadcasters and telephone companies. The other is Becky A. Klein, a former Texas regulator appointed in the 1990’s by the state’s then-governor, George W. Bush. She lost a congressional bid two months ago after her campaign received a huge amount of financial support from executives at telecommunications companies who expected she would be a top contender for the F.C.C. job.”
“Powell led the Republican-dominated FCC in easing decades-old rules governing ownership of newspapers and television and radio stations. The commission approved changes in 2003 that allow individual companies to own TV stations reaching nearly half the nation’s viewers and combinations of newspapers and broadcast outlets in the same community,” the Associated Press said.
The National Association of Hispanic Journalists, Unity: Journalists of Color and the National Association of Black Journalists unsuccessfully urged the commission to delay action on the media ownership rules.
“Major media companies said the changes were needed because the old regulations hindered their ability to grow and compete in a market altered by cable television, satellite broadcasting and the Internet,” the AP story continued.
“But lawmakers from both parties and a broad range of groups criticized the changes, saying the FCC regulations give large media companies too much control over what people see, hear and read.”
Co-Anchor Format Could Mean Diversity Opening
“Don’t think of this as a racial diatribe. I swear it’s not,” wrote columnist Lawrence Aaron Wednesday in The Record of Hackensack, N.J. “In high-stakes network news anchor prospecting, what goes unmentioned is that not one single African-American — male or female — is in the running.
“I’d like to see Lester Holt of NBC and Ed Gordon, formerly of BET, get a shot at the soon-to-be-vacant CBS anchor chair. Both men, 44, are the right age with the right level of experience and plenty of room to grow. Another good African-American candidate is CBS’ own correspondent, Byron Pitts.
“With all three broadcast networks in the midst of trying to maximize ratings as top anchors shuffle, the names of Katie Couric and Diane Sawyer have been floated as female front-runners for the [Dan] Rather job. It has been cast as a chance for gender upward mobility. Even fans of Jane Pauley, 54, speculated about her chances.
” . . . But no one seems to be concerned about the dearth of African-American, Latino and Asian candidates.”
CBS chairman Leslie Moonves told reporters on Tuesday he was planning to introduce significant changes to the format of the “CBS Evening News” when Rather departs as anchor in March.
“Mr. Moonves said the moves were likely to include a shift toward multiple anchors and away from what he called the “voice of God, single anchor” format that has been used throughout most of the history of network television news,” as the New York Times reported.
Such a move might provide an opening for a journalist of color. ABC featured Frank Reynolds, Max Robinson and Peter Jennings as the anchors of “World News Tonight” from 1978 to 1983. Robinson’s stint was the last time an African American was a regular anchor on one of the broadcast networks’ weeknight evening news programs. Connie Chung served briefly as Rather’s co-anchor on CBS, from 1993 to 1995.
Vegas Staffers Said to Have Planned Walkout
“Black staffers were organizing a walkout at KTNV-TV, Channel 13 when it appeared weatherman Rob Blair might avoid discipline, according to sources,” Norm Clarke wrote Thursday in the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
“Several nonblack staffers agreed to join the walkout over concern that Blair was getting special treatment, insiders said.
“Blair was dismissed on Sunday for referring to ‘Martin Luther Coon King Jr. Day’ during a Saturday morning forecast that, it turns out, was pretaped and went unedited by Blair and others in the control room.
“Twenty minutes later, Blair made matters worse during an apology when he said, ‘Apparently I accidentally said Martin Luther Kong Jr., which I apologize about — slip of the tongue.'”
“Frustration grew when Blair was back on the job Sunday morning and News Director Craig Hume was ‘kind of rallying support’ to keep Blair from being fired. “Many staffers were upset that Hume and Blair, a recent Hume hire, appeared to be too close,” Clarke wrote.
Jim Thomas, vice president of marketing and programming for the Journal Broadcast Group, which owns the Las Vegas station, has been investigating how the taped broadcast made it on the air without being redone. He told Journal-isms today he had relocated from Milwaukee to Las Vegas.
While Blair’s agent has denied any racist intent and said Blair was being unfairly punished, a Chicago disc jockey who was fired for an offensive joke has admitted he was wrong.
On Jan. 11, “Java Joel” Murphy told a joke on the air about adopting “three black kids” and “taking them to the zoo to see where they came from,” as Robert Feder reported in the Chicago Sun-Times.
“Were you surprised by the reaction of your bosses?” Feder asked Murphy, who was fired from WKSC-FM.
“Not at all,” he replied. “I was surprised that it only took a few phone calls to get me fired. I think they wanted to do damage control before any damage was done. In this day and age, I can’t say I blame them.”
Holding U.S. Reps Accountable on Social Security
A year and a half ago, we mentioned a Web site by a former legislative director of the Congressional Black Caucus that aims to provide information on whether individual members of Congress “are being responsive to their least affluent and minority constituents.”
That Web site, by Ken Colburn, is still going strong, and has just posted information on what might be the hot domestic issue in Congress this year: Social Security.
“Techpolitics has published a table showing number and percentage of Social Security recipients for individual congressional districts,” he told Journal-isms. “The figures show that current Social Security recipients are a potent political force in the districts of many Representatives. Because they have seen the program’s benefits, the current recipients are likely to oppose the Bush Administration’s plans to replace it with a stock market-based program.
“The table provides a basis for reporters to raise the issue of whether individual Representatives are being responsive to their constituents on the critical Social Security issue.
“For example, Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite [R-Fla.] represents a district in which roughly 47 percent of her constituents of voting age receive Social Security checks. Her district is about 5 percent African American and 12 percent minority based on the 2000 census. The percentage of African American constituents by congressional district is at: http://www.techpolitics.org/congress/fh5.php (108th Congress).
Public Editor Tackles Victims’ Pasts, Gary Webb
How relevant are the criminal records of crime victims?
Public Editor Don Wycliff of the Chicago Tribune wrote this week about two men, “killed in the hail of gunfire loosed by a man disgruntled at not being allowed into [a]popular nightspot. By all accounts, neither man did anything to merit being slain. And yet the Tribune’s story about the killings included detailed descriptions of the criminal record of each.”
“. . . ‘These victims were trying to earn an honest living and you guys, like the media always does, framed their fate to have something to do with their past,’ Russ Hanes of Lisle said in an e-mail to nine of the staffers who worked on the story. ‘Reporters have historically framed “all” black people to be criminals, sexual deviants and all other kinds of social degenerates,'” Wycliff continued.
But Wycliff, who is African American, said he ultimately would have made the same call as the editors.
“I look at this kind of question from the other end of the telescope and ask whether I can think of a good reason not to tell the readers about this part of the subject’s permanent record. Absent a compelling reason, I think it is our obligation to publish the information and let readers fit it into an overall picture of the person’s life,” he wrote.
In a column two weeks ago, Wycliff wrote ago that, “It has been almost a month since he died and I haven’t been able to get Gary Webb out of my mind,” referring to the former San Jose Mercury News reporter who linked the CIA to the Nicaraguan contras and the cocaine trade in inner cities. Webb committed suicide last month.
“I have a confession to make: I still think Gary Webb had it mostly right,” the public editor wrote.
“I think he got the treatment that always comes to those who dare question aloud the bona fides of the establishment: First he got misrepresented — his suggestion that the CIA tolerated the contras’ cocaine trading became an allegation that the agency itself was involved in the drug trade. Then he was ridiculed as a conspiracy-monger — joked one commentator, Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post, ‘Oliver Stone, check your voice mail.’ In the end, Webb was rendered untouchable.”
“Broadcast News” Moment for ABC’s Pierre Thomas
“Facing deadline for a piece about inaugural security, ABC correspondent Pierre Thomas got stuck in gridlock Tuesday night, so he jumped from the car and raced, tape in hand, toward the network’s downtown studio,” Richard Leiby wrote Thursday in the Washington Post’s “Reliable Sources” column.
“On the way, he tripped and broke his left wrist, but saved the tape. ‘Of course my wrist gave and the concrete didn’t,’ he told us from home yesterday. Thomas quickly got up and made it another two blocks — in time to make deadline. ‘It’s very “Broadcast News,” ‘ he says. After airing the piece, he went to the emergency room.”
Another Gumbel Joins the Airwaves
Elton Gumbel joined WCTV-TV in Tallahassee, Fla., last month as a sports anchor/reporter. “He is a graduate of Florida A&M and previously worked at Metro Sports for Time Warner Cable in Kansas City,” according to his station bio.
“. . . Elton is making his own mark in television following in the famous footsteps of other members of his family, Bryant and Greg Gumbel,” it says.
Shaunie O’Neal — Shaq’s Wife — Hired in Fla.
“The wife of basketball superstar Shaquille O’Neal has been hired by WFOR and WBFS Miami-Ft. Lauderdale. Shaunie O’Neal will work as an entertainment and lifestyle reporter for the Viacom-owned duopoly,” according to Joel Myer’s blog on the Broadcasting & Cable Web site.
“‘She possesses an obvious rapport with the biggest stars and celebrities,’ noted WFOR Vice President of News Shannon High- Bassalik.
“Though her connection to the Miami Heat’s franchise player may have helped her with the gig, Shaunie’s no slouch. She’s done tours with The Insider, Fox Sports’ The Best Damn Sports Show Period and Access Hollywood. Oh, and Shaunie was also on Lakers Living Room, a Fox Sports West show targeting female fans of her husband’s former team.”
Journalists Have Say on MLK Day
In connection with Martin Luther King Jr. celebrations this week:
- Lerone Bennett, executive editor of Ebony magazine since 1987, wondered aloud at Detroit’s Wayne State University “whether African Americans as a whole fully appreciate the seriousness of the times, warning that the black intellectual tradition is being threatened in America like no other time in history because of the ‘great black depression and a white plague of drugs that is reminiscent of black slavery.’? according to Kim Kendrick, writing in the campus newspaper the South End.
“To further add to this hurdle, Bennett said blacks are also being threatened from within by the ?new minstrels? he cautioned, who glorify drugs, materialism, ‘pimpism’ and misogyny -? a hatred of women ? by referring to black women as ‘bitches and hoes,’? Kendrick reported.
- Columnist Wil LaVeist, writing in the Daily Press of Newport News, Va., declared that, “When I hear or read the phrase ‘slain civil rights leader,’ I know exactly to whom it’s referring. That bothers me. It’s even more annoying this time of year because I’m going to see and hear it over and over.
“I did a Google search to test how much the phrase is linked with the name. More than 13,000 hyperlinks were returned. . . . King was so much more than a murder victim who died for a limited cause. . . . King was a human rights advocate.”
- Columnist Brian Lewis in the Springfield (Mo.) News-Leader also put Google to work: “A Google search on ‘Martin Luther King’ and ‘I have a dream’ yields thousands of Web pages. A search for a more complex and challenging King quote ? ‘I don’t want to be integrated out of power’ -? found two Web pages,” he wrote.
- Something the news outlets might not have mentioned: Monday wasn’t only a holiday for Martin Luther King. In Mississippi, at least, it was officially a “day for the observance of the birthdays of Robert E. Lee and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.”
Ethnic Press Said to Reach Different Audience
“A pair of studies on the readers of ethnically targeted newspapers affirms what many in the field have long claimed — mainstream newspapers are failing to reach this audience,” Michael Shields reported Wednesday for Media Post.
“Dual studies conducted by Circulation Verification Council on both the Hispanic and African American newspaper markets appear to bear out this contention. According to a survey conducted among 15,000 readers of 110 African American community newspapers across the United States, 66 percent of readers cite their African American newspaper as their primary or only source for local news and community event information. In addition, only 12 percent of these readers subscribe to a daily newspaper.
“Similarly, among 15,000 readers of 77 Hispanic community newspapers nationwide, 66 percent of readers cite their Hispanic newspaper as their primary or only source for local news and community event information, and only 14 percent subscribe to a daily newspaper.”
The studies were conducted by Gemstone Communications Inc. and its subsidiary Ethnic Print Media Group, which represents over 550 Hispanic- and African American-oriented newspapers to advertisers.
Pitch for Black Papers Seems Like “Shakedown”
“Pay Up, Honky: Black newspapers find that crying racism can be good for business,” was the headline over a piece in the alternative Cleveland Scene by Kevin Hoffman this month.
“‘Black people, wake up!’ shouts the ad running in local black newspapers,” the piece begins. “‘Do not spend your money with Kohl’s Department Stores or T-Mobile Wireless . . . Help us prove their racist stereotypes wrong.’
“From the hyperbolic tone, you’d think the companies had installed whites-only drinking fountains. But the outrage stems from something a bit more pedestrian. Black newspapers are crying discrimination because the two companies don’t spend enough money with . . . black newspapers.
“City News and the Akron Reporter are running the ad as part of a nationwide effort organized by Les Kimber, whose California marketing agency sells advertising for black papers. ‘Essentially, a group of publishers have decided to use the boycott as a marketing tool in order to eliminate what we consider economic discrimination against black newspapers,’ Kimber says.
“. . . his civil rights struggle looks suspiciously like a shakedown,” Hoffman concludes.
“To Kimber, it’s all about the color of a paper’s owner, not who actually reads it. He considers The Plain Dealer a white paper, though it reaches more than 193,000 black readers, according to the Media Audit, a national research firm. Though City News markets directly to blacks, its readership is only 47,300.”
Archives of 200 Black Papers to Be Digitized
“A venture between a leading media placement firm and a content management application developer is embarking on a project to digitize reams of back issues from more than 200 black newspapers throughout the United States,” according to the publication Newspapers & Technology.
“The project, backed by New York-based Amalgamated Publishers Inc. and Bangalore, India-based Ninestars Information Technology Ltd., has already begun to digitize the pages of two papers, the Chicago Crusader and the Gary (Ind.) Crusader.
“Ultimately, the companies hope to create a fully searchable Internet database, available to anyone who wants to research black history, said Mark Channing, chief financial officer of Amalgamated. “
In a separate project, the Afro-American Newspapers of Baltimore is digitizing its 110 years of archives in a deal with Cold North Wind of Ottawa, Canada, as announced in 2003. The project is partially completed.
CNN’s Media Show Scored as “Vacuous Punditry”
Both fans and detractors of the CNN media show “Reliable Sources” might be interested in a commentary by a professor from Turkey who says that, “‘Reliable Sources’ is actually ‘Exhibit A’ for what is wrong with journalism in the United States: instead of tackling endemic problems like the influence of advertising money and profit margins on news, guests sit around and blow hot air for endless hours about how Reporter X is ‘liberal’ and Editor Z is ‘conservative’.”
Christian Christensen’s news peg is CNN’s decision to kill “Crossfire.” “For those of us interested in seeing an end to vacuous punditry masquerading as serious journalism, CNN’s ‘Reliable Sources’ should be next on the chopping block,” writes Christensen, an assistant professor in the faculty of communication at Bahcesehir University in Istanbul.
“During the 14 months of programming I examined, the direct influence of advertisers on the media was discussed explicitly a grand total of one time. . . . In the episodes I combed through, consisting of over 250,000 words of dialog, the FCC was mentioned in reference to only three stories: the Janet Jackson breast incident (of course), Howard Stern and obscenity (no surprise), and the attempt by the FCC to ‘relax’ media ownership laws in the U.S. In typical ‘Reliable Sources’ fashion, however, the FCC ownership issue was glossed over in the final minute of one episode, and was not offered as a topic for debate to any of the guests. . . . Why discuss a little thing like a radical change in ownership rules when you can, as was done on ‘Reliable Sources’ in twelve separate episodes, beat the dead horse of the Jayson Blair/NYT affair until your arms go numb?”
Two years ago, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting documented the lack of diversity among the program’s guests.
“Covering one year of weekly programs (12/1/2001=11/30/2002) with 203 guests, the FAIR study found Reliable Sources’ guestlist strongly favored mainstream media insiders and right-leaning pundits. In addition, female critics were significantly underrepresented, ethnic minority voices were almost non-existent and progressive voices were far outnumbered by their conservative counterparts.
“White guests outnumbered all others on Reliable Sources, 194 to 9, making the show?s guest roster 96 percent white.”
Comcast Channel Targets Asians
“Comcast Corp. will expand its efforts in ethnic-targeted cable programming with the conversion of a recent channel acquisition into an all-Asian network. International Channel Networks will yank in-language programming for European and Middle Eastern audiences in the United States from its flagship network, International Channel, which will be rebranded and replenished with strictly Asian-themed programming in the second quarter of the year,” wrote Andrew Wallenstein Wednesday in the Hollywood Reporter.
Better Homes and Gardens to Publish in Chinese
“Meredith Corp. is putting a Far Eastern twist to its flagship home, food and family magazine. The Des Moines-based company said Wednesday that it will launch a Chinese-language edition of Better Homes and Gardens for China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore,” reported Patt Johnson in the Des Moines Register.
“This is Meredith’s first non-English publishing venture, said Art Slusark, Meredith spokesman.”
Detroit NABJ Chapter Forms Auto Task Force
The Detroit Chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists announced the debut of an automotive task force this month.
“The mission of the automotive task force is to promote diversity in automotive communications, including journalism, public relations, advertising, marketing and other related professions. . . . The task force will engage in a variety of public service, educational and networking initiatives,” a news release said.
“Rather than complain about the lack of diversity within our ranks, we’ve decided to do something about it,” Frank Washington, an automotive journalist and chair of the task force, said in the release. “Our purpose is to fill the multicultural void that exists in one of the most critical professions in the auto industry — communications.”