Latino Jockey’s Case Against Herald to Proceed
The legal fees resulting from a 2003 blunder by the Miami Herald, caused partly by an Anglo reporter’s failure to understand a Spanish-speaking jockey, are accumulating.
A federal judge dismissed a libel suit filed by jockey Jose Santos in federal court in Louisville, Ky., it was reported last week. But Santos’ lawyer, David Travis, told Journal-isms yesterday that the Kentucky ruling was expected and that refiling the case in state court in South Florida was “imminent.”
The Thoroughbred Times recounted what originally took place:
“Santos and Sackatoga Stable, the owners of 2003 Kentucky Derby . . . winner Funny Cide, filed a lawsuit last May against the Miami Herald and its parent publishing conglomerate Knight Ridder Inc. for libel seeking $48-million in damages. Legal action was prompted after the newspaper published a story and a photograph on May 10, 2003, that appeared to show Santos holding a device in his hand, other than his whip, as Funny Cide crossed the finish line in the classic.
“Bernie Hettel, Kentucky’s chief state steward, said that a Miami Herald reporter notified him regarding the photograph that seemed to show Santos holding a device. An investigation was launched, and officials eventually cleared Santos of any violation of racing rules.
“The lawsuit claimed that the photographs and articles, which were circulated throughout media centers worldwide, were of a libelous nature because Santos had denied all allegations during an interview with Miami Herald reporter Frank Carlson, also one of several individuals named as a co-defendant in the suit.
“Santos, who speaks with a Chilean accent, was misquoted by the newspaper as saying he carried a ‘cue ring’ in order to alert an outrider to his presence in the race. He later said he was referring to his ‘Q-Ray’ bracelet that he wore for arthritis.”
“More than 200 people fulminated about the screwup in letters to the editor,” Chuck Strouse wrote shortly afterward in Miami’s alternative paper New Times.
“So let me get this straight,” Strouse continued. “In Miami, the most Hispanic city in the country, the newspaper of record screwed up because someone misunderstood a Spanish speaker?”
Santos’ lawyer, Travis, told Journal-isms that, “local newspapers here would have had someone call him [Santos] and ask him in Spanish.”
Strouse’s story quoted an unnamed Hispanic editor at the Herald: “The fuck-up was mostly at the reportorial level. If I had heard he didn’t understand, I would have called up the jockey, but Sports Editor Jorge [Rojas] was apparently never told that.”
Travis told Journal-isms he would “hate to even guess” how much in legal fees have been spent so far. Santos had to hire a lawyer to defend himself from the Herald’s allegations before the Kentucky Racing Commission, which cleared Santos, Travis said.
The Herald was widely denounced for the screwup. In the Boston Globe, columnist Thomas Oliphant wrote on May 20, 2003, that “what happened to the jockey who gave the gelding Funny Cide smart, winning rides in the Kentucky Derby and Preakness is worth a moment, because it tells you more about the condition of American journalism, precisely because it was such a routine assault on a person’s reputation.”
The Herald apologized on Page 3 of its Nov. 1, 2003, editions.
Armstrong Williams Found a Friend at Sinclair
“Last year, when conservative commentator Armstrong Williams took $240,000 in payoffs from the Bush administration to promote its education policies in the media, he needed to reach a national television audience to satisfy the terms of his lucrative deal. Fortunately for Williams, he was good friends with David Smith, the CEO of Sinclair Broadcast Group, the nation’s largest owner of television stations,” Eric Klinenberg reported Thursday on the Rolling Stone Web site.
“Although Smith says he didn’t know Williams was on the take, he liked the pundit’s pro-Bush views and was eager to hand him plum assignments at Sinclair. While on the Bush payroll, Williams did an interview for Sinclair with then Education Secretary Rod Paige, the man responsible for funneling him taxpayer money to secure such prime-time exposure. He also interviewed Majority Whip Tom DeLay, and even got an hour on camera with Vice President Dick Cheney, who rarely speaks to the media. ‘Sinclair brought me stuff that I did not have—real numbers, where you can get the speaker of the house or the VP,’ Williams tells ROLLING STONE. ‘On Sinclair, I was talking to millions of viewers a night.’
“Even before the payoffs became public, the news staff at Sinclair was horrified. The producer who edited the interview Williams did with Paige calls it ‘the worst piece of TV I’ve ever been associated with. You’ve seen softballs from Larry King? Well, this was softer. I told my boss it didn’t even deserve to be broadcast, but they kept pushing me to put more of it on tape. In retrospect, it was so clearly propaganda,'” the piece continued.
New Unity Goals Include Presidential Debate
Unity: Journalists of Color released a five-year strategic plan Thursday that calls for people of color to make up no less than 20 percent of newsroom staffs and at least 15 percent of newsroom managers. It also calls for the coalition to sponsor a presidential campaign debate in 2008.
Unity, the coalition of the associations of black, Hispanic, Asian American and Native American journalists, also is looking at Boston, Chicago, Washington, and Houston as potential sites for its 2008 convention, executive director Anna Lopez told Journal-isms.
The American Society of Newspaper Editors has set a goal of parity with the percentage of people of color in the U.S. population, currently 31.7 percent, by 2025. Its most recent census had newsrooms at 12.94 percent.
Janet Brown, executive director of the Commission on Presidential Debates, was asked last summer about the idea of Unity as a debate sponsor. She said then that she had not yet heard of the idea, but “we’re open to just about anything.”
Among the goals and strategies in Unity’s five-year plan:
- “Monitor how government and industry policies, technological changes and the proliferation of ethnic media are affecting opportunities for people of color in the news media.
- “Participate in national policy debates involving journalism before federal and state regulators, and other institutions, in collaboration with other media organizations when appropriate.
- “Create a weeklong diversity training module that can be taught at universities and colleges throughout the country, utilizing experts from our associations and other institutions, focusing on the history of diversity in the news media, the impact of diversity, and efforts to diversify the media today.
- “Commission research on the impact of media consolidation on the news and information needs of communities of color and issue the results to the general public and media.
- “Position the organization as the clearinghouse for research and data on diversity as it pertains to the industry, as well as materials originating from UNITY and its alliance partners, and from other industry and government sources.
- “Create a survey to track people of color at major media outlets. Use the UNITY Washington Press Corps Diversity Project as a model to continue monitoring the level of diversity in capital bureaus and local and national reporting staffs, and hold meetings with bureau chiefs and media executives.”
Wife’s Racial Views Seep Into Washington Times
“Most of Marian Coombs‘ especially inflammatory writings have appeared in white supremacist venues such as The Occidental Quarterly, which ran her glowing review of a book on ‘racially conscious’ whites by Robert S. Griffin, a member of the neo-Nazi National Alliance,” Heidi Beirich and Mark Potok report on the Web site of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The reference is to the wife of Francis Booth Coombs, managing editor of the Washington Times. “Fran Coombs has published at least 35 of his wife’s news and opinion pieces for his paper, although his relationship to her is not acknowledged in her Times bylines,” they continue.
“In one opinion piece in the Times, Coombs described the whole of human history as ‘the struggle of . . . races.’ Non-white immigration, she wrote in another column, is ‘importing poverty and revolution’ that will end in ‘the eventual loss of sovereign American territory.’ In England, Muslims ‘are turning life in this once pleasant land into a misery for its native inhabitants.’
“. . . Both Coombses declined comment. So did Washington Times editor in chief Wesley Pruden and officials of the organization that owns the newspaper.
“. . . The Washington Times is relatively small (circulation 102,000) and money-losing (it’s been estimated that its backer, the Unification Church, has spent more than $1 billion to keep it going over the past 22 years),” but it is influential with Republican administrations, Beirich and Potok write. “President George W. Bush invited its top leaders—including Coombs, Pruden . . . and others—to the White House for an exclusive, 40-minute interview. The resulting stories were spread across the front page of the Times’ Jan. 12 edition.”
Newsday Pulls Ads from Hot 97 Radio Show
“Bowing to pressure from an Asian community group, Newsday is pulling its advertising from the controversial morning show on hip-hop radio station Hot 97” in New York, Rafer Guzman reported today in Newsday.
“The decision was announced late Thursday after Asian Media Watchdog threatened to protest outside the paper’s Manhattan offices. Hot 97 has drawn intense criticism for airing a racially offensive song that mocked tsunami victims.
“. . . In the weeks since morning host Miss Jones and her team first aired the song, a coalition of Asian advocacy groups and leaders has put increasing pressure on Hot 97 (WQHT/97.1 FM) and its parent company, Emmis Communications, by going after advertisers,” Guzman’s story said.
Cincinnati Paper Ponders Race Relations in 2015
A Cincinnati Enquirer diversity initiative “brought together five members of the African-American community ‘to discuss past race relations, where we stand now and where we might be during Black History Month in 2015,” in the words of the Gannett Co. News Department.
“The panel, which included the president/CEO of a petroleum company, a minister and a financial services officer, expressed optimism about the future and agreed that there would be no easy answers. The panel also included student Akilah Hughes, of Florence, Ky., who will be 25 in the year 2015. ‘When people can finally realize that we?re all human regardless of skin color or hair color or race and religion,’ Akilah said, ‘it’s the biggest thing that could come out of Cincinnati.'”
As the Enquirer piece noted, the United Way of Greater Cincinnati’s 2004 “State of the Community” said, “Clearly, we are a community troubled by race relations and it is striking that there is no valid, reliable and commonly agreed upon measure of race relations in our community. We must develop a measure quickly and track it over time to understand how we are doing in this very important area.”
“Even anecdotal evidence poses problems,” the story continued. “You can point to the progress made by African-Americans in business, politics and other areas. But you can also remember the 2001 riots, when a white police officer shot an African-American teenager and racial tension in the city exploded into days of violence.”
Ernest Sotomayor Leaving Newsday for Columbia U.
Ernest R. Sotomayor, Long Island editor of Newsday.com and immediate past president of Unity: Journalists of Color, is leaving Newsday after 16 years to work at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.
Sotomayor notified colleagues Thursday that effective Feb. 28, he will be the school’s new director of career services. “I’ll be directing the student job placement and career counseling efforts, helping students get into the business by learning job hunting skills, working with faculty and recruiters, etc.,” he wrote. “Additionally, I’ll teach occasionally as an adjunct, help develop programming and assist with existing programs and partnerships Columbia has with a number of other institutions.
“Another part of the job will be to attend the various conventions of journalism associations as part of Columbia’s contingent at these events, so I expect to run in to many of you often at those gatherings.”
Norment, Leavy Split Bennett’s Job at Ebony
Ebony managing editors Lynn Norment and Walter Leavy have assumed responsibility for day-to-day operations of Ebony magazine, now that Lerone Bennett has stepped down as executive editor.
Norment has long been active in the National Association of Black Journalists and its Chicago chapter, and she wrote the foreword to the NABJ publication “Committed to the Cause,” profiling the NABJ presidents.
At Ebony, she has been known for her features and profiles.
Leavy has been at the publication since 1980. He has described his “For Brothers Only” column, whose authorship alternates between Leavy and Kevin Chappell, as “an avenue of expression for things that are uniquely male. It highlights the hopes and dreams of black men, and it also lets the world know that black men have issues too, especially when it comes to relationships.”
Bennett originally announced he was stepping down in August 2003, but a month later said that publisher John H. Johnson Jr. had talked him into staying.
Ray Rodriguez Named President of Univision
“Ray Rodriguez, the head of Univision’s networks, was promoted to president and chief operating officer of the nation’s leading Spanish-language media company on Wednesday, putting him in direct line to succeed Chairman and Chief Executive A. Jerrold Perenchio as CEO,” Christina Hoag wrote yesterday in the Miami Herald.
Perenchio, an Italian-American, is Univision’s longtime CEO and has been its largest shareholder.
“The position has been vacant since August 2000, when Henry Cisneros resigned to start a joint venture to develop inner-city housing,” CBS MarketWatch noted.
“All of Univision’s businesses will now report to Rodriguez, who as Univision network president and chief operating officer was in charge of the company’s three television networks: Univision, TeleFutura and Galavision,” the Herald story continued.
“The move also resolves an oft-heard criticism of Univision—that it is not headed by a Hispanic. Rodriguez was born in Cuba and grew up in Miami.”
Investigator in Stephen Hill Case Named Top Cop
“The investigator who helped put together the case against former WCPO investigative reporter Stephen Hill has been named Cincinnati’s Police Officer of the Year,” Roy Wood reported Thursday in the Cincinnati Post.
“Police Officer Dionne Winfrey received the award at the Exchange Club’s luncheon meeting Wednesday at the Millennium Hotel downtown.
“Hill, who mentored young males, admitted he posed as a woman named ‘Dawn’ to trick four teen-aged males into performing anal sex on him and allow him to perform oral sex on them.
“Hill pleaded guilty in October to four counts of sexual battery and is serving a five-year sentence in the Ohio prison system.
“‘This was a very sensitive investigation,’ Assistant Police Chief Cindy Combs said Wednesday in noting why Winfrey was nominated for the award. ‘It took several months and, as you are aware, because it was very highly played out in the media, we had numerous setbacks through the court process.’
“Combs made note of the compassion Winfrey showed to the family of the teen victims in the case.
“‘Throughout the ordeal, she was determined to seek the truth,’ Combs said. ‘Her work with the family and the witnesses were essential in the successful prosecution of this case,'” Wood wrote.
Randal Yip to Produce E! Network Oscar Show
Randal Yip, a freelance producer and past vice president/broadcast of the Asian American Journalists Association, has been named line and show producer of E! Entertainment’s “Live Countdown to the Academy Awards.”
The six-hour broadcast originates live from the Kodak Theater in Los Angeles the day of the Oscars, Feb. 27, from noon to 6 p.m. Eastern time (9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Pacific).
Yip, a 2003 Maynard Management Fellow, has been an executive producer at KNTV in San Francisco and KPTV in Portland, Ore.
Ernie Flores Jr. Remembered as Filipino Voice
Ernie Flores Jr., a beloved Filipino-American journalist who died at age 71 on Jan. 7 after a massive heart attack, is remembered in a tribute by Leonard Novarro on the New California Media Web site.
“He was a journalist who prided himself on publishing a newspaper that not only reflected the community it served, but was written and edited with skill and a commitment to quality. That professionalism was also reflected in his writing,” Novarro wrote.
“During his funeral and church services . . . hundreds from the Filipino community turned out to show their respect and love for a man who had served them eloquently for the last 18 years as editor and publisher of the Filipino Press, the area’s largest publication serving the San Diego area Filipino community.
“Flores wrote for several newspapers, including the Arizona Republic in Phoenix and the San Diego Union, and although he returned to public relations in 1981, first working for U.S. International University and later as press secretary for then U.S. Rep. Jim Bates, D-San Diego, his first love was journalism and his dream, to own his own newspaper.
“After several newspaper ventures, he founded the Filipino Press in 1986. Together, with co-publisher and marketing director Susan de los Santos, Flores built the newspaper into the widely recognized voice of the Filipino community in the San Diego area.”
Dallas Pioneer Symbolically Passes a Torch
“As a journalism pioneer here in Dallas, I’m proud to pass my torch to my younger colleague LaKisha Ladson, who excelled in high school and college academics and began her career at The Dallas Morning News nearly four years ago,” Norma Adams-Wade wrote Wednesday in the Dallas Morning News.
Adams-Wade, a Morning News columnist and a founder of the National Association of Black Journalists, was writing about “an intriguing idea for cultivating a new generation of leaders in various fields” that had been proposed by the Urban League of Greater Dallas and North Central Texas.
“The Passing the Torch project recognizes veteran residents who distinguished themselves in their fields,” Adams-Wade wrote. “Each veteran, in turn, selects a promising young protégé and passes a legacy torch as a symbolic nudge to continue the work that the veteran started.”
Ladson’s beat is Rockwall, a heavy-growth suburb east of Dallas. She started as a rewrite person on the night metro desk and “worked her way up through hard work, grit and determination,” Eric Nelson, deputy metro editor/regional, told Journal-isms.
American Indian J-Institute Taking Applications
“The American Indian Journalism Institute, a training program for Native American college students that has produced several professional journalists now working at daily newspapers, is accepting applications for its new class in June,” the Freedom Forum announces.
“The Freedom Forum, a nonpartisan foundation promoting employment diversity in America’s newsrooms, will fully fund and run the annual academic journalism program for about 25 Native American college students. It will take place June 5-24, 2005, at the Al Neuharth Media Center at the University of South Dakota.
“Graduates of the program will receive four hours of college credit awarded by the university and a $500 stipend/scholarship from the Freedom Forum, paid when the students return to college full time in the fall.
“Top graduates of the program will receive paid internships as reporters and photographers at daily newspapers for the remainder of the summer. Graduates also will have the opportunity to join the staff of reznetnews.org, the online Native American college newspaper, as paid reporters or photographers when they return to school.”
