Racist Remarks by Manager of 13 Stations Disclosed
“Meredith Corp. fired the head of its broadcast group last fall after documenting his repeated comments criticizing blacks, including: ‘We’ve got to quit hiring all these black people,’ according a company memo filed in a lawsuit against the executive,” Ryan J. Foley of the Associated Press reported late yesterday from Des Moines, Iowa.
“The Des Moines-based media company, which publishes specialty books and magazines including Ladies’ Home Journal and Better Homes and Gardens, fired Kevin O’Brien in October, citing violations of its equal opportunity policies,” Foley reported in his exclusive.
“According to a company memo uncovered in a search of court documents this week, an internal investigation found that O’Brien ‘made statements, often in the context of speaking about a minority employee, that employ racial and ethnic stereotypes and denigrate women.’
“. . . After reading parts of the memo, members of the National Association of Black Journalists were outraged.
“‘This was the true definition of a “power bigot” ? he controlled 13 television stations,’ said Barbara Ciara, vice president of the group and an anchor at WTKR in Virginia. ‘Who knows how much damage he’s done to the careers of unsuspecting black journalists?’
“. . . The investigators found that, among other things, O’Brien had urged colleagues not to hire black people and complained that an Atlanta TV station was ‘too black.’
“O’Brien’s attorney, David Casselman, of Tarzana, Calif., said the company’s disclosure was meant to embarrass his client.
“He did not dispute the allegations, but insisted his client is not a racist,” the story continued.
“O’Brien, 62, had been at Meredith for three years, overseeing 13 television stations and half of Meredith’s 2,600 employees. He was credited with turning around the broadcast group, which reaches 10 percent of TV households in the country, and earned almost $2 million last year. The group includes KPHO in Phoenix, WFSB in Hartford and KPDX and KPTV in Portland, Ore.
“. . . Meredith’s top lawyer wrote in the memo to O’Brien that the investigation had confirmed that he made the following statements:
- “‘We can’t right all the wrongs of the Civil War; we’ve got to quit hiring all these black people.’
- “‘You shouldn’t hire old black guys. These guys don’t listen, they have attitudes, and you can’t control them.’
“O’Brien came to Meredith after 15 years as an executive with Cox Television Independent Group and had headed the California Broadcasters Association and the Association of Local Television Stations.
“According to the memo, O’Brien also:
- “complained that the Atlanta station hired too many black reporters and anchors;
- “said that a black weather forecaster, who was eight months pregnant at the time, should be fired because she was too fat;
- “declined a business deal with a minority-owned station, writing in an e-mail: “I’ve never seen a minority broadcast enterprise work in my entire life, especially if they have control!” and
- “told a black waiter at a company outing: ‘You probably don’t like the same fruit as me. You look like a watermelon kind of guy.’
“. . . O’Brien, who has homes in San Francisco and Las Vegas, did not return an e-mail message seeking comment. He remains unemployed and has complained in court documents that Meredith’s allegations have ruined his reputation.
“Meredith ‘took swift, decisive and appropriate action’ against O’Brien, spokesman Art Slusark said. He said Meredith does not tolerate discrimination.”
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Kids Soaking Up More and More Media
“Children and teens are spending an increasing amount of time using ‘new media’ like computers, the Internet and video games, without cutting back on the time they spend with ‘old’ media like TV, print and music,” the Kaiser Family Foundation reported Wednesday.
“Instead, because of the amount of time they spend using more than one medium at a time (for example, going online while watching TV), they’re managing to pack increasing amounts of media content into the same amount of time each day.
“The study, Generation M: Media in the Lives of 8-18 Year-olds, examined media use among a nationally representative sample of more than 2,000 3rd through 12th graders who completed detailed questionnaires, including nearly 700 self-selected participants who also maintained seven-day media diaries.”
As with previous studies, racial and ethnic differences were apparent.
- “African American kids are more likely than White kids to report bedroom televisions, DVRs, cable/satellite TV connections, subscriptions to premium TV channels, and video game consoles. In general, this pattern is consistent with results from earlier studies that indicate African Americans are particularly attracted to TV,” the study said. “For the most part, Hispanic kids fall in between Black kids and White kids, differing significantly from neither of the other two groups in the proportion owning these media.”
- “African American kids watch all screen media [television, videos/DVDs, movies] combined over an hour more per day than Hispanic kids, and over two hours more than White kids.”
- But because kids engage in media multi-tasking, “the more than 2 1/4 hour difference between White and Black kids in media exposure is reduced to just 15 minutes when we look at media use.”
- “A majority of young people from each of the major ethnic and socio-economic groups now has Internet access from home, but the divide between groups remains substantial. For example, 80% of White youth have Internet access at home, compared to 67% of Hispanics and 61% of African-Americans. Similarly, in a typical day 71% of children who go to school in higher income communities (more than $50,000 a year) will use the Internet, compared to 57% of kids from middle ($35-50,000) and 54% of those from lower (more than $35,000) income areas.”
- “White youths are significantly more likely (57%) to use a computer than either African American (44%) or Hispanic (47%) youths on any given day. However . . . differences in specific computer activities related to race emerge only for Internet games and instant messaging. Significantly fewer African American kids (14%) than White or Hispanic kids (25% and 27%, respectively) play Internet games. . . . African American kids spend more time than White kids with interactive games.”
Quantifying some obvious conclusions, the survey also reported that:
- “Nearly three out of four (73%) 8-18 year-olds read for pleasure in a typical day, averaging 43 minutes a day. Some kids read more than others: those whose parents set and enforce rules about TV (0:16 more per day than those without rules), those without a TV in their bedroom (0:16 more), and those in homes where the TV is not left on most of the time whether anyone is watching or not (0:18 more).”
- “The study found no relationship between children’s reported grades and their use of TV or computers; but it did find that those who get the lowest grades (Cs and Ds or below) spend more time playing video games (0:21 more) and less time reading (0:17 less) than those with high grades (mostly As and Bs).
- “A typical 8- to 18-year-old is exposed to 8 1/2 hours of recreational media content daily. . . . Youngsters whose parents completed some college report significantly lower levels of exposure than those whose parents completed college (kids whose parents completed high school fall between).
Read the report (PDF)
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Oprah Winfrey Tied for 507 on List of Billionaires
Talk-show entrepreneur Oprah Winfrey remained the only media personality of color on the Forbes magazine annual list of the world’s billionaires, tying for No. 507, but the fourth-richest person was Carlos Slim Helu, a Mexican telecommunications magnate.
Robert L. Johnson, founder of Black Entertainment Television, fell off the list last year after paying a divorce settlement, and has not returned.
Winfrey, 51, joined the billionaires list in 2003, the first black woman to do so. Her debut came two years after Johnson’s. On this year’s roster, the onetime news co-anchor at Baltimore’s WJZ-TV is one of only seven women to qualify as “entirely self-made,” with a net worth of $1.3 billion.
A. Jerrold Perenchio, 74, chairman and CEO of Univision Communications Inc., is tied for 258th place with a net worth of $2.4 billion. He is an Italian-American who does not speak Spanish.
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Mogul Wants Univision But Sale Unlikely
Emilio Azcarraga Jean, who owns the Spanish-speaking world’s largest media company, Grupo Televisa, has set his sights on the multibillion-dollar broadcasting and entertainment conglomerate known as Univision Communications Inc.?the company that his father’s father founded 44 years ago, Meg James reported yesterday in the Los Angeles Times.
“His path to power is blocked, however, by a man twice his age: A. Jerrold Perenchio, the iron-willed chairman and chief executive of Univision,” James wrote.
“The 74-year-old Los Angeles billionaire?a former talent agent and boxing promoter who also is one of California’s biggest political contributors and art collectors?has spent more than a decade building Univision into a fortress.”
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Columnist Decries Lack of Black Sports Editors
“The joke among black sports journalists,” columnist Allan Wolper wrote this week in Editor & Publisher, is that the number of black sports editors “is so small that they all wind up being interviewed for the same jobs. These editors talk of how the lack of black faces in their sports sections skewers coverage of players raised in economic wastelands, especially in professional football and basketball where black athletes dominate.”
“Don Hudson, who tracks black sports editors at daily newspapers for The National Association of Black Journalists, can identify only five of them.
“One reason is that newspapers are using their diversity dollars to recruit Hispanics, who can communicate with the increasing number of baseball stars who don’t speak English. ‘We are not satisfied with the translators the teams use,’ said Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, the recently named sports editor of The Washington Post.
“And this new emphasis will only add to the frustration of black sportswriters who want to become editors.
“‘People leave when they don’t get promoted,’ Leon Carter, sports editor of New York’s Daily News, told me. ‘I got hired because I earned the right to be the sports editor. But having said that, a newspaper does its best job when it reflects the community it covers.'”
Women Aren’t Getting a Fair Shake in Sports, Either (Joanne C. Gerstner, Editor & Publisher)
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Black Schools May Be More Affected by Censorship
“The calls come in by the dozen each week at the Student Press Law Center. Often frantic and seeking legal advice, student journalists and their advisers find their way to Mark Goodman, executive director of this nonprofit group that defends students’ First Amendment rights,” Daarel Burnette II wrote this week on the Black College Wire.
“. . . And while censorship can occur at any college publication, students at historically black colleges might be disproportionately affected, Goodman said during an interview from his office in Arlington, Va.
“‘On many [black college] campuses, administrators are extremely sensitive to the public image of the institution because they have received so little respect for many years from the rest of the world,’ he said. ‘It really is a direct consequence of any organization that has felt beleaguered and unappreciated. They’re going to be more sensitive to criticism even when it comes from within.'”
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Tavis Smiley Signs for Weekend Public Radio Show
“Tavis Smiley, who shocked public broadcasters and fans when he quit his National Public Radio talk show last November, shocked them again Thursday by returning to public radio,” Robert Feder reported today in the Chicago Sun-Times.
“This time, Smiley signed with Public Radio International, an NPR rival distributor with more than 700 affiliates nationwide, to host a weekly two-hour talk show, starting April 29.
“Unlike his NPR show, which aired weekday afternoons, the new ‘Tavis Smiley Show’ is being packaged as a weekend offering.”
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“Bionic Black Woman” Overwhelmed After Farewell
“Though still despondent over the recent death of her beloved husband, Sheela Allen-Stephens says viewers are helping her cope,” television columnist Gail Shister wrote in the Philadelphia Inquirer Wednesday.
“Since retiring last week after almost 30 years with WCAU, the popular features reporter has received thousands of e-mails and cards.
“‘I’m shocked. Overwhelmed. I always considered myself one of the bit players. I’m not an anchor person. I don’t do the weather. I kind of know, but don’t really know, that anybody cares.
“‘After I had to pack it in, I felt like a failure, until all these people reached out to me. I never realized how many lives I’ve touched. I’ve had some e-mails that would rip your heart out.’
“Allen-Stephens, 61, says she feels like Jimmy Stewart‘s character in Frank Capra‘s 1946 classic, It’s a Wonderful Life, whose guardian angel helps him see how much he would be missed if he jumped off that bridge.”
In a story on Allen-Stephens’ retirement, Shister wrote: “‘I’m the bionic black woman,’ she told this reporter in ’01. ‘The old broad’s hard to kill. I’m a dog person, but everybody keeps saying I’m a cat. I’m on my ninth life here. I’m a little nervous.'”
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“Forgotten Emergencies” Dwarf Tsunami Toll
“Brutal conflicts in Congo, Uganda and Sudan are the world’s three biggest ‘forgotten emergencies,’ each dwarfing the toll of the Asian tsunami but attracting little news media interest, a Reuters poll showed Thursday,” Ruth Gidley reported for the news agency.
“War in Democratic Republic of Congo has claimed at least 10 times as many lives as the December tsunami yet remains almost unheard-of outside of Africa, key players among relief agencies said.
“‘It’s the worst humanitarian tragedy since the Holocaust,’ said John O’Shea, chief executive of Irish relief agency GOAL. ‘The greatest example on the planet of man’s inhumanity to man.’
“Reuters AlertNet, a humanitarian news Web site run by Reuters Foundation, asked more than 100 humanitarian professionals, news media personalities, academics and activists which ‘forgotten’ crises the media should focus on in 2005.”
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Interracial Couples Debated on U.K. Op-Ed Pages
A two-year old opinion piece in London’s Evening Standard by a black man who said he prefers white women continues to reverberate, with some interesting statistics thrown into the mix.
Two years ago, David Matthews complained that, “Despite the bump-and-grind sexual posturing of innumerable hip-hop videos, which portray black women as living, breathing sex toys, they tend to be conservative and surprisingly old-fashioned.”
In today’s Guardian, also based in London, author Steve Pope has a commentary headlined, “Whatever happened to sista love?: The choice of partners by black British males reflects a corrosive lack of self-respect and is rooted in slavery.”
He wrote: “According to the most recent National Survey of Ethnic Minorities, half of Caribbean-origin men had a white partner, and 40% of Caribbean origin children had one white parent. In contrast, 80% of Asian men had same-race partners.
“. . . The most recent UK figures showed that 30% of black Caribbean women have white partners. I asked a prominent Asian businessman why so many in his community had prospered in the west. ‘We have strong family structures and support,’ he said. Sadly, the same cannot be said for the black population. With most black children being raised in single-parent households and so many boys?in the absence of a black father-figure?growing up to fail, it is clear why building strong black male-female relationships is vital.”
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Awards Season Under Way; NAMME to Honor Six
- At its annual awards banquet April 14, the National Association of Minority Media Executives is honoring six journalists for championing diversity: Acel Moore, associate editor, the Philadelphia Inquirer (Robert C. Maynard Legend Award); Gordon Parks, photojournalist, writer, novelist, poet, composer and cinematographer (Distinguished Diversity Award for Lifetime Achievement); Loren Ghiglione, dean, Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University (Lawrence Young Breakthrough Award); Jeannie Park, executive editor, People magazine (Catalyst Award for Print) Maria Hinojosa, correspondent, CNN (Catalyst Award for Broadcast) and Omar Wasow, executive director, BlackPlanet.com, (Catalyst Award for New Media).
- Winners of this year’s Columbia University “Let’s Do It Better!” awards for outstanding coverage of race and ethnicity in print and broadcast journalism include Sarah Glover, Melanie Burney, Annette John-Hall and Ron Tarver of the Philadelphia Inquirer; Eric Deggans of the St. Petersburg Times; Sam Ford of WJLA-TV in Washington; filmmaker Stanley Nelson, and Ed Bradley of CBS News.
In addition, Sharon Rosenhause, managing editor of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel and 2005-06 chair of the American Society of Newspaper Editors’ Diversity Committee, will be honored along with producer Orlando Bagwell, for the PBS documentary, “Matters of Race,” a “compelling four-part exploration of the complex demands of America’s changing multiracial and multicultural society.”
- “The much-watched AdWeek/Mediaweek Hot List is due out next week, and sources tell Media Ink that Janice Min, Us Weekly editor, will cop Editor of the Year honors,” Keith J. Kelly wrote today in the New York Post.
- “David S. Fallis, a reporter for The Washington Post, has been awarded the 2004 Heywood Broun Award for his four part series on Virginia’s ‘assisted living industry,’ a patchwork of more than 600 privately run homes for disabled adults who have nowhere else to live,” the Newspaper Guild announced Thursday. This columnist was among the judges.
- Tim A. Chavez, a writer for Hispanic Magazine in Coral Gables, Fla., won a Wilbur Award for religion writing in the “Magazines, specialized” category for “Home on Father’s Day.”
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Globe Seals Deal for 49% of Metro Boston
“The Boston Globe yesterday said it completed its purchase of a 49 percent interest in the Metro Boston newspaper, a deal that had been delayed by concerns over racial insensitivity in the Metro culture and by a Justice Department antitrust inquiry,” Mark Jurkowitz reported in the Globe today.
“While officials of both parties lauded the deal yesterday, several representatives of the local African-American community said Metro’s efforts at fostering diversity were insufficient,” Jurkowitz continued.
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Film on Reporter Wins at African Festival
“A South African film celebrating a reporter’s struggle against apartheid has taken top honours at Africa’s premier film festival,” as the South African news agency SAPA reported.
“‘Drum,’ by South African director Zola Maseko, picked up the Gold Talon prize for best feature-length film late on Saturday at the closing of the 19th PanAfrican Film and Television Festival,” known locally as ‘Africa’s Cannes.'” The festival takes place in Burkina Faso, West Africa.
The story recounts the tale of a magazine by the same name and of real-life journalist Henry Nxumalo, but Agence France-Presse reported that the film got a mixed reception in South Africa, “with many former ‘Drum’ journalists alleging that Maseko’s tribute to Nxumalo and the magazine bore little resemblance to reality.”
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In Survey, Jews of Color Satisfied With Coverage
Twenty-six Jews of color who responded to a survey on their satisfaction with how their communities were covered responded positively, according to Robin Washington, editorial page editor of Minnesota’s Duluth Tribune, who conducted the survey.
The occasion was Bechol Lashon, a gathering of Jews of color from around the world held two weeks ago and hosted by the Institute for Jewish and Community Research in San Francisco. Washington led a panel on “Portrayals of Jews of Color in Media and Popular Culture.”
He told Journal-isms that the survey was disseminated to the 80 attendees, and that the communities included the Abayudaya of Uganda, the Lembas of South Africa, Orthodox Yemenites in New York, Hebrew Israelites in the United States and Orthodox re-converted Portuguese Jews known as Anusin.
Of 26 who responded, 21 said they personally were the subject of articles or broadcast reports. “Twelve said their communities were portrayed accurately and 7 said inaccurately,” Washington said. “I was surprised by how positive the response was; I don’t know if the general public would respond that way, or how leaders of other groups would.”
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Short takes:
- What made WFSB-TV, “owned by Meredith Corp. and employing 200 people, renege on its commitment to expand its operation in the city?” columnist Stan Simpson asked Wednesday in Connecticut’s Hartford Courant. “Those familiar with the negotiations say Channel 3 was balking at minority-hiring provisions the city required for construction.”
- “Barbara Brandon-Croft, who made history in 1991 by becoming perhaps the first African-American woman to do a cartoon for a major syndicate, is ending her weekly feature,” Dave Astor reported in Editor & Publisher, speaking of “Where I’m Coming From.” Her client list had dwindled to seven newspapers.
- “The Philadelphia Inquirer recently appointed Hai Do its new director of photography, making him the only Asian American to hold a lead photography position at a top-ten circulated newspaper,” according to the Asian American Journalists Association.
- “Destination Freedom, a groundbreaking radio drama series depicting the struggle for civil rights in America, has been donated to The Museum of Broadcast Communications. The series created by pioneer radio writer Richard Durham was heard on WMAQ Radio from June 27, 1948, to August of 1950, and was sponsored initially by the Chicago Defender and then by the Chicago Urban League,” the Chicago-based museum announced last week.
- A Liberian court ordered the offices of the privately owned weekly the Forum closed, and issued an arrest warrant for the paper’s managing editor and other editorial staff for “contempt of court” after they allegedly ignored several earlier summonses, according to Reporters Without Borders, which condemned the moves.
- Patrick Elasik, a promising young magazine entrepreneur, was electrocuted while walking across the G train subway tracks from one platform to another, police said, Oren Yaniv reported Thursday in the New York Daily News. Elasik, 26, was the co-founder and co-owner of Mass Appeal Magazine, a bimonthly urban lifestyle publication based in Brooklyn, having moved there in 1996 from the Washington area.
- Raoul Dennis, who formerly worked in the Washington area for Gannett Co., Black Entertainment Television and the D.C.-area’s Gazette newspapers, has launched the bimonthly Prince George’s Suite magazine for Prince George’s County, Md., Krissah Williams reported Thursday in the Washington Post. Dennis was also an editor of the old YSB (“Young Sisters and Brothers”) magazine, and edited the National Newspaper Publishers Association News Service, serving the black press.
- Mack Freeman, “the first Black journalist in Jacksonville,” Fla., died Tuesday after a heart attack, the Web site of the Florida Times-Union reported Tuesday. Freeman, 66, was hired in 1968 at Jacksonville’s Channel 12 and left television in the late 1970s, the story said.
- Curtis Jackson, correspondent and fill-in anchor at Black Entertainment Television in New York, has joined WEWS-TV in Cleveland as weekend anchor/reporter, the station confirmed today.
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