Secret Service Received Race Info on Journalists
The Secret Service not only knows whether Cedric the Entertainer was funny on Saturday night, but also the race of everyone in his family—or at least those who attended the reception with the president that preceded the White House Correspondents’ Association’s annual dinner.
As Dana Milbank reported Friday in the Washington Post, “The Secret Service has requested racial information on journalists and guests scheduled to attend a reception tomorrow night with President Bush.
“White House reporters said they were offended that after furnishing the customary information—name, date of birth and Social Security number—they were also asked for the race of each person expected to attend the small reception scheduled before the White House Correspondents’ Association’s annual dinner.”
The correspondents complied anyway, two officers of the association—Knight Ridder reporter Ron Hutcheson, the president, and Edwin Chen, a Los Angeles Times White House reporter who is secretary—told Journal-isms today.
Chen said he told the Secret Service that two of his colleagues who would be attending—Ronald Brownstein and Doyle McManus—were white.
Hutcheson said the association’s executive secretary called him “and said ‘this is embarrassing.’ But I was on deadline and didn’t have time to follow up.” He and the executive secretary knew most of the 100 guests, and Hutcheson quickly identified his colleague Bill Douglas and Anna Devere Smith as African Americans. And, of course, there were the African American stand-up act Cedric the Entertainer, whose routine was overshadowed by that of first lady Laura Bush, and Cedric’s relatives, whom he introduced from the stage.
“They were satisfied in the end,” Hutcheson said. “I just thought public scrutiny”—Milbank’s story —”might have caused some policy reversal, but unfortunately, it didn’t.”
The request “looks pretty darn strange to me. If you have the Social Security number and date of birth, you should be able to find race someplace else, and I’m not sure what race has to do with anything in this context,” he added. Tiger Woods, who has pronounced himself “Cablinasian”—part Caucasian, part black, part American Indian, part Asian—was not spotted on the invitation list, sparing Hutcheson and the Secret Service that dilemma.
Milbank wrote that, “The Secret Service said that it has been routine for many years to request such information of people who will be near the president, and that the information allows for quicker and more accurate searches of criminal databases. The policy has not been applied universally, however; such information is not requested of the people who greet the president and first lady at White House Christmas parties, for example, and is not always asked of people who have appointments in the White House complex.”
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Lockman Loved a Good Drink, So Martinis Followed
Pulitzer Prize winner and longtime Wilmington (Del.) News Journal columnist, editorial writer and editor Norman Lockman wasn’t about to leave to chance how he’d be officially memorialized, Betty Winston Bayé, columnist at Kentucky’s Louisville Courier-Journal, told Journal-isms today.
She continued with this report:
Norm, who was 66, lost his fight with Lou Gehrig‘s disease last month. So, his brother-in-law, Bob Trainer, told the 350 people who filled nearly every seat in downtown Wilmington’s Episcopal Church of Saints Andrew and Matthew Saturday that Norm had taken care of the most important details of his home-going. Norm chose the gold urn that contained his ashes and the photograph of him wearing his signature bow tie that sat on an easel in the front of the church and directly in front of his eulogists — as if to remind them, one said, that he was watching.
Norm chose the simple cover for his memorial program, a cartoon rendering of himself from the neck up, reading, “Norman A. Lockman, 1938-2005” and the word, “Finale.”
Norm also chose the music and those who would have the speaking parts.
Norm didn’t suffer fools gladly, said one of his eulogists, local businessman Ajit George. He interspersed years of recollections — from Norm as his first boss to those from a friendship that spanned 33 years — with what others had to say. The others included Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., and fellow columnists Derrick Z. Jackson of the Boston Globe and DeWayne Wickham of USA Today.
One of Norm’s three daughters, Carey Lockman Corbin, remarked that the Lockmans had entered a new era, but promised that the family would continue to honor his great affection for food, music and lively debate. “Don’t be afraid to express your opinions. Engage in healthy debates,” Corbin recalled her father saying.
His work had occupied him for about 50 years. With time and his energy running out, Norm wrote a farewell column Nov. 28 in which he had sage advice for those who would soldier on without him. “Journalism,” he said, “is like driving. You need to know when to stop doing it well before you become a hazard to yourself and others.”
Norm also loved a good drink, and so, a martini reception followed at a different location.
Among those spotted at the service, Bayé added, were W. Curtis Riddle, publisher of the News Journal; Bennie Ivory, executive editor of the Courier-Journal in Louisville; Vanessa Williams of the Washington Post; Roy Campbell, formerly of the Philadelphia Inquirer; Garland Thompson, formerly of the Baltimore Sun; and Wayne J. Dawkins and Sherman Miller, members of the Trotter Group of African American columnists.
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Kenneth Clark’s Pessimism on Integration
Richard Severo‘s obituary today of Dr. Kenneth Clark, “the psychologist and educator whose 1950 report showing the destructive effect of school segregation influenced the United States Supreme Court to hold school segregation to be unconstitutional,” contained this paragraph:
“To the end, Dr. Clark remained committed to integration, although he grew more pessimistic. For this, in part, he blamed nonconservative whites who, he thought, had betrayed the civil rights struggle; those blacks who thought they could succeed in isolation from whites; politicians of both races who made empty promises; and defeatists who came to think that integration and real racial harmony were ‘too difficult to achieve.'”
On the rhetorical evolution from Negro to black to African American, Clark was asked the best thing for blacks to call themselves, Severo continued.
“White,” he replied.
“He said a lack of meaningful progress could be blamed on blacks who saw themselves only as victims and on whites too narrow-minded to recognize their own self-interest in black success. As whites become a minority in a polyglot country, he was asked, won’t they see that it is in their interest that blacks succeed?
“‘They’re not that bright,’ he replied. ‘I don’t think you can expect whites to understand the effects of prejudice and discrimination against blacks affecting them. If whites really understood, they would do something about it.'”
Clark was 90.
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Albom Says He Writes for Readers, Not Critics
Mitch Albom, the Detroit Free Press columnist who wrote that two players were in the stands for a Final Four basketball game before the event had even taken place—making him a fabricator after the two didn’t show up—returned to column-writing Sunday, saying he had been subjected to “An explosion that mixed the criticism I deserved with a lava flow of anger, hate, self-righteousness and people who once called themselves friends preferring to act as my judge and jury.”
But, he continued, those aren’t the people who matter.
“I will not swipe at those who swiped at me. It was my mistake. I’ll own up to it. Besides, in 20 years of doing this column, I have never written for those people.
“I write for you.
“I write for readers. I find stories I think interest you, opine on subjects I think you might want to think about. It is the joy of this space. And in my absence, you have returned some of that joy with letters and e-mails and phone calls,” he wrote.
Albom also said: “If I ever needed a humbling reminder to slow down, something I’ve struggled with for years, here was that lesson again. That column was filed in a hurry on a day when I wrote another column right after it. Too fast. Too dangerous.”
Meanwhile, “None of the papers carrying Albom’s Detroit Free Press column cancelled during the past month, according to John Twohey, vice president for editorial and operations at Tribune Media Services,” Dave Astor reported in Editor & Publisher.
In the same publication, Joe Strupp reported that Albom additionally returned to his perch Sunday on ESPN?s ?The Sports Reporters? and that Carole Leigh Hutton, editor and publisher of the Free Press, “told E&P on Sunday that the Albom affair had drawn sharp reactions, both for and against the writer. ‘I have been yelled at quite soundly by readers for having him out of the paper,’ Hutton told E&P. ‘But plenty have yelled at me for putting him back in the paper.’?
Don?t forget where you?re from (Ernest L. Wiggins, The State, Columbia, S.C.)
Albom violated basic principle (Jacquelyn Mitchard, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
Media Crime & Punishment (Howard Kurtz, Washington Post)
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CPB Chair Tracks PBS Guests’ Political Leanings
“The Republican chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is aggressively pressing public television to correct what he and other conservatives consider liberal bias, prompting some public broadcasting leaders—including the chief executive of PBS—to object that his actions pose a threat to editorial independence,” Stephen Labaton, Lorne Manley and Elizabeth Jensen reported today in the New York Times.
“Without the knowledge of his board, the chairman, Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, contracted last year with an outside consultant to keep track of the guests’ political leanings on one program, ‘Now With Bill Moyers.’
“. . . Pat Mitchell, president and chief executive of PBS, who has sparred with Mr. Tomlinson privately but till now has not challenged him publicly, disputed [his] accusation of bias and was critical of some of his actions.
“‘I believe there has been no chilling effect, but I do think there have been instances of attempts to influence content from a political perspective that I do not consider appropriate,’ Ms. Mitchell, who plans to step down when her contract expires next year, said Friday.”
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Did Bride-to-Be “Even Know Any Hispanics in Ga.?”
Jennifer Wilbanks, the betrothed suburban Atlanta woman whose pre-wedding flight spawned a national search, could face misdemeanor or felony charges, a prosecutor said today, CNN reported.
“I felt sorry for her; how humiliated she must feel. Silly girl,” Dan Herrera, assistant managing editor of New Mexico’s Albuquerque Journal, wrote Sunday.
That is, until Herrera took up a reporter’s offer “to listen to the tape recording of the 911 call the woman made from a pay phone late Friday night . . .
“The 911 operator asked her to describe her kidnappers.
“And she described me.
“And my wife.
“And a vehicle we used to own.
“In her words:
“‘It was a Hispanic man and a Caucasian woman.’
“‘I would say in their 40s, maybe.’
“‘I don’t know, about 5-10, about my height, about 5-9.’
“The male kidnapper also had short dark hair and no facial hair.
“This is me. To a tee.
“I realize I just described all three of my brothers and about 10 percent of New Mexico, too.
“My wife is Hispanic, but she is very light complexioned with blonde hair. She is of similar height and build as the woman described.
“And for years we owned a large blue van, just like the one the woman’s kidnappers used.
“What is this?
“Racism? Stupidity?
“Why in panicked self-preservation did she turn against what is a small minority in her state? Does she even know any Hispanics in Georgia? In her culture or upbringing, are Hispanics naturally suspicious people?”
‘Two categories of journalism: What we need to hear . . . [and] this stuff that pays the bills’ (Steve Murray, Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
If a Runaway Bride Can Get National Attention, Why Can?t Tamika Huston’s Disappearance? (Deborah Mathis, BlackAmericaWeb.com)
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Brown Denies Intimidation at Hampton J-School
“I can state categorically that there’s no climate of fear” at Hampton University’s journalism school, dean Tony Brown said Saturday in the Daily Press of Newport News, Va. “That’s the most absurd statement I’ve ever heard.”
Brown’s reaction in a story by Jessica Hanthorn noting that leaders of the National Association of Black Journalists met April 13 with administrators at Hampton “to address what the association calls a climate of intimidation and fear among students in HU’s journalism program.
“Officials from the National Association of Black Journalists declined to provide specifics on incidents at the school, but they said they spoke in person with more than 20 journalism students who said they are being discouraged from doing hard-hitting journalism,” Hantorn wrote.
Brown said that NABJ “is now working against HU by spreading unfounded accusations,” the story said.
“It is not serving the black community,” Brown was quoted as saying. “The conflict is not serving the students, and Hampton University does not want this conflict.”
However, the story continued, “Talia Buford, an HU student who worked as the paper’s editor for several years, said some students at the paper said they were afraid of retaliation.
“There are a couple who would say, ‘I don’t want to write this story because I don’t want to make anyone mad,’ ” she said in the story.
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Short takes
- Maria Martin, president of Gracias Vida Productions in Austin, Texas, and Ivan Penn, reporter at the Baltimore Sun, are among those selected for Knight fellowships at Stanford University, the program announced late today. Penn plans to study African American entrepreneurship; and Martin, “transnational communities, the role of media in promoting democracy, and power dynamics in societies undergoing demographic change.”
- California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger asked Thursday for Spanish-language television station KRCA to remove a controversial local billboard advertising the news team as broadcasting from “Los Angeles, Mexico,” Ad Week reported. Schwarzenegger called the advertisement “extremely divisive” in promoting illegal immigration.
- In general, African Americans and Hispanics are more likely to be watching TV in all its various dayparts than the general population at large, data from Scarborough Research reiterates, according to David Kaplan, writing in Media Post.
- Kim Roberts Hedgpeth was named Saturday as national executive director of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA), one of the first African Americans, if not the first to hold such a position. She had been serving as acting national executive director, AFTRA announced.
- Philadelphia reporter Alicia Taylor has left WCAU-TV in Philadelphia, callers were told today. Her contract expired May 1. “Taylor joined ‘CAU in November ’98 out of Baltimore’s WBAL. In spring ’02, she was the target of nasty Internet threats that resulted in the departure of morning anchor Sharon Reed,” as Gail Shister reported last week in the Philadelphia Inquirer.
- Douglas Hopper, Maria Ma and Roseanne Pereira are the first three recipients of National Public Radio’s new Kroc Fellowship Program, a year-long intensive training program designed to attract ?the best of the best? to the public radio news system. The program is funded from a 2003 bequest of more than $200 million to NPR from Joan B. Kroc, widow of McDonald?s Corp. founder Ray A. Kroc, NPR said.
Hopper, who is completing his B.A. in journalism at the University of Oregon, organized the University?s Queer Film Festival, among other activities. Pereira taught English and American culture to refugees from Sudan and the Congo; her family is from the former Portuguese colony of Goa, now a state in India. Ma is an Asian American New York University graduate who spent her winter break in China, researching the high suicide rate of rural Chinese women.
- Philip P. Pan, Beijing bureau chief of the Washington Post, won the Overseas Press Club’s Bob Considine Award for best newspaper or wire service interpretation of international affairs. Pan wrote about “the inner workings of the largest authoritarian system in the world,” judges noted, providing “often searing portraits of ordinary Chinese” crushed beneath the wheels of a huge bureaucracy, the New York Times reported.
- Shirley Hancock, once an anchor at KOIN-TV in Portland, Ore., settled a lawsuit against the TV station and its owners and spoke with Brent Hunsberger of the Oregonian. “Even when I was anchoring three No. 1 newscasts, with three different male anchors, I was offered a contract that was below what the primary male anchors made doing the same or even fewer newscasts. In one instance, it was a six-figure disparity,” she said.
- Brian Moss, the editor in chief, U.S., of the Metro chain of free daily newspapers, has been ousted after only six months on the job, Keith J. Kelly reported Friday in the New York Post. Moss presided over the New York, Boston and Philadelphia editions. “The company has been embroiled in controversy in recent months after allegations surfaced that some of its executives made allegedly racist remarks at company meetings,” Kelly noted.
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