Publishing Racist Letters

Editors Explain Why Bigotry Makes the Paper

When a letter writer to the Courier-Journal in Louisville, Ky., called columnist Betty Bayé a “porch monkey,” Bayé wanted the phrase to stay in the letter, if only so that readers would be aware of what she hears a lot. So we did,” said Keith L. Runyon, editor of the paper’s Forum section.

When a Hmong refugee wrote the Wausau Daily Herald in Wisconsin that her children were turned away from some homes on Halloween, the paper ran a reply from a woman who wrote, “I’m sorry your children were slighted but let’s face a few cold facts. Us whites have done more for Hmong than any city in the country. There might be hard feelings from some but, if the shoe was on the other foot, would you take your tax dollars to support us whites?”

The two examples were cited this week in an exchange on the listserve of the National Conference of Editorial Writers. The subject was whether racist letters to the editor should be published.

The majority said yes ? within limits, of course — because as John Taylor, editorial page editor of the Wilmington (Del.) News Journal, said, “people should be aware that there are people in their community who hold such beliefs and convictions. It’ all too easy to say that racism or anti-Semitism is a thing of the past.”

Not everyone agreed. “Racists have other means of transmitting their ideas, including the Internet, so I don’t worry that we are barring anyone who wants to listen from hearing their views,” said the opinion editor of a small mid-Atlantic newspaper. “Printing such letters in a reputable newspaper gives these ideas a legitimacy that they would not otherwise have.”

“Our bias should be toward the most robust discussion possible, but not at the expense of resurrecting old canards,” said Frank Partsch, editorial page editor of the Omaha (Neb.) World-Herald. “When we work so hard to increase diversity on our editorial pages and to increase readership among minority groups,” said Kay Semion, editorial writer at Florida’s Daytona Beach News-Journal, “why would we consider publishing a letter that is racist — that doesn’t inform, that lowers the level of the edit-page conversation, that is an insult to those we are wanting to bring into our readership?” Semion is also president of the organization.

But those who argued for publishing had their own arguments and told some revealing stories.

“Hearing stupid remarks on talk radio or watching vulgar stereotypes on television just washes over us by now, like dirty water. But when the disreputable appears in print, I have the feeling/hunch . . . that putting it in writing makes it clearer that this sort of thing is not what good people would want to say,” wrote Paul Greenberg, editorial page editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in Little Rock.

In Wausau, opinion editor Peter J. Wasson of the Gannett Wisconsin Newspaper Group recalled that publication of the anti-Hmong letter led to a spate of letters condemning the writer’s view and responses from Hmong Americans explaining who they are (not from a country of their own, but a people who helped the Americans during the Vietnam war and were first abandoned by the United States when the Americans withdrew, then persecuted after fleeing to Laos. Eventually the U.S. granted them entry.) “The responses, some of which are printed on this page, have been overwhelming,” the paper editorialized. “The antidote to offensive, bigoted or just plain unreasonable speech is more speech ? more dialogue and more debate. You can find it here.”

From Peoria, Ill., editorial page editor Barbara Mantz Drake said the Journal Star printed letters from Matt Hale, the young white supremacist who later went to prison for soliciting the murder of federal judge Joan Lefkow. “As long as race, religion and ethnicity remain public issues, and they do, then we can’t exclude racists from the discussion. . . . Did we edit his letters to remove racist screed? No. We would have done readers (and the city) a disservice if we made Hale appear more civil than he was. . . . If nothing else, reading Matt Hale informed this city that serious white supremacism is not an anachronism. It is real, and dangerous.”

Karl Seitz, editorial page editor of the Birmingham Post-Herald in Alabama, writing from the city once called “Bombingham,” cautioned, “Don’t believe the racists can’t learn to clean up their language to a publishable level.”

He wrote, “Although I entered this profession after the situation exploded, I’ve lived long enough and worked with others who were in the profession back then to know that Southern newspapers of fifty years ago routinely ignored and didn’t publish the racist rants of Ku Kluxers and others. It was thought that if the uncouth racists were ignored they would disappear, leaving a more [genteel] and often unspoken racism in place. For that matter, most Southern newspapers tried to ignore the Civil Rights Movement, too,” he wrote.

“When the bomb killed four young girls in a Birmingham church in 1963, the hate expressed by that act came as a shock to large numbers of newspaper readers, even though it was not the first time that Ku Kluxers had planted bombs in this city.

“While publishing racist letters in the 1950s and early 1960s would not have prevented such bombings, they would have let readers know that such hatred did, in fact, exist in their community. The hatred has different targets these days, but readers need to know it still exists.”

Still, some editors are frustrated simply by having to deal with such correspondence.

Harry Austin, editorial page editor of the Chattanooga Times page of the Chattanooga Times Free Press in Tennessee, wrote, ?In our daily, twinned editorial pages — the old, liberal Chattanooga Times on the left side of the double truck, the old right-wing Chatta. News Free Press on the right side; the result of the sale and merger of both papers in 1999 to a single owner — my counterpart on the opposing page continues to publish the sort of racist and gay-bashing letters that I will not publish on my page (we alternate days for letters and our syndicated columns M-Sat., and give letters we both agree on a page in the Sunday Perspective section.)

“My (decidedly unscientific) observation of the result is that publishing these letters must validate the thinking of those who hold those views, because one letter seems to prompt a spurt of more such letters. On the other hand, folks with opposing views write and lambast[e] them. The argument never seems to end. I do get tired and frustrated by the continuing dialogue. I don’t know if it’s healthy, or boring, or breeds more and bigger hatred and side-taking. Regardless, it certainly keeps both racist and gay-bashing letters (more of the latter than the former) aired and alive.”

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NBC’s Departing Neal Shapiro Disappointed NABJ

“Amid growing dissatisfaction with his leadership of the news division, NBC News President Neal Shapiro is in initial separation talks with the network to step down from his post, according to three sources at the company,” Matea Gold wrote today in the Los Angeles Times.

In December, Shapiro braved a driving snowstorm to meet with leaders of the National Association of Black Journalists, and pledged “future participation in our NABJ Media Institute” and “continued dialogue about hiring and retaining black journalists” after a two-hour meeting. It was called a groundbreaking session.

But the promises apparently did not live up to the billing.

“NABJ has spent the last six months working with Mr. Shapiro in an effort to improve the networks hiring and retention of Black journalists and managers, we hope that whoever takes his place will keep their eye on the ball,” NABJ’ vice president for broadcast, Barbara Ciara, told Journal-isms via e-mail.

“The January objective was to see more black reporters and producers on the NBC nightly news covering the big stories. That hasn’t happened yet.

“Neal said he would make every effort to think diversity when he made new hires, I have seen no evidence that he has made any progress. Since January he has hired a new Executive Producer and promoted two reporters to cover the White House, not one of those hires is black.”

Factors cited for Shapiro’s departure include the dwindling lead of the “Today” show over ABC-TV?s “Good Morning America” and the “disconnect” in management style between Shapiro and Jeff Zucker, president of the NBC Universal Television Group, according to Jacques Steinberg, writing Thursday in the New York Times.

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Detroit’s Terry Foster Weighs Bankruptcy Filing

“I am fighting to keep from filing bankruptcy,” Terry Foster, Detroit News sportswriter and Fox SportsNet commentator, announced to readers of his blog today, after a candy store and coffee shop he opened flopped. He said he was closing the store this weekend.

“I tried my hand in the business world and it did not work. To be honest it is the biggest mistake I made in my life and it is something I must pay for for years to come,” Foster wrote.

“I got into business for two reasons. I was convinced I was going to be fired at my newspaper job and thought this could be a new beginning if that happened. I also was not doing full time radio and I was coming to grips that my radio career was coming to an end. 2. I wanted to make some cash to start a college fund for my two kids and then sell it.

“Well I was the one who got the education. It has been an expensive education, but I am man enough to deal with it. I have to do it for my wife and kids. They never asked for this.

“Now it is up to me to be a big man and make life right again.”

Foster told Journal-isms he had expected to be fired from the Detroit News after changes in job assignments. Foster, who wrote at the Free Press in the 1980s, had a column that ran on the front of the News sports section.

He told his blog readers, “I remember living in a rat infested neighborhood where boys used to stand on the garbage cans and pelt rats with bricks. One morning I woke up early for breakfast and one of the rats was invading my box of cereal. It scared the hell out of me.

“As I grew older I vowed to never put myself or my family in that predicament. We are not close to that happening. But my motivation for the next few years will be that rat and that box of cereal. I don’t want to return to that.

“If anyone has any advice I sure could use it now.”

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Role ‘Shifts,’ Denver’s Tamara Banks Splits

“Anchorwoman Tamara Banks is leaving WB2 News to join Mayor John Hickenlooper’s administration as its neighborhood liaison,” April M. Washington reported today in Denver’s Rocky Mountain News.

Hickenlooper announced Thursday that after “a long search to find the right person” for the job, Banks has agreed to become the mayor’s office’s full-time link to Denver’s neighborhoods.

Banks is a former president of the Colorado Association of Black Journalists and regional representative on the board of the National Association of Black Journalists.

“Banks said Thursday the time had come for her to seek new opportunities as her role with the local TV station had shifted in the past year under new management,” the story said. The station now describes Banks as an “anchor/reporter.”

“The reason I got in journalism is to make an impact and a difference,” Banks said in the story. “This is another extension of that, to help get people involved in the process.”

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Viewers Support Arthur Chi’en After F-Word Firing

Viewers are rallying behind New York television reporter Arthur Chi’en, who was fired by WCBS-TV last week after he shouted the F-word at two meddlers who horned in on his live shot, according to Clyde Haberman, writing today in the New York Times.

“Some of his colleagues were dismayed. So were people whom he covered for Channel 2 and, before that, for NY1 News. Mr. Chi’en, a respected reporter, specialized in transportation news. Letters of protest have been sent to WCBS by representatives of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the Transport Workers Union and the Straphangers Campaign. Most days, you can’t get those groups to agree on a lunch order,” Haberman wrote.

“Nobody is about to nominate Mr. Chi’en for a Peabody Award. Punish him and even suspend him, say supporters like Tom Kelly, the transportation authority’s communications director. But dismissal in this situation is ‘outrageous,’ Mr. Kelly said in a letter to WCBS.

“Some of Mr. Chi’en’s allies sense a climate of fear in the F.C.C.’s pumped-up campaign against indecency.”

Meanwhile, the New York Post reported Thursday that “New York entrepreneur David Yee is hawking a line of Arthur ‘Chi’en Revolution’; coffee mugs, T-shirts, buttons, tote bags, messenger bags, barbecue aprons, teddy bears and even a ‘Chi’en Classic Thong,’ emblazoned with the classic quote, ‘What the fuck is your problem, man?’

“I’ve got bigger things to worry about than the shirts, basically,” Chi’en said in the Post.

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Meredith Corp. Settles With Kevin O’Brien

“Meredith Corp. and its former broadcasting president Kevin O’Brien have reached a settlement ending their legal battle,” Patt Johnson reported Thursday in the Des Moines Register.

“Terms of the settlement were not disclosed.

“Meredith fired O’Brien on Oct. 29, saying he had violated the company’s equal opportunity employment policy.

“The company sued him Nov. 12, asking a federal judge in Des Moines to affirm its decision to fire O’Brien. In a court document, Meredith accused O’Brien of racial discrimination and sexual harassment.

“The document said an independent investigation found that O’Brien made racist statements, including ?We can’t right all the wrongs of the Civil War; we’ve got to quit hiring all these black people.'”

Sole Black Member of CPB Calls NPR “Even-Handed”

“Despite complaints about a purported unbalanced coverage by National Public Radio journalists, NPR provides more even-handed coverage of news than the major networks, says the only Black member of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting,” Hazel Trice Edley reported for the NNPA News Service.

“American public broadcasting has been more fair, more unbiased, more balanced than the private media, CBS, ABC, FOX, and is actually more trustworthy than most other American institutions, including the judiciary, the presidency and the Congress,” says the lone Black member, Ernest J. Wilson III, a professor of government, politics and Afro-American studies at the University of Maryland. “A lot of the fairness and balance stuff is overdrawn.”

The assault on NPR (Tom Ashbrook, Boston Globe)

There’s a ‘nuclear option’ for PBS’ woes as well (David Shaw, Los Angeles Times)

A Charge of Media Bias, From the Left This Time (Associated Press)

Africans Urge Training to Counter Negative Reporting

The International Press Institute?s 54th congress wound up in Nairobi on Tuesday with a proposal to train African editors to report on the continent, Nixon Ng’ang’a wrote Wednesday in the Standard of Nairobi, Kenya. More than 300 delegates attended.

“IPI chairman Wilfred Kiboro said the training would be part of a strategy to counter negative reporting on the continent by the media, including its homebred journalists,” Ng’ang’a wrote.

Reports from the conference:

• Media need to see the positive in Africa, IPI congress told (Eric Nyakagwa, Journalism.co.za)

 

• Democracy and Terrorism Take the Centre Stage (Mugumo Munene, The Nation, Nairobi)

 

• Journalists Welcome Freedom of Information Directive (Catholic Information Services for Africa, Nairobi)

 

• Consultant Calls for Revival of National News Agencies ( Dauti Kahura, East African Standard, Nairobi)

 

• Group Honors Broadcaster Who Landed in Trouble (The Nation, Nairobi)

 

• Press Freedom Remains an Elusive Dream in Africa (John Kamau, East African Standard, Nairobi)

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Short Takes

• “A national initiative led by five of America’s leading research universities with the support of two major foundations will advance the U.S. news business by helping revitalize schools of journalism,” the Carnegie Foundation of New York and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation announced Thursday. A Carnegie spokeswoman said journalists of color and historically black colleges and universities might participate as the group seeks requests for proposals and makes grants to other institutions.

 

• Dudley Brooks, an award-winning 22-year photographer at the Washington Post and a native of Baltimore, was named the Baltimore Sun’s assistant managing editor for photography, starting June 10. “His philosophy of photographic coverage has been forged by his work on assignments such as China’s crackdown following the Tiananmen Square massacre, Nelson Mandela’s release from prison in South Africa and Pope John Paul II’s first visit to Cuba,” editor Tim Franklin told the staff this week.
• Christopher Callahan, associate dean of the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland, was named Wednesday as the first dean of the journalism school at Arizona State University. Callahan was instrumental in locating the National Association of Black Journalists on the Maryland campus and led last year’s survey documenting the whiteness of Washington bureaus for Unity: Journalists of Color.
• “The Chicago Defender, which was perhaps the last daily newspaper in America to launch a Web site, will take a big technological leap forward Thursday by launching a podcast,” Mark Fitzgerald wrote Wednesday in Editor & Publisher.
• The Rev. Al Sharpton has signed with Chicago-based Matrix Media to host a nationally syndicated weekday afternoon talk show, set to start late this summer. The civil rights leader and onetime Democratic presidential hopeful plans to originate the show from New York, Robert Feder reported Thursday in the Chicago Sun-Times.
• “The owners of Funny Cide, along with the jockey who rode the thoroughbred to victory in the 2003 Kentucky Derby, have filed a defamation suit against the Miami Herald for its May 2003 article suggesting that the jockey held an illegal object in his hand during the race,” Jessica M. Walker reported Monday in the Daily Business Review in South Florida. As reported in February, the Herald’s blunder was caused partly by an Anglo reporter’s failure to understand the Spanish-speaking jockey, Jose Santos.
• “WOWT’s ‘retiring’ ‘anchor’ Pat Persaud paid loving tribute to herself Monday evening, narrating a retrospective that was every bit as free of substance as most of her ‘career’ has been,” Ted Brockman wrote Tuesday in his Omaha, Neb., TV blog. He followed developments with Persaud during the rest of the week, and then warned Thursday about “Omaha’s scariest co-anchor, Elictia ‘Omarosa’ Hammond.”
• “Joining NBC-owned Channel 5 as a general assignment reporter is Alexander Perez, who has been a reporter at KVIA-TV, the ABC affiliate in El Paso, Texas,” Robert Feder reported Thursday in the Chicago Sun-Times.
• “A survey of the media coverage relating to genetically modified crops in five developing countries has shown that news stories often lack critical analysis of the issues at stake, and rarely represent the views of farmers,” Talent Ngandwe reported from Lusaka, Zambia, for SciDev.Net. “In four of the countries studied — Brazil, India, Kenya and Zambia — the media tended to follow the government line on GM crops while in Thailand the media generally opposes government plans to introduce the crops.”

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