D.C.’s Post, NPR, Miami Herald Limit Use of Word
The Washington Post today joined the Miami Herald, National Public Radio, the Boston Globe, the Tulsa (Okla.) Daily World and other news organizations in tightening rules on using the word “refugee” to describe people displaced by Hurricane Katrina.
The Associated Press and the New York Times both defended their use of the word today and said they planned to continue using it. Critics, including some African American leaders, have portrayed use of the word to describe displaced people, who on television screens have been largely black, as part of what they called a racial double standard that has characterized the response to the devastation. Some say that’s precisely why the word is appropriate. Still others say the entire discussion is irrelevant, given the magnitude of the damage that must be addressed.
At the Los Angeles Times, editors said the paper had decided to use the word “advisedly,” but had not prohibited it.
The Miami Herald was among the first mainstream news organizations to restrict use of the term on Friday, when executive editor Tom Fiedler sent out an e-mail that said, “When writing about people displaced by Katrina, the word ‘evacuees’ is preferable to ‘refugees.’ In addition to political implications, the latter implies that the people cannot return, which isn’t the case for all.”
[Added Sept. 6: The Boston Globe “had a policy of not using ‘refugee’ from the beginning of the evacuation,” national editor Kenneth J. Cooper told Journal-isms this morning. “In my book, it is inaccurate. A refugee has to cross an international border. People who move inside a country are technically ‘internally displaced.’ These are internationally accepted definitions, I believe. We have used evacuees or the displaced.”]
On Sunday at the Tulsa World in Oklahoma, city editor Wayne Greene told his staff that, “Saturday afternoon we decided to not use the word ‘refugee’ in reference to the evacuated people, even though that’s a perfectly good English word that describes what they are. It’s an issue that the Congressional Black Caucus has raised, saying it makes the people sound like second-class noncitizens. Under the argument that we’d rather switch than fight, we have used the words ‘evacuee’ and ‘displaced people.’ Other generics are fine. Please maintain that style.”
Also Sunday, Bill Marimow, managing editor at National Public Radio, said in a note to the staff: “In referring to the people who have fled their homes because of Hurricane Katrina. please use the words EVACUEES or SURVIVORS. Please DO NOT use the word refugees, which has the strong connotation of fleeing to another country to avoid invasion, persecution or political oppression.”
[Added Sept. 6: On public television’s “The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer,” “we never had a policy about it,” senior correspondent Gwen Ifill messaged this morning. “i can just tell you that as of yesterday we were using the word evacuee.”]
After announcing a new policy to editors, Leonard Downie Jr., Washington Post executive editor, told Journal-isms by e-mail today, “For several days, we have minimized the use of the term (I’m not sure whether it appeared in the paper today) and we have decided not to use it at all except, of course, in direct quotations or narrowly necessary contexts. A number of people — from officials speaking publicly to colleagues here — said the term refugees appeared to imply that people displaced from New Orleans . . . were other than Americans.”
One of those officials was Marc Morial, former mayor of New Orleans and president of the National Urban League, who said to host Tim Russert on NBC-TV’s “Meet the Press” Sunday:
“These are not, Tim, refugees. Let’s not refer to them as refugees. They’re citizens. They’re survivors.
“Yes. They’re Americans,” Russert replied.
“They’re us,” said Morial.
Webster’s New World Dictionary, the standard in most newsrooms, defines “refugee” as “a person who flees from home or country to seek refuge elsewhere, as in a time of war or of political or religious persecution.”
The Associated Press, the major source for national news at most news outlets, plans to continue to use the term, Mike Silverman, vice president and managing editor, told Journal-isms. “We’re sticking with it for now, though remaining open-minded of course. It has seemed to us that the unprecedented scope of the disruption and diaspora of hundreds of thousands of Americans from their homes, their communities, even their states, warrants the use of the term,” he said.
And so will the New York Times. “We have not banned the word ‘refugee.’ We have used it along with ‘evacuee,’ ‘survivor,’ ‘displaced’ and various other terms that fit what our reporters are seeing on the ground. Webster’s defines a refugee as a person fleeing ‘home or country’ in search of refuge, and it certainly does justice to the suffering legions driven from their homes by Katrina,” said Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis.
After much discussion at the Los Angeles Times, “we’re not going to prohibit it,” according to Clark Stevens, senior editor for copy desks. But “if you’re going to use it, make sure it doesn’t carry implications that it’s not meant to. I don’t think that will be much of a problem,” he said.
Editors of the Daily Press of Newport News, Va., explained their thoughts to readers Sunday in the paper’s “Feedback” column. “As for the idea that only people seeking refuge in another country qualify — like the Marielistas from Cuba or people fleeing Sarajevo — some people will recall the term ‘Dust Bowl refugee,’ which applied to Americans fleeing Texas, Oklahoma and other areas afflicted by the disastrous drought in the 1930s,” they said. “‘Refugee’ is a strong word — but it’s the right word. We’ll use it appropriately, with no hint of disrespect or condescension, and not overuse it. This might be one of those moments where the language is changing.”
To many, feelings about use of the term are linked to thoughts about treatment of the displaced. On Washington’s WPFW-FM, an interviewee related the story of a displaced hurricane victim who said she was glad to be “back in America,” because she felt she had been treated like someone who “did not belong in America.” Human Rights Watch does define a refugee as someone “who is outside of his or her country of nationality and unable or unwilling to return.”
In a note to members of the National Association of Black Journalists listserve, writer Judy Simmons argued for using the term, saying, “these events have the tragic scope that the word ‘refugee’ connotes for me.
She continued, “Our (that is to say, black) sensibilities are engaged with the labeling probably because of our constant wounding by language. No matter what the label, nothing will erase the sense many of us have that mountains would have been moved much sooner for a white population. We’ll never know that for sure, and seeking some kind of redress through imposing a reportorial vocabulary won’t alter that situation.”
- Keith Boykin blog: Refugees or Evacuees?
- Justin Fenton, Baltimore Sun: Use of ‘refugee’ is called biased
- Mike Pesca, National Public Radio: Are Katrina’s Victims ‘Refugees’ or ‘Evacuees?’
- Adrian Walker, Boston Globe: ‘Refugees’ in their land
- Eric Zorn, Chicago Tribune blog: “Refugees” vs. “Evacuees”
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Loie Quinn, Co-Founder of Journalism Program, Dies
Loie Quinn, founder with her husband, John Quinn, of the Chips Quinn Scholars Program that trains young journalists of color, died Sunday in her home in Carolina, R.I., Karen Catone, director of the program, told program alumni today.
Loie Quinn was 75. She died in her sleep, Catone said, adding that there had been no official cause of death but that she had been in frail health the past few years.
The program is named in honor of the Quinns’ son, John C. “Chips” Quinn Jr., a newspaper journalist who died at 34.
“Chips died in an automobile accident in 1990,” according to an account of the program’s evolution. “His parents, John and Loie Quinn, stayed up all that night trying to find a way to respond to the tragedy. They quickly decided on a memorial – an internship-scholarship program to bring young journalists of color into newspaper newsrooms. The program would select the students, nominated by their teachers, and match them with newspapers.”
There are now more than 900 graduates of the program, “the larger majority of whom are in news related careers across the USA,” according to a death notice today in the Providence Journal.
John and Loie Quinn were to be honored later this week in Washington by the National Association of African Journalists, which planned to present them the Advancement of Minority Journalists Award at its conference at Howard University.
Services are scheduled for Wednesday in Carolina. Condolences may be sent to: P.O. Box 173 525 Carolina Back Road, Carolina, RI 02812. “Memorial gifts may be sent to South County Hospital Healthcare Endowment, 100 Kenyon Avenue, Wakefield, RI 02879 in Mrs. Quinn’s memory would be appreciated,” the notice to alumni said.
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Newsday to Trim Its New York City Coverage
“Newsday said it will cut 45 editorial positions and trim New York City coverage, the latest contraction at the paper since a costly circulation scandal last year,” Catherine Tymkiw reported in Crain’s New York Business on Thursday.
“The cuts will be mostly at the New York City office, which will operate with a smaller staff as the paper focuses on Long Island and Queens, according to memos sent to employees by the paper’s publisher and editor.
“The paper will ‘concentrate the bulk of [its] resources on core coverage areas of Nassau, Suffolk and Queens,’ according to the memo from Newsday Publisher Timothy Knight. He said the paper would seek voluntary buyouts rather than layoffs.
The New York City office, headed by New York editor Les Payne, a past president of the National Association of Black Journalists, has eight full-time editors, of whom three are African Americans, one is Asian American and one is Hispanic. “Since this is a staff reduction not elimination,” Payne told Journal-isms, “these editors will likely be shifted and maybe even retained in some cases.”
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Short Takes
- “Former FOX25 gal Mai Shiozaki, 32, of Salem was arrested Aug. 12 trying to make off with a fab frock at 40 Atlantic in Marblehead,” Gayle Fee and Laura Raposa reported Thursday in the Boston Herald. “Her case was continued without a finding last week in Lynn District Court, but Mai’s on the hook for $855 in restitution for the dress, according to Mary-Alice Doyle of Essex County District Attorney’s Office. And she must stay away from the store.”
[Added June 7: The case was dismissed Feb. 24 after Shiozaki made $855 in restitution, the Lynn County District Attorney’s office said.]
- Dr. Edward M. Welch Jr., former chairman of the Mass Communications Department at Jackson State University, has filled the post vacated by Kelly Harvey at the Scripps Howard School of Journalism at Hampton University, Judy Clabes, CEO of the Scripps Howard Foundation, said. Harvey, daughter of the university president, taught broadcast journalism but left to go to the University of Pittsburgh Law School.
- “Tom Randles is out at WTKR. The contract of the handsome anchorman with the smooth delivery has not been renewed,” Larry Bonko reported Friday in the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot. “On Sept. 9, he’ll conclude his tenure at CBS affiliate Channel 3 that began on Jan. 11, 1993. Randles anchors the ‘NewsChannel 3’ local newscast at 5 p.m. and co-anchors at 6 and 11 p.m. with Barbara Ciara,” vice president for broadcast of the National Association of Black Journalists.
- Former vice president Walter Mondale‘s speech to the Asian American Journalists Association convention last month in Minneapolis was excerpted Wednesday in the Duluth (Minn.) News Tribune. The paper mentioned Mondale’s remarks in its editorial on the demand for oil, noting Mondale’s observation that, “for the first time in recent history it’s not just from the U.S. but China and other Asian countries.”
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More to come Tuesday
