Maynard Institute archives

BET Had Bit Role in Tookie Drama

by richard0623

Network Was Intermediary in Assault-Weapon Drop

Using Black Entertainment Television as an intermediary, members of the Bloods street gang turned in assault rifles to Los Angeles police last week in an effort to save the life of Stanley Tookie Williams, the former leader of the rival Crips gang who was executed Tuesday morning, according to the network.

“The guys know they can talk to us,” reporter Stephanie Frederic told Journal-isms tonight.

“I’ve been in L.A. since ’92. I had done a lot of stories on the Bloods and the Crips.”

Frederic’s Dec. 9 report, shown about five times on the BET “news briefs” that replaced the nightly newscast, opened with gang leader Bloodhound saying, “If you spare his life, we pledge to get more guns off the streets and we pledge to get other Bloods to do the same thing.”

“Is it an offer California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger can refuse?” Frederic asked on camera.

“L.A.’s notorious Blood gang wants to cut a deal: They’ll surrender some assault rifles in exchange for saving the life of their once-rival Crip co-founder Stanley Tookie Williams.”

Then came another sound clip from Bloodhound. “Most of [the] Bloods I came in contact with want to see Tookie live and continue the work he’s doing. They identify with him regardless of the fact that he’s a Crip — most Bloods are, ‘that could be me.'”

Frederic said the Bloods asked whether she would receive the weapons, but she proposed that they be dropped off at a neutral location instead. “We’ll go there, confirm that they’re there, then call the cops,” Frederic said she told the gang members. “They didn’t want to be connected to them and we didn’t want to transport them. I can imagine being stopped by the cops” having the weapons in BET’s possession, she said.

The gang members used the cleansing lubricant WD-40 to remove any fingerprints.

Frederic said the governor’s office had a “no comment” when BET asked about the gun drop. Schwarzenegger announced on Monday he was denying Williams’ request for clemency.

Police called BET and confirmed they had picked up the banned weapons, she said, but she could not immediately say how many there were, nor could the L.A. police department immediately provide details. “We stayed up until 4 o’clock in the morning picking up guns,” Frederic continued. “The first drop was Thursday night at 10:30. The next one was at 1, then 3. They called us all weekend, ‘We have three more guns.’ ‘We have five more guns.'”

The story was picked up by the local CBS and ABC stations in Los Angeles. “We could have had more coverage,” Frederic allowed. She said the Bloods intended to stage similar gun drops in other cities. “With the number we got, we could have been picking up guns all over the country.”

A viewer who saw the BET report voiced his frustration Monday on the Web site ThugLifeArmy.

“The mainstream press can put headlines out about how the community leaders in LA are asking for calm and that they are afraid of violence when the Governors decision comes down, or headlines about how prison guards are afraid of what is going to happen, just making the point that the Crips put fear into the government,” wrote the poster, identified as “Robert.”

“Why are the other sides of this story not reported, especially the BET and the Bloods story? Why is it not even on BET’s web site or any mention of it anywhere?”

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Raju Narisetti on Wall St. Journal’s Promotion List

“I’m pleased to announce the appointment of Dan Hertzberg as senior deputy managing editor and of Alix Freedman, Marcus Brauchli, Edward Felsenthal and Raju Narisetti as deputy managing editors,” Paul Steiger, managing editor of the Wall Street Journal, told the Journal staff on Wednesday.

“These appointments ratify the expanded responsibilities that all five have already taken on during the past year.

“Raju, based in Brussels, will continue to direct all Journal reporting teams and coverage from Europe and the Middle East and to serve as editor of The Wall Street Journal Europe.”

Neither Steiger nor a Journal spokesman responded Friday to an inquiry about whether black or Latino journalists are in the pipeline for top Journal editorial positions. [Added Dec. 20: Spokesman Robert Christie replied in the column dated Dec. 19.]

In 2004, Carolyn Phillips, a black journalist who as assistant managing editor was the highest ranking person of color in the Journal’s newsroom, filed a lawsuit alleging discrimination. “The litigation continues, with more depositions scheduled for January,” Phillips told Journal-isms.

As reported here in May, the Indian-born Narisetti describes himself as an advocate of the kind of diversity that he said “has to go well beyond the typical measures.”

He said then of his appointment, “What it hopefully does is signal – to the outside world — that at all three editions of the Journal, there continue to be no ethnic or country-of-origin barriers to getting to the top-most rungs of news management. Like all papers we strive to do better on diversity – and it is really a never-ending task – but I am by no means an exception.”

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“We Want Courtland to Continue as a Columnist”

Courtland Milloy said today he had told his Washington Post editors “I’m basically calling it a day” on the local column he has written for more than 20 years, but Post Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr. told Journal-isms, “We want Courtland to continue as a columnist.”

Milloy, whose last column appeared Nov. 30, said a decision by the Post to move its local columnists off the Metro front page to make way for an index to the section, as Joe Strupp reported Wednesday in Editor & Publisher, was one of the factors “that have caused me to take stock. I’m wrapping up my 30th year here. You look up one day and you’re closer to the end of the line than the station you left out of.”

Milloy spoke with Journal-isms before having lunch today with Downie to discuss options, and couldnâ??t be reached afterward. Downie spoke after the two had lunch.

Milloy started his column in 1984 and took a break in 1999. In 2001, then-Post ombudsman Michael Getler wrote:

“Milloy’s column is one of the things I like best about the newspaper. He writes a reportorial-style column. He goes to places and talks to people and writes down what they say and do and why they do it. He writes mostly about black people. But they could be white or Hispanic. What is important is their humanity and dignity. He takes us to places and people that many of us don’t get to, and he often finds things there that are restorative. He reminds us, through reporting, that at a time when we are surrounded by so much ugliness — an out-of-control gun culture, rampant violence on television and in movies — many people are out there who are not headline-makers but who do things that make us less despairing about where we are headed.

“Journalism is approaching its season of awards. Milloy probably is not an entrant in the big contests. Maybe that’s a good thing, because prizes can sometimes change the chemistry between writers and readers. Yet Milloy’s twice-weekly column, in my view at least, is something to be prized by readers, something that makes a newspaper special and revealing even when the news is slow or depressing.”

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Writer Was Paid to Push Indicted Lobbyist’s Clients

“A columnist from a libertarian think tank admits accepting payments to promote an indicted lobbyist’s clients,” including Indian tribes, Eamon Javers wrote today on BusinessWeek Online.

“A senior fellow at the Cato Institute resigned from the libertarian think tank on Dec. 15 after admitting that he had accepted payments from indicted Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff for writing op-ed articles favorable to the positions of some of Abramoff’s clients. Doug Bandow, who writes a syndicated column for Copley News Service, told BusinessWeek Online that he had accepted money from Abramoff for writing between 12 and 24 articles over a period of years, beginning in the mid ’90s,” Javers reported.

“‘It was a lapse of judgment on my part, and I take full responsibility for it,’ Bandow said from a California hospital, where he’s recovering from recent knee surgery.

“Bandow confirms that he received $2,000 for some pieces, but says it was ‘usually less than that amount.’

“. . . A review of Bandow’s columns and other written work shows that he wrote favorably about Abramoff’s Indian tribal clients — as well as another Abramoff client, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands — as far back as 1997. One column, syndicated by the Copley News Service, saluted one Abramoff client tribe, the Mississippi Choctaws, for their entrepreneurial spirit, hard work, and commitment to free enterprise. ‘The Choctaws offer a model for other tribes,’ Bandow wrote.

“Bandow wrote a column earlier this year — well after the disclosure that Abramoff was under federal investigation — saying that wealthy Indian tribes had become yet another ‘well-funded special interest seeking political favors.’ In response to BusinessWeek Online’s inquiry, Bandow said his views of Indian gambling have shifted over the years. ‘It’s gone well beyond what it once was,’ he said.

Cato Communications Director Jamie Dettmer told Editor & Publisher that the think tank would be removing one to two dozen Bandow wrote concerning Indian tribes, with Bandow helping to identify them,” E&P wrote today.

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Hip-Hop Admirer Celebrates Pryor’s Use of “N” Word

While many columnists of color have expressed the hope that comic actor Richard Pryor’s eventual renunciation of the “N” word would in death set an example for the hip-hop generation, an academician who specializes in hip-hop culture is instead celebrating Pryor’s earlier use of the term.

In an online essay called “A Nigger Un-Reconstructed: The Legacy of Richard Pryor,” Mark Anthony Neal, associate professor of black popular culture at Duke University, argues that “The voices that Pryor heard in his head — the ‘niggers’ in his head — were the same ‘niggers’ that both the Civil Rights guard and the Black Power elite had a vested interest in killing-off . . . Pryor knew better; he had long known better. Those ‘niggers’ were the salt of the earth.”

Others took a different view, as commentary after Pryor’s death Saturday continued:

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“Real Sports” Wins DuPont for Child-Slavery Story

For the first time in the history of the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards for broadcast journalism, a sports program will be honored with a silver baton, Columbia University announced Thursday.

“HBO’s Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel” won for its report, “The Sport of Sheikhs,” an investigation of child slavery connected to camel-racing in the United Arab Emirates.

Also among the 13 winners were North Carolina Public Radio-WUNC, Chapel Hill, for “North Carolina Voices: Understanding Poverty,” and CNN for its coverage of the tsunami disaster in Indian Ocean states.

“Telling the Truth: The Best in Broadcast Journalism,” hosted by Michel Martin, is to be broadcast nationwide on PBS stations beginning Jan. 24, according to the news release. Martin Smith of “Frontline,” producer, writer and director of the one-hour program, will shadow six of the duPont winners “to examine how these skillful journalists get the facts, make editorial choices, and confront challenges along the way,” the release said.

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Departing Cristina Magazine Hoping to Resurface

“The December issue of Cristina La Revista displays a cheery cover shot of Mexican actress Adela Noriega. But turn inside to the happy holidays letter to readers from the title namesake, and it makes no mention that the contract between publisher Editorial Televisa and Cristina Saralegui Enterprises (CSE) will expire Dec. 31, and this is to be the last issue. At least in the present incarnation,” Nancy Ayala wrote Thursday in Marketing y Medios.

However, Marcos Avila, Saralegui’s business manager and husband, said, “I’m thinking really positive and happy about the potential and the possibilities of the brand and moving forward.” He says that his famous television talk-show wife feels the same way, Ayala wrote.

“Moving forward could mean staying put with Editorial Televisa, the U.S. publishing arm of Mexican media behemoth Grupo Televisa, or branching out elsewhere. ‘We’re still talking to Editorial Televisa,’ Avila says, while adding, ‘[But] we’ve already received calls from other publishing companies. We’ll see [what] will pan out.'”

“With a circulation of 88,000 monthly, Cristina La Revista ranks behind only Vanidades in the category of Spanish-language women’s magazines, according to HispanicMagazineMonitor, the Miami Herald wrote on Nov. 30.

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“The American Indian Movement Targets the Rocky”

“The Rocky Mountain News and the American Indian Movement of Colorado are a match made in hell,” Michael Roberts wrote Thursday in Denver’s alternative paper Westword.

“The Rocky’s been consistently critical of Colorado AIM’s position regarding Denver’s annual Columbus Day Parade and has printed enough words attacking longtime AIM provocateur Ward Churchill to fill a Harry Potter book. Meanwhile, Colorado AIM contends that the Rocky carries a stain of anti-Native American prejudice that can be traced back to its Wild West origins; in an 1863 editorial, the paper described the Ute people as ‘a dissolute, vagabondish, brutal and ungrateful race’ that ‘ought to be wiped from the face of the earth.’

“Relations between these two organizations could hardly be more strained. But during the past month, matters deteriorated even further, with Colorado AIM picketing the paper and calling for the firing of editorial-page editor Vincent Carroll. Not that anyone would know from reading the Rocky, which hasn’t printed any of the particulars.”

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Press Played Role in Anti-Black Riot of 1898

“The 1898 riot that killed an unknown number of blacks in Wilmington was part of an organized, statewide effort to put white supremacist Democrats in office and stem the political advances of black citizens,” Barbara Barrett began her story today in tne Raleigh, N.C., News & Observer.

“And in the wake of the riot, white supremacists in state office passed North Carolina’s Jim Crow laws.

“Those laws disenfranchised African Americans until the civil rights movement and Voting Rights Act of the 1960s.

“In a 460-page document released today, the Wilmington Race Riot Commission describes the riot and accompanying coup d’etat as a watershed moment in North Carolina history.

“Democratic leaders, including News & Observer editor Josephus Daniels, developed a strategic campaign to put white supremacist leaders in the General Assembly and U.S. Congress during the 1898 elections. The Democrats were working to drive out a coalition government of Republicans and Populists, which had the support of black voters.

“The day after the 1898 election, a mob of several hundred white men burned the building of a black-owned newspaper. African Americans in the city fled as the building burned, with families hiding in swamps and cemeteries for days with little more than the clothing on their backs, said LeRae Umfleet, a researcher with the state Office of Archives and History who authored the report.”

The black-owned newspaper was the Wilmington Daily Record, according to an account in the 1997 book “White Women, Black Men” by Martha Hodes. Editor Alexander Manly challenged the idea that black men deserved to be lynched for raping black women, saying many such relationships were consensual. The editorial was reprinted by Democrats and circulated throughout the South as a slander of white womanhood. Black leaders of the day were pressured to approve the destruction of Manly’s presses. Manly escaped the city, eventually landing in Washington.

“The stories told by crusading black journalists in the post-Reconstruction South clashed with changing ideas about the purity of white women that were crucial to the larger purposes of disempowering black people after the Civil War,” Hodes wrote.

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Britain’s Trevor McDonald Leaves Evening Newscast

“When Sir Trevor McDonald surrendered the reins of ITV1’s main evening news bulletin last night, he left bookmakers scratching their heads about who might now rank as Britain’s most popular and trusted newscaster, Joe Joseph wrote today in the Times of London.

“McDonald is to Britain what General Colin Powell – one of McDonald’s heroes – is to America: a black man who has risen to the top of his profession with people rarely noticing or bothering to mention the colour of his skin. . . . McDonald is neither ashamed of his poor roots in Trinidad, nor does he flaunt them. He has achieved all of those peculiar British accolades: a knighthood, a castaway on Desert Island Discs, Booker Prize judge; his own Spitting Image puppet.”

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Short Takes

  • “In the shadows of the New Orleans story, the Mississippi Coast has become invisible and forgotten to most Americans,” Mississippi’s Biloxi Sun-Herald said in a front-page editorial Wednesday. “Could it be possible that the ongoing story of an Alabama teenager missing in Aruba has received more coverage on some cable networks than all of the incredibly compelling stories of courage, loss and need of untold thousands of Mississippians? . . . We would like to invite our news colleagues from across the nation to come and view the Coast with us.”
  • In Kuwait, the military this week pulled the press credentials of embedded reporter Louis Hansen and photographer Hyunsoo Leo Kim of the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, saying they had violated ground rules by photographing battle-damaged military vehicles, Bill Geroux reported in the Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch Thursday. Virginian-Pilot Editor Denis Finley said the incident arose from a misunderstanding.
  • On Dec. 31, Jackie Jones, who has been an editor at the Washington Post, Newsday, the Detroit Free Press, the Philadelphia Daily News and other papers, leaves Penn State University, where she has been teaching journalism for three years. “Now I’m grading papers and launching Jones Coaching,” for which she will serve as a writing and editing coach, she told Journal-isms.
  • “Have you ever been to a supposed ‘exclusive’ gathering and find that ONE person who had no business attending? You look around and wonder, ‘who in the hell invited THAT fool?’ Keep that in mind for a moment,” Morris W. O’Kelly wrote Tuesday on EURWeb.com. He was discussing the inclusion of Debra Lee, CEO of Black Entertainment Television, in a meeting of black leaders last week at the White House. As reported here a week ago, “Lee’s role was said to represent black business (though BET is owned by the Viacom conglomerate), and to raise such issues as employment and minority business access to Gulf region rebuilding.”
  • “Hoy, the Spanish-language newspaper at the center of a circulation scandal that also engulfed its sister publication, Newsday, will convert to free distribution in New York next year, owner Tribune Co. said yesterday,” Mark Harrington wrote today in Newsday. “Hoy, which costs 25 cents here, is already free in Los Angeles and Chicago.”
  • According to two Wenner Media sources, Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner “has signed a deal with MTV to star in an ‘Apprentice’-type reality show about aspiring music journalists,” according to Jeff Bercovici, writing today in Women’s Wear Daily.
  • “Veteran broadcaster Ray Suarez has been named host of American RadioWorks, public radio’s largest documentary production team,” American Public Media announced Wednesday. “Suarez, who has 25 years of broadcast news experience, begins work in January with the American RadioWorks documentary ‘Intelligent Designs on Evolution.’ Suarez is also a senior correspondent for public television’s Newshour with Jim Lehrer.”
  • “Media entrepreneur Robert L. Johnson is starting a private equity fund to invest in corporate buyouts, with a crucial assist from Washington’s Carlyle Group, the largest private equity firm in the United States,” Terence O’Hara reported Wednesday in the Washington Post.
  • “More Americans are getting college degrees than they were about a decade ago, but skills in reading and analyzing data among the well-educated have dropped significantly, according to a national report on literacy released Thursday,” Liz Bowie reported today in the Baltimore Sun, referring to the National Assessment of Adult Literacy.
  • “Comcast Corp. has scaled back plans for an English-language channel targeting Asian-Americans, cutting nearly half the staff and scrapping original programming plans at the venture,” Andrew Wallenstein wrote Sunday for the Hollywood Reporter. “Last week, the cable operator quietly eliminated about 30 jobs at AZN Television, sources said.”
  • “Dick Parsons has no shortage of friends. This month, the affable chairman and chief executive of Time Warner has had a steady stream of phone calls from some of the world’s top corporate chiefs,” Aline van Duyn and Joshua Chaffin reported Thursday for the Financial Times. “Their message to him: we support you, even as Carl Icahn and Bruce Wasserstein team up to try to unseat you and break up the company you run.”
  • “Arnold Diaz will bring his decades of investigative-reporting experience to WNYW/Ch. 5, sources confirmed yesterday. Word around the TV business was Diaz, who left WCBS/Ch. 2 Wednesday, will join Ch. 5 as its lead investigative reporter,” Richard Huff reported Thursday in the New York Daily News.
  • New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell approves of an upcoming parody of his best-selling “Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking,” called “Blank: The Power of Not Actually Thinking At All,” Rachel Sklar wrote today on her Fishbowl NY media blog. “Blank is completely hilarious. I have no idea who Noah Tall is, although I’m slightly terrified to meet him. He obviously knows me or at least my writing a bit too well at this point. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, the parody is the most flattering form of imitation (or something like that),” Gladwell told Sklar by e-mail.
  • A correction Tuesday in the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times: “You’re right, we should have known: Ethel Merman could not have appeared in Porgy and Bess on Broadway, as we said Sunday. Merman was white and the show has an African-American cast.”

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