NPR, CNN, Atlanta Paper Cover Rights Matriarch
Coretta Scott King‘s death at age 78 today took place on a high-volume news day, with President Bush’s State of the Union address planned tonight and Judge Samuel A. Alito confirmed and sworn in as associate justice of the Supreme Court.
Still, some news outlets, particularly National Public Radio, CNN and the hometown Atlanta Journal-Constitution, via its Web site, devoted a significant amount of coverage to the woman who stood by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s side and took the spotlight in her own right after his assassination in 1968.
The Journal-Constitution plans at least five pages of coverage Wednesday, Hank Klibanoff, managing editor for news, told Journal-isms.
However, at the Fayetteville (N.C.) Observer, reporter Khary McGhee wrote in a blog entry titled “Understanding the importance of diversity”: “The scuttlebutt when I entered the office this morning was that there was debate among editors as to whether we should have a local reaction story to Mrs. King’s death.
“I couldn’t believe that there was resistance to the idea of going out and talking to people in this community — about half of which is black — about Mrs. King’s life and legacy. There were people that knew her in this town. There were people touched by her life in this town.”
“We started the tributes on Morning Edition with the announcement of her death and an obituary. (NPR’s Senior Correspondent Juan Williams was on all the news shows today),” Susan Bluttman, media director of NPR, told Journal-isms.
“Morning Edition had Eleanor Holmes Norton,” the D.C. delegate to Congress, “and Clayborn Carson from Stanford University as guests.
“News and Notes had a roundtable with Andrew Young, Dick Gregory and Mary Frances Berry.” Young, a King lieutenant in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, was later mayor of Atlanta. Comedian and activist Gregory was long active in the civil rights movement and Berry was chair of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission.
“Day to Day did a remembrance with tape from one of her speeches,” Bluttman continued. “We also had a special hour of remembrance, hosted by Neal Conan. It included NPR senior correspondent Juan Williams, Taylor Branch, the Pulitzer prize winning author of the Civil Rights trilogy America in the King Years, Maya Angelou, poet, playwright and author. Cory Booker, Newark mayoral candidate, Ron Walters, professor of government and politics at University of Maryland.
“For [‘All Things Considered’] this evening: We are to air excerpts from a speech Coretta Scott King gave in NYC three weeks after the assassination of her husband. Melissa Block talks with civil rights activist Andrew Young about the life and work of Coretta Scott King. And, lastly we talked to mourners gathered at Martin Luther King’s tomb, at the King Center in Atlanta.”
NPR also created a page on King — “profile, photo gallery and — best of all — lots of good audio,” Bluttman said.
“Today, CNN broke in with the news of Coretta Scott King’s passing during American Morning and continued to provide live reports throughout the day,” spokeswoman Edie Emery said.
“CNN also carried live parts of the news conference by Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin and civil rights leader and former ambassador Andrew Young. CNN’s Daryn Kagan had a one-on-one interview with Bishop Eddie Long, and CNN’s Kyra Phillips interviewed Xernona Clayton, one of King’s closest friends and creator of Turner Broadcasting System’s ‘Trumpet Awards.’
“In addition, CNN’s coverage included interviews with author Taylor Branch, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) and the Rev. Al Sharpton.”
“FOX News Channel covered Coretta King’s death throughout the day,” spokeswoman Dana Klinghoffer said. “In fact, FOX News Channel was the first network to report it at 7:03 AM/ET. FOX News Channel D.C. correspondent Kelly Wright was in touch with the King family and received independent confirmation from them. As for the funeral, FNC will cover it extensively although final plans have not been set yet.”
As for the broadcast networks, “ABC’s daily webcast ‘World News Now’ featured a piece on Coretta Scott King in her own words,” spokeswoman Natalie J. Raabe told Journal-isms.
“‘World News Tonight’ will look back on Mrs. King’s lasting legacy with a piece featuring an array of voices of those who knew her and can speak to her national importance,” Raabe said.
CBS spokeswoman Sandra M. Genelius said correspondent Byron Pitts, a National Association of Black Journalists “Journalist of the Year,” would report on King on the “CBS Evening News.” Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., appeared on “The Early Show” to discuss King after the news broke shortly after 7 a.m., spokeswoman Leigh Farris said.
NBC spokeswoman Barbara Levin said anchor Brian Williams led “NBC Nightly News” with King’s passing.
In print, the death dominated the Web page of the hometown Atlanta Journal-Constitution, with audio and video, excerpts from King’s memoir, and reflections from other Georgians. The paper on numerous occasions reported on mismanagement of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Social Change, which King helped create after her husband’s death.
“It’s possible to care deeply about a person and raise questions about things done in her name and in the family’s name,” Klibanoff said.
Why at least five pages of coverage in Wednesday’s paper? “Her own personal story and her ties to Atlanta through her husband and her father-in-law and her sons and her own self are so enormously important to us. Its history and Atlanta’s are so woven through the story of the civil rights struggle. She’s an icon of that. The family was highly regarded,” he said.
“Many of the black radio stations here in the Atlanta area dumped out of their regular programming to simulcast with talk stations covering the story,” an Atlanta journalist told the National Association of Black Journalists.
Syndicated radio host Tom Joyner said in a statement, â??Itâ??s mornings like this one when we found out that Coretta Scott King had died that make me remember why I love black radio and am proud to be part of it. I was glad that we were on the air when the news broke and I was glad that we were the ones who broke the news to millions of our listeners.
â??Minutes after her death was announced, Tavis Smiley was on our show talking about how so many of the opinions held by the soon-to-be confirmed Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito contrast what Dr. King stood for. You may hear that somewhere else. but you heard it first on our show.
â??On a personal note, I feel proud to have met with and talked with Mrs. King and her children on many occasions. So, when we discuss her death and her life on our show itâ??s more than news story about the wife of a slain Civil Rights giantâ??s wife. Itâ??s more like the death of a family member.
â??Those of us who were part of the movement have a big responsibility ahead of us, and the death of Mrs. King has made our task even bigger. Weâ??ve got to continue to do the work and at the same time try to light a fire underneath the feet of a generation of people who have only read about Dr. King and his soldiers.”
At least one journalist developed a personal relationship with King. The civil rights matriarch wrote the foreword to “No, I Won’t Shut Up: 30 Years of Telling It Like It Is,” by the Rev. Dr. Barbara A. Reynolds, former USA Today columnist.
Reynolds said King contacted her to help write her own memoir after reading Reynolds’ critical 1975 biography of Jackson, now titled, “Jesse Jackson: Americaâ??s David.” Reynolds was then at the Chicago Tribune and went to Harvard on a Nieman fellowship, class of 1977. “She used to call me late at night [at Harvard], when she was under the hair dryer,” Reynolds said of King.
“I spent a year with her in her condo. I couldn’t understand some of the issues. She was like my mentor. She wanted people to know that she had a life before Dr. King and was involved in the peace movement, and [intimated] that she helped him come into the peace movement. She wanted to be put in context. She wanted people to know that everything he went through, she did, too. She didn’t want to be seen as an appendage.”
Reynolds described King as a spiritual person who delighted in being a mother, but was private and cautious in dealing with the news media. “I have a whole drawer full of interviews” she plans to go through, Reynolds said.
- Karu F. Daniels, AOL Black Voices Entertainment Newswire: Remembering Coretta Scott King
- Resources on Coretta Scott King (Poynter Institute)