“Political” Nature of Funeral Debated
The day after 10,000 people attended the funeral of Coretta Scott King and millions more saw it on television, commentators debated whether the six-hour service became “too political” and Black Entertainment Television defended its decision not to televise it.
As President Bush watched from the stage, the Rev. Joseph Lowery, a founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, former president Jimmy Carter and others used the occasion – directly or indirectly – to note that Mrs. King stood against some of his policies.
“We know now there were no weapons of mass destruction,” Lowery said, as Bill Torpy and Maria Saporta reported in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
“His words were met by ‘oohs’ and long, loud applause. ‘But Coretta knew, and we knew there were weapons of misdirection right here.
“‘Millions without health insurance, poverty abound. For war billions more, but no more for the poor.'”
On National Public Radio’s “News and Notes” with Ed Gordon, Lowery and Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., another civil rights pioneer, were asked whether the remarks were too political. Commentators weighed in.
“Well, first of all, I’m neither Republican nor Democrat,” Lowery said. “I’m Methodist, and both parties have felt my wrath from time to time. One of them takes us for granted, and the other just takes us, so I wasn’t interested in any partisan politics.
“I was interested in commemorating Coretta Scott King. We weren’t burying a rap artist nor a famous cook. We were burying a woman who gave her life to world peace, racial justice, human dignity, and that’s what she was about, and what did they expect us to talk about? I talked about what she talked about. I talked about what she lived about. I talked about what she dedicated her life to, and I don’t understand how anyone could expect to attend the funeral of Coretta Scott King and not hear a message about her lifetime commitment to world peace, to eradicating poverty and to eliminating racial injustice.”
Lewis agreed. “What happened was fitting and appropriate. It was not just a funeral, but it was also an opportunity to say what Coretta Scott King stood for and what her husband stood for, and what they gave so much of their talent and time to build a movement. And I think the people that spoke, some of the people that spoke especially, President Carter, Rev. Joseph Lowery, and some others, wanted to restate what Mrs. King was all about. She was a woman of peace, non-violence and love; and she wanted to look out for those that had been left out and left behind; look out for the poor. And I think some of the speakers wanted to remind the people that were there in power of what it was all about.
“You had the president of the United States, President Bush, and you had the secretary of state there, Condoleezza Rice, and they needed to get the message, and people around the country needed to get that message.”
On NPR’s “Day to Day,” however, correspondent Juan Williams, author of the book version of “Eyes on the Prize,” the televised civil rights history, said Carter’s reference to the Kings as being “targets of secret government wire tapping, other surveillance” was “where some people felt it got over the line, and became purely political, as opposed to honoring Mrs. King and her life.
“What she wanted was to be treated as royalty,” Williams said. “People oftentimes said she could be stand offish, a little bit arrogant, condescending. But I think it, what it really was, was that was Mrs. King, having suffered the trauma of her husband’s assassination, raising the four kids, all the rest, really wanted to be treated as someone with great dignity.
“She wanted to be the queen in the African American community. And I think that what we saw yesterday in part was that. But when it got beyond that to the political stuff, I think she would have been very upset. She’s just wanted to be honored in that moment, and so for her, I think the politics would have been the wrong note out.”
On “News and Notes,” George Curry, editor in chief of the National Newspaper Publishers Association News Service, approved of Lowery’s remarks: “You can’t come there and sanitize and pretend that everything is all right when the Pres-, some of the people there have fought against everything that Mrs. King and Dr. King had fought for,” Curry said. “And also, they were trying to sanitize the message anyway by not having recognizable civil rights leaders who had spoke, who had worked with Dr. King, not allowed him to share the platform, like Rev. [Jesse] Jackson, who also called Coretta King to let her know that her husband had been killed.”
Laura Washington, Chicago Sun-Times columnist, agreed. “We had four presidents at the funeral yesterday, but there was not a president at all at Martin Luther King’s funeral, so that says both how far we’ve come, but it also says, the reason why it’s so important for us to be political.”
Meanwhile, Michael Lewellen, BET’s senior vice president for corporate communications, defended BET’s decision not to televise the funeral, a choice Philadelphia Inquirer television critic Gail Shister called “a shocker.” The two other black-oriented television cable networks, TV One and Black Family Channel, both went live.
“BET received about ‘two dozen’ phone calls and ‘a handful’ of e-mails from viewers yesterday, Lewellen says. That’s slightly above BET’s average, he adds.
“The network’s decision was based on its desire not to replicate live coverage of the first lady of civil rights’ funeral being carried on CNN, MSNBC and Fox News Channel, Lewellen says,” Shister wrote.
“For MSNBC, going live with coverage was practically a slam dunk, says Mark Effron, vice president of daytime and live news programming.
“King ‘was an eyewitness to history and someone who made history. She was a seminal figure in the history of the civil rights movement. We went forward [with live coverage] from the very beginning,'” her article continued.
The Black Family Channel, meantime, has decided to rebroadcast the funeral service on Sunday at 8 p.m. Eastern, Greg Morrison, news director, told the National Association of Black Journalists. “The opportunity came about when several churches with television [ministries] decided to donate their time slots,” he said.
On its Web site, the National Association of Black Journalists listed some of its members who helped cover the event: Atlanta Journal- Constitution photographer Renee Hannans Henry, Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Ernie Suggs, who is NABJ’s vice president for print; Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post, who provided commentary for MSNBC’s live coverage, as did Chicago Defender editor Roland S. Martin for TV One; Errin Haines of the Associated Press; Darryl Fears of the Washington Post; Audra Burch of the Miami Herald; Karen Jacobs of Reuters; Byron Pitts of CBS; Jovita Moore of WSB-TV in Atlanta; Corey Dade of the Wall Street Journal; Sonji Jacobs, Mae Gentry, Add Seymour, Jr. and W.A. Bridges, all of the Atlanta Journal- Constitution; and Ozier Muhammad of the New York Times.
- Herb Boyd, The Black World Today: Mrs. King Hailed, Bush Assailed
- Marian Wright Edelman, National Newspaper Publishers Association: Remembering Coretta Scott King
- Michael A. Fletcher, Washington Post: With Tribute To King, Bush Reaches Out
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Resignations Join Riots in Tumult Over Cartoon
Editors of the alternative weekly New York Press resigned en masse today in protest in a dispute with top management over reproducing the riot-linked Danish cartoons of Muhammad, according to the paper, as the tumult over the cartoons continued.
Protests against the printing of caricatures of Prophet Muhammad “have now spread to sub-Saharan Africa, with burning of Danish flags in Niger and Nigeria and one death during protests in Somalia,” the international Web site Afrol News reported. “Peaceful and controlled protest marches have also taken place in Kenya and Mali, while in other West African countries, expressions of protests have stuck to the format of public debate,” it said.
The conservative columnist Michelle Malkin told readers of her blog Tuesday night, “I appeared tonight on Fox News Channel’s Hannity and Colmes for an all-too-brief segment on the Mohammed Cartoons. Before I drove to the Washington, D.C., studio, I stopped by a Kinko’s store, printed out the cartoons, and pasted them onto a piece of poster board. I then used my short time on the airwaves to do what no one wants to do on American TV:
“I tried to show viewers all 12 cartoons to give viewers the full context of the Jyllands-Posten’s decision to publish the artwork.
“Unfortunately, as I tried to walk through the content of the cartoons, the camera cut from my display to video of the Islamists’ crazed, violent protests.”
The Society of Professional Journalists Tuesday issued a statement saying it believes that “bad or offensive speech is best countered with more freedom of speech, not less,” but added, “At the same time, the Society recognizes that free-speech rights come with responsibilities. SPJ urges journalists to honor their obligation to weigh the news value of all views against the offense those views may cause.”
Most U.S. media outlets have decided against showing the cartoons. National Public Radio decided against even linking to the cartoons, according to Bill Marimow, who today was named NPR’s vice president for news.
He told NPR’s ombudsman, Jeffrey A. Dvorkin on Tuesday, “the bottom line for me is the cartoon is so highly offensive to millions of Muslims that it’s preferable to describe it in words rather than posting it on the Web.”
At the New York Press, Editor-in-Chief Harry Siegel wrote, “Having been ordered at the 11th hour to pull the now-infamous Danish cartoons from an issue dedicated to them, the editorial group – consisting of myself, managing editor Tim Marchman, arts editor Jonathan Leaf and one-man city hall bureau Azi Paybarah, chose instead to resign our positions.
“We have no desire to be free speech martyrs, but it would have been nakedly hypocritical to avoid the same cartoons we’d criticized others for not running, cartoons that however absurdly have inspired arson, kidnapping and murder and forced cartoonists in at least two continents to go into hiding.”
- Kevin Sullivan, Washington Post: Cartoon furor began quietly
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Univision Confirms It Is Exploring Sale
“Spanish-language broadcaster Univision Communications confirmed Wednesday that it is exploring a series of strategic alternatives, including a possible sale of the company,” Jay Sherman reported for TV Week.
“The news helped sustain a sharp run-up in Univision’s stock price, which began Wednesday morning after The New York Times first broke the news of the possible sale. Shares in Univision were up nearly 12 percent to almost $34 a share by the end of the trading day Wednesday.
“The move comes after months of Wall Street speculation that Univision Chairman Jerrold Perenchio, at 75, might eventually seek an exit strategy for the company. Mr. Perenchio owns 10 percent of Univision’s stock and controls 50 percent of the voting power.”
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Salt Lake Tribune Joins NAHJ Parity Project
“The Salt Lake Tribune, a MediaNews Group newspaper, is pleased to announce that it has joined the National Association of Hispanic Journalists’ (NAHJ) Parity Project. This program seeks to improve the quality of news coverage of the Latino community and to increase the number of Latinos working in the media industry,” NAHJ announced Monday.
“Since the Parity Project launched two years ago, 22 news organizations have become partners, including 17 newspapers, four television stations and one national radio network.
“During the first two years of the Parity Project, the overall number of Latino journalists working at partnering companies increased by 49 percent. The organization also has sponsored town hall meetings attracting more than 1,000 participants and has conducted nearly two dozen cultural awareness sessions with more than 1,000 newsroom professionals.”
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NBC’s Williams Sorry for Mixing Up Obama, Ford
“‘NBC Nightly News’ anchor Brian Williams told The Hill that he wrote Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Rep. Harold Ford Jr. (D-Tenn.) letters of apology last week after he confused the two men at the State of the Union address,” the Capitol Hill newspaper The Hill reported Tuesday.
“During NBC’s broadcast, Williams noticed Obama on the House floor and identified him to the viewing audience. Unfortunately, it was actually Ford.
“‘I made a silly and honest mistake, and knowing both men I knew instantly what I had done,’ a contrite and gracious Williams said in a phone call. ‘I obviously should have corrected it, but the proper time never arose.’
“Williams isn’t alone. Rewind to last’s year’s State of the Union. Another reporter asked Obama’s office why he hugged the president. Again, it was Ford.”
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Media Said to Miss Sweeping Changes in Welfare
“In December 2005, Congressional Republicans enacted the Budget Reconciliation bill for Fiscal Year 2006 by the barest of margins,” Joel Berg, executive director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger and identified as “a nationally recognized leader in the fields of hunger, food security and national and community service,” wrote today on the Nieman Watchdog Web site.
“Vice-President Cheney broke a tie in the Senate and the bill passed by only a two-vote margin in the House. Not one Democrat in the House or the Senate voted for it. The media coverage on the bill’s debate and passage focused mostly on large cuts in Medicaid, students loans, and other programs that benefit low- and middle-income Americans.
“Largely overlooked, however, was the reality that the bill also enacts the most sweeping changes in Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) Program – better known as welfare – since President Clinton signed bipartisan welfare reform legislation into law in 1996.
“The new law would increase the percentage of families receiving public assistance that are required to work in each state, and impose new penalties on states for failing to meet federal requirements.”
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Short Takes
- Roy S. Johnson, who left at the end of the year as assistant managing editor at Sports Illustrated, is freelancing a column, “Pass the Word,” on the AOL Black Voices Web site. His latest columns are on the Super Bowl, discussing Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver Hines Ward and Steelers running back Jerome Bettis. Johnson told Journal-isms he hoped to syndicate the column, which runs Mondays, to newspapers. He also covers major sports events for the site.
- Relations between African Americans and black immigrants are the subject of a cover piece in The Crisis magazine’s January/February issue. “The steady rise of Black immigration from Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America has forced communities nationwide to confront the issues of intraracial diversity,” Lori S. Robinson writes in the NAACP publication. “As newcomers and African Americans encounter each other, misunderstanding, tension and even animosity can result.” However, continues Robinson, who wrote for the defunct Emerge magazine, “incentives for forging diverse Black coalitions abound.” The Crisis does not place its articles online.
- The Freedom Forum Diversity Institute planned to welcome its eighth class of journalism fellows on Monday. The 12-week training program at Vanderbilt University in Nashville is designed for people of color who want to become journalists, but have had little or no formal journalism training.
- Michel Martin, the ABC-TV correspondent who joined National Public Radio and plans to start an African American-oriented show there, was substitute host on NPR’s afternoon “Talk of the Nation” Monday and Tuesday. “Got a hilarious fan email yesterday saying, ‘I hope this is not some one time thing for Black History month,'” she told Journal-isms.
- Lester Holt will co-anchor NBC-TV’s weekend “Today” live from Torino, Italy, and will also serve as a news correspondent during the winter Olympics, agent Ken Lindner & Associates, Inc. announced.
- Malcolm Gladwell, the New Yorker magazine writer who is author of best-selling “Blink” and “The Tipping Point,” was the subject of a piece Sunday in the New York Times Book Review headlined, “The Gladwell Effect.”
- “The Zimbabwean government has launched a new assault on the country’s remaining independent press through a wave of criminal prosecutions,” Human Rights Watch said Wednesday.
- “A Chinese editor has died as a result of a police beating he received for his paper’s reporting on corruption, journalists and rights groups say,” the BBC reported Tuesday. “Wu Xianghu had been in hospital since the attack in October, suffering from an existing liver problem made worse by the beating, earlier reports said.”
- Ramon Cantu, owner of the El Manana newspaper in the violent border town of Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, said Tuesday there would be no more investigative coverage of drug gangs, a day after the paper’s offices were sprayed with bullets and a reporter hospitalized with five gunshots, Editor & Publisher reported Tuesday.
- The Committee to Protect Journalists applauded a Mexican official’s announcement that the government will name a special prosecutor to investigate crimes against journalists. “The announcement was long anticipated. President Vicente Fox pledged in a meeting with CPJ in September that he would seek to create the position in response to a wave of murderous violence against the media in the northern states,” the organization said today.
