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Sorting Out the “Day Without Immigrants”

The “Day Without Immigrants,” or “Day of Absence,” has come and gone. What’s left is sorting out the role of the news media and the varying analyses of what exactly it all meant.

“I say we’re witnessing something we’ve seen before – aimed at African-Americans and Jews and gays and Muslims, and any other group that’s been blamed for society’s ills,” Ruben Navarrette, columnist for the San Diego Union-Tribune, said in a commentary this morning on National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition.”

“What we’re seeing is evil mixed with racism and more precisely ethnocentrism – the sort that’s served up at the dinner table where children hear their parents make careless and ignorant remarks about how this group is taking over, or that group doesn’t know its place.”

Navarrette had cited “threats against California’s most prominent Latino elected officials . . . a savage attack on a Hispanic teenager in Houston,” the burning of a Mexican flag outside the Mexican Consulate in Tucson, Ariz., and “an Internet video game that lets players shoot Mexicans crossing the border – complete with splattered blood.”

In the Los Angeles Times, columnist Erin Aubry Kaplan wrote, “I realized Monday that there is no place to make it in this movement. . . . It doesn’t much matter, because blacks are not needed. Latino immigrants are diverse, numerous and politically astute. Blacks are even losing their historic and symbolic role as a mirror of the nation’s conscience; another group now holds a mirror that is less damning and easier for the nation to gaze into.”

Syndicated columnist Earl Ofari Hutchinson noted that the right-wing Minutemen are banking on “thousands of blacks” agreeing with their stance against illegal immigrants, and joining their chapters.

However, Juan Gonzalez, writing in the New York Daily News, noted Tuesday that such key African American leaders as the Revs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton rebuffed those who “have even tried to pit black Americans against the undocumented.”

In the Los Angeles Times, Eliseo Medina, executive vice president of the Service Employees International Union, wrote under the headline, “The birth of a national movement.” But David Roybal, in the Albuquerque (N.M.) Journal, wrote that “Over the very issue of Mexican immigration, there is a great divide among Latinos. It even includes a division between immigrants who have been here for a few years and those who arrived more recently.”

E.J. Montini, in the Arizona Republic in Phoenix, said the day’s events played into the hands of anti-immigration politicians and their supporters. “It proved only that the city, the state and the nation did just fine without immigrants for one day,” he wrote.

More certain is the role of the news media in the protests. Some in the Spanish-language media took an activist stance.

“Continuing on a trend that started earlier this year, the media helped [mobilize] protesters to the rallies,” Laura Martinez wrote Monday in Marketing y Medios. “ImpreMedia’s El Diario La Prensa, the largest Spanish-language daily in New York, . . . published a blank full-page ad on Monday, showing the void that would be left in the country without the work of immigrants. The blank page, in partnership with SBS,” the Spanish Broadcasting System, “did feature several lines of text in both English and Spanish: ‘To us an America without immigrants is unimaginable: an empty page, dead air, a blank screen.’ At the bottom of the ad were three logos for El Diario, 93.1 Amor and Mega 97.9 FM.”

In Chicago, Robert Feder wrote in the Sun-Times, “Coverage of Monday’s immigration rally sent ratings through the roof for WGBO-Channel 66. The 5 p.m. newscast set viewership records for the Univision Spanish-language outlet, which led all stations in the market among viewers in the key 18-to-34, 18-to-49 and 25-to-54 age demographics.”

Nationally, “Whatever side of the border or fence viewers may have sat upon, Monday’s immigration rights rallies provided vibrant material for national and local media, which in some cases interrupted regular programming to provide a day of expansive coverage,” Martin Miller and Maria Elena Fernandez wrote Tuesday in the Los Angeles Times.

And in that market, TV critic Paul Brownfield wrote today in the L.A. Times, “you needed to be watching Fox News Channel 11’s coverage (the best and most contextual of the experience), where reporter Tony Valdez, enveloped in the masses at MacArthur Park, got into a history lesson-cum-shouting match with KFI radio’s ‘John and Ken.’

“‘John and Ken’ – both of whom sound like they’ve taken classes at the Adam Carolla Center for the Advancement of the Sarcastic Angry White Guy – had urged their listeners Monday to hold a counter ‘Great American Spend-a-Lot’ to show that, hey, white people can hunt and gather for food and clothing without anybody’s help.” Carolla is a West Coast radio replacement for Howard Stern, who went to satellite radio.

“Kudos to Fox 11 for throwing them on the air as part of the coverage, for it got at one of the more uncomfortable subtexts of the day: White people scared and/or peeved that all these illegals were taking the day off to demand rights,” Brownfield wrote.

In related developments, the Native American Journalists Association, declaring that “Native people have been dealing with immigration for more than 500 years,” reaffirmed its alignment with the National Association of Hispanic Journalists in opposing use of the word “illegal” as a noun in referring to illegal immigrants.

And Hispanic ad agencies across the country decided to close up shop on Monday, according to Mariana Lemann, writing Monday in Marketing y Medios.

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Ventura Paper Catches Up With Story About Itself

The Ventura County (Calif.) Star wrote today that it had disciplined Managing Editor Richard Luna for ethical violations, telling readers it was disclosing the information because other news outlets had already reported it.

“It is unfortunate that this has leaked before we could conclude the investigation,” Editor Joe Howry said in the story. “That would have been appropriate and fair to Rich.”

Mark Fitzgerald reported on the Editor & Publisher Web site Monday night that, “An ethics violation by Ventura County (Calif.) Star Managing Editor Richard Luna has roiled the newsroom over the past week, forcing a mass meeting with the publisher – and prompting the newspaper to bring in the head of human resources at parent E.W. Scripps Co. to investigate allegations of other ethical breaches by Luna.”

“On Tuesday evening, the Associated Press released the story to media outlets throughout California about Luna’s discipline,” the Star told readers today.

“Luna, second in command of the news operation, was sanctioned for seeking, and in one case accepting, press credentials for college basketball games he did not cover for the paper. The ethics policy of the E.W. Scripps Co., The Star’s parent company, instructs journalists never to take anything of value that is given them solely because they are members of the media,” said the story, credited to “Star staff.”

“He also directed midlevel editors to pressure a sports reporter into seeking media credentials for him to other events. Those credentials were unavailable, said Howry, and Luna did not attend the games.

“Luna, who came to The Star in 2004, acknowledged his mistakes and apologized to many staff members for his violations.”

Luna is a past five-year board member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, a 1994 graduate of the Maynard Institute’s management training program, a former metro editor of the Detroit News and managing editor of the Indianapolis Star, two jobs that he left abruptly.

In a telephone conversation with E&P today, Luna said, “I did accept a credential for an event that I wasn’t covering, and that was wrong. I’m very, very sorry for what has happened,” Fitzgerald reported late today.

“Luna said he had apologized to the paper’s publisher and top editor, and to members of his newsroom management team,” the E&P story said.

“‘I am trying to meet with as many of the newsroom staff as I can so I can apologize face-to-face,’ he added.”

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Protests, Tributes, Pleas on Press Freedom Day

Fifty-nine journalists who died while reporting the news in 2005, including two Associated Press Television News cameramen, were memorialized today as World Press Freedom Day was observed around the globe.

The 59 were added to the Freedom Forum Journalists Memorial in Arlington, Va., which now bears the names of 1,665 journalists, dating back to 1812, Elizabeth White reported for the Associated Press. One of those remembered was Akilah Amapindi, 23, the member of the National Association of Black Journalists who died at last year’s NABJ convention, NABJ reported.

More than 100 journalists marched across Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital, “demanding an end to government’s growing media tyranny that has seen the closure of a record four newspapers over the past three years and the systematic harassment of journalists,” Gift Phiri wrote for the Association of Zimbabwe Journalists.

The Committee to Protect Journalists issued a report showing North Korea to be the world’s most censored country. Burma, Turkmenistan, Equatorial Guinea and Libya round out the top five of the “10 Most Censored Countries.”

U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan implicitly called for a virtual ban on interviewing terrorists, according to Thalif Deen of the Inter-Press Service, saying “that both civil society and mass media should play a prominent role in countering ‘hyper-nationalistic and xenophobic messages that glorify mass murder and martyrdom’.”

UNESCO announced it was awarding its 2005 UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize to Chinese journalist Cheng Yizhong, the former editor of Nanfang Dushi Bao (Southern Metropolis Daily), a daily newspaper in Guangzhou.

“In December 2003, Nanfang Dushi Bao reported a suspected SARS case in the city of Guangzhou, the first new case in China reported since the epidemic was wiped out in July 2003,” mediachannel.org reported. “The government had not yet publicly released information about the case when the newspaper’s report was published. Nanfang Dushi Bao also broke the story of a college student who was beaten to death while in police custody. Public outcry over the death led to the arrest of several local government and police officials.

“The South China Morning Post reported that Chinese authorities have barred Cheng from leaving China to accept the award.”

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In U.S., Public Trusts Government More Than Media

More people trust the media than their governments, especially in developing countries, according to a 10-country opinion poll for the BBC, Reuters and the Media Center, according to GlobeScan, which conducted the survey. But the United States bucked the trend â?? with government ahead of media on trust (67% vs 59%) along with Britain (51% vs 47%).

In the United States, “Americans’ most important news sources in a typical week are television (mentioned first by 50%), newspapers (21%), Internet (14%), and radio (10%),” the survey showed.

“When asked how much they trust different news sources, Americans give the highest trust ratings to local newspaper (81% a lot or some trust), friends and family (76%), national television (75%), national/regional newspapers (74%), and public broadcast radio (73%) and the lowest ratings to blogs (25%), international newspapers (52%), and news web sites on the Internet (55%).

“The most trusted specific news sources mentioned without prompting by Americans include FOX News (mentioned by 11%), CNN (11%), ABC (4%), NBC (4%), National Public Radio (3%), CBS (3%), Microsoft/MSN (2%), USA Today (2%), New York Times (2%), CNN.com (1%), Time Magazine (1%), and friends/family (1%).”

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5 Journalists of Color Awarded Fellowships

Leslie Casimir, a child of Haitian immigrants, Douglas Kim, who is of Korean descent, and Dian Wei Tang, who was born in China and migrated to the United States in the mid-1990s, are among the 12 journalists winning John S. Knight fellowships at Stanford University for the 2006-07 academic year, the program announced Tuesday.

Casimir, immigration reporter at the New York Daily News, plans to study black immigration in the United States; Kim, arts and entertainment editor at the Seattle Times, is to explore the use of technology, media, diversity and culture to reach audiences of the future; and Tang, deputy metro editor of the World Journal in New York, plans to study how ethnic and mainstream media can benefit each other.

Yonette Joseph, copy editor in the Style section of the Washington Post, and Angela Shah, a special writer at the Dallas Morning News, are among 12 chosen for the University of Michigan Knight-Wallace Fellows program, it was announced Monday.

Joseph, who is African American, plans to study “the Impact of Hispanic Immigration on Black and Small-Town America,” and Shah, who is Asian American, wants to look into “street corner capitalism.”

The Nieman Fellowships at Harvard University are expected to be announced May 22.

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With Software, Write Your Own Bob Herbert Column

“According to Nancy Kruh of The Dallas Morning News, veteran New York Times columnist Bob Herbert has been stuck in a rut for years,” blogger Evan Coyne Maloney wrote Tuesday. “‘For several months now,’ Kruh writes, ‘as I’ve read one Iraq war column after another, one thought always comes to mind: Um, haven’t I read this before? So, yesterday, I finally immersed myself in Lexis-Nexis to try to quantify and qualify this phenomenon.’

“What Kruh discovered is that many of Herbert’s columns during the Bush presidency contain similar, interchangeable passages. She cites a number of examples that make it seem like your average Herbert column is just a random recombination of wording from earlier columns.

“Given the paper’s recent stock performance and rumblings from restless investors, I thought I’d help the Times find ways to put out the same product for less money. So I spent about fifteen minutes writing software that can generate Bob Herbert columns while using a minimal amount of our Earth’s precious resources.

“Behold ‘Automatic Bob’, the Bob Herbert column generator.”

[Added May 4: Herbert did not respond to requests for comment.]

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Grants Aid Ethnic, Inner City Media Projects

An ethnic news service to be launched by the Center for the Improvement and Integration of Journalism at San Francisco State University and “hyperlocal” newscasts for a Hispanic section of Philadelphia are among 10 projects to be funded by the J-Lab program of the University of Maryland’s Institute for Interactive Journalism.

On the news service, “Beginning this summer, San Francisco State University journalism students and students from the Bay Area Multicultural Media Academy (BAMMA) will produce articles, photographs, audio and video stories and multimedia packages. Ethnic news outlets can subscribe at no cost to the service for the first year and download stories from CIIJ’s website,” a news release said. The center received $12,000 for the first year and the possibility of $5,000 for the second, director Cristina Azocar told Journal-isms today.

In the MURL Building Blocks program from Temple University in Philadelphia, Temple journalism students partner with public broadcaster WHYY-TV “to push hyperlocal newscasts to the city’s largely Hispanic 5th Street Corridor between Lehigh and Hunting Park Avenues via WHYY’s experimental datacasting technology. The datacasts will use a discrete portion of WHYY’s digital broadcast signal to transmit information to desktop computers using small rooftop antennas. Neighborhood residents will also receive disposable digital still and video cameras and low-end audio recorders to produce multimedia content and service news. All the content will also appear on the Web sites of Temple’s Multimedia Urban Reporting Lab (MURL) and WHYY,” a J-Lab release said.

Other grants went to programs to train “citizen journalists” in rural and urban areas.

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FAIR Says Schieffer Told Only Part of Story

As noted in Monday’s column, CBS-TV’s “Face the Nation” host Bob Schieffer said Sunday’s all-female guest list would have pleased his old friend, the late Air Force Gen. Daniel ‘Chappie’ James, an African American who “told me one day there would never be full equality in this country until we no longer noticed that someone was the first or the only.”

The liberal watchdog group Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting said Schieffer told only part of the story.

“Face the Nation only fares well if Schieffer takes his friend’s statement quite literally,” FAIR said, “since the White House Project’s latest study found only 18 percent of the show’s guests were women. His old friend, being African-American, wouldn’t have seen much of himself reflected in Face The Nation either: in the National Urban League’s 2005 study, only 5 percent of the show’s interviews were with black guests.

It continued, ” in the midst of self-congratulation, [Schieffer] cops out of responsibility for his own show’s guest lists by saying, ‘We don’t invite guests . . . because of race and gender, we invite key players in the week’s big stories’ – as if ‘key players’ and ‘big stories’ were platonic forms that media had no role in defining.”

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Short Takes

The March 20 New York Times article, “Plight Deepens for Black Men, Studies Warn,” which created so much buzz in March, inspired Voltaire Sterling, a Los Angeles attorney and recent graduate of Harvard Law School, to conduct a grass-roots marketing campaign for the inspirational book “Letters to a Young Brother” by actor Hill Harper, Lisa Richardson wrote today in the Los Angeles Times. Harper plays a coroner on the hit television show “CSI: New York.” With the book, he “embraces a demographic more accustomed to reading about how it is bound for prison or will likely die young,” Richardson wrote.

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