Maynard Institute archives

Some Forgive; Others Deny

by richard0434

Paper Atones for Siding With Segregationists

The latest decision by a Southern newspaper to apologize for its actions during the civil rights era has been met with “some negative response, a handful of cancellations, a bunch more actual cancellations, the expected name calling and denials,” Executive Editor Bob Gabordi of the Tallahassee Democrat told Journal-isms today.

“On the other hand, representatives of the SCLC and NAACP and others formally accepted the apology, with the caveat that they would continue to watch us,” he said, speaking of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

The Tallahassee Democrat this week is commemorating the 50th anniversary of a 1956 bus boycott in the Florida capital, which came five months after the famous refusal of Rosa Parks to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Ala.

The commemoration began with a special 20-page section of the Sunday paper that included an apology from the newspaper signed by Patrick Dorsey, president and publisher, and Gabordi.

“Leaders in that journey toward equality should have been able to expect support in ending segregation from the local daily newspaper, the Tallahassee Democrat,” the editorial said. “They could not. We not only did not lend a hand, we openly opposed integration, siding firmly with the segregationists.

“It is inconceivable that a newspaper, an institution that exists freely only because of the Bill of Rights, could be so wrong on civil rights. But we were.”

It noted that the lead editor of the special section “was an African-American woman, Managing Editor Africa Price, a 1992 graduate” of Florida A&M University in Tallahassee. The actions of two FAMU students precipitated the 1956 boycott.

“That is change, a measurable and important change,” the editorial continued.

“The racial makeup of our newsroom staff is moving closer to reflecting the demographics of our community; we are not there yet, but we think it is an important goal.” In the latest census of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the Gannett-owned paper reported 15.5 percent of its news professionals were black, though there were no Hispanics, Asian Americans or Native Americans.

The editorial anticipated that some would ask, “Why are you going to stir all of this up again?”

Gabordi said today, “One person actually said the boycott never happened, that we were making it up, or that if it did, [it] wasn’t a big deal.

But he added, retired SCLC leader the Rev. Joseph Lowery, who was in Tallahassee for the opening of the week’s events, urged the SCLC to be watchful of the newspaper, “noting that others have apologized, but not changed,” Gabordi said by e-mail. “I was the keynote speaker Tuesday for a luncheon honoring the Rev. C.K. Steele, who deserves greater national prominence by the way, and was able to spend some time talking with his sons. Their reaction was warm and forgiving. (We had apologized privately to them before the Sunday column as two sons were on our advisory panel). There were about 400 folks at the luncheon and it was very emotional.”

Other commemorative activities include a documentary that can be viewed online and is to be shown on both the FAMU educational television station and on WFSU, the public television station of Florida State University.

“We’re trying to send a signal because of the way the coverage was 50 years ago,” the editor said.

In February, the Birmingham (Ala.) News published a special section of “lost, sold, stolen or stored” photographs from the civil rights era that some editors initially were lukewarm about making public. “The story of The Birmingham News’ coverage of race relations in the 1960s is one marked at times by mistakes and embarrassment but, in its larger outlines, by growing sensitivity and acceptance of change,'” the paper said.

On May 14, the Waco (Texas) Tribune-Herald apologized for the role that journalists played in the 1916 lynching of a 17-year-old African American, Jesse Washington, that came to be known as the “Waco Horror.”

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Black, White Coverage of ’79 Shootings Contrasted

A 400-page report from the Greensboro, N.C., Truth and Reconciliation Commission on shootings at a 1979 demonstration that left five dead includes a section on how the black- and white-owned press differed in their coverage.

The report, released Thursday, concluded that “Klansmen and Nazis, the Greensboro Police Department and even Communist demonstrators bear responsibility – but not equal responsibility” for the shootings, as Margaret Moffett Banks reported today in the Greensboro News & Record.

The background: On Nov. 3, 1979, “A heavily armed caravan of Klansmen and Nazis drove into the area and confronted anti-Klan marchers, many of whom were members of what became the Communist Workers Party. During the ensuing gunfire, captured on videotape by TV crews, five anti-Klan marchers were killed and 10 others wounded,” today’s story explained.

“Two long and expensive criminal trials brought no convictions for Nazis and Klansmen, who claimed self-defense.”

In its media section (PDF), the commission report noted, “media reports in Greensboro’s daily newspapers in 1979, The Greensboro Daily News and The Greensboro Record, contrasted sharply to what was communicated in the weekly Carolina Peacemaker that circulated in the African American community. The daily morning and evening newspapers focused on the unfortunate actions of the Klan/Nazis and the CWP, suggesting each side was culpable for what happened. In contrast, the weekly newspaper focused on the actions of the Greensboro Police.” The report lists a sampling of the headlines.

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“American Idol” Success Justifies Boss’s Wheedling

The two-hour season finale Wednesday of “American Idol” gave Fox the most-watched night in its 20-year history, not including sporting events, according to early figures from Nielsen Media Research, Scott Collins reported today in the Los Angeles Times.

“Now, I’m sure you’re eager to get to the part about my having been right,” columnist Eugene Robinson wrote today in the Washington Post. “We have to go all the way back to 2002 and the very first ‘American Idol’ season. I hadn’t heard anything about the show, but I noticed that my two sons – one in college at the time, one in middle school – were watching and discussing it, so I sat with them one evening and checked it out. The next day I came into the office ranting about how this admittedly stupid amateur-hour show was going to be the biggest thing on television. My exquisitely cultured colleagues at The Post looked at me as if I were standing there naked except for a tinfoil hat to keep the CIA from controlling my brain waves,” wrote Robinson, who in 2002 was assistant managing editor in charge of the Style section.

“There were a brave and prescient few who got it immediately, however – who saw that there was something special about the format, something insidious about how the show brought you into the lives of these young, unpolished singers, some of them incapable of ever being polished beyond the dullest glint. The evil geniuses behind the show somehow made you care who survived elimination to return next week and wring the neck of another unsuspecting ballad.

“There weren’t many early adopters. I had to beg, plead, wheedle and cajole to get our Hollywood correspondent to do a proper story on ‘Idol’ – and I was her boss.”

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Reporters Urged to Link Poverty, Environment

The editors of Grist, an online environmental magazine, “had seen plenty of admirable reporting on the suffering of the poor along the Gulf Coast, and they were glad the environmental roots of the disaster were getting attention. But why, they wondered, were two of the biggest issues raised by the storm – poverty and environmental degradation – being covered as unrelated problems? To them, the hurricane proved the rule: that low-income communities bear a disproportionate burden of the effects of environmental damage,” Kevin Friedl wrote in the May/June issue of the Columbia Journalism Review.

“Chip Giller, Grist’s founder and president, worries that even when reporters take on stories about poverty, they rarely tease out these connections to the environment. He also thinks that too much environmental reporting is confined to big-picture topics like global warming and species extinction – important concerns, but unrelated to readers’ daily lives.

“. . . For seven weeks, starting in February, the site published ‘Poverty & the Environment,’ a series focusing on the overlooked link between class and environmental damage.”

Norris McDonald, an independent environmentalist who publishes a blog called “African American Environmentalist Association,” told Journal-isms today that reporters should also “look at the fact that blacks do not own even one tanker or any other component of the energy sector.”

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Immigration Bill Passes; Commentary Continues

“Obstacles Loom in Immigration Bill Passage,” reads a headline today in the Los Angeles Times.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., R-Wis., said a Senate bill fell short on the two most important provisions of immigration legislation: securing U.S. borders and enforcing sanctions against employers of illegal workers, Nicole Gaouette and Joel Havemann reported.

Sensenbrenner’s comments “underlined the obstacles in the road to a bill that Congress can send to President Bush,” they said. That, in turn, guarantees more commentary:

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A Former Source Editor Gets 6 Months in Assault

“The former editor of the hip-hop magazine The Source was tossed in jail for six months yesterday on bizarre charges that he clonked two strangers in the head with a red satchel filled with gravel earlier this year in Harlem,” Laura Italiano reported Thursday in the New York Post.

“David Blanks, 32, had been free on $5,000 bail after pleading guilty to attempted assault in March.

“Manhattan prosecutors say Blanks, who also uses the name Dasun Allah, was standing on 125th Street near Third Avenue in the early afternoon of Jan. 8 when he started swinging his satchel for no apparent reason.

“He hit two men in the head, causing them ‘substantial pain,’ court documents alleged.”

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ESPN Pulls Barry Bonds Reality Show

“ESPN put its controversial documentary/reality show, Bonds on Bonds, on hiatus, and will bring it back this season only if Barry Bonds, the San Francisco Giants’ star, goes on a home-run tear and gets close to breaking the career home-run record of Hank Aaron,” John Consoli reported Thursday in Mediaweek.

[Added May 29: Bonds smacked his 715th homer on May 28, overtaking Babe Ruth.]

Meanwhile, Jonathan Curiel wrote Thursday in the San Francisco Chronicle, “Not since the O.J. Simpson trial have blacks seemed so polarized about whether a well-known African American has been subjected to unfair treatment. On blogs, in conversations and in other public forums, black Americans are talking not about Bonds’ homers but about whether he deserves empathy or contempt.”

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Houston Chronicle Puts Out Extra on Enron Verdicts

The Houston Chronicle rushed out an extra on Thursday that reached newsstands at 2 p.m. with the verdicts on the fate of the former chief executives of Enron, Kenneth L. Lay and Jeffrey K. Skilling, Julie Bosman reported today in the New York Times. Both were found guilty.

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Writer Asks Smiley to Abide by Own Covenant

Activist commentator Tavis Smiley, who introduced the best-selling collection of essays, “The Covenant with Black America,” is being advised to heed his book’s advice, particularly on accepting sponsorship by Wal-Mart and on giving Republicans a break.

“Must he change or tone down his criticism of Republicans and the Bush administration, in order to promote his book and keep his television show?” asked Rhone Fraser, a graduate assistant in the Department of Africana Studies at the University of South Florida, last week on blackcommentator.com.

Fraser referred to a Smiley radio commentary in which he said, “I like Kenneth Blackwell, but. . .”

“There is no ‘but,'” Fraser said, referring to charges that the Ohio secretary of state, who is African American and now a candidate for governor, played a role in disenfranchising black voters in the 2004 presidential election. In narrowly losing Ohio, Democrat John Kerry lost the presidency.

As for Wal-Mart, a sponsor of Smiley’s PBS show, “Isn’t the denial of living wages and decent health benefits against the principles Tavis Smiley and his show stand for?” Fraser asked.

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BET Defends Stand on Coretta King Funeral

Black Entertainment Television did not join other networks in showing the funeral of Coretta Scott King live last February, and last week Robert Townsend, CEO and president for production of the Black Family Channel, said of his own network, “We had to carry it. We think that is really responsible television.”

In response, Michael Lewellen, spokesman for BET, told Journal-isms this week:

“Based on Nielsen ratings information, more African Americans watched BET’s primetime retrospective on Mrs. King’s life; interviews with the King children; commentary from leading Black leaders; and two-hour special with memorable moments from the funeral service than watched the actual live funeral telecast on any network. In addition, another 57,000 on-line users accessed BET’s live web cast of Mrs. King’s funeral on BET.com. While the coverage we provided may not have pleased everyone, the viewing options BET made available were exactly what some viewers were looking for.”

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Too Many “Heritage” Months?

Are there too many ethnic heritage months?

“Already, there are national months to celebrate the contributions of women, African-Americans, Hispanics, Irish-Americans, American Indians and Asian Pacific-Americans. President Bush recently designated May as Jewish Heritage Month, and Caribbean- and Haitian-American months are in the pipeline,” Alva James-Johnson wrote Sunday in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

“A national observance ‘means your ethnicity and your racial group has achieved a level of legitimacy,’ said George Wilson, a sociology professor at the University of Miami. ‘And you can use it to your advantage in the social and economic arenas.’

“Some disagree. Jose Enrique Idler, a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C., said the heritage months divide Americans.

“‘People already have enough differences as it is,’ said Idler, a Venezuelan immigrant and author of Officially Hispanic: Classification Policy and Ethnic Identity.”

Nevertheless, James-Johnson wrote, Claire Nelson, founder and president of the Washington, D.C.-based Institute of Caribbean Studies, expects President Bush will sign a proclamation this month recognizing June as Caribbean-American Heritage Month.

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Short Takes

  • “WXYZ-TV (Channel 7) says in documents filed in federal court that it has tried to accommodate the religious beliefs of anchorman Frank Turner, and the station denies it has discriminated against him,” Paul Egan reported today in the Detroit News.
  • “After a local white separatist posted video of an interview with him on the Internet, WFTS-Ch. 28 reporter Don Germaise insisted he did not agree to answer questions in exchange for the separatist’s cooperation with his own story for Tampa’s ABC affiliate,” Eric Deggans wrote Wednesday in the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times. “But pro-white activist David Daugherty says Germaise isn’t telling the truth.”
  • “Hearst Corp.’s San Antonio Express-News and Grupo Reforma, based in Monterrey, Mexico, have partnered to launch Cancha, a Spanish-language publication aimed at Spanish-dominant Mexicans in San Antonio,” Mariana Lemann reported Thursday in Marketing y Medios.
  • Richelle Carey, reporter and “News 4 This Morning” anchor at KMOV-TV in St. Louis, is joining CNN Headline News as an anchor starting June 13, CNN announced Wednesday, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported.
  • “It’s rare that a baby boomer gets a second chance. I was 50 and unhappy with my job. Teaching in public schools for 22 years had worn me out,” Sheldon Scruggs began a May 17 piece in the Times Herald-Record of Middletown, N.Y. He described his experience at the Freedom Forum’s Diversity Institute in Nashville, which trains people of varied backgrounds to become journalists. Publisher Jim Moss encouraged him to apply.
  • Eric Kearney, publisher of the black-oriented weekly Cincinnati Herald, was ranked 13 on the “Power 100” list of most influential businesspeople compiled by CincyBusiness magazine, Editor & Publisher reported Thursday. “The magazine said Kearney ‘already wielded enormous influence’ as a newspaper owner, but noted he now has more clout as a newly appointed state senator,” E&P said.
  • Correspondent Randall Pinkston of CBS News is to be awarded the Donald H. McGannon Award for his role “in advancing the roles of women and persons of color in the media.” He is to receive the honor from the United Church of Christ’s OC, Inc. and the Telecommunications Research and Action Center on Sept. 12 in Washington. “In the early ’70s, Randall Pinkston became one of the first African-Americans in Mississippi to be invited into TV viewers’ living rooms,” a 2003 story in the Jackson Clarion-Ledger observed.
  • Willy Stern, a former staff writer at Forbes, Business Week and the Nashville Scene alternative paper, ripped into the Nashville Tennessean and its editor, E.J. Mitchell, Thursday. The Gannett paper “is written and edited by a squadron of second-rate journalists, led by editor E.J. Mitchell, an arrogant character with little interest in the reporters who churn out the product,” Stern wrote in the Scene.
  • Former reporter Tshombe Jackson of KCBS-TV and KCAL-TV in Los Angeles cost the NewsBlues Web site nearly $33,000 in legal fees to defend itself against a claim of defamation and libel, the site’s creator and author, Mike James, wrote on Monday. Four months after the suit was filed, “on Friday, May 19, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Bert Gennon ruled that Jackson had ‘no probability’ of prevailing and threw the lawsuit in the dumpster, where it belonged in the first place,” James said. Jackson had denied “our December 22 report that he used his ‘LAPD-issued press pass’ to gain access to news events for clients of his reporter coaching business,” claiming he had no such pass, James wrote earlier.
  • “JOURNALISTS. Get the rack ready! Our attorney general is coming for us, snarling like a guard dog at Abu Ghraib, Derrick Z. Jackson wrote Wednesday in the Boston Globe. Jackson explained: “On Sunday, Alberto Gonzales told ABC’s ‘`This Week’ that he would consider prosecuting reporters who get their hands on classified information and break news about President Bush’s terrorist surveillance program.”
  • “Electronic media is a central focus of many very young children’s lives, used by parents to help manage busy schedules, keep the peace, and facilitate family routines such as eating, relaxing, and falling asleep, according to a new national study released today by the Kaiser Family Foundation,” the organization reported Wednesday. “According to the study, in a typical day more than eight in ten (83%) children under the age of six use screen media, with those children averaging about two hours a day.”
  • Angela Burt-Murray, editor of Essence magazine, “said she avoided sweeping changes since returning to Essence after two years as executive editor of Teen People. But she’s made ‘subtle shifts’ that included adding a section on ‘black men, sex & intimacy,'” according to a story by Jeffrey Gold of the Associated Press.

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