Maynard Institute archives

Press Urged to Make Amends

by richard01521

N.C. Panel Wants Redress for Anti-Black Violence

A 600-page report on anti-black riots in Wilmington, N.C., in 1898 recommends that newspapers – particularly the News & Observer in Raleigh, the Charlotte Observer and the Wilmington (N.C.) Star-News – help make amends for their role in inciting the violence.

It calls for going beyond a simple apology. The papers should study “the effects of and impact of Jim Crow on the state’s black press” and “endow scholarships at the state’s public universities.”

The report also condemns the role of out-of-state newspapers that covered the 1898 events, such as the Washington Post.

The three North Carolina papers indicated that they are open to discussing the suggested remedies.

As the Wilmington Race Riot Commission explained, “The riot took place in an era when similar violent attacks on black communities by white mobs occurred in Atlanta, Tulsa and Rosewood, Fla. In Wilmington, in a move unparalleled in U.S. history, a coup d’etat replaced the city’s duly elected officeholders with white supremacists.” The violence killed “an unknown number of blacks.”

The commission, created by the state Legislature, continued: “A pivotal demand” made of Wilmington’s Committee of Colored Citizens “was that the community oust newspaper editor Alex Manly, who had published an article in the Record, the city’s only African American newspaper, that challenged claims by whites regarding interracial sexual relationships. The CCC was to respond by 7:30 a.m. on Nov. 10.

“No response was received from the CCC at that time, and by 9 a.m. a group of men marched to the Record printing office and destroyed the newspaper building.

“Before the day ended, a mob of up to 2,000 whites roamed the streets, armed with rifles and fueled by weeks of propaganda in newspapers and rhetoric-filled meetings. Rifles and rapid fire machine guns were fired, and black men were killed or wounded throughout the day.”

The other media-related recommendations were that, “newspapers . . . should acknowledge the role of media in the events of 1898 and work with the North Carolina black press association to prepare a summary of the Commission report for distribution statewide.”

Commission spokesman Michael Hill said the black newspapers in the state were financially strapped and the idea was that the white-owned newspapers could do something to assist the black press.

Tim Griggs, executive editor of the Wilmington Star-News, said Thursday in his newspaper’s story, “The Star-News will do everything it can to report on both the lessons learned from 1898 and the commission’s findings. The paper will also work with other state media to address the commission’s recommendations.”

Rick Thames, editor of the Charlotte Observer, noted that the commission said the first step was acknowledging the papers’ involvement in the 1898 events, and told Journal-isms a lead editorial on Sunday would do just that.

“Clearly, there are other things to do,” he said, adding that an internal meeting was scheduled Monday to discuss further steps. “It’s sad. Newspapers are the first rough draft of history. Unfortunately, it’s true that they played a negative role in what I call a particularly ugly role in the state’s history and we failed to own up to it right on our pages.” A Jan. 8 column by Jack Betts, an associate editor, also acknowledged the Observer’s 1898 involvement, saying it “led to much of North Carolina’s inclusion in the 1965 federal Voting Rights Act,” which still governs how legislative districts are drawn.

Orage Quarles, publisher of the Raleigh News & Observer, told Journal-isms that his paper, too, acknowledged its actions after a preliminary commission report was issued in December. “We’re on the record owning up,” he said. He said he would have to have many discussions before deciding on further action.

Rip Woodin, president of the North Carolina Press Association, which represents more than 200 newspapers, told Journal-isms he had not read the report and had not received proposals for creating press-funded scholarships. “We really haven’t had the contact with the North Carolina Black Press Association,” added Woodin, publisher of the Rocky Mount (N.C.) Telegram.

LeRae Umfleet, a state researcher who wrote the report, cited the Washington Post in discussing out-of-state reporters who played a role in inciting the violence. Henry Litchfield West, a Post reporter, rode in parades of the Red Shirts, a militant wing of the pro-white Democratic Party. “He was sympathetic to the white supremacist movement and his stories in the Post reflected that,” she said.

Because of the slant of West’s reports, the federal government “was less likely to send federal assistance to the city,” Umfleet said. “If the people of Wilmington knew that the federal government would take action, things in Wilmington wouldn’t have progressed as they did. I don’t think any black deaths would have occurred.” The white supremacists “orchestrated this all the way to Washington, D.C.”

Representatives of the North Carolina Black Publishers Association and the Washington Post could not be reached for comment.

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Milloy, Trescott, Tanabe Taking D.C. Post Buyout

Three Washington Post journalists of color – Style section writer Jacqueline Trescott, Metro columnist Courtland Milloy and Francis Tanabe, senior editor and art director in the Book World section – are among the approximately 70 reporters, editors, photographers and newsroom administrators taking early retirement offers from the Washington Post Co.

“Staffers age 54 and older with 10 years of service were eligible to receive up to two years of full-time pay and benefits in exchange for leaving the newspaper before retirement age,” Frank Ahrens reported Thursday in the Post.

Peter Perl, Post assistant managing editor for training and development, identified Trescott, Milloy and Tanabe as the only journalists of color in the group, although he told Journal-isms he counted 14 among the 140 eligible to take the buyout.

Ahrens wrote that Milloy, along with others, including television critic Tom Shales, were taking the offer but would keep writing for a period under contract.

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.”

Trescott, who taught at the Maynard Institute’s Summer Program for Minority Journalists, told Journal-isms she would continue working at the Post under contract until June 2007, covering news of the Smithsonian Institution, arts agencies and performing arts centers.

Trescott spent 31 years at the Post and five at the defunct Washington Star. She said that after Athelia Knight, who directs the Young Journalists Development Program, she is the African American journalist with the longest full-time service at the paper. Knight, Trescott and Milloy all arrived in 1975.

Tanabe, 63, told Journal-isms he would travel – first to Japan, then to Europe.

Under his full name, Kunio Francis Tanabe, he wrote on Book World’s 25th anniversary in 1997, “While still a graduate student working on a thesis titled ‘The Ethical Concepts of Karl Marx,’ I was hired by William McPherson, then the book editor of The Washington Post, to become his part-time assistant. Little did I know then that I would continue working for the book section for more than a quarter century. . . .”

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Media Organizations to Pay Wen Ho Lee $750,000

“Five media organizations have agreed to pay $750,000 to former nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee as part of a settlement of a Privacy Act lawsuit between Lee and the government that ends contempt citations for journalists protecting the identities of their confidential sources,” the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press reported today.

ABC News, The Associated Press, the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times and The Washington Post agreed to pay Lee, who had subpoenaed six reporters to learn who leaked information about him to the news media when he was under investigation for espionage.

[Added June 3: In addition, the federal government will pay Lee $895,000 to drop his lawsuit, Paul Farhi reported Saturday in the Washington Post.]

“In a joint statement from the news organizations, the media outlets said they agreed to the payout ‘to protect our confidential sources, to protect our journalists from further sanction and possible imprisonment, and to protect our news organizations from potential exposure. We were reluctant to contribute anything to this settlement, but we sought relief in the courts and found none. . .”

“The media companies cited the lack of a federal reporter’s privilege as another reason for settling. . . .

“Lee subpoenaed the reporters who wrote about the investigation: Pierre Thomas, formerly of CNN and now with ABC News; James Risen and Jeff Gerth of The New York Times; Josef Herbert of The Associated Press; Bob Drogin of the Los Angeles Times; and Walter Pincus of The Washington Post. The reporters refused to comply with the subpoenas.”

“CNN, in a separate statement, said it declined to join in the settlement ‘because we had a philosophical disagreement over whether it was appropriate to pay money to Wen Ho Lee or anyone else to get out from under a subpoena,'” the Associated Press said.

Thomas, the black journalist among the group, said on the ABC News blog, “Obviously I’m relieved. This has been a difficult ordeal for me professionally and for my family.

“I want to thank CNN for supporting my legal fight for more than 4 years. I want to thank my attorney Charles Tobin and Ted Olson, who worked on the filings before the Supreme Court. I especially want to thank ABC News President David Westin for his unwavering support in my efforts to protect the confidentiality of my sources. Thanks as well to the ABC News legal team led by Henry Hoberman.”

Thomas added, “Here I was reporting the story fairly and accurately, pointing out the strengths and weaknesses of the government’s case, and I was being asked to reveal the identities of people who were making sure I was doing the right thing, the right way.”

Asian Americans promoted Lee’s legal defense fund and accused the government of using him as a scapegoat, as the Associated Press reported in 1999.

â??This is racial profiling at its worst. It is un-American and it is unconstitutional,â?? author, journalist and civil rights activist Helen Zia, who went on to co-author a book with Lee, said then.

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Charles Gibson Denies Intention to Slight Africa

“ABC World News Tonight anchor Charles Gibson told a Chicago radio station Wednesday that he was misquoted in a New York magazine article that called into question the reporting of news from Africa,” Roland S. Martin reported Thursday in the Chicago Defender.

“During a 16-minute interview on WVON-AM’s ‘The Roland S. Martin Show,’ Gibson responded to a May 29th article by Joe Hagan in New York Magazine titled, ‘Charles in Charge.’

“According to the Q and A, Hagan asked Gibson if he would be traveling around the globe as much as his competitor, NBC’s Brian Williams.

“Gibson’s response? ‘That’s because of Katrina; you saw him going down there. Now he’s in Africa. I don’t know why you do that. Why the hell do you go to Africa? It’s certainly an interesting choice. We’ll do travel, when it warrants.’

“After the issue was discussed for an hour on WVON, Gibson called into the show to respond.

“‘This guy, who I will never talk to again from New York magazine who is something of a snake, he took my quote and I think perverted the meaning of it to indicate in some way that I was insensitive to news from one of the five major continents in the world,’ he said.”

“He wasn’t questioning the need to go to Africa, it was why go to Africa with a rock star, he said,” David Bauer wrote Thursday for the Associated Press after interviewing Gibson.

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3 Women’s Groups Protest Vargas Decision

“Elizabeth Vargas says she’s at peace with her decision to walk away from one of the highest-profile jobs in America. But not everyone is so thrilled about it, especially some women,” Paul Farhi wrote Monday in the Washington Post.

“Vargas, 43, stepped down as the co-anchor of ABC’s ‘World News Tonight’ on Friday, three days after ABC announced that she would leave the broadcast. ABC and Vargas said her unexpected departure was a result of the demands of the job – and the demands of being the mother of a 3-year-old, with another child due this summer.”

The National Organization for Women “has joined with two other prominent women’s organizations to protest Vargas’s departure. In a letter that will be sent today to ABC News President David Westin and Disney-ABC Television Group President Anne Sweeney, the organizations call Vargas’s status ‘a clear demotion’ and characterize it as ‘a dispiriting return to the days of discrimination against women that we thought were behind us.'”

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Black Men “At the Corner of Progress and Peril”

“What does it mean to be a black man? Imagine three African American boys, kindergartners who are largely alike in intelligence, talent and character, whose potential seems limitless,” began a series today in the Washington Post. “According to a wealth of statistics and academic studies, in just over a decade one of the boys is likely to be locked up or headed to prison. The second boy — if he hasn’t already dropped out — will seriously weigh leaving high school and be pointed toward an uncertain future. The third boy will be speeding toward success by most measures,” continued the first installment, “At the Corner of Progress and Peril” by Michael A. Fletcher.

“. . . In the coming weeks and months, The Washington Post will explore the lives of black men through their experiences — how they raise their sons, cope with wrongful imprisonment, navigate the perceived terrain between smart and cool, defy convention against the backdrop of racial expectations. On Sunday, The Post will publish the findings of a major poll conducted jointly with the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard University. The nationwide survey measured the attitudes of black men on a variety of issues and asked others for their views of black men.”

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Black Caucus Backs Jefferson’s Staying Put

“Rep. William J. Jefferson has been asked by the House Democratic leader to step down from the Ways and Means Committee owing to the lingering FBI bribery investigation, but the Louisiana Democrat has refused and won the support of the Congressional Black Caucus,” Brian DeBose reported Thursday in the Washington Times.

“Mr. Jefferson has not been charged with anything, so to forcibly remove him from a seat on the Ways and Means Committee would be unprecedented,” the caucus said in a statement.

Steve Kornacki reported Tuesday in Roll Call, the Capitol Hill newspaper, that a closed-door meeting between Pelosi and a half-dozen senior members of the caucus “yielded an uneasy and potentially temporary truce between the two sides.”

“Led by CBC Chairman Mel Watt (D-N.C.), the contingent entered Pelosi’s office late last Wednesday to inform her that they planned to publicly and emphatically criticize her demand that Jefferson step down from the exclusive committee, according to an aide to a senior CBC member,” Kornacki wrote.

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Short Takes

  • “An arbitrator has ruled TV reporter Arthur Chi’en was wrongly fired by WCBS Channel 2 for blurting out the F-word on live television last year,” the New York Daily News reported Thursday. “The station should have handed Chi’en a lesser penalty for lashing out at hecklers in a live shot when he thought the cameras weren’t rolling last May,” the story said. Chi’en, 37, now works at New York’s WPIX-TV.
  • Washington Post columnist Colbert King’s columns on unanswered questions in the January killing of retired New York Times editor David Rosenbaum are the subject of a June cover story by Joe Strupp in Editor & Publisher. “While surprisingly few follow-ups have been written – even in the New York Times – King himself has devoted more than a half-dozen columns and two editorials to the case,” Strupp wrote. “Fred Hiatt, the Post’s editorial page editor, says, ‘I think they are terrific columns – and what makes them terrific is that he does a lot of reporting.'” The article is available so far only to E&P subscribers.
  • “Longtime Albuquerque TV personality and former KOB-Channel 4 anchorman Nelson Martinez says his bosses accused him of faking being sick as an excuse to fire him in December,” Maggie Shepard reported Thursday in the Albuquerque (N.M.) Tribune. “What they really wanted, he says in a civil lawsuit filed against the station in state District Court on Wednesday, was to make way for new – younger and less expensive – faces.”
  • “Discovery en Español’s first original production, Objectivo: El Norte, premiered May 21, garnering the channel’s highest ratings ever, according to the company,” Moses Frenck reported May 26 in Marketing y Medios. The production took “a hard look at illegal immigration between Mexico and the United States” and repeats June 11 and June 14, at 10 p.m. Eastern and Pacific time.
  • June Cross, an independent documentary film producer in New York, was one of 10 journalists chosen for the Kaiser Media Fellowships in Health program, it was announced on Thursday. Cross is the author of the new memoir, “Secret Daughter: A Mixed-Race Daughter and the Mother Who Gave Her Away” and plans to study Hurricane Katrina’s impact on the health care safety net nationally.
  • Phuong Ly left the Washington Post on May 5 after returning from the American Society of Newspaper Editors convention in Seattle, where she accepted the Freedom Forum/ASNE Award for Outstanding Writing on Diversity. Her winning stories chronicled facets of the immigrant experience in the Washington region. Ly told Journal-isms today she plans to write about Nigeria, where she spent time on a fellowship, take Spanish lessons, spend a week as a visiting professor at the Poynter Institute journalism school, consult, teach and write magazine stories. “I want to get better in my writing and want to make the leap to magazines and books,” the seven-year Post veteran said, “and do longer stories about how immigrants affect America and how America is being changed by immigrants.”
  • Kara Briggs, a former Unity: Journalists of Color president who wrote about her battle with breast cancer as a Portland Oregonian staff writer, started work in May as senior fellow with the American Indian Policy and Media Initiative at New York’s Buffalo State College. Briggs works from her home in the Northwest and said she oversees the initiative’s opinion and news-gathering efforts. “I’d be happy to talk or correspond with op/ed editors about issues in their area on which we may provide commentary,” she told Journal-isms.
  • Gwen Ifill, moderator of PBS’s “Washington Week,” and Debra L. Lee, president of Black Entertainment Television, are among the Washingtonian magazine’s “Washington Women to Watch” listed in its June issue.
  • “A federal agency has determined there is probable cause to believe the work of two female sportswriters at the St. Paul Pioneer Press was scrutinized differently from that of their male colleagues,” Editor & Publisher reported on May 28. “In 2003, Cara LaBrie and Robbi Pickeral filed sexual discrimination complaints against the Pioneer Press with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. At the time, they were the only female sports reporters at the paper.”
  • “The BBC has made a formal complaint to Egyptian Minister of the Interior Habib Al-Adly following assaults by members of the Egyptian security services on four journalists, two of whom work for the BBC,” the Associated Press reported today.
  • “Gambian security officers arrested a local journalist working for the BBC on Tuesday, a local source told the Committee to Protect Journalists,” the committee reported on Thursday. “A BBC source in London confirmed that Lamin Cham had been detained. His whereabouts are unknown. His arrest comes amid a government crackdown on a critical U.S.-hosted Web site, Freedom Newspaper.”
  • Maryan Mohamud Qalanjo, a female journalist working for Shabelle Radio, one of the most popular radio stations in Somalia, was badly beaten, tortured and snatched away in Baidoa by armed militias loyal to the speaker of the Somali Parliament Sharif Hassan Sheekh Adan, the Shabelle Media Network reported on Thursday.
  • “Confronted with atrocious accounts of rape committed by members of the Congo military, Congolese President Joseph Kabila at first was silent – then found his voice, saying ‘It’s shocking,'” Jeff Koinange reported Thursday on CNN. “‘These kinds of acts are simply unforgivable.’ The father of a young girl, Kabila was commenting after watching an exclusive CNN report from last week in which women, children and a doctor described an array of sex crimes by the Congolese military – some of whom used knives to rape their victims.”

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