Public Editors Tackle Coverage Complaints
In their weekend columns, newspapers’ reader representatives grappled with the coverage accorded the war in Lebanon, while some columnists of color focused on other aspects of the latest war, including the role of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and, in Seattle, a shooting at the Jewish Federation there.
In the Raleigh (N.C.) News & Observer, Ted Vaden sided with a reader who complained that as the violence continued, Wednesday’s paper devoted much of the front page to a feature, with three pictures, about the U.S. Kids Golf Championships.
Melanie Sill, the N&O’s executive editor, said in the column, “Our philosophy has always been to give people state, local and regional news, and the presence of national and international news kinds of ebbs and flows” with events. But Vaden countered that the display “contributes to readers’ perceptions of misplaced news priorities.”
In the Hartford Courant, Karen Hunter wrote on Sunday, “The pictures of Lebanese and Palestinians dealing with death and destruction have outnumbered pictures of Israelis nearly 2 to 1. The photos of [Israeli] victims have been mostly of soldiers. The fact that there has been more destruction and death in Lebanon than in northern Israel is unavoidable. News decisions have to reflect that reality. Still, the news staff should be mindful of the editorial statement some see when the newspaper displays Lebanese covered in blood in Page 1 color photos and Israeli victims inside the newspaper in black and white.”
That wasn’t the only war, of course. “As Iraq was crowded off TV screens last week by the fighting in Lebanon, a question came to mind: Are Americans getting the information they need to intelligently judge progress – or lack of it – in the war on terror?” Joel Connelly asked today in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
“No, or at least not as the Middle East exploded last week.
“Americans saw injured Lebanese kids, sobbing widows in Beirut and – to a decidedly lesser extent – Israelis taking cover from Hezbollah rockets.
“At the same time, on Thursday, car bombs and rockets ripped through an upscale Baghdad neighborhood. Businesses were burned. Buildings collapsed. At least 25 civilians died, and dozens more were injured.
“We saw almost none of this on the tube, dominated this night by high-profile news personalities relocated to Lebanon.”
- Tammy L. Carter, Orlando Sentinel: Let’s look for opportunities to help war’s innocent victims
- Robert L. Jamieson Jr., Seattle Post-Intelligencer: ‘Pregnant lady’ is a hero – twice
- Deborah Mathis, BlackAmericaWeb.com: If Condi Rice is Incompetent as Secretary of State, It’s Not Why Most Folks Think
- Paul Moore, Baltimore Sun: Coverage of Israel, Lebanon strives to maintain balance
- Tony Norman, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Reglar rapscallions in high places
- Kate Parry, Minneapolis Star Tribune: Seeking visual balance in Middle East coverage
- Eugene Robinson, Washington Post: A War of Her Own
- Gregory Rodriguez, Los Angeles Times: Resilience Among the Ruins
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New Orleans Anchor Part of Suit Against Feds
It’s rare that a television anchor is party to a lawsuit that his station must report on. But then, a Hurricane Katrina comes along only once in a lifetime.
Norman Robinson, anchor at New Orleans’ WDSU-TV and resident of eastern New Orleans, along with a Lower 9th Ward couple and two St. Bernard Parish residents, is suing the Army Corps of Engineers, holding the agency responsible for flooding that destroyed their homes last year.
“Robinson is suing over flooding that so severely damaged the first floor of the house where he and his wife were helping raise their granddaughter that she had to be relocated to Houston,” Susan Finch reported in the Times-Picayune last April 26.
“He did not attend a news conference outside the 400 Poydras St. federal courthouse to announce filing of the case.”
Last week, the corps filed a 51-page memo asking a federal judge to dismiss the suit, Finch reported on Thursday. Siding with Robinson and the other residents, Times-Picayune columnist Jarvis DeBerry wrote a column Friday comparing their case to the federal government’s exploitation of slaves.
“It’s obvious to everyone that the corps, a government agency, failed to protect the American people from harm and that its negligence destroyed many lives and many more homes. But it was just as obvious that our antebellum government filled its coffers with money derived from the exploitation of enslaved Africans and their descendants. Having a good argument doesn’t always matter,” DeBerry wrote, citing a case discussed in Randall Robinson’s 2000 brief for reparations, “The Debt.”
WDSU-TV News Director Anzio Williams told Journal-isms today the station was taking precautions to be sure anchor Robinson was not reporting on the case, and that “as a television station, we’re not taking a position one way or the other” on the suit.
But he noted that in New Orleans, everyone – journalist and non-journalist – is part of the story. “Over 95 percent of my staff got some kind of FEMA assistance. That doesn’t mean we can’t cover a FEMA press conference,” he said.
“Not only are we reporting and doing journalism on this, we’re living it,” Williams said of the hurricane and its aftermath. “We are members of the community first. We believe all of our employees are dealing with loss in their own individual ways.”
The station has received only two e-mails commenting on Robinson’s involvement in the lawsuit, Williams said.
The news director said Robinson was not discussing the case publicly, and the anchor could not be reached for comment. But last Aug. 31 he spoke with Journal-isms after fleeing with other station employees to sister station WAPT-TV in Jackson, Miss.
Asked what the past few days had been like, he said, “It’s uprooting and moving your entire life from one location to the next and not knowing how you’re going to face and deal with your own set of emotions, because this time you’re going to suffer from the same experiences as the people you’re reporting on.”
- Associated Press: Gulf Coast Papers Receive APME Awards
- Mark Lisheron, American Journalism Review: The Ties That Bind
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Newspaper Wants Court Documents Sealed
The Indianapolis Star, which like most newspapers champions access to information, is asking a court to seal certain documents in a case accusing the paper of religious and racial discrimination.
As reported in June 2005, two former editorial writers filed suit against the Star claiming that after Gannett Co. bought the paper in 2000, Barbara A. Henry, who became Star president and publisher, and Dennis Ryerson, who eventually became editor, “displayed strong disagreement with anyone who had a Biblical view of homosexuality.”
As part of her deposition, Lisa Coffey, who was transferred out of the department after writing a column citing the dangers of anal sex, “made allegations regarding [identifying information redacted] sexual orientation and [identifying information redacted] HIV status,” in the words [and whited-out words] of the Star’s July 27 motion.
“It is certain plaintiffs will continue to make an issue of [identifying information redacted] alleged sexual orientation and [identifying information redacted] alleged HIV status absent some intervention by this Court,” according to the motion.
“Furthermore, in light of plaintiffs’ history of soliciting media attention for their case, it also is likely this information will find its way into the public domain. The Star seeks a protective order to prevent this type of discovery abuse.”
Neither Coffey nor James Patterson, the other defendant, had first-hand knowledge of the sexual orientation or HIV status of the people involved, the Star said. Patterson, who is a founding member of the Indianapolis Association of Black Journalists, is also claiming racial discrimination.
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Disappointment With Diversity in New TV Season
Taye Diggs, as a cop, plays “the only black lead character of a new drama or situation comedy slated for fall season that arrives, [locust-] like, in mid-September,” Ken Parish Perkins wrote on Friday in the Chicago Defender.
Perkins, as reported last week, was the black journalist pressing comedian Chris Rock and others on the annual Television Critics Association tour for their thoughts on the lack of African Americans in next year’s drama shows.
That Diggs’ character “is all by his lonesome ought not to shock anyone who has watched the commercial broadcast networks lose any sign of ethnic identity,” Perkins wrote.
“Just as telling as we look over our new offerings for the 2006-07 season are a couple of things: how black characters remain sidekicks and afterthoughts, and how the black-cast show, despite what the network executives say, really is vanishing before our eyes.
“Judging from cast members and producers of new series paraded in front of television critics during the two-week dog and pony show in Los Angeles which ended Thursday, of the 175 stars representing characters in 27 new shows only 21 were African-American, 16 Latino and two Asian. Of the 61 producers who either created these shows or were listed as the executive producers in charge of story architecture, casting and hiring writers, only Ugly Betty on ABC and The Game on CW have Latino and black producers (film actress Salma Hayek for Ugly Betty, Mara Brock Akil with The Game).
“How disappointing in a season that overall shows enormous promise.”
- Dinah Eng, TV Week: Rice and Beans Scripts a Diverse Kids’ World
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Bush’s NAACP Speech Draws More Commentary
“President Bush bragged last week to the NAACP, ‘I come from a family committed to civil rights.’ He said Thurgood Marshall and Martin Luther King Jr. were part of America’s `second founding, the civil rights movement.’ He talked about his recent tour of the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis with the prime minister of Japan. ‘If you haven’t been there, you ought to go,’ he said,” Derrick Z. Jackson wrote Saturday in the Boston Globe.
“Three days later, the Globe’s Charlie Savage reported that Bush is gutting the civil rights division of the Justice Department. Savage obtained documents under the Freedom of Information act and found that just 19 of 45 lawyers hired for the division’s voting rights, employment litigation and appellate sections since 2003 have civil rights backgrounds and of the 19, Savage wrote that ‘nine gained their experience either by defending employers against discrimination lawsuits or by fighting against race-conscious policies.’
“This happened because halfway into Bush’s first term, former attorney general and Confederate romanticist John Ashcroft rewrote hiring procedures to eliminate hiring committees composed of veteran civil servant lawyers.”
- Betty Bayé, Louisville Courier-Journal: Even after his NAACP speech, Bush’s actions still speak louder
- Sylvester Brown Jr., St. Louis Post-Dispatch: NAACP missed big chance to press Bush on diverse issues
- Brian Lewis, Springfield (Mo.) News-Leader: Bush makes good call in speaking to NAACP meeting
- Cynthia Tucker, Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Demagogic side of GOP shuns blacks
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Short Takes
- Less than a year after Glenn Proctor became executive editor and Thomas A. Silvestri became president and publisher of the Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch, Louise C. Seals, announced today she was stepping down as managing editor. She had been in the job since 1994 and at the paper since 1968. She is retiring “to spend more time with her family,” a newsroom notice said. The Richmond Style Weekly this month reported “considerable anxiety at the paper.”
- “The appeal of Mumia Abu-Jamal, the Philadelphia-based African-American journalist who has spent a quarter of a century on Pennsylvania’s death row after being convicted of killing a white Philadelphia police officer, is finally moving into its critical phase, in the federal Court of Appeals,” Dave Lindorff wrote on opednews.com. “Attorney Robert R. Bryan of San Francisco, a veteran capital appeals lawyer who took over Abu-Jamal’s defense in 2003, filed a brief (PDF) on July 20 in the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia, laying out three arguments for overturning Abu-Jamal’s murder conviction.”
- The McCormick Tribune Foundation awarded 13 grants through its journalism program to strengthen the industry’s diversity and garner youth interest in news media, the foundation announced in a news release dated Aug. 1. “A substantial portion of the grants will strengthen ethnic media. A grant to Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc. will fund a workshop on investigative reporting techniques for local ethnic media journalists. A grant to the Asian American Journalists Association will support an Executive Leadership Program for mid-level journalists.”
- “Luis Alberto Gonzalez returns home after 21 years. He’s joining Univision Puerto Rico, as Deputy News Director. Luis Alberto departs Mexico City, where he had worked as News Director for ESPN Deportes,” the TV news newsletter Shop Talk reported today.
- “For almost six months, Univision sought a new face to host the weekend edition of its news magazine, Primer Impacto. The job was left vacant when Puerto Rican news anchor Carmen Dominicci joined the now-canceled Telefutura newscast En Vivo y en Directo,” Magaly Morales reported today for Tribune Media Services. “The chosen one turned out to be Honduran journalist Satcha Pretto, former news anchor at the Univision affiliate KUVN-23 in Dallas.”
- “Pick your humanitarian crisis – whether it’s war in the Middle East, starvation in Africa, an earthquake in Pakistan or Hurricane Katrina – and chances are good” that Ann Curry, “who reads the news on Today and co-anchors Dateline, will be there,” Peter Johnson wrote today in USA Today. “Network news analyst Andrew Tyndall says that although Curry’s reporting might be faulted for tugging at people’s heartstrings more than looking at the roots of crises, ‘you’ve got to give her chops for extracting money from NBC News’ budget to send her to all these places.'”
- “The future owner and publisher of the Akron Beacon Journal expect to cut jobs in the coming months even as they focus their energies on increasing the paper’s revenue and on growing circulation,” Jim Mackinnon wrote Saturday in the Beacon Journal.
- John Bodette, executive editor of the St. Cloud (Minn.) Times, introduced two interns – graduates of the American Indian Journalism Institute held in June at the University of South Dakota in Vermillion, S.D. – in his June 23 column. They are Russel A. Daniels and Ishmael Ali Elias, who described themselves in Bodette’s column.
- More than 1,000 readers responded to Gracie Bonds Staples’ July 5 story in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution about Brittany O’Connell, a 17-year-old graduate of Atlanta’s Southside High School who dreams of going to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, public editor Angela Tuck wrote on Saturday. “Thanks to readers, a special fund set up for Brittany after the story appeared now contains thousands of dollars. Her tuition, room and board had already been paid. Staples didn’t set out to raise money for Brittany; her goal was to share a poignant story.”
- Until 2004, Nicole Haynes, the newest sports reporter at WSYR-TV in Syracuse, N.Y., “was one of the world’s premiere track and field stars, a three-time Canadian national champion in the heptathlon and an Olympic hopeful whose career ended in disappointment at age 29 because of injuries,” William LaRue reported Sunday in the Syracuse Post-Standard.
- NBC News correspondent Kevin Corke has his own entry on the Facebook Web site, Brian Stelter of TV Newser reported on Friday. “Nothing shocking – he’s a self-described ‘ravenous reader of non-fiction, total movie freak, lover of political theatre, player of all sports (even bowling), sometimes brutally honest to a fault, anti-romance cynic and a true believer in humanity’s best . . . until you prove otherwise.'”
- Rep. Cynthia McKinney, D-Ga., “speaks loudly but has accomplished little in her 12 years in Congress. That’s because her outrageous rhetoric and loopy antics distance her not only from the Republican majority, but even from many of her Democratic colleagues,” Cynthia Tucker, editorial page editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Journalist of the Year of the National Association of Black Journalists, wrote Sunday. The contrast with Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., is “the difference between infamy and influence.”
- “Gambia – a sliver of a nation on the West African coast – bills itself to foreigners as a cheerful beach resort, but critics say the country shelters a corrupt regime that is arresting reporters and closing down papers to silence opponents ahead of September presidential elections,” Heidi Vogt reported today for the Associated Press.
- Reporters Without Borders voiced outrage Friday on learning that Marcos Perales Mendoza, the editor of La Portada, an investigative monthly based in Barrancabermeja, Colombia, “has been forced to flee the region by the death threats he has been getting since May 2005 in response to his articles about local corruption.”
- Three gunmen fatally shot Vic Melendrez, a photojournalist for the Manila tabloid Tanod, in front of his house Monday in metropolitan Manila, Teresa Cerojano reported today for the Associated Press.
- In the Democratic Republic of Congo, “Journalist Emmanuel Makila was surrounded by rioters and threatened with death after an election rally by presidential candidate Jean-Pierre Bemba yesterday in Kinshasa. Makila, who works for private weeklies The Post and Révélateur, told the Committee to Protect Journalists he was saved by a few bystanders who pleaded with the mob on his behalf,” the committee said Friday. “Rioters seized Makila’s camera after he photographed an arson attack on a building housing the High Authority on Media, a national press watchdog.”