Bush Acknowledges Poverty as Issue

President Interviewed by Black Radio Network

President Bush has told black radio listeners he realizes that “the core issues of poverty” must be addressed as New Orleans rebuilds, but also said “it’s up to the local folks to make the decisions necessary to encourage people to come back.” First lady Laura Bush urged teachers around the country to consider moving to the Gulf Coast because they “are needed so desperately.”

The presidential couple spoke for 20 minutes on Monday with April Ryan, White House correspondent for American Urban Radio Networks, aboard Air Force One en route to Mississippi for commemorations of the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. The interview has been airing since then on the radio network.

Bush deflected a question about the value of Jesse Jackson‘s talks this week in the Middle East, saying “I’ve got a fantastic secretary of state” in Condoleezza Rice. And the Republican gave this answer when asked whether Democratic Mayor C. Ray Nagin was “a help or a hindrance to your efforts”:

“I think Ray Nagin is a person that received the endorsement of the people of New Orleans. And I believe that Ray Nagin understands what needs to be done. Now, he has asked the federal government for help. He has asked for us to help eradicate hurdles, bureaucratic hurdles, to help him realize a vision. That’s why I’ve named Don Powell, who’s a good friend of mine who’s down there on a regular basis talking with Mayor Nagin. But Mayor Nagin ran on a platform and said, I will help rebuild this city. And now it’s going to be up to him to deliver his promises. He also has got to work with the governor and the Louisiana Recovery Administration.”

At the National Association of Black Journalists convention this month, Nagin blamed problems with rebuilding the city on a ‘bureaucratic’ state system that has kept money from reaching those who need it most.

“I know this man. He and I went through a lot,” Bush said of Nagin. “He went through a heck of a lot more than I did because he was down there in the middle of the storm. And I watched him — I watched him go through a period of desperation, and then realize help would be coming. And it’s now up to him and the city council and the state government to seize the initiative, and implement a plan that has been developed. And I believe the people of Louisiana are capable of doing that.”

Ryan, who has been at the White House for nine years, told Journal-isms she had been requesting interviews since Bush took office in 2000. American Urban Radio Networks claims to be the largest black-owned radio network (Radio One is publicly traded), reaching an estimated 25 million listeners, and boasts that it is the only African American broadcaster with a bureau in the White House.

In the interview, Ryan noted it was the 43rd anniversary of the March on Washington and asked, “What have you learned in this year about race and poverty after Katrina?”

After acknowledging that the vision of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had not been realized, Bush said:

“Katrina was a terrible natural disaster, and as a result of that natural disaster, we saw a — that a group of people lived in abject poverty. And the fundamental question is, will we react in a way that addresses the core issues of poverty?

“One such issue is education. In other words, the school system had failed the people of New Orleans, the families of New Orleans. Will the—out of this rubble and debris, emerge a school system that helps address the issue of poverty? Another issue is ownership. There was a lot of absentee landlords that held properties. I happen to believe that if somebody owns their own home, or owns their own business, they’ll be better off. And that’s one way to address abject poverty. Another is the criminal justice system that needs to be improved. In other words, the storm highlighted the need for society to continually address the root causes of poverty. And I vowed in Jackson Square in New Orleans, we would, and we are.”

At another point, the first lady added, “I think that schools are one of the most important pieces. And schools were destroyed; over 1,000 schools were destroyed. And many are being rebuilt and reopened. But it’s also a time to call out to the whole United States and ask people who are teachers to consider moving to the Gulf Coast, getting a job there for a couple of years, or forever, for the rest of their lives, as teachers, because teachers are needed so desperately in all of those schools.”

As he has previously, Bush rejected the notion that the federal response was racially motivated. “Now, in terms of the politics of Katrina, I will — I flatly reject the concept that the federal response was based upon race,” he said. “I just — I reject that out of hand. And whoever says that is trying to politicize a very difficult situation. The federal response could have been better, and I’ve taken responsibility for the federal response. As a matter of fact, the governor took responsibility for the state response, and the mayor took responsibility for the local response. In other words, our point was, we all could have done better.

“. . . The storm exposed a racial divide; the rebuilding has a chance to heal that divide. It’s hard work, but it’s necessary work. And the federal government is committed to that work, and so am I,” Bush said.

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Nagin: Almost Like Media Were “Lying in Wait”

“I think prior to Katrina I was the media darling,” New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin said Tuesday on National Public Radio’s “News and Notes With Ed Gordon.”

“During Katrina, I had some struggles. And then when I went on that little tirade on the radio that was played all over the world, I was perceived again. But then, as time moved on, it was almost like there was a lying in wait for me to say something or to make a mistake. And since that time, the media has used me as the poster child for everything that went wrong with Katrina.

“Is it fair? No. But it’s the realities of being a leader in this type of situation. And, you know, it’s too early to write the total story on the history of what’s happened and I’m just going to keep working, and at some point in time folk will wake up.”

Nagin also conceded it was hurtful to hear the title of a new book by Leonard N. Moore, associate professor of history at Louisiana State University, “An Oreo in Chocolate City: C. Ray Nagin and the End of Black Political Power in New Orleans.”

“Yeah, it is hurtful,” Nagin told Gordon. “And, you know, what I – what really makes me mad is when black folk tear up black folk like that. You know, it’s just, you know, you would think that understanding and seeing all the images and understanding the challenge of dealing with something that no one else has had to do before, that we would come together and kind of recognize if this can happen in New Orleans, it can happen in Cleveland, it can happen in Detroit. It can happen in any other city where there’s a concentration of poor people and particularly black people. But, you know, hey, it’s America and some people are going to try and take advantage of a negative situation.”

• ABC News blog: New Orleans District Attorney Bristles at Criticism, Walks Out of Interview
• Donna Brazile, Vanity Fair: In Katrinaâ??s Wake
• George E. Curry, National Newspaper Publishers Association News Service: Katrina’s Other Victims
• Toni Fitzgerald, Medialife Magazine: Viewers take a pass on NBC’s ‘Katrina’
• Matea Gold, Los Angeles Times: Brian Williams and Katrina: One Year Later
• Alessandra Stanley, New York Times: An Anniversary With Strong Images, Sorrow, Self-Congratulation and Blame
• Brian Stelter, TVNewser: A Year Of Katrina: Robin [Roberts] Returns Home
• Sherrel Wheeler Stewart, BlackAmericaWeb.com: Mississippians on Gulf Coast Feel Ignored By Feds, Victimized by Rising Costs
• Tonyaa Weathersbee, BlackAmericaWeb.com: Those Decrying ‘Big Government’ Should Remember the Images of Post-Katrina Neglect

Katrina anniversary coverage on ABC, BET, Black Family Channel, CBS, CNN, C-SPAN, Fox News Channel, Tom Joyner’s Reach Media, National Public Radio, NBC and TV One

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“Wrong Guy to Take Home” Arrested in Strangling

[ Updated Aug. 31:] Martín Barreto, the former board member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists found strangled last week in a million-dollar Manhattan apartment, “was killed by a male prostitute he picked up for $40 in cocaine, sources said yesterday,” Alison Gendar and Robert F. Moore reported Thursday in the New York Daily News.

“Edwin Ramos, 26, who came across Martín Barreto, 48, during a chance meeting on the street and agreed to go home with him in exchange for the drug, told cops he crushed the victim’s larynx after objecting to a form of kinky sex, sources said.

“‘It was bad luck,’ a police source said. ‘He picked the wrong guy to take home.’

“The tattooed suspect gave a sorry excuse for the killing, according to Bernard Cosenza, deputy inspector of the Manhattan South detective squad.

“‘He said he didn’t mean it,’ Cosenza said.

“Barreto, a public relations executive who once worked as a City Hall press aide, was found naked, partially on a bed and wedged against a wall at his Greenwich Village home on Aug. 21. Ramos, who was arraigned last night on a second-degree murder charge and held without bail, took the victim’s cell phone and laptop computer and the keys to the E. 10th St. flat, cops said.”

“Police had been tracking the use of Barreto’s cell phone, which led to Ramos’ arrest Tuesday.”

In the New York Times, Emily Vasquez reported Thursday that Ramos was arrested on Tuesday “after investigators went to a Manhattan employment agency where they knew he had registered. By coincidence, Mr. Ramos was there at the time. He ran from them and was taken into custody after a brief chase, the authorities said.

“He was charged in Mr. Barretoâ??s murder yesterday after hours of questioning.

“Members of Mr. Barretoâ??s family said the news of the arrest came as another shock . . . ‘It doesnâ??t sound like something heâ??d be interested in doing,’ said his sister, Julieta Barreto. ‘Martin is a concept of what a real gentleman is about in every sense of the word, his ethics, his good will to help others, his social conscience with everyone.’

“But his brother-in-law, Rick Meyer, said, ‘Thereâ??s a lot about Martinâ??s life that we donâ??t know.'”

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Newsweek’s Whitaker Said to Be Leaving as Editor

“Mark Whitaker, editor of the No. 2 news magazine since 1998, will move upstairs and hand the reins to Jon Meacham, currently the managing editor,” Keith Kelly reported today in the New York Post, attributing his statement to “sources.”

“That will put Meacham in charge of day-to-day operations. Not clear is exactly what role Whitaker will play. But he is expected to stay with Newsweek, possibly working on some broader strategic job with the magazine and its parent, the Washington Post Company, which also owns Slate and Budget Travel,” Kelly continued.

Jan Angilella, Newsweek’s director of communications, told Journal-isms, “We have no comment for today.” Whitaker did not respond to a request for comment.

Whitaker is the publication’s first African American top editor and was twice elected president of the American Society of Magazine Editors.

Kelly wrote that, “Insiders acknowledge that the rumor mill seems to have erupted with intensity in recent days, and many feel it is tied to the need to offset some of the changes afoot at its archrival, Time.

“Newsweek has won four National Magazine Awards — including two for general excellence — during Whitaker’s tenure, but last year was shut out while Time won the general excellence award in its category.

“And in May 2005, it ran the embarrassing Periscope item about U.S. Marines allegedly flushing the Koran down the toilet at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Whitaker had to issue a retraction and tighten up Newsweek’s use of anonymous sources.”

• [Added Aug. 31:] Sarah Ellison, Wall Street Journal: Newsweek’s Whitaker to Leave Editor Post; Meacham to Take Over

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Wilbon Says Others on Paper Envy Sportswriters

Michael Wilbon, sports columnist for the Washington Post and co-host of ESPN’s “Pardon the Interruption,” took a swipe at newspaper feature writers as he rose to the defense of fellow Post columnist and ESPN co-host Tony Kornheiser:

“When you work in a sports section all your life, even one as prestigious as The Post’s, there are always jerks in features and news sections insulting sports writers and I, for one, come out swinging,” Wilbon said Monday in an online chat.

“Way too many of them think they’re superior in talent when they’re not. The definition of ‘deadline’ for too many of them is ‘a week from tomorrow.’ They wouldn’t know how to write on deadline if their lives depended on it, in some cases. They make far, far, far less money in a lot of cases and hate that. There’s a jealousy factor involved and directed at sportswriters, just the way sportswriters have directed bad behavior at TV sports people for years and years.”

The back-and-forth began on Aug. 15, when Post Style section writer Paul Farhi, reviewing Kornheiser’s latest television role, began, “Tony Kornheiser played it safe in his ‘Monday Night Football’ announcing debut last night, making few missteps but offering little for the highlight reel. It wasn’t exactly clear at times why he was there at all.”

Kornheiser then went on ESPN Radio’s “Dan Patrick Show” and said; “I apparently got ripped in my own newspaper, The Washington Post. You know, by a two-bit weasel slug named Paul Farhi, who I would gladly run over with a Mack truck given the opportunity.”

He added in his column, “In critiquing my performance, I think what makes me happiest was that I didn’t throw up. (Though if I had, I would have aimed at that putz in Style.)” Letter writers and the Post ombudsman, among others, subsequently volunteered their opinions on Kornheiser’s responses.

• Jemele Hill, Orlando Sentinel: Kornheiser lacks his usual sarcastic bite
• Deborah Howell, Washington Post: Unsportsmanlike Conduct

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Williams, Rhoden Books Prompting Commentary

New books by black journalists Juan Williams and William Rhoden are generating commentary beyond the book-review sections as other columnists of color weigh their books’ arguments.

Rhoden, a New York Times sports columnist, published “Forty Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Black Athlete,” promoting it at this month’s Indianapolis convention of the National Association of Black Journalists.

“His is a treatise exploring the willful mistreatment of African-American players by an ownership bent more toward enhancing white performance than winning,” Newsday columnist Les Payne wrote on July 30.

“The flip side, and it’s an eye-opener, is Rhoden’s perspective on just how blind black athletes are to what the dominant society has in store for these now ‘Forty Million Dollar Slaves.'”

USA Today columnist DeWayne Wickham noted last week that he saw Rhoden on a panel at the NABJ convention. “But it wasn’t the discussion of . . . a racially tinged confrontation between a black player and a black reporter . . . that kept me glued to my seat,” Wickham wrote. “It was Rhoden’s book that I couldn’t stop reading as the discussion on stage unfolded.

“The book is a revealing history of the struggle for dignity of some long-forgotten black athletes, and of the wasted careers of many of those who came after them but knew little of that painful past. . . . Too many of today’s black athletes accept the role of cultural icon but shun that of advocate for their race. That’s the crux of Rhoden’s book â?? and my despair.”

Williams’ book prompted a column last Thursday by New York Daily News columnist Stanley Crouch, who wrote, “I strongly recommend ‘Enough’ as a very welcome turning away from explaining everything in terms of white America’s unlimited power and unlimited disregard. Had black Americans ever truly believed that, there never would have been a Thurgood Marshall or a Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and all of those who came before them. In our moment, Bill Cosby opened the door for new discussion. For the good of all, Juan Williams is helping to hold that door open.”

Williams is a senior correspondent for National Public Radio and commentator on “Fox News Sunday.” His book’s full title is “Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America â?? And What We Can Do About It.”

In the New York Times, columnist Bob Herbert called it “a cry for a new generation of African-American leadership at all levels to fill the vacuum left by those who, for whatever reasons, abandoned the tradition of struggle, hard-won pride and self-determination. That absence of leadership has led to an onslaught of crippling, self-destructive behavior.”

“Racism certainly exists. But it’s not a question of what are they going to do. It’s a question of what are we going to do,” agreed Kerra R. Bolton last week in the Asheville (N.C.) Citizen-Times.

As reported earlier, columnist Ruben Navarrette Jr., writing Aug. 13 in the San Diego Union-Tribune, said he identified with Williams. “A few years ago, my friend Juan Williams told me that he thought we had something in common — namely, how those who represent our communities, or claim to represent them, view us with suspicion and resentment,” Navarrette wrote.

“What happens,” Williams told Crouch, “is that you become some sort of a leper if you don’t lockstep your opinions in line with white liberals. They run the programming of CBS, NBC and ABC, and they don’t want you to rock the boat of received opinion.”

• Michael Eric Dyson and Juan Williams duel in “Talk of the Nation” Katrina discussion, National Public Radio

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Sudan President to Consider U.S. Journalist’s Case

The “Sudanese president said Tuesday he would consider the case of a Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist arrested in the war-torn Darfur region and accused of spying, a presidential aide said,” the Sudan Tribune reported today.

“President Omar al-Bashir said during a meeting with a senior U.S. envoy that he would consider Chicago Tribune reporter Paul Salopek‘s ‘case out of a humanitarian standpoint,’ said al-Bashir’s spokesman Mahjud Fadul Bedry.”

“Salopek was described as being in good health and receiving frequent visits from U.S. diplomats,” William Niekirk wrote today in the Chicago Tribune.

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Emerging Latino Journalist Sees Too-Timid Media

“I owe The Times lots. They taught me so much. They gave me freedom and room to work, and pushed me to push myself,” said Daniel Hernandez, 25, the Emerging Journalist of the Year of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. In an interview published Monday in LAist, Hernandez was explaining why he left the Los Angeles Times for the alternative LA Weekly.

“Everyday the people there amazed me, their talent and drive,” Hernandez said of the region’s dominant paper. “But The Times has a very clear, very rigid tradition on how to report the news.

“Shortly after I got there, I started having these long, tortured thought sessions with myself about my participation in the MSM,” or mainstream media. “I saw how the people and places the paper chose to cover were automatically political decisions because for every thing you chose to cover there is something you chose to not cover. I started realizing that the mainstream style on reporting the news that most papers employ is not really concerned with depicting the truth, but concerned primarily with balancing lots of competing agendas and offending the least amount of interests as possible.”

Hernandez also said L.A. and Mexico City were becoming more alike, and concluded with his own perspective on the need for more L.A. media diversity:

“I really wish there were more young bicultural voices in L.A. journalism, complicating the dialogue, bringing their own perspective and experiences into the mix, challenging assumptions,” he said. “I wish I had a view into Koreatown by a good, curious, bilingual Korean journalist, for instance, or with L.A.’s Persian population. It’s up to the daily papers in L.A. to look past the J-school and Ivy League pools and actively recruit and shape talented young journalists from campuses in our own backyard(s), because they’re out there.”

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Short Takes

• “I now know what it’s like to be on the other side,” Rusty Lang wrote Monday in the Tulsa (Okla.) World. Even though she is part Choctaw and was a planner, presenter and mentor at the Native American Journalists Association convention in Tulsa this month, she wrote, she felt like an outsider. “I had a disconnected paternal family line. . . . For the first time, in my experience, being white was being a minority.”
• William B. Plummer, vice president and treasurer at Alcoa, is joining Dow Jones as executive vice president and chief financial officer, Dow Jones announced Monday. Plummer, 47, who is African American, “will lead all finance functions as well as investor relations, real estate, facilities and purchasing. He also will oversee strategic planning.”
• Marquette University’s J. William and Mary Diederich College of Communication has helped two incoming African American freshmen through a scholarship fund named for Mattiebelle Woods, who was believed to be the nation’s oldest working journalist when she died last year at 102, Assistant Dean Rose Richard told Journal-isms. Woods wrote for the Chicago Defender, Milwaukee Defender, Milwaukee Star and Milwaukee Globe during her career. The college is seeking donations for the fund, which awards journalism students $1,000 per year for four years. The first two recipients are Keith Jamerson and Justin Lester.
• “Andrew DeVigal has been named multimedia editor of the web newsroom at The New York Times, the news organization announced this week,” the Asian American Journalists Association reported on Friday. “DeVigal is a graduate of the 1998 class of AAJA’s Executive Leadership Program (ELP). Over the years, he has devoted his personal time to volunteering for a number of online projects to advance AAJA.”
• “The prosecution of a businessman accused of enabling customers to receive satellite broadcasts of a Hezbollah television station is drawing scrutiny over how far the government can go in claiming someone is aiding terrorist groups,” Nahal Toosi of the Associated Press wrote on Monday. “Attorneys say the case of Javed Iqbal, who was arrested Aug. 23 on conspiracy charges, is unusual because the charges stem from the distribution of news.”
• The Palestinian government party Hamas will launch a satellite television channel in October, the Palestinian news agency Ramattan reported on Monday. Ramattan said it will be the first Palestinian political channel to broadcast via satellite, according to the Web site adnkronosinternational.
• “If the president does not cease and desist” calling the Democratic party the “Democrat Party,” Gil Cranberg wrote today on the Nieman Watchdog site, “perhaps he will do so if, the next time he trots out ‘Democrat Party,’ a member of the press corps asks, ‘With all due respect Mr. President, why do you use that term when everybody knows that isn’t the party’s name? What are you trying to accomplish?'” Cranberg is a former editorial page editor of the Des Moines Register and Tribune.
• “An unidentified assailant shot and killed Venezuelan columnist Jesús Rafael Flores Rojas last week in front of his home in El Tigre in southwestern Anzoátegui province. The Committee to Protect Journalists is investigating whether Flores’ murder is related to his journalistic work,” the committee reported Tuesday.