Maynard Institute archives

Press Missed Obama-Wright Meeting

by richard0474

Book Relates Times the Candidate Outfoxed the Media

Barack Obama met secretly with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright during last year’s presidential campaign in an unsuccessful attempt to persuade him to keep silent, one of several times Obama was able to maneuver out of eyeshot of the press, the author of a new book on Obama’s campaign says.

Richard Wolffe, former Newsweek White House correspondent and author of "Renegade: The Making of a President," told Journal-isms Wednesday that Obama also had his general-election debate preparation team slip into his hotel without the media’s knowledge. He used the same tactic to interview Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., as his prospective running mate.

Tommy Christopher writes in Politics Daily:

Candidate Barack Obama was unable to stop the Rev. Jeremiah Wright from delivering his April 2008 remarks at the National Press Club. (Credit: National Press Club)"Wolffe describes a clandestine meeting between the two on the eve of Wright’s re-emergence at the National Press Club: They ended up talking at Wright’s home, and Obama tried to adopt the tone of a concerned friend giving advice.

"He did not want to tell his former pastor what to do, but he did want to nudge him in the right direction by making him aware of what was about to happen. Wright wasn’t heading for vindication; he was heading for vilification.

"’Look, you’re a pastor, you have your own role to play,’ Obama said. ‘But I can tell you how politics in the cable and blog age works. Here’s what you need to anticipate: that it’s going to be a media circus. But obviously, you need to do what you need to do.’

"The rest, as they say, is seemingly ancient history. Wright made a fool of himself, Barack Obama cut him loose once and for all, and his opponents bleated about some kind of bus, and the contents of its underside."

Wolffe said the meeting in Wright’s Chicago home, two days before Wright’s April 28, 2008, appearance at the Press Club in Washington, proceeded without media knowledge because "at that point in time he did not have a protective pool of reporters. He could slip in and out, especially when he was home. He hadn’t gotten close to getting the nomination."

Later, for the general election, Obama would arrange for policy and communications advisers to arrive at his hotel before the journalists did, so that reporters would have no idea he was preparing for the debates with Sen. John McCain, his Republican opponent. He interviewed Biden in the same way, having the future vice president arrive early, Wolffe said.

The first night of NBC-TV's two-part special 'Inside the Obama White House,' lifted the network in the ratings. It is to be rebroadcast on Friday.

The clandestine meeting that did get media attention took place in June, after Obama went over the top in delegates for the Democratic nomination.

Obama failed to board a plane from Washington to Chicago as expected, letting the reporters take off without him. The then-Illinois senator went to the Washington home of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., to meet privately with rival Hillary Clinton. Afterward, the five television network Washington bureau chiefs and the D.C. bureau chief of the Associated Press formally protested to the Obama campaign. Fox News’ Chris Wallace explained that the Obama team violated the protocol of always having a press representative near the candidate, as one is with the president.

”Renegade’ is billed on its cover as ‘based on exclusive interviews with Barack Obama,” Ben Smith writes¬†in Politico. "The footnotes detail 21 such interviews. They were so exclusive, as it happens, that key elements of them apparently did not appear contemporaneously in Newsweek, which was footing the bill as Wolffe flew around the country with Obama for two years.

"In one passage, Wolffe takes a direct shot at the Newsweek’s chief scribe, Evan Thomas, describing him as one of the magazine’s ‘most senior, and white, writers’ whose ‘racial stereotyping’ wasn’t that different from Jeremiah Wright’s inability to ‘to accept that America was in the process of change.’"

Obama himself suggested the book and granted Wolffe generous access.

”Why can’t you write a book about [the campaign]? Like Theodore White. Those are great books,’ Wolffe writes that Obama asked him on March 20, 2008, two days after a campaign-changing speech on race that Wolffe describes in ‘Renegade’ as ‘the epitome of hope,” Smith wrote.

Obama Compares "Cable Chatter" to WWF Wrestling

During Tuesday night’s NBC News special "Inside the Obama White House," as President Obama and NBC’s Brian Williams were driving to get burgers, Williams asked Obama whether, when he’s watching cable TV and lands on a news channel and sees a debate underway about him, he stops and watches, Chris Ariens reported¬†on the TV Newser Web site.

"I generally don’t. Mainly because I don’t find most of the cable chatter very persuasive," Obama replied. "I’ve used this analogy before, it feels like WWF wrestling. Everybody’s got their role to play. I know a lot of these guys. And if Pat Buchanan is having a conversation with Chris Matthews or talking to Keith Olbermann, everybody’s got their set pieces and, so, I don’t feel as if I’m learning anything from the debate."

Obama lifted NBC in the ratings on Tuesday as the first of the network’s two-part special, ‘Inside the Obama White House,’ won its 9 p.m. time slot in the important demographic of adults 18 to 49, as Benjamin Toff reported¬†in the New York Times.

Part Two of the special aired Wednesday night. The broadcast will air again on Friday 8-10 p.m. ET on NBC, NBC announced.

On CBS-TV’s "the Late Show" on Monday, David Letterman aired a new segment called the "Sonia Sotomayor Pronunciation Round-Up," showing how talking heads and anchors have mispronounced the name of the would-be Supreme Court justice. (Video)

Sotomayor Beats Bush Choices in First Impressions

"Americans have a more favorable first impression of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor than they did for any of President George W. Bush’s choices for the high court, according to a new Associated Press-GfK poll," Mark Sherman reported¬†Wednesday for the Associated Press.

"The public also backs her confirmation in higher numbers.

"The poll, released Tuesday, said that roughly a third of the country has a favorable view of Sotomayor, while 18 percent view her unfavorably. Half of those polled say she should be confirmed; 22 percent oppose her confirmation.

". . . Questioned about affirmative action, 63 percent support it for women and fewer, 56 percent, favor affirmative action for racial or ethnic minorities. The poll did not define affirmative action.

"Other polls have shown most Americans disagree with preferences for minorities even while supporting affirmative action."

In the most recent Pew Research Center values survey, released May 21, for example, "just 31% agreed that "we should make every effort to improve the position of blacks and minorities, even if it means giving them preferential treatment." More than twice as many (65%) disagreed with this statement. That balance of opinion has fluctuated only modestly through the 22-year history of the values survey," the Pew center reported.

Meanwhile, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich wrote the conservative publication Human Events Wednesday that he should not have used the word "racist" in connection with Sotomayor.

Gingrich still called "unacceptable" these words from a 2001 speech by Sotomayor:

"’I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.’

However, the progressive media watchdog group Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting said on Tuesday that "the prevailing media discussion is totally misleading" about Sotomayor’s comment.

"Does Sotomayor believe that Latina judges are wiser than white judges? That’s what her right-wing critics want the quote to mean. "But anyone who reads Sotomayor’s 2001 speech can see that the prevailing media discussion is totally misleading. Her point was that people’s backgrounds affect how they see the world. This would seem to be a rather uncontroversial fact of life; justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Samuel Alito made similar statements about their own backgrounds to no great controversy."

Africa Price Named Top Editor at Shreveport Times

Africa Price"Africa Price, the Tallahassee Democrat’s managing editor, has been named executive editor at Gannett Co. Inc.’s daily newspaper in Shreveport, La., the newspapers announced today," the Tallahassee paper wrote on Monday.

"A native of Louisiana, Price has been in Tallahassee for three and a half years. She began her Gannett career in 1994 as an education reporter in Shreveport and held various reporting and editing positions before becoming managing editor in Jackson, Tenn., in 2001. She became the managing editor in Tallahassee in late 2005.

"In her new position, Price will be the top news executive in Shreveport. Throughout her career she has earned various corporate and professional honors, including the Florida A&M University School of Journalism Distinguished Alumni Award in 2007."

 

 

Bridges from the Akwesasne reservation to both the United States and Canada were closed. (Credit: St. Regis Mohawk Tribe Environment Division)

Indian Country Editor Faults Coverage of Standoff

"With bridges to both the United States and Canada closed, the Mohawk people of Akwesasne and their supporters gathered at the Canadian customs building on Cornwall Island spent most of Monday without land access to the outside world," Randi Rourke and Tom Wanamaker wrote for Indian Country Today. "But while the protest at the border crossing remained peaceful and generally upbeat, concern over how long the situation might last contributed to a sense of underlying tension.

"The island the Mohawks call Kahwehnoke is part of their territory that spans the St. Lawrence River between New York state and the provinces of Ontario and Quebec. Leaders of the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne, the elected community government for the northern portion of territory, have vigorously protested a plan by the Canadian Border Service Agency to arm its border guards on the island on June 1. This date coincides with the implementation of new identification requirements of the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative and a recent partnership between the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Canada’s Ministry of Public Safety to coordinate resources at border crossings."

Rourke, a Mohawk who is editor of the publication and lives at Akwesasne, said media coverage of the controversy leaves much to be desired.

"The local and Canadian national coverage has largely blamed the Mohawks’ protest for the closure of the U.S.-Canada border on their territory," she told Journal-isms. "It is clear that the media have little understanding of Indian rights as they relate to border crossing despite a long history of Mohawks’ resistance to American and Canadian policies imposed upon them on their own territory.

"These issues have long divided the Mohawk community of Akwesasne and its mostly white neighbors. Worse, reader comments to online reports have become forums to express racism and hatred. In situations like these, balanced reporting and editing should be the utmost concern of media."

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-63R0T6N1k&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Ecleveland%2Ecom%2Fohio%2Dsports%2Dblog%2Findex%2Essf%2F2009%2F06%2Flebron%5Fjames%5Fa%5Fnational%5Foutrag%2Ehtml&feature=player_embedded]

Almost every NBA playoff game featured Kobe Bryant-LeBron James puppet commercials. interspersed with Dwight Howard’s T-Mobile spots with Charles Barkley and Dwyane Wade.

Cleveland Paper Claims It’s Been "Pile on LeBron Week"

"Yahoo! Sports NBA columnist Adrian Wojnarowski went Skip Bayless on LeBron James in his article ‚Äî ‘King James left the playoffs as a loser,’ The Cleveland Plain Dealer’s "Starting Blocks" compilation of commentary around the Web reported¬†on Tuesday.

"Wojnarowski, like so many other national columnists, blasted LeBron James for walking off the court in Orlando without shaking hands with Magic players, and for not addressing the media following the game.

"This has become ‘Pile on LeBron Week,’ which sparked a spoof (see video above) of the LeBron and Kobe puppet commercials."

After Orlando‚Äôs six-game victory over Cleveland concluded Saturday night, James, the NBA‚Äôs most valuable player, said, "It’s hard for me to congratulate someone after you lose to them. I’m a winner. It’s not being a poor sport or anything like that. But somebody beats you up, you’re not going to congratulate them on beating you up. That doesn’t make sense." He later sent the Magic a congratulatory note, but James was widely panned for uncharacteristically poor sportsmanship.

The Orlando Magic face the Los Angeles Lakers in the NBA finals beginning Thursday.

[On Thursday, NBA commissioner David Stern said James had been fined $25,000 for
skipping the postgame news conference after Cleveland lost to Orlando in the
Eastern Conference finals, the Associated Press reported.

["Stern said Thursday night that he spoke with the Cavaliers star on Wednesday
and that James admitted he was wrong to not congratulate Orlando’s players and
coaches after the loss."]

 

Knight Hopes to Fund 3 "Journalistic Test Kitchens"

"Gary Kebbel, our journalism program director, has been talking to universities about a project still in the planning," Alberto Ibarguen, president and CEO of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, says in an interview with Forbes magazine.

"It’s the idea of the university as a journalistic test kitchen. The university would be linked with a local news organization to produce content. It would force the academy to be practical and allow the newspaper, TV or radio to do long-form projects that they have little time to develop. One outcome of this might be investigative units based at universities that could publish their work in a local newspaper. We expect three ‘test kitchens’ to be funded by the end of the year," Ibarguen said.

John Hope Franklin Celebration Next Week at Duke

Duke University will host “A Celebration of the Lives of John Hope and Aurelia Whittington Franklin,” on June 11, to honor the late historian and his late wife, who were married on June 11, 1940, the university announced on Wednesday.

"Per his wishes, there was no funeral or memorial service for John Hope Franklin following his death this March. Instead, his family planned a celebration of his and his wife’s lives in honor of their 69th wedding anniversary. Aurelia Whittington Franklin died in 1999.

Featured speakers are to include former president Bill Clinton, who in 1997 appointed Franklin to chair a national task force on race; attorney and civil rights leader Vernon Jordan, Franklin’s longtime friend; Evelyn Higginbotham, Harvard history professor and co-author of the 9th edition of “From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans”; and David Levering Lewis, New York University history professor and W.E.B. DuBois biographer. The Jubilee Singers of Fisk University plan to perform.

The event is open to the public. Members of the media who plan to attend are urged to secure credentials.

Short Takes

(Photo: Courtesy Donnie Roberts via Philadelphia Inquirer.)

  • In conjunction with its 180th anniversary, the Philadelphia Inquirer printed a special edition on Sunday and a reprint of its first-ever edition on Monday. It ran a story about five founders of the National Association of Black Journalists who have held prominent positions in Philadelphia newspapers. In addition to Chuck Stone, the first NABJ president, they are, from left, Reggie Bryant, Donnie Roberts, Claude Lewis and Acel Moore, shown at a Feb. 26, 1977, meeting of NABJ two years after its founding.
  • The South Bend (Ind.) Tribune and Schurz Communications have launched Racing Toward Diversity, a quarterly magazine that focuses on diversity issues. The debut spring issue numbered 36 pages and targeted a NASCAR audience and efforts at diversity in that sport. The next issue, said Charles V. Pittman, senior vice president of marketing for Schurz, will focus on financial literacy and health care. Michael Pozzi, the magazine’s director, said Racing Toward Diversity uses paid freelancers and publishes 20,000 copies for a business-to-business audience. Pozzi. who produces magazines for the Tribune, said the next issue would be published July 30. Freelance opportunities for that issue are still available.
  • "In Cairo, a group of Muslim clerics connected with Egypt’s prestigious Al-Azhar University have announced the creation of a new satellite channel to propagate moderate Islam and challenge what it describes as extremist distortions of the religion," Paul Schemm reported Tuesday for the Associated Press.
  • "Terry Harper, the longtime executive director of the Society for Professional Journalists, died Tuesday," as the Indianapolis Star reported. "Harper, Indianapolis, had battled brain cancer and recently relinquished his responsibilities at SPJ because of his illness. He was 45." SPJ said, "He deserves a great deal of credit for the strong position SPJ is in as the nation‚Äôs largest and leading journalism organization. He served as executive director for seven years."
  • "Jay Severin, the right-wing talk show host on Boston’s WTKK-FM radio station who was suspended for a month after making derogatory statements about Mexicans, returned to the air yesterday and offered a ‘sincere apology’ for his ‘hurtful, unkind, and wrong’ commentary," David Abel reported¬†Wednesday in the Boston Globe. "But it didn’t take long for Severin to return to familiar subjects ‚Äî abortion, the Supreme Court, Muslims ‚Äî and switch from contrition to more churlish language."
  • Francelle R. Watson, a former producer for KCTV-TV in Kansas City, has sued the station, alleging race, age and gender discrimination, Scott Lauck reported¬†Monday for Missouri Lawyers Media. "According to the lawsuit, News Director Regent Ducas wore a shirt bearing obscenities directed at women, Hispanics, gays and blacks. . . . Watson also said she was denied a chance to attend the 2008 Unity Convention, a once-every-four-years gathering of black, Hispanic, Asian and Native American journalists associations, but that two white employees were sent instead." Watson is 49.
  • "Tony Dungy, the historic Super Bowl coach whose teams made the playoffs each of the last 10 seasons, unprecedented in this era, and Rodney Harrison, the three-time All-Pro and two-time Super Bowl champion, will join NBC’s Emmy nominated studio show ‘Football Night in America’ as analysts, NBC announced¬†on Wednesday.
  • "One way for brand marketers to increase sales in a down economy might be by targeting Hispanics with Spanish-language media. According to a new study conducted by Experian Simmons for Univision Communications, Hispanics are less affected by the recession, tend to be more positive about it, shop more often and are more receptive to TV ads than the general population," Katy Bachman reported¬†Tuesday for Mediaweek.
  • "Amnesty International today urgently demanded that Mexican Lydia Cacho Ribeiroauthorities step up protection around well-known human rights activist and journalist Lydia Cacho Ribeiro, whose home and offices in Cancun are being regularly photographed and watched by an armed man while her life has been threatened in online messages. . . . Cacho has been repeatedly attacked and harassed since she published her book, ‘Los Demonios del Eden’ (‘The Demons of Eden’), which documents allegations that powerful businessmen had been involved in child prostitution and trafficking," the group said¬†on Tuesday.
  • In North Carolina, "Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police have launched an internal investigation into a confrontation between an officer and a WBTV (Channel 3) photographer in which a camera was damaged and the photographer detained," Mark Washburn reported¬†Wednesday in the Charlotte (N.C.) Observer. Travis Washington, a photographer with Channel 3 for about three years, was handcuffed and put into a cruiser, where he was held for about an hour before being released without charges. He was treated afterward at an emergency room for a minor back injury related to the confrontation, Dennis Milligan, news director said. Milligan told Journal-isms that Washington, a black journalist, did not think his treatment was race-related because a white female journalist was "barked at" as well.
  • "Faculty, staff, and students representing more than 80 college and high school radio stations have signed a letter to members of the House and Senate opposing the Performance Rights Act, which would impose performance royalties on broadcast radio. The schools represented include Duke University, Harvard, Washington State University, and Virginia Tech," RadioInk reported.
  • CNN commentator Roland Martin and blogger Jimi Izrael exchanged columns over a statement¬†by Izrael on theroot.com that, "I first met CNN‚Äôs Roland Martin in the early 2000s at an NABJ convention. He was wearing a dashiki, walking around selling something he called a ‘black power pack:’ a bag of incense, a hunk of jerky meat and one of his self-published books. That‚Äôs a true effing story." Martin replied on his own essence.com blog, "Now, you might say this is no big deal and consider it trivial, but the reality is a lie is a lie. . . . "
  • "The Foreign Correspondent’s Club of China (FCCC) has posted a statement on its Web site about Chinese security officials ‚Äî uniformed and otherwise ‚Äî harassing foreign journalists in and around Tiananmen Square. The group’s incident list includes five cases of obstruction reported in the past week. As usual in situations the government finds sensitive, police are not following regulations adopted in January 2007 that were intended to ease restrictions on international reporters," Madeline Earp wrote¬†for the Committee to Protect Journalists.

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