Maynard Institute archives

“Wolves With Sheep’s Badges”

by richard0342

Columnist Takes Aim at Cops Accused of Murder

The changeovers in Congress and in state capitals are commanding the big-picture headlines, along with the prospects for a change of course in Iraq. But for many columnists writing about urban America, the day-to-day quest for personal safety, and deadly confrontations with the police, are never far away.

 

 

One place this is playing out is New Orleans. In one of the more shocking fallouts from the great disaster of 2005, “Seven New Orleans police officers were indicted Thursday on an array of murder and attempted-murder charges stemming from a shooting on the Danziger Bridge six days after Hurricane Katrina, which victims have portrayed as an ambush by police that left two dead and four wounded,” as Laura Maggi wrote Dec. 29 in the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

“The state grand jury refuted the New Orleans Police Department account of what happened on Sept. 4, 2005, which had been portrayed by officers as an appropriate response to reports of both sniper fire and people shooting at police officers near the bridge, on Chef Menteur Highway in eastern New Orleans.”

On Tuesday, Maggi and Brendan McCarthy reported, police colleagues and supporters offered hugs, handshakes and shouts of support as six New Orleans police officers and one former officer walked into Central Lockup to be booked on murder and attempted-murder charges. The four accused of murder were released on bail Friday, but Chief Judge Raymond Bigelow said they must remain under house arrest and may leave home only for a job or to meet with their attorneys, Maggi reported for Saturday’s newspaper.

Editorial writer and columnist Jarvis DeBerry felt no sympathy for the police supporters. A Dec. 31 column was headlined, “Cops Story is Hard to Believe.” Friday’s was called, “Police give us cause to be skeptical.”

“Practically every year a ‘handful’ of New Orleans officers are exposed as wolves with sheep’s badges,” DeBerry said in Friday’s column. “Within the last three years we’ve seen officers booked with crimes that include solicitation of prostitution, shoplifting, multiple counts of extortion, two counts of aggravated rape, aggravated kidnapping, public bribery and conspiracy to rob a bank. Since Katrina we’ve had two officers fired (and indicted on charges of 2nd degree battery) for beating a 64-year-old retiree in the French Quarter and another suspended for four months for threatening the cameraman who filmed the beating.

“Considering all those blemishes on the department’s record — not to mention the fact that a former cop is on death row for murdering civilians — you’d think police and their vocal supporters would adopt a more humble tone when wrongdoing is alleged, or at least take the wait-and-see approach. But no.”

Also on New Orleans:

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Disney Said to Threaten Critic of Hate-Speech Radio

“The Walt Disney Company has sent a cease-and-desist letter to the blogger and media critic ‘Spocko,’ effectively closing down his Web site, Spocko’s Brain, after the online muckraker instigated a letter-writing campaign that caused national advertisers including Visa and MasterCard to flee the Bay Area ABC-affiliate radio station KSFO,” Tom Siebert reported Friday on Media Post.

 

 

“KSFO features hard right-wing talk show hosts who endorse torture and mock the tortured, called for the public hangings of New York Times editor Bill Keller and other journalists, and demand that callers mock Islam. They also mock their own advertisers, calling Chevrolet ‘sh!tty’ and recommending that Sears’ Diehard battery be attached to an African-American’s testicles.

“Spocko (a pseudonym for the blogger, who does not want to be identified), recorded the station’s programming and posted audio files on his site, calling attention to the hate speech. He also began sending letters to advertisers on KSFO, including AT&T, Bank of America, Visa, MasterCard and others, pointing out the station’s content and directing them to his blog to hear proof, via his audio files.”

Journal-isms was unable to reach representatives of ABC Radio and KSFO on Friday, but Siebert wrote, “A spokeswoman for ABC Radio declined comment.” [Added Jan. 8: ABC Radio spokeswoman Julie Hoover confirmed Jan. 8 that, “We are not commenting.” KSFO is an ABC owned-and-operated station.]

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Satellite Channel Shows U.S. Troops Blown Up

“Sunni-Shia power politics and U.S.-Egyptian relations are at the center of a dispute over a satellite television station that is the latest weapon in the arsenal of Iraq’s insurgents,” Lawrence Pintak wrote Thursday on the Columbia Journalism Review’s CJR Daily.

“Al-Zawraa, an Iraq-based television version of the jihadi Web sites, is being broadcast across the Arab world by Nilesat, a satellite provider answerable to the Egyptian government. Al-Zawraa features non-stop footage of U.S. troops being picked off by snipers, blown up by roadside bombs and targeted by missiles. ‘We find the channel utterly offensive,’ said one U.S. diplomat in Cairo. Getting the Egyptians to pull the plug is ‘at the top of our agenda.’

“But the Egyptian government insists it’s all just business. ‘For us, it means nothing,’ the Egyptian Information Minister, Anas el-Fiki, told me. ‘It is a channel that reserved an allocation on Nilesat. They had a contract, paid the fees. There is nothing political for Nilesat. It’s pure business. We have no concern what the channel is doing.’

“But, as is often the case in the Middle East, much more is going on beneath the surface.”

Pintak is director of the Adham Center for Electronic Journalism at the American University in Cairo and author of “Reflections in a Bloodshot Lens: America, Islam & the War of Ideas.”

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Ford Called Patron of Vietnamese Americans

“Over 1.4 million Asian Pacific Americans today represent the largest viet kieu, or overseas Vietnamese community outside Vietnam,” the publication Asian Week editorialized Friday, discussing the late former president Gerald R. Ford. “They can trace a common lineage to Ford’s brief interregnum that admitted 130,000 refugees fleeing regime changes in Vietnam and the rest of Southeast Asia.

“It was this country’s 38th president who gave a damn for the hopes and dreams of abandoned Vietnamese and . . . Asian Americans among 2,700 orphans he airlifted in ‘Operation Babylift.’ They were among the thousands of Vietnamese and Southeast Asian refugees rescued after Congress had refused his requests for military aid to stall the demise of the South Vietnamese government in the waning days of Vietnam’s long civil war.

“. . . And as a poll of that time indicated, Ford’s admission of them through the 1975 Indochina Migration and Refugee Act was not popular with an isolationist America concerned with rising domestic unemployment and inflation. The law was unpopular as his presidential pardon of Richard Nixon, which contributed to Ford’s close presidential defeat in the 1976 election.”

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Artist Sees No Problem With James Brown Cartoon

“Did anyone else see —and reject—the cartoon of [James] Brown saying to St. Peter, ‘Turns out, I didn’t feel so good’?” an opinion page editor asked on the listserve of the National Conference of Editorial Writers.

“My God.”

“Saw it, and rejected it without a second thought,” another editor replied.

For some, Gary McCoy’s contrast of Brown’s signature line “I Feel Good” with his death from heart failure brought on by pneumonia might qualify as tasteless, but McCoy said a couple of editors told him they liked it. “I like James Brown’s music,” McCoy told Journal-isms. It was supposed to be “a funny take on the song.”

McCoy’s work is syndicated by the Daryl Cagle editorial cartoon service, and his cartoons appear in the Illinois Business Journal and the Suburban Journals of Greater St. Louis. This one did not, and he said he did not know if anyone actually ran his cartoon.

Meanwhile, columnists of color continued to write about Brown, who died on Christmas day at age 73:

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Fox Cancels Syndicated “Geraldo at Large”

Fox will cease production on Twentieth Television’s syndicated “Geraldo at Large” in mid-January, with a weekend version of the show, “At Large with Geraldo Rivera,” returning to Fox News Channel, Jim Benson reported Thursday in Broadcasting & Cable.

“. . . The series marked the first syndicated entry for Roger Ailes, chairman-CEO of Fox News, after adding duties as chairman of the Fox Television Stations. Ailes noted that in addition to hosting his signature program, Rivera will continue to make guest appearances on The O’Reilly Factor and serve as a correspondent at large during major breaking news events.

“Geraldo is a great talent and did a tremendous job for us in syndication,” Ailes said. “His ratings were climbing in several markets, including New York. However, with the soft ad marketplace, the lack of an early news lead-in for his show in several cities and the timeline for financial success, I’ve asked him to come back to Fox News Channel. We look forward to bringing his special journalistic skills back to FNC.”

“Added Rivera, ‘I’m proud to work for Roger and I’m a team player. Fox News Channel is the best outfit in the business and the new deal allows me to cover breaking news and work with one of the most talented group of reporters in the world. Roger and I go back decades and I want to thank him for another great opportunity.'”

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Winfrey’s Comparison of U.S., S. Africa Debated

Oprah Winfrey is spending $40 million for a new state-of-the-art school for 150 female students in South Africa. But comments she made about why she did so, in an interview with Newsweek’s Allison Samuels, sparked a spirited discussion on the e-mail list of the National Association of Black Journalists.

“Say what you will about the American educational system—it does work,” she said, according to Samuels’ piece. “‘If you are a child in the United States, you can get an education.’ And she doesn’t think that American students— who, unlike Africans, go to school free of charge— appreciate what they have,” Samuels wrote. “‘I became so frustrated with visiting inner-city schools that I just stopped going. The sense that you need to learn just isn’t there,’ she says. ‘If you ask the kids what they want or need, they will say an iPod or some sneakers. In South Africa, they don’t ask for money or toys. They ask for uniforms so they can go to school.'”

The journalists debated whether it was a fair comparison. Others wrote columns about it:

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Short Takes

  • “CNN, America’s leading cable news network, has incensed Zimbabweans following the airing last week of a story in which a correspondent claimed Zimbabwe was so ravaged by starvation that peasants in the countryside had taken to eating rats to survive,” Geoff Nyarota and Conrad Nyamutata reported Tuesday in the Financial Gazette of Harare, Zimbabwe. CNN correspondent Jeff Koinange filed the story. “Rural Shona people certainly relish eating rodents, and have done so since time immemorial. The Shona, who constitute 80 percent of Zimbabwe’s population, however, eat mice and not rats,” the newspaper said.
  • Cole Campbell, dean of the journalism school at the University of Nevada, Reno, and former editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, Va., was killed Friday in a single-car rollover in southwest Reno, the Reno (Nev.) Gazette-Journal reported. He was 53. Among his many activities, he had been involved with the National Association of Minority Media Executives and the Inter American Press Association and had served as a member of the board of visitors at Norfolk State University. The University of Nevada, Reno hosted the Maynard Institute’s Editing Program.
  • Denita Monique Smith, the student journalist at North Carolina Central University who was found dead outside her Durham, N.C., apartment Thursday, was shot, Sgt. Jack Cates of the Durham Police Department confirmed Friday, Matt Dees reported Friday night on the Raleigh News & Observer Web site. Police “treated her death as suspicious — meaning they were unsure if it was accidental or intentional — until an autopsy confirmed the gunshot wound,” he wrote.
  • “A huge screw up,” Roland S. Martin, executive editor of the Chicago Defender, wrote to readers on Friday. “There is no other way to describe what took place on Thursday when we ran a front page story of South Side native Deval Patrick regarding him becoming the next governor of Massachusetts being on page 6. Unfortunately, all of you turned to page 6 and it wasn’t there. Many of you called — a number irate — and you should. It should have never happened, and we look amateurish because of it.” The story that never appeared — all Thursday’s readers got was a front-page promo — ran in Friday’s paper, Editor & Publisher reported.
  • Norma Martin, deputy features editor at the Kansas City Star, starts work Jan. 29 as assistant managing editor/features at the News Tribune in Tacoma, Wash. Both papers are owned by the McClatchy Co.
  • After more than seven years as a senior editor at Forbes magazine, Brett Pulley has accepted a position as chief executive officer of a small Internet company, NewYork.com, Pulley told Journal-isms on Friday. Pulley, who previously worked at the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, wrote the 2004 book, “The Billion Dollar BET: Robert Johnson and the Inside Story of Black Entertainment Television.”
  • “The ‘Watchdog’ columnist for the San Antonio Express-News has resigned after being accused of plagiarizing material from several Web sites, including Wikipedia,” Editor & Publisher reported on Wednesday. “Jacqueline Gonzalez, the readers’ help Watchdog columnist— and also administrative assistant to Robert Rivard, the newspaper’s longtime editor —resigned Tuesday. She had worked for the Express-News for three years. A fellow employee had discovered that she used information from Wikipedia in a Dec. 25 column on the birth date of Jesus, without attribution, the paper reported.
  • Local columnist James Ragland of the Dallas Morning News and financial columnist Tannette Johnson-Elie of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel are recommending the film “The Pursuit of Happyness.” Ragland said “the Horatio Alger-type tale . . . brought tears to my eyes as well as my wife’s.” “‘Happyness’ sets example of black male achievement” was the headline on Johnson-Elie’s column.
  • Reporter De Anna Sheffield of WTSP-TV in Tampa, Fla., is leaving her job to become a vice president with Big Brothers Big Sisters of Tampa Bay, Ernest Hooper wrote Wednesday in the St. Petersburg Times. “TV is in my blood, but helping children is in my heart,” said Sheffield, 36, who graduated magna cum laude from Jackson State University with a degree in mass communications.
  • Rafael Pineda, 69, can’t imagine not anchoring the 6 and 11 p.m. newscasts on Univision’s WXTV/Ch. 41, which he has done for 35 years, Richard Huff wrote Friday in the New York Daily News. “That’s the longest consecutive run in one place for any anchor here — and he’s also the oldest.”
  • “Radio One is entering the print media business with the acquisition of Giant Magazine for $270,000,” Jeff Clabaugh reported Wednesday in the Washington Business Journal. “Giant, launched in 2004 as an entertainment magazine for 20-something men, was re-launched under new editor Smokey Fontaine last year as a lifestyle and music magazine targeting urban readers. Recent covers have included Beyonce, Janet Jackson and Sean Combs. Fontaine will now be chief executive of Giant and gets an undisclosed financial stake in the magazine.”
  • Jennifer Okamoto has been named senior editor/lifestyles for DallasNews.com, a position in which she has served on an interim basis for several months, Editor & Publisher reported on Thursday. Okamoto is to develop and manage the strategic direction of Lifestyles content on DallasNews.com and coach and train print journalists in the Lifestyles section of the Dallas Morning News.
  • “O.J. Simpson can’t spend any money he received as an advance for `If I Did It,’ his book about the murder of his former wife, and a related television deal, lawyers for the family of Ronald Goldman said,” Edvard Pettersson reported Thursday for Bloomberg News.
  • “CNN apologized Tuesday for mistakenly promoting a story on the search for Osama bin Laden with the headline ‘Where’s Obama?’ the Associated Press reported. “A spokesman for Illinois Sen. Barack Obama said the apology was accepted.”

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