Maynard Institute archives

Massacre Story Has Language Issues

by richard0478

Drunken driving charges were dismissed against Jeffrey Nguyen

Killer’s Ethnicity Complicates Telling of Tale

Hordes of journalists descended on the Virginia Tech shooting story, and its racial overtones — shooter Seung-Hui Cho is South Korea-born but U.S.-raised — continued to make the use of language sensitive.

NBC News became a part of the story of the biggest massacre in U.S. history. “Sometime after he killed two people in a Virginia university dormitory but before he slaughtered 30 more in a classroom building, Cho Seung-Hui mailed NBC News a large package including photographs and videos Monday morning, boasting,

 

 

‘When the time came, I did it. I had to,'” as Alex Johnson reported on MSNBC.com. The photos provided more grist for the visual media.

The language questions, which began Monday with Cho’s description as “an Asian man” before his name was disclosed, ranged from how his name should be rendered to how to describe Cho’s citizenship status.

Tragic as it is, the crime and its aftermath have been the kind of story that reporters, and their audiences, want to be a part of. Readers drove up hit counts for news Web sites, the evening newscasts were extended to an hour, and journalists of color successfully sought a piece of the coverage.

“Cable and network news outlets credited veteran beat reporters at the Justice Department and other agencies in Washington, D.C. — not at the scene — with many of their scoops, which led the day’s media coverage,” Peter Johnson reported Wednesday in USA Today.

“Paul Slavin, an ABC News senior vice president, singled out ABC’s Justice Department correspondent Pierre Thomas and legal correspondent Rich Esposito for breaking news throughout Tuesday, including first identifying the shooter as . . . Cho Seung-Hui.

“‘Thomas is not only a terrific Justice Department reporter, but he’s also an alumnus (of Virginia Tech), which gave him links to all sorts of people’ on the campus, Slavin says,” Johnson wrote.

CNN announced that anchor and special correspondent Soledad O’Brien would provide a minute-by-minute account of the massacre for an hour-long “CNN: Special Investigations Unit” documentary on Saturday and Sunday, 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. Eastern time.

ABC’s Robin Roberts reported live from Blacksburg, Va., home of Virginia Tech, along with her “Good Morning America” colleagues.

For Asian Americans, the story had special significance.

In the San Jose Mercury News, columnist L.A. Chung wrote on Wednesday, “All day Monday, reeling from the unfolding carnage on the pastoral campus of Virginia Tech, I wondered the same thing everyone else did: Who was this shooter? Why did he do it?

 

 

 

“When I awoke the next morning, the name of the perpetrator of the nation’s worst mass murder was all over the news, and I had another reaction: Oh, no. He’s Asian.

“Actually, there was a collective flinch out there among Asian-Americans.”

The theme was repeated in other news stories reporting the collective fear of Asian Americans that Cho’s deed would reflect on them.

The Asian American Journalists Association had issued a media advisory Monday urging the news media “to avoid using racial identifiers unless there is a compelling or germane reason.”

On Tuesday it said, “we are disturbed by some media outlets’ prominent mention that the suspect is an immigrant from South Korea when such a revelation provides no insight or relevance to the story.” It also said Cho’s name was properly rendered Seung-Hui Cho.

Few news organizations, some exceptions being the Boston Globe, New York Daily News and Los Angeles Times, went along with the AAJA on Cho’s name, and some of those outlets used both renderings in the same edition.

Rene Astudillo, executive director of AAJA, told Journal-isms: “Chapter 2 of ‘All-American: How to Cover Asian America’ (which is the AAJA-published stylebook) indicates naming rules for those living in Asian countries.

“Last name first then first name, is correct KOREAN USAGE, BUT many Korean Americans and those who have lived in the U.S. for a long time have adopted the Western name order, which is first name, then last name.

“Cho as we all know has lived in the U.S. since age 8. In our communications with members of the Korean American Coalition and communities, including our AAJA members who are of Korean descent, they confirm that Korean Americans or long term U.S. residents of Korean descent adopt the Western style.

“In fact, if you listen to the TV interview with Cho’s former dorm roommates, they keep referring to him as ‘Seung,’ which is his first name.

“This has also been confirmed by Jeannie Park, executive editor of People magazine who is an AAJA member and is of Korean descent. She also questioned why media companies have been using last name first. But People magazine and People.com, Jeannie says, will use the Western usage as it should be.

“And by the way,” Astudillo added, many cable (including CNN) and TV networks have not done their homework of researching the proper pronunciation of Cho’s name. They keep on saying Cho Song Whewee, when it should be Song Hee Cho, as in our advisory yesterday.”

National Public Radio announced Wednesday it would use “Seung-Hui Cho.” “Day to Day” producer Ki-Min Sung, a Korean-American, explained on that show:

“There’s nothing Americanized about putting your first name first when living in the States. If he changed his name to Mike or George or something an American would have no problem pronouncing, okay, I’d say he Americanized his name. But to call him Cho Seung Hui casts him as a foreigner. Asian or American? It’s a gray area a lot of Asian immigrants like me have had to navigate. Because Seung Hui Cho grew up here, he is, in fact, a Korean-American of the 1.5 generation.

“Unlike European-Americans that came to Ellis Island long ago, a first generation Asian immigrant is the first generation to immigrate to the States. The second generation is American-born. But then there’s us, an in-between generation that came to America as kids. We don’t have the customs of the old country, but we never forget we weren’t born here. Sometimes we don’t feel at home in America and we can also feel out of place when we go back to visit Asia. Most of us have assimilated to American culture too well. That’s why we add the .5 to our first generation status. Seung Hui came to the United States when he was 8 years old. He may not have been an American citizen, but he grew up here, and that’s why his name should be given the American treatment.”

Said host Madeline Brand: “NPR is using the name on his driver’s license and in his writings — that is, Seung Hui Cho.”

A sore point for some has been the use of the term “resident alien” to describe the shooter, whose background journalists raced to flesh out once his identity became known.

“The phrase ‘resident alien’ (while it hasn’t come up for discussion) is for the museums,” Astudillo said. “Immigrant communities have long urged the media to banish that term and instead use ‘permanent legal residents’ or in the case of those who are not green card holders or have no immigrant or non-immigrant visas — ‘undocumented immigrants’. As you know immigrant groups also object to the term ‘illegals’ or ‘illegal immigrants.'”

The Los Angeles Times simply called the shooter “a child immigrant.”

Some non-Asians picked up on the Asian American concerns. On NPR’s “All Things Considered,” host Robert Siegel read an on-air column that concluded of Cho, “Despite being a South Korean national living in America, his upbringing, and his problems, were distinctly American.”

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62% of Whites Call Imus Story Overcovered

Sixty-two percent of whites thought the story of radio host Don Imus’ racist and sexist remarks — which led to his firing after a dramatic week —was overcovered, according to a poll reported in the latest weekly News Interest Index from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. Only 31 percent of blacks felt that way.

 

 

In another post-firing development, CBS Radio dropped plans to place former Boston Globe columnist Mike Barnicle — whose background includes his own racially offensive remarks — in the Imus slot, a CBS spokeswoman confirmed.

And despite moves to bring complaints about Imus to the Federal Communications Commission, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin told Congress the agency does not have the authority to fine or take other action against him, the Washington Times reported on Wednesday.

On Imus’ replacement, “We had originally alerted Westwood One (who syndicates the show) that Mike Barnicle was to fill in — following that communication our plans changed and it was decided Mike and Chris would host the show on WFAN — on a temporary basis. No permanent host has been named as of this time,” CBS Radio spokeswoman Karen L. Mateo said.

Her reference was to sports jocks Mike Francesa and Chris “Mad Dog” Russo of CBS-owned WFAN-AM in New York, where Imus’ show originated.

Staffers at Westwood One “say they were stunned when CBS told them last Wednesday night that Barnicle would be sitting in Imus’s chair during his suspension,” Keach Hagey reported Wednesday in the Village Voice “Press Clips” column.

“Once word of it hit the newswires, however, Barnicle could forget about it,” Hagey continued.

In 2004, “talking about the marriage of former secretary of defense William Cohen (who is white) and his wife, Janet Langhart (who is black), Barnicle remarked, ‘Yeah. I know them both. Bill Cohen. Janet Langhart. Kind of like Mandingo.'”

The Pew Research Center for People and the Press found, “Majorities of both whites (53%) and African Americans (61%) who have been following the Imus story say that the punishment he received was appropriate. But roughly twice as many whites as blacks believe his punishment was too tough (35% vs. 18%).

“Fully 62% of whites say that news organizations are giving too much coverage to the Imus story. This compares with just 31% of African Americans who believe the controversy has been overcovered. A plurality of blacks (44%) says that the amount of coverage has been appropriate, while a sizable minority (18%) says it has gotten too little coverage.”

The survey also found the Imus story to be the second most heavily covered of the year to date.

The Imus story was discussed on nearly all the Sunday talk shows.

On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” a simmering Gwen Ifill of PBS told host Tim Russert, “This has been an interesting week. The people who have spoken, people who have issued statements, the people who haven’t. There’s been radio silence from a lot of people who’ve done this program who could’ve spoken up and said, ‘I find this offensive’ or ‘I didn’t know.’ These people didn’t speak up.

“Tim, we didn’t hear that much from you.

“David, we didn’t hear from you,” she said, turning to New York Times op-ed columnist David Brooks.

“What was missing in this debate was someone saying, ‘You know, I understand that this is offensive.’ You know, I have a seven-year-old goddaughter. Yesterday, she went out shopping with her mom for high-top basketball shoes so she can play basketball. The offense, the slur that Imus directed at me happened more than 10 years ago,” when Imus called Ifill a cleaning lady, as part of a joke, Imus maintained.

“I like to think in 10 years from now,” Ifill continued, “that Asia isn’t going to be deciding that she wants to get recruited for the college basketball team or be a tennis pro or go to medical school and that she’s still vulnerable to those kinds of casual slurs and insults that I got 10 years ago, and that people will say, ‘I didn’t know,’ or people will say, ‘I wasn’t listening.’ A lot of people did know, and a lot of people were listening, and they just decided it was OK. They decided this culture of meanness was fine until they got caught. My concern about Mr. Imus and a lot of people and, and a lot of the debate in the society is not that people are sorry that they say these things. They’re sorry that someone catches them.”

Newsweek produced a package for its April 23 issue, “Power, Race and Media,” that deconstructs the events and notes that, “Young black journalists were among the first to demand that Imus be ousted.”

The Web site EURWeb.com, which usually covers black entertainers, ran a story about Journal-isms and its author’s views on the Imus affair, “The Eulogy Begins for Don Imus: Richard Prince asks is the controversy dead?”

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NAACP, Oprah Join Refocus on Rap Lyrics

The move to transfer the outrage over Don Imus’ remarks to the excesses in rap music proceeded with a two-part look at the issue on Oprah Winfrey’s show and the announcement of an NAACP campaign to work to end demeaning media portrayals of black Americans, particularly women.

The NAACP said the STOP Campaign is an initiative of its Youth and College Division, the Associated Press reported on Monday.

“When Oprah Winfrey turns her daytime talk show into a ‘town hall’ on offensive images in rap music, you know the national conversation has shifted away from Don Imus calling black female athletes ‘nappy-headed hos’ and toward the cultural reasons the white radio host felt safe saying it,” Diane Werts wrote Tuesday in Newsday.

“Winfrey hosted more than a dozen black panelists on her influential interview hour yesterday, turning the spotlight inward after Imus’ firing for his racist/sexist comments about the Rutgers women’s basketballers’ appearance in the NCAA finals. “‘We hold Don Imus to a higher standard than we want to hold ourselves to,’ said sports commentator Jason Whitlock, who has long assailed black hip-hop culture for perpetuating the stereotypes Imus tapped into.

“‘They are “jigabooing for dollars,” basically, in their videos and music,’ Whitlock said, with Winfrey citing such songs as Nelly’s ‘Tip Drill,’ where the rapper swipes a credit card through a near-naked woman’s buttocks. ‘In the history of mankind,’ said Whitlock, ‘no one has ever received more respect than they were willing to give themselves.'”

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Media “Did Get Played” on Duke Story, But . . .

“We have lived for more than a year with the Duke lacrosse case,” Linda Williams, metro editor of the Raleigh News & Observer and an African American, told staffers in a memo on April 12, the day after North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper said he would dismiss sexual assault and kidnapping charges against three former Duke University lacrosse players.

 

 

“It’s now over. Sort of. Today we have ‘analysis,’ a repetition of the often repeated erroneous assumptions about the case and, of course, the continuing bile from the looney lacrossers who have dominated the blogosphere,” Williams continued.

“In our newsroom, I think we have survived and thrived with our sanity intact. . . .

“Today also brings a lot of press bashing. The national media, particularly Cable TV, produced some horrific trash. But even in the criticism, the pundits are still getting a lot of things wrong.

” There continues to be a theme that the ‘black folks made him do it.’ The line is that Durham is ‘dominated’ by black people who the neophyte white politician had to satisfy with the heads of the white guys. This is just one of several ways the press got the racial calculus wrong.

“There’s a joke among black folks that whites view one black person in a room with ten of them as diversity, two is ok, but three is domination. So, I suppose that the fact that blacks are 37 percent of Durham County’s registered voters is ‘domination.’ Blacks in Durham have wielded influence in the past by voting as a block. But the people pushing this line seemed to have not noticed that the black vote split 3 ways in the infamous, three-candidate primary that Nifong supposedly won because of his strong support of the accuser. The split in the black vote was significant in that one losing candidate got 30 percent of that vote.

“It was a low-turnout election — about 20 percent — so it worked out that some black votes that went to Nifong put him over the edge. Some analysts saw the trend and concluded that the motivation of those voters had to be responding to Nifong’s racial appeal. Of course, no one bothered to ask black voters why they voted they way they did. Some analysts saw a few black folks moving in a certain direction and assumed that it had to be about race. And, no one examined the racial motivation of the white voters who showed in that race a much more definitive bloc voting pattern than the black voters.

“The media surely did get played on race. Defenders of the accused players played the race card early on, complaining that the players were targeted because they were white and well off. That ploy worked brilliantly in deflecting questions about what role the character of the players and their reputations as neighbors from hell played in causing so many people to assume the worst about them. Pundits like the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz are still playing that race card.

 

 

“The race card also discouraged any serious examination of the role that money played in the resolution of this case. If it proves anything at all, it’s that justice often has to be purchased in America. And, most often, at a pretty steep price.

“I’ve grown weary of the boiler plate language in so many stories: ‘a case that raises issues of race, class, and privilege’. . . ‘a case that raised racial tensions . . .’ And, this means what? The thought is almost never completed.

“As the case unfolded over time, I have detected a racial divide, but it is not about the core facts of the case. A very large number of blacks seem detached from the case, but many whites are in overdrive. The blacks who are paying attention have a different view of the meaning of the case than whites. While whites see a righteous crusade for justice, blacks see a massive display of white power and a media responding to that power with unprecedented coverage.

“As a result of this view, blacks do not see this case as significant for the justice system. They do not see better outcomes for them and their love[d] ones should they be falsely accused. They do not expect the aid of powerful congressmen, or a national television audience seeing them as great parents with lovely children. In sum, they see that now that the universe has been returned to its proper order, a return to business as usual.

“Much of the reaction we’re getting today is from the ‘apology’ crowd. There is some reaction to the decision to name the accuser on the Editors blog (The Associated Press, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times and Newsday are among the outlets that did not name her, according to reports on various Web sites.) There are some thoughtful responses mixed in with the usual post from the obsessed and racial paranoids.

“A question to ponder when you read Craig Jarvis’ accuser profile. Were we obligated to take into account what we knew about her mental health status in the decision to name her?”

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Departing Colby King Cautioned Colleagues on Race

Colbert I. King, the Pulitzer Prize-winning deputy editorial page editor of the Washington Post, retired in December leaving a memo to his colleagues that called for “a serious examination of race — how we editorialize about Prince Georges leaders vs. Northern Virginians—the language, the selection of words we use when talking about black vs. white leaders in the region.”

Northern Virginia is majority white; Prince George’s County, Md., is majority black. King did not elaborate. He told Journal-isms he had not provided the memo to the Washington City Paper, which disclosed its existence on Thursday, and that “it was internal discussion.”

King, 67, who was the only African American on the editorial board, continues to write his Saturday op-ed column, although he retired from the board. Jonathan Capehart, a one-time editorial writer at the New York Daily News, subsequently joined.

King’s memo also took note of the board’s pro-war Iraq policies.

“The board, in my final view, needs to think through its position on Iraq, encouraging a full expression of views,” he said. “The page must also take care to avoid resorting to sophomoric language when addressing serious matters. There is a tone that a Post editorial must maintain to preserve its unique standing in journalism.”

King, who said he wanted to depart quietly, was not present for his farewell cake, a ritual at the newspaper, Erik Wemple reported.

“Editorial writer Ruth Marcus had rounded up some store-bought pies and cheesecake. Staff members were drifting away from deadline duties to partake in the ritual.

“The guest of honor, though, was unavailable. He had blown through the corridor with a quick ‘Bye’ and disappeared.

“The group dug in anyway. ‘Nothing goes uneaten here,’ says an editorial board staffer.” [Item added April 19.]

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Short Takes

  • Some 108,232 people are attending the National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas, marveling over the latest technology, the organization said, but “the African American presence is minute. It’s as if people of darker hue don’t exist,” Reggie Miles, an assistant professor at Howard University, told Journal-isms. While people of color comprise 33 percent of the U.S. population, they are only 3.26 percent of commercial broadcast television station owners, according to a study by the group Free Press.
  • The Chicago Defender fired its entire accounting department after uncovering a scheme in which paychecks were issued and cashed in the name of employees who were no longer working at the black-oriented daily, Mark Fitzgerald reported Friday in Editor & Publisher. “Current and former employees say the accounting department staff of four was fired for issuing and cashing checks supposedly for two newsroom employees— a reporter and a page designer— who left the paper shortly after former Executive Editor Roland Martin resigned. The scheme had apparently gone on for two months, the employees said.”
  • Reuters corrected “Birth of a Nation,” a graphic it distributed

 

 
  • commemorating the 400th anniversary of the Jamestown, Va., settlement, after Retha Hill, vice president, content for BET Interactive, alerted the news service to the absence of African Americans. Whites and Native Americans were shown, Hill told Journal-isms. Author Lerone Bennett describes the unloading of “twenty blacks of undetermined origin” in 1619 as the beginning of “the history of the black man in British America.” The blacks were indentured servants.
  • Speaking of black history, TV One’s telecasts of the classic six-part, 12-hour miniseries “Roots” on April 8-15 earned the three-year-old network its highest ratings ever, averaging even higher ratings after its premiere, the network announced on Tuesday.
  • “BET Networks this evening will unveil what it says is its most ambitious programming slate in the 26-year history of the flagship channel, introducing 16 new original series, including its first-ever stab at scripted fare,” Anthony Crupi wrote Wednesday in MediaWeek.
  • “Fox News Channel and the Congressional Black Caucus still plan to hold Democratic and Republican presidential candidate debates, even with major Democratic candidates refusing to participate,” John Eggerton reported Friday in Broadcasting & Cable.

 

 
  • Jason Samuels has been named the senior producer in charge of digital content for ‘”World News with Charles Gibson,” ABC News announced on April 5. “In the role, he oversees the daily production of the ‘World News’ webcast and the broadcast’s integration with ABCNEWS.com,” the announcement said..
  • Kimberly Atkins, who left the Boston Herald in December, its last journalist of color, is now in Washington with Lawyers USA, a national newspaper for lawyers. She told Journal-isms, “I cover the Hill and the Supreme Court from the Washington, DC office. It’s very different from life as a daily paper reporter, but with the industry as it is, it’s nice to work for a paper that is actually expanding its staff instead of making cuts!”
  • Tennis commentator “Patrick McEnroe, ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith and ESPN.com columnist Jemele Hill will square off against [Skip] Bayless, and each other, on the new ‘ESPN First Take’ morning show, says Norby Williamson, ESPN’s executive vice president of studio and remote production. ‘First Take’ replaces ‘Cold Pizza’ in the 10 a.m. to noon time slot on ESPN2 effective May 7,” Michael McCarthy reported on Monday in USA Today.
  • “Curtis” creator Ray Billingsley wonders if African-American artists are given a fair shake with National Cartoonists Society awards. But society president Rick Stromoski says all candidates are treated equally, Dave Astor wrote Tuesday in Editor & Publisher.
  • At the Magazine Publishers Association, Shaunice Hawkins has been promoted to vice president, diversity and multicultural initiatives, from director, diversity development, the organization announced on Monday.
  • “Miami Herald reporter Nicole ‘Nikki’ White, whose beat included trends and lifestyles, left the paper after seven years — to help others with their lifestyles. White, 32, a self-taught decorator born in Jamaica, is partner at Essentials For Your Decor (essentials4yourdecor.com),” Joan Fleischman reported April 1 in the Herald.
  • “The Herald’s Robert Steinback, 51, a longtime columnist who left last year on sabbatical, returns — as a community editor, in charge of two Miami-Dade Neighbors editions, Gables and East,” Joan Fleischman reported April 1 in the Miami Herald.
  • Drunken driving charges were dismissed against Jeffrey Nguyen, 33, a reporter for KCOY/KKFX in Santa Maria, Calif., on March 5, according to San Luis Obispo Superior Court. He received a year’s probation and an $865 fine for speeding, the court clerk’s office said. The charges stem from a Dec. 30 incident in which Nguyen struck two vehicles. Nguyen told Journal-isms the blood samples showed he was not drunk. He said he fell asleep at the wheel.
  • Janet Rolle was to join BET Networks on April 16 as executive vice president and chief Marketing officer; Jeanine Liburd, who most recently served in corporate communications at Viacom, as senior vice president, communications and public affairs, and Alvin Bowles as senior vice president, integrated marketing, BET announced on April 2. As reported on March 29, Rollé was vice president and general manager of AOL Black Voices, and Bowles was its publisher.

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