7 Arrested in Raid on Your Black Muslim Bakery
The son of the late Oakland Black Muslim leader Yusuf Bey was among seven people arrested Friday during a series of predawn law-enforcement raids in connection with three Oakland homicides, including the daylight shooting death of Oakland journalist Chauncey Bailey, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
“Yusuf Bey IV and six other people were taken into custody and several weapons were seized during the multi-agency raids that began at 5 a.m. Police, SWAT teams and bomb units from throughout Alameda County searched Your Black Muslim Bakery at 5832 San Pablo Ave. and three associated locations nearby on 59th and Aileen streets in North Oakland.
“Bey hasn’t been formally charged with a crime. But police said they had arrested the people responsible for killing Bailey, 57, at 14th and Alice streets on Thursday as well as two other people four days apart in July,” the Web site story, by Matthai Chakko Kuruvila, Christopher Heredia, Jaxon Van Derbeken and Henry K. Lee, said.
“‘The search warrant yielded several weapons and other evidence of value including evidence linking the murder of Chauncey Bailey to members of the Your Black Muslim Bakery,’ said Assistant Police Chief Howard Jordan, who said the raids were part of a yearlong investigation into a variety of violent crimes.
“Homicide detective Lt. Ersie Joyner said ‘scientific evidence’ had linked the firearms to Bailey’s killing.
“Joseph Debro, an Oakland businessman who writes a column for the Post, said Bailey had recently asked him for information about Your Black Muslim Bakery’s financial troubles for a story Bailey was writing.
“‘To him it was just another story,’ Debro said. ‘He wasn’t apprehensive or anxious about it at all. He said he was working on a bunch of stories and this was one.'”
KCBS-AM posted the audio of a story by Bob Melrose about Bailey’s investigation-in-progress.
Bailey was shot to death Thursday morning near the Alameda County courthouse in what police called an assassination-style killing. He was editor-in-chief of the Post Newspapers, which includes black papers in Oakland, Berkeley, Richmond, San Francisco and Southern Alameda County, Calif. Bailey was a longtime reporter for the Oakland Tribune and assumed the Post editorship in June.
Bailey’s age was given as 57 years old in some news reports but as 58 by the Detroit News, where he once worked, and by the Bay Area Black Journalists Association. The News stood by its personnel records.
The Tribune said, “Your Black Muslim Bakery and its affiliated businesses, which fill several storefronts along both sides of San Pablo Avenue near the Emeryville and Berkeley borders, have long been alternately praised and vilified. Police said the Nation of Islam, an umbrella organization for Muslims nationwide, is not affiliated with the bakery.”
“We do not have any reason to believe that the Nation of Islam is involved in any of this activity,” Assistant Chief Jordan was quoted as saying.
The group was the subject of a 2002 story in the East Bay Express.
The Tribune reported that “authorities also uncovered conditions so unsanitary that the Alameda County Health Department has closed down the popular bakery and cafe.
“Police broke down doors and used stun grenades to disorient people to gain entry. No one was hurt in the raids, which began at 5 a.m.”
The Tribune story by Harry Harris, Kristin Bender and Kelly Rayburn added, “Bailey also served as the news director at the East Bay’s black-oriented KSBT SoulBeat Television.
“And some say Bailey had a tumultuous relationship with members of the Black Muslim group.
“A longtime friend of Bailey’s who did not want to be named said the journalist got threats ‘all the time’ from the Black Muslim Bakery and its supporters when Bailey hosted a segment on the Soul Beat television show. ‘This was like 10 years ago,’ the friend said.
“Many of the threats came during call-in time on Bailey’s show, and many were taped on the program.
“The man later came on Bailey’s Soul Beat segment, the friend said, and the pair seemed to have a better relationship after that. Bailey wasn’t the only journalist to run afoul with the group. Stephen Buel, the editor of the East Bay Express, said the newspaper had a brick through the window in late 2002 following a series chronicling the dark side of the group.
“A reporter at the newspaper received threats following a story about the death of Bey in 2003. ‘We took them seriously and ultimately (the reporter) worked outside the office,’ Buel said. Bailey, who was released from the Tribune in 2005 because of conflict of interest issues, began covering the group again shortly after taking over as editor of the Oakland Post this summer. A memorial for Bailey, with flowers, notes and mementos had been erected at the spot where he was gunned down.”
The Committee to Protect Journalists reported on Thursday that the last targeted assassination of a journalist in the United States occurred in 1993 when Dona St. Plite, a Miami radio reporter of Haitian descent, was gunned down at a benefit. The period from 1976 to 1993 saw a total of 12 journalist killings. “A CPJ report issued that year, ‘Silenced: The Unsolved Murders of Immigrant Journalists in the United States,’ found that in all but one case, the victims were immigrant journalists working in languages other than English. Most received little or no national media attention.
“In 2001, freelance photographer William Biggart was killed in the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, and Robert Stevens, a photo editor at The Sun, died of inhalation anthrax in Boca Raton, Fla.”
The Oakland Tribune spoke to James Vesely, now the Seattle Times’ editorial page editor, who was among those who hired Bailey in Detroit, where Bailey was a staff writer and columnist at the Detroit News from 1979 to 1992, according to a News story by Oralandar Brand-Williams.
“Chauncey had this great, infectious personality,” Vesely recalled in the Tribune story by Josh Richman and Douglas Fischer. “He was also high-maintenance, but he arrived at Detroit just when there was a time that the racial presence of some reporters was important to the paper and to the city, and I think he carried that off pretty well.”
Vesely said Bailey impressed him as a young journalist at the vanguard of a generation of black men who remembered both Jim Crow and the civil rights movement, “part of a pioneer corps of reporters” asserting an African American presence at major metropolitan daily newspapers. “He fit that to a ‘T’ — he was someone who immediately knew the community, knew the town.
“I remember him once going across the desk at another black reporter. He was a dynamite guy, and sometimes the dynamite went off. He was a very strong personality, very assured of himself.”
Jesse McKinley of the New York Times quoted Bailey’s boss, Post Publisher Paul Cobb:
“He was the James Brown of the media. He was the hardest-working man in journalism.”
McKinley wrote on Saturday:
“Asked whether there were any regrets about not moving faster to arrest the suspects before Mr. Bailey was killed, Assistant Chief Howard Jordan said that the Oakland Police Departmentâ??s resources were ‘very thin’ and that the long-term investigation involved the cooperation of neighboring departments.
“‘Today was the best day we had, that we could have done this with the coordination of our allied agencies,’ Mr. Jordan said. ‘We werenâ??t just kind of waiting around.’
‘Mr. Jordan said it was ‘very disheartening’ to hear about Mr. Baileyâ??s killing, ‘and it was particularly disheartening to know it was connected to our investigation.'”
- Brenda Payton, Oakland Tribune: Bailey was a champion, not a cheerleader
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L.A. Anchor Suspended 2 Months; Others Disciplined
“Los Angeles television newscaster Mirthala Salinas was suspended without pay for two months— but not dismissed —Thursday from KVEA-TV Channel 52 for covering Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa while they were romantically involved, a relationship that journalism experts said damaged the station’s credibility,” Duke Helfand and Meg James reported on Friday in the Los Angeles Times.
Beth Barrett wrote in the Los Angeles Daily News, “Salinas, 35, whose romantic relationship with the mayor was disclosed by the Daily News on July 3, was among four NBC-Telemundo (Channel 52) employees disciplined after a three-week investigation by Telemundo executives with involvement of its parent company NBC Universal.
“The findings were broadcast on the network’s national newscast Thursday night.
“‘Her reading of copy during newscasts on June 8 and June 11 regarding the mayor’s separation from his wife was a flagrant violation of these guidelines,’ Telemundo President Don Browne said in a statement Thursday.
“The failure to respond appropriately in the following weeks further compounded these errors.”
KVEA General Manager Manuel Abud was reassigned to another position, and News Director Al Corral was suspended for two months without pay.
“The highest-ranking executive, Ibra Morales, who oversees the network’s 16 Spanish-language stations, was reprimanded,” the Times said.
The Times story continued: “Browne said that in April, Salinas was given the role of temporary news anchor, reading lead-ins and other material involving stories about the mayor and politics.
“Seated in the anchor’s chair, Salinas reported on the 6 p.m. news June 8 that Villaraigosa and his wife, Corina, were separating after 20 years of marriage.
“Three days later, Salinas was again in the anchor’s spot when the newscast reported on a Villaraigosa news conference in which he said he felt a ‘personal sense of failure’ about the breakup of his marriage. His wife filed for divorce the next day.
“Browne singled out the two occasions as the most egregious examples of the conflict of interest, saying those involved showed a ‘lack of leadership and vigilance required to protect the credibility and reputation of our news product . . .’
“In an internal memo to Telemundo staff members, Browne said that ‘while the content and accuracy of KVEA’s newscasts were not compromised, our news policy standards with respect to conflict of interest were clearly violated.’
“Salinas, 35, could not be reached for comment. She had been suspended with pay since the scandal erupted three weeks ago.
“Villaraigosa, 54, did not comment on the merit of Telemundo’s decision, saying only that he wanted to concentrate on his job in its aftermath.
“‘I regret that decisions I have made in my personal life have been a distraction for the city, and I am deeply sorry that I have let so many people down, especially my family,’ he said in a statement.
Barrett reported in the L.A. Daily News:
“Browne said faculty members from the Poynter Institute, an institution that supports excellence in journalism, helped the network determine whether their news-policy guidelines were violated.
“‘It’s not as great a sanction as it could have been. People have been fired for their relationships with sources,’ said Bryce Nelson, professor of journalism ethics at USC Annenberg School for Communication.
“‘I don’t think it’s a slap on the wrist,’ Nelson said. ‘It’s a visible punishment that will cause hardship for her and others involved.’
“Still, he said, without knowing the details of the investigation, it is difficult to know whether the punishment is sufficient.
“Browne said mandatory training sessions will be conducted at KVEA.”
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Min Could Be Highest Paid in Celebrity Weekly World
“Take that, Bonnie Fuller,” Stephanie D. Smith wrote Friday for Women’s Wear Daily. “If Us Weekly hits all its targets for circulation and advertising, then Janice Min could become the highest-paid editor in the celebrity weekly category thanks to her new two-year contract.”
“The deal, according to the New York Post on Thursday, includes a $1.5 million base salary; a guaranteed circulation bonus of $500,000, and additional bonuses totaling $500,000 â?? potentially earning Min more than her predecessor Fuller, who decamped from Us Weekly parent Wenner Media to American Media Inc.
Min did not respond to a message seeking comment.
When Min officially got the editor’s job in 2003, Mae Cheng of Newsday, then president of the Asian American Journalists Association, said, “Throughout her career, Janice has been a role model and inspiration for many Asian American journalists. She will no doubt continue to be so in her new role. There are still too few Asian Americans in upper management journalism positions. So Janice’s appointment is indeed good news.”
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Robin Roberts Has “Very Successful” Surgery
“Good Morning America” anchor Robin Roberts had ‘very successful’ surgery for breast cancer Friday and has left the hospital for home, ABC said” in a network announcement.
“Roberts, 46, revealed her diagnosis to viewers Tuesday. She said doctors believed they had caught the cancer early,” she said.
“‘The tests following her surgery take some time to process, so when we have more information we will update you,’ said ABC News spokeswoman Bridgette Maney. ‘Thank you for your thoughts and prayers for Robin.’
“Roberts’ mother and sisters traveled from the Mississippi Gulf Coast and New Orleans to be with her for the surgery. The former college basketball star and sportscaster grew up in Pass Christian, Miss.
” Roberts’ disclosure has called attention to the fact that, “Testing is particularly important for black women, many of whom face a particularly virulent strain of breast cancer,” as David Bauder reported Tuesday for the Associated Press.
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Steiger Sees Increased Diversity at Wall St. Journal
Paul Steiger, the longtime managing editor of the Wall Street Journal who stepped down from the top job in May, told the Asian American Journalists Association on Friday that he is â??conflicted but hopefulâ?? about prospects for the paper now that parent company Dow Jones is being sold to Rupert Murdochâ??s News Corp. for $5 billion, according to Vindu Goel, reporting for the San Jose Mercury News.
Steiger spoke at a convention, held this year in Miami, where shrinking financial resources were once again a prominent issue.
“News Corp. founder Rupert Murdoch’s pending purchase of Dow Jones & Co., owner of the Wall Street Journal, raises questions about the company’s future commitment to diversity and its financial support of AAJA and other minority journalism organizations,” began a story in the student convention newspaper by Diane Chang and Lena Wong.
“‘The Wall Street Journal has been very supportive,’ said Rene Astudillo, AAJA’s executive director. ‘In fact, they are one of our corporate members.’
“But News Corp. has little history of being involved in AAJA, Astudillo said.”
However, the story reported, “Steiger, Dow Jones vice president and former Journal managing editor, said he did not think the merger would impact diversity in the Journal’s newsroom.
“‘That is because Rupert Murdoch has said he expects to expand hiring,’ Steiger said in an e-mail. ‘If that proves to be the case, diversity should improve, because the pattern of hires in recent years has reflected more diversity than the previous makeup of the staff, and that trend is likely to continue.”
In his convention address, his first since the deal was sealed on Tuesday, Steiger said the merger with News Corp. offers the Journal many benefits: “the resources of News Corp.— which owns newspapers in Britain, the U.S. and Australia; the Fox studios and broadcast networks; and MySpace, among other properties — will allow the Journal to ‘extend the reach of our journalism to people and places we donâ??t reach now,'” Goel reported.
â??’Rupert has had great success in getting his journalism read,’ said Steiger. At the same time, he said, Journal editors know what their readers expect and will stand up for their interests.”
Meanwhile, Astudillo, 54, announced he is stepping down as executive director when his contract is up on May 1, 2009, after 10 years in the job.
He told Journal-isms he believed that 10 years was long enough and that he might become a consultant.
Astudillo oversees finance, fundraising, administration and the management of chapter development and programs. One of his major responsibilities is organizing the annual AAJA convention, according to the student convention newspaper.
An immigrant from the Philippines, Astudillo was program coordinator at the Asian & Pacific Islander American Health Forum, executive director of the Filipino Task Force on AIDS, and education director of the Life Foundation, Hawaii’s AIDS foundation based in Honolulu, a bio said.
Convention attendance stood at 940 on Friday, Astudillo told Journal-isms.
- Alana Dong, AAJA Voices: AAJA board looking to Web for ad revenue
- Alana Dong, AAJA Voices: AAJA revisiting policy on non-media sponsorship
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“Missing” NABJ Founder Didn’t Realize She Was One
Wayne Dawkins, National Association of Black Journalists historian and author of “the NABJ Story,” this week located the only “missing” founder among the 44 who created the organization in 1975: Carole Bartel of the Congress of Racial Equality’s CORE Magazine, the author announced.
Bartel, now known as Oonaâ??o Haynes, explained on Thursday that Oona’o is her given name and that she used her professional name in signing the list of founding members on Dec. 12, 1975.
Speaking from East Orange, N.J., Bartel said she did not realize she was a founder, Dawkins said, though she did not explain why. Another founder, Marilyn Darling, called the meeting “serendipitous.” Bartel is now an aromatherapist on the staff of a holistic center and author of a 2006 childrenâ??s book, “Tree of Music: The Mpingo Pingo Tree.” In 1979, she published “I call him Reggie, They Call Him #59746,” about her husband, a singer with the Escorts, an R&B group, Dawkins explained.
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Morris Thompson to Help Start Paper in Mexico City
Veteran journalist Morris Thompson, who has been on a “long hiatus” in Mexico, says he is returning to “The Life” as the founding finance editor of the to-be-revived English-language Mexico City News.
“The News was Mexico’s premier English-language daily from 1950 until 2002, and is being revived with new guarantees of editorial independence, and a two-year commitment, from the deceased founder’s grandson and other Mexican investors. Publication is to start in mid-September with just three reporters, but Thompson will get one of them and first-rate wire services,” he said on Friday in an e-mailed news release.
“It’s a rare and irresistible opportunity during what may be the autumn of newspapers to be part of a startup in a city and country I love,” Thompson said. “And I’ll get to help reporters grow, and with them to make use of my mature and deep knowledge of this country.”
A member of the National Association of Black Journalists since 1979 and its Journalist of the Year in 1984, Thompson, 54, said he has written occasional “light” freelance pieces since resigning as the Knight-Ridder Mexico correspondent in 2002.
He was based in Mexico after opening a Latin America and Caribbean bureau for Newsday in 1983, and returned for the second time in 1989 after serving as Atlanta correspondent for the Washington Post. He was Knight Ridder’s foreign editor, based in Washington, before taking another turn as a foreign correspondent in 2000. He has also worked for the Wall Street Journal, the old Chicago Daily News, the Miami Herald, the Detroit News and the Philadelphia Daily News.
“During his time off, he has been active on the elected Vestry of his 150-year-old Anglican/Episcopal parish in Mexico City, and on the board of its social-service arm that for several years was the only program in the city reaching out to persons with HIV/AIDS,” Thompson wrote.
“He continues to say, as he long has to his NABJ friends, that one of the charms of Mexico is that ‘Mexicans are colored folks.’ Which, he says, is of course a high compliment.” He can be reached at morris.thompson (at) gmail.com.
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Obama: Some Hip-Hop Creates Unrealistic Reality
In the cover profile for the 14th anniversary issue of Vibe magazine, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., clarifies his views on rap. Though he had a high-profile meeting with rap star Ludacris last fall, he was also quoted by the Associated Press in April as saying that rappers were “degrading their sisters. That doesn’t inspire me,” the AP reported.
“Obama told Vibe that he was misquoted — he was talking about the culture as a whole, not rappers in particular,” the story said.
“‘I stand by exactly what I said, which was that the degrading comments about women that (radio host Don) Imus said is language that we hear not just on the radio, not just in music. We ourselves perpetuate that, and we all have to take responsibility for that.’
“But the Illinois senator also didn’t let rappers off the hook.
“There’s no doubt that hip-hop culture moves our young people powerfully. And some of it is not just a reflection of reality,’ he told the magazine. ‘It also creates reality. I think that if all our kids see is a glorification of materialism and bling and casual sex and kids are never seeing themselves reflected as hitting the books and being responsible and delaying gratification, then they are getting an unrealistic picture of what the world is like.’
“Still, Obama seemed unwilling to use raunchy rap as a rallying cry in his campaign: ‘My priority as a U.S. senator is dealing with poverty and educational opportunity and adequate health care. If I’m ignoring those issues and spending all my time worrying about rap lyrics, then I’m wasting my time.’
“So why put a politician on the cover of a magazine that had 50 Cent fronting last month’s issue?
“‘Because for the first time since VIBE was launched in 1993, a political figure has burst on the scene and fired up young people in a major way,’ Vibe editor in chief Danyel Smith said by e-mail. ‘Because regardless of who wins the election, the Senator will have inspired many new voters to the polls. Because Obama is frank, brilliant, vibrant, and not cynical — all things that make him a perfect VIBE cover.”
- Nekesa Mumbi Moody, Associated Press: After Imus outrage, rappers clean up act
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FCC Seeks Comment on Minority-Ownership Idea
The Federal Communications Commission issued a notice this week on proposed rules that include whether companies should be allowed to exceed radio and TV station ownership limits when planning to sell their assets to minorities.
As the Nashville Tennessean reported in December, the FCC issued in 2003 “a new set of guidelines that sought to expand the number of media outlets a single company could own in a local market. Those rules were challenged in court and, in 2004, a decision by the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals led to the FCC’s establishing a series of public hearings on several proposed changes.”
The court agreed with a petition from the Minority Media & Telecommunications Council that said the FCC had not included the minority ownership question in its proposals.
Even though it has now done so, commissioners Michael J. Copps and Jonathan A. Adelstein said on Tuesday that their colleagues were not providing enough time for comment.
“After mulling this over for almost one year, the Commission is all of a sudden in a hurry and it is the public that gets punished. Giving the American people only 60 days to comment on dozens of proposals is outrageous,” they said.
David Honig, executive director of the Minority Media and Telecommunications Council, told Journal-isms: “The extremely low representation of minorities in broadcast ownership is unacceptable in a multicultural and democratic society. Thus, weâ??re pleased that the Commission has sought comment on a host of minority ownership proposals. We hope members of the public, including broadcasters, will file extensive comments and advance additional proposals.”
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Short Takes:
- “In light of revenue and profit declines, Register editor Ken Brusic has notified his staff that the company will be laying off some of them after offering voluntary buyouts last year,” Editor & Publisher reported on Friday, speaking of the Orange County (Calif.) Register. “Brusic didn’t mention how many staffers would be let go or which positions were likely to be cut, but the company plans to move swiftly. By next Thursday, the company intends to have all of the pink slips out and most laid-off staffers gone.”
- As a freelance photographer for The Associated Press in Havana, Cuban photographer Cristóbal Herrera Ulashkevich captured two crucial images of Fidel Castro’s health slide: his fainting spell while making a speech in 2001 and his dramatic fall after another speech in October 2004, Wilfredo Cancio Isla of El Nuevo Herald wrote. “The two sets of photos appeared in media around the world, boosting Herrera’s professional standing but also putting him on the road to forced exile in Costa Rica — because security forces did not like his images.” Herrera is now in Miami.
- Dan Lewerenz, a board member and former president of the Native American Journalists Association, left the Associated Press on Friday after more than 10 years. Lewerenz, based most recently in Cheyenne, Wyo., told colleagues, “I’m going back to school at the University of Wisconsin, where I will draw on the resources in the law school and journalism/communication programs to study the relationships (cultural, historical and legal) between American Indian tribal governments and tribal media.” He is a member of the Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska.
- “The annual Harris Poll measuring public perceptions of 23 professions and occupations came out Wednesday — and you can find journalists in the Bottom Ten,” Mark Fitzgerald wrote in Editor & Publisher. “Just 13% of the 1,100 U.S. adults surveyed in June and July said the occupation of journalist had “very great prestige,” while 16% said it had “hardly any prestige at all.” The plurality of respondents, 47%, grudging conceded there was “some prestige” in being a journalist.”
