A New O.J. “Media Circus”

Will Las Vegas Arrest Take Us Back a Decade?

“It’s already a media circus,” retired LAPD detective Tom Lange told ABCNews.com on Monday. “Obviously, people still have a fascination with this.” Lange, who had co-written a book about the O.J. Simpson criminal trial more than a decade ago, was talking about Simpson’s arrest in Las Vegas on Sunday on armed robbery charges.

As Dan Whitcomb reported on Monday for Reuters, “Simpson, acquitted in a sensational double murder trial in 1995, was being held without bail on Monday after being jailed and accused of armed theft of his own sports souvenirs from memorabilia dealers in a Las Vegas hotel room.

“Simpson was arrested on Sunday on suspicion of armed robbery, assault with a deadly weapon, conspiracy and burglary. An expletive-laden audiotape surfaced on Monday in which Simpson was apparently heard issuing threats.

“The football player-turned actor was denied bail because he was considered a possible flight risk and had no ties to the local community, Clark County Judge Nancy Oesterle said.

“He was due in court on Wednesday and could seek bail then, Oesterle told a throng of reporters outside a Las Vegas courthouse in a scene reminiscent of the murder trial in which the star athlete was found innocent of killing his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman.

“‘I guess this is what they call a media frenzy,’ said Oesterle, who was appointed to handle media issues surrounding the case.”

In a story called, “Court of Public Opinion Harsh on Simpson: On Blogs and Radio Shows, the Verdict’s in on Simpson’s Legal Troubles,” Susan Donaldson James wrote on ABCNews.com: “Scour the Internet blogs and it’s hard to find an O.J. Simpson supporter these days.”

She went on to quote Ron Kuby, a New York City radio talk show host, who said, “My people are glad he got arrested. It’s a second chance to put him behind bars. He got away with murder.”

“Kuby, a left-leaning civil rights lawyer, believed Simpson was guilty then and now. ‘I sided with my white friends on this,’ he said.

“. . . Renee Amoore, an African-American and deputy chairman of the state Republican committee in Pennsylvania, couldn’t agree more.

“‘O.J. is crazy and out of control and he’s been allowed to get away with things too many times,’ she said. ‘People are so fed up with him.’

“The racial climate in the country has changed, too, said Amoore, who points to better black role models like Oprah and Barack Obama.

“‘African-Americans are stepping up to [the] plate,’ she said. ‘We are now saying how we feel and not going along to get along. We don’t feel like victims anymore.'”

• Earl Ofari Hutchinson, syndicated: Can Even O.J. Be a Victim of a Police Rush to Judgment?

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ESPN Cited for “Walking the Walk” on Diversity

Readers of this column might have noticed a number of recent hires of journalists of color by ESPN. Tom Jolly, sports editor of the New York Times, down to one African American sportswriter in his department of about 60 people, told Journal-isms this month that one reason was that ESPN and Sports Illustrated had raided his section.

Now comes news that ESPN has won this yearâ??s Diversity Champion award from the Walter Kaitz Foundation.

Luis Clemens wrote Monday in Multichannel News, “ESPN’s senior management holds that a diverse audience demands diverse programming, which, in turn, requires a diverse workforce, both in front of and behind the cameras. . . .

“[ESPN] has been a strong advocate for diversity and has really walked the walk,” said Kaitz’s executive director, David M. Porter Jr.

“Network president George Bodenheimer will personally accept the award at Kaitz’s Sept. 19 fund-raising dinner. Asked why diversity is important, Bodenheimer responded: ‘A, it is the only way to run a successful business; b, it is the right thing to do.’

“Diversity is a key component of the networkâ??s business, said Bodenheimer. ‘You are trying to reach as wide an audience as possible. If you donâ??t have a broad collection of voices contributing . . . you are just not going to be as successful as you want to be. I donâ??t think it is any more complicated than that.’

“But ensuring diversity among the network’s most senior executive ranks has apparently proven to be plenty complicated.” None of those who report directly to Bodenheimer are African American, Asian or Latino.

“Move one, two and three levels down the ranks of management, though, and there is plenty of diversity. ‘At the director level, at the vice president level, we are starting to build definitely a strong bench. These are the folks that are poised for continued growth,’ said ESPN’s diversity director, Lorie Valle-Yañez. ‘I actually feel pretty good about where we are as a company, with respect to that.'”

John Skipper, ESPN executive vice president of content, who oversees all of ESPN’s content efforts across multiple platforms, “points to the value of different viewpoints when it comes to covering stories like the dog-fighting ring operated by Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick: ‘I like very much that I have senior executives who I can [ask], “Am I, as a white American, missing something here with Vick?” I’ve got southern African-American employees [to whom] I can say, “Am I missing something here that I donâ??t understand?” And we did that every day when we were covering Michael Vick to make sure we were being sensitive and representing different points of view.'”

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500 Protest Column on Duke Lacrosse Players

Barry Saunders received more than 500 e-mails and phone messages in reaction to his column in the Raleigh (N.C.) News & Observer a week ago that “criticized the three exonerated Duke lacrosse players for seeking a reported $30 million from the city of Durham over their arrests, now determined to be flawed,” public editor Ted Vaden told readers on Sunday.

“‘How about a compromise figure?’ Saunders wrote. ‘Instead of $30 million, how about a fish sandwich, a Yoo-hoo and a one-way Greyhound bus ticket?'”

Saunders said reaction ran 70-30 against the column. A sample: “Never have I seen what I read that appeared in your newspaper today. Congratulations, you have struck a new all-time low,” wrote Joan Collins of Garden City, N.Y., Vaden said.

Saunders began, “Only a heartless misanthrope would argue against giving something to the dear, sweet former Duke lacrosse players who have been through such an ordeal.

“Why, I think one of them even spent an hour in custody — not in jail, but waiting for a magistrate to finish his lunch so daddykins could post bail.

“The players are asking for $30 million. That seems a bit high for the inconvenience they suffered, but they certainly deserve some recompense. After all, the strippers they hired didn’t even finish their hootchy-kootchy dance.”

Saunders concluded, “Sure, they’re owed something, but so are many others who daily suffer worse in-court indignities. Do they honestly believe they deserve more than Dwayne Dail, the innocent Goldsboro man just released after spending 18 years in prison on a rape charge? The $20,000 he’ll receive for each year in prison is not justice.

“The Dukies have gone beyond seeking justice. They’re being greedy and retributive. If they get $30 million, they will have done to the city what Mike Nifong said they did to that dancer.”

• Clarence Page, Chicago Tribune: What the Duke lacrosse case has taught us

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Keyes Could Add Color, Liven Up GOP Field

The announcement on Monday by Alan Keyes that he will join the Republican presidential race means that the GOP field will no longer consist solely of white men, and could liven things up if he participates in Tavis Smiley’s “All-American Presidential Forum” scheduled for Sept. 27 at Morgan State University in Baltimore.

As reported on Friday, Smiley is trying to persuade former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., to change their minds. They have all declined, citing scheduling conflicts.

Keyes, a conservative from Maryland who ran twice before for president, announced on his Web site that he filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission on Friday to make his candidacy official. The Associated Press noted, “He also has been a Senate candidate from Maryland, and, in 2004, he suffered a 43-percentage point loss to Democrat Barack Obama in the Senate race in Illinois. Republicans drafted Keyes after primary winner Jack Ryan dropped out amid a scandal.” Keyes was scheduled to participate Monday night at a debate involving lesser-known candidates in Florida.

A spokeswoman for Smiley said she had not heard from Keyes’ campaign.

Meanwhile, one of the journalists Smiley picked for his Sept. 27 panel, Ray Suarez of PBS’ “The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer,” told Journal-isms he planned to raise Latino issues during the debate. He was asked in light of complaints by columnist Ruben Navarrette of the San Diego Union-Tribune that he was not able to do so during Smiley’s Democratic candidates forum.

“I plan to raise issues of concern to Latinos, AND follow the guidance from Tavis Smiley and his producers to use the Covenant as a template,” Suarez said, referring to the “Covenant With Black America” book that Smiley edited.

“The truth of the matter is a bad school is a bad school whether it’s in East LA or the West Side of Chicago, and inadequate health care is inadequate whether its effects are being suffered in the Mississippi Delta or Spanish Harlem. I am not so naive to think I was included on the panel because I ask darn good questions (though I do!) and that being Puerto Rican had nothing to do with it. But when we’re actually sitting in the hall asking the questions, being a good reporter is going to be every bit as important as being a BIGS (Boricua in Good Standing).”

As for the absence so far of Giuliani, Romney and McCain, Suarez said via e-mail:

“I am very disappointed that all the announced Republicans won’t be on hand for the candidate forum. No reporter wants to talk to a subset of the field, even this early in the campaign. Encounters of this kind are very important to voters, and this particular one would give the candidates an opportunity to talk about subjects that don’t normally come up when you are hobnobbing with donors. And after blacks voted for the GOP at a very low rate in the last two national elections (Latinos at a somewhat higher rate, but still disproportionately Democratic), I guess any pol can make two calculations:

“a) I really need to talk to these constituencies because we need to do better among them . . .

“OR

“b) let’s face it, they aren’t going to vote for us in 08, so I might have better uses for my time.

“The so-called top tier seems to have chosen ‘b.'”

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Stephen A. Smith Extends Leave from Inquirer

“THE Inqwaster’s Stephen A. Smith was due to return to work at the newspaper Friday, but has extended his leave, we’re told,” Dan Gross wrote on Monday in the Philadelphia Daily News, speaking of its sister paper, the Philadelphia Inquirer.

“Phawker.com reported Aug. 20 that Smith had been stripped of his column and was asked to return to general-assignment sports reporting. At that time, Smith was about to take vacation and requested an additional two weeks of unpaid leave, sources tell us.”

Gross continued, “He was to return to work Friday, but did not. Inqwaster editor Bill Marimow declined to comment on if/when Smith, who has been seen several times on ESPN during his absence, would return.

“‘I’m not gonna talk about this one anymore. It’s become a personnel matter,’ Marimow said.

“Smith responded to an e-mail by referring us to his D.C.-based attorney, Johnine Barnes, who gave us a vague statement:

“‘At this time, Stephen A. Smith does not have any comment regarding any of his professional duties and responsibilities. Stephen is evaluating the journalistic freedom of a writer and will comment on his professional responsibilities at an appropriate time in the future.'”

Henry Holcomb, an Inquirer business reporter who is president of the Newspaper Guild of Greater Philadelphia, told Journal-isms on Monday that management and the Guild were still “into conversations and we’re trying to be helpful to Stephen.”

The Guild had filed a formal protest with the company over Smith’s reassignment.

• Al Daulerio, Philadelphia magazine blog: Stephen A. and the Inky: Lawyering It Up?

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Radical Iraqi Group Offers Money to Kill Cartoonist

“The leader of al-Qaida in Iraq offered money for the murder of a Swedish cartoonist and his editor who recently produced images deemed insulting to Islam, according to a statement carried by Islamist Web sites Saturday,” the Associated Press reported.

“In a half hour audio file entitled ‘They plotted yet God too was plotting,’ Abu Omar al-Baghdadi also named the other insurgent groups in Iraq that al-Qaida was fighting and promised new attacks, particularly against the minority Yazidi sect.

“‘We are calling for the assassination of cartoonist Lars Vilks who dared insult our Prophet, peace be upon him, and we announce a reward during this generous month of Ramadan of $100,000 for the one who kills this criminal,’ the transcript on the Web site said.

“The al-Qaida leader upped the reward for Vilks’ death to $150,000 if he was ‘slaughtered like a lamb’ and offered $50,000 for the killing of the editor of Nerikes Allehanda, the Swedish paper that printed Vilks’ cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad with a dog’s body on Aug. 19.”

Agence France-Presse said the Dagens Nyheter daily, which republished the cartoon in small format on Sunday, quoted Vilks as saying, “I’m starting to grow old. I could die at any time — it’s not a catastrophe.”

“Sweden’s Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt on Sunday sought to defuse tensions and urged ‘reflection’ after talks with local Islamic leaders,” Agence France-Presse said.

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Short Takes:

• “Ginny Poon Yamate, a former ABC7 KGO-TV San Francisco producer, died Sept. 13,” the Asian American Journalists Association said on Friday. “She joined the station in 1979 and held various positions. In addition to producer, she was Director of Public Affairs and Community Relations Manager. Yamate was a 1999 graduate of AAJA’s Executive Leadership Program in Los Angeles. Most recently, she was Manager of Diversity Outreach & Corporate Contributions at California State Automobile Association Corporate Affairs.”
• Daniel Hernandez, 26, a staff writer at LA Weekly who formerly wrote for the Los Angeles Times, is leaving the alternative publication “because Scribner has asked him to write a book about Mexico City based on his amazing cover story from last year,” according to Gustavo Arellano, who writes the “Ask a Mexican” column in the Orange County Weekly. Hernandez won the Emerging Journalist Award in 2006 from the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.
• “Among networks, Spanish-language Univision is now a top contender Univision has surpassed the networks in young adult viewership, according to recent Nielsen ratings. This prominence of Spanish-language media has some concerned about the cultural isolation of Hispanic immigrants,” according to a headline atop a story Monday by Ben Arnoldy in the Christian Science Monitor.
• “MTV’s ‘Traffic’ is a hard-hitting, US-funded documentary that is part of a campaign aimed at educating vulnerable youth in Asia about the risks of being trafficked illegally for exploitative labor,” Simon Montlake wrote for Tuesday’s editions of the Christian Science Monitor. “The movie, which premieres Tuesday on MTV Thailand, is tailored for the US broadcaster’s vast youth audience in go-getting East Asia. By raising awareness of the dangers, campaigners say they hope to address a practice that is akin to modern-day slavery.”
• “More than 500 people demonstrated peacefully outside the Northwest Washington home of Debra Lee, Black Entertainment Television’s chief executive, yesterday afternoon, demanding that the network stop airing what they call demeaning and offensive portrayals of African Americans,” Marissa Newhall wrote Sunday in the Washington Post.
• “Nearly 40 years after enactment of a national fair housing law, federal officials are handling a record number of discrimination complaints. The complaints come from small towns and big cities— from black families relocating after Hurricane Katrina, disabled people tired of climbing stairs with their crutches and single mothers looking for an apartment in a good school district. For a package moving Wednesday, Sept. 26, GNS analyzed five years of federal data on housing discrimination complaints,” Gannett announced on its Web site, referring to the Gannett News Service.
• CNN is broadcasting an hour-long documentary on Thursday at 8 p.m. ET on the events in Jena, La. On “CNN Special Investigations Unit: Judgment in Jena,” “CNN anchor Kyra Phillips reports on racial tensions within Jena, a small Louisiana town where whites and blacks have existed in the sort of separate, yet civil existence typical of many rural Southern towns,” a program description says. The “Jena Six” case drew national attention when Mychal Bell “and five other black teenagers were charged with attempted murder for beating a white teen and leaving him unconscious,” as the Chicago Tribune reported.
• AOL announced that it will move its corporate headquarters from Dulles, Va., outside Washington, to New York, locating it in the center of the media advertising marketplace. A spokeswoman did not respond to a question about how the move affects AOL Black Voices and AOL Latino.
• “The canard that a powerful Jewish lobby controls the media . . . is true!” Askia Muhammad, a columnist who is a member of the Nation of Islam, wrote on his blackjournalism.com Web site, citing experiences in the news media.
• “Reporters Without Borders condemns a violent assault on Tope Abiola, the deputy editor of the privately-owned Nigeria Tribune daily newspaper, who was beaten unconscious by prison guards and police at Agadi prison in Ibadan (in the southwestern state of Oyo) on 11 September while trying to cover the aftermath of a riot by inmates,” Reporters Without Borders said on Friday.
• “Members of the Somali Transitional National Government security forces raided the Radio Shabelle office in the capital, Mogadishu, Saturday morning and detained 19 staff members. The security forces accused the journalists of throwing a grenade at a police patrol, reported one of the detained staffers,” the Committee to Protect Journalists said on Monday. “Security forces fired into a nearby hallway during a daily editorial meeting at the Shabelle office, forcing the journalists to take cover, reported one of the staff members.”
• Referring to an incident in Pakistan, “The Committee to Protect Journalists is outraged by the assault on Hassan Sharjil, the 14-year-old son of prominent journalist Shakil Ahmad Turabi, editor-in-chief of the South Asian News Agency. Hassan was beaten by a man outside his school today in Islamabad as he was dropped off for classes at around 6:45 a.m. . . . Hassan’s father told CPJ that the man beating his son told him, ‘We warned your father to stop writing lies, but he wouldn’t listen. This will teach him a lesson,'” the organization said on Friday.
• “The U.S. media are still stumbling in coverage of race and ethnicity, according to the National Association for Multi-ethnicity in Communications (NAMIC). But panelists — including Mariane Pearl, widow of slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl; CNN anchor Anderson Cooper; and Larry Wilmore, a regular on The Daily Show — at this week’s 21st annual conference in New York on Sept. 16-18 will take on the roadblocks,” Paige Albiniak reported Monday in Broadcasting & Cable. “Cooper will receive the Mickey Leland Humanitarian Achievement Award during lunch on Tuesday.”