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CBS, ABC Deny Airing “Puff” on Thomas

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Viewer: “Like Watching Home Shopping Network”


CBS-TV and ABC-TV defended their networks’ pieces on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas amid criticism that “60 Minutes” and “Nightline” had offered up uncritical “puff pieces” as they interviewed Thomas in connection with his new memoir, “My Grandfather’s Son.”


“60 MINUTES goal in this rare interview was to provide as complete a picture of Justice Thomas as we could. We believe we succeeded,” “60 Minutes” spokesman Kevin Tedesco told Journal-isms, referring to Sunday night’s broadcast.


“Everyone is entitled to his or her opinion but I’d point out that we did have Anita Hill on GMA yesterday and she was quite tough on Thomas,” Jeffrey W. Schneider, spokesman for ABC News, told Journal-isms. His references were to Hill, who accused Thomas of sexual harassment during his 1991 confirmation hearings, and to ABC’s “Good Morning America.”


“In addition, Jan’s interview was both fair and probing,” Schneider said, referring to a series of reports by Jan Crawford Greenburg that aired on “Nightline” and other ABC programs.


As noted Monday, the reviews were different on the e-mail list of the National Association of Black Journalists, and in a discussion of the “60 Minutes” piece on PBS’ “The Tavis Smiley Show.”


“I’ve now watched the 60 Minutes interview and the Nightline interview. It was like watching the Home Shopping Network,” wrote one. “You mean to tell me that there was not a single critical commentator on Clarence Thomas’ record? These things could have been on Larry King and no one would have blinked. I’m rarely disgusted, but this was pure journalistic drivel.”


Another said, “I also find it very interesting that the only real televised critic was Al Sharpton in the 60 minutes piece. Given his baggage — and the way whites feel about him, [it] seemed like an attempt to discount the merits of the criticism.”


“It was a soft-ball interview designed to sell books for Thomas. Frankly, I’m surprised at CBS,” a third said.


“Do you think after the whole Dan Rather fiasco that they’re forgoing the tough Mike Wallace approach for something more Larry King-ish?” a fourth said, referring to a discredited story about President Bush’s military service.


The first poster replied, “I also noticed that there was no mention by either show to say whether they’d attempted to interview Anita Hill for comment. Nor did they refer to her New York Times editorial as a counterpoint to Thomas’ viewpoint. During the Nightline interview, they did something that just astounded me. Thomas talked about how Democratic Senators smiled in his face and lied to him and ABC ran archival footage of Joe Biden smiling in slow motion while The Temps’ ‘Smiling Faces’ played in the background. It was propaganda and not news.”


On the Smiley show, Marc Morial, president of the National Urban League, Princeton professor Cornel West and Farah Griffin, director of Columbia University’s Institute for Research in African American Studies, were equally critical of the “60 Minutes” piece. “Nightline” had not yet aired.


“It was an advertorial for Clarence Thomas and perhaps for the book,” Morial said.


“I think that CBS and ’60 Minutes,’ they really ought to be ashamed of themselves,” West said. “Because you get another example of debased journalism where there’s no Socratic energy, no tough questions raised. I have nothing against staying in contact with the humanity of Brother Clarence Thomas, and we did see humanity, his story, his relation to grandfather, and so forth.


“I don’t want to demonize the brother, but he needs to be criticized, and they presented this story as if those of us who are critics, Black, White, Red, or whatever, have no good reasons to be critical of him siding with the strong against the weak and the powerful against the relatively powerless.”


A right-wing blogger had this comeback: “Those people who thought Steve Kroft’s interview with Clarence Thomas on Sunday’s 60 Minutes was not tough enough should remember that Anita Hill received a very gentle 60 Minutes treatment on February 2, 1992,” wrote Tim Graham on the NewsBusters site. “Ed Bradley drew out the disclosure that she was a Democrat, but went on with a set of gooey questions about whether she has Eleanor Roosevelt quotes on her office wall.”


The two networks are not the only media outlets with pieces on Thomas that might be considered uncritical.


“Rush Limbaugh, the conservative talk radio host, also interviewed Justice Thomas. He dedicated 90 minutes to the conversation on Monday, setting a record: ‘No guest has ever gone longer than one hour on this program,’ Mr. Limbaugh noted,” Brian Stelter reported in his TV Decoder blog for the New York Times Web site.


Jet magazine boasts — inaccurately — in its upcoming Oct. 15 issue that Thomas has “agreed to sit down with JET Magazine for his first and only magazine or newspaper interview since being named to the Supreme Court in 1991.”


Headlined “Clarence Thomas Says He’s An Independent, Misunderstood And Proud Black Man,” the piece by Kevin Chappell begins:


“Spend a little time at the U.S. Supreme Court with Justice Clarence Thomas and you are quickly taken aback by two things: His booming infectious laugh that permeates his office and rumbles through the hollowed corridors of the historic Washington, D.C., building; and the surprisingly normal fare that the Yale-educated lawyer finds humorous.”


Thomas was interviewed by a group of black reporters in 1995, by Chris Mondics of the Philadelphia Inquirer in 2003 and by Diane Brady of Business Week magazine this year.


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. . . Anita Hill Has Her Say in Print, on TV


Anita Hill, who accused Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment during his 1991 confirmation hearings for Supreme Court justice, is not remaining silent as Thomas promotes his version of their clash.


“Justice Thomas has every right to present himself as he wishes in his new memoir, ‘My Grandfather’s Son,'” Hill wrote in a New York Times op-ed piece Tuesday, “The Smear This Time.”


“He may even be entitled to feel abused by the confirmation process that led to his appointment to the Supreme Court.


“But I will not stand by silently and allow him, in his anger, to reinvent me.


“In the portion of his book that addresses my role in the Senate hearings into his nomination, Justice Thomas offers a litany of unsubstantiated representations and outright smears that Republican senators made about me when I testified before the Judiciary Committee — that I was a ‘combative left-winger’ who was ‘touchy’ and prone to overreacting to ‘slights.’ A number of independent authors have shown those attacks to be baseless.”


Hill also made television appearances on NBC and CNN, among other outlets.


The Boston Globe filled in readers on Hill’s whereabouts. “A few weeks ago, she began a sabbatical from her teaching job at Brandeis University, beginning a one-year stint as a visiting scholar at Wellesley College that will enable her for the first time to go through all of the 20,000 or so letters she received after testifying against Thomas,” the Globe’s Michael Kranish reported Wednesday.


On National Public Radio’s “Tell Me More,” Kevin Merida of the Washington Post, co-author of the recent “Supreme Discomfort” book on Thomas, said there were “competing facts” involving Hill and Thomas, and “all kinds of complications that independent journalists, other books have dealt with. And Justice Thomas does not really deal with the complete set of facts in these cases.”


Meanwhile, the Heritage Foundation held a dinner Monday night honoring Thomas and invited “a group of bloggers and other opinion journalists,” as James Joyner, one of the bloggers, reported on Tuesday.


LaShawn Barber, a black conservative, wrote on her blog after the event, “Justice Thomas told us a couple of anecdotes about how two black men at different events ‘confronted’ him, asked him questions, listened civilly to the answers, and concluded: ‘Why are they lying about you? What can we do about it?'”


Thomas friend Armstrong Williams, the conservative commentator and entrepreneur, was scheduled to have a book party Wednesday night for Thomas at his Capitol Hill home, putting two entire city blocks off-limits to residents, the Washington Post’s “Reliable Source” column reported on Monday. The Hill, the Capitol Hill newspaper, reported Thursday that the guest list included actor Will Smith, White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten, ABC newswoman Barbara Walters, CBS Sports’ James Brown, ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith, ex-NBA star Charles Barkley and Bob Jones of Bob Jones University.



Grambling Removes Material from Paper’s Web Site








 


 


“Administrators at Grambling State University on Friday ordered the student newspaper to take down an article and photos about an anti-racism lesson — including a photo depicting an elementary student with a makeshift noose around her neck,” the Student Press Law Center reported on Tuesday.


“The Gramblinite sent a reporter and photographer Friday to cover an event designed to teach young students about racism in the context of the Jena Six case. One of the images taken showed a girl — a student at Grambling’s Alma J. Brown Elementary lab school — held up in the air with a noose placed around her neck.


“‘We knew it was a controversial photo,’ said De’Eric Henry, editor in chief of The Gramblinite. ‘That’s why we did not run it in the paper. We ran it as a photo gallery online.’


“The Monroe, La. News Star reported Sunday that the child featured in the photo apparently was taking part in a lesson about events surrounding the six black students charged in the 2006 beating of a white student in Jena, La.’


“Henry said he received a call from his news editor while driving to Dallas to cover a sports event. The news editor told him that members of the administration had requested the photos be removed.


“Henry held a phone conference with his fellow editors, deciding to remove only the photos involving the noose.


“But Henry returned from his trip Monday morning to find all the photos, and the story itself, removed from the Web site. Henry said someone from the university president’s office had called Wanda Peters, The Gramblinite’s adviser, and asked that all the material be taken down.”


Provost Robert M. Dixon sent out a memorandum Jan. 17 suspending the newspaper for the rest of January “or until administrators are content with greater ‘quality assurance’ of the paper,” as the News-Star in Monroe, La., put it. It followed complaints about a plagiarized story.


Editors defied the order and published on Jan. 18. After a torrent of criticism from media organizations, the university dropped its requirement that the student newspaper submit all its stories to a faculty adviser for editing.


University spokesman Ralph Wilson told Journal-isms he could not address how the university’s action squared with the January agreement, but said the university had received complaints from parents and others.



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Is Barack Obama Actually Charlie Brown?


A suave Barack Obama has graced the covers of GQ and Vibe magazines as he seeks the Democratic nomination for president, but an artist for the latest edition of the New York Observer, published Tuesday, imagines the senator from Illinois quite differently: as Charlie Brown to Hillary Clinton’s Lucy in Charles Schultz’s “Peanuts” cartoons.


“It’s Your Campaign, Barack Obama: Has Hillary Clinton grabbed the football? Is the Illinois senator wishy-washy?” the caption reads. It accompanies a story by Jason Horowitz, “Clinton Campaign Gets In Gloat Mode With $27 Million; Hillary Donor Chortles: Massive Haul More Than Obama, Edwards Combined.”


The Charlie Brown image also made the cover.


Meanwhile, Obama met with black journalists in South Carolina, Mary C. Curtis reported in her Charlotte (N.C.) Observer column.


“My report: He cannot walk on water but he can speak with passion about issues he believes are important — and crack an occasional joke.”



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Professor Defends Calling Williams “Happy Negro”


Boyce D. Watkins, an African American Syracuse University finance professor, is standing by his calling reporter and commentator Juan Williams a “Happy Negro,” a phrase Watkins used on television after Williams defended Fox host Bill O’Reilly.


O’Reilly had remarked in an interview with Williams that he had eaten in Sylvia’s, a black-owned soul-food restaurant in Harlem, and found it no different from eating in a white one.


Williams wrote an essay Friday in Time magazine saying the “Happy Negro” remark was “a pathetic cowardly, personal attack against me intended to damage my credibility and invalidate any support I offer to O’Reilly against the charges that he is a racist.”


Watkins replied in his own piece, “On CNN, I essentially explained that anyone who thought Bill O’Reilly was suddenly a reformed racist who’d seen the light has been getting high with Bobby and Whitney too long. I’ve been on this man’s show before, and he has consistently demeaned, degraded and devalued everything about black culture he could get his hands on. I also mentioned that I was unimpressed with Juan Williams’ agreement and defense of O’Reilly. Seeing Williams sitting there congratulating O’Reilly for his bigotry reminded me of the Negro in the white suit defending ‘massa’ at all costs. His attitudes were consistent with his latest and most terrible book, which does nothing but blast black culture and black people, as if we are the sole causes of socioeconomic inequality.


“Therefore, I could only use terms I felt appropriate. I defined Williams as ‘The Happy Negro’. On CNN, I compared O’Reilly’s use of Williams to Hugh Hefner hiring a stripper to tell him that he’s not a sexist. The ‘Happy Negro’ was no longer happy when he heard what I had to say.”


In an interview Wednesday with the Daily Orange, the student newspaper at Syracuse University, Watkins said of his essay, “I didn’t want to publish it in Time magazine, I wanted to publish it directly with the black community, so I sent it to Essence magazine, also Black America Web and blacknews.com, which are highly read Web sites in the black community. . . . It’s just really one of those things that represents the division going on in the black community.”



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Explanation of Columnist’s Plight Challenged


“The folks at 1100 Broadway are engaging in some sophisticated camouflage after we reported last week the paper’s inhumane treatment of cancer survivor and erstwhile Tennessean columnist Tim Chavez,” Liz Garrigan, editor of the Nashville Scene, wrote Tuesday in her blog. “In addition to characterizing our reporting as ‘the usual twisted, vitriolic drivel from a local alternative newspaper,’ publisher Ellen Leifeld claimed that Chavez hadn’t been able to come back because his doctor hadn’t released him.








 

 

“That, dear readers, is the drivel. His doctor did release him, but Chavez never turned in that paperwork because the human resources department made it clear to him that his job had been eliminated. Once he heard that, there was no reason to shuffle paper. After Chavez called the paper to say he could return, this is the email he received.


“‘After our conversation, I was thinking about your interest/intention in coming back to a job here and wanted to make sure you had an update on our staffing situation,’ the HR official wrote. ‘I’m sure you’ve heard from other staffers that we recently downsized in the newsroom as well as other departments through a voluntary severance plan, which included reduction of editorial staff where you most recently worked. The job you formerly held does not exist anymore. There are other jobs that are open, and perhaps more will come open. They are/will be jobs targeted specifically to fit with the goals of the information center going forward. You are welcome to apply for any of the open jobs and will be considered on how your qualifications meet the job requirements.’


“Course, if we’d treated a staffer this way, we would probably obfuscate and engage in transference too.”


Leifeld told Journal-isms, “My only comment is that this is a personnel matter that we are attempting to work out.”


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Surprise! Another Racial Divide Over O.J.


If the cartoons from Pat Oliphant (mainstream press) and Walt Carr (black press) aren’t evidence enough, the Associated Press reported last week that, “Far more whites than blacks say O.J. Simpson will be tried fairly in his armed robbery case and think he is guilty, according to a poll released Thursday that underscores the nation’s racial divide over its justice system and the tarnished celebrity.


“While 70 percent of whites said they believe this month’s charges against Simpson are true, only 41 percent of blacks said so, according to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll. And while 73 percent of whites said they believe he will have a fair trial, only 36 percent of blacks agreed.


“. . . Simpson was released from jail Wednesday after posting $125,000 bail in connection with the armed robbery of sports memorabilia collectors at a Las Vegas hotel.”



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