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“I’m Bruised, Honey. Yeah, I’m Bruised”

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Suspended Reporter Speaks Out, Gains Support

 

 

 

Suspended Dallas reporter Rebecca Aguilar disregarded her lawyer’s advice and broke a week of silence to defend herself, challenging hostile reactions from the blogosphere to her interview of a 70-year-old man who twice shot and killed intruders trying to break into his business.

Meanwhile, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, which had presented Aguilar with “Broadcast Journalist of the Year” honors this month and was virtually alone in defending Aguilar, was joined by Unity: Journalists of Color; the Dallas LULAC Council, which is part of the League of United Latin American Citizens; and the alternative newspaper Fort Worth Weekly.

“Aguilar’s Oct. 15th piece on 70-year-old property defender James Walton, who had just purchased a new shotgun outside a sporting goods store, prompted a flurry of bloggers and blog readers to brand her as bigoted, anti-gun, an ambusher and a ‘bitch’ among kinder assessments,” wrote Ed Bark, who had been the Dallas Morning News television critic for 26 years before taking a buyout last year.

Critics zeroed in on Aguilar asking Walton, “Are you a trigger happy kind of person? Is that what what you wanted to do? Shoot to kill?”

“A since disabled video of her story on youtube.com still brandishes the headline, ‘Anti-white mexican reporter from Dallas, TX suspended,'” Bark wrote.

“‘I’m bruised, honey. Yeah, I’m bruised,’ Aguilar says in her first interview on these matters and more. Against the advice of her attorney, she’s telling her side because ‘I think staying silent makes a person look guilty.’

“In particular she wants to emphasize that she and Walton had conversed at length on the phone after he first called her at Fox4. In fact, she says, they again were talking shortly before she allegedly ‘ambushed’ him outside a Mesquite Academy Sports & Outdoor store, where Walton told her he was headed because ‘they’ve got the best shotguns.’

“Our tamer interview venue is a Dallas coffee shop, where Aguilar, 49, finds it difficult to keep her composure. Her tears clearly are genuine, not an act. They embarrass her, as did Fox4’s Oct. 16th order to pack up and leave after her previous day’s story prompted both heavy criticism and a telephoned death threat to her newsroom desk.

“‘I’m sorry I’m crying but I’ve been waiting to talk about this for a while,’ Aguilar says. ‘It was humiliating. I love Fox4. I love my job, my colleagues. We’re very competitive, but we motivate each other. A person does not stay at a station because of the money or the glory. I mean, I live there more than I live at home. It may sound corny, but it’s true.'”

Aguilar also provided ammunition to those who questioned why she was the only employee disciplined, saying that the script for her story was approved beforehand. “We have layers of gatekeepers,” she was quoted as saying, “And I’m the only one suspended.”

She told Bark she still doesn’t know whether her indefinite suspension is with or without pay.

KDFW has kept silent on its reasons for suspending Aguilar, but Kathy Saunders, vice president and general manager, did write NAHJ that “our corporate security professionals have reached out to Ms. Aguilar regarding the threats she received.”

In its statement, Unity said, “It is puzzling why KDFW chose to run Aguilar’s piece, and then suspended her only after the station received public pressure.”

Jesse Diaz, president, and Gehrig M. Saldaña, vice president of Dallas LULAC Council 4496 wrote, “There appears to be a double-standard which has developed in regard to how Rebecca Aguilar has been treated thus far. I can tell you I have never seen this kind of unfounded judgment accessed to other reporters who have covered sensitive issues . . . We just want to make sure Rebecca Aguilar is judged with an equal level playing field and is not being singled out for journalistic criticism because of the color of her skin.”

In its piece, the Fort Worth Weekly wrote: “They call us ink-stained wretches for a reason. Sometimes we’re not tactful, sometimes we go overboard, sometimes we piss off folks. But aggressive journalism is often the only way to get to the bottom of things, and it ain’t always pretty. Without bulldogs in the press corps, newspapers would be filled with headlines such as ‘Mission accomplished in Iraq’ and ‘Fort Worth blossoms under urban gas drilling.’ It’s a sad day when pressure from viewers, readers, bloggers, gun activists, and racist crackpots spurs a news organization to ignore the principles of investigative journalism and throw a reporter to the dogs.”

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In California, Fires Command Continuous Coverage

 

 

 

“Local television news devoted nearly continuous live coverage throughout much of Monday to the fires raging across seven Southern California counties as the crisis led to the cancellation of most regular daytime programming, cut into advertising revenues and pushed newsrooms to their limits,” Martin Miller and Greg Braxton reported Tuesday in the Los Angeles Times.

“In a massive news effort not seen since a similarly devastating series of blazes four years ago, local TV stations broadcast a grimly familiar roll call of scenes and vowed to continue to do so as long as events dictated it. Beginning midmorning Sunday, most TV screens were filled with images of homes burning, hillside infernos, scrambling evacuees, Super Scooper airplane water drops and impromptu news conferences with officials including local fire personnel and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.”

The Times itself “delivered breaking, and diverse, news about a major local story —in this case, the California wildfires —to millions of online readers in blog-like fashion, with brief dispatches from correspondents, added at the top. Many were in the human interest vein,” Editor & Publisher reported on Tuesday night.

The Radio-Television News Directors Association set up a message board for members who “need to reach out to other newsrooms for any reason whatsoever.”

Michael Schneider reported in Variety on Monday that many television staffers —including news director Nancy Bauer Gonzales of KCBS and KCAL in Los Angeles — were having to deal with their own homes being evacuated.

“It’s a logistical nightmare,” said Jose Rios, vice president of news for KTTV, in the Los Angeles Daily News. “It’s spread all over the place.” Rios told the paper his station had dispatched a clutch of reporters to San Diego, but was unable to fly them there due to high winds.

Fox News Channel’s coverage included on-the-scene reports from Malibu and San Diego, thanks to the efforts of college student journalists whose pieces for thePalestra.com have appeared on Fox News Channel and FoxNews.com, Paul J. Gough reported Tuesday for the Hollywood Reporter.

One of the students was Stefan Holt— son of NBC News correspondent Lester Holt — at Pepperdine University.

The Wave newspapers, which serve African American communities in Los Angeles, are not covering the wildfires, editor Andre Herndon told Journal-isms, because except for the intensification of air pollution from the smoke — “the air quality here is bad enough,” he said—the fires have not affected the Los Angeles neighborhoods they target.

Victor Franco, vice president for community affairs and media relations for Telemundo 52, KVEA-TV, and Pedro Rojas, editor of La Opinión, did not respond to requests for comment about their coverage of the impact on the Latino community.

However, CNN and the public radio show “The World” were among those reporting on some of the Latinos affected.

“For the first time we saw Spanish updates on the English-speaking newscasts, which I thought was very interesting. I’ve never seen that before growing up here in San Diego,” Kyra Phillips said on “CNN Newsroom” on Wednesday.

“How did that help, Jorge?” Phillips asked a San Diego laborer, Jorge Miramontes, who picks fruit with his family.

Miramontes said through a translator, “They were saying in Spanish and English and we were going from channel to channel. And that way we found out.”

Public Radio International’s “The World” reported on Wednesday, “While many flee the fires in southern California, some Mexican migrants are refusing to go. They say they’d rather risk their safety than risk deportation.”

In the San Diego Union-Tribune, Leslie Berestein reported on Wednesday that the “fire along the U.S.-Mexico border is affecting various aspects of immigration in San Diego County, in particular the busy human-smuggling routes surrounding Tecate and Campo.

“Six illegal border crossers are hospitalized with burn injuries, and one of them is in critical condition, said Alberto Lozano, a spokesman for the Mexican Consulate in San Diego. He said the six men, all from central and southern Mexico, were rescued Monday,” the story said.

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Media Coalition Wants “Jena Six” Proceedings Open

“A coalition of major American media companies filed a 1st Amendment petition Monday seeking to open to public scrutiny the criminal trial of Mychal Bell, one of the teenage defendants in the controversial Jena 6 case in Louisiana,” Howard Witt reported on Tuesday in the Chicago Tribune.

 

 

 

“The legal motion, filed in LaSalle Parish District Court, challenges the decisions by presiding Judge J.P. Mauffray to close the proceedings in Bell’s juvenile case and order all the parties involved not to speak about it. Mauffray’s orders run counter to Louisiana juvenile laws, precedents set by the Louisiana Supreme Court and provisions of both the Louisiana and U.S. Constitutions, the petition asserts.

“The Chicago Tribune is the lead plaintiff in the petition, joined by the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times Co., The Associated Press, Hearst Corp., Belo Corp., Gannett Co., CNN and ABC News.

“Bell, 17, is one of six black teenagers charged in an attack last Dec. 4 at Jena High School in which a white student was beaten and knocked briefly unconscious. That incident capped months of racial tensions in the mostly white Louisiana town that was set off after three white youths hung nooses from a tree at the high school.”

As the Shreveport Times noted, Gannett, Hearst and Belo own media properties in the region.

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. . . as a Jena Editor Challenges Media “Myths”

Craig Franklin, assistant editor of the Jena (La.) Times, wrote in the Christian Science Monitor on Wednesday that “The real story of Jena and the Jena 6 is quite different from what the national media presented.

“In fact,” Franklin wrote, “I have never before witnessed such a disgrace in professional journalism. Myths replaced facts, and journalists abdicated their solemn duty to investigate every claim because they were seduced by a powerfully appealing but false narrative of racial injustice.

“I should know. I live in Jena. My wife has taught at Jena High School for many years. And most important, I am probably the only reporter who has covered these events from the very beginning.

“The reason the Jena cases have been propelled into the world spotlight is two-fold: First, because local officials did not speak publicly early on about the true events of the past year, the media simply formed their stories based on one-side’s statements —the Jena 6. Second, the media were downright lazy in their efforts to find the truth. Often, they simply reported what they’d read on blogs, which expressed only one side of the issue.”

Franklin is only the latest to come forward to correct purported flaws in national reporting of the case.

Late last month, Todd Lewan of the Associated Press wrote “Locals Dispute Growing Story of Jena 6.” The Alexandria (La.) Town Talk put together a timeline and question-and-answer page to clear up misconceptions.

The first “myth” on Franklin’s list is “The Whites-Only Tree. There has never been a ‘whites-only’ tree at Jena High School. Students of all races sat underneath this tree. When a student asked during an assembly at the start of school last year if anyone could sit under the tree, it evoked laughter from everyone present—blacks and whites. As reported by students in the assembly, the question was asked to make a joke and to drag out the assembly and avoid class,” Franklin wrote.

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Tip for Young Journalists: Follow Your Passion

Nisid Hajari, foreign editor of Newsweek, was asked five questions Wednesday by the South Asian Journalists Association. One was whether he would offer some tips for young journalists who want to go into magazine journalism.

“Follow your passion, as cheesy as that sounds,” he said. “I’ve worked at a couple different kinds of magazines (the Village Voice, Entertainment Weekly, TIME), and while they have similarities they are not interchangeable. You’ll do your best work if you’re passionate about the subject matter— and don’t worry so much at first about the prestige of the publication. The key is to gain clips and experience. My years in Hong Kong for TIME allowed me to grow and take on responsibilities I might not have been given if I had stayed in New York. And (something that’s too often underestimated in the NY magazine world) they were just plain fun.”

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Columnist Says Mexicans Have Choice of Myths

Mexicans “mythologized a tale of the violent and tragic conquest to explain their birth as a people: the story of the Spaniard Hernan Cortes and his indigenous translator and mistress, Doña Marina, a.k.a. La Malinche,” columnist Gregory Rodriguez wrote Sunday in the Los Angeles Times.

“Marina was Cortes’ victor’s prize and, in 1522, she gave birth to Martin Cortes, one of many mestizo children born to the conquerors’ mistresses and paramours. Four and a half centuries later, in 1950, the great Mexican poet Octavio Paz famously wrote that the ‘strange permanence of Cortes and La Malinche in the Mexican’s imagination and sensibilities reveals that they are something more than historical figures: They are symbols of a secret conflict that we still have yet to solve.’

“Despite, or perhaps because of, the psychic power of the Cortes-Malinche story, you won’t find many monuments to them in Mexico City. After Mexico gained its independence from Spain in the early 19th century, Mexican nationalists, who sought to distance themselves from their European heritage, demonized the conquerors in general and Doñ¡ ?arina in particular.

“. . . This alienation resonates profoundly throughout the culture. On the one hand, Mexico proudly acknowledges its Indian ancestry; on the other, it clearly prizes whiteness as a status symbol. It endlessly questions its identity: Is it modern or ancient, Spanish or Indian? And the Cortes/Malinche story, instead of defining Mexico’s origins in a constructive way, merely prolongs and exacerbates the country’s ambivalence about its history as a conquered nation.

“. . . So, with this history of cultural collisions and convergences in mind, I propose that Mexicans and, particularly, Mexican Americans choose a different symbolic story to explain their identity. It’s not a new story, but too few know it. It’s right out of ‘The Conquest of New Spain,’ Bernal Diaz del Castillo’s 16th century eyewitness account. . . .”

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Ruthell Howard, D.C. Copy Editor, Dies at 50

 

 

“Ruthell Howard, 50, a copy editor for The Washington Post for more than 15 years, died of cardiopulmonary arrest Oct. 21 at Menorah Home and Hospital in Brooklyn, N.Y.,” Patricia Sullivan reported in the Post on Tuesday.

“In the sometimes-anonymous copy desk position, which requires mediation between strong-willed reporters attached to their words and readers who demand accuracy, clarity and context, she was known as a polite but meticulous editor, her colleagues said.

“Ms. Howard also did freelance editing for Crisis magazine and taught a weekend journalism class for non-journalism majors at Howard University.”

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Colleagues Differ on Benefits of Integration

Two columnists at the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times have disagreed on the benefits of integration.

On Oct. 11, Bill Maxwell wrote, “As the product of an all-black, Jim Crow era school in a small town, I am convinced . . . that racial integration is not necessary for a high-quality public school education. If the school district would sign an agreement guaranteeing equal resources in majority black schools, black parents should have no reason to demand integration.

“Evidence tells me that integration, which we have had for nearly a half century, has not rescued most black children from the behaviors and culture that trap them in the cycle of failure. We need to try something different.”

On Sunday, media critic Eric Deggans wrote on his blog, “when I read Bill Maxwell’s piece making the case that integrated schools don’t help black kids enough, I felt compelled to raise what I have often felt is an overlooked point about the advantage of diverse schools for black children.

“It can teach them how to live with white people.

“I have learned from my own experience that there is a difference between experiencing a people’s culture through the filter of media and having to deal with it personally. And for black kids who grow up in all-black environments, it can be a challenge to cope with being a racial minority at all — let alone navigating the currents of white dominated society as an outsider. And as long as society is dominated by white culture, understanding it and learning how to relate to it will be an important task for any person of color.”

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Short Takes

 

 

 

 

 

 
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