Maynard Institute archives

Making Sense of Taylor’s Death — or Not

by richard0488

He Wasn’t a “Kid Who Couldn’t Shake the Hood”

 

 

Describing himself as the “media member who probably knew Sean Taylor and his family the best,” a South Florida Sun-Sentinel sportswriter appealed to other journalists on Wednesday not to write about the slain NFL player as “this poor kid who couldn’t shake the hood, or its mentality.

“Sean came from a black family with a little money,” Omar Kelly, Miami Dolphins beat writer, wrote Wednesday on the e-mail list of the Sports Task Force of the National Association of Black Journalists. “I live a couple of blocks from his father, and play racquetball with him a couple of times a year. Sean Taylor was his dad, who happens to be a police chief, and a well respected one.

“Sean went to the best schools Miami had to offer. He hated the fact his parents sent him to private school. But he knew the reason why they did, and [it’s] the same reason most of us send our own kids to private school, or want to. His circle of friends weren’t people from the gutter. They were regular people, guys with 9-to-5 jobs and college educations. And he was loyal to his true friends, which was a very small circle that often didn’t include his college teammates.

“My hope is that the nation doesn’t assassinate his character without knowing all the facts because it’s a slow news week,” he added. His colleagues expressed their gratitude. Kelly wrote a version of these comments for the Sun-Sentinel, which ran them on the front page on Wednesday, as reporters and editors continued to wrestle with the story of the 24-year-old Washington Redskins safety who was shot to death in his suburban Miami home by an apparent intruder.

“In a news briefing, Miami-Dade Police Director Robert Parker said that as of now, everything suggests that the attack on Taylor, who died early Tuesday following surgery for his wounds, was a ‘random occurrence,’ ” Peter Whoriskey, Jason La Canfora and Amy Shipley wrote late Wednesday on the Washington Post Web site.

 

“‘There is nothing so far to indicate there was involvement on the victim’s part,’ he said.”

However, the story added, “Police detectives have said they would explore whether there could be a possible connection to a dispute between Taylor and several Miami men over his all-terrain vehicles in 2005 that led to criminal charges against Taylor, who received probation after entering a guilty plea but was later sued by one of the men.”

The Associated Press’ Bob Baum reported Wednesday night from Tempe, Ariz., that Arizona Cardinals cornerback Antrel Rolle, a childhood friend, said Taylor had many enemies on the streets of Miami.

“This was not the first incident,” Rolle said in the story. “They’ve been targeting him for three years now.”

On Tuesday, some African American sportswriters expressed concern that coverage would unfairly emphasize negative aspects of Taylor’s past and repeat stereotypical images of young black men.

Many continued to express those feelings on Wednesday. But others insisted that, as John Smallwood wrote in the Philadelphia Daily News, “Unfortunately, some circumstances in Taylor’s life almost force you to question the manner of his death.”

Jason Whitlock of the Kansas City Star and FoxSports.com, who has written incendiary columns denouncing the hip-hop culture, wrote that “The Black KKK claimed another victim, a high-profile professional football player with a checkered past this time,” though he acknowledged that “I could very well be proven wrong for engaging in this sort of aggressive speculation.”

“Within hours of his death, there was a story circulating that members of the black press were complaining that news outlets were disrespecting Taylor’s victimhood by reporting on his troubled past,” Whitlock wrote on FoxNews.com.

“No disrespect to Taylor, but he controlled the way he would be remembered by the way he lived.”

Michael Wilbon wrote in the Washington Post, “I wasn’t surprised in the least when I heard the news Monday morning that Sean Taylor had been shot in his home by an intruder. Angry? Yes. Surprised? Not even a little. It was only in June 2006 that Taylor, originally charged with a felony, pleaded no contest to assault and battery charges after brandishing a gun during a battle over who took his all-terrain vehicles in Florida. After that, an angry crew pulled up on Taylor and his boys and pumped at least 15 bullets into his sport-utility vehicle. So why would anybody be surprised? Had it been Shawn Springs, I would have been stunned. But not Sean Taylor.”

However, Eugene Robinson, an op-ed columnist at the same paper, differed in a blog item headlined, “Sean Taylor Was a Man, Not a Narrative.”

“Asked about Taylor’s sudden and awful death, Coach Joe Gibbs said simply that life is fragile,” Robinson wrote. “Others have not been so modest, or so wise. They recount Taylor’s past ‘troubles’ and try to make him emblematic of Young Black Men in general — the mean streets, the parasitic friends, the casual violence, the weapons, the beefs, etc., etc. This is argument, not explanation. It’s lazy and wrong, and it drives me up the wall.”

University of Miami football coach Randy Shannon “told The Miami Herald he was frustrated that people would get the wrong impression once again, or more accurately, never get the right impression with the media publicizing the former Hurricane’s shooting as something associated with a long list of other UM deaths,” Susan Miller Degnan reported.

”This has nothing to do with the University of Miami,” Shannon said in this story.

“Sean was in the NFL. This happens all across the country. Until people stop thinking we’re Thug U and start looking at what we really have done, I don’t know how much more we can improve our image. No matter what I think about what we do, the image is going to be there until people start writing positive things about the school.”

But some sportswriters suggested that the failure of college athletes to be integrated into the rest of the student body — maturing with the rest of the students — is an important topic for exploration.

“They aren’t students, in many cases,” freelancer Bomani Jones wrote, recalling his own experiences at Clark Atlanta University. “They’re employees that attend class to perpetuate a silly charade. What other group spends 3-4 years in college and comes out thugging?”

Janiece Richard, an athletics graduate assistant at the University of Kansas, added: “I have seen some college athletes come here and make a difference in their lives, but the majority of the athletes leave just the same as they came or even worse because of this sinking feeling they’re being taking advantage of and this sours the collegiate experience.”

Jemele Hill of ESPN.com agreed. “On some campuses, football programs have become an elevated sort of prison, where you learn to be a better criminal than what you were. It doesn’t help that these coaches completely look the other way when their athletes engage in foul behavior, giving them a twisted sense of right and wrong. it also doesn’t help that they leave them ill-equipped educationally for society. If you look at what has happened to University of Miami players, current and former, it’s obvious that too many of them came and left unchanged.”

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Minority Ownership of Commercial TV Stations Drops

An update on the number of minority-owned broadcast outlets “suggests that the future of minority TV station ownership is in jeopardy,” with the number of minority-owned commercial TV stations decreasing by 8.5 percent in the last year, according to a report Tuesday from the media reform group Free Press.

“Minority television ownership is in such a precarious state that the loss of a single minority-owned company results in a disastrous decline,” said S. Derek Turner, research director of Free Press and lead author of “Out of the Picture 2007.”

Permitting any more consolidation will only further diminish the number of minority-owned stations.

Among the findings:

  • “Minorities comprise 34 percent of the entire U.S. population, but own a total of 43 stations, or 3.15 percent of all full-power commercial television stations.
  • “From October 2006 to October 2007 the number of minority-owned full power commercial TV stations decreased by 8.5 percent, from 47 to 43 stations, or from 3.45 percent to 3.15 percent of all stations.
  • “Blacks or African Americans comprise 13 percent of the entire U.S. population but only own a total of 8 stations, or 0.6 percent of all stations.
  • “From October 2006 to October 2007 the number of African American-owned full power commercial TV stations decreased by nearly 60 percent, from 19 to 8, or from 1.4 percent to 0.6 percent of all stations. Much of this decrease is attributable to the bankruptcy and subsequent reorganization of Granite Broadcasting. Prior to its change to a white-controlled company in February of this year, Granite was the largest African American-owned (and largest minority-owned) broadcast television company, owning 10 stations.
  • “Hispanics or Latinos comprise 15 percent of the entire U.S. population, but only own a total of 17 stations, or 1.25 percent of all stations.
  • “From October 2006 to October 2007 the number of Latino-owned full power commercial TV stations increased from 16 to 17, or from 1.18 percent to 1.25 percent of all stations. This increase stems from the purchase of a Salt Lake City station, KPNZ, by Liberman Broadcasting, owner of three other TV stations and 22 radio stations. Liberman is the largest Latino-owned broadcast television company, and the third largest minority-owned broadcast television company.
  • “Asians comprise 4.5 percent of the entire U.S. population but only own a total of 13 stations, or 0.95 percent of all stations.
  • “From October 2006 to October 2007 the number of Asian-owned full power commercial TV stations increased from 7 to 13, or from 0.51 percent to 0.95 percent of all stations. This increase stems from the April 2007 purchase of 5 home-shopping affiliates from EW Scripps Company by Multicultural Radio Broadcasting Incorporated. Multicultural Radio Broadcasting also owns 42 radio stations and is the second largest minority-owned broadcasting company.
  • “Non-Hispanic White owners controlled 1,116 stations, or 81.9 percent of the all stations.
  • “Companies with dispersed voting interest (usually large publicly traded corporations such as ABC/Disney) controlled the remaining 203 stations, or 14.9 percent of all stations.”

The study also said, “The state of female and minority ownership in the broadcast sector is even more shocking compared to other industries. While female and minority ownership has advanced in other sectors since the late 1990s, it has gotten worse in the broadcast industry.”

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N.Y. Times Lays Off a Bridge Between Cultures

“Today we notified the Newspaper Guild that about a dozen support positions within the newspaper are being eliminated,” Executive Editor Bill Keller wrote to the New York Times staff on Wednesday, according to the New York Observer. “We will, for example, be closing the Recording Room as well as trimming a number of clerical and secretarial jobs. The people in those jobs will receive the severance they are entitled under the Guild contract.” The Recording Room is where transcripts of tapes are made.

What Keller’s memo did not say was that among those “support positions” is that of Terry Aguayo, the Miami Bureau office manager since 1999, a Miami-raised Cuban American who helped three English-language-only bureau chiefs negotiate the city.

In addition, a database search found 63 Aguayo bylines in the last year, including stories in Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s papers on the shooting death of NFL player Sean Taylor.

“Without her, the paper’s national staff would have been up a creek with no one in-house to help them understand the area’s large Spanish speaking population,” a Times staffer told Journal-isms. “To lose her in a bureau like Miami is to shoot ourselves in the foot.”

Keller’s memo also said, “During 2008, we also expect to eliminate a few management jobs in administrative areas. This staff reduction does not include any journalists, nor any widespread buyouts, as has happened in the past. But as many of you know, we put into place a hiring freeze several weeks ago, and except for those jobs that are critically important to our future ambitions, we intend to enforce it. As journalists resign or retire from the Company next year, we will be trying to fill their positions internally.”

Meanwhile, the Kansas City Star became the latest mid-sized paper to offer buyouts, telling readers on Wednesday that employees with 20 years of “uninterrupted service” can take the offer that gives 20 weeks’ pay, Joe Strupp reported in Editor & Publisher.

Clinton Found Slightly Ahead Among Blacks

 

“Just weeks ahead of the first presidential primaries and caucuses, Hillary Clinton is the candidate viewed most favorably by likely African American voters— with Barack Obama running a close second — according to national survey results released today by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies,” the organization said on Tuesday.

“In the survey of 750 African Americans, sponsored by the AARP and conducted from October 5 to Nov. 2, Sen. Clinton was rated favorably by 83 percent of respondents, with 9.7 percent viewing her negatively. Sen. Obama received favorable ratings from 74.4 percent, with 10.1 percent viewing him negatively.”

The study was released a day after the Obama campaign announced that Oprah Winfrey would tour the early primary states on his behalf, prompting speculation about how effective she would be.

“She’s above Hollywood, straddling the worlds of entertainment, media and philanthropy,” Jocelyn Noveck wrote on Tuesday for the Associated Press. ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show’ reaches close to 9 million Americans each day and is syndicated to 135 foreign countries. Then there’s ‘O,’ her magazine, and her Web site. Winfrey’s philanthropy has been well-publicized, especially her funding of a school for girls in South Africa.

“In Iowa, Winfrey’s show wins its time slot overwhelmingly in the state’s four largest media markets — Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, Davenport and Sioux City. KCCI, the Des Moines station, has the 12th highest viewership in the country for the show.

“With all that, Winfrey’s influence with women viewers — and voters — is surely of concern to the other Democratic candidates, who might have equal-time concerns.

“But legally, the show would be on solid ground even if it featured Obama every day (he’s only been on twice). The equal-time provision of the Federal Communications Act provides exemptions to news interview shows, and the FCC has ruled that interview segments on talk shows get the same exemption. As it is, Winfrey says she will not use her platform, only her personal voice, to advocate for Obama.

“The Clinton campaign, in an e-mail to The Associated Press, said of Winfrey: ‘We’re fans and we think it’s great she is participating in the process. Everyone has wonderful supporters, and we’re proud of ours’ — such as Steven Spielberg, Magic Johnson and Barbra Streisand, who threw her support behind Clinton on Tuesday.

“And of course, Clinton has her husband, Bill, hitting the trail — ‘arguably as much of a media rock star as Oprah,’ says [former political speechwriter Marty] Kaplan, now a professor at USC’s Annenberg School of Communications. ‘This is the game,’ Kaplan says. ‘And on the Republican side you have Mike Huckabee saying, “I’ll see your Oprah and raise you Chuck Norris.”‘ (Other notable endorsements include Robert Duvall for Rudy Giuliani and, for [John] Edwards, Bonnie Raitt and Jackson Browne.)”

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Carville Heads List of Imus’ “Top 10 Enablers”

“It didn’t take long for the Don Imus enablers to re-emerge,” Rory O’Connor wrote last week on the AlterNet Web site. “Just months after the racist, sexist and homophobic shock jock was fired for his on-air characterization of the Rutgers University women’s basketball team as ‘nappy-headed ho’s’ — and less than two weeks after Citadel Broadcasting announced his impending return to radio — the Big Media and Big Politics elite are crawling out of the woodwork to embrace Imus all over again.”

His list of “Don Imus’s Top Ten Enablers”:

1. James Carville, CNN, analyst, ex-presidential adviser

2. Bob Kerrey, New School president, former senator and former Democratic presidential candidate

3. Rudy Giuliani, Republican presidential candidate, former mayor

4. Sen. John McCain, Republican presidential candidate

5. Gov. Bill Richardson, Democratic presidential candidate

6. Tim Russert, NBC News anchor

7. Frank Rich, New York Times columnist

8. Sam Tanenhaus, New York Times Book Review editor

9. Jeff Greenfield, CBS News analyst

10. Howard Kurtz, Washington Post and CNN media commentator

 

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AsianWeek Lists Top “Yellow-Face” Performances

“It may be hard to believe, but there was once a time when Hollywood would routinely turn to non-Asian actors to portray Asian characters in films,” Philip W. Chung wrote Wednesday in AsianWeek>.

“Often, these ‘yellow face’ performances both reinforced and embodied all the negative stereotypes — funny accent, slanted eyes, buck teeth, and enough ‘Orientalism’ to send the yellow fever meter through the roof.

“For those too young to know this history or those wanting to take a walk down memory lane, here are the 25 ‘yellow face’ film performances (so no David Carradine in Kung Fu unless the long-rumored film version gets made) that have arguably had the most impact on our cultural landscape.

“And if you think ‘yellow face’ existed only in the non-P.C. past, note that three of the entries are from this year.” They include Christopher Walken as Feng in “Balls of Fury” and Eddie Murphy in “Norbit.” Only numbers 25 to 11 are listed; the top 10 are to be unveiled next week.

Chung is a writer and co-artistic director of Lodestone Theatre, an Asian American theater company based in Los Angeles. He writes a bi-weekly column, “Reel Stories.”

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Johnson Publishing Lays Off 3 Business-Side Execs

“Three top-level executives were laid off Monday from the Johnson Publishing Company, publishers of Ebony and Jet magazines,” Jason Fell reported Wednesday for Folio magazine. “The departure of those executives — Jeff Burns, Ebony senior vice president and associate publisher; Ebony senior vice president and Midwest advertising director Dennis Boston; and Barbara Rudd, Ebony vice president and Western advertising director — was confirmed by the publisher.”

“Burns, who was reached by phone Tuesday evening, said he was ‘shocked’ by his sudden termination. . . . ‘They’re trying to turn around the slide in advertising, which has of course affected the entire advertising industry.’ Through September, Ebony was down 8.7 percent in ad revenue ($46.5 million) and 10.3 percent in ad pages, when compared to the same period last year, according to Publishers Information Bureau figures. Jet was down roughly six percent in both ad revenue and pages over the same period.”

Jet reported in 2003 that Burns, a Howard University alumnus, helped create a scholarship program to assist students entering historically black colleges and universities. It said he was a 25-year Johnson Publishing employee and was instrumental in the 2003 renaming of Howard University’s School of Communications in honor of Publisher John H. Johnson, who died in 2005.

Wendy E. Parks, spokeswoman for Johnson Publishing, told Journal-isms, “I can confirm that the group publisher of EBONY and JET magazine has made the strategic decision to merge its advertising leadership to become more cohesive in meeting the challenge of its advertising needs in response to the ever-changing landscape of the overall advertising industry. Nijole S. Yutkowitz,” who was national advertising director for Jet, “will direct the advertising sales departments for both EBONY and JET magazines under the leadership of EBONY and JET group publisher, Kenard E. Gibbs.”

Parks said the editorial side was not affected by the changes.

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Short Takes

  • In a newly released survey from the Project for Excellence in Journalism, an arm of the nonpartisan Pew Research Center in Washington, “American journalists in Iraq give harrowing accounts of their work, with the great majority saying that colleagues have been kidnapped or killed and that most parts of Baghdad are too dangerous for them to visit,” Richard Perez-Pena reported Wednesday for the New York Times. “Almost two-thirds of the respondents said that most or all of their street reporting was done by local citizens, yet 87 percent said that it was not safe for their Iraqi reporters to openly carry notebooks, cameras or anything else that identified them as journalists. Two-thirds of respondents said they worried that their reliance on local reporters — including many with little or no background in journalism — could produce inaccurate or incomplete news reports.”

 
  • Black Enterprise magazine’s December issue features five different covers and a list of “America’s most powerful players under 40.” Those closest to journalism are Rosalyn Durant, 31, vice president for programming and acquisitions for ESPN, and Magnus Greaves, 33, founder of Doubledown Media. Doubledown publishes Trader Monthly, TraderDaily.com, which “reaches the trading world on a real-time basis and serves as a global community hub,” and Dealmaker, which “reaches investment bankers, private equity fund managers, CEOs, COOs and CFOs, and venture capitalists,” according to the Doubledown Web site. Among other ESPN responsibilities, Durant oversees NBA programming.
  • Bill Cosby received an endorsement from former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney during Wednesday night’s Republican presidential debate, televised on CNN. An African American YouTube questioner asked, “what about the war going on in our country, black on black crime? Two hundred to 400 black men die yearly in one city alone. What are you going to do about that war?” Romney replied, “Well, one, about the war in the inner city — number one is to get more moms and dads. That’s No. 1. And thank heavens Bill Cosby said it like it was. That’s where the root of crime starts. No. 2, we’ve got to have better education in our schools.”
  • “For years, the AP has been flying in the face of a prevailing industry trend,” Sherry Ricchiardi reports for the December/January issue of American Journalism Review. “While others are pulling out of foreign locales, the wire service has made worldwide expansion part of a master plan for future growth. To lead that effort, a new division, AP International, was established in 2003. Other stalwarts— the New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times among them — maintain a presence in the region, but not with the AP’s strength. Back home, foreign bureaus continue to fall like dominoes.”
  • Marshall Tome, who helped develop what’s now called the Navajo Times, one of the few independent Native newspapers in the country, died Friday in Fort Defiance, Ariz. He was 85 and had been battling lung disease, Felicia Fonseca reported Tuesday for the Associated Press. Tome was working as an assistant city desk editor at the San Francisco Chronicle in the late 1950s when he was asked to return to the Navajo Nation to help develop what’s now called the Navajo Times, the story said. His career also included stints at the Albuquerque (N.M.) Tribune, the Kansas City Star and as director of communications at Arizona State University, according to his son, Deswood Tome.
  • Former Los Angeles Times columnist Alisa Valdés-Rodríguez, whose 2003 book “The Dirty Girls Social Club” became a best-seller and its author proclaimed “The Godmother of Chica Lit” in Time magazine, says she’s “testing the waters” to run in New Mexico’s 1st Congressional District, Kate Nash reported Tuesday in the Albuquerque (N.M.) Tribune.
  • Noting the number of journalists who have been fired for ethical transgressions, Edward Wasserman asked on Monday in the Miami Herald, “what’s with the vindictiveness, the self-righteousness, the callousness with which media bosses respond to even marginal instances of misconduct — typically while brandishing ethical slogans that they spend little time actually grappling with, and that are nearly always more perplexing than some high-minded clause in an employee manual?”

 
  • Nigel Wheeler, a reporter at KXAS-TV in Dallas, is leaving to pursue his dream. “I’m in a rock band called Egress and we’ve decided now is the time to hit the road,” he explained on the station’s Web site. “A lot of people are wondering why my stage name has been changed to Kali Green,” he continued. “The reason is fairly simple: I want to keep my two professional lives separate. If I come back to TV I don’t want people to be confused. Kali Green is actually my middle name. Kali means Prince, Nigel means dark, so at least for now, greetings from the Dark Green Prince.”
  • “The media have been accused by some of being responsible — either wittingly or unwittingly — for instigating or provoking religious or ethnic tensions in areas of conflict or making preemptive judgments,” Thalif Deen reported from the United Nations Wednesday for Inter-Press Service. Norman Solomon, executive director of the Washington-based Institute for Public Accuracy, “said media efforts to use a religious faith as an adjective to condemn deadly violence are often self-serving; they point the finger in one direction and away from others, obscuring the truth that radical fundamentalisms are not confined to any faith.”
  • “Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez said on Wednesday CNN may have been instigating his murder when the U.S. TV network showed a photograph of him with a label underneath that read ‘Who killed him?” Reuters reported on Wednesday. “The caption appeared to be a production mistake — confusing a Chávez news item with one on the death of a football star. The anchor said ‘take the image down’ when he realized. But Chávez called for a probe in an interview on state television, where he repeatedly reviewed a tape of the broadcast.”
  • “Florida A&M University’s School of Journalism and Graphic Communication will host the Gordon Parks ‘Crossroads’ exhibit beginning Wednesday through Jan. 15 in the FAMU Black Archives,” the Tallahassee Democrat reported on Tuesday. “Individuals will be able to view 45 of Parks’ works, all selected from different areas of a career that saw Parks serve as a composer, musician, poet, photographer, journalist and a film director.”

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