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“Call to Battle” Over FCC Decision

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Further Slide Feared for Minority Ownership

“Congressional opponents of media consolidation are greeting the FCC’s vote to ease its media-ownership rules as a call to battle, and they are promising the fight isn’t over,” Ira Teinowitz reported Tuesday in TV Week.

 

“We’re not done with this, not by a long shot,” said Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., hours after the FCC vote.

The advocacy group Free Press said, “Racial and ethnic minorities make up 34 percent of the U.S. population. Yet they only own 7.7 percent of full-power radio stations; 3.15 percent of television stations.

“The FCC’s Dec. 18th decision to relax media ownership rules will make this situation even worse.”

[On Thursday, the National Association of Black Journalists called on Congress to reverse the decision.]

As Stephen Labaton reported in the New York Times, “The Federal Communications Commission approved two new rules on Tuesday that are likely to reshape the nation’s media landscape by setting new parameters for the size and scope of the largest news and cable companies.

One of the rules, “which gives owners of newspapers more leeway to buy radio and television stations in the largest cities, is a step in the direction of deregulation. It is intended to help the newspaper industry, which is suffering from dwindling advertising revenue, and to recognize that the historical conditions that gave rise to cross-ownership restrictions have changed, now that more news sources are available on the Internet and cable television.”

Under that change, “The commission will presume that newspaper-broadcast combinations in the top 20 markets are in the public interest so long as eight independent voices, including newspapers, remain and the stations are not among the top four in the market. It will also allow newspaper-radio combinations but require no voices test,” John Eggerton explained in Broadcasting & Cable.

“But the change drew criticism from newspaper executives, who said it was too modest to be meaningful, and from prominent lawmakers and commission Democrats, who called it a Christmas present to the nation’s largest conglomerates,” the Times story said.

Some also suggested that when newspapers in the top 20 markets covered by the FCC ruling wouldlook to TV stations to buy, the few minority-owned ones would be targeted because they would be cheaper.

Separately, however, the FCC pleased another media advocacy group, the Minority Media and Telecommunications Council, by adopting 12 minority-ownership proposals and putting 13 more out for comment.

Among them is “A ban on racial discrimination in broadcast advertising. This historic civil rights action— 23 years after it was first sought by the National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters (NABOB) — should spell the end of written and unwritten ‘no-urban’ and ‘no-Spanish’ dictates by which some advertisers refuse to consider Black and Spanish stations for ad buys,” the group said. “Based on the FCC’s own research, MMTC estimates that the FCC’s action today should produce a 5-10% increase in revenue for Black and Spanish radio specialists.”

That aside, it was the FCC’s decision to partly relax the newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership ban, made on a party line 3-2 vote, that drew the most reaction.

“Today the FCC failed to further the important goal of promoting diversity in the media and instead chose to put big corporate interests ahead of the people’s interests,” Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., said.

Obama was one of 25 senators who signed a letter to FCC Chairman Kevin Martin warning that they will move on legislation to nullify the FCC vote, according to RadioInk.

Commissioner Michael Copps agreed. “I think we are going to have more consolidation and to the extent that we have more consolidation, that makes for less diversity of voices and less localism for the American people, and I think that is bad,” he told Broadcasting & Cable.

The National Association of Hispanic Journalists was among the groups urging Martin “to postpone your vote . . . to lift the newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership rules until you first address the issue of minority ownership.”

It noted that the General Accountability Office found that the number of women- and minority-owned broadcast outlets “appears to be limited.”

Reps. Jay Inslee, D-Wash., and Dave Reichert, R-Wash., introduced legislation on Wednesday that would overturn the new media cross-ownership rules, the Free Press group reported.

Philly “Anchorbabe” Providing Fodder for Tabloids

Tabloid journalism is having a field day with the story of Alycia Lane, an anchor on Philadelphia’s KYW-TV whom “local newspapers dubbed . . . Philly’s anchorbabe, a Latina bombshell, and the sexiest face in town,” as Tanya Barrientos wrote two years ago in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

 

Lane, 35, is accused of punching a New York police officer in the face and yelling derogatory remarks at her. The story dominated the front pages of both the New York Post and the Philadelphia Daily News on Monday, and the Philly papers are not about to let the story die.

According to Regina Medina and Dan Gross, writing Wednesday in the Philadelphia Daily News, “Lane’s lawyer, David Smith, who has represented ‘Simple Life’ star Nicole Richie and New York publicist Lizzie Grubman, said Lane had been ‘accosted by several individuals wearing plainclothes.’

“‘They attempted to grab her camera to prevent her from taking photographs of an altercation they [plainsclothes people] were involved in,’ Smith said. ‘Miss Lane was shocked to learn after the fact that these individuals were police officers.’

“New York City cops have a different version.

“About 2 a.m. Sunday, the twice-divorced Lane, new love Q102 radio morning host [Chris] Booker and the other couple were inside a cab, which was behind a slow-moving vehicle containing three plainclothes police officers, police said.

“One of the men inside the cab jumped out and ran over to the unmarked police car and, soon afterward, the officers identified themselves, a New York police spokesman said.

“A male officer tried to walk the ‘intoxicated’ man back to the cab when Lane began to take pictures, according to the New York County district attorney’s complaint. Tenth Precinct Officer Bernadette Enchautegui grabbed Lane’s arm, holding the camera, to move it away from the officer’s face, the complaint said. Then Lane said, ‘I don’t give a f— who you are. I am a reporter, you f—ing dyke,’ the document said.

“Station sources said they were shocked to learn that Lane’s bosses had been apprised of the arrest by a Daily News reporter who called the station on Sunday.

“Her arrest — first reported on Gross’ new blog Phillygossip.com — and her alleged words have become part of pop culture and trendy fashion. Alycia Lane parody T-shirts, buttons and stickers have hit the Internet.

“NB2 Apparel has an ‘I’m a F**king TV Reporter, Bitch’ T-shirt, and designs from ‘Free Alycia’ to the profane, ‘I Don’t Give A F— Who You Are, I’m A Reporter, You F—ing Dyke’ are available now at cafepress.com.”

Lane is the third of four children born to a Puerto Rican mother and a father of Welsh descent, Barrientos wrote in a 2005 profile.

Tuesday’s update was the station announced that Lane would begin a planned two-week, end-of-year vacation a week early. “Her name and image were stripped from station promos, and her work on the station’s holiday special, airing tonight, was edited out,” the Inquirer reported.

“Observers say her return to her $700,000-a-year anchor job hinges not only on her legal case— a felony charge of second-degree assault that could take months to resolve — but the court of public opinion,” Michael Klein wrote.

Wednesday’s was that Lane “cried on the shoulder of Pennsylvania’s governor after she was accused of slugging a Manhattan cop,” as the New York Daily News reported.

“She didn’t ask me for anything,” Gov. Ed Rendell insisted in a Philadelphia radio interview,” the News said. “Rendell said Lane simply ‘wanted someone to hear her side of the story. I guess she respects me and because she can’t get it out publicly,’ he added.”

“Mothersucka” Anchor Wins Her Job Back

The Atlanta anchor who was fired after the station accused her of uttering “m—–f—–” during her newscast is being reinstated after the anchor appealed the decision, saying she was misheard.

 

Cari Champion

“Effective January 7, 2008, Cari Champion will rejoin the news team here at WGCL-TV,” the Meredith Corp.-owned station said in a statement. “Cari has accepted responsibility for the incident that occurred on the November 11 late newscast, and will be making a statement to the news team here shortly after her return. We welcome her back.”

Champion, a weekend co-anchor, had maintained that she used the word “mothersucka” and that she does not curse.

“I stand by my story I originally shared with you….word for word,” she told Journal-isms.

“I’m happy Meredith investigated the incident and concluded it was the right decision to reinstate me. I had tons of support from friends, family and the community during my time off…emails, letters and phone calls.

“Now I look forward to working in a city that I love…. doing what I love to do.”

Champion told Journal-isms on Nov. 21, “I was talking to my co-anchor during a commercial break. The floor director did not cue me or my co-anchor, and when it was time to tease an upcoming story, you could only hear us but not see us.

“My co-anchor and I were talking about a mechanical screenwriter. It is difficult to use at times. The last part of our conversation was silly banter and barely audible, but it was picked up. I called the screenwriter a ‘mothersucka’ not the f-bomb. I emphatically deny any attempted cover up of the mishap. In fact I was the one who brought it to the attention of the news directors. And, the beta tape, wherever it is, has conversation that clearly supports my position.”

When she returns, she said, “I’m going to thank Meredith. I will also apologize to anyone and the station if anyone was upset and or embarrassed by the incident.” Champion said she could not comment on whether she was reimbursed for the time she was off the air.

Series on Suburban Cops Finds Black Resentment

“In area towns, nuisance laws result in a disproportionate number of arrests of African Americans, often by nearly all-white police forces,” the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote on Saturday as it began a three-part series, “Too Tough? Tactics in suburban policing.”

“The Inquirer spent more than a year analyzing arrest data, studying court records, observing police, and conducting scores of interviews in cities and towns in Southeastern Pennsylvania and across the state,” the first article, by Mark Fazlollah, Dylan Purcell and Keith Herbert, said.

“Among the findings:

“Many of the laws used to make these arrests are so vague and poorly drafted that experts say they violate the Constitution. More than 4,000 people in Pennsylvania have been arrested since 2000 under local loitering statutes, including some that outlaw standing in public or “hanging out.”

“Despite a national trend toward more diverse police forces, the suburban departments embracing these high-arrest tactics are nearly all white and, in some cases, getting whiter — a gulf that increases tensions and creates mistrust between police and communities.

“Some police departments and Pennsylvania county jails routinely strip-search all defendants, including those arrested on minor nuisance laws — though federal courts have consistently ruled that such blanket strip-search policies are unconstitutional.

“Although these policies can help curb serious crime, at least temporarily, their long-term record is mixed at best. In Darby, Pottstown and Coatesville, serious crime has gone up since 2000, statistics show.

“These high-arrest policies now in vogue in many cities across Pennsylvania and the nation also come with a cost.

“The tactics can — and often do — go awry, resulting in the arrest of many innocent people, and creating resentment and racial strains in community after community, The Inquirer’s review shows. “

 

Robin Stone Writes About Gerald Boyd’s Last Days

“It was November 5, 2006, the day of our son’s tenth birthday, when I came to accept that my husband, Gerald, was dying,” Robin D. Stone writes in the January issue of Essence magazine. “Gerald” is Gerald M. Boyd, the only African American to become managing editor of the New York Times, who died on Thanksgiving 2006.

Stone explains, “at some point, we will all lose someone who means the whole world to us, and that loss will devastate us. . . . this story is about finding a way to make sense of that loss, about finding solace in words and deeds whose only reason was love.”

In her narrative, she writes:

“Gerald had been adamant that we keep our long-ago promise of a great big birthday party, even though he could barely sit up and watch. Just nine months before, a seizure had sent him to the hospital. Cancer had already spread from his lung to his brain. Doctors termed it stage IV metastasis— the highest number, with the slimmest chance of recovery. My husband shared news of his illness with family only and asked me not to tell any but our closest friends. Until the very end, I honored his request. And so the two of us, with our son, Zachary, began our final journey together.

“I had known for some time that Gerald was growing weaker, but he did not want to acknowledge that the cancer was winning. And I willfully lived in his world, parroting the optimism of doctors who said we had a chance to get on top of this thing. In his world, we shuttled between experts and treatments, hoping for miracles — or at least some extra time. In his world, we inched up the 37 stairs to the bedroom of our Harlem brownstone each day, as if that’s what a man with advanced lung cancer was supposed to do. And in his world, we celebrated Zachary’s birthday with bowling and pizza and ice cream for 20, just as we had promised we would. Yes, it was Gerald’s world. And in this world, not once did we discuss the fact that he was going to die.”

Joyce Davis Leaves Prague for Pa. Broadcaster

Joyce M. Davis left Prague, Czech Republic, on Tuesday, for Harrisburg, Pa., trading a job as associate director of broadcasting for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty for one in public broadcasting as director of content development for Harrisburg’s WITF-TV, WITF-FM and Central Pa. magazine.

 

 

She starts there in mid-January. “We were looking for someone who would bring professional leadership to as many of those platforms as possible,” Kathleen Pavelko, WITF’s president and CEO, told Journal-isms. In addition to her experience in radio, Davis brings “significant, deep journalism experience at the executive level.” Since the broadcast outlets are in the state capital, “it was important for us to have someone whose journalism credentials were sterling,” Pavelko said. Moreover, Davis’ “personal qualities of leadership — consensus building, teacm building — were evident from the moment we were introduced.” With a staff of 32, “we needed an individual who could lead a creative and quarrelsome” team, Pavelko said.

Davis joined Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in 2003 after being a foreign editor in the Knight Ridder Washington Bureau and, before that, a senior foreign editor for National Public Radio.

Davis, one of the few African Americans in mainstream journalism who is a specialist on Islamic countries, wrote “Martyrs: Innocence, Vengeance and Despair in the Middle East” and “Between Jihad and Salaam: Profiles in Islam”. She was traveling on Wednesday and could not be reached.

13 DuPont-Columbia Award Winners Announced

An episode of Chicago Public Radio’s “This American Life” about the disintegration of an assimilated Muslim family in New Jersey, who faced discrimination after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, was one of 13 winners of the 2008 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards for broadcast journalism, Columbia University announced on Monday.

Other winners included:

NAACP’s Crisis Debuts Under Asim; to Go Quarterly

The NAACP’s magazine the Crisis has published its first issue under new editor in chief Jabari Asim, celebrating “Black Genius.” Asim also told Journal-isms the magazine plans to reduce its frequency from every other month to quarterly to cut costs.

 

Asim was chosen to edit the venerable publication, established by the NAACP in 1910 with W.E.B. DuBois as founding editor, while Asim was deputy editor of the Washington Post Book World. He started his new job Aug. 20.

The November/December issue, with playwright August Wilson on the cover, also features a q-and-a with Morehouse President Robert Franklin Jr.; a column by Asim that argues against a recent Pew Center study that said African Americans may no longer be one race; an article by Todd S. Burroughs highlighting a movement of black women working to quell negative media images of African American women, the story of Jack Trice, a football player who died at 21 and is the only African American to have a college stadium named after him.

Asim said the publication would go quarterly “for a year or two,” and planned “Definitely more cultural emphasis, which is my background.”

Black Critics Name “Great Debaters” Best of ’07

“The Great Debaters,” a Denzel Washington-directed, Oprah Winfrey-produced film about historically black Wiley College winning a national debating championship in 1935, was voted best picture of 2007 by the African-American Film Critics Association.

Don Cheadle was chosen best actor and Kasi Lemmons best director for “Talk to Me.” Marion Cotillard best actress for “La Vie en Rose,” Ruby Dee best supporting actress for “American Gangster” and Chiwetel Ejiofor best supporting actor for the same film. Charles Burnett received the group’s Special Achievement Honor.

Its top 10 films were, in order: “Great Debaters,” “American Gangster,” “Talk to Me,” “Gone Baby Gone,” No Country for Old Men,” “Michael Clayton,” “Juno,” “Sweeney Todd,” “Things We Lost in the Fire” and “There Will Be Blood.”

Filmmaker Recalls Last Dinner With St. Clair Bourne

St. Clair Bourne, the pioneering filmmaker who died Saturday at age 64, will be remembered at a memorial service on Friday, Jan. 25, at 7 p.m. at Riverside Church in New York, his writing collaborator, Lou Potter, told Journal-isms.

 

St. Clair Bourne

Los Angeles-based Topper Carew, a fellow African American filmmaker, remembered his last meeting with his colleague this way:

“When word came to me over the weekend of St. Clair’s death, it came as a shock. We had recently been together in Jackson, Miss., to speak on a filmmaker’s panel. On Nov. 14, the night I arrived in Jackson, I ran into Saint in the hotel lobby. We decided to have dinner together.

“At dinner, he spoke excitedly about his new film. A documentary about the civil rights photographer, Ernest Withers. About the progress of his film on the Panther party. About recapturing the rights to some of his work. And, most excitedly, about organizing and cataloging thousands of his own photographs for exhibit and for sale. I had forgotten about Saint’s photographic talents. And in keeping with Mississippi, he proudly announced that he had photographed James Meredith’s and Dr. King’s marches through Mississippi. My other memory of our dinner was him being adamant about having some catfish.

“The next morning, we spoke on the panel. The audience of mostly filmmakers spoke of their high appreciation for his blog. ‘There is nothing else like it.’ He humbly asserted that he wanted to take it to a higher level but was technologically challenged. He was practically apologetic.

“The day wore on and the conferees returned to the hotel after dinner. Saint said he was retiring for the night and went to his room and minutes had passed and Saint reappeared. Cool. That happens. He joined another filmmaker and myself. We talked. After a while, I said goodnight to them both and left them to their conversation.

“The next day at the conference site, St. Clair was nowhere to be seen. I assume he had left or had other business. That night, the conference was taken offsite to a posh Jackson restaurant. We were just settling into the salad course when in walked Saint. I had one more seat in my booth and invited him to join us. It was then that we learned where he had been. Saint had come downstairs the night before because he had felt a numbness in one of his arms and legs. During our conversation in the lobby, he made no mention of it. But he must have said something to the brother who was with us. And coincidentally, that brother is producing a series on black health. And where had St. Clair been? The ‘medical brother’ took him to the hospital where he spent the night and all of the next day undergoing tests. No one at the conference knew until that night at dinner. All were deeply concerned. He assured us that they had given him every possible test, but had found nothing.

“Back at the hotel, we had one more Jackson conversation. In it, he expressed a concern about “people not doing enough”. It was the honest, dedicated, humane, concerned, consistent, true to the game, challenging voice of St. Clair.

“The last I heard from him was the ‘Chamba Notes’ re: his upcoming surgery. I immediately wrote back to him offering any help that he might need. I never heard back. He remained in my thoughts. And then, “the news.” He is a real loss to the planet. He will be missed.”

Short Takes

 

David M. Lewis

 

Maria Reeve
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