Obama Says That Memories “Can’t Be Played With”
Golfweek magazine dismissed its editor on Friday barely 24 hours after the news that its new cover featured a noose prompted a chorus of negative feedback.
“We apologize for creating this graphic cover that received extreme negative reaction from consumers, subscribers and advertisers across the country,” said William P. Kupper Jr., president of Turnstile Publishing Co., the parent company of Golfweek, in a statement.
Even Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential candidate from Illinois, weighed in. He told an interviewer from American Urban Radio Networks that it showed “a lack of sensitivity to some of the profound historical and racial issues that are involved here and are obviously significant.
“We have to have a culture that understands that there’s nothing funny about a noose. That’s a profound history that people have been dealing with and those memories are ones that can’t be played with,” Obama said.
In fact, ousted editor David Seanor‘s intent was serious— unlike, it should be noted, that of comedian Katt Williams, who showed up in November at the BET Hip-Hop Awards in a pink suit and a giant noose around his neck. Williams’ antic met with no censure from BET and, by comparison, caused hardly a ripple elsewhere.
“Katt did that? All he’s doing is being Katt and trying to get some attention,” said actor-comedian Marc Curry (“Hangin’ with Mr. Cooper”), asked about Williams’ stunt by a Cincinnati Enquirer reporter in November.
BET spokeswoman Jeanine Liburd did not respond to a request for comment on Friday. [“I don’t believe we have an official comment on this,” spokeswoman Tracy McGraw said on Jan. 23.]
As the New York Times reported Friday on its Web site, “The Golfweek cover was in response to the remark by Golf Channel’s Kelly Tilghman on Jan. 4 that one way for young golfers to stop Tiger Woods is to ‘lynch him in a back alley.’ The magazine cover line reads: ‘Caught in a Noose: Tilghman slips up, and Golf Channel can’t wriggle free,’ and points readers to a special report by the weekly magazine.”
“We were trying to convey the controversial issue with a strong and provocative graphic image. It is now obvious that the overall reaction to our cover deeply offended many people. For that, we are deeply apologetic,” Kupper, the president of the company, said in his statement.
Seanor spoke later Friday with Michael Arkush of Yahoo Sports. “When race and golf are in the same sentence, people want to change the subject as soon as they can. People in golf don’t want to talk about that stuff,” he said. “I was on the floor at the PGA show, 20,000 people were milling around, maybe 30-40 of color.”
Seanor had told Journal-isms on Wednesday, “we debated long and hard” about how far to go in illustrating a debate about something that “is terribly offensive to African Americans.” He explained that his magazine received e-mails from subscribers who thought the punishment for Tilghman was an overreaction. After a discussion with his staff, he said the publication needed to give its readers a reality check on what the noose represents to African Americans.
Jeff Babineau, 45, was named the editor of the magazine, which has a circulation of 160,000, nearly all of it by subscription. Babineau has been with Golfweek for nine years, and has filled a number of roles with the magazine, including editor, deputy editor and senior writer, the magazine said.
In an interview on the Dan Patrick radio program, Babineau said he will write a story in the next issue of Golfweek to address the controversy, ESPN reported.
“Reaction to the noose drew a harsh rebuke from PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem,” the ESPN story continued.
” ‘Clearly, what Kelly said was inappropriate and unfortunate, and she obviously regrets her choice of words,’ Finchem said in a statement. ‘But we consider Golfweek’s imagery of a swinging noose on its cover to be outrageous and irresponsible. It smacks of tabloid journalism. It was a naked attempt to inflame and keep alive an incident that was heading to an appropriate conclusion.’ “
The magazine received about 100 to 150 demands for cancellations, the Times said, adding, “As far as was known, no advertisers have pulled out.”
[Sports journalist Roy S. Johnson reported on his blog on Saturday, “According to a source familiar with the events, the decision to fire Seanor came after TaylorMade, the giant golf manufacturer and one of Golfweek’s biggest advertisers, told magazine executives it would yank its advertising from the publication.”]
Word of the Golfweek cover spread after a posting Wednesday afternoon on the e-mail list of the National Association of Black Journalists Sports Task Force. Members had mixed reactions after Seanor’s dismissal.
“Just throwing this out there: should the editor’s punishment have been harsher than Kelly Tilghman’s?” one asked. “Both should’ve been punished and reprimanded sharply, but his punishment is far worse than hers — and she started the mess. Most agree that she probably didn’t have racist intentions, but do we think the editor had racist intentions? My guess is that he probably didn’t. He acted out of ignorance, just like Tilghman did. Certainly he has responsibility to know better, but so does Tilghman, whose TV voice is arguably as powerful (or more powerful).”
“Hell, i’d have been out of a job a long time ago if [my employer] reacted the same way everytime i wrote something controversial that a bunch of readers got upset about,” another said.
A third pointed to the lack of editors and writers of color at Golfweek, saying editors of color are key. “Because when you have people like us in those positions, we know where the talented brothers and sisters are.” He gave the example of a writer who had been overlooked. “I got one email pitch from him and immediately knew he was someone we needed. None of our white editors ever considered him for a job because they don’t look to bring us on. If we infiltrate the editing ranks we will break the writer ranks.” [Updated Jan. 19]
Reaction from Golfweek readers
Cedric Golden, Austin (Texas) American-Statesman: All the noose that’s fit to print— and that’s the problem [Added Jan. 19]
Rickey Hampton, Flint (Mich.) Journal: Bigger issues at stake than ‘lynching’ comment
Jemele Hill, ESPN.com: Can one awful comment change golf for better?
Gordon Jackson, Dallas Examiner: A lynching of Tiger Woods’ name?
Roy S. Johnson blog: GolfWeak Editor Whacked
Gregory Kane, Blackamericaweb.com: Not Only Does the Golf Channel’s Dimwit Anchor Need Schooling —So Does Tiger Woods
Leonard Pitts, Miami Herald: Broadcasters’s ‘Joke’: An apology, suspension — and keep on going
Shaun Powell, Newsday: Like Tiger, let’s close the case on Tilghman
John Smallwood, Philadelphia Daily News: Horrendous Noose Judgment
DeWayne Wickham, USA Today: Tiger was too quick to dismiss lynching comment
Sound bites courtesy American Urban Radio Networks.
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Talk Show Hosts Indignant Over Revocation of Award
“I can’t take these screaming savages, whether they’re in the African Methodist Church, the A.M.E. Church, or whether they’re in the streets, burning, robbing, looting.”
As this then-print column reported in 1996, that was just one of the statements that preceded the firing of New York talk-show host Bob Grant back then from WABC radio in New York. The topic was the plane crash that killed Ron Brown, the African American Democratic strategist who helped Bill Clinton win the White House. “My hunch is that he is the one survivor,” said Grant of the man who went on to become secretary of commerce. “I just have that hunch. Maybe it’s because, at heart, I’m a pessimist.”
Buckley Broadcasting Corp. of Greenwich, Conn., earned the Thumbs Down Award from the National Association of Black Journalists for picking up Grant after his firing and syndicating him to 105 markets.
Now Grant is in the center of a new controversy. Radio & Records, a radio industry magazine, awarded the 78-year-old a lifetime achievement award, then withdrew it after receiving e-mails chronicling Grant’s on-air remarks in the 1990s. They were compiled by the progressive watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting.
Grant’s conservative talk-show comrades are up in arms over the “affront to free speech,” Kara Rowland reported Thursday in the Washington Times. “Industry insiders called for a boycott of the R&R conference, to be held March 13-15 at the Renaissance Washington Hotel.” Conservative radio host Sean Hannity interviewed Grant on his syndicated show.
Rowland’s piece continued, “A 1995 FAIR article by Jim Naureckas, titled ‘50,000 Watts of Hate,’ quoted Mr. Grant as referring to Haitian refugees as ‘maggots’ and calling for policemen with machine guns to show up at a gay pride parade.
“Asked about his comments, Mr. Grant did not deny that he made them, but noted they were more than 10 years old.
“‘You mean there’s no statute of limitations?’ Mr Grant said, calling FAIR a ‘vicious’ group that has targeted him for years ‘and has not let up.’
“Phil Boyce, the WABC program director who fired and later rehired Mr. Grant, said he was ‘shocked and hugely disappointed’ by the decision to rescind the award.
“‘R&R has egg on their face. At the same convention where they are banning Bob Grant, Al Sharpton gets to come and lecture program directors like me about what is good and just and fair on the radio,’ he said. ‘Yeah, there are some things that Bob said years ago he shouldn’t have said. He paid the price, and that’s 10 years ago.'”
Boyce recently hired Don Imus last month for WABC after his April firing from CBS Radio and MSNBC for his “nappy headed ho’s” remark. He seemingly didn’t address the fact that, with the very title of the award, the publication’s seal of approval covers the honoree’s performance over his or her lifetime.
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Chauncey Bailey’s Publisher Reports Death Threat
“Police placed Oakland Post publisher Paul Cobb and another man under protection Wednesday night after the man said two men he knew to be once associated with Your Black Muslim Bakery offered him $3,000 to lure Cobb to a place where they intended to kill him,” Thomas Peele reported Thursday for the Chauncey Bailey Project.
“The threat came five months after the Post’s editor, Chauncey Bailey, was shot to death as he walked to work on Aug. 2 near Alice and 14th streets. A bakery associate, Devaughndre Broussard, then 19, confessed the next day to killing Bailey because the journalist was planning a story [on the] business’s troubled finances, police said. Broussard later recanted and is awaiting trial.
“Cobb made a series of phone calls to city officials and police Chief Wayne Tucker on Wednesday night asking for protection for him and for the man. ‘I am worried for my safety and for my wife’s safety,’ he said.”
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After Long Week, Bob Johnson Apologizes to Obama
“Bob Johnson, the controversial founder of BET, apologized Thursday to Sen. Barack Obama for his impromptu remarks . . . criticizing the Democratic presidential candidate’s admitted drug use as a teenager and referring to Obama as Sidney Poitier,” BlackAmericaWeb com reported on Friday, using material from the Associated Press.
“‘I’m writing to apologize to you and your family personally for the un-called-for comments I made at a recent Clinton event,’ Johnson said in a statement. ‘In my zeal to support Senator Clinton, I made some very inappropriate remarks, for which I am truly sorry. I hope that you will accept this apology. Good luck on the campaign trail.’
“Obama spokesman Bill Burton responded Thursday, saying, ‘Obama accepts the apology. We’re going to leave it at that.'”
Johnson’s comments, made Sunday, were widely denounced. Hillary Clinton said in Tuesday debate in Las Vegas that they were “out of bounds.” Johnson insisted throughout the week he was referring to Obama’s community work in Chicago, not to drug use.
Friday’s story reported that some thought Johnson’s apology did not go far enough.
Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson was asked Monday by MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann why the Clintons just didn’t cut Johnson loose.
“Well, you know, I think from the Clintons’ point of view, he’s not an easy man to break with,” Robinson said. “He signed on to the Clinton side very early. His doing so helped some other prominent African Americans feel comfortable in doing that even though they knew that Obama would probably run, for a long time . . . They had vacationed at his place in the Caribbean. He is by the way a billionaire. You know, he’s not an easy man to dismiss. So, I don’t think they want to do that. I think they want to pretend that that just kind of never really happened and let’s all get along now.”
Eric Easter, ebonyjet.com: Media Mix: The Surrogate Shuffle
Nathan McCall, Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Clinton gets proxy to play race card
Ruben Navarrette, San Diego Union-Tribune: Democrats race to the bottom
Don Wycliff, Chicago Tribune: In the video age, any doubts, go to the tape
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2 Journalists of Color to Ask Questions at CNN Debate
As the nation honors the 79th birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. , on Monday, CNN plans to broadcast the latest Democratic presidential primary debate from Myrtle Beach, S.C., and a live “Anderson Cooper 360º special” about the influence of race upon politics in America.
Two journalists of color, CNN correspondents Joe Johns and Suzanne Malveaux, will be panelists questioning the candidates, and CNN’s lead political anchor, Wolf Blitzer, will serve as moderator for the two-hour debate, which airs from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. Eastern time and is hosted by the Congressional Black Caucus Institute, the network said.
At 11 p.m., CNN plans a live, one-hour “Race & Politics: America Votes 2008” special on “Anderson Cooper 360º.” “Anchors Cooper and Soledad O’Brien guide viewers through some of the issues related to race that may impact how America votes. O’Brien will focus on black evangelical Christians and GOP efforts to attract these traditional Democratic voters, while Cooper will moderate a panel of guests, including Amy Holmes and Roland Martin, who will discuss the most pressing political topics related to race in the current presidential campaign.”
As reported on Wednesday, MSNBC promised a debate in Las Vegas Tuesday that would “focus on issues important to minority voters.”
But though the event was sponsored by the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, 100 Black Men of America, a Latino political action committee, the Democratic African-American Leadership Council, the College of Southern Nevada and the Nevada Democratic Party, the questions were asked by Brian Williams and Tim Russert — NBC’s two most prominent journalists, but both white males — with Natalie Morales, a Latina, pitching e-mailed questions from voters. The groups said not many of their suggested questions were asked.
Michael Chabon, Huffington Post: Hey, Louis Farrakhan and Richard Cohen: You Can’t Scare Me
Richard Cohen, Washington Post: Obama’s Farrakhan Test
Desiree Cooper, Detroit Free Press: She’s living, teaching the King dream
Mary C. Curtis, Charlotte (N.C.) Observer: Even abroad I can’t avoid U.S. politics
Lewis Diuguid, Kansas City Star: Dr. King’s greatest dream remains unfulfilled
Hazel Trice Edney, National Newspaper Publishers Association: King’s Son, Others Warn on His Birthday: Don’t Be Mystified By Historic Candidacies
Bill Fletcher, Blackcommentator.com: Why I Got Angry After New Hampshire
Emil Guillermo, AsianWeek: ‘Nobama’: Why is Obama Snubbing Asian Americans?
Howard Kurtz, Washington Post: Chris Matthews Backs Off ‘Nasty’ Remark on Clinton
Rhonda Chriss Lokeman, Kansas City Star: Good Karl, bad Karl
Errol Louis, New York Daily News: It’s a big mistake to forget cities
Ana Menendez, Miami Herald: Democrats get only cardboard candidates
Mary Mitchell, Chicago Sun-Times: Obama might be the candidate who can bridge the racial divide
Clarence Page, Chicago Tribune: Big fuss over small differences
David Person, Huntsville (Ala.) Times: Getting the vote of black Democrats
Dr. Barbara A. Reynolds, National Newspaper Publishers Association: Clinton vs. Obama: Where My Loyalty Lies
Eugene Robinson, Washington Post: The Hard Choice Is Now
David Roybal, Albuquerque (N.M.) Journal: Richardson-Clinton Uproar Much Ado About Money
Marisa Treviño, LatinaLista blog: Media Trying to Decipher the Nevada Hispanic Vote Strikes a Raw Nerve With Latino Community
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Short Takes
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David Squires |
“My deputy sports editor position was eliminated after the most recent round of cuts at the Daily Press,” David Squires told readers Friday in his final sports column for the Newport News, Va., paper. “The Daily Press is keeping me on staff in the new role, reporting on Urban Affairs, for lack of a better phrase. So now you can call me a reporter.”
“Because we live in an age when social media sites are our daily bread, it seems natural to turn to them as resources for writing a story,” Jennifer Woodard Maderazo wrote for PBS’ Mediashift Web page. “When I wrote a piece about the popularity of Facebook all over the world, I went straight to Facebook to get the user interviews I needed. And when I wrote about the Brazilian success of social networking site Orkut, I simply joined the community and introduced myself to potential subjects.” Her piece is called, “The Benefits and Pitfalls of Using Social Media for Reporting.”
“Year 2007 started off looking poorly for consumer magazines, and it pretty much ended that way, with ad pages down slightly for the year, falling by 0.8 percent from the prior year’s total, to 251,577.74, when Sunday magazines are included in the roundup, according to the Publishers Information Bureau,” Lisa Snedeker reported Thursday for Media Life Magazine. “By and large, 2007 was a year of retrenchment for America’s magazine publishers as they struggled against further incursions by the internet, in terms of reader and advertiser defections. There were fewer launches but more closings.”
“As black cartoonists prepare to take part in a comics-page action, a number of white cartoonists contacted by E&P had some positive things to say about the Feb. 10 effort,” Dave Astor reported Thursday for Editor & Publisher. “On Feb. 10, at least eight African-American cartoonists will draw similar comics to satirize the way many newspaper editors think their work is interchangeable — even though strips by black cartoonists are as different from each other as strips by white cartoonists.”
A federal policy prohibiting death row inmates from conducting face-to-face interviews with reporters might have been enacted for political rather than safety reasons, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Indianapolis (7th Circuit) ruled on Tuesday, Amy Harder wrote for the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. “The three-judge panel sent the case back to the trial court, which had upheld the Bureau of Prisons’ (BOP) rule banning face-to-face interviews.”
“Stephanie Mehta, a veteran writer at Fortune, has been named Global Editor of Fortune (in effect the foreign editor of the magazine),” the South Asian Journalists Association reported this week. “Mehta, whose father is from India and whose mother is from the Philippines, is one of four journalists of South Asian origin to hold similar titles at major U.S. magazines. Fareed Zakaria is editor of Newsweek International; Nisid Hajari is foreign editor of Newsweek; and Bobby Ghosh is international editor of Time (a job Romesh Ratnesar held before him).”
Luis Jiménez, a popular and edgy Hispanic morning-radio host last in this column after being suspended for a month over homophobic comments, “cracks the morning mike ” now at New York’s WCAA-FM after 14 years as morning co-host at WSKQ-FM, David Hinckley reported Thursday in the New York Daily News. The station “is paying him a reported $5 million a year to help break WSKQ’s dominance.”
With the label “White House Boys Dancing,” Wonkette features a video captioned thus: “In a break from more traditional reporting duties, NBC reporter (and Bush-baiter extraordinaire) David Gregory helps white boys everywhere learn to show their appreciation for the awesomeness that is Mary J. Blige.”
“Belo8 quietly has folded La Vida, aimed at Hispanic viewers, and Metro, which targeted a black audience,” Dallas television writer Ed Bark wrote Wednesday on his blog. “Its respective anchors, Henry Guerrero and Angelique Tege, now are co-anchoring the new Young Street, which premiered on Jan. 6th. The station describes it as ‘a look at the lifestyles of young adults in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, including music, nightlife, food and fashion.'”
“Only one word comes to mind” in discussing New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina —fortitude— “and nowhere is the trait more apparent than in the stories of the new immigrants and ethnic media,” Christine Senteno wrote Thursday for New America Media.
Sandra Endo is joining CNN Newsource’s Washington, D.C., bureau, serving as a national correspondent and ” reporting live from the scene of breaking news events and from the nation’s capital, providing live reports for more than 800 CNN Newsource partner stations,” the network announced on Thursday. Endo arrives from the New York cable channel NY1, where she was the lead political reporter.
“Reporters Without Borders today reiterated its call for the release of 24 detained Cuban journalists as the population prepared to vote— but not choose, as there is no choice —its representatives in national and provincial assembly elections to be held on 20 January,” the organization said on Thursday.
“Running battles erupted across Kenya on Wednesday after the country’s opposition leader called for three days of nationwide protests against the outcome of last month’s presidential elections,” CNN reported on Wednesday. “Journalists were caught up in the melee, including CNN’s Zain Verjee, who was hit in the back with a tear gas canister as she reported outside Nairobi’s Uhuru Park, where the opposition planned a protest rally.”
The Western story line on Kenya’s crisis is “equally about a western anthropology that figures conflict in Africa only in tribal terms; an Africa whose existence is so basic it must not be understood beyond the discourse of the tribe,” George Ogola wrote Wednesday in Nairobi’s Business Daily. Meanwhile, Timothy J. McNulty, public editor at the Chicago Tribune, referencing this column’s discussion of the word “tribe,” wrote Friday, “Paul Salopek, the Chicago Tribune’s Africa correspondent, said he understands that Western-oriented readers may think of the word tribe from a racial angle, but he said 99 percent of Africans use the word tribe or tribal proudly. He said if he used the term ‘ethnic group’ in its place, it would puzzle his sources.”
In Afghanistan, “Reporters Without Borders is very worried about the pressure being placed on the authorities by conservative religious leaders in the case of Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh, a young journalist in the northern province of Balkh who has been detained since late October 2007 on charges of blasphemy and defaming Islam. The Council of Mullahs says he should be sentenced to death. ‘The calls for the death penalty for Kambakhsh highlight the growing influence of fundamentalist groups on intellectual debate,’ the organisation said. ‘The blasphemy charges are an ill-disguised attempt to hide the desire of the local authorities to restrict press freedom,'” Reporters Without Borders said on Thursday.