Empire State May Swear In Its First Black Governor
The New York Times Monday broke the story reporting that New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, “who gained national prominence relentlessly pursuing Wall Street wrongdoing,” was caught on a federal wiretap arranging to meet with a high-priced prostitute at a Washington hotel last month.
Spitzer called a very brief news conference in which he apologized but did not specify for what. Republicans called for the Democratic governor to step down, and if he does, the nation would have a second sitting African American governor in David A. Paterson, now the lieutenant governor. Deval Patrick is in his first term as governor of Massachusetts.
Writing on the New York Observer Web site Monday afternoon, John Koblin said, “A team of New York Times metro and investigation reporters and editors have been working since yesterday afternoon to break the story of Eliot Spitzer’s alleged involvement with a prostitution ring, according to a newsroom source.
“The group of editors were led by metro editor Joe Sexton . . . metro political editor Carolyn Ryan and investigation editors Matthew Purdy, Kevin Flynn and Ian Urbina.
“The team of reporters was led by Danny Hakim, the Albany reporter . . . .”
(The story mistakenly reported that the team included David Chen, a reporter in the paper’s Trenton, N.J., bureau. Chen told Journal-isms he was not involved.)
Sewell Chan, a prolific Metro reporter, explained the story in a podcast on the Times Web site.
Among those covering the story for other news organizations were Erika Hayasaki of the Los Angeles Times and Keith Richburg of the Washington Post.
On the other side of the reporter’s notebook was Errol Cockfield, Newsday’s former Albany bureau chief and former board member of the National Association of Black Journalists, who left the paper last year and is now Spitzer’s press secretary. Cockfield, who works with communications director Christine Anderson, said he would have no comment.
“In New York, local stations broke into afternoon programming to carry the story,” John Eggerton reported for Broadcasting & Cable. “But a technical problem deprived them from showing live images of the actual moment,” Richard Huff added in Tuesday’s editions of the New York Daily News.
The Associated Press reported that the Times Web site suffered substantial delays Monday as traffic spiked following its reports on Spitzer.
“Times spokeswoman Diane McNulty said the site saw 60 percent more traffic between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. than it did a week earlier, forcing its information technology staff to juggle Web servers to keep up,” the AP said.
Eggerton wrote in Broadcasting & Cable: “Spitzer won a landslide victory as governor in 2006 on a record of cleaning up the city. He pursued various music companies over charges that they paid for radio airplay, securing millions of dollars in settlements from Entercom Communications, BMG and Warner Music, among others. He also wound up subpoenaing broadcast groups.
“As attorney general, Spitzer was publicly critical of the Federal Communications Commission for not cracking down on payola . . . FCC commissioner Jonathan Adelstein told the FCC at the time that it hadn’t gotten a lot of evidence until it was able to go over Spitzer’s ‘wealth of solid material.’ “
Paterson would become New York’s first legally blind as well as its first African American governor. He came to the No. 2 post after serving in the state Senate since 1985.
New York Daily News columnist Errol Louis was not pleased when Spitzer chose him as his running mate.
“At a time when voters are demanding reform, Paterson is an Albany insider who has often ended up on the wrong side of ethical questions,” Louis wrote in January 2006.
“As my colleague Joe Mahoney pointed out in a Daily News article last year, for instance, Paterson held a closed-door meeting in February 2005 with leaders of the Oneida Indian Nation who run the state’s largest casino and were lobbying hard to kill a possible rival casino in the Catskills.
“The Oneida Nation had given $5,000 to Paterson’s campaign and $45,000 to the Senate Democratic Campaign Committee, which Paterson controls, weeks before the meeting. Blair Horner of the good-government New York Public Interest Research Group said the closed meeting ‘stinks to high heaven.’
“Other ethics issues came up last year when records showed that two men on Paterson’s staff were also registered lobbyists who often work on political campaigns, one of whom quit the public payroll the day after Election Day in 2004. Paterson claimed ignorance of the dual status of his staffers.”
Editor & Publisher: The Emperor’s No Clothes: More Papers Jump on Spitzer Scandal
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Mississippi Outlets Prepare for Tuesday’s Primary
“For the first time in a long time, Mississippi is a player in the presidential race,” Don Hudson, managing editor of the Jackson (Miss.) Clarion-Ledger, told Journal-isms on Monday.
“We’re doing a little bit of everything here, from blogging on Obama’s visit (he’s here this evening at Jackson State) to expanded coverage for Tuesday and Wednesday’s online and print editions,” he said, referring to Sen. Barack Obama.
“Despite all the hype, our secretary of state is predicting a low to moderate turnout. He is, however, expecting a higher turnout than in the 2004 presidential primary.” Mississippi’s primary Tuesday is the last contest before Pennsylvania’s in six weeks.
Meanwhile, Ira Teinowitz reported in TV Week that more than $40 million could be spent in Pennsylvania in the weeks leading up to the April 22 primary, quoting Evan Tracey, chief operating officer of TNS Media Intelligence’s Campaign Media Analysis Group.
“For media companies, the political spending has been welcome news amidst reports of pullbacks from auto makers, car dealers and real estate and financial services companies, although there remains doubt political advertising will fully make up for those losses,” Teinowitz wrote.
Several public editors wrote over the weekend that readers continued to watch for perceived slights to one candidate or another.
“Perhaps it’s getting harder to cover a presidential election these days. Or maybe it’s just that readers are more partisan and watching more closely,” C.B. Hanif wrote in the Palm Beach (Fla.) Post.
“If any campaign organization in the history of politics has believed that its side got a fair shake from the newspapers that covered it, I have seen no evidence of it,” Ted Diadiun, reader representative in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, wrote on Sunday.
At the New York Times, “For several weeks, my associate, Michael McElroy, and I have been counting and comparing photographs, counting and ranking articles as positive or negative for one candidate or the other, reading coverage and staff blogs on nytimes.com, and looking back through an extensive body of enterprise reporting on Clinton and Obama,” Clark Hoyt wrote, referring to Sen. Hillary Clinton.
“Some of what we found may surprise some readers. It has caused me to conclude that The Times has not been systematically biased in its news coverage, even if it has occasionally given ammunition to those who claim otherwise.”
On the Web site of the Columbia Journalism Review, Zachary Roth wrote on Friday, “More than a week after John McCain‘s endorsement by the anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic pastor John Hagee, the media continues to give the GOP nominee a free pass.
” . . . One would think that when a leading presidential candidate proudly touts the support of such a figure, the issue would receive close scrutiny from the press. But last week, once McCain assured reporters that, just because Hagee was endorsing him, it didn’t mean he agreed with everything Hagee said, the mainstream media essentially let the matter drop.”
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Ethics of Printing “Off the Record” Remark Debated
“I am surprised that there has been almost no comment on the journalistic ethics — or lack of them — that led to the resignation of Samantha Power as Barack Obama‘s foreign policy adviser,” Roy Greenslade wrote Monday on his media blog for Britain’s Guardian newspaper. “You may recall that she stepped down on Friday after it was reported that she had called Hillary Clinton a monster.
“Power was in London at the time to promote a book. I watched her being interviewed about Obama’s policies by Jeremy Paxman on ‘Newsnight on Thursday,’ . . . next day came the bombshell when The Scotsman carried a story headlined ‘Hillary Clinton’s a monster’: Obama aide blurts out attack in Scotsman interview. Political correspondent Gerri Peev explained that ‘in an unguarded moment’ while discussing Clinton’s forceful campaign in the Ohio primary Power said: ‘She is a monster, too — that is off the record — she is stooping to anything.’ Peev added that Ms. Power was ‘hastily trying to withdraw her remark.'”
Peev’s editor, Mike Gilson, said in defense of publishing the story, “I do not know of a case when anyone has been able to withdraw on the record quotes after they have been made.” The interview, he said, “was clearly on an on-the-record basis. She was clearly passionate and angry with the tactics of the Clinton camp over the Ohio primary and that spilled over in the interview. Our job was to put that interview before the public as a matter of public interest.”
In today’s Scotsman, its ombudsman, Ian Stewart, sided with the paper, Greenslade wrote.
But Greenslade added, “I’m afraid I’m not so certain . . . I do lots of interviews with the most sensitive people on earth — editors, journalists and newspaper managers — and many of them say suddenly ‘and that’s off the record.’ Were I to break confidence and publish they would never speak to me again. End of source. End of briefings. End of stories.”
Monroe Anderson, ebonyjet.com: Message to Obama’s pit crew: it’s time to floor it
Michael Calderone, politico.com: McCain not always chummy with the press
Wayne Dawkins, politicsincolor.com: Is Clinton ‘Comeback Kid?’
Eric Deggans blog, St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times: Did Obama Consultant Lose Her Job Over Journalistic Malpractice?
Editor & Publisher and Associated Press: Congressman Rips Obama — But AP Leaves Out a Lot
Megan Garber, Columbia Journalism Review: Monster’s Ball: The (Samantha) Power of political insult
Nicholas D. Kristof, New York Times: Obama and the Bigots
Howard Kurtz, washingtonpost.com: Hillary Gets Some Respect
Deborah Mathis, BlackAmericaWeb.com: Bill and Hillary Clinton Possess — Or Are Possessed By — an Almost Unnatural Need to Win
Mary Mitchell, Chicago Sun-Times: Obama’s uphill battle familiar to many blacks
Irma Montoya, New American Media: The Least Among Us
Les Payne, Newsday: Hillary Clinton’s venom, gall are a turnoff
Barry Saunders, Raleigh (N.C.) News & Observer: He’s just following the female
Robert L. Smith, Cleveland Plain Dealer: Race mattered more in Ohio primary than in any other state
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Two Men Share Name, Ancestors’ Plantation History
“David Wilson is a 28-year-old African-American man from Newark, New Jersey. He grew up in a tough, urban neighborhood, but managed to navigate his way out of poverty and into the world of news production in New York City,” announces MSNBC. “Now, meet David Wilson: David Wilson is a 62-year-old white man from rural North Carolina. He grew up in Caswell County, where his ancestors once farmed tobacco. He now operates a small chain of BBQ restaurants in nearby Reidsville, where he lives with his wife and son.
“Although they have never met, the two men share more than just a name — one David’s ancestors were once enslaved by the other’s forebears in the antebellum South. In ‘Meeting David Wilson,’ the two men come face-to-face to confront their storied past. The 90-minute documentary records the unusual ‘family reunion’ as the New Jersey Wilson family travels back to the North Carolina plantations to meet the white Wilsons; meeting on the very same plantation where lives were sacrificed and where racial equality was once unthinkable.”
“Meeting David Wilson” is scheduled for MSNBC on April 11 at 9 p.m. Eastern time, planned to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the assassination of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who was slain on April 4, 1968. The program is to be hosted by “Today” Correspondent Tiki Barber and followed by a 90-minute live discussion of racial issues in America at Howard University. It will be moderated by “NBC Nightly News” Anchor and Managing Editor Brian Williams.
Wilson began his career with the CBS News program “48 Hours,” where he researched and developed content. He also served as lead producer and oversaw newsroom operations for NNS (Network News Service), a national newsgathering service, and an ABC, CBS, and Fox News conglomerate.
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Short Takes
“Dith Pran, who survived torture under the genocidal Khmer Rouge after helping The New York Times’s Cambodia correspondent for three years, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in January. He was hospitalized for three weeks starting in mid-February, and was released to the Roosevelt Care Center in Edison, NJ, on Friday,” Stephen Wolgast reported Saturday for the National Press Photographers Association.
Barbara Ciara, president of the National Association of Black Journalists, will meet with congressional leaders this week regarding the association’s request to reverse the Federal Communication Commission’s decision to allow corporate ownership of both print and broadcast media in the same city, NABJ announced on Monday.
Tiffany Parkes and Jillian Simms, two African American students at Florida International University’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication, have been chosen for all-expense-paid trips to Cape Town and Johannesburg, South Africa, the school announced on Monday. They were selected by local television and newspaper editors and will travel with Allan Richards, chair of the school’s journalism and broadcasting department, on a 10-day study and reporting field trip in mid-April. Parke and Simms will interview, record video and write articles, as AIDS journalists, in a region devastated by the disease, the school said.
Phillip Morris, local columnist for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, photographer Barry Gutierrez of the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, “Africa’s Maryland,” a presentation on Liberia by WBAL-TV in Baltimore; and “Uganda’s Silent War,” from PBS’ “The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer,” were among the winners in the National Headliner Awards, which bestowed honors in the print, broadcast and online categories.
Washington Post columnist Donna Britt described watching her son Darrell Britt-Gibson, 22, for two years play O-Dog on “The Wire,” the HBO series about life on Baltimore’s drug-strangled streets that ended Sunday after a five-year run. “I’m sad to see ‘The Wire’ go. And even sadder that the conditions that inspired it will almost certainly continue their all-too-lengthy run,” Britt wrote on theRoot.com.
An apology from Ebony magazine: “In the feature, ‘The 10 Hottest Couples’ (Feb. 2008), EBONY ran an image of Russell Simmons in which he was dressed in a Halloween costume — as an ’80s rapper. The picture was presented out of context, in a story about relationships in which the magazine was celebrating his and his family’s ability to navigate children and new partners with grace. We apologize to Simmons for any discomfort this image may have caused him,” the Web site Regret the Error reported.
After 182 years, Bolivia has recognized the descendants of Africans, recognizing one of them as an authority and as king of the African-Bolivian community, Teresa Bo reported for the al-Jazeera network. “Before we were not even considered Bolivians,” one man said. Residents had no health care or access to education, he said. “Julio Pinedo — or King Bonifaz as he is known — lives in the Yungas, a tropical area in Bolivia that produces coca leaf. The government of Evo Morales is trying to redeem years of discrimination and acknowledge the power of former slaves,” Jeffrey W. Ballou, deputy news editor of Al Jazeera English, told colleagues Monday on the National Association of Black Journalists’ e-mail list.
“While women make up the majority of applications and entries to journalism schools and departments, the female voice in general remains underrepresented and skewed towards stereotyping in media coverage,” Frederico Links wrote in the Namibian newspaper on Friday. “Without negating media influence and responsibility on this issue, and with all due respect, the fact is that the real fight, or investment, has to take place somewhere else in order for us to produce confident and courageous female journalists, something which at present is the exception rather than the rule,” Links concluded, writing from the south African country of Namibia.
In Pakistan, reporter Khalil Khosa was released Saturday after being missing for eight days. Khosa has not described the circumstances of his abduction but he said his kidnappers told him, “Don’t practise this kind of journalism again,” Reporters Without Borders reported on Monday.