Maynard Institute archives

Housecleaning at CBS Chicago

by richard0559

Anchor Diann Burns, Reporter Romo Among 18 Out

 

Chicago television anchor Diann Burns and reporter Rafael Romo are among “around 18 WBBM-Ch. 2 staffers today either laid off or being told their contracts will not be renewed by the CBS-owned station,” Phil Rosenthal reported Monday on the Chicago Tribune Web site.

Others are longtime Chicago newswoman Mary Ann Childers, sportscaster Mark Malone, reporter Katie McCall, executive producers Vicki Zwart and Caryn Brooks, producer Harvey Moshman and investigative producer Phil Hayes, Rosenthal reported.

“‘There’s certainly some staff reductions that are taking place,’ President and General Manager Joe Ahern said this afternoon. ‘We’re not unique in the economic environments we’re all involved in. The Tribune, the Sun-Times, Newsweek, ABC in network news, many, many others have gone through these reviews of staffing and resources in order to adjust to the economic conditions.’

 

“Ahern would not confirm the number of those let go, saying only it was a ‘single-digit’ percentage of the station’s workforce,” Rosenthal’s story said.

Marc Watts, who negotiated a reported $2-million-a-year contract for Burns, who is his wife, told Journal-isms, “Diann is fine. She wishes Channel 2 well. As an agent, I don’t think anybody in the country is immune from layoffs. Local television news and network TV news are in a whole different ballgame just in the last two or three years.”

Watts also represents Romo, and said both would be fine. “Proper foresight and proper anticipation is the key to proper agenting. If you can see a train coming down the tunnel trying to hit you, you can do what you have to do to minimize” the blow. “Both of my clients have bright . . . futures.”

When Burns went from ABC-owned WLS-TV to WBBM-TV on a five-year contract in 2003, Steve Johnson wrote in the Chicago Tribune, “The CBS-owned station is betting what is thought to be the biggest anchor salary in town that its new newsreader . . . will start to draw back the hundreds of thousands of viewers who abandoned the station during the ’90s, leaving it a distant also-ran in the news wars.

“It’s a heavy burden for a woman whose trademarks during her long tenure at rival WLS-Ch. 7 were not any particular magnetism she exuded or stories she reported, but rather her air of inoffensiveness and affability on that station’s chuckle-happy news set.”

But Chicago Sun-Times television writer Robert Feder wrote two weeks ago, “In luring Burns from top-rated ABC-owned WLS-Channel 7 and signing her to what probably was the most lucrative local TV news deal ever, WBBM-Channel 2 boss Joe Ahern bet the ranch that she would substantially boost ratings for the CBS-owned station.

“He lost the bet.”

Romo, who was born and raised in Cananea, Mexico, joined WBBM from Univision’s WGBO-TV in Chicago, becoming the first Spanish-speaking newsman to cross over to an English-speaking station in the Chicago market, Watts said.

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Heroic Photographer Dith Pran, 65, Dies of Cancer

 

 

“Dith Pran, a photojournalist for The New York Times whose gruesome ordeal in the killing fields of Cambodia was re-created in a 1984 movie that gave him an eminence he tenaciously used to press for his people’s rights, died in New Brunswick, N.J., on Sunday. He was 65 and lived in Woodbridge, N.J.,” Douglas Martin reported for the New York Times.

“The cause was pancreatic cancer, which had spread, said his friend Sydney H. Schanberg.

“Mr. Dith saw his country descend into a living hell as he scraped and scrambled to survive the barbarous revolutionary regime of the Khmer Rouge from 1975 to 1979, when as many as two million Cambodians — a third of the population — were killed, experts estimate. Mr. Dith survived through nimbleness, guile and sheer desperation.”

Dith was a member of the Asian American Journalists Association. “In 2000, AAJA named the championship trophy for its annual photo competition after Dith. So far the names of seven Asian American up-and-coming photojournalists are now engraved on the trophy,” AAJA said in a statement.

“In 2004, AAJA honored Dith with the ‘Pioneers in Journalism’ award as part of the launching of the organization’s 25th Anniversary Endowment campaign. Dith was honored alongside Peter Bhatia of The Oregonian, veteran broadcast journalist Connie Chung, pioneering Asian American male broadcaster Ken Kashiwahara and Hearst Newspapers columnist Helen Thomas,” AAJA said.

In a story March 19 in the Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J., Dith said he planned to use his condition as a platform to campaign for early cancer screening.

“There is the determination to use his late-life celebrity to help raise awareness about the ‘sneaky’ ravages of pancreatic cancer, the same disease faced by actor Patrick Swayze and which claimed the lives of Michael Landon and Luciano Pavarotti,” Judy Peet wrote.

“I thought because I didn’t drink, smoke or do drugs that I was safe. But I ignored signs (weight loss, abdominal pains) until it was too late. I hope people learn from me and insist that your doctor test for cancer. Do it every six months,” Peet quoted Dith as saying.

“I am not afraid to die, but I hate to see a life wasted.”

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Vickie Burns Named V.P.-News at NBC Flagship

 

Vickie Burns, one of the few African American women in a news management role at a major television station, has been named vice president of news and content at NBC flagship WNBC-TV in New York.

“In her new role, Burns will direct the station’s news projects not just on its traditional telecasts, but all of the news going out in a new media mix of online and out-of-home platforms such as gas pumps, podcasts and taxi cabs,” Jennifer Nycz-Conner reported Monday in the Washington Business Journal.

“She has been VP of news at NBC-owned WRC-TV in Washington since September 2003. Previously she was with sister station WMAQ-TV in Chicago, which she joined in 1986 as a line producer and worked her way up to being named news director in 2001,” Michele Greppi reported in TV Week.

“WNBC, the flagship station in the NBC Local Media Division, has lost ratings ground to WABC-TV in recent years.

“‘Vickie’s energy, creativity and journalistic skills are the perfect mix to ensure WNBC’s leadership in the New York market,’ WNBC President and General Manager Frank Comerford said in announcing Ms. Burns’ hire Monday.”

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Newspaper Finds Wright Sound Bites Oversimplify

 

 

The Chicago Tribune has analyzed the sermons of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., and concluded that, “Examining the full content of Wright’s sermons and delivery style yields a far more complex message” than those seen in television and video sound bites, “though it’s one that some will still find objectionable.

“For more than 30 years every Sunday, Wright walked churchgoers along a winding road from rage to reconciliation, employing a style that validated both.

“Wright’s sermons closely follow the prophetic formula,” Manya A. Brachear wrote Saturday of Sen. Barack Obama’s former pastor.

“Taking a biblical text, he analyzes the history and language, highlights the personal pain likely shared by people in the pews, calls out similar injustices in today’s society and emphasizes that God always provides. His delivery is often provocative, sometimes even raunchy.

“But the most provocative passages often don’t convey the entire point.

“For example, on the Sunday after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Wright preached for the first time in three decades on the ‘brutally honest’ last verses of Psalm 137, which he said “spotlight the insanity of the cycle of violence.”

“The sound bite taken from the sermon is something Wright on that day termed a ‘faith footnote,’ in which he used the phrase ‘chickens are coming home to roost’ to sum up what U.S. diplomat Edward Peck had said in a TV interview. Malcolm X expressed the same sentiment after the John F. Kennedy assassination. But critique of foreign policy was not Wright’s central topic.

“In January, shortly after former President Bill Clinton referred to Obama’s campaign as a fairy tale, Wright told his flock: ‘Bill did us, just like he did Monica Lewinsky. He was riding dirty.’

“Beyond that racy dig, however, the sermon seeks to admonish members who may vote for Hillary Clinton because they think a black candidate can’t win. Wright likened their doubt to the doubt of Jesus’ disciples who did not believe he could feed a crowd with five loaves and two fishes.”

The excerpted sound bites caused an uproar that led to Obama’s March 18 Philadelphia speech calling for a national conversation on race, and demands that Obama leave the church. Clinton said she would have left, and on Saturday Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, Clinton’s highest profile African American supporter, said the same.

Meanwhile, Wright made a surprise appearance Friday night at Chicago’s St. Sabina Church, which hosted poet Maya Angelou as she nears her 80th birthday, according to WBBM-TV, which had cameras at the church and a report by Diann Burns.

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N.Y. Times Responds to Letter From Rev. Wright

Richard W. Stevenson, New York Times political editor, has written to Time magazine in response to the letter from the Rev. Jeremiah Wright to reporter Jodi Kantor that, although a year old, has been circulating recently via e-mail and was posted on the Time Web site.

“In early March 2007, Ms. Kantor interviewed Mr. Wright, then senior pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, for a story about Senator Obama’s religious evolution,” Stevenson’s response said. “During the lengthy interview, Mr. Wright told Ms. Kantor that Mr. Obama, on the night before the formal declaration of his presidential candidacy several weeks earlier, had canceled an invitation for Mr. Wright to speak at the event. Since Mr. Obama’s decision to disinvite Mr. Wright was clearly news — and because word of it was beginning to get around — we decided to publish a news story about it right away. Ms. Kantor called Mr. Wright back and spoke to him to fact check the article before it was published,” the response continues.

“Mr. Wright wrote his letter to Ms. Kantor several days later. He did not respond to subsequent attempts by Ms. Kantor to reach him. The following month, when the reporting and editing on it was complete, we published a much longer story about Senator Obama’s faith, including a full account of Mr. Wright’s influence on him, incorporating considerable material from the interview.

“. . . it is worth noting that at no time has Mr. Wright challenged the accuracy of either story written by Ms. Kantor — both of which, given the events of the last several weeks, seem remarkably prescient about the potential political peril in the Obama-Wright relationship.”

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Sinbad Questions Media Silence About Bosnia Trip

Sinbad, the comedian who accompanied Hillary Clinton on her 1996 trip to Bosnia, said on radio’s syndicated “Tom Joyner Morning Show” on Monday that he, too, was surprised that the news media did not come forward to say that the former first lady was not telling the truth when she said she came “under sniper fire” upon landing. He said he lost respect for Clinton after she not only repeated the story but embellished it.

“I said, ‘Man, where’d that come from?’ Sinbad said of the New York senator’s statements. “All that footage existed for some time. What was the press doing?”

“As he told Mary Ann Akers of washingtonpost.com, ‘I think the only “red phone” moment was “Do we eat here or at the next place?” ‘” the Washington Post wrote on March 22. “What kind of president would say ‘Hey, man, I can’t go ’cause I might get shot, so I’m going to send my wife. Oh, and take a guitar player and a comedian with you’?”

“Replying to Sinbad earlier this week, Clinton dismissed him as ‘a comedian.'”

“I’m a man. I’m a black man,” Sinbad retorted on the Joyner show. “I’m so much more than ‘just a comedian.’ Is Bill Maher ‘just a comedian?” Are the people on ‘Saturday Night Live’ “just comedians?

“When did I lose credibility as a human being?”

Sinbad said Clinton’s “exaggerations got worse and worse. I got a bad knee. I would have remembered” dodging sniper fire. “I lost a lot of respect” for the Democratic presidential candidate, he said.

A supporter of Barack Obama who began the campaign season supporting Clinton, Sinbad said that after the Iowa caucuses he saw that the Clinton campaign had “a sense of entitlement. ‘How dare Barack Obama try to take this from me?’ “

He concluded by telling Joyner, “If I disappear, you’ll know what happened.”

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Clinton Tells Columnists She Hasn’t Used Race Tactic

Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., began a conference call with African American columnists last week by denying she had used race as a tactic in her presidential campaign.

“There is an ugly perception, which has developed, that my campaign has tried to, or used race as a tactic, and I want to categorically reject that,” she told members of the Trotter Group, speaking Thursday from a campaign stop in Raleigh, N.C. “I would personally never condone it nor quite frankly would any of my senior staff and advisers, many of whom are, as you know, African American, and who have fought most of their lives to expand opportunities for everyone in this country, most particularly African Americans.”

She continued, “This has been an incredible primary election season and obviously the stakes and historic nature of both Sen. Obama’s candidacy and my own have invested this campaign with unprecedented intensity and excitement. And, I am well aware that what often happens when passions run high — there have been some painful moments in our campaign and both of us have had supporters who have crossed the line between healthy competition and unfair comments.

“And both of us have rejected them whenever appropriate.”

Reaction was mixed. “I must admit, that it was great to hear her tell members of the Trotter Group during the conference call ‘there is a common purpose in this primary that goes beyond Sen. Obama or myself,'” Dwight Lewis wrote in the Nashville Tennessean.

“Once this primary (season) is finished and we have a nominee, we will be united and we will go on to victory in November against Sen. McCain because the stakes are just too high to do or settle for anything else,” Lewis quoted Clinton as saying.

“We’ll have to wait to see how long her message of reconciliation lasts,” Mary C. Curtis wrote in the Charlotte (N.C.) Observer.

In the Boston Globe, Derrick Jackson wrote, “It could be possible that Clinton is reading the polls taken after Obama’s speech” in Philadelphia March 18 “and is feeling pressure to display a heart. . . . But there are also signs that she will continue to skate the thin ice of race politics and risk the Democratic Party falling through. Because of the racial blunders of her campaign, Clinton is for the rest of the way utterly dependent on middle-aged and older white working class and middle-class voters.”

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Media Said to Be Missing Most of “War on Terrorism”

A State Department official took a two-part question on Monday that hit close to home in this time of news-coverage retrenchment, and it was about the “war on terrorism.”

“The decline in coverage of the world, the ability of the press to get out and get the real stories about what’s going on in the rest of the world is a problem we encounter across the board,” Gerald M. Feierstein, principal deputy coordinator for counterterrorism, told members of the National Council of Editorial Writers.

“To the extent that the press does cover the war on terrorism,” he continued, it covers the 15 percent Feierstein called “kinetic — things blowing up and people getting killed. You’re missing the 85 percent that will make the difference in whether we succeed or don’t succeed.”

Much of the 85 percent gets to the “Why do they hate us” question asked after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The news media should be evaluating American success in eliminating the causes of terrorism and in winning hearts and minds. Cutting back on news from abroad does just the opposite.

Feierstein wasn’t the only official who spoke of the “war on terrorism” in non-military terms.

Mark Dybul, U.S. global AIDS coordinator, rattled off horrifying statistics about the effect of AIDS in Africa: two-thirds of the teachers in Zambia have died of the disease; AIDS has killed more people than the African civil wars; AIDS is the biggest killer of African peacekeepers.

What does that have to do with the average American? Dybul was asked. “It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize,” he replied, that when most of the adults in a village die, or when governments lose the ability to control their territory because too many adults have expired, “the impact is very real on peace and security.” Terrorists look for unguarded, ungoverned safe havens in which to thrive.

Arsenals in the “war on terrorism” include education and economic development as well as health. It’s important to “drain the swamp” where terrorism breeds, Feierstein said. In areas of Pakistan, parents send their children to extremist madrasses “because there is no public education in any meaningful sense of the term,” he continued.

Career diplomat Richard Boucher, assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian affairs, told of U.S. soldiers who won the loyalty of an Afghan village when they remained with them year-round rather than leave when the seasons changed, as the Taliban had done. “If we forget about someplace, that’s the next place we’ll have problems,” Boucher said.

Chris Kelly, a principal deputy assistant secretary of state for the Western Hemisphere, said the philosophy extends to free-trade agreements. The idea is to steer nations “away from social exclusion.” On Sept. 11, 2001, Kelly said, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell was in Lima, Peru, where 34 foreign ministers, members of the Organization of American States, were to sign the Inter-American Democratic Charter. The document asserts the basic right of the peoples of the Americas to self-government and sets up mechanisms for responding to crises in which democratic governments are toppled from power. At the time, rebel forces in Colombia controlled territory equivalent in size to Switzerland, the Chicago Tribune said then.

Rather than return to the States after word of the terrorist attacks, Kelly said, Powell remained to demonstrate solidarity with the governments pushing for more democracy in the region.

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Atlanta, Memphis Papers Commemorating King Death

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Memphis Commercial Appeal are commemorating the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. with multimedia packages, remembrances, and at the Commercial Appeal, a community dialogue.

“Spurred on by local newspaper columnist Wendi C. Thomas, bolstered by a dynamically diverse planning team, and using materials developed by Everyday Democracy, a wide array of Memphis residents are coming together to — as Commercial Appeal editor Chris Peck recently wrote — “work together to talk about race in Memphis, gain a better understanding of one another, and pledge to take on specific projects that can repair and restore race relations in this city — and heal the city itself,” according to the Web site.

“As the 40th anniversary of the King assassination approaches, Memphis has a real chance to begin to write the future history of this place,” he added.

“About 100 citizens met for breakfast two weeks ago to kick off the initiative. Common Ground plans to continue by holding small-group sessions each Thursday night April 24 through May 29, followed by an action forum in early June. ‘This isn’t going to be namby-pamby stuff. This is going to be real, get-to-work stuff,’ . . . Lisa Moore Willis, a program coordinator, told the Commercial Appeal.”

Jim Auchmutey, introducing “The Death of Martin Luther King Jr.: 40 Years Later,” about Atlanta’s reaction to King’s assassination, wrote, “The assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. 40 years ago this week touched off shock waves of anger and violence across the nation. But in Atlanta, King’s hometown, there was a profound sadness. Tens of thousands of people walked with his casket, borne on a mule-drawn wagon, through the streets where he had grown up, gone to school and ministered. The great pageant of grief was the largest funeral the city has ever seen. In anticipation of the anniversary, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution interviewed and photographed 12 people who experienced those days most vividly. They are witnesses, colleagues, family members — intimate participants in the end of an epoch.”

In her column on Saturday, public editor Angela Tuck told readers that Pouya Dianat, a Journal-Constitution photographer, and Ryon Horne, an audio/video producer for ajc.com, teamed up with veteran reporters Auchmutey and Ernie Suggs to produce a story and photo package for Sunday’s @issue section. Auchmutey wrote a piece for Sunday.

On ajc.com, the project was to unfold as a three-part multimedia show marking the 40th anniversary of King’s death.

One of those featured in the video presentation is Earl Caldwell, who was waiting to interview King for the New York Times when he heard the shots that killed King at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis.

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New Hearing Ordered for Mumia Abu-Jamal

“Dead witnesses.

“Old evidence.

“A potential dearth of jurors willing to step into a case that has been an international cauldron — and to deliver a death sentence.

“Those will be just some of the possible challenges facing prosecutors if the 26-year-old case of Mumia Abu-Jamal proceeds to a new sentencing hearing, with a new jury deciding whether he should get life in prison or death for killing Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner in 1981,” Emilie Lounsberry wrote Sunday in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

“‘It would be a most interesting sentencing hearing,’ predicted Center City lawyer Joseph J. McGill, who prosecuted the case in 1982 when he was an assistant district attorney.

“The new hearing was ordered last week by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, which said Abu-Jamal must be sentenced to life in prison — or given a chance to persuade another jury that he deserves life, rather than death.

“Philadelphia District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham said she would not accede to a life sentence. She is said to be considering a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court seeking to have the death sentence reinstated. Barring a successful appeal, or a change of mind by Abraham, a new penalty hearing will take place.”

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Short Takes

  • David Cruz, a reporter and former anchor at WOAI-TV in San Antonio, was arrested on suspicion of driving while intoxicated early Friday, according to police, KSAT-TV reported. “After performing a sobriety test on Cruz, the officer arrested the reporter and transported him to the Municipal Court building for magistration, according to the report. The 56-year-old refused to take a Breathalyzer test and passed out in a bathroom, according to the report. In an e-mail statement to KSAT 12 News at about 4:30 p.m., Cruz apologized to the community and resigned his position at News 4 WOAI.”
  • In Cuba, “Encouraged by Raul Castro‘s call for more criticism and open discussion, the main newspaper in the country, Granma, has been covering for the first time stories on corruption, theft, waste and inadequacies in the centralized economy,” Albor Ruiz reported Thursday in his column in the New York Daily News.
  • “The congressional fight over changes to the Federal Communications Commission’s media-ownership rules is headed for its first Senate vote,” Advertising Age reported on Thursday. “The Senate Commerce Committee today announced that on April 2 it will consider legislation from Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., to overturn the FCC change,” which allowed for cross-ownership by one company of a broadcast outlet and a newspaper in the same market under certain circumstances. The resolution is co-sponsored by 13 other senators, including presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., and Barack Obama, D-Ill.
  • “Anchor Wendy Chioji says her story has a happy ending: She is leaving WESH-Channel 2 and television news to help open a cycling center in Park City, Utah,” Hal Boedeker reported Friday in the Orlando Sentinel. “Today is her 20th anniversary at the NBC affiliate. Chioji, 46, will leave after the May sweeps, an important ratings period.”
  • “Think tank citations in the media are dropping, but right and center still predominate, according to a new study by FAIR. The annual study, which FAIR has conducted since 1995, counts citations of the 25 most prominent think tanks of right, center and left, using the Nexis database. Citations for the 2008 study were counted in what Nexis designates to be major U.S. newspapers, as well as in transcripts of the broadcast networks ABC, CBS and NBC; the cable channels Fox News, CNN, MSNBC and CNBC; and publicly funded PBS and NPR,” the organization reported on Friday.
  • “CBS-owned television station KCNC-Channel 4 conducted a round of newsroom layoffs Wednesday, mostly affecting off-air personnel but including weekend morning anchor Arturo Santiago,” Joanne Ostrow reported Friday in the Denver Post. “Among those getting pink slips: assignment editor Melinda Dionne, producer Jennifer Hall, writer Carol Svoboda, editor Shawn Montano (recently named video editor of the year by the National Press Photographers Association) and community affairs coordinator Sharon Walker.”

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