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2 Reporters Freed at Last

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Bearak Released in Zimbabwe, Hussein in Iraq

 

“A court in Zimbabwe on Wednesday dismissed charges against a reporter for The New York Times, Barry Bearak, who was arrested almost two weeks ago for covering the elections in Zimbabwe without government permission, a lawyer for him said,” Graham Bowley reported for the New York Times.

And in Iraq, “the U.S. military released Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein on Wednesday after holding him for more than two years without filing formal charges,” Robert H. Reid reported for the AP.

“Hussein, 36, was handed over to AP colleagues at a checkpoint in Baghdad. He was taken to the site aboard a prisoner bus and left U.S. custody wearing a traditional Iraqi robe. He was smiling and appeared in good health,” Reid wrote.

But in Zimbabwe, freelance journalist Frank Chikowore was arrested by police near his Harare home on Tuesday and has since been held in an unknown location, Reporters Without Borders said. That organization also called for the release of British journalist Jonathan Clayton, who was arrested at Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo international airport in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, on April 9.

“As Zimbabwe sinks deeper into crisis, the authorities are using its Kafkaesque laws to take radical measures with people they regard as getting in the way,” Reporters Without Borders said. “We are extremely worried about Chikowore, who has proper press accreditation and who has nonetheless been virtually kidnapped by the police for no known reason.”

In its story on Bearak, the Times continued, “Stephen Bevan, a British freelance reporter who had also been accused of violating the country’s stiff journalism laws, was freed as well, according to the lawyer, Beatrice Mtetwa.

“In a court in Harare, the capital, the magistrate ruled early Wednesday morning that the state had failed to provide evidence of any crime, and ordered the defendants to be released.”

“Bill Keller, the executive editor of The Times, said: ‘Barry’s family, friends and colleagues are overjoyed that the court threw out the preposterous charges against him, and that he is on his way home. His only offense was honest journalism, telling Zimbabwe’s story at a time of tormented transition. He had no intention of becoming part of that story.’

The AP reported that “Hussein, 36, was handed over to AP colleagues at a checkpoint in Baghdad. He was taken to the site aboard a prisoner bus and left U.S. custody wearing a traditional Iraqi robe. He was smiling and appeared in good health.

“I want to thank all the people working in AP . . . I have spent two years in prison even though I was innocent. I thank everybody,” Hussein said after being freed.

“The U.S. military had accused Hussein of links to insurgents, but did not file specific charges. In December, military authorities brought Hussein’s case into the Iraqi court system for possible trial.”

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Moderators “Pummel” Obama in First Part of Debate

Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama held their first debate before the long-awaited April 22 Pennsylvania primary on Wednesday night, and the initial analysis was that the tougher questions went to Obama, as the front-runner.

“It was three or four or five on one,” Howard Fineman of Newsweek said on MSNBC, counting Clinton, McCain and the two questioners, George Stephanopoulos and Charles Gibson of ABC News.

“They were saying, ‘wait a minute fellow, are you really the right guy'” to take on Republican John McCain?

On washingtonpost.com, Chris Cilliza wrote, “The first 45 minutes were Barack Obama’s toughest time in any debate. He came under withering assault from the moderators (and Hillary Clinton) on a whole host of issues from the comments of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s former pastor, to his decision not to wear a flag lapel to his connections with a one-time member of the Weather Underground.

“Time and again, Obama dismissed the questions as part of the politics of the past, something that he was running to change. Given both the number and nature of the questions he fielded, it would have been impossible for him to shine in those first 45 minutes. He survived — at least as of this writing — without making any more adverse news, which is an accomplishment in and of itself.”

On MSNBC, host Keith Olbermann said conservative radio host Sean Hannity of Fox News fed Stephanopoulos questions for Obama about his relationship with former Weather Underground member William Ayers. The Web site Think Progress provided audio of the conversation between Stephanopoulos and Hannity on Hannity’s radio show.

Mark Halperin of Time magazine said Stephanopoulos, in pressing Clinton on whether Obama could beat McCain — to which Clinton finally said, “yes, yes, yes,” — handed Obama a round. Clinton “created a dilemma for herself with contradictory messages about Obama’s electability. By punting when given an opportunity to assert that Obama can’t beat McCain in a general election, she diluted the main remaining argument for her own candidacy,” he wrote.

The conservative National Review headlined its analysis, “Forty-five Minutes of Pummeling Before a Wonky Cooldown.”

By Thursday morning, Gibson and Stephanopoulos came in for more criticism.

Greg Mitchell led his piece in Editor & Publisher, “In perhaps the most embarrassing performance by the media in a major presidential debate in years, ABC News hosts Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos focused mainly on trivial issues as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama faced off in Philadelphia.”

Tom Shales of the Washington Post said Gibson and Stephanopoulos “turned in shoddy, despicable performances.” He noted Gibson was booed and said, “To this observer, ABC’s coverage seemed slanted against Obama.”

Walter Shapiro, former USA Today political writer, wrote in Salon, “the debate easily could have convinced the uninitiated that American politics has all the substance of a Beavis and Butt-Head marathon. If the debate was a dress rehearsal for the Oval Office, then the job of a 21st-century president primarily consists of ducking gotcha questions.”

On the Public Journalism Network, run by Kennesaw State University, Professor Leonard Witt wrote that he “got so angry watching the smarmy questions” from Gibson and Stephanopoulos that he went to the ABC News debate story online, where he found more than 1,700 comments.

New York Times columnist David Brooks “thought the questions were excellent,” however. “The journalist’s job is to make politicians uncomfortable, to explore evasions, contradictions and vulnerabilities. Almost every question tonight did that. The candidates each looked foolish at times, but that’s their own fault,” Brooks wrote.

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AP Story Questions Test in Black Neighborhoods

“Scientists using federal grants spread fertilizer made from human and industrial wastes on yards in poor, black neighborhoods to test whether it might protect children from lead poisoning in the soil. Families were assured the sludge was safe and were never told about any harmful ingredients,” John Heilprin reported for the Associated Press on Sunday.

 

 

 

The story got an immediate reaction.

“A Senate committee led by California Sen. Barbara Boxer plans to look into government funding of studies that put fertilizer made from treated human and industrial waste on the lawns of East Baltimore rowhouses and a vacant lot near a school in East St. Louis, Ill.,” Stephanie Desmon wrote Tuesday in the Baltimore Sun.

“Additionally, the president of the Maryland NAACP said yesterday that he is asking federal and state officials to launch a criminal investigation.”

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that Alvin Parks, the East St. Louis mayor, said he was going to the site to investigate what happened. “This hit me completely out of the blue,” he was quoted as saying.

The story originated with the news cooperative. “The Associated Press reviewed grant documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and interviewed researchers. No one involved with the $446,231 grant for the two-year study would identify the participants, citing privacy concerns. There is no evidence there was ever any medical follow-up,” the initial story said.

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Unity Urges Refocus on Diversity in Management

In light of disappointing figures in the American Society of Newspaper Editors’ annual diversity census, Unity: Journalists of Color is urging ASNE “to refocus its diversity initiatives on the promotion and retention of journalists of color in management roles, including senior management.”

The newspaper industry is facing a “crisis of relevance” in that “more than half of all Americans are expected to be people of color in one generation,” the coalition said in a statement on Sunday.

ASNE announced on Sunday that “The percent of minority journalists working at daily newspapers grew minimally to 13.52 percent from 13.43 percent of all journalists” in the latest survey, which also showed that an estimated 2,400 journalists left newsrooms in 2007 through a combination of buyouts and layoffs.

The figures were released at a joint convention of the ASNE and the Newspaper Association of America, which represents publishers, along with a third group, NEXPO, which represents makers of newspaper hardware and software.

Except for programs devoted to diversity, it was difficult to see more than a handful of people of color present at any time during the gathering, a striking indication of the lack of diversity at the industry’s top echelons.

In separate responses to the ASNE figures from the journalist of color organizations, the industry to double the number of Latinos working in newsrooms between 2002 and 2007. “NAHJ launched the Parity Project in newsrooms with the largest gaps between the size of the Latino community and the number of Latino journalists and proved that when commitment matches rhetoric, real measurable progress can be achieved,” that group said.

In a related development, the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University announced it would unveil two major journalism diversity projects at the Unity convention in Chicago this summer.

“The work includes a Web-based clearinghouse for research on news diversity issues and a census of ethnicity of the Washington press corps. The Washington study is a follow up to a 2004 study conducted for UNITY by Cronkite Dean Christopher Callahan when he was at the University of Maryland,” it said.

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Grand Forks, El Paso, San Gabriel Papers Honored

The Grand Forks (N.D.) Herald, El Paso (Texas) Times and San Gabriel Valley (Calif.) Newspaper Group led the newspaper industry in their diversity efforts this year, the American Society of Newspaper Editors announced.

Those newspapers won the year-old Pacesetter Diversity awards, which recognize top performers in three categories: best diversity index (Grand Forks Herald); highest percentage of minorities on staff (El Paso Times) and largest increase in the percentage of minority hiring (San Gabriel Valley Newspaper Group).

The Diversity Index compares the percentage of minority staffers with the percentage of minorities in the community. The top three winners receive $3,000 each.

“We’ve been able to get access and tell stories from Indian Country that otherwise would have eluded us,” Mike Jacobs, editor and publisher of the Grand Forks Herald, said in a news release. “Other staff of color have enriched our newsroom (not least by improving the cooking) and shown one of America’s least diverse areas that the professions are open to talented people of every background.”

In San Gabriel Valley, a Tribune reporter spent a month getting the inside story on a fire that devastated a local business community from a closed Asian community that feared and mistrusted local authorities, the news release said. “The reporter’s fluency in Mandarin and her understanding of the culture were key to earning the community’s trust.”

There were other pleas to continue diversity efforts during the ASNE-Newspaper Association of America-NEXPO gathering. Randall Beck , executive editor of the Argus Leader in Sioux Falls, S.D., recipient of the 2008 Editorial Leadership Award, told the group on Tuesday, before Sen. Hillary Clinton spoke, “We must resist the temptation to use tough times as an excuse not to try. A decent newspaper, whether in print or online, must reflect the unique viewpoint of the . . .community that it serves, and the only way to do that is to recruit, train and promote journalists of color.”

Similarly, columnist Lewis Diuguid, vice president, community resources at the Kansas City Star, winner of the Catalyst Award for print from the National Association of Multicultural Media Executives, told NAMME at its annual awards dinner on Tuesday that increasing staff diversity was a way for media outlets to offer “something new and exciting to attract new readers. Our country depends on the diversity that we inject into the news industry,” he said.

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ESPN Settles With Harold Reynolds Over ’06 Firing

“ESPN said Tuesday that a settlement has been reached in the lawsuit filed by former baseball analyst Harold Reynolds over his firing,” the Associated Press reported from Bristol, Conn.

 

 

 

“Reynolds sued the sports network for at least $5 million in October 2006, three months after he was fired. He claimed he was wrongly fired after a female intern complained about what he called a ‘brief and innocuous’ hug and said he filed the suit to set the record straight and restore his name.

“Reynolds played 12 seasons in the major leagues and worked at ESPN for 11 years. He has been an analyst for MLB.com since July 2007.

“Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

“‘My family and I are ecstatic,’ Reynolds said in a statement Tuesday night. ‘This was a matter of principle and I stood on principle and never wavered. All of my goals were met and now I look forward to concentrating on the game I love.’

“ESPN spokesman Mike Soltys said the resolution allows the network to spare the people involved any further disruptions and that the settlement was ‘economically compelling’ for ESPN.

“‘It was a fraction of his demands and substantially less than what it would have cost us to litigate the case,’ Soltys said. ‘Our confidence in both the appropriateness of our action and our legal position never wavered.'”

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Native Americans Outraged in Raleigh, Anchorage

Comments by radio jocks in Raleigh, N.C., and Anchorage, Alaska, this week outraged Native Americans, leading to the “indefinite” suspension of two morning drive-time hosts in Anchorage.

In Raleigh, WDCG-FM, known as G105, met with concerned citizens Wednesday after Bob Dumas and his crew teased an intern for marrying a Lumbee Indian, WTVD reported.

“‘Did you tell your parents, “hey, at least he’s not black?”‘ Dumas asked during the broadcast. ‘After you guys get married are you going to have a tee-pee warming party? A tee-pee warming party? I hear Pottery Barn is making great stuff for tee-pees.”

“That led to outrage from Native American leaders who called the statements inflammatory, callous and insensitive,” WTVD reported.

In Anchorage, morning drive-time hosts on the “Woody and Wilcox” morning show on KBFX-FM “were bantering with a caller about whether getting into a fender-bender at Minnesota Drive and Raspberry Road made you a ‘real’ Alaskan. What else made you a real Alaskan?” Julia O’Malley wrote Wednesday in the Anchorage Daily News.

“‘Have you made love to the Yukon River and peed in a Native woman?’ one of the men said,” according to listener Michelle Davis, “turning an off-color axiom inside out.”

As soon as she got to a phone, “Davis, who is part Tlingit, called the station manager. Then she got on her computer and e-mailed a network of friends in the Alaska Native community. She wrote to news media, Native leaders and politicians. She complained to the FCC.

“For a week, outrage built across the state. A state legislator spoke against it on the floor of the House of Representatives in Juneau, and it came up Tuesday night at the Anchorage Assembly meeting. School Superintendent Carol Comeau and Mayor Mark Begich publicly condemned it. The Alaska Federation of Natives issued a statement comparing the hosts to embattled shock jock Don Imus. Several people called on advertisers to cancel their contracts.

“On Tuesday afternoon, KBFX owner Clear Channel Communications suspended Woody and Wilcox ‘indefinitely’ and ordered them to attend sensitivity training.”

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Short Takes

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Feedback: Bob Johnson’s Blackness Benefited Him

Bob Johnson should know of where he speaks. He wouldn’t have been in the position he is in had he not been one of, if not the only, black executive with the virtually all-white cable owners association (replacing Don Anderson, formerly of HBO).

It was powerful and influential members of this group, including John C. Malone, who grubstaked Johnson in the formation of BET. It probably would not have happened had he been white. Had he been white, he likely would simply have moved up to head the cable organization at some point. This is not to demean Johnson’s entrepreneurial skills, but to point out that this kind of crabs-in-a-bucket mentality is particularly ridiculous when coming from one whose blackness has also benefited him in his dealing with whites.

Joe Boyce
Indianapolis
April 15, 2008

Boyce is a former Time magazine bureau chief and Wall Street Journal senior editor who retired in 1998 after 32 years in the business.

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Feedback: Challenge McCain’s Mythology About U.S.

I am disappointed that a major assertion by presumptive Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain — one made Monday in Washington before a roomful of reporters at a joint convention of the American Society of Newspaper Editors and the Newspaper Association of America — has gone virtually unreported.

In failing to report his comments, reporters in attendance allowed a McCain attack on Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama to go unchallenged, even though McCain appeared to rely on a dangerous bit of American mythology to support his claim.

McCain said that Obama was unfair to suggest that some Americans who feel economically vulnerable have sought reassurance through gun ownership, religious extremism or xenophobia. McCain went on to say that the fact that Americans who lived through the Depression built a great economy and served heroically in war indicates that Americans reject ethnic and class divisions in favor of the lofty ideals of America’s Founding Fathers.

What McCain did not say was that America’s founding traditions include the ethnic and class divisions to which Obama alluded. Thirteen of the first 18 men Americans elected as president were slave owners or strongly pro-slavery. The author of the Declaration of Independence and a principal author of the U.S. Constitution owed most of their wealth to slave holdings. Generations of Americans tolerated Ku Klux Klan terrorists in their midst. Most Americans today continue to tolerate separate and unequal school systems and penal systems that send nonwhite people to death row at unjustifiably high rates for the same crimes that more often result in jail sentences for white offenders.

And politicians from former Democrat Strom Thurmond to lifelong Republican George H.W. Bush (he of Willie Horton fame) have benefited politically by using racial and economic fears to stampede economically vulnerable voters.

It is fair for the news media to ask Obama to explain his awkward allusion to the political exploitation of ethnic and class tensions. But it is unfair for the media to accept without challenge McCain’s comforting mythology that Americans, rather than being vulnerable to political manipulation, have always rallied for freedom and equality.

Martin C. Evans
Melville, N.Y.
April 16, 2008

Evans reports on military and veterans affairs for Newsday.

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Feedback: Tavis Made a Bad Choice

I’d bet that Tavis wishes he could take back some of the things he said about Barack Obama. I believe Tavis is a secret Hil-Billary supporter. Man, wake up! Tavis did not make a good choice to lash out at Barack for not attending his symposium. If white folks would have a “State of The White Union” symposium, he would probably be one of the first to raise hell about it…..”maybe?”..Tavis did not care that Barack’s presence at his event could have cost him the election. Tavis, Maxine Waters, and the other Hil-Billary supporters need to wake up! We have the most qualified person in the country running for the highest office in the country, and they are clinging to people who have their own personal agenda to take back the White House.

Tavis, I am not hatin’ on you, I think you made a bad choice by letting that mouth of yours put you in a bad light with many black Americans. Tom, you are not invincible either…quit cryin’ and get someone else to replace him.

Amos Jones
Columbia, S.C.
April 16, 2008

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Feedback: Smiley’s Views Outdated, Poorly Directed

I watch Tavis Smiley every night on PBS. I also watch Charlie Rose, and get the majority of my news from PBS.

The issue with Tavis is not his critique, and questioning of Obama, it is the veracity of the criticism. It is also the preaching of a victim philosophy. Many blacks these days do not subscribe to these ideas. Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Rev. Jeremiah Wright do not speak for them. They are still affected by racism in everyday life, but instead of blaming anyone else, they fight it by being better. This is similar to how Michael Jordan, Oprah Winfrey, Tiger Woods, and Bill Cosby relate to hate, and to attempts to hold them back. All of these examples work every day to uplift instead of teach that someone else is the reason for their struggle, and they are not coming from a conservative ideal.

We watch an attack on Obama from the founder of BET, someone who has no credibility in the hardworking black community, for his poor programming on a network that is supposedly dedicated to our culture. Blacks are more inclined to have the beliefs of someone like Chris Rock, with his skit— “I love black people, but I hate niggers.” Most blacks have this same view, because those that we call that word make us look bad. I am a supporter of Obama, but do not attack Tavis for his views. I just find them outdated and poorly directed. If there were more attention to praising and supporting the hardworking, education-seeking youth, instead of supporting those who prey on them, then these “leaders” would get more support than they do.

Tavis’ meeting on the “State of Black America” was a worthwhile gathering, but for him to have the audacity to critique a politician for not coming shows an arrogance that “we” tire of. He is not the black voice, and few out there who proclaim themselves so are. We are a diverse people, with a variety of views, and those “old-time” political persons do not speak for us like Martin Luther King Jr. did.

I will continue to support Tavis, although I do not believe some of the things he does. I just think many of these leaders need to redirect their attention to our community that is looking to progress, and not those holding us back.

Maurice D. Jones Sr.
PRIDE Ventures, Inc.
www.prideventures.shopping.officelive.com
Philadelphia
April 16, 2008

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Feedback: Stand Up to African American Fascism

I am not at all surprised that Smiley has been receiving hate mail and been called a traitor and sellout for his lack of support of Obama. But, now is definitely not the time to resign.

I have sacrificed heavily, spending ridiculous proportions of my resources to hold back the tide of gentrification threatening my community, taken on some of the biggest local players in my town and chastised the black leaders who continue to work for ethnic cleansing in our community. But, when I DARE to criticize Obama, I am castigated. People in my own family don’t want to speak to me. We have lost at least one engagement at a facility I manage because a client didn’t like the fact that I had problems with Obama. I have, for the first time in my life, been called envious of a black man or sellout or out of touch — BY MY OWN FRIENDS.

Now, let’s get back to Smiley.

The articles in this series and comments by national figures are overtly hostile to him, questioning his courage, manhood, integrity. SO HE WANTS TO DISAGREE WITH YOU ON OBAMA!! Why should that be a referendum on who Smiley is. I haven’t been a big fan of Smiley’s for some time, but I would defend his right to speak his mind and make creative business deals 24/7.

I hope the brother sees that he can’t let this rare emergence of shameless African American fascism stop him from doing his important work or call him to question what he thinks.

A. Alston
Philadelphia
April 16, 2008

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Feedback: Johnson Succeeded for Many Reasons

A lesson in perspective, with regards to Mr. Boyce’s comments (“Bob Johnson’s Blackness Benefited Him”):

You need to review your history. Go back to 1969 and you’ll see where Bob was: at the National Cable Television Association office in D.C. Check around that era and you will find a host of highly qualified black executives who could have been in similar roles had it not been for the way in which cable networks evolved, who grabbed up the licenses, and why neither the public nor prospective owners saw news about the availability of such licenses. But that does not address the point of whether Johnson’s blackness benefited his success. He was not the only one in position.

Example: a prominent black attorney who today runs a successful communications law firm in D.C. was formerly an FCC attorney assigned to the Cable section. He had identified and encouraged a number of capable black executives for the companies that already (and very quietly) filed for cable licenses. He was instrumental in encouraging owners to consider for cable and shared cable ownership the pool of qualified blacks who couldn’t break through in major markets in the commercial network radio/TV sphere.

There’s a reason it didn’t happen, and you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure this out.

Another example: In D.C., the Evening Star Broadcasting Co. (which owned WMAL-TV/AM/FM), at the command of its president, initiated a program to aggressively develop black executives in radio and TV to work in the industry. This was unheard of and a major commitment that did not receive full credit. The Washington Post Co. and NBC had only intern programs, which didn’t benefit minorities as a whole. (The Post’s gift to Howard University of WHUR later made amends).

The point of this history is to understand that if Blacks could have benefited from “being Black” to be in a position of advantage, then where are the other examples? Yes, Bob Johnson was successful, but for a combination of reasons, including Bob’s experience and skill set and, oh yes, the fact that he was at the National Cable Television Association.

Trust me, if he were white, Bob would have had a choice of positions. However, he goes down in history as the first and only Black cable owner. How rude!

Tom M. Jones
Raleigh, N.C.
April 17, 2008

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