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“Character Assassination”

richard

Columnist Defends Role in Wright Appearance;
Says She’ll Ask Obama Campaign for Apology

The Rev. Dr. Barbara A. Reynolds, a onetime USA Today editorial board member and columnist who left daily journalism, studied for a divinity degree and now practices her ministry in Washington, is being painted as a Hillary Clinton supporter who set up her friend the Rev. Jeremiah Wright for his disastrous appearance Monday at the National Press Club.

Reynolds told Journal-isms on Wednesday, “I never have been a surrogate for a politician and none in their right mind would want me to.” She said she would write a column asking the Barack Obama campaign for an apology, “because I see Obama as a gentleman and I don’t think he’d approve of this stuff.” She said she understands the Obama campaign to be behind the stories that she is a Clinton supporter. Two people with ties to the Obama campaign warned her on Monday “that I was going to be smeared by certain reporters.”

In fact, she said, she has veered between the two candidates. “If I have a sin, it’s double-mindedness.”

The accusation that Reynolds was working for Clinton was first raised on Monday by columnist Errol Louis in the New York Daily News, then spread through the blogosphere to Ben Smith’s blog on Politico.com and then by Andrew Malcolm on his Los Angeles Times blog. The Huffington Post, Gawker, the Drudge Report and others soon followed with links.

In reaction, a blogger for theleftcoaster.com called the episode character assassination.

The portrayals forced Sylvia Smith, the Press Club president, to issue a statement Tuesday saying, “as president of the National Press Club, I invited Wright to speak. It’s as simple as that.”

The portrayals also point out the dangers inherent in journalists making political endorsements; not doing so used to be a fundamental tenet of the profession in order to avoid conflicts of interest.

At the Washington Post, the dean of political journalists, David S. Broder, had a unique role as both political reporter and regular political columnist, but after years of outside criticism that this represented a conflict, he is now simply a columnist.

National Public Radio this month announced that Juan Williams, who split his time being a senior correspondent at National Public Radio and a commentator on Fox News, would relinquish his role as a correspondent at NPR so he may “pursue his many outside assignments and engagements, without any conflicts or limitations.” He is now “one of our on-air news analysts.”

In Reynolds’ case, she said this in a February blog posting, before casting her vote in the Maryland primary:

Sen. Barack Obama, “tall, brilliant, handsome, with a wonderful wife and a message of hope would make a good president, but I embrace Clinton because at the highest levels” the Clintons “have helped make life better for African-Americans.”

Despite that endorsement, it is also true that Reynolds is a staunch defender of Wright, and wrote a column in March for her Reynolds News Service defending him, noting that she had even introduced him (in 2007) at the National Press Club.

“The Jeremiah I know is a sought-after preacher in seminaries across the country. I have traveled with him, introduced him at the National Press Club and use his tapes as teaching tools in my prophetic ministry classes at the Howard University School of Divinity, where he often preaches to adoring audiences,” she wrote then.

The same month, in her role as journalist, Reynolds publicly asked Clinton about former vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro’s statement that Obama benefited in the presidential contest because he is black. The occasion was a Washington conference of the National Newspaper Publishers Association, for whom Reynolds writes her religion column.

As reported in this column then, “Reynolds told Journal-isms she did not think Clinton’s response — ‘I certainly do repudiate it and I regret deeply that it was said. Obviously she doesn’t speak for the campaign’ — was forceful enough. ‘I would have hoped she had said, “I called her up and she resigned.” I think she didn’t get it.’ Unlike her husband, former president Bill Clinton, ‘I don’t think she feels the pain,’ Reynolds said.”

But since the Press Club event Monday, Reynolds’ column disclosing her Maryland primary choice has erased most of that history.

“We should have been paying a little less attention to Wright’s speech and the histrionics of his ensuing news conference and taken a peek at — who was sitting next to him at the head table for the National Press Club event,” Malcolm wrote on his L.A. Times blog, referring to Reynolds.

“It won’t take very much at all for Obama supporters to see in Wright’s carefully arranged Washington event that was so damaging to Obama the strategic, nefarious manipulation of the Clintons.”

“Is Jeremiah Wright a colossal disaster for Barack Obama or a press trick?” read the headline on Louis’ column in the Daily News. “Was Jeremiah Wright’s speech set up by a Clinton supporter?” echoed the L.A. Times.

“What is so strange is that I wanted to be on the speakers committee so I could open the door for more people of color to speak at the Press Club,” Reynolds told Journal-isms. “I brought in Secretary Jackson of HUD. He’s a Republican,” she said, referring to Alphonso Jackson, who resigned in March after allegations of favoritism in his dealings with a Philadelphia developer.

“I just believe in the First Amendment. People ought to be able to be heard, especially people of color. To be attacked for giving people a chance to be heard is ridiculous.”

Earlier on, Reynolds said, she was accused of being a supporter of Obama, saying she believes him to be “a very good example of prophetic ministry,” and writing that she feared for his life.

She said she would still write the same column supporting Clinton, because she had also written positively about Obama.

Regardless, she said, “Whoever is elected, I’m going to ask the tough questions.”

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Carole Simpson Says Black Person Can’t Be Elected

Former ABC anchor Carole Simpson, a Hillary Clinton supporter, said on CNN’s “Larry King Live” on Monday that Sen. Barack Obama could not be elected because he is black.

 

Carole Simpson

Simpson, who now teaches at Emerson College, made the comment in a conversation with professor and author Michael Eric Dyson and Flavia Colgan, columnist and editorial board member of the Philadelphia Daily News, both identified as Obama supporters.

The conversation went like this:

“SIMPSON: Thank you very much. What I want to say is how much things have changed. When this race started, Obama had all of the attention, rock star, Obama girl, everything, everybody was flocking to him. And now look at where we are. And I was asked on this program, should Hillary drop out and I said absolutely not. Anything could happen. And look at what has happened. We have a confluence now of race and religion, two hot political potatoes, and Obama stuck right in the middle of it.

“DYSON: Larry, can I say this? I think it’s very important to say that Barack Obama himself has been brilliant in transcending these divisions, these bitter precincts of prejudice, and looking towards an America that he can unite. Even though he loves his pastor and distances himself from what he says that he finds [offensive], he calls on the American people to move beyond his paralyzing prejudices to unite as Americans. I think that’s what we have to focus on.

“KING: We have about a minute. Flavia, do you fear that Obama may become this year’s Dukakis?

COLGAN: Look, the proof in the pudding is in the eating of it. And I certainly respect the viewpoints of the American voter. So far they have obviously chosen Barack Obama, in terms of delegates. And throughout the country, he’s running a 50-state strategy. But I will respect whatever decision they make. I think that it’s patronizing to the American public to think that we haven’t made — and this is where I disagree with Reverend Wright — that we haven’t made enough progress as a nation that someone like Barack Obama will not become president simply because of the color of their skin. I do not believe that.

“SIMPSON: Oh, you better believe it.

“COLGAN: I’m sorry. You can have your opinion.

“SIMPSON: You better believe it.

“COLGAN: I do not believe, based on my experience, that that is the case.”

Simpson elaborated Thursday morning for Journal-isms:

“In my banter with Flavia Colgan on ‘Larry King Live,’ I was not associating my remarks in any way with anything Rev. Jeremiah Wright may have said about Barack Obama’s, or any other black person’s, electability. I was saying that I don’t think the time is yet right in America for a black person to be elected president. Although I’m a Hillary Clinton supporter, I’m not sure the time is yet right for a woman to be elected president. And as an African American woman I have been torn by the choices in this campaign.

“Senator Obama is an excellent presidential candidate who has eloquently professed his desire to unite the American people. After covering presidential campaigns since 1968, it has been my experience that, while white voters say they will vote for a black man, they probably won’t once they get in the polling booth. They could vote for Obama in the primaries, because it was politically correct, and, hey, they were just primaries. When November rolls around there could be a whole different mindset. Now, we’re talking about the President of the United States.

“I think back to popular Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley and his run for Governor of California. All the polls predicted his victory, because many whites said they would vote for him. He lost. White voters admitted later they just couldn’t do it. Vote for a black man to run the Golden State.

“It would be wonderful to think we have come far from that time and place but I see exit polls from Pennsylvania that show some white voters say they would never vote for a black man. And that was in Pennsylvania not Mississippi.

“I fear I may be right, but I hope that I am wrong about my fellow countrymen and women.” [Updated May 1]

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Danger in Seeing Where Sound Bites Came From

“For a fascinating hour Monday, America got to witness two major lapses in judgment that may or may not have a lasting impact on the remainder of the presidential race,” Eric Easter wrote Tuesday on ebonyjet.com.

“The first offense, by MSNBC, was unintentional. It an honorable notion that unfortunately backfired. The network, after being strongly chastised just minutes before by Obama campaign manager David Axelrod for giving Reverend Jeremiah Wright a national platform, made the decision to run with Wright’s National Press Club speech live. An amazing decision for a competitive 24 hour news channel. One full hour of Wright, without a commercial break, in the hope that he would say something controversial.

“And for 40 or so minutes of that hour, the decision was a bust. Wright, in his speech, confidently, courageously and brilliantly defined the historic role of the Black church and the prophetic preaching tradition, finding time also to preach a theology of inclusion and global redemption. Had he stopped there, this whole discussion could have faded away.

“But then came the Q&A. Wright overestimated his charm, and the network got its controversial soundbites.

“Which is where MSNBC’s gambit backfired. For those viewers who watched the full speech and then watched the post-speech coverage, the difference between what we saw for that hour and what that hour was reduced to after MSNBC’s editing was astounding.

“In a matter of moments Wright’s cadence, without the context of the full build-up, looked nonsensical. His body language — absent the gradual church style wind-up — came off as comical. His pointed and repeated rebukes to the press corps for its lack of research (which seemed effective over the course of several questions minutes earlier) looked flippant and arrogant when reduced to only one instance.

“It wasn’t that MSNBC was being malicious. They did what all networks do, reduce long moments to their most dramatic core. Where they erred was letting us see them making the sausage. In exposing their editing process so barely, MSNBC severely decreased its credibility and gave those who already distrust the media much more fuel for the fire.”

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Oops. Wright Didn’t Call Christian College “Godless”

In Dallas, “CBS11 and Jay Gormley clearly have made an egregious error in reporting that the Rev. Jeremiah Wright branded Texas Christian University a ‘Godless Christian college’ during his Sunday guest sermon at Friendship West Baptist Church in Dallas,” television writer Ed Bark wrote Tuesday in his “Above the Fold” blog.

“Instead, the videotape that the station used as evidence during Monday’s 10 p.m. newscast shows that Wright actually said ‘Jarvis Christian College,’ which is a predominantly black institution located in Hawkins, TX.

“In his prominently played story, though, which since has been removed from CBS11’s Web site, Gormley told viewers that the already controversial Wright ‘appeared to take a potshot at TCU.’

“He then went on to interview supposedly ‘outraged’ TCU students, one of whom said, ‘How can you call people Godless if you don’t know them? You know what I mean, like blanketing TCU as a Godless Christian University is just absolutely ridiculous.’

“Another student said in part, ‘We’ll take the higher ground.’

“Shortly before 6 p.m. Tuesday, CBS11 responded to a mid-afternoon phone call and email inquiring about the story.” The station planned to air a correction on Tuesday’s 10 p.m. newscast, Bark wrote.

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Stephen Buckley to Lead St. Pete Times Web Site

St. Petersburg Times managing editor Stephen Buckley has been named publisher of tampabay.com, a new position designed to sharpen and accelerate the Times’ push into electronic publishing, Stephanie Garry reported in the paper’s print edition on Wednesday.

 

Stephen Buckley

“Buckley, 41, said he wants to capitalize on the company’s work on the Web site, especially by increasing revenue. He said the potential of technology is constantly changing and he’ll go into the position with an open mind.

“This is such an important part of our business,” said Buckley, who will start the post in mid June. “We want to be a leading force among newspaper Web sites in the United States.”

“Buckley, the son of Jamaican immigrants, got his start at the Times as a 16-year-old intern. A graduate of Duke University, Buckley was a metro reporter for the Washington Post before working as a foreign correspondent in Nairobi, Kenya, and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

“Buckley returned to the Times in 2001 as a national reporter and became managing editor in 2005.”

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5 of Color Awarded Stanford, Michigan Fellowships

Five American journalists of color have been selected for the journalism fellowship programs at Stanford University and the University of Michigan, designed to give 12 journalists in each program a subsidized, mid-career break, the schools announced separately on Monday.

The number of journalists of color in each program remains the same as last year, although Stanford experienced a sharp dropoff in U.S. applicants from daily newspapers.

“As recently as three years ago we had 56 applicants from daily newspapers, representing more than half the total applicants. This year it was 31, representing a little more than a third of the total (35.2 percent),” James R. Bettinger, program director, told Journal-isms.

 

Diane Cardwell

The programs identified the winners of color as:

Darrell Bowling, senior video producer, MSNBC.com, who plans to study “Does diversity in the newsroom influence diverse news coverage?” as a Michigan Knight-Wallace Fellow; and Kimberly Kozlowski, health/human service reporter, the Detroit News, studying “The race for stem cell cures,” also at Michigan.

Winners of the John S. Knight Fellowship at Stanford are Diane Cardwell, City Hall bureau chief at the New York Times; studying “how cities in the U.S. and abroad can meet the challenges of growth in a rapidly changing world” Babak Dehghanpisheh, Baghdad bureau chief, Newsweek; “the war of ideas and information between the United States and Islamic radicals”; and Antonio Ruiz-Camacho, managing editor, Rumbo newspapers, Houston; “new trends in immigration: how Spanish-language publications in the U.S. are addressing readers’ cultural crossroads.”

Cardwell is African American, Dehghanpisheh was born in Iran and Ruiz-Camacho was born in Mexico, Bettinger said.

The Michigan program had four African American, three Hispanic and two Asian Americans among 61 applicants this year, although “several applicants didn’t check off the civil rights code in their application,” the program’s Patty Meyers-Wilkens said. “We didn’t see a drop, we have had about the same number of applications in the last few years and a very similar composition of applicants.”

At Stanford, “Slightly fewer than 30 percent of our applicants (25 out of 88, 28.4 percent) were journalists of color, and it continues to be a group of journalists that we target strongly, because we think it’s important, especially as newspapers in particular have such strong staffing cutbacks,” Bettinger said.

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Latinos, Asians Outraged by CBS Immigration Story

“As if Katie Couric didn’t already have enough problems.

“Weighed down by record-low ratings at the anchor desk of ‘CBS Evening News,’ and by reports suggesting she will leave that post two years before her multimillion-dollar contract expires, Couric now has civil rights groups — mostly Hispanic — on her back,” Gebe Martinez reported Tuesday on the Politico.com site.

 

Byron Pitts

“And for good reason.

“The CBS newscast that carries her name recently aired a one-sided and inaccurate report about illegal immigrant women who give birth to their children in the United States. The news story challenged the broader constitutional law of birthright citizenship and stated — without providing the correct context — that the births cost U.S. taxpayers millions of dollars annually.

“The story’s central figure was a woman identified as an illegal immigrant, who was lying in her South Texas hospital bed — her right arm wrapped around her newborn and her left hand punctured by an intravenous needle— while reporter Byron Pitts lectured her that “many Americans who struggle to take care of their own families think it is unfair that they should have to take care” of non-U.S. citizens.

“Immigrant advocates found the report so crass, and so far below the network’s journalistic standards set by legends Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite, that they accused Couric of sinking to the depths of Lou Dobbs, the CNN broadcaster and contributor to CBS’s ‘The Early Show’ who has inflamed national anti-immigrant sentiment. One Hispanic group posted on its website a photo of Couric that morphs into Dobbs.”

“. . . CBS has not responded to the civil rights groups’ request for a meeting. “We appreciate the passionate and articulate feedback on our series. We will continue to do our best to listen to the many voices engaged in immigration issues, to produce fair and accurate stories and to bring national attention to this complicated topic,” CBS said in a statement.”

Pitts told Journal-isms on Wednesday, “For the moment I’ll let the story stand for itself. Criticism and discussion is always healthy.”

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In N.Y., Don Imus Struggles to Recoup Ratings

“Don Imus may have a job, but he’s not exactly setting the world on fire,” Matthew Flamm reported Monday for Crain’s New York Business.

“The latest iteration of ‘Imus in the Morning,’ which debuted on WABC-AM in December, was ranked 20th among persons aged 25 to 54, according to the winter survey from Arbitron.

“The show’s 1.5 share of that audience represented a 17% drop from last year, when Curtis & Kuby held the morning slot and were tied for 18th place in the demo.

“Among men 25 to 54 years old, Mr. Imus’s show ranked 18th—down from 16th a year ago—with a 2.2 share, which was 8% below Curtis & Kuby’s number.

“He’s also trailing his numbers from last year when he was heard on all-sports WFAN-AM. The shock jock left the CBS Radio-owned station following an uproar over comments he made about the Rutgers women’s basketball team.”

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Short Takes

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Feedback: Reynolds Has Unquestionable Integrity

My Nieman classmate Barbara Reynolds wears many hats, but I have no doubt about her ability to figure out which one is on her head at any particular time. Her courage and integrity are unquestionable. Suggesting that she set up her friend and clerical colleague Jeremiah Wright to advance Hillary Clinton’s political prospects is absurd.

Jack E. White Jr.
Richmond, Va.
April 30, 2008

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Feedback: I Predict Blowback for Clinton Supporters

Re: Carole Simpson.

Wow. The story of this election will be the split in African America, particularly if Barack Obama wins. It’s a classic case of “what did you do during the war?”-style redux, which will ask prominent black pols and celebs, “did you support Obama?”

Right or wrong, I think there will be a harsh blowback on those African Americans who decided to choose Hillary Clinton over Obama.

Lawrence C. Ross Jr.
Los Angeles
April 30, 2008

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Feedback: Why Is Carole Simpson Being Negative?

I cannot understand, for the life of me, why Black people are tearing down this history making man!

It just doesn’t make sense, considering he has an insurmountable delegate lead and he is clearly on track to become the Democratic nominee.

The party, it seems, thinks Barack Obama is far more “electable” than Hillary Clinton, and all of her baggage. The majority of voters in this country have made that decision, and polls show America at large, believe he can!

I find it appalling that Carole Simpson, a person of color who broke barriers herself, with engage in such negativity.

Wanakee Hill
Mandeville, La.
April 30, 2008

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Feedback: Wright Had to Defend Black Pulpits

Rev. Jeremiah Wright is correct. The press is driving the American public to attack the Black church!

Our last haven. Our last sanctuary. Where else is there to go to vent the frustration and rage of four NYPD detectives being let off scot-free for murdering innocent, unarmed Black men. Where else to go when South Carolina troopers routinely use their vehicles to run over, hit and maim so-called Black “suspects” or “suspicious” for sport? When there were lynchings, burnings, rapes and wholesale slaughters, where did we go? There was no place else to go.

Rev. Wright is correct: “God damn America (or any country) for killing millions of innocent people.” The whole quote from the whole sermon is compelling and needed to be said in a Black church where those who have been victimized, yet callously dismissed by a system bent on ignoring Black civil rights, needed to hear something that validated their intense suffering and pain.

Rev. Wright, bless him, refused to stay hidden so the mainstream press (including Juan Williams and the strange Jonathan Capehart from the Washington Post and the shril “GOP strategist” Tara Wall) could have a free hand at pummeling the Black Church from here through Election Day and beyond. Can’t they link dots and figure out Wright HAD to stand up and defend not only his pulpit, but pulpits throughout the land — the only public venue where Black stomach-in-knots distress can be aired, healed, understood and prayed over?

I like them both! Obama is my candidate and I would be proud to have Wright as my pastor. Wright doesn’t owe America an apology for a powerfully delivered sermon, and he pointed out that America has never apologized to Black Americans for slavery. Because of this, He said, “I have the right to jump up and down on America’s foot.”

Where does Juan Williams stand on America’s government apologizing to us for slavery? I think the answer to that is where does “FOX News” stand on this question?

Bill Alexander
Freelancer
Washington
April 29, 2008

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Feedback: Don’t Let Media Stop Obama’s Rise

Have we forgotten what this presidential campaign is about and who is running? Minister [ Jeremiah] Wright is not running for president. Sen. [Barack] Obama is. Yet, once again, we have one African/Anglo American who is being held responsible for the actions and words of other people. We don’t hold Hillary Clinton’s feet to the same fire for her husband’s words, for her staff’s words or for any other people she has been associated with. We don’t hear CNN, MSNBC or Fox News looping images of Pastor John Hagee, an influential minister who has endorsed [Sen. John] McCain and his anti-Catholic comments, nor do we see McCain’s embracing of this endorsement repeatedly looped, analyzed and discussed. Isn’t the goal of corporate media to do what neither McCain nor Clinton are able to do, stop his rise to the presidency?

Minister Wright finally got his 15 minutes of fame yesterday, when a Clinton supporter arranged to have him speak to the National Press Club. After rambling on for a time, there was a staged Q-and-A where Wright basically threw Senator Obama under the bus. Do I think this was planned? Of course. The bigger question is, why do we care about these antics? Minister Wright does not define Senator Obama; they are two separate people with very different views and agendas. But as long as we allow the media to continue painting us with the same broad stereotypical brush, this nonsense will continue.

The strategy of the media, as well as of the Clinton and McCain campaigns, is to place the usual stereotypical doubts in the minds of Americans, specifically Anglo American men, who are for Senator Obama for the same reasons I am: They actually listened to what he is saying about the issues. And this is new, uncharted waters for Anglo America—looking past skin color and perceptions to get to a new truth, because change is crucial to this country’s future. We are on the precipice and we have to get this right, because this country cannot take another four years of more of the same. But if you can make Anglo America uncomfortable enough about its decision making, then you can convince it to do what’s comfortable, instead of what’s right.

Ask yourself: Are you going to allow the corporate-media noise influence your decisions, or are you going to take a long hard look at the real issues and make your decision based on the candidate who genuinely wants to create real change in our government? This isn’t about race, it’s about right. Because if you do what you’ve always done, you will get what you’ve gotten for the last eight years. I am not going to be marginalized, are you? Speak up for yourself — use your power — with your vote.

E. Joyce Moore
http://jemiltd.bravejournal.com/
Indianapolis, Ind.
April 29, 2008

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