Maynard Institute archives

Moyers: “Double Standard” on Wright

by richard0613

“White Preachers Are Given Leeway in Politics”

Bill Moyers, whose interview last Friday of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright brought criticism from the PBS ombudsman as too soft, hit back at critics in an essay to be broadcast Friday night, saying “it is all about race, isn’t it?” and contending a double standard applies concerning Wright and white ministers.

Moyers, himself an ordained Baptist minister, said on PBS’ “Bill Moyers’ Journal”:

“Behold the double standard: John McCain sought out the endorsement of John Hagee, the war-mongering, Catholic-bashing Texas preacher, who said the people of New Orleans got what they deserved for their sins. But no one suggests McCain shares Hagee’s delusions or thinks AIDS is God’s punishment for homosexuality.

“Pat Robertson called for the assassination of a foreign head of state and asked God to remove Supreme Court Justices, yet he remains a force in the Republican religious right.

“After 9/11, Jerry Falwell said the attack was God’s judgment on America for having been driven out of our schools and the public square, but when McCain goes after the endorsement of the preacher he once condemned as an agent of intolerance, the press gives him a pass.

“Jon Stewart recently played tape from the Nixon White House in which Billy Graham talks in the Oval Office about how he has friends who are Jewish, but he knows in his heart that they are undermining America. This is crazy and wrong — white preachers are given leeway in politics that others aren’t.

“Which means it is all about race, isn’t it?

“Wright’s offensive opinions and inflammatory appearances are judged differently. He doesn’t fire a shot in anger, put a noose around anyone’s neck, call for insurrection, or plant a bomb in a church with children in Sunday school. What he does is to speak his mind in a language and style that unsettles some people, and says some things so outlandish and ill-advised that he finally leaves [Barack] Obama no choice but to end their friendship. We’re often exposed to the corroding acid of the politics of personal destruction, but I’ve never seen anything like this— this wrenching break between pastor and parishioner played out right in front of our eyes.

“Both men no doubt will carry the grief to their graves. All the rest of us should hang our heads in shame for letting it come to this in America, where the gluttony of the non-stop media grinder consumes us all and prevents an honest conversation on race. It is the price we are paying for failing to heed the great historian Jacob Burckhardt, who said, ‘beware the terrible simplifiers.'”

Discussing last week’s program, PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler wrote on Thursday that he had received “lots of mail about this interview—much of it critical.

“I do feel that there were not enough questions asked and some that were asked came across as too reserved and too soft, considering the volatility of the charges. For example, after replaying at length a Wright sermon delivered the first Sunday after 9/11 — in which Wright invoked America’s role in slavery, taking the country from the Indians, bombing Grenada, Panama, Libyan leader Gaddafi’s house, Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Iraq, plus state terrorism against Palestinians and black South Africans to conclude that the 9/11 attacks were ‘America’s chickens are coming home to roost’ —Moyers asked: ‘When people saw the sound bites from it this year, they were upset because you seemed to be blaming America. Did you somehow fail to communicate?’

“As Howard Kurtz wrote in The Washington Post afterwards: ‘Thought he was blaming America? Where did anyone get that idea?’ It would be hard to formulate a more delicate way to put a question to Wright about that sermon without challenging any of its content.”

Moyers responded to the charges in his essay.

“Hardly anyone took the ‘chickens come home to roost’ remark to convey the message that intervention in the political battles of other nations is sure to bring retaliation in some form, which is not to justify the particular savagery of 9/11 but to understand that actions have consequences. My friend Bernard Weisberger, the historian, says, yes, people are understandably seething with indignation over Wright’s absurd charge that the United States deliberately brought an HIV epidemic into being. But it is a fact, he says, that within living memory the U.S. public health service conducted a study that deliberately deceived black men with syphilis into believing that they were being treated while actually letting them die for the sake of a scientific test.”

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Whitlock Says Playboy Misrepresents His Piece

Sports columnist Jason Whitlock, no stranger to controversy, publicly accused Playboy magazine on Friday of misleading readers about a piece he wrote so the publication could “fan racial flames.”

 
 

It was unusual move for a writer, and was taken, he told Journal-isms, because “I’m outraged . . . I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever written, and the thing I’m most passionate about. I wanted it to be well-reported, and they’re s—-ing on these people” quoted in his piece by mislabeling it.

Whitlock wrote Friday in his Kansas City Star column that, “On May 9, this headline will greet Playboy readers on the cover: ‘Jason Whitlock, The Black KKK.’ On the inside of the magazine over my column, the headline will read: ‘The Black KKK.’ A subheadline will state: ‘Hip Hop is killing Black America, and it’s time to do something about it.’

“The story isn’t about the Black KKK. The words do not appear in the 5,000-word column. None of the sources quoted in the story or spoken to on background ever heard those words come out of my mouth, and they never spoke them to me. The story isn’t about hip-hop killing Black America.

“The story is about the astronomical financial and cultural price we all —black, white, brown and yellow —are paying for locking up 2.3 million of our citizens. The piece focuses on California’s penal system, the state’s too-powerful prison guard union, Jim Brown’s anti-gang-violence organization and Mexican-black hostility.”

On Friday afternoon, Chris Napolitano, the magazine’s editorial director, defended his decision and said he didn’t become aware of Whitlock’s objections until it was too late.

“Playboy has an impeccable history in dealing with civil rights issues. We didn’t have any ulterior motives when deciding on a headline for Mr. Whitlock’s excellent story,” he said in a statement.

“Even though we used the working title ‘The Black KKK’ in our assignment letter to Whitlock on February 7, I was not made aware of his displeasure until a month after we had gone to press. (For the record, Whitlock misquotes the subhead to the story. It actually reads, ‘Thug life is killing black America. It’s time to do something about it.’)

“From the beginning, our idea was not to stir divisiveness but to stir debate. I still believe the title, presentation and planned publicity campaign are appropriate and accurately reflect the points in the article expressed in its introductory paragraph and throughout.

“I feel that most people who read his brilliant cultural commentary will regard it as a powerful indictment of the root causes of violence and despair devastating our cities and suburbs.”

Read this statement, Whitlock said he filed the piece on March 10, didn’t receive the assignment letter until the end of March, and didn’t know until April 23, when he was sent the planned promotional pitch, the language Playboy planned to use.

The sports columnist, who also writes nationally, has used the “Black KKK” phrase to refer to gangster rappers. He famously blamed “the Black KKK” for the shooting death last year of NFL player Sean Taylor before the guilty parties were known.

Other black sportswriters shared Whitlock’s outrage on the e-mail list of the National Association of Black Journalists Sports Task Force on Friday. But Justice B. Hill, senior writer for the Major League Baseball Web site, said Whitlock was not blameless.

“Had Whitlock not coined black KKK [and he’s made plenty of noise with it], nobody could have come back and debased his work by using the term in a context that he didn’t mean it to be used,” Hill wrote.

“Is it fair to Whitlock? Absolutely not. But that’s a hard lesson that he’ll be learning here. His words have deeper meanings, and he should take care in how he puts them to use. To be candid, some words are lightning rods for trouble, and ‘Klan’ is one of ’em, if used improperly. Whitlock has done so too often to count.”

“Jason is definitely the victim of his own writing to a degree,” agreed sports blogger Michael Eaves, who blogged about the Playboy development. “sorta like the people in prison to which he was referring.. if you do the crime.. you will do the time.. if he had not written the line.. it wouldn’t be a headline..

“however, what playboy is doing is simply outrageous.”

In Friday’s column, Whitlock singled out Napolitano, saying he “intends to use a 5,000-word column I wrote challenging the wisdom of America’s drug war, world-leading incarceration rate and brutal prison system as an excuse to fan racial flames and distract readers from the real issues raised in the piece.

“It’s all eerily similar to the Golfweek-noose cover of a few months ago, except Napolitano’s scheme is more calculated and deliberate.

“He’s going to do this over my objections and the strong disapproval of his executive editor, Lee Froehlich, the man who worked with me crafting the piece. . . . He doesn’t care. He has a sexy headline he wants to promote and magazines to sell.”

Whitlock told Journal-isms he hadn’t yet been paid by Playboy, but said, “I could care less” about that.

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5 of Color on London Paper’s “Top 50 Pundits” List

 
Donna Brazile

Karl Rove, the Bush administration’s political strategist who began as a commentator for Fox News only on Super Tuesday, Feb. 5, is already the most influential pundit in the United States, according to the London Telegraph, which Friday completed its list of the top 50 U.S. political pundits.

Commentators of color on its roster include Democratic political strategist Donna Brazile, no. 19; Juan Williams of Fox News and National Public Radio, no. 31; Roland Martin, CNN and Essence.com commentator and radio host at Chicago’s WVON-AM, no. 33; Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson, who appears on MSNBC, no. 37; and former Rep. J.C. Watts, R-Okla., “a regular contributor across various networks.” There were no Latinos, Asian Americans or Native Americans.

“We considered the depth and reach of pundits — the weight given to their opinions and the distance their views travel. Those who appear in different media — print, electronically and via television and radio — lifted themselves higher,” U.S. Editor Toby Harnden wrote.

The top 10 were Rove; MSNBC’s Chris Matthews; Fox News’ Sean Hannity; Rush Limbaugh, “undisputed king of talk radio”; Politico founders John Harris and Jim VandeHei (counted as one); “Drudge Report” author Matt Drudge; “Meet the Press” host Tim Russert of NBC; Jon Stewart, host of Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show”; David Brooks of the New York Times and Mark Halperin of Time magazine.

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CBS’ Kroft Admits “I Didn’t Think About That”

 
 

“One of the treats of the conference on covering race that I’m attending here at Columbia University, was a chance to hear 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft talk about one of his most controversial interviews in recent memory: his Sept. 30 sit-down with Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas,” media critic Eric Deggans wrote Thursday on his St. Petersburg Times blog.

“Critics accused Kroft of handling Thomas with kid gloves to get the kind of access he has never given a TV journalist. . . .

“More than anything, I was intrigued by a moment when Kroft was asked about a typical Thomas inconsistency: He has a moment early in the interview where he insists race is not a huge factor in his life or perception of himself. But he also recounts growing up in a segregated south, feeling as if the white world discounted his law degree from Yale because he was black and being told by his grandfather that at a certain age, he couldn’t dare look a white woman in the face for fear of lynching or worse.

“But Thomas wound up an opponent of affirmative action who married a white woman. Doesn’t that indicate that race had some impact on him, despite his protestations? ‘I didn’t think about that until this session,’ noted Kroft today.

“In an odd way, that response proved the value of what we’re talking about here at Columbia. If you don’t have journalists on hand who know black culture and black issues — like the reasons why some black people feel Clarence Thomas is in denial about how race and affirmative action have affected his own life — then you get stories which miss important cultural issues.”

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Leonard Pitts Voted NABJ’s Journalist of the Year

 
Leonard Pitts Jr.

Leonard Pitts Jr., a Pulitzer Prize winner for commentary in 2004, has been named Journalist of the Year by the National Association of Black Journalists, the organization announced on Thursday.

Pitts will join Chicago television reporter Harry Porterfield, who will be presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award at the association’s Salute to Excellence Gala on July 26 in Chicago, the association said.

“Following a column where Pitts criticized white supremacists and conservative blogger allegations that the news media will ‘refuse to report black on white crime while pulling out all the stops when crime is white on black,’ he and his family received death threats after a white supremacist group released his personal information on the Web,” according to the announcement.

 
 

“A few years ago, Leonard visited us at the AJC for a training session,” Ernie Suggs, a reporter at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and NABJ’s vice president/print, told Journal-isms. “I had always been familiar with his work, but meeting him gave me a new and more focused perspective of who he is as a person and a columnist. Since then, I have been deeply moved and inspired by his words and the wisdom in his columns. For selfish reasons, I am glad that he is NABJ’s Journalist of the Year, but he is so universal this might not be enough to recognize his greatness.”

The winner of 11 Emmy Awards, Porterfield created the series “Someone You Should Know” in 1977 while at CBS Chicago affiliate WBBM-TV, the organization noted. “Porterfield began his broadcasting career in 1955 as a jazz disc jockey with WKNX-AM in Saginaw, Mich., later becoming its cameraman and stagehand at WKNX-TV. Porterfield joined the CBS station in 1964 as a news writer and later rose to news anchor. Today, Harry continues his series, highlighting prominent black figures in the city. He is an active jazz violinist and narrator at concert performances.”

NABJ also announced that Charlie Cobb, reporter and early civil rights activist; San Francisco broadcast journalist Belva Davis; the late Chicago columnist Vernon Jarrett and Newsday columnist and retired editor Les Payne would be inducted into its Hall of Fame. Nagatha Tonkins of North Carolina A&T State University was named Journalism Educator of the Year; Sidney Wright IV of Florida A&M University its Student Journalist of the Year; and Evelyn Cunningham, formerly of the Pittsburgh Courier, was chosen for the association’s Legacy Award.

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Chicanos Seek to Revisit Ruben Salazar’s Death

“University of Southern California professor Félix Gutiérrez, with backing from other longtime Chicano scholars and journalists, is calling upon Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and County Sheriff Lee Baca to release all documents surrounding the Aug. 29, 1970, death of journalist Rubén Salazar,” Emily C. Ruiz reported for the April 28 issue of Hispanic Link Weekly Report.

 
 

“‘Whatever it takes to get the story out should be done. If that’s a reinvestigation, fine,’ Gutiérrez told Weekly Report. A coroner’s jury concluded only that Salazar who was shot in the head with a tear-gas missile fired by a deputy sheriff, ‘died at the hands of another.’ No criminal charges were filed.

“Salazar was killed while he and his KMEX-TV news crew were covering the Chicano Moratorium March Against the Vietnam War. Gutiérrez raised the issue as a panelist during an April 22 event at the Los Angeles Times where the U.S. Postal Service unveiled a stamp recognizing Salazar’s pioneering work.

“Salazar wrote in a Times column a month before he was killed that law enforcement representatives had visited him personally to advise him to tone down his coverage of police activities in the Mexican-American community.”

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Florida-Based Black-Owned Radio Group Files Suit

“Tama Broadcasting, one of America’s largest Black-owned radio groups, filed a lawsuit in federal court last week accusing its largest creditor of serious violations of federal and state laws as a result of a company restructuring plan gone bad,” Karsceal Turner wrote in this week’s edition of the Florida Courier.

“The federal lawsuit pits Tama, the owner of nine radio stations in Florida and Georgia, against D.B. Zwirn Special Opportunities Fund, a multibillion-dollar hedge fund that is shutting down after losing the confidence of its wealthy global investors.

“A major point of contention, according to Tama, is the fact that it leased its nine stations to Zwirn as part of a company restructuring that never happened. Zwirn immediately began to gut the stations, fire employees, and change successful programming and music formats on virtually all the stations, without Tama’s consent. Zwirn’s changes caused a listener outcry in Tampa, Jacksonville and Savannah. Tama still owns the stations’ broadcast licenses.

“According to the National Association of Black-Owned Broadcasters, African Americans own only 220 radio and TV facilities of the 29,593 broadcast facilities that exist nationwide, or less than one percent. Tama’s nine stations represent almost five percent of the total number of Black-owned radio stations in America, and about 10 percent of all Black-owned FM stations.

“Tama is the sixth-largest Black-owned broadcasting group in the country. Radio One, with 54 radio stations, is usually considered to be the largest Black-owned media group in the U.S., although it is publicly traded. Daytona Beach, FL natives Dr. Glenn W. Cherry and Charles W. Cherry II are major shareholders of Tama, which owns and operates WTMP-AM and FM in Tampa, FL, and four FM radio stations — WJSJ, WSJF, WHJX, and WFJO in Jacksonville, FL, and three FMs in Savannah, GA. WTMP-AM has broadcast primarily to Tampa’s Black community for 54 consecutive years. “

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Ouster Creates Vacancy for AP’s D.C. Bureau Chief

The Associated Press Friday ousted its Washington bureau chief, Sandy Johnson, and officially anyone can apply for the job. But the chances that a person of color will fill the position appear to be slim.

A census of the Washington press corps for Unity: Journalists of Color four years ago “found that only 10.45 percent of the correspondents and editors representing daily newspapers in the nation’s capital were journalists of color. The representation of journalists of color was even lower at the top leadership positions.”

The Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University is preparing a follow-up study for this summer’s Unity convention.

Officially, “The job will be posted and all who wish to apply will be welcome,” AP spokesman Paul D. Colford told Journal-isms.

But insiders say the pool of people of color from which to draw is slim. In November, AP reported two domestic bureau chiefs, one African American, one Hispanic, among its 140 or so domestic bureaus.

In Washington, Dean Baquet of the New York Times is believed to be the only journalist of color serving as bureau chief of a major news organization.

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Obama to Spend an Hour Sunday on “Meet the Press”

In advance of Tuesday’s primaries in Indiana and North Carolina, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., will sit down with NBC News’ Tim Russert for an hour-long interview on “Meet the Press” on Sunday, NBC announced.

 
Barack Obama

The program will originate live from NBC affiliate WTHR-TV in Indianapolis. Obama’s last appearance on the program was on Dec. 30, when the show originated live from Des Moines, Iowa.

George Stephanopoulos of ABC News announced on Thursday that he would interview Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., on “This Week” about the same time, the New York Times reported on Saturday in a story about the competition between the shows. “The Senator will take questions from Mr. Stephanopoulos and voters in studio in Indianapolis and others via satellite from North Carolina,” according to ABC.

Meanwhile, Clinton was interviewed by Fox News Channel host Bill O’Reilly for the first time on Wednesday, for an interview shown on “The O’Reilly Factor” in two parts on Wednesday and Thursday. “The O’Reilly Factor” is the most popular program on cable news, averaging 2.58 million viewers in March, Brian Stelter noted for the New York Times.

Clinton said that she found the comments made by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s former pastor, to be “offensive and outrageous,” CBS reported.

“Clinton also reiterated her previous remarks about Wright that she would not have stayed in the church after hearing the comments. She said it was up to voters to decide how the controversy over Wright impacts the campaign.” [Updated May 3.]

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Mexico, India Lax in Prosecuting Journalists’ Killers

“Democracies from Colombia to India and Russia to the Philippines are among the worst countries in the world at prosecuting journalists’ killers according to the Impunity Index, a list of countries compiled by the Committee to Protect Journalists where governments have consistently failed to solve journalists’ murders,” the Committee reported on Wednesday.

“The countries with the worst records for impunity — Iraq, Sierra Leone and Somalia — have been mired in conflict. But the majority of the 13 countries on CPJ’s Impunity Index are established, peacetime democracies such as Mexico, pointing to alarming failures by those elected governments to protect journalists.”

Meanwhile, “According to a major new survey of more than 18,000 adults in 20 countries released on the eve of International Press Freedom Day May 3, an average of 56 percent said they believe that media ‘should have the right to publish news and ideas without government control,’ ” Jim Lobe reported Thursday for Inter Press Service.

“At the same time, an average of 36 percent of respondents — concentrated mostly in Russia, several Arab states, China, and Indonesia — believe ‘the government should have the right to prevent the media from publishing things that it thinks will be politically destabilising.’ ” The survey was conducted by WorldPublicOpinion.org, a project of the University of Maryland’s Program on International Policy Attitudes.

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Short Takes

  • “The nation’s Asian American population increased by 434,000 to surpass 15.2 million, or 5 percent of the estimated total U.S. population of 301.6 million, according to Census statistics released today. Asians were the second fastest-growing minority group after Hispanics, with a 2.9 percent, or 434,000, population increase between 2006 and 2007,” AsianWeek reported on Thursday.
  • “A Sudanese cameraman with the Arab satellite news channel Al-Jazeera on Friday accused US authorities of insulting Islamic symbols after arriving home after six years of detention at Guantanamo Bay,” Agence France-Press reported on Thursday. Sami al-Haj “was arrested by the Pakistani army on the Afghan border in December 2001 while covering the US war in Afghanistan, and had been held without charge since June 2002 at the US naval base in Cuba. His case was championed by many human rights and media watchdogs.”
  • “Journalism programs at Florida A&M University and Southern University were among those re-accredited” on Friday by the Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communications, Dorothy Bland, FAMU’s journalism division director, told Journal-isms. “More than 20 programs were reviewed. San Francisco State University’s program received a provisional re-accreditation. Winston-Salem State University’s program was denied accreditation.”
  • “After three decades of keeping mum, Barbara Walters is disclosing a past affair with married U.S. Senator Edward Brooke, whom she remembers as ‘exciting’ and ‘brilliant.’ Appearing on ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show’ scheduled to air Tuesday, Walters shares details of her relationship with Brooke that lasted several years in the 1970s, according to a transcript of the show provided to The Associated Press,” the AP reported on Thursday.
  • “After talking with the school’s new president, broadcaster Tavis Smiley agreed Thursday to resume his financial support of Texas Southern University,” Jeannie Kever reported Friday for the Houston Chronicle. “He agreed in 2004 to give the school $1 million — $200,000 a year for five years — and to help raise another $1 million for its school of communications. He stopped payments in July 2005, a decision a spokesman for Smiley attributed to his concerns about financial management of the school under former president Priscilla Slade, who was later charged with using about $500,000 in school money for personal expenditures.”
  • The New York Times Student Journalism Institute announced Thursday the 24 participants admitted into its annual program at Dillard University in New Orleans for aspiring journalists, to be held May 18 to 31. The students represent eight historically black colleges and universities and nine other schools from around the country.
  • “Anchor/reporter Luis Cruz is leaving Las Vegas to take his old job back as news director in Yuma, Arizona,” Veronica Villafañe reported on her Web site Media Moves. “Luis has been at KVBC for the past two years. Before taking the weekend morning anchor job at the NBC station in Vegas, he was news director at KYMA-TV from June 2004-2006,” she wrote.
  • “A book published on Thursday asserts that a black radio journalist convicted of murdering a white Philadelphia police officer more than 26 years ago is not guilty of the crime and that it was actually committed by another man who is now deceased,” John Hurdle reported Friday in the New York Times. “The book, ‘The Framing of Mumia Abu-Jamal,’ by J. Patrick O’Connor, asserts that Officer Daniel Faulkner died on Dec. 9, 1981, from shots fired by Kenneth Freeman, a business partner of the brother of the convicted man, Mr. Abu-Jamal, who has been on death row for 25 years for a crime he says he did not commit.”
  • On ebonyjet.com on Thursday, Eric Easter examined, anthropologically, whether the phrase “crabs in a barrel” is appropriate in such cases as the “Tavis Smiley/Barack Obama incident, the Tavis Smiley/Tom Joyner incident and now, the relationship between Obama and Reverend Jeremiah Wright.”
  • No black journalist has replaced the late Ed Bradley as a correspondent for CBS-TV’s “60 Minutes,” but reporter Byron PItts has a story for Sunday’s show on Dr. Paul Farmer, who “dedicates his life and career to delivering medical treatment in Third World countries, saving countless lives in places like Haiti and Rwanda,” the program says.
  • “Chicago’s CBS-owned TV and radio stations are teaming up to simulcast a 90-minute town hall meeting about violence in the city,” Robert Feder reported Thursday in the Chicago Sun-Times. “Rob Johnson, news anchor at WBBM-Channel 2, and Felicia Middlebrooks, morning anchor at all-news WBBM-AM (780), will host ‘Speaking Truth: A Town Hall Meeting on Violence’ from 10 to 11:30 p.m. May 10.”

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Feedback: Reynolds on Role in Wright Appearance

The Rev. Dr. Barbara Reynolds, who helped arrange for the appearance of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright at the National Press Club on Monday, has written a column for the National Newspaper Publishers Association, the black press, defending herself from charges that she is a supporter of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign who set up Wright to damage the Barack Obama candidacy. Errol Louis of the New York Daily News, who published the suggestion on Tuesday, has not responded to requests for comment and has not returned to the subject of Reynolds in print, though he wrote a column about Wright.

Reynolds’ column does not ask for an apology from Obama’s campaign, as Reynolds had said it would. “I have decided not to broach the matter publicly with the Senator’s campaign because to do anything at this point will not help him. However, I am attempting to alert him of the smear campaign through private channels,” she told Journal-isms.

Here is an edited version of Reynolds’ column:

By Rev. Dr. Barbara Reynolds

As a member of the speakers’ committee of the National Press Club and upon the invitation of Club President Sylvia Smith, I helped organize the press breakfast that featured the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Since my role has been questioned, I feel I owe my readers an honest answer.

 
 

I began suggesting Pastor Wright as a speaker about three years ago, when I met him at the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference that was convening in Washington, D.C. At that conference, Sen. Barack Obama was the morning keynote speaker and I was the afternoon keynote. After seeing that Wright and Obama had such powerful, but distinct social justice messages to lift people up, I wondered why the public had not heard more from this conference, of which Wright was the founder.

As a minister, I served as a commissioner on the conference’s Katrina Truth and Justice Commission hearings. Sen. Hillary Clinton testified and attacked the Bush administration for its negligence, and Senator Obama also addressed the group in Washington and encouraged its mission. I saw the Conference message as a part of the legacy of the Black Church that was either being drowned out by the conservative evangelicals or the prosperity preachers.

For two years, Wright and the Conference took their message to Washington and the National Press Club. Many eloquent and renowned theologians, including pastors Wright, James Forbes, Freddie Haynes, Cynthia Hale and others, spoke. Unfortunately only one reporter, Hamil Harris of the Washington Post, reported it.

Ironically, I remember praying that somehow this group directed by Rev. Dr. Iva Carruthers and composed of some of the most dedicated and progressive preachers and theologians in the country would gain more public exposure.

I soon found there is much truth to the old saying, “Be careful what you pray for, because God may not come the way you want Him, but when He comes, He is right on time.” So when the recent controversy around Wright erupted, Sylvia Smith asked if I could get Wright as a speaker — the man I had been suggesting even before she became president of the press club. I was delighted because the Samuel Proctor Conference was again coming to Washington for its legislative conference. Wright could now bring the social justice message with its promise of equality and inclusion to an international level.

That was my only motivation.

I have been attacked for my role in all this. What is fueling it? I stated publicly that I voted for Senator Clinton in the primary as my way of thanking her for how she stood up for the poor when she had a chance. Few have written that I also publicly criticized the Senator for not firing Geraldine Ferraro when she insinuated that Senator Obama was an “affirmative action” presidential candidate. Few have written that in lectures and sermons I have spoken highly of Senator Obama and how his message of hope offers a great opportunity to bring a divided nation together.

I believe in the First Amendment. I believe that people of different views should have voices as citizens. I believe that pastors, preachers and prophets should NOT go to the rulers and politicians and ask permission from them to speak truth to power or to speak the Word that God places in their heart. If they did that, most of the churches, synagogues and mosques in America would shut down.

As an editorial board member at USA Today for 13 years, I helped develop the Opinion page. I was a door-opener to let people in, not a doorkeeper to shut people out. I fought hard to bring upon those pages the views of the marginalized, left out, overlooked and invisible into the mix with the rich, powerful and the establishment figures.

I constantly fought for the media to hire more blacks as columnists and editors and to also hire more religion writers. I dare say, if there were writers and journalists armed with the knowledge of how the black church has provided leadership to this nation — not by shutting up, but by challenging, rebuking and reconciling — people of faith would see the mainstream media in a more positive light. Ironically, some of the same black journalists who are criticizing me now as I continue to fight for inclusion and diversity are there as a result of myself and others fighting the corporate media to hire them.

Shortly before the Press Club breakfast, I helped organized a press luncheon for Secretary [Alphonso] Jackson of HUD and worked very hard to make it a sold-out event, as was the Wright breakfast. I am not a Republican.

Two weeks before the Wright event, I helped organize a press luncheon for the National Council of La Raza, a Hispanic organization. I am not Hispanic. But nevertheless, I read that I am part of some nefarious plot against Obama. Ironically, as I preached and made speeches about the prophetic vision of Obama that will have a longer positive effect on politics in America than these silly arguments, I was accused by some of being an Obama surrogate.

I am neither an Obama surrogate nor a Clinton surrogate. If either one becomes president — or neither, I will still be challenging the next president to lift up the poor and the powerless as I have challenged presidents for the last four decades.

One thing I learned from Dr. Betty Shabazz, the wife of the late Malcolm X, is to “find the good and praise it.” I think this country would be better served if either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama became president instead of John McCain. And I think this country is better served by an ex-Marine like Pastor Jeremiah Wright standing up for his beliefs and, like the Jeremiah in the Bible, standing up for his country in pointing out the nation’s past sins and pleading for change and reconciliation, which is the message I heard at the National Press Club.

In his powerful speech before the NAACP on the previous evening, he made the case that we are a nation of differences and different does not mean deficient. Why can’t we accept the different message and style of Wright? Meanwhile, Pastor Wright and his family are receiving death threats, and his church bomb threats. This is very sad. I do not believe that tearing down and hating on either Barack, Clinton or Wright is honorable. If this level of hate continues, it will only spell disaster for our nation.

At this writing, Senator Obama appears favored to be the nominee. If he prevails, I will most certainly support him and vote for him in the general election. Then I will have voted — in the primary and in the general election- — for two of the most phenomenal politicians this country has produced. And at the same time, I am proud to stand beside Pastor Jeremiah Wright, one of the most brilliant and courageous preachers I have ever known.

Wayback machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20080605161624/http://www.mije.org/richardprince/double_standard_on_wright

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