Maynard Institute archives

Spike vs. Clint: Who’s Right?

by richard0516

Journalists Play Role in Fact-Checking “History”

It was three weeks ago at the Cannes Film Festival that filmmaker Spike Lee threw down the gauntlet.

“Speaking about the casting for his tale of four black American soldiers in Tuscany during World War II, Lee said that black actors appear in war films too infrequently,” Eric J. Lyman reported then in the Hollywood Reporter.

“‘Clint Eastwood made two films about Iwo Jima that ran for more than four hours total and there was not one Negro actor on the screen,’ Lee told reporters. ‘If you reporters had any balls you’d ask him why.'”

On Friday, England’s Guardian newspaper published Eastwood’s response.

“Clint Eastwood has advised rival film director Spike Lee to ‘shut his face’ after the African-American complained about the racial make-up of Eastwood’s films,” Paul Lewis wrote.

“In an interview with the Guardian published today, Eastwood rejected Lee’s complaint that he had failed to include a single African-American soldier in his films ‘Flags of Our Fathers’ and ‘Letters from Iwo Jima,’ both about the 1945 battle for the Japanese island.

“In typically outspoken language, Eastwood justified his choice of actors, saying that those black troops who did take part in the battle as part of a munitions company didn’t raise the flag. The battle is known by the image of US marines raising the American flag on Mount Suribachi.”

Who’s right? And why should journalists care?

Lee’s film, “The Miracle at St. Ana,” is based on a 2003 novel by a former newspaper and magazine writer, James McBride, who teaches journalism at New York University. Of the black troops, McBride said he was bringing to light the disservice history has done “in failing to fully recognize not only that they fought as soldiers but that their humanity and love of this country was, in some respects, greater than that of their white counterparts.” He added, “They fought for a country that treated ‘the enemy’ better than they were treated. In my opinion that’s patriotism of the highest order.”

The National Association of Hispanic Journalists, concerned about the lack of representation of Latinos last year in Ken Burns’ public television documentary miniseries on World War II, “The War,” joined other Latino groups in demanding that Hispanics be included. “Ken Burns is highly respected, and we felt that his exclusion of Latinos in a 14-hour documentary about World War II was a disservice to Latinos and to all veterans,” NAHJ President Rafael Olmeda told Journal-isms. “Latinos have been excluded from the American story too many times for us to sit in silence and watch it happen again.” Burns created some additional footage showing Latinos and Native Americans.

Journalists, writing “the first draft of history,” are constantly referring to previous drafts. Just last Saturday in the Washington Post, Kevin Merida introduced readers to John Mercer Langston (1829-1897) of Virginia, the nation’s first black elected official, by relating his life to that of Barack Obama. On the op-ed page, Colbert King discussed black cleric Alexander Crummel (1819-1898), who hoped to establish a black Christian republic in Liberia, by relating Crummel to changes in a Washington neighborhood.

Journalists have been called upon before to confirm or deny the role of blacks in historical events.

When Eastwood’s “Flags of Our Fathers” was released in 2006, Dan Glaister of Britain’s Guardian filed this from Los Angeles:

“On February 19 1945 Thomas McPhatter found himself on a landing craft heading toward the beach on Iwo Jima.

“‘There were bodies bobbing up all around, all these dead men,’ said the former US marine, now 83 and living in San Diego. ‘Then we were crawling on our bellies and moving up the beach. I jumped in a foxhole and there was a young white marine holding his family pictures. He had been hit by shrapnel, he was bleeding from the ears, nose and mouth. It frightened me. The only thing I could do was lie there and repeat the Lord’s prayer, over and over and over.’

“Sadly, Sgt McPhatter’s experience is not mirrored in ‘Flags of Our Fathers,’ Clint Eastwood’s big-budget, Oscar-tipped film of the battle for the Japanese island that opened on Friday in the US. While the film’s battle scenes show scores of young soldiers in combat, none of them are African-American. Yet almost 900 African-American troops took part in the battle of Iwo Jima, including Sgt McPhatter.”

“Their presence confounded the policy of segregation,” military historian Bernard C. Nalty wrote of the black Marines on a National Park Service Web site.

“Because of the random intermingling of white and black units, an African-American Marine, carrying a box of supplies, dived into a shell hole occupied by white Marines, one of whom gave him a cigarette before he scrambled out with his load and ran forward. Here, too, black stewards and members of the depot and ammunition companies came to the aid of the wounded. A white Marine, Robert F. Graf, who lay in a tent awaiting evacuation for further medical treatment, remembered that: ‘Two black Marines . . . ever so gently . . . placed me on a stretcher and carried me outside to a waiting DUKW,'” or amphibious truck.

In the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Wednesday, columnist Tony Norman, who is black, was sympathetic to Eastwood. “Yes, blacks fought and died at Iwo Jima, but in segregated units. To spotlight black soldiers who aren’t merely extras or tokens would have been to introduce an extra layer of narrative. A black face isn’t going to move the story along necessarily,” Norman wrote.

When the issue arose on the e-mail list of the National Association of Black Journalists, most agreed that the stories of people of color in World War II had not received their due. Veteran broadcast journalist Greg Morrison, now working at CNN, wrote that he had heard snippets of stories from the Pacific Theater from his dad. “He was a medic in the China Burma India campaign that supported Merril’s Marauders . . . It should be noted that many of the records of Black soldiers in that theater were destroyed during a fire at the Army records center in St. Louis several years ago. However men like my father are still around and can set the record straight.”

Morrison elaborated for Journal-isms. “We should also look at ourselves as journalists. Are we getting those living veterans from WWII to tell their stories for future generations? A few years ago I sat my dad down in front of a home video camera and interviewed him about his life and service,” he said. “This should be something we should try to do en masse. Because if we don’t tell our own stories, who will?”

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“Assassination” Exhibit Shut, Media Made Him Do It

“This morning, a Boston-born performance artist, Yazmany Arboleda, tried to set up a provocative art exhibition in a vacant storefront on West 40th Street in Midtown Manhattan with the title, ‘The Assassination of Hillary Clinton/The Assassination of Barack Obama,’ in neatly stenciled letters on the plate glass windows at street level,” Sewell Chan reported Wednesday on the New York Times blog, “City Room.”

“By 9:30 a.m., New York City police detectives and Secret Service agents had shut down the exhibition, and building workers had quickly covered over the inflammatory title with large sheets of brown paper and blue masking tape. The gallery is across the street from the southern entrance to The New York Times building.

“The police officers declined to answer any questions, and at first would not permit reporters to speak with Mr. Arboleda, who was wearing a black T-shirt and making cellphone calls from inside the makeshift gallery.

“Later, Mr. Arboleda, who is 27, said in an interview: ‘It’s art. It’s not supposed to be harmful. It’s about character assassination — about how Obama and Hillary have been portrayed by the media.’ He added, ‘It’s about the media.'”

Other images in the collection show the Obama daughters as “nappy headed hos” and Obama with the assassinated Robert F. Kennedy, among more graphic images.

The Clinton counterpart includes a wall of cigars, a reference to the Monica Lewinsky episode, and another wall of supposed campaign posters, including one reading, “the antidote to niggeritis.”

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In a commentary, “CBS Evening News” anchor Katie Couric blasted “the continued and accepted role of sexism in American life, particularly in the media.”

Couric Sees Sexism in Hillary Clinton Coverage

“CBS Evening News” anchor Katie Couric said, “However you feel about her politics, I feel that Sen. [Hillary] Clinton received some of the most unfair, hostile coverage I’ve ever seen.” The occasion was the Alice Award Luncheon Gala Tuesday at the Sewall-Belmont House and Museum in Washington, Patrick W. Gavin reported Wednesday on FishBowlDC.

Couric went on to blast the coverage in a “Notebook” commentary sent to CBS affiliates and posted on the “CBS Evening News” Web site, saying, “One of the great lessons of [Hillary Clinton’s] campaign is the continued and accepted role of sexism in American life, particularly in the media. . . It isn’t just Hillary Clinton who needs to learn a lesson from this primary season — it’s all the people who crossed the line, and all the women and men who let them get away with it.”

At the luncheon, Couric, the first regular solo female anchor on an evening network news program, “referred to one ‘prominent member of the commentariat’ who said he ‘found it hard to be objective when it came to Obama.’

“‘That’s your job,’ she remembers thinking when hearing this, before suggesting that he ‘find another line of work,'” Gavin reported.

On the Huffington Post, Danny Shea said Couric’s reference in the commentary to “mainstream pundits saying they instinctively cross their legs at the mention of her name” is specifically about Tucker Carlson, who often made such a claim while still on MSNBC during the campaign.

“Last night, without naming names, Couric seemed to excoriate both MSNBC’s Chris Matthews — who has come under fire for sexist remarks against Hillary Clinton — and NBC’s Lee Cowan — who reportedly said he found it ‘hard to stay objective.’ . . . Matthews notoriously announced that he ‘felt [a] thrill going up [his] leg’ while listening to Obama speak, and was forced to apologize for sexist remarks against Clinton in January,” Shea wrote.
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Turning Tables: Will Foreigners Accept Obama?

 

“‘Will Americans vote for a black man?’ I’ve been asked this question by foreigners of various origins a dozen — or maybe three dozen — times since the U.S. presidential campaign began for real in January,” op-ed writer Anne Appelbaum said Tuesday in the Washington Post. “Now we have the answer: Yes, Americans will vote for a black man. Which means that it is time to turn this rather offensive question around: Will foreigners accept a black American president?”

“. . . British, French and even Polish newspapers splashed Obama and his candidacy on their front pages this past week, most accompanied by laudatory articles that solemnly proclaimed, ‘America has changed.’

“But has Europe changed? And have Asia and the Middle East changed? I hate to put it so crudely, but — European newspaper reporting to the contrary — racism is not unique to the United States.”

In the New York Times, columnist Thomas L. Friedman took an opposite view, writing from Cairo:

“It would not be an exaggeration to say that the Democrats’ nomination of Obama as their candidate for president has done more to improve America’s image abroad — an image dented by the Iraq war, President Bush’s invocation of a post-9/11 ‘crusade,’ Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo Bay and the xenophobic opposition to Dubai Ports World managing U.S. harbors — than the entire Bush public diplomacy effort for seven years.

“I just had dinner at a Nile-side restaurant with two Egyptian officials and a businessman, and one of them quoted one of his children as asking: ‘Could something like this ever happen in Egypt?’ And the answer from everyone at the table was, of course, ‘no.’ It couldn’t happen anywhere in this region. Could a Copt become president of Egypt? Not a chance. Could a Shiite become the leader of Saudi Arabia? Not in a hundred years. A Bahai president of Iran? In your dreams. Here, the past always buries the future, not the other way around.”

On ebonyjet.com, Jennifer Brea attested to the intense African interest in the U.S. election. “In Addis Ababa, I met sleep-deprived print journalists — there are, alas, no Wolf Blitzers in Ethiopia — who told me how readers would call in the middle of the night after a Democratic primary to ask the results, unable to wait until the morning papers. These same journalists had taken to memorizing the names and demographic compositions of Pennsylvania’s counties. (Many Americans would be hard-pressed to place the country of Ethiopia on its proper continent, let alone name its capital city!)”

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Majority Consider Racial Breakthrough Important

“A solid majority of Americans say it as at least somewhat important to the country that an African American has won the presidential nomination of a major political party. But there are wide political and racial divisions over the significance of Barack Obama’s history-making achievement,” the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press reported Wednesday in its Weekly News Index.

“Overall, 36% of the public says it is very important to the country that an African American won a major party’s nomination, while another 27% see this as somewhat important. A third of Americans say it is either not too important (15%) or not at all important (18%) that a black candidate has become a major party nominee.

“About half of Democrats (51%) say it is very important to the country that an African American has secured the nomination of a major party; that compares with a third of independents (32%) and just 20% of Republicans. Republicans are evenly divided over the importance of this milestone: while 50% view it as either very or somewhat important, nearly as many (48%) say it is not too important (16%) or not at all important (32%).

“Nearly six-in-ten blacks (59%) say the nomination of an African American is very important to the country; just 32% of whites express this view. Nearly four-in-ten whites (37%) believe it is not too important (17%) or not at all important (20%) — roughly three times the percentage of blacks (13% not too, not at all important).”

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Fox Anchor Sorry for “Terrorist Fist Jabs” Comment

“Fox News Channel anchor E.D. Hill apologized to viewers Tuesday for characterizing a set of Barack and Michelle Obama’s gestures as “terrorist fist jabs,” Sarah Lai Stirland reported Wednesday for wired.com. “The Emmy-award-winning journalist offered the [mea] culpa after the liberal media-watchdog group Media Matters launched an internet petition Tuesday morning urging viewers to let Fox know that the comment was beyond the pale.”

Hill said she was not comparing the Obama’s body gesture to terrorist behavior but instead was simply reporting what others have said or thought about the first bump.

Stirland continued, “Hill’s is just the latest of a string of apologies that have come from high-profile television news personalities in this super-heated, and super-long, presidential election. The candidates, by virtue of being who they are, place the sensitive subjects of gender and race on the front-burner, and Media Matters has caught many controversial comments along the way, as well as the subsequent apologies.”

Perhaps coincidentally, TV Newser reported on Tuesday that Hill’s show, “America’s Pulse,” is being canceled, “but Hill stays with the network in a capacity to be determined. Hill has been with FNC since 1998. She co-anchored ‘Fox & Friends’ for several years before moving to the 11amET hour, then launching ‘America’s Pulse.'”

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Spanish-Language Newscasts Shut Down

“The financially troubled Equity Media shut down its centralized Spanish-language newscast last Friday, leaving its Univision affiliates in six markets without news at 5 p.m and 10 p.m.,” Harry A. Jessell reported Tuesday for the subscription-only tvnewsday.com site.

“The affected full- and low-power stations were in Oklahoma City, Naples-Ft. Myers, Fla.; Detroit; Amarillo, Texas; Salt Lake City and Fort Smith-Fayetteville, Ark.

“Tom Arnost, the president and CEO of the Equity station group, blamed the slumping economy and declines in auto, real estate and other key advertising categories.”

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Pat Tobin Death Offers Reminder About Colon Cancer

Colon cancer killed Pat Tobin, the Los Angeles public relations practitioner who died on Tuesday at 65, according to a statement from the Public Relations Society of America/Los Angeles.

 

Dwight Lewis

That news hit home for Dwight Lewis, columnist, regional editor and editorial board member at the Nashville Tennessean, who has been crusading since 2000 for African Americans to get themselves checked for the disease. On Presidents Day 2000, Lewis’ doctor found a tumor about the size of a ping pong ball on the upper side of his colon. Lewis had surgery the next day.

“I am one of those who put my first screening off until I was almost 52 years old,” Lewis told readers in 2005. “After my surgery, Dr. Jeffrey Eskind later told me, and I’ve written this before, that if I had waited just a little longer to have it done, I would have been dead meat.

“Now, I urge everyone I know to get their colon examined — and know your family history. It’s just that important — important enough to save your life.”

Lewis shared a news release he received last month from Vanderbilt University. “African Americans who have multiple first-degree relatives with colon cancer are less likely than whites with affected relatives to undergo recommended screening procedures, according to a report in the March 24 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals,” it began.

“Family history increases risk for colon cancer, especially if multiple first-degree relatives develop the condition or if one immediate family member is diagnosed before age 60, according to background information in the article. Most clinical guidelines recommend that individuals with these family history factors begin undergoing screening for colorectal cancer at age 40 years, as opposed to age 50 for the general population. A colonoscopy every five years is the screening method of choice.”

“As journalists, one of our jobs is to make society better,” Lewis told Journal-isms, “and we have to get the word out. I could have not told anybody. I did not have to do that. We have to talk to one another about getting up and going to the doctor. Certain subjects, as a race of people, we’re hit harder than other groups,” and journalists should be putting their personal experiences to use, he said.

In fact, journalists could be playing a role that physicians are not. “For both African Americans and whites with family histories of colon cancer, the most common reason given for not having had a colonoscopy or flexible sigmoidoscopy was the lack of a recommendation from their health care provider, and this reason was more commonly reported by African Americans,” according to the Vanderbilt news release.

Funeral arrangements for Tobin are pending.

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Waning U.S. Interest Frustrates Reporters in Iraq

“Slowly, as Iraq slips from the front pages and Web pages, today’s news starts to sound like yesterday’s; violence explodes; a spectacular military success, or failure,” Felix Gillette, Matt Haber and John Koblin reported Tuesday in the New York Observer.

“Casualty lists grow until they become incomprehensible, and then unreadable, unquantifiable. Against that metronomic numbness, 90 American journalists (according to a November 2007 study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism) continue to work a dangerous war that becomes a harder and harder story to sell to Americans. As the American press corps gets older, wearier — and simultaneously younger and more untested as the veterans leave — there are truths that some of the reporters of Baghdad have learned about the war in Iraq.

“Chief among them is that even if you grab hold of a part of the truth, it has a way of becoming false. Second: If you manage to find a true story, don’t depend on anyone back home wanting to hear it.”

The piece is headlined, “60 Months in the Red Zone: Five Years Later, the American Press Corps in Iraq Is War-Weary and Depleted — Also Committed, Engaged and Desperately Seeking a Narrative to Wake Up Readers.”

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Short Takes

  • Tony Ramirez, a New York Times metro reporter since 1989 who had been vice president of the New York chapter of the Asian American Journalists Association, confirmed that he took the employee buyout last month. He compiled the “Metro Briefing” column and had worked at the Wall Street Journal and Fortune, according to an AAJA bio.
  • Joseph Torres, former staffer at Hispanic Link News Service and former deputy director of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, got a shout-out in the Kay Barbero column in the Hispanic Link Weekly Report for his work with the media-reform group Free Press. “Now Joe spends most of his time lobbying Congress to keep our profession out of the clutches of greedy giants whose interests run more to accumulating wealth and destroying competition than to protecting the First Amendment,” the column said.
  • “Reporters Without Borders and the Burma Media Association, an organisation of Burmese journalists in exile, condemn a series of measures taken by military government in the past few days to control news and information coming out of the cyclone-hit Irrawaddy delta,” Reporters Without Borders said on Wednesday. “The blogger and comedian known by the stage name of Zarganar was arrested without explanation on 5 June. The police began confiscating satellite dishes on 6 June in order to deny Burmese access to foreign news media. And the official press published articles denigrating the foreign media on 8 June. Furthermore, several journalists have been expelled in recent weeks and it has become impossible to get a press visa.”
  • In the Philippines, “Reporters Without Borders calls for the release of ABS-CBN television’s presenter, Ces Drilon, her two-member crew and their guide, who have been missing for the past two days on the southern island of Sulu and may have been abducted by the militant group Abu Sayyaf, which has kidnapped more than 30 journalists,” the group said on Tuesday.

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Feedback: Pat Tobin Was Down With the Plan

Pat Tobin was an amazingly warm and unbelievably giving sister to so many of us. Pat and I met almost 28 years ago and, whether in Dallas/Fort Worth, New York or Los Angeles, Pat and I always caught up with each other. Of course, she and I always connected at NABJ which, for so many in our generation, was the once-a-year chance to kick back, lay back and bare our souls to each other.

 

Pat Tobin

Last week, when Pat and I spoke, we were still planning our annual NABJ hangout at the small dinner party she hosted with our good friend, Xavier Dominicis, an executive in Toyota’s corporate communications division. In fact, it was Xavier who called me early Tuesday morning with the sad news. I told Pat that the long-running TV execs’ “colored managers’ party” would be held at my brother’s jazz lounge and she was definitely getting a comfortable perch from which she could hold court. Pat laughed and said she’d be there. She mentioned she was going back into the hospital for another round of chemo but would be fine. As usual, she said, there was nothing I could do for her but just stay in touch.

I owed Pat because she was always there when I needed her — even when I didn’t know I needed her.

When I was WNBC VP/news director in NYC, Pat called me from L.A. whenever there was a huge, crazy story going on. Amadou Diallo’s shooting by the NYPD brought a call from Pat, who when I told her we had surfaced a witness who feared for her life and didn’t want to go to the police, said she’d get the best attorney to represent this witness. Moments went by and I got a call from our friend and her client, Johnnie Cochran, who stepped in.

When the LAPD stomped and stormed their way through journalists (some of mine) and civilians during the May Day gathering in an L.A. park last year, Pat called to check on what I might need. She got me immediately in touch with Mr. John Mack (an outstanding brother and excellent leader), former head of the L.A. Urban League, who was at home. I shared with him some of the outrageous behavior the police exhibited and, in his capacity as head of the Police Commission, had Police Chief William Bratton call me right away.

Pat never sought credit; she never looked for honors. Pat was and wanted to be just a good sister.

Pat cared. Pat made things happen. She was a down-with-the-plan sister and we are all much better for having called her “friend.” I miss her but I know I will listen to her speaking to me every single day. I love you, Pat.

Paula Madison
Los Angeles
June 11, 2008

Madision is executive vice president, diversity at NBC Universal.

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Feedback: Ideas for Journalists on World War II

Re: “Spike vs. Clint: Who’s Right?”: I urge journalists to interview black and white World War II vets. We are losing them so quickly. Next year is the 65th anniversary of D-Day. 2010 is the 65th anniversary of Iwo Jima and the end of the war.

Maggie Rivas-Rodriguez, a former reporter for the Dallas Morning News, has spent the last few years collecting the stories of Latino-American World War II soldiers and war workers. It will be a treasure of information for future journalists and historians.

Bobbi Bowman
Diversity director
American Society of Newspaper Editors
Reston, Va.
June 12, 2008

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