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Hitler No, Lynching Yes?

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Black Entertainment Television has not aired its tamed-down version of NYOIL’s “Y’all Should All Get Lynched,” but its animated video, which accuses current rappers of “disrespecting the race,” is circulating on the Internet.

References to Horrors Don’t All Provoke Outrage

Just as an ESPN writer was out on suspension for referring to Adolf Hitler — in an inappropriate analogy making a point about the NBA championship games — came word that Black Entertainment Television has produced a video that assails the current state of hip-hop. Its animated “Y’All Should All Get Lynched” includes an image of dead African Americans swinging from trees.

In light of the Holocaust, Jemele Hill‘s statement that “rooting for the Celtics is like saying Hitler was a victim” was almost universally considered out of bounds. She was suspended a week ago and her column, an apology, returned on Monday. But we seem not to have the same degree of sensitivity toward references to lynching, a form of domestic terrorism used for years to keep blacks and others “in their place.”

To BET’s credit, the network has not televised the animated video, a tamer adaptation of a production by New York rapper NYOIL, who says of BET in an interview posted last week on You Tube, “Now that the video has begun to leak, how are they going to react?”

The rapper added on a Web site named for the legendary rap group Public Enemy, “Maybe they should have tapped into my team and had us do some sort of forum on one of the shows and sort of open the pathway to the video.. I dunno.. Can’t speak for them.” NYOIL is an acronym for “New York’s Original International Lover.”

The overall point of the video will get no argument from most who consider themselves socially aware. The video includes a parade of negative images, and accuses current rappers of “disrespecting the race” and being “race traitors” by propagating immoral and destructive behavior. But how “conscious” is it, really, when it uses the same profane language as the rappers being castigated, and trivializes the horrors of lynching to make its point?

“Sometimes you have to fight fire with fire,” NYOIL, a husband and a father of three teen-agers, told London’s Guardian newspaper last year. “I’m a rational, educated guy, not overly emotional. But I recognize that I have to talk the appropriate language.”

The original, produced in 2006, was named “video and song of the year” by the alternative newspaper LA Weekly. “New York-based rapper NYOIL deployed strategic hyperbole to call for the lynching of rappers —- specifically, the materialistic, violence-glamorizing, thug/pimp/playa types,” Ernest Hardy wrote. “His take-no-prisoners video named names and spliced unauthorized video clips (the ostensible reason YouTube banned the video). Juxtaposing Sambo imagery against photos of The Game, Lil Jon, Diddy and others, NYOIL painted many of rap’s biggest stars as Uncle Toms poisoning hip-hop and black American culture.

 

 

“Controversial doesn’t begin to describe this video. ‘Y’All Should All Get Lynched’ was a cultural bomb whose detonation reverberated across the blogosphere and beyond. Fallout is still falling out.”

NYOIL says that BET President of Entertainment Reginald Hudlin, a former Hollywood director with a love of animation, bought the licensing rights to his work and produced the BET version in October. It is now circulating on the Internet.

Hudlin has been unavailable for comment, according to a BET spokeswoman.

Responses to the trivialization of lynching have been uneven.

BET declined to comment when comedian Katt Williams wore a noose to last fall’s BET Hip-Hop Awards after the displaying of a noose became a central element in the Jena Six case.

But Golfweek magazine fired its editor in January after the publication featured a noose on its cover.

There were grumblings when Fox News Channel’s Bill O’Reilly said in February on his radio program, “I don’t want to go on a lynching party against Michelle Obama unless there’s evidence, hard facts, that say this is how the woman really feels.”

Judging from the messages posted along with both versions of NYOIL’s video circulating on the Web, the reference to lynching isn’t controversial among his audience. Many urge BET to air it.

Sen. Barack Obama, now the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, had this to say in January in commenting about the Golfweek cover: “We have to have a culture that understands that there’s nothing funny about a noose. That’s a profound history that people have been dealing with and those memories are ones that can’t be played with.”

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Downie to Step Down as Washington Post Editor

 

 

“Leonard Downie Jr. said today he is stepping down as The Washington Post’s executive editor, ending a 17-year tenure in which the paper became a major online force and won a slew of prizes for high-profile investigations, including one that Downie published over President Bush’s objections,” Howard Kurtz reported Monday on the Washington Post’s Web site.

“Downie, 66, said his last day will be Sept. 8. The paper’s new publisher, Katharine Weymouth, said she plans to announce a successor soon.

“‘After 44 years, the notion of not working in the newsroom anymore brings a lot of emotions,’ Downie said in an interview. ‘I will really miss it . . . At the same time I’m ready to do this, because so much further change now needs to take place at the newspaper and Web site, and someone else should be tackling that.'”

The Post reported 25.1 percent journalists of color in the latest survey of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, up from 17.1 percent in 1991, the year Downie became executive editor.

In 2006, when the Post announced it was trimming the equivalent of 80 full-time news positions, Downie said the paper would use three hiring criteria: whether the prospect has special expertise, whether the journalist is outstanding and is available because of downsizing at another news outlet, and whether the hiring would increase diversity, not necessarily in that order. “Our goal has always been to reflect the community as much as we can,” he told Journal-isms then.

The Post has African Americans, Hispanics and an Asian American at the assistant managing editor level. But diversity concerns heightened in 2004, when Philip Bennett, who is white, was named managing editor over Eugene Robinson, who is black and would have been the first journalist of color to reach that level at the newspaper.

After a series of meetings, Downie welcomed recommendations from a group of concerned staffers of all races and both sexes.

“Our hope is that within four years, we will have a newsroom that truly reflects our community, that there will be journalists of color at every level of the newspaper,” Downie said then, “from local bureau reporters to White House correspondents to AMEs.”

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From Imus: “He’s African American.” “There You Go.”

“Less than 15 months after losing his gig on WFAN and MSNBC for making racially charged comments regarding the Rutgers women’s basketball team, radio icon Don Imus has danced dangerously close to, and arguably over, the line again,” as Mike Florio wrote on the Web site ProFootballTalk.com.

 

Don Imus

“On Monday, Imus had the following exchange with Warner Wolf:

Wolf: “Defensive back Adam ‘Pacman’ Jones, recently signed by the Cowboys. Here’s a guy suspended all of 2007 following a shooting in a Vegas night club.”

Imus: “Well, stuff happens. You’re in a night club, for God’s sake. What do you think’s gonna happen in a night club? People are drinking, they’re doing drugs. There are women there, and people have guns. So, there, go ahead.”

Wolf: “He’s also been arrested six times since being drafted by Tennessee in 2005.”

Imus: “What color is he?”

Wolf: “He’s African American.”

Imus: “Well, there you go. Now we know.”

A newsroom employee at New York’s WABC Radio, where Imus is based, told Journal-isms staffers were instructed to say there would be no comment but “it will be addressed tomorrow on ‘Imus in the Morning.'”

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Simpson: Not Switching to Obama Is “So Wrong”

Former ABC News anchor Carole Simpson took some heat during the primary campaign for her support of Hillary Clinton’s candidacy, first because she endorsed Clinton while teaching journalism at Emerson College, then after she said on CNN’s “Larry King Live” that she did not believe the time was right for a black person to win.

She explained later that she didn’t think the time was right for a woman, either, but she hoped she was wrong. As part of her campaigning for Clinton, Simpson appeared with the candidate in New Hampshire and moderated a “town hall” meeting with Clinton on the eve of Super Tuesday. It was broadcast on the Hallmark Channel, with time paid for by the Clinton campaign.

She now tells Journal-isms it is time to back Barack Obama:

YES, NOW I SUPPORT OBAMA FOR PRESIDENT
By Carole Simpson

 

Carole Simpson

I saw filmmaker Spike Lee in a restaurant before the final June primaries. He wagged his finger at me and said, “I have a bone to pick with you.” He turned on his heel and shouted back, “Obama in ’08.”

Spike was one more of the many black men and women who have been upset with my public endorsement of Hillary Clinton last September.

It was a tough decision. I have suffered discrimination as a woman and as an African American and have worked throughout my career to eradicate sexism and racism in journalism. I would have been elated to have either Senator Clinton or Sen. Barack Obama make history by becoming the first of my sex or race to be elected president of the United States. Drat it! Why did they both have to run this year?

I chose Hillary because I have covered her for 30 years. She is the smartest woman I have ever met and I got to know her as politically savvy and tough, yet warm and funny. But I suffered more because of my gender than my race. People ask why so many older women support her. It’s because she represented our own struggles for equal opportunity and the begrudging respect of men, black and white, who abused their power over us.

I didn’t know Obama or his record, even though we’re both from Chicago. He seemed to bolt from out of nowhere. I came to appreciate his oratorical skills, his charisma and his intelligence. But I wondered, “Who is he really?”

Now that Hillary has lost claim to the Democratic nomination, I am wholeheartedly supporting Barack Obama for president. I have done my research. Some Clinton supporters say they’ll stay home. That’s so wrong. Or they say they’ll vote for John McCain. Horrors. Those 18 million Clinton voters need to get on the Obama bandwagon and vest in him their dreams for change and a better America.

I’d like to turn to my other most frequently asked question: How could a journalist endorse a political candidate? Listen up. I am not a working journalist anymore. I had been gone from ABC News for three years and had been teaching college when I endorsed Hillary. After 40 years of having to keep my opinions sub rosa while working for a free press, I believed it was time to exercise my rights to free speech and academic freedom. It was very liberating.

I think the public would have more confidence in the opinions of someone who covered news for four decades and gained the experience, knowledge and context to make considered judgments.

As for teaching young journalism students, I would no more try to persuade them to adopt my points of view than I would the millions of viewers who used to tune in to my newscasts. Think of me as a former journalist, who is now teaching my students the tenets of good journalism, and a patriotic citizen who wants our country to be the best it can be to all Americans. To that end, for my students “I will teach them well and help them lead the way.” For me, I will say what I have to say, when I need to say it, whether in print, on the radio, or on television. I think I’ve earned that.

Finally, if you read this, Spike, I’m with you. “Obama in ’08.”

 

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BET, TV One to Devote Hours to Convention

“With Sen. Barack Obama poised to make history as the first African-American presidential nominee of a major political party, BET and TV One will significantly step up their coverage of the Democratic National Convention in August,” R. Thomas Umstead wrote Sunday for Multichannel News.

 

 

“BET, which covered the 2004 Republican and Democratic presidential conventions on a limited basis, will offer more than five hours of on-air convention coverage from Denver, as well as provide a robust online offering which will allow users to provide user-generated content surrounding the convention.

“Four-year-old TV One, which is covering its inaugural presidential campaign, will provide blanket coverage of the four-day convention from Aug. 25-28, including live primetime coverage and a nightly post-convention show, said its president, Johnathan Rodgers.

“Both networks say the historical presidential run of the U.S. senator from Illinois is the driving force behind their unprecedented coverage of the 2008 presidential campaign.

“‘If Obama were not the presumptive nominee, we would not have covered the convention at all,’ said Rodgers. ‘This is a huge event in the history of African-Americans and we are a network that’s proud of the fact that 93% of our audience is black. Not only do we feel an obligation to cover it well, we feel it is part of our promise to our viewers.’

 

 

“While the 43.2 million-subscriber network’s live coverage will be hosted by XM Satellite Radio personality Joe Madison and CN8 anchor Arthur Fennell, Rodgers said the broadcast will be simple and straightforward. ‘We will cover that extensively in a way that C-SPAN or PBS covers it,’ he said. ‘Our audience will be able to see what’s going on at the convention — we will not overwhelm them with commentary, interviews or other features. It will be mostly pure convention coverage, with Arthur and Joe as our guides through the process.’

“At the conclusion of each night’s convention coverage, Rodgers said the network will host a live show that will serve as a news/entertainment recap of the night’s events.

“The show will be hosted by radio personality Jackie Reid along with celebrity husband-and-wife team of Michael Eric Dyson and Marcia Dyson. The show will also feature other personalities such as actor Hill Harper, comedian Cheryl Underwood, the Rev. Al Sharpton, and TV One chef/on-air personality G. Garvin.”

 

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Northern White Family Traces Slave-Trading Roots

It might not resonate with white Americans the way “Roots” or Henry Louis Gates’ “African American Lives” did with black Americans, but “Traces of the Trade,” debuting Tuesday night on the PBS series “P.O.V.,” is compelling viewing nonetheless.

In the words of the news release, “In this bicentennial year of the U.S. abolition of the slave trade, one might think the tragedy of African slavery in the Americas has been exhaustively told. Katrina Browne thought the same, until she discovered that her slave-trading ancestors from Rhode Island were not an aberration. Rather, they were just the most prominent actors in the North’s vast complicity in slavery, buried in myths of Northern innocence.

“Browne — a direct descendant of Mark Anthony DeWolf, the first slaver in the family — took the unusual step of writing to 200 descendants, inviting them to journey with her from Rhode Island to Ghana to Cuba and back, recapitulating the Triangle Trade that made the DeWolfs the largest slave-trading family in U.S. history. Nine relatives signed up. ‘Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North’ is Browne’s spellbinding account of the journey that resulted.

“. . . One ‘secret’ excavated by ‘Traces of the Trade’ is that the DeWolfs were not just participants in the slave trade — they were the largest slave traders in American history. This one family, whose name adorns the stained glass windows they donated to Bristol’s St. Michael’s Episcopal Church, brought over 10,000 African slaves to the Americas. Up to half a million of these Africans’ descendants are alive today. Moreover, the DeWolfs conducted the trade over three generations, beginning in 1769, and well after it had been banned in the United States in 1808.

“Another fact obscured by post-Civil War mythologies is that the entire Northeastern seaboard was deeply implicated in the trade right up to the war. The DeWolfs may have been the biggest slavers in U.S. history, but there were many others involved. The Triangle Trade sustained the growing economies of Northern seaports like Bristol. Locals may have thought of the DeWolfs as distillers and traders that supported ship-building, warehousing, insurance and other trades and businesses, but it was common knowledge that the basis for all this was the cheap labor and huge profits reaped from trafficking in human beings.

“The efforts of group members to answer these questions with action form the film?s dramatic denouement — while landing the questions right back in the laps of all Americans. The family comes home and dives head-on into the debate about reparations for slavery, interviewing leading spokespeople who are for and against this remedy, and inviting viewers into the question of how to create ‘repair.’ The film asks us to consider this from political, economic and an internal viewpoint: What would it take to repair our relationships and to move beyond the guilt, defensiveness, anger or fear that can trip us up?”

The 90-minute documentary is accompanied by a book, “Inheriting the Trade” by a participant in the journey, Thomas Norman DeWolf, as well as study guides and other resources.

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PR Firms Seeing Rise in Interest From Journalists

“The planned 10% workforce cut at McClatchy Co., owners of Knight Ridder, that was announced last week reinforced an uncertain media landscape that might be driving more reporters and editors to pursue positions in the PR industry,” Frank Washkuch wrote Friday in PR Week.

“While many journalists ultimately end up in PR, the media industry’s troubles are causing some to do so earlier in their careers.

“In the greater Atlanta region, journalists seeking PR jobs are becoming so common that Diane Lore, VP of digital media at GCI Group and former Atlanta Journal-Constitution features project editor, helps to administer a ‘second life club,’ producing educational e-mails and organizing regular gatherings to inform ex-reporters, editors, and those who are contemplating a career switch, about the opportunities in PR.”

Meanwhile, McClatchy papers are implementing the cuts.

Betsy Lumbye, executive editor at the Fresno (Bee), told Journal-isms a bureau reporter of color was affected.

Tara Ransom, assistant city editor in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram’s Arlington office, confirmed Friday that she was among the layoffs.

David Zeeck, executive editor of the Tacoma (Wash.) News Tribune, said he lost four journalists, all white males. An Asian American librarian took early retirement, he said.

Melanie Sill, editor of the Sacramento (Calif.) Bee, said no journalists of color were affected by Bee newsroom job reductions.

However, at the Miami Herald, Executive Editor Anders Gyllenhaal said, “We will not know for a couple of days what the precise impact of these cuts are.”

Separately, the locally owned Daytona Beach (Fla.) News-Journal announced it was “laying off 99 employees as part of a plan to reduce costs and prepare the company to be sold,” the paper said on its Web site.

“In addition, the Sunday News-Journal Ideas section will be discontinued, with editorial pages moving to the front section of the paper.

“Bureau offices in Palm Coast, New Smyrna Beach and DeLand will be closed.”

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. . . Gannett Recruiter Bryant Leaving After 13 Years

Gannett Co. corporate recruiter Cedric Bryant is leaving the company on Thursday after 13½ years in the job, he told Journal-isms on Monday.

 

Cedric Bryant

He is leaving with this advice for journalists grappling with an industry in turmoil: “A lot of people have tended to be job-focused instead of skill-set focused,” he said.

“Make yourself a value-added employee. Are there additional things that you can do? Master one thing and do another. That’s how you separate yourself in the marketplace. What else can you do in addition to the role you are assigned?”

Bryant, 40, said he wanted to take a break from a job that “never stops.” While others go on vacation in the summer, that’s when the journalism conventions take place. After that is the fall recruiting season. The job, once focused on recruiting college journalists for newspapers, has expanded into digital media, television, sales and production.

Bryant came to Gannett’s Arlington, Va., corporate offices in 1993 at age 27 after having been sports editor in Shreveport, La. After taking the summer off, Bryant said, he might pursue a master’s degree in business administration.

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Short Takes

 

Michael A. Chihak

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Feedback: I’d Write a Lesson on This Video

When I first saw this video [“Y’all Should All Get Lynched”], I didn’t know what to say. A few minutes later, though, I realized I didn’t know where to start. The juxtaposition of the images, coupled with the blunt profane language makes this a shocking, provocative piece.

If I were still teaching a mass communications class, I’d definitely write a lesson on this video and the questions it raises: is this commentary or entertainment? Is the use of images and video clips protected by the First Amendment? Is the use of profanity appropriate or necessary; Is using the Internet to circulate this video helping or hurting BET?

Afi-Odelia Scruggs
Independent journalist and author
http://www.aoscruggs.com/
Cleveland
June 23, 2008

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Feedback: Jemele Hill Had the Wrong Stylebook

We can laugh at the Soup Nazi. And roll in the aisles at a rendition of “Springtime for Hitler.”

So why should Jemele Hill be suspended over an outrageous Hitler reference thrown in with a bunch of other off-the-wall analogies?

I posed this question to a half-dozen fellow copy editors and asked them how they would have handled the Celtics column.

All of them would have done what any astute and sensible copy editor would do — recognize the issue and pass the buck to their slots. I didn’t poll the slots.

The consensus among the copy editors was that Hitler was off-limits. One copy editor said that, in a previous position, he had gotten negative feedback for writing in a column that Stalin was worse than Hitler.

And I think that a slotman would or should call the author, and ask whether the line was so funny that she wanted to risk her career on it.

But it’s not an offense that merits a suspension or being forced to write a humiliating note of apology.

The Soup Nazi and “Springtime for Hitler” are funny and acceptable because they are creatures of Jerry Seinfeld and Mel Brooks, respectively. Our society is still fragile enough that we need different stylebooks for different races, ethnicities and religions. Jemele Hill’s crime was looking in a stylebook that belonged to someone else.
Andrew M. Cagen
Attorney at Law
Providence, R.I.
June 23, 2008

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