Media Use Euphemisms in Ex-Senator’s Obituaries
David S. Broder, the dean of Washington political reporters, said it in his Washington Post column when Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., announced his retirement in 2001. And now that Helms has died at age 86, history seems to be repeating itself.
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“Those who believe that the ‘liberal press’ always has its knives sharpened for Republicans and conservatives must have been flummoxed by the coverage of Sen. Jesse Helms’s announcement last week that he will not run for reelection next year in North Carolina. The reporting on his retirement was circumspect to the point of pussyfooting,” Broder wrote on Aug. 29, 2001.
“On the day his decision became known, the New York Times described him as ‘a conservative stalwart for nearly 30 years,’ the Boston Globe as ‘an unyielding icon of conservatives and an archenemy of liberals.’ The Washington Post identified Helms as ‘one of the most powerful conservatives on Capitol Hill for three decades.’
“Those were accurate descriptions. But they skirted the point. There are plenty of powerful conservatives in government. A few, such as Don Rumsfeld and Henry Hyde, have been around as long as Helms and have their own significant roles in 20th century political history. What really sets Jesse Helms apart is that he is the last prominent unabashed white racist politician in this country — a title that one hopes will now be permanently retired.”
The stories on Helms’ July 4 demise, in both the freshly written obituaries and those that had been prepared in advance, likewise avoided the “R” word.
“Former U.S. Sen. Jesse A. Helms, the son of a Monroe police chief who rose to national prominence as one of the leading lions of the American right, died early this morning. He was 86,” began the story by Rob Christensen in Helms’ home-state Raleigh News & Observer.
The New York Times, in an obit bylined by Steven A. Holmes, who has since left the paper, began, “Jesse Helms, the former North Carolina Senator whose courtly manner and mossy drawl barely masked a hard-edged conservatism that opposed civil rights, gay rights, foreign aid and modern art, died early Friday. He was 86.” The Web site headline was the tepid “Jesse Helms, Conservative Force in the Senate, Dies at 86.”
The Associated Press, in a story by Whitney Woodward and David Epso, also resorted to euphemism: “Former Sen. Jesse Helms, who built a career along the fault lines of racial politics and battled liberals, Communists and the occasional fellow Republican during 30 conservative years in Congress, died on the Fourth of July.”
The Washington Post’s Web site obituary, written in advance by retired staff writer Bart Barnes, did quote Broder’s column using the “R” word. But the lead of the story called Helms “one of America’s leading crusaders against communism, liberalism, tax increases, abortion, homosexuality, affirmative action and court-ordered busing to desegregate schools.”
The stories are reminiscent of the coverage of Helms’ retirement. Then, the progressive media watch group Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting wrote:
“News that North Carolina’s Jesse Helms will retire from the Senate when his term is up in 2003 received polite coverage in mainstream media. USA Today (8/22/01) described Helms’ views as ‘unabashed and outspoken conservatism.’ To the Washington Post (8/22/01), Helms is one of the Senate’s ‘most ardent champions of conservative causes . . . a man of bold colors and few pastels.’ Curiously using the past tense, the Los Angeles Times observed, ‘he personified the unvarnished, uncompromising, attack-dog brand of conservatism.’ (8/22/01)
“Most of the coverage alluded to Helms’ unrepentant racism and homophobia — though few called it that. Some outlets presented his bigotry as merely accusations from political foes: ‘His opponents have accused him of using race to win elections.’ (CBS Evening News, 8/21/01) Overall, most outlets painted Helms as a conservative whose career has merely been punctuated by controversial episodes, not as a demagogue whose career has been defined by the politics of hate and reaction.”
FAIR’s analysis went on to cite Broder as the exception.
“Broder offered a few examples of Helms’ bigotry. There are many,” it said.
“As an aide to the 1950 Senate campaign of North Carolina Republican candidate Willis Smith, Helms reportedly helped create attack ads against Smith’s opponent, including one which read: ‘White people, wake up before it is too late. Do you want Negroes working beside you, your wife and your daughters, in your mills and factories? Frank Graham favors mingling of the races.’ Another ad featured photographs Helms himself had doctored to illustrate the allegation that Graham’s wife had danced with a black man. (The News and Observer, 8/26/01; The New Republic, 6/19/95; The Observer, 5/5/96; Hard Right: The Rise of Jesse Helms, by Ernest B. Furgurson, Norton, 1986)
“Ancient history? No. Helms remains unapologetic to this day. Forty years after the Smith campaign, Helms would win election against black opponent Harvey Gantt with another ad playing to racist white fear — the so-called ‘white hands’ ad, in which a white man’s hands crumple a rejected job application while a voiceover intones, ‘You needed that job . . . but they had to give it to a minority.'”
Writing on the Chicago Tribune blog “The Swamp,” Frank James, a black journalist, came closest to matching Broder in directly addressing Helms’ stance on race:
“He had, fairly or not, a reputation as one of the Senate’s most retrograde members on race issues,” James wrote.
“Helms was more complicated on racial issues than the caricature he became for many Americans. He actually had African Americans on his staff including James Meredith who integrated the University of Mississippi.
“But he was a master at racial politics. The Village Voice once reported that before Helms allowed a photo to be taken of him during an interview, he got up and removed a photo that included a black man from the wall behind him, explaining that some people in North Carolina might not understand.”
- Monroe Anderson blog, Jesse Helms is dead — Let’s bury American racism with him (July 5)
- Richard Barrett, theNationalist.com: Jesse Helms: American champion — Segregationist ahead-of-his-time
- Eric Bates, Mother Jones: What You Need to Know about Jesse Helms (1995)
- Isaac Chotiner , “The Plank” blog, New Republic: Jesse Helms anecdotes
- Kent Klein, Voice of America: Former US Senator Jesse Helms Dies At 86
- Mark Memmott blog, USA Today: The ‘controversial and polarizing’ Jesse Helms has died
- David Waters, “On Faith,” washingtonpost.com: Judgment and Jesse Helms
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2 Laid Off at East Bay Papers Try to Figure It Out
For two of the 29 journalists laid off at newspapers in California’s Bay Area News Group-East Bay, the news is beginning to sink in.
“My plans? After dusting myself off, I am in the process of trying to figure out how I best can utilize my skills, knowledge and passion for this industry to continue to bring news, information and the stories of San Francisco Bay Area residents to others,” Michelle Fitzhugh-Craig, who was city editor at the Oakland Tribune, told Journal-isms on Friday.
“I’m kind of under a little bit of shell-shock,” Dino-Ray Ramos, a fashion columnist and blogger for the newspaper group, told Journal-isms.
The group includes the Oakland Tribune, the Contra Costa Times, Fremont Argus, Hayward Daily News, Tri-Valley Herald, San Jaoquin Herald, San Mateo County Times and a dozen weeklies. The 29 journalists represent 13 percent of the news staff.
Fitzhugh-Craig is vice president/print of the Bay Area Black Journalists Association and also had chaired the National Association of Black Journalists Council of Presidents.
“Of course, I am looking for editorial opportunities at a diverse mix of media organizations,” she said. “But understanding the importance of capturing the ever-growing audience who uses the Internet to learn what is happening in the world around them, I believe my primary focus is online journalism. One method of doing so will be to relaunch shades Magazine, Celebrating All Women of Color.”
Ramos, a Filipino-American originally from Texas, said he had already begun freelancing and might even do so for the Bay Area News Group. At 29, he had risen rapidly at the paper, promoted from news clerk about six months after he arrived almost two years ago.
“I was kind of enterprising,” he said. He started a blog. He wrote feature stories. He started teaching fashion journalism at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco.
“I think they got rid of the wrong people,” Ramos said. “They said it was not based on seniority; they were trying to avoid redundancy in positions. They got rid of good, hardworking people. When I heard my news, I thought, ‘maybe this is all for the best. I need to move forward.'” Ramos said he will remain on staff until July 11, and continue to pursue freelance opportunities.
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In S.C., Delawese Fulton Takes Buyout at the State
Delawese Fulton, business reporter at the State in Columbia, S.C., told readers on Friday that she had taken a buyout and that they were reading her “last column as a retail reporter for The State.”
“For now, I will remain in Columbia until my daughter graduates from high school in 2010,” Fulton told Journal-isms. “And after a month or so of a well-deserved rest, I am looking forward to freelancing (especially business-oriented publications) and putting my MBA to use. If a solid, well-paying journalism gig comes along, I would surely take that too. It just has to be in Columbia or within a hour’s drive (like Charlotte).”
Fulton joined the paper in 2005 after working as a business reporter at the Macon (Ga.) Telegraph, as an education reporter at the Raleigh (N.C.) News & Observer and as a crime reporter at the Post and Courier in Charleston, S.C.
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Feedback: Helms Was a Bigot of the First Order
I’ll call Jesse Helms a racist. I spent a good deal of time looking into Helms’ background in North Carolina when I was South bureau chief for Time magazine in the 1980s and Time was doing a cover story on the senator, who then was at the height of his power.
What I discovered about Helms was not all bad. Apparently, he was a good family man and, as a senator, looked after his constituents, both white and black. One of his childhood friends in Monroe told me Helms even played with black kids as a child. But I also was allowed access to years of editorials that he wrote and read daily over the radio in Raleigh, where he had a regular broadcast, prior to his political career. A look at his vitriolic rhetoric when it came to race relations and civil rights left no doubt in my mind that this guy was a bigot of the first order. And he had no scruples about using racial division and prejudice for his own political gain as a candidate and senator.
He may have loved his wife and daughters and his adopted son, with whom he liked to spend quiet evenings popping popcorn and watching TV, and his only vice may have been an affinity for Lucky Strike cigarettes, but this was a mean-spirited, angry white supremacist and proud of it. May we never see his ilk again in Congress.
Joe Boyce
Indianapolis
July 4, 2008
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Feedback: Journalists, Politicians Are Embarrassed
Jesse Helms was a segregationist, a throwback to the bad old days of Bilbo, Faubus, Thurmond, Maddox and the rest of their despicable racist ilk. As a native North Carolinian, I am glad the old bigot has finally gone on to his reward. I wish it had happened sooner. I hope he is roasting in hell.
The main reason journalists and politicians, including those still temporarily in the aptly named White House, don’t want to call Helms a racist is that they are embarrassed by their long-lasting support and tolerance for his obnoxious racist beliefs. Tough.
Helms was a bigot. His entire career was based on bigotry. He hated blacks, gays and anybody else who was different. Anybody who ever voted for him supported bigotry. They can all join Helms in hell.
Jack White
Richmond, Va.
July 5, 2008
