Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth Changed Reporter’s Worldview
“Epic Story” Traces Media’s Role in Perpetuating Racism
4 GOP Hopefuls to Boycott Univision Debate Over Rubio Flap
Donated Stations Headed for Minority Ownership or Training
The Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth (Credit: Cincinnati Enquirer)
Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth Changed Reporter’s Worldview
Mark Curnutte, a white reporter for the Cincinnati Enquirer, first met the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth shortly after arriving in the Ohio city in 1993. He interviewed the civil rights leader for “A Polite Silence,” a seven-day series about race relations in the city for which Curnutte won the 1994 Unity Award from Lincoln University in Missouri.
“I didn’t fully understand who he was historically. He was not the type of person to promote himself,” Curnette, 49, said. After he learned of Shuttleworth background, Curnutte said, he engaged the clergyman and took in lessons that guided his reporting of topics from the Cincinnati Bengals — Curnutte was the NFL beat writer — to undocumented immigrants.
“For someone of that stature to start educating a white journalist and not judge me says a lot about him and I’ll always be grateful,” Curnette told Journal-isms on Wednesday. “It opened my eyes. You appreciate people on the margins and their struggle and their fight.” Telling their stories becomes “one of the highest callings of the profession,” the reporter said. Shuttlesworth taught him that “each life deserves dignity.”
On Wednesday, Curnutte contributed to his newspaper’s story on Shuttlesworth’s passing.
“On his 80th birthday, Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth was hailed in his native Alabama as a ‘black Moses’ whose fearless courage a half century ago helped lift the civil rights movement from a Southern skirmish into a national crusade that forced America to examine its soul,” the story by Barry M. Horstman began.
“Described in a 1961 CBS documentary as ‘the man most feared by Southern racists,’ Rev. Shuttlesworth survived bombings, beatings, repeated jailings and other attacks — physical and financial — in his unyielding determination to heal the country’s most enduring, divisive and volatile chasm.
” ‘They were trying to blow me into heaven,’ Rev. Shuttlesworth, who spent most of his adult life in Cincinnati, said of those who violently opposed him in Birmingham and throughout the South. ‘But God wanted me on Earth.’
“Wednesday morning in Birmingham, God called Rev. Shuttlesworth home, ending a remarkable and inspiring 89-year life that left Alabama and the United States forever changed — if still short, an African-American president notwithstanding, of a society where skin color is irrelevant in shaping life’s opportunities and challenges.”
In his 1999 biography, “A Fire You Can’t Put Out: The Civil Rights Life of Birmingham’s Reverend,” Andrew M. Manis, an associate professor of history at Macon State University in Georgia, describes Shuttlesworth’s alliance with the Rev. Emory Jackson, editor of the black Birmingham World, during the Birmingham struggles.
“His life was one press release after another,” Manis told Journal-isms on Wednesday. “Always using the press to let the authorities know what he was going to do next. Where he was going to attack the segregation next. It got the message to ‘Bull’ Connor and the others so they could never say he snuck up on them,” referring to the arch-segregationist Theophilus Eugene “Bull” Connor, the city’s commissioner of public safety.
Still, Manijs said, Shuttlesworth was “a bit formal” in his dealings with white reporters. Unlike the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., “his full-time occupation was not as a civil rights leader. He always was an active pastor. Shuttlesworth was the kind of person who wouldn’t analyze anything without using theological . . . language.” Most reporters “did not want that kind of language,” preferring King’s more intellectual approach.
But Shuttlesworth’s approach was fine with Curnutte. “Rev. Shuttlesworth gave me my first introduction to Martin Luther King III,” Curnutte said. “He said I was a courageous journalist and I couldn’t believe it. I thought I was just being fair. So many white people had tried to kill him. Here is a man seeing me on my own merits, not giving the interview to the black newspaper, and if he had, I wouldn’t have blamed him.”
“Epic Story” Traces Media’s Role in Perpetuating Racism
“It is our contention that newspapers, radio, and television played a pivotal role in perpetuating racist views among the general population,” Juan Gonzalez and Joseph Torres write in their new book, “News for All the People: The Epic Story of Race and the American Media,” to be officially published Oct. 24.
“They did so by routinely portraying non-white minorities as threats to white society and by reinforcing racial ignorance, group hatred, and discriminatory government policies. The news media thus assumed primary authorship of a deeply flawed national narrative: the creation myth of heroic European settlers battling an array of backward and violent non-white peoples . . . it has persisted as a constant theme of American news reporting from the day of Publick Occurrences, the first colonial newspaper, to the age of the Internet.”
The 378-page book by Gonzalez, a columnist for the Daily News in New York and former president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, and Torres, government relations manager for the advocacy group Free Press and former NAHJ deputy director, started life as a pamphlet titled, “How Long Must We Wait: The Fight for Racial and Ethnic Equality in the U.S. Media,” distributed at the Unity 2004 convention.
A Ford Foundation grant in 2005 sped up the project. “I think you and the readers of your column will find many important revelations in the research we’ve done as well as in our analysis of why the struggle to achieve media diversity has encountered so many obstacles for so long,” Gonzalez wrote Journal-isms.
The book also attempts to “sketch the origin and spread of the system of the news in the United States, retracing how the media came to exercise such enormous sway over public life,” according to its introduction. It also aims “to unearth the saga of this ‘other’ American journalism, to collect in one place and preserve for future generations some of the achievements of those editors and journalists of color who repeatedly challenged the worst racial aspects of our national narrative.”
The book tour begins Oct. 20 in New York and continues to San Francisco; Oakland, Santa Cruz, Fresno, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Northridge and San Diego in California; Albuquerque and Santa Fe in New.Mexico; Dallas and Houston in Texas; Colorado Springs, Fort Collins and Denver in Colorado and to Washington, D.C.
4 GOP Hopefuls to Boycott Univision Debate Over Rubio Flap
“A letter signed by 3 Florida Hispanic Republicans urging a boycott of Univision’s planned Republican presidential debate is gaining the support of White House candidates, while triggering a defiant letter in return from the largest Spanish-language television network in the United States,” Phil Keating and Serafin Gomez wrote Tuesday for Fox News Latino.
“At issue is whether Univision offered to drop or soften a story about the drug arrest and conviction of Florida’s US Senator Marco Rubio’s brother-in-law in exchange for Rubio agreeing to sit down for an interview on a show where immigration issues were likely to come up. Rubio, a Cuban-American from Miami, opposes the Dream Act, which provides a pathway to citizenship for many young immigrants.
“. . . So far, 4 candidates have jumped onboard the Univision debate-boycott: Texas Governor Rick Perry, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann and former Utah Governor John Huntsman.”
Donated Stations Headed for Minority Ownership or Training
The Minority Media and Telecommunications Council Tuesday announced the completion of deals for the six radio stations donated to MMTC by Clear Channel in 2010.
“All of these buyers are either minority or women owner/operators or they are non-minority buyers who have committed funding for minority training and mentoring initiatives. MMTC has entered into local marketing agreements (LMAs) which include a future option to buy the stations with four of these broadcasters. MMTC will remain the licensee of the stations until these sale transactions have closed. Two of the stations will be sold to and immediately operated by the new owners.”
The six are:
- KFXN-AM Minneapolis. “Xeng Xiong and Kongsue Xiong operated an on-line radio station for Hmong residents and run a small business in the Twin Cities. Their on-line station has moved to KFXN AM, where they operate an LMA for MMTC. KFXN AM will broadcast information and entertainment in the Hmong and Laotian languages as they strive to promote social cohesiveness and understanding in Minneapolis.” http://www.wnrr1380.com/
- WHJA-AM Laurel, Mississippi and KYHN-AM, Fort Smith, Ark. James Hardman, a minority broadcaster from Tulsa with decades of experiences “will program the stations targeting the African American community. He plans to buy the stations from MMTC in 3-5 years.”
- WNRR-Am, North Augusta, S.C.: “Renee deMedicis is operating WNRR as an LMA and [plan to] purchase the station from MMTC in 2012. Ms. deMedicis and her husband have extensive experience in radio sales and programming. Ms. deMedicis owns and operates an advertising agency in North Augusta. Both are on air personalities, sell advertising, serve the community and are working to grow the station.”
- WTOC (AM) Newton, N.J.: “Dr. Hector A. Chiesa and his non-profit organization, Radio Vision Cristiana . . . will purchase as soon as the assignment application has been approved by the FCC. The station is currently silent in preparation for Radio Vision to launch their Spanish Religion format. Radio Vision currently owns another station in New York.”
- KMFX-AM, Wabasha, Minn., currently WBHA-AM: “Alan Quarnstrom and Q Media Group purchased KMFX from MMTC in June. As part of the purchase price Q Media and MMTC allocated funds for the purpose of initiating and/or maintaining training programs targeted at women and minorities who wish to manage or otherwise participate in the operations of broadcasting stations, broadband systems or any other medium of mass communication.”
