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Gates Becomes Part of “Black in America 2”

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Star Editor Janice Min Stepping Down from Us Weekly

Jose Antonio Vargas Jumps to Huffington Post

Professor Stars in Run-Up to CNN Documentary

Henry Louis Gates Jr. became the star of CNN’s long-planned "Black in America 2" debut Wednesday night as a result of his arrest in Cambridge, Mass., after being suspected of burglarizing his own home.

During "Moment of Truth: Countdown to Black in America 2," a live event broadcast from Times Square, Gates recounted for CNN anchor and special correspondent Soledad O’Brien his arrest at his Cambridge home.

He noted that the mayor "called and apologized," and said he was waiting for the police officer to "tell the truth about what he did," and not "the distortions and fabrications in the police report." The officer insists he followed proper procedures.

Gates did not rule out legal action, and said he had no animosity toward the neighbor who reported seeing two black men with backpacks trying to break into the home. Gates was with a driver, returning from the airport. In fact, Gates said he was happy for the vigilance, because he has valuables in the house.

Gates was originally scheduled because he had helped radio host Tom Joyner trace his ancestry, which includes relatives who were wrongly executed in the killing of a Confederate veteran. The two men said they were appealing for redress from South Carolina’s governor, Mark Sanford.

The two-hour debut of "Black in America 2" began at 9 p.m. Eastern time, after President Obama’s 8 p.m. news conference, which focused on health care.

Jennifer Lee, a spokeswoman for the Root.com, which Gates edits, said CNN’s was Gates’ only scheduled broadcast appearance, to her knowledge. He told his story in a Q and A on theRoot.com and in an hour-long interview with the Washington Post. Both are owned by the Washington Post Co.

Despite the dropping of charges, the Gates arrest for disorderly conduct has quickly become the subject of commentary, particularly, but not only, by African Americans. The opinions range from editorials in the Los Angeles Times, the Dallas Morning News and Salem (Ore.) Statesman Journal, to pieces online by Gates’ daughter and by a Los Angeles police officer, writing under an assumed name for the National Review. Cambridge police.

"I don’t blame Gates for viewing himself as the victim of racial profiling. History is on his side," Editorial Page Editor Dick Hughes, who is white, wrote in a column scheduled for the Salem newspaper.

"When minority motorists talk about being stopped for ‘Driving While Black" or ‘Driving While Hispanic,’ history supports them. When I was a police reporter in the 1970s, doing ridealongs with officers, they told me how they profiled drivers in deciding whom to stop.

"Even if that profiling wasn’t an official part of department policy, it was passed from one generation of officers to the next.

"Yes, times have changed, and the U.S. has elected its first black president. But such history dies hard."

Another editorial page editor, Harold Jackson of the Philadelphia Inquirer, who is black, said "I’m using the incident to introduce an editorial on The Sentencing Project’s new report on racial disparities in prison sentencing."

Many used the incident to puncture the myth that the United States had entered a "post-racial" era with Obama’s election, an idea Obama himself denied last week.

On the other side, a Los Angeles police officer writing under the pseudonym "Jack Dunphy" wrote for the National Review:

"The claim that Gates had been ‘profiled’ is ludicrous. Police responded to a 911 call from a witness who described two black men she believed to be breaking into a home. If contacting a black man then found inside that very home is deemed to be ‘profiling’ then the term itself has been stripped of its meaning.

". . . If there’s an apology that’s owed, it’s not from the police."

Under the headline, "Professor quick to exploit case," Boston Herald columnist Peter Gelzinis wrote, "Exploitation can assume many forms – including Skip [Gates’] sudden decision to train his historian/journalist eye on the subject of racial profiling. Obviously, there’s no need to ask why he wasn’t moved to make such a documentary before yesterday."

From the left, Cornel West, the activist Princeton professor who worked with Gates at Harvard, linked the incident with Obama’s speeches on personal responsibility and the president’s admiration of Abraham Lincoln.

On Pacifica Radio’s "Democracy Now!" West said, "Lincoln became great, because a social movement pushed him against slavery in that regard. And Obama is looking to the wrong Lincoln. And if he doesn’t understand the greatness of Lincoln was responding to the social movements of working people and poor people, he’s going to end up with a failed presidency, with a lot of symbolic gestures, but, on the ground, everyday people, those Sly Stone called ‘everyday people,’ suffering still."

Obama Says "Cambridge Police Acted Stupidly"

President Obama, asked to comment at his news conference about the arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr., said "any of us would be pretty angry" if we had been subject to the same police actions, and that "the Cambridge police acted stupidly, when there was already proof that they were in their own home." 

The question, asked by Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun-Times, was the final one at an hour-long conference focused on Obama’s health care proposals. The president began his answer by saying that "Skip Gates is a friend" and "I don’t know all the facts.

"Now, I don’t know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that," he said, as reported by the Boston Globe. "’But I think it’s fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry; number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home; and, number three, what I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there’s a long history in this country of African Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately. That’s just a fact," Obama said.

"That doesn’t lessen the incredible progress that has been made," he added. "I am standing here as testimony to the progress that’s been made. And yet the fact of the matter is, is that, you know, this still haunts us. And even when there are honest misunderstandings, the fact that blacks and Hispanics are picked up more frequently and often time for no cause casts suspicion even when there is good cause. And that’s why I think the more that we’re working with local law enforcement to improve policing techniques so that we’re eliminating potential bias, the safer everybody is going to be."

Despite the president’s familiarity with Gates, who has been called the most prominent African American scholar in American history, the professor apparently wasn’t so large on some journalists’ radar screens.

Blogging for USA Today, David Jackson described him as "Henry Gates, an African-American professor at Harvard who was arrested at his home by police in Cambridge, Mass." Chris Cillizza, summarizing the conference for his "The Fix" column on the Washington Post site, did not mention Gates.

Commenting on MSNBC, Howard Fineman said Obama’s more down-to-earth response to the Gates question showed more of the Obama that people tuned in to see than did his discussion of health-care policy.

The news conference was covered live by BET, which has been attempting to change its reputation as the network of booty-shaking music videos. Keith Brown, senior vice president of news and public affairs, said the network had covered all of Obama’s news conferences.

When the session was over, special correspondent Sophia Nelson of theRoot.com explained that her father, brother and even she had been victims of profiling, and she presumed her male anchor, BET News correspondent Andre Showell, had as well. They quickly went on to discuss Obama’s responses on health care.

Previously:

Star Editor Janice Min Stepping Down from Us Weekly

"Janice Min, the editor who turned Us Weekly into one of magazine publishing‚Äôs major success stories, will step down next week after seven years there, in what she and her boss, Jann S. Wenner, described Monday as an amicable parting," Richard P?©rez-Pe?±a wrote Monday in the New York Times.

"Ms. Min said she did not have her next move planned, though she talked about online ventures and television as fields that would appeal to her. But after publicized contract haggling in 2005 and 2007, with speculation each time that one of the field’s biggest stars might just walk away, Ms. Min said that this time she had decided not to renew her contract, which expires Aug. 1.

‚Äú’As long as I‚Äôm here, I can‚Äôt really even begin to think about what I‚Äôm going to do next,’ she said. ‘But I‚Äôm 39 and I‚Äôd like to have another career. I felt like I‚Äôd done every possible thing at Us Weekly to make it successful.’‚Äù

"Ultimately, it was all about the money," Amy Wicks wrote Wednesday for Women’s Wear Daily.

"A few years ago, Us Weekly editor in chief Janice Min signed a contract worth approximately $2 million, but that deal is about to expire, and given the state of the publishing world, that kind of money wasn’t on the table this time around. While Us owner Jann Wenner asked Min to stay, in the end they couldn’t agree on a new salary number."

U.S. Holds Iraqi Journalist 10th Month Without Charges

"American forces arrested Iraqi journalist Ibrahim Jassam last year and continue to hold him without charge in a U.S. military prison camp — even as the United States transfers jurisdiction to Iraqi authorities," Quil Lawrence reported Monday for National Public Radio.

"Jassam, a cameraman, shot footage of Iraq’s violence during times when it was impossible for Western reporters to move safely around Iraq.

"He was 29 years old in 2006 when he began working for Reuters news agency. At the time, the towns southwest of Baghdad had earned the nickname the ‘Triangle of Death’ because of the violence between Shiite militias and Sunni insurgents. His brother, Walid, says Jassam took his work very seriously.

". . . But as with many cases in the past, the U.S. military apparently thought Jassam’s photos looked a little too close to the action, suggesting a connection to insurgents.

". . . Iraqi journalists have been regularly detained by U.S. forces through the course of the American occupation; several have been killed when mistaken for insurgents. According to Mohamed Abdel Dayem, of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, Jassam is the only one still in U.S. custody.

"No charges have been brought against any of the journalists . . . If and when they are detained, [journalists’] cases should be reviewed in a quick and timely way, and they should either be charged with a recognizable crime or they should be released,’ Dayem says.

". . . Jassam’s sister says he isn’t eating enough and looks thin. She says her brother knows that the Iraqi court cleared him in November, and that he can’t understand why the Americans keep holding him, for 10 months now and counting."

Jose Antonio Vargas Jumps to Huffington Post

Jose Antonio Vargas a rising star at the Washington Post who covers what he calls "the marriage of the Internet and politics," "is moving to a Web site that operates at that intersection: The Huffington Post," Brian Stelter reported Tuesday for the New York Times.

"Mr. Vargas will join the Arianna Huffington outfit next month as the technology and innovations editor. He will oversee a new section about tech (coming this fall) and encourage sitewide innovation.

"The Huffington Post has been on something like a hiring tear in recent months. After Dan Froomkin, the Washington Post columnist, was dismissed last month, Ms. Huffington happily scooped him up.

"Mr. Vargas said he had respect and admiration for The Washington Post, where he has worked since 2004, and that his move to Ms. Huffington’s Post was a personal decision."

Vargas, 28, told Facebook friends he seemed "2 have stunned some peeps with this move: to me, there is no new media v old media. only good journalism."

The hiring of Vargas brings Huffington’s total to seven paid reporters, with Vargas, who is of Filipino background, its first paid reporter of color. Huffington spokesman Mario Ruiz said the operation had 38 editorial staffers.

Traditional Burial Service Planned for Cronkite Thursday

A family funeral service for longtime CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite, who died Friday at 92, is scheduled for Thursday at 2 p.m., at St. Bartholomew’s Church in midtown Manhattan, CBS said on Wednesday. 

CBS News will provide a live feed by satellite to broadcasters that wish to carry it. The network said it would stream the service on cbsnews.com.

The ceremony will be a traditional burial service from the Book of Common Prayer with the Rev. William McD. Tully presiding. It will include a jazz band’s rendition of “When The Saints Go Marching In” during the final procession. Speakers are to include Andy Rooney, Sanford Socolow, Mike Ashford and Bill Harbach followed by a final tribute from son Chip Cronkite.

The family has requested that donations be sent to the Walter and Betsy Cronkite Fund in care of The Austin Community Foundation (www.austincommunityfoundation.org).

"They will distribute the funds as a tribute to their parents’ wishes and values: local and national charities they supported, among them education (including sailing), journalism, basic needs, health care and research, community organizations, planned parenthood and animals."

Personal notes may be sent to the family in care of the church, 325 Park Ave., New York, NY 10022.

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