Maynard Institute archives

MSNBC Finally Ousts Pat Buchanan

by richard0508

Updated February 18, 2012

Pundit Sees “An Undeniable Victory for the Blacklisters”

Seniority Will Be Watchword in Philly Layoffs, Not Diversity

Journalist Anthony Shadid Also Recalled as Arab American

Cable Networks Covering Whitney Houston Funeral Live

AP Cites Nekesa Moody as First on Whitney Houston Story

Do Members of One Marginalized Group Relate to Others?

ESPN Apologizes for Racial Slur in Jeremy Lin Headline

Black History Month Related to Mexican-American Struggle

Short Takes

Pundit Sees “An Undeniable Victory for the Blacklisters”

MSNBC Thursday dropped conservative commentator Pat Buchanan, the recipient of two “Thumbs Down” awards from the National Association of Black Journalists, after decades of complaints that his pronouncements amounted to expressions of white nationalism, anti-Semitism and homophobia. The trigger this time appeared to be his latest book.

According to Media Matters, Pat Buchanan's book, 'Suicide Of A Superpower,' 'waxes nostalgic about the segregation era and cites crime statistics that he says 'might explain why black folks have trouble getting a cab.'

“The calls for my firing began almost immediately with the Oct. 18 publication of ‘Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?‘ Buchanan wrote in his column for Creators Syndicate on Thursday.

He went on to describe his critics: “Without a hearing, they smear and stigmatize as racist, homophobic or anti-Semitic any who contradict what George Orwell once called their ‘smelly little orthodoxies.’ They then demand that the heretic recant, grovel, apologize, and pledge to go forth and sin no more.

“Defy them, and they will go after the network where you work, the newspapers that carry your column, the conventions that invite you to speak. If all else fails, they go after the advertisers.”

“The book ‘Suicide of a Superpower’ contained chapters titled ‘The End of White America’ and ‘The Death of Christian America,” David Bauder wrote Thursday for the Associated Press. “Critics called the book racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic, charges Buchanan denied.

“MSNBC President Phil Griffin said last month that he didn’t think Buchanan’s book ‘should be part of the national dialogue, much less part of the dialogue on MSNBC.’

“The network said on Thursday that ‘after 10 years, we have decided to part ways with Pat Buchanan. We wish him well.’

“Buchanan, in a column posted on Thursday, called the decision ‘an undeniable victory for the blacklisters.’

“. . . Buchanan wrote that advocacy groups like Color of Change and the Anti-Defamation League brand people as racists or anti-Semites if they dare ‘to venture outside the narrow corral in which they seek to confine debate.’ They seek to silence and censor dissent while proclaiming devotion to the First Amendment, he said.”

However, as Howard Kurtz wrote for the Daily Beast, “. . . Buchanan, who survived for 10 years at MSNBC — and decades at CNN before that — wasn’t ‘blacklisted’ by wild-eyed liberal activists. He was forced out by MSNBC President Phil Griffin, who has presided over the hiring of Ed Schultz, Lawrence O’Donnell, Al Sharpton and a slew of liberal commentators, including Howard Dean and Ed Rendell. (The new house conservative, other than morning man Joe Scarborough, is ex-GOP chairman Michael Steele.)

Buchanan wrote in his column, “If my book is racist and anti-Semitic, how did Sean Hannity, Erin Burnett, Judge Andrew Napolitano, Megyn Kelly, Lou Dobbs and Ralph Nader miss that? How did Charles Payne, African-American host on Fox radio, who has interviewed me three times, fail to detect its racism? How did Michael Medved miss its anti-Semitism?”

However, Stelter wrote, “Of the eight interviewers he named in his essay, five were hosts on the Fox News Channel or its sibling the Fox Business Network. Several Fox News hosts and commentators publicly defended Mr. Buchanan in January, sparking some speculation that Fox could sign him as a commentator at some point.”

David Yontz, senior editor at Creators Syndicate, told Journal-isms on Friday that the syndicate has no plans to drop Buchanan. “We don’t give out the information about the number of papers writers are in, but I can say that we plan to keep carrying Pat Buchanan,” he said by email.

Buchanan was among two initial recipients of NABJ’s Thumbs Down awards in 1989 when he wrote that “if a young black or a young white male, sidles up to ask directions, and one of the two is a robber, rapist or killer, the odds are at least 11-to-1 that it is the black male,” as Jet magazine recounted at the time.

Buchanan was awarded the Thumbs Down again in 2008 after he wrote a column titled “The Way Our World Ends,” concluding that “the Caucasian race is going the way of the Mohicans” because of a “baby boom among these black and brown peoples” that will bring an end to Western Man in the 21st Century.”

Seniority Will Be Watchword in Philly Layoffs, Not Diversity

Seniority, not diversity, will be the prime consideration when the Philadelphia Media Network reduces the newsroom staffs of the Inquirer, Daily News and Philly.com by 37 positions, the company and the Newspaper Guild told Journal-isms on Friday.

“I hope something is done to stop the wholesale loss of blacks and Latinos,” said Vernon Clark, an Inquirer reporter who represented the Guild in talks with the company’s human resources managers on Wednesday. “Every time we’ve gone through a downsizing, diversity has taken a big hit.”

The declarations brought to mind the tumult created in 2007, when the Inquirer’s then-parent company laid off up to 71 newsroom employees, or about 17 percent of the editorial staff. When the current sale process is completed, the papers will have their fifth owner in six years, Julie Moos noted for the Poynter Institute.

The National Association of Black Journalists, and then the Asian American Journalists Association and Unity: Journalists of Color Inc. protested the disproportionate numbers of journalists of color on the 2007 layoff list. Black journalists were twice as likely to be there. Management and the Guild each blamed the other for that outcome.

Then, after renewed negotiations between management and the Guild, at least nine newsroom employees on the Inquirer’s layoff list — including two African American journalists — were reported coming back to work.

On Wednesday, Mike Armstrong reported for the Inquirer, “In a cost-cutting move, the parent company of The Inquirer, the Philadelphia Daily News, and Philly.com said it will reduce the number of newsroom positions by 37 — through buyouts, it hopes — by the end of March.”

Asked whether diversity would be taken into consideration in making layoffs, the Guild and management reached the same conclusion.

“Our last contract cites that the employer must review its diversity hiring practices but there is no language regarding protecting diversity in the event of any layoffs,” Dan Gross, president of the Newspaper Guild of Greater Philadelphia/CWA Local 38010, said in an email. “Those are done by seniority.”

Mark Block, vice president for external relations at the Philadelphia Media Network, said, “Our contract with the Guild requires layoffs in seniority order — length of service. We are not permitted to take into account any demographic factors or job performance.”

Clark said he raised the diversity issue during union talks with the human resources managers. “They’re concerned, but always the same issue with seniority,” he said.

Newsroom employees said privately it was too early to tell where cuts would be made. Staffers have until Feb. 29 to apply for a buyout. “Based on response to the voluntary program, the company might then resort to layoffs of Guild members to reach its goal of eliminating 37 positions by March 31,” the Inquirer story said.

In any case, another staffer said, “Diversity was lost a long time ago.”

Separately, “Nearly 300 newsroom employees of Philadelphia Media Network Inc. signed a public statement Friday calling on the current and any future owners of the media company to protect the integrity of their reporting,” Armstrong reported.

“. . . The three-paragraph statement addresses both the ramifications of a possible change in ownership for Philadelphia Media Network (PMN) and employees’ ‘dismay’ over how coverage of the sale process had been ‘compromised and censored’ by management.

“. . . Greg Osberg, PMN chief executive officer and publisher, responded with his own statement, expressing support for the journalists’ ‘clear message,’ but disagreeing that censorship had occurred.”

Anthony Shadid

The Oklahoman in Oklahoma City produced a video on the life of its native son. (Video)

Journalist Anthony Shadid Also Recalled as Arab American

Anthony Shadid, the New York Times Mideast correspondent who died in Syria at age 43 Thursday after an asthma attack, was hailed by journalists Friday as “one of the best journalists of his age,” in the words of David Kenner, associate editor at Foreign Policy magazine.

Shadid was the grandson of Lebanese immigrants, and as such was also the object of pride among Arab journalists and Arab Americans.

In a story headlined, “Tributes flow for deceased Lebanese-American journalist Anthony Shadid,” the Beirut-based Al-Akhbar quoted high-profile Egyptian blogger Issandr el-Amrani, or The Arabist, calling Shadid “the Godfather of Arab-American journalism.”

An official of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, the leading civil rights group for Arab-Americans, mentioned Shadid’s ethnicity before his profession when quoted in the Detroit Free Press.

” ‘It’s a huge loss, not just for Arab-Americans, but for journalists,’ said Abed Ayoub, of Dearborn, [legal] director of ADC. ‘He embodied what journalists should be,’ ” Niraj Warikoo wrote.

Sami Moubayed, a university professor, historian, and editor-in-chief of Forward Magazine in Damascus, Syria, wrote for the Huffington Post:

“I looked up to Tony — as any aspiring journalist would, when I first met him in 2003. I was new in my career, and he was on his way to winning his first Pulitzer.

“He had everything that we lacked as Arab journalists covering the Middle East. He did not have to humor anybody and was unafraid to say the truth. He couldn’t care less if government authorities hated him — the most they could do was revoke his visa, or expel him from the country in 24 hours. He didn’t have the ‘I Can’t Write That Complex.’ He wrote what he saw and felt, with no restrictions. Tony sympathized with ordinary people of the Middle East, admired their struggles, and since December 2010, was overwhelmingly supportive of the Arab Spring that ripped through the Arab World.

“Tony learned Arabic as an adult, but claimed that he always bonded with the Lebanese emigrant community in Oklahoma, where he grew up. He spent most of his professional life covering the region, first with the Associated Press, and then with the Boston Globe and the Washington Post, for which he famously won Pulitzer Prizes in 2004 and 2010. Those awards never affected his ego — not the slightest bit. They were actually the least thing he was comfortable discussing, so as not to let other journalists feel that he was, in any way, superior to them.”

Al-Akhbar also reported, “Shadid’s sister-in-law told Al-Akhbar that the family had yet to decide whether to bury the esteemed journalist in Lebanon or in the United States.”

Whitney Houston

Cable Networks Covering Whitney Houston Funeral Live

“Several cable networks this Saturday will air live coverage of late pop music icon Whitney Houston’s funeral, the networks announced Thursday,” R. Thomas Umstead reported for Multichannel News.

“BET and Centric’s Live: The Homegoing of Whitney Houston will begin its coverage of the Houston funeral from New Hope Baptist Church in Newark, N.J. at 11:30 a.m. The special will feature commentary from on-air correspondents April Woodard and Lola Oguinake, network executives said.

“Later that evening BET will air a one-hour special, BET Remembers Whitney, in which BET News correspondent Bevy Smith interviews music and television personalities such as Kim Burrell, Kelley Price, Faith Evans, Ledisi, India.Arie, Tisha [Campbell-Martin] and Tichina Arnold as they share memories of Houston.

“CNN’s Piers Morgan, Soledad O’Brien and Don Lemon will anchor CNN and CNN International’s live global coverage of the funeral special, Whitney Houston: Life, Death Music, beginning at 11 a.m., the network said. CNN Digital will also live stream the funeral on the web and via mobile at www.cnn.com/live from 11:30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. (ET).

“Fox News Channel will stream the funeral live on its site while the network airs portions of the service live between 11.30 a.m. and 2 p.m. with anchors Uma Pemmaraju and Rick Folbaum, network officials said.”

Tonya Pendleton added Friday for BlackAmericaWeb.com:

“Marvin Winans, a friend of the Houston family and part of the Winans gospel dynasty, will officiate the funeral at the church that she attended as a child. Aretha Franklin and Stevie Wonder have been selected to sing, Kevin Costner is expected to eulogize Houston, and Ray J., Brandy, Chaka Khan and Cece Winans — the godmother of Houston’s daughter, Bobbi-Kristina Brown — are expected to attend, among others luminaries.

“At 8 p.m. on CNN, Houston will be the subject of a brand-new ‘CNN Presents,’ which will re-air on Sunday at 11 p.m. The three-hour special, hosted by Dr. Sanjay Gupta and Randi Kaye, will include a look at her life and career, the last days of her life and interviews with Kelly Price, Kim Burrell, “Access Hollywood’s” Shaun Robinson, music writer Gerrick Kennedy and Adam Ambrose of Tru Hollywood nightclub, the place where Houston partied in the days before she died.”

TVOne announced Friday that it will air live coverage of the service beginning at noon ET/9 a.m. ET. “TV One’s coverage will be anchored by Jamal Munnerlyn, longtime host of the Access Hollywood-produced entertainment newsmagazine, TV One Access, which aired on TV One for six years. Tvone.tv also plans to stream live coverage of the service.”

In addition, “Houston’s publicist, Kristen Foster, announced Wednesday that The Associated Press will be allowed a camera at Saturday’s funeral in Newark. The AP will stream the service on http://livestream.com/aplive. The event also will be available to broadcasters via satellite.”

AP Cites Nekesa Moody as First on Whitney Houston Story

Nekesa Mumbi Moody, music editor for the Associated Press, was awarded the news cooperative’s Beat of the Week Award for her coverage of Nekesa Mumbi MoodyWhitney Houston’s death Saturday night, the result of a tip from Houston’s publicist, Kristen Foster.

“. . . no one even came close to Moody,” Jack Stokes, editor of the AP’s internal Connections newsletter, wrote in the publication Thursday. “From TMZ to The New York Times, from MSNBC to Drudge to the Los Angeles Times, AP was credited across the board for an hour. Quite simply, no one else had the story.”

“The beat was so big that other media were asking as to how AP got it,” Stokes continued.

“The answer is journalism basics:

  • “Preparation pays off hugely. And, prepare for the worst.
  • “Strong source work is essential, including all of those phone calls and emails and coffee dates that don’t seem to yield anything notable at the time but whose effect gets layered and multiplied until just that moment when it matters most.
  • “Fast action among diverse journalists working as a team is critical.
  • “Being good at what you do helps a whole lot, too. . . .” 

The prize comes with $500.

Not too long ago, security guards at Madison Square Garden did not recognize Jeremy Lin., left. (Credit: buzz60.com) (Scroll down for video)

Do Members of One Marginalized Group Relate to Others?

Eric Deggans, media writer for the Tampa Bay (Fla.) Times, reflected Wednesday on two purportedly jocular Twitter postings that landed Jason Whitlock of FoxSports.com and Roland Martin of CNN in trouble with Asian Americans and gay activists, respectively.

“As someone who has written a lot about prejudice in media, I was surprised and intrigued by what happened here. Two African American commentators who have often written about prejudice and race issues themselves, fell into the kind of public mistakes you might expect from people who hadn’t spent any time thinking about these issues at all,” Deggans wrote for the National Sports Journalism Center.

Deggans, who also chairs the Media Monitoring Committee of the National Association of Black Journalists, continued, “A measure of how far we have to go hit me after a visit to the Facebook page maintained by the AAJA’s MediaWatch group, where followers were criticizing a CNN panel discussing [NBA phenom Jeremy] Lin and race issues in which no Asian commentators were featured.” He was referring to the Asian American Journalists Association.

“I thought back to how I felt seeing African American issues dissected on some TV shows — I remember a debate on a Sunday politics show about controversy over public use of the word ‘niggardly’ which included no African Americans — and I felt like I was hearing a broken record replay yet again.

“These incidents are humbling reminders that those of us who have spent lots of time thinking about how prejudice affects some marginalized groups, still need to spend effort on how similar problems affect other types of people differently,” Deggans wrote, adding a few recommendations:

“Expand the voices making commentary — Just as sports media outlets worked hard to find more black reporters and commentators to better cover issues and avoid stereotypes, [it’s] time for the pool to expand in other ways, too.

“Where are the Asian voices in sports media, who can help explore what it means to see a breakout player like Lin subvert so many stereotypes about Asian Americans? Hey media executives — if you can’t find them, it’s time to start developing them. Just like you did with African Americans, once upon a time.

“Avoid the wordplay, it just invites trouble . . .”

ESPN Apologizes for Racial Slur in Jeremy Lin Headline

“ESPN has issued a statement apologizing for the presence of a racial slur that appeared in a headline about Jeremy Lin’s performance on Friday night,” Tom Ziller reported Saturday for SBNation.

“According to ESPN, the headline — ‘Chink in the Armor’— appeared on ESPN.com attached to a story about Lin’s nine turnovers in a New York Knicks loss for about 35 minutes before being removed.

“Rob King, ESPN.com editor-in-chief, also tweeted a message about the slip-up.

” ‘There’s no defense for the indefensible. All we can offer are our apologies, sincere though incalculably inadequate.’ . . .”

The network later produced a short video apology.

The Asian American Journalists Association replied:

“New York Knicks guard Jeremy Lin had a bad night Friday. Regrettably, so did ESPN. Using ‘a chink in the armor’ to describe Lin’s poor performance was inexcusable.

“We at the Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA) find it hard to fathom how such an offensive headline appeared on your publishing platforms. The phrase was even spoken on-air.

“We are glad ESPN has recognized its mistake, and we appreciate the quick apology for the transgression.

“Many people, not just in Asian American communities, are shocked that a news company with a long tradition of excellence would use a racial epithet. It’s particularly galling because of the weeks of discussion about Lin, his heritage and even the wave of outright racism surrounding his stardom. . . . ” [Feb. 18]

 

Black History Month Related to Mexican-American Struggle

Freedom's Journal Cover Page As February began, Gary Younge, U.S. correspondent for Britain’s Guardian newspaper, related the observance of Black History Month to the shutdown of the Mexican American studies program in Tucson, Ariz.

Younge wrote, “Black history month, which begins today in the US, gives us all a chance to rescue stories that have been discarded, correct stories that have been mistold and elevate stories that have been downplayed.

“Black history is not a subgenre of history. Nor does it stand apart from other histories. It makes no more or less sense than American history, Jewish history or Tudor history. Nor is it any more or less diverse — black historians don’t agree on everything just because they’re black. Partial, interconnected, necessary, it is simply the world’s history told either about or through the prism of a particular group of people.

“Recent events in Tucson, Arizona pose a direct threat to the very logic on which black history month (not to mention to mention the ‘heritage months’ dedicated to Hispanic, Asian Pacific and Native American histories) now stands.

“The Tucson Unified School District, where 60% of the students are Latino, will today be forced to shut down its Mexican American studies program or lose as much as $14m of funding from Arizona state. A few weeks ago, officials went into schools and ‘confiscated’ seven books from the classrooms deemed to promote ‘ethnic resentment’. Among them were several classics including Pedagogy of the Oppressed, by Paulo Freire, and Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 [Years], by Bill Bigelow.

“. . . One of the most salient lessons of black American history is the effectiveness of solidarity. As in its policing (the state’s stop-and-search laws were copied in more stringent form in other states), so in education: Arizona could set a dangerous precedent that might be used against women’s studies, queer studies and, yes, black history month. In short, these measures seek not to teach history but to preach nationalist mythology, aimed at raising not so much open-minded critical thinkers as blind patriots. We have been here before.”

Meanwhile, in the Huffington Post on Tuesday, Jack Mirkinson introduced readers to Freedom’s Journal, the first black newspaper in American history. “Founded in 1827 in New York City, the first edition of the Journal summed up a great many of the reasons for the continuing, vital existence of the black press.

” ‘We wish to plead our own cause,’ the editors wrote. ‘Too long have others spoken for us. Too long has the publick been deceived by misrepresentations, in things which concern us dearly.’

“Samuel Cornish and John Russwurm served as the top two editors of the Journal, which was founded the same year that slavery was abolished in New York. They were explicit in their desire to counter the steady stream of racist reporting coming out of the city’s other papers. Subscriptions cost $3 a year, and the paper tried to give a comprehensive look at the day’s news.”

All 103 issues of Freedom’s Journal have been digitized and are available on the Web site of the Wisconsin Historical Society, Mirkinson noted.

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