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Politico, Suspended Reporter Reach “Agreement”

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Tweets, Romney Comments Could Mean Joseph Williams’ Exit

Blacks, Latinos Affected Most by Health Care Act

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Short Takes

 

Tweets, Romney Comments Could Mean Joseph Williams’ Exit

Joseph Williams, the Politico reporter whose comments and tweets about Mitt Romney led last week to a suspension, told Journal-isms Friday that he and Politico have “reached an agreement” that will be announced shortly.

“I’m not permitted to talk about it,” Williams said.

Politico Editor John F. Harris did not respond to emailed requests for comment Friday night.

While Williams would not talk about the announcement to come, he insists that his experience provides a cautionary tale. He has submitted a piece to theGrio.com in which he says that “a tiny group of organizations with Internet access, a money pipeline and next to no credibility can coerce powerful, independent news organizations that pride themselves on speaking truth to power. Rather than inform the public or operate as a legitimate check on the media, pointing out gaps in newsroom diversity or errors in coverage, members of the [right-wing news media] only care about their agenda: harassing, undermining, discrediting and embarrassing people who don’t agree with their view of the world.”

If Williams and Politico part ways, it will be a sad ending to a two-year stint that began in 2010 as Politico tried to address its reputation as a fast-moving sweatshop that paid little attention to diversity concerns.

The 2010 announcement of hiring of Williams read, “Joseph Williams will arrive Wednesday to become Deputy White House Editor after five years as Deputy Bureau Chief of the Boston Globe’s Washington Bureau.

“He edited breaking national political news, assigned, wrote and edited political enterprise stories, and covered the Obama administration’s urban affairs agenda. Before then, Williams was the deputy managing editor for local news at the Star Tribune in Minneapolis. A 1996 Nieman fellow, he began his career at the Richmond Times-Dispatch and worked in Miami and Boston.

“A 1984 University of Richmond graduate, Williams misspent his youth playing for losing football teams in high school and college. He is an Air Force brat who grew up on military bases in California, Washington state and D.C., and in Athens, Greece.”

Williams’ current troubles began on June 21, when Williams made a remark on MSNBC suggesting that Romney, the putative Republican presidential nominee, was comfortable only around white people. “The video was first flagged by conservative website Washington Free Beacon. Breitbart.com ran the video and also flagged a series of tweets Williams had written that made fun of the Republican candidate, particularly in regard to his wealth,” Dylan Byers wrote at the time for Politico.

“‘Regrettably, an unacceptable number of Joe Williams’s public statements on cable and Twitter have called into question his commitment to this responsibility,’ POLITICO’s founding editors John Harris and Jim VandeHei wrote in a memo to the staff. ‘His comment about Governor Romney earlier today on MSNBC fell short of our standards for fairness and judgment in an especially unfortunate way,’ ” Byers reported.

Then, on Tuesday, David Martosko wrote for the Daily Caller that Williams had tweeted about his employer on the evening of March 30 that “what’s most irritating is the overlay of blatant racism. that’s the secret sauce in the Politico shitburger.” Williams said that the tweet, which he made weeks before his Romney comments, had been mistakenly posted to his public feed, rather than in a direct message.

Williams had his defenders during his ordeal. On BlackAmericaWeb.com, Michael H. Cottman wrote Wednesday, “Romney may in fact be more comfortable with whites than he is with black people. Williams wasn’t claiming that Romney is a racist, he was simply suggesting that Romney perhaps feels more at ease when associating with people like him: white and wealthy.”

Dr. Boyce Watkins, Syracuse University scholar in residence in entrepreneurship and innovation, wrote June 22 in his ThyBlackMan blog, “Joe Williams wasn’t suspended by Politico for being abusive, unprofessional, sloppy or disrespectful http://thyblackman.com/2012/06/22/politico-joe-williams-suspended-racist-romney-comments . Instead, he was suspended for expressing opinions that come from a point of view that his supervisors can never learn to appreciate. . . . Politico Joe Williams was suspended for being a black man.”

In the essay Williams submitted to theGrio.com, and made available to Journal-isms, he writes, “By now, my cautionary tale is familiar: . . . saying Romney, a millionaire businessman, is more comfortable around people like him was like waving a red cape waving in front of a charging bull —namely, Big Media, an arm of the late Andrew Breitbart‘s online empire, and [the Daily] Caller, a web site scandal sheet run by Tucker Carlson. After rummaging through some 3,000 tweets, they cherry-picked ones designed to prove their flimsy case: that I was biased against Romney, a racist against whites and a representative of my employer’s slant against conservatives.

“At this point, I have to own my role in the story: I was careless on Twitter, ignored some warning signs, and realized too late that my followers weren’t the only ones watching me. Life on the business end of a scandal, is mortifying; an old friend told me I’d raced past the blues singer and the rock guitarist to become the lead result in a Joe Williams Google search, for all the wrong reasons.

“Yet it’s easy to miss the larger lesson in my cautionary tale – that a tiny group of organizations with internet access, a money pipeline and next to no credibility can coerce powerful, independent news organizations that pride themselves on speaking truth to power. Rather than inform the public or operate as a legitimate check on the media, pointing out gaps in newsroom diversity or errors in coverage, members of the RWNM only care about their agenda: harassing, undermining, discrediting and embarrassing people who don’t agree with their view of the world.”

Blacks, Latinos Affected Most by Health Care Act

As polls showed that African Americans and Hispanics are more favorably disposed toward the Affordable Health Care Act, and administration officials say those groups would be disproportionately helped by it, the Obama administration sought to capitalize on its Supreme Court victory by reaching out to those groups.

Valerie Jarrett, senior adviser to President Obama, held interviews Friday with Roland Martin on radio’s syndicated “Tom Joyner Morning Show,” with Warren Ballentine on radio’s “Warren Ballentine Show,” with Leroy Jones of American Urban Radio Network, and with Joe Madison of Sirius XM Radio, who is known as “The Black Eagle.”

In addition, Jarrett hosted a background briefing conference call for reporters Thursday on what the decision meant to African Americans. The Office of Minority Health in the Department of Health and Human Services sent staffers to Atlanta and Maryland radio stations to discuss the benefits of the law, upheld by the Supreme Court Thursday in a 5-4 decision.

“We had a NBC/Wall Street Journal poll this week that underscored how, in so many respects, the political parties are talking to radically different audiences,” John Harwood of the Wall Street Journal said Friday on “The Diane Rehm Show,” an NPR program that originates at WAMU-FM in Washington.

“. . . If you look at the popularity of the health care law by race, overall in the country, 35 percent of the American people said the health care law was a good idea, 41 percent, bad idea. But break it down: whites, 29 percent good idea, 50 percent bad idea. Mitt Romney has a large lead among white voters. African-Americans, 67 percent say they think the law is a good idea, 4 percent say it’s a bad idea, and with Hispanics, 48 and 20. Now, that’s where there’s some play in overlap in the middle. But these parties are talking to much different coalitions.”

On Politic365.com, Adriana Maestas wrote that “Blacks, Latinos and other folks of color make up more than half of the nation’s uninsured population” and listed “5 Things the Obamacare Ruling Does for Blacks and Latinos.”

They were: “More Blacks and Latinos will gain health coverage,” “More Black and Latino Doctors and Nurses,” “Improved Health for the Ladies,” “Coverage for Black and Latino Young Adults is Protected” and “More Health Centers in Black and Latino Communities.”

 

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