Maynard Institute archives

Armstrong Williams to Buy Two TV Stations

by richard0585

Commentator Instantly Boosts Nation’s Black Ownership

A “Pretty Categorical Non-Apology” From Bloomberg

Commentator Instantly Boosts Nation’s Black Ownership

Armstrong WilliamsArmstrong Williams, the conservative commentator and entrepreneur, is buying two television stations newly acquired by Sinclair Broadcast Group, Inc., the parties announced Thursday. The transaction would instantly multiply the tiny number of commercial television stations owned by African Americans.

African American ownership dropped from 12 stations in 2009 to 10 stations in 2011, or less than 1 percent of the nation’s 1,348 full-power television stations, the Federal Communications Commission said in November.

Williams plans to acquire WEYI-TV, an NBC affiliate in the Flint/Saginaw/Bay City/Midland, Mich., market, ranked no. 67, and WWMB-TV, a CW affiliate in market 103 in the Myrtle Beach/Florence, S.C., market, near Williams’ hometown of Marion, S.C.

No purchase price was disclosed. The transaction is part of a larger deal in which Sinclair agreed to purchase the broadcast assets of 18 television stations owned by Barrington Broadcasting Group, LLC for $370 million and entered into agreements to operate or provide sales services to another six stations. The deal is subject to approval by the FCC and antitrust clearance. Williams said he was financing the purchase through J.P. Morgan Chase.

David D. Smith

The stations Williams plans to buy are in markets where the Hunt Valley, Md.-based Sinclair would own too many stations under FCC rules.

David D. Smith, president and CEO of Sinclair, said in a statement, “We are pleased to advance the diversity efforts of the FCC and create a path for minority ownership in the broadcast space through Howard Stirk Holdings,” Williams’ firm. Smith told Journal-isms that Sinclair does not plan to sell any more of the newly acquired stations, since their acquisition would not violate the FCC rules.

In his own statement, Williams said, “Today’s announcement fulfills a life-long dream to own and operate broadcast facilities and give back to an industry that I love. I have been privileged to work with the Sinclair Broadcast Group for years and I am truly thankful for the opportunity it has provided. Many in the industry talk about diversity and expanding opportunity, but here the Sinclair Broadcast Group is putting words into action. The name ‘Howard Stirk’ is taken from my mother’s maiden name, Howard, and my [father’s middlename], Stirk. Knowing the humble, [hardscrabble] beginnings of my family in rural South Carolina, I felt honoring my parents in this small way was the right thing to do.”

The Sinclair announcement noted, “In addition to his well-known work as a political commentator, Mr. Williams has spent nearly twenty years developing and producing high quality television programming, including primetime specials with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, former Vice President Dick Cheney and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. From 2001 to 2003, Mr. Williams served as Chief Operating Officer of the Renaissance Cable TV Network with responsibility for all programming, advertising and content development.”

Despite his Republican credentials, Williams told Journal-isms by telephone, “I’ve evolved. I don’t care about political party. I care about what works for the people.”

Smith told Journal-isms that he and Williams had long worked together and that Sinclair was looking to expand its relationship with him. “I’ve always admired his ability to stick his neck out there and call people . . . for what they’re doing,” he told Journal-isms by telephone. “We’re big believers in advocacy journalism, and he fits that mode. He was the first one I called” when the ownership possibility arose.

Williams said that he would manage the stations himself and that the purchase would give him the opportunity to do more television production. He said that he would not want to tamper with the NBC programming but that “local television should be about the local area.”

A “Pretty Categorical Non-Apology” From Bloomberg

Bloomberg Businessweek executives did not return telephone calls or emails this week when Journal-isms inquired about its cover, but when Politico, Slate, the Atlantic and other publications blasted the cover’s racial overtones on Thursday, editor Josh Tyrangiel broke his silence.

” ‘Our cover illustration last week got strong reactions, which we regret,’ Josh Tyrangiel, the magazine’s editor, wrote in a statement sent to POLITICO,” Dylan Byers, Politico’s media reporter, wrote. ” ‘Our intention was not to incite or offend. If we had to do it over again we’d do it differently.’ “

Slate’s Matthew Yglesias called that “a pretty categorical non-apology. . . . Note that Tyrangiel doesn’t say they regret publishing the actual content of the cover, but the ‘strong reactions’ that it incited. How hard is it to take responsibility for the cover, say sorry, and leave it at that?”

The cover shows people of color surrounded by cash in a house, with the cover line, “The Great American Housing Rebound,” keyed to a story about Phoenix in which no people of color are mentioned.

Ryan Chittum wrote in Columbia Journalism Review, “The cover stands out for its cast of black and Hispanic caricatures with exaggerated features reminiscent of early 20th century race cartoons. Also, because there are only people of color in it, grabbing greedily for cash. It’s hard to imagine how this one made it through the editorial process.

“Compounding the first-glance problem with the image is the fact that race has been a key backdrop to the subprime crisis.

“The narrative of the crash on the right has been the blame-minority-borrowers line, sometimes via dog whistle, often via bullhorn.

“It’s a narrative that has, not coincidentally, dovetailed with ‘Obamaphone’ baloney, the ACORN pseudo-scandal, and Southern politicians calling the first black president ‘food-stamp president,’ and is meant to take the focus off the ultimate culprits: mortgage lenders with no scruples and the Wall Street banks who financed them. . . .”

The artist was Andres Guzman, a Lima, Peru, native currently residing in Minneapolis. CJR’s Sara Morrison reported, “He wrote on his blog that he ‘was asked to make an excited family with large quantities of money.’ He added: ‘Drawing dollars was a drag. ‘ “

Jason Linkins of the Huffington Post added, “Rachel Nagler, Head of Communications for the magazine, passes along a note from Andres Guzman, the illustrator: ‘The assignment was an illustration about housing. I simply drew the family like that because those are the kind of families I know. I am Latino and grew up around plenty of mixed families.’

Morrison and Linkins made the point that, in Morrison’s words, “All that said, it’s surprising that no one at Businessweek took a minute to consider that the cover could be viewed as racist.”

That, too, was the message from the National Association of Black Journalists and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists:

“The image that was published by Bloomberg BusinessWeek is just a microcosm of a bigger problem in the magazine industry — the lack of diversity,” NABJ President Gregory Lee Jr. said in a statement. “The last presidential election demonstrated that our nation’s demographics are changing rapidly and it is essential that media companies should make the appropriate changes to welcome diversity in their newsrooms, specifically in managerial positions.”

Errin Haines, NABJ vice president-print, said in the same statement, “Being controversial is one thing, but this cover is clearly offensive and demeaning.

“What is the message this cover seeks to convey to readers? And who thought this was a good idea? That such an image would be published by a magazine of the stature and exposure of Bloomberg BusinessWeek suggests that there was no one with the cultural sensitivity or awareness in the room to step in before this cover made it to press.

“While that fact is problematic, this incident presents an opportunity to prevent such oversights in the future, and NABJ stands ready to help the magazine bring more diversity to its masthead.”

“In an interview, Hugo Balta, the president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, said the cover ‘continues to speak to the insensitivity of how minorities, and in this case Latinos, are being portrayed in media,’ “ Tanzina Vega wrote for the New York Times.

” ‘I think it oversimplifies an issue that obviously has tremendous financial impact to the country, and it also puts a face to a community that is too often vulnerable to those types of attacks,’ Mr. Balta said. ‘If we go with the old saying that a picture is worth a [thousand] words, the message in this picture is that it’s the minority’s fault.’ “

Apology Over Blackface

February 27, 2013

Photog, Magazine Differ Over Intent of Darkening Model

Jet Editor Sorry for Facebook Comment on Fantasia

Historian Says Parks Would Have Wanted Tubman Honored

Editorials Back Renewal of Voting Rights Act

CNN Still in Rough Ratings Waters

. . . Martin “Unperturbed” by Uncertainty of CNN Role

Detroit’s Fleming Reportedly Suspended for 10 Days

ESPN Leads the Way in Sports Journalism Diversity

VH1 to Follow Reporters on “Urban Entertainment” Beat

Why Are These People in That House?

Short Takes

A darkened white model Ondria Hardin, 16, of Lumberton, N.C., appeared in the F

Photog, Magazine Differ Over Intent of Darkening Model

The French magazine that published a photo of a darkened 16-year-old white girl under the title “African Queen” apologized Wednesday “to anyone who may have been offended.”

But the magazine’s management offered a different explanation of what the photo represented than did the photographer, and the controversy again shone a light on the lack of racial progress in the fashion industry.

Anna Klassen wrote Wednesday in the Daily Beast, “. . . Unfortunately, increased racial diversity within the fashion industry is still an issue. According to reports, at New York Fashion Week this season, an astonishing 82 percent of models were white. Of the remaining 18 percent, only 6 percent were black. And while some design houses are trying to remedy this problem — see Miu Miu’s spring campaign video that features an entirely black cast — they are few and far between. . . .”

Just a week ago, Margaret Sullivan, public editor at the New York Times, quoting a reader’s letter about the Times’ redesigned T Magazine, wrote, “. . . There is a complete absence of any people of color in articles or fashion shoots. I assume the ads cannot be controlled, but I saw only one African-American and one Asian-American among the thousands of models in the ads. The T doesn’t look like my neighborhood or America.”

Writing about the Numéro photo spread, Julee Wilson explained Wednesday in HuffPost BlackVoices, “. . . Ondria Hardin, a 16-year-old, blond-haired, blue-eyed model is seen with darkened skin, striking a pose for the glossy.

“The Huffington Post reached out to the magazine for comment and received the following statement Wednesday morning via email:

” ‘Some people have declared that they have been offended by the publication in Numéro magazine n°141 of March 2013, of an editorial realized by the photographer Sebastian Kim called ‘African Queen’, featuring the American model Ondria Hardin posing as an ‘African queen’, her skin painted in black.

” ‘The artistic statement of the photographer Sebastian Kim, author of this editorial, is in line with his previous photographic creations, which insist on the melting pot and the mix of cultures, the exact opposite of any skin color based discrimination. Numéro has always supported the artistic freedom of the talented photographers who work with the magazine to illustrate its pages, and has not took part in the creation process of this editorial.

” ‘For its part, Numéro Magazine, which has the utmost respect for this photographer’s creative work, firmly excludes that the latest may have had, at any moment, the intention to hurt readers’ sensitivity, whatever their origin. . . .”

However, Kim denied the model represented a black woman and called the “African Queen” title unfortunate.

“At 11:03am The Huffington Post received the following statement from photographer Sebastian Kim via email,” Wilson continued.

” ‘I would like to apologize for any misunderstanding around my recent photos for Numero France. It was never my intention (nor Numero’s) to portray a black woman in this story. Our idea and concept for this fashion shoot was based on 60’s characters of Talitha Getty, Verushka and Marisa Berenson with middle eastern and Moroccan fashion inspiration. We at no point attempted to portray an African women by painting her skin black. We wanted a tanned and golden skin to be showcased as part of the beauty aesthetic of this shoot.

” ‘It saddens me that people would interpret this as a mockery of race. I believe that the very unfortunate title ‘African Queen’ (which I was not aware of prior to publication) did a lot to further people’s misconceptions about these images. It was certainly never my intention to mock or offend anyone and I wholeheartedly apologize to anyone who was offended.”

Klassen wrote in the Daily Beast, “. . . this isn’t the magazine’s first racial offense. In 2010, it used Caucasian model Constance Jablonski to portray an African mother in an editorial spread, complete with Afro and dark face paint, posing with a black baby in a field of wheat.

“Numéro joins the ranks of other magazines that have featured racially insensitive spreads in the past. In 2006, fair-skinned Kate Moss posed for The Independent wearing nothing but black paint covering her face and body. In 2010, Claudia Schiffer posed for Karl Lagerfeld in yellow and blackface, wearing an afro-like wig, sequined top and brown face and body paint. And in 2012, make-up brand Illamasqua featured a model in dark face paint and makeup.”

Jet Editor Sorry for Facebook Comment on Fantasia

Jet magazine editor-in-chief Mitzi Miller has apologized for a Facebook comment expressing her exasperation over having to compose a statement defending the magazine’s use of a 10-year-old photo of cover subject Fantasia  Barrino, who became famous in 2004 as a winner on television’s “American Idol.”

“I apologize for the lack of sensitivity shown in my FaceBook post. It was a thoughtless comment made during a moment of frustration. It was unprofessional and not representative of the JET mission, which is to uplift. I regret letting my emotions get the best of me. I am truly apologetic,” Miller said in a statement, Veronica Wells reported Tuesday for Madame Noire.

As reported in this space on Friday, Miller told her Facebook friends, “The fact that I wasted an hour of my workday writing a press release to address an issue created by a person who cannot even read it is just… #whyiwannaBahousewife.”

President Obama spoke at the unveiling of a statue of Rosa Parks in the U.S. Capitol, saying people often live their lives “as if in a fog, accepting injustice, rationalizing inequity, tolerating the intolerable.” (Video)

Historian Says Parks Would Have Wanted Tubman Honored

On Wednesday, President Obama spoke at the unveiling of a full-length bronze statue of civil rights icon Rosa Parks, the first African American woman so honored in the U.S. Capitol’s Statuary Hall.

“Mrs. Parks would have been more embarrassed than flattered,” historian Douglas Brinkley wrote Wednesday for the Washington Post’s theRootDC. “She was an extremely self-deprecating woman. What would have truly perturbed her was that Obama has yet to issue an executive order to create the Harriet Tubman National Monument. The paperwork is ready. It just needs the president’s signature.

“Mrs. Parks enjoyed noting that she was born in February 1913 and Tubman died just a month later in March. She felt that the freedom struggle baton had been passed on to her from her all-seasons hero.

“The National Monument deal which Obama should sign — like the one he did in October 2012 for Latino human rights activist Cesar Chavez in Keene, Calif. — would have units in both New York (Auburn) and Maryland (adjacent to the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge). All the leading elected politicians in those states — Cuomo, Schumer, Gillibrand, Cardin, Mikulski and O’Malley — are for the federal preservation of the Tubman sites. . . “

Editorials Back Renewal of Voting Rights Act

“A key provision in one of the U.S.’s best known civil rights laws, the Voting Rights Act, received a highly skeptical and sometimes downright hostile response from the conservative justices at the Supreme Court on Wednesday,” Josh Gerstein wrote Wednesday for Politico.

But renewing the measure has the support of some of the nation’s leading editorial pages.

After Justice Antonin Scalia said during a Supreme Court argument Wednesday, “This is not the kind of a question you can leave to Congress,” the Washington Post editorialized with this rejoinder:

“. . . ‘It was clear to 98 senators, including every senator from a covered state, who decided that there was a continuing need for this piece of legislation,’ Justice Elena Kagan said, in what might seem a self-evident point.

“But not to Justice Scalia. ‘Or decided that perhaps they’d better not vote against, that there’s . . . none of their interests in voting against it,’ he said. Later he elaborated on why he feels free to dismiss this particular congressional action: ‘I don’t think there is anything to be gained by any senator to vote against continuation of this act. . . . They are going to lose votes if they do not reenact the Voting Rights Act. Even the name of it is wonderful: the Voting Rights Act. Who is going to vote against that in the future?’

“This is a stunning line of argumentation. Congress is empowered to write legislation enforcing the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. But if Justice Scalia doubts the purity of lawmakers’ motives, then apparently this power is limited. We wonder how the justice is able to discern what lay within the hearts of these 98 senators. We also wonder how many challenged acts of Congress would survive if the court saw fit to strike down any that were enacted by lawmakers considering, in part, their reelection prospects. . . . “

CNN Still in Rough Ratings Waters

“Looks like wall-to-wall crippled cruise ship coverage wasn’t enough to get CNN off rough ratings seas. One full month since Jeff Zucker officially took over the cable news network, CNN saw a 5% dip in total day viewers and a 1% slip in primetime viewership in February as compared to January,” Dominic Patten wrote Tuesday for Deadline Hollywood.

Meanwhile, Zucker is expected to host a networking reception in New York March 8 as part of the Region 2 conference of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. “He will be speaking to NAHJ members and guests,” NAHJ President Hugo Balta told Journal-isms, in an appearance scheduled before NAHJ and the National Association of Black Journalists complained that Zucker’s first hires included no journalists of color.

Zucker met Monday with NABJ leaders. On Tuesday, NABJ President Gregory H. Lee Jr. issued a statement saying NABJ had a standing quarterly meeting with CNN that predates the current leadership team. “. . .This particular meeting was an opportunity for NABJ to speak with Mr. Zucker and to learn more about his vision for the network. We had a productive discussion on how CNN can partner with NABJ to achieve our common objective of promoting a diverse newsroom, in particular within the management ranks, where our industry overall is lacking in diversity . . .,” Lee said.

. . . Martin “Unperturbed” by Uncertainty of CNN Role

“. . . It has been reported that CNN veteran contributors, Roland Martin and Donna Brazile could be next on [CNN President Jeff] Zucker’s chopping block,” Tanya Young Williams wrote Wednesday for the HuffingtonPost.

“While on the red carpet at the 44th NAACP Image Awards, Martin spoke candidly about his current role at CNN and his future relationship with the network. Martin appeared unperturbed by the uncertainty of his pending employment with CNN. In fact, he said, ‘I’m excited about other opportunities.’ Martin, who was scheduled to meet with Zucker in days following the interview, continued, ‘It’s up to them if they want me to stay around.’ “

Roland Martin Martin messaged this statement to Journal-isms on Wednesday:

“I’ve worked hard to build my company, Nu Vision Media, from one platform to several. We have CNN, TV One, Tom Joyner Morning Show, the websites, books, and speaking. We are working on two new books and looking at other ventures, including documentaries. I’m also looking to expand my portfolio at TV One. I recently appeared on ESPN’s First Take, and would love to do more sports stuff. My passions run well beyond politics; anyone who has seen Washington Watch on TV One could see that. I would love to do more sports stuff.

“I don’t know what the future holds at CNN. It’s not my call. My deal is up April 8 and I’ll know by then whether my six-year stay there will come to an end or I will continue to provide the kind of cutting-edge commentary on a variety of issues that has been well-received by many. I can’t control when I’m booked and on what shows. I just try to deliver something different and exciting each time I’m on, and do my best to make my work stand out.

“In the past few weeks since all of this speculation began, I have numerous people reach out to me expressing their strong feelings about my work. Many of them are in entertainment, sports, politics, business, and everyday people. Their feedback has been nothing short of amazing, whether it’s Sidney Poitier, Hank Aaron, Harry Belafonte, Charles Barkley, Stevie Wonder to the brothers and sisters shouting at me as I walk down the streets of DC, NY, Houston, Detroit and other cities. I appreciate all of the love and support. It’s always amazing to me how you can be on for a short period of time but affect people in so many different ways.

“I wake up with the same motto that has always driven me: If you do good, I’ll talk about you. If you do bad, I’ll talk about you. At the end of the day, I’ll talk about you!”

Short Takes

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