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Journalisms Mon Apr 15

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New York Times reporter John Eligon, in Boston to run the marathon, was part of the Times team covering the tragedy. (Video)

Police Deny N.Y. Post Report That Saudi is Bombing Suspect

With the notable exception of the New York Post, media coverage of the bombings at the Boston Marathon Monday were, as the Daily Beast’s Howard Kurtz said in describing television coverage, “serious, substantive, and restrained, resisting the urge for melodrama or reckless speculation. When there is a story of sufficient magnitude, as happened at the twin towers and again near the finish line of the Boston race, news outlets don’t need to resort to hype and hysteria. They simply sort through the painful facts that slowly emerge.”

The New York Post, however, insisted in its headline, “Authorities ID suspect as Saudi national in marathon bombings, under guard at Boston hospital.” For hours, it was also reporting that 12 had died, not two, as the rest of the news media were saying, or later, three.

Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis told an 8:30 p.m. news conference, “There is no suspect at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. That’s been widely reported in the press.”

The identity of the suspect matters to many. “To be completely honest,” wrote Arsalan Iftikhar, a civil rights lawyer who blogs as “the Muslim Guy,” “when the news first started breaking in media outlets around the country about the explosions, I joined several million brown people in America thinking exactly the same thing:

“ ‘Oh God…Please don’t let it be a Muslim…’ ”

He added, “But based on facts and reality, we Muslims are not being paranoid. For example, a FOX News contributor named Erik Rush wasted no time by going on Twitter right after the Boston Marathon explosions to state that Muslims ‘are evil…Let’s kill them all.’ “

The Rev. Al Sharpton, who hosts the early evening “PoliticsNation” on MSNBC, found himself anchoring MSNBC’s coverage. John Eligon, a Kansas City-based New York Times reporter who ran the marathon Monday, became part of a Times video on the events, then shared a byline on a story about the tragedy. Eligon is a member of the National Association of Black Journalists and its Kansas City chapter.

“MSNBC made the curious decision to let Al Sharpton, no one’s idea of a breaking-news specialist, take the reins from Chris Matthews when his hour came up,” Kurtz reported. “The reverend was assisted by Mike Barnicle, a former Boston columnist who at least knows the cop scene there. . . .”

Was Rubio Correct in Calling Che Guevara a Racist?

Was Che Guevara, hero of leftist self-proclaimed revolutionaries of all races, a racist?

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., already being discussed as a 2016 presidential candidate, was unchallenged when he made that claim Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.” Rubio was disapproving of the recent trip by celebrity husband and wife Jay-Z and Beyonce to Cuba.

“I think Jay-Z needs to get informed. One of his heroes is Che Guevara. Che Guevara was a racist. Che Guevara was a racist that wrote extensively about the superiority of white Europeans over people of African descent, so he should inform himself on the guy that he’s propping up,” Rubio said during an interview with ABC News’ Chief White House Correspondent Jonathan Karl.

“Secondly, I think if Jay-Z was truly interested in the true state of affairs in Cuba, he would have met people that are being oppressed, including a hip-hop artist in Cuba who is right now being oppressed and persecuted and is undergoing a hunger strike because of his political lyrics,” Rubio added. “And I think he missed an opportunity. But that’s Jay-Z’s issue.”

Was Rubio right about Guevara?

The Yahoo Answers website answered just such a question three years ago when a reader asked, “Why did Che Guevara help Black ppl even though in his Diaries he had very racist views?”

The “best answer,” chosen by readers, was, “Only to someone completely uninformed, could Che —(a man who fought in Africa with an all black army against white South African mercenaries of Apartheid)— be seen as ‘racist’ for a diary passage he wrote as a youth 15 years earlier. . . .”

As for the rapper, “Rubio was apparently referring to Angel Remon Yunier Arzuaga, whom the senator tweeted about last week,” Sean Sullivan wrote for the Washington Post. “The Cuban rapper was put in jail for lyrics protesting against the Cuban government.”

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