Station Employees Arrested Before Morsi’s Overthrow
Press-Freedom Group Urges Europe to Protect Snowden
Blacks More Engaged With Top News Stories Than Whites
Zimmerman Trial Not the Meditation on Race Some Expected
“The N Word” Special Boosts CNN Ratings by 90%
Public Editor: Calling People “Mutts” Wasn’t Best Idea
Tribune Co. Deal Speeds Television Industry Consolidation
7.7 Million Watch, 10 Million Tweet BET Awards
Short Takes
Station Employees Arrested Before Morsi’s Overthrow
The Egyptian army’s overthrow Wednesday of Mohamed Morsi, the country’s first democratically elected president, was preceded by an action that reminds us of the power of the news media:
“Al Jazeera’s live Egypt service [has] been taken off air along with several other TV channels,” Al Jazeera reported.
“Reports from our correspondents say this happened during a live broadcast when security forces stormed the building and arrested the presenter, guests and producers.”
As the Al Jazeera report indicated, the network was not the only media outlet affected.
Egypt’s Al Ahram reported, “The Muslim Brotherhood-owned television channel Misr 25 went off air along with several other Islamist-run channels, including the controversial Hafez and Al-Nas, shortly after the military statement announcing the ouster of president Mohamed Morsi.
“Police forces went to the Media Production City in Cairo’s 6 October, where the offices and studios of these channels are located, and evacuated them, according to Al-Ahram’s Arabic-language news portal.
“The police also arrested some of the personnel working for these channels.”
The right to control the airwaves is so vital to national security that in the United States, the Communications Act of 1934 forbids foreign ownership of U.S. broadcast outlets [PDF].
Egypt’s “chief of the armed forces, General Abdul Fatah Khalil al-Sisi, announced in a live television broadcast:
- “the suspension of the Egyptian constitution,
- “the appointment of the head of the constitutional court as the country’s interim leader,
- “the calling of early new presidential elections, and
- “the establishment of a national government of technocrats,” allafrica.com reported.
Both sides saw the value of the media. On Friday, Morsi’s Ministry of Investment sent notice to all satellite television channels “warning they will be shut down if the government deems that their coverage of this weekend’s political protests incites violence, insults individuals, or contradicts societal values, news reports said,” the Committee to Protect Journalists reported Friday.
“Numerous journalists are also facing new legal threats in the two days since President Mohamed Morsi blasted independent media in his national address, according to Egyptian news reports, which also described the abduction of an editor. . . .”
Others were injured during the demonstrations. Reporters without Borders reported Tuesday, “More than 10 journalists were attacked while covering the demonstrations and clashes between government opponents and Muslim Brotherhood supporters in Cairo and other regions.” It also said, “According to a public health ministry report released yesterday, 781 people were injured and 16 died during the demonstrations on 30 June alone.”
The danger to women in such crowds, highlighted during the Tahrir Square demonstrations of 2011, remained an issue. “Two years after CBS News reporter Lara Logan was sexually assaulted while covering the 2011 Egyptian uprising, another journalist has been attacked while covering unrest in the country,” Media Life Magazine reported Wednesday.
“The Netherlands Embassy in Egypt released a statement yesterday saying that a 22-year-old Dutch woman was attacked in Tahrir Square on Friday night; an Egyptian news report said the woman was raped. She was treated in a Cairo hospital and then sent back to her family in The Netherlands. . . .”
Overall, “Egypt’s Tahrir Square has seen nearly hundred women falling victim to ‘rampant’ sexual attacks during the past four days of protests against President Mohamed Morsi, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said,” Al Jazeera reported.
“The global rights watchdog said on Wednesday that the mobs sexually assaulted ‘and in some cases raped at least 91 women’ in Tahrir Square amid a climate of impunity. . . .”
News of the Egyptian developments dominated website front pages in the United States, the Huffington Post reported.
“The political crisis in Egypt came to a head when Egyptian military chief Al-Sisi announced the removal of Morsi and temporary suspension of the country’s constitution in a televised statement. Celebrations erupted in Cairo as he added that the chief justice of the constitutional court will serve as the country’s interim leader.
“The coverage of the political crisis in Egypt was scant on cable news networks for most of the week, however viewers could turn to online news outlets. Fox News, MSBNC and CNN switched to the protests in Egypt once Morsi was ousted. NBC News also broke in with a special report anchored by Brian Williams. . . .”
Meanwhile, the White House embraced a new spelling of the now-deposed president’s last name on Tuesday.
“Until today, the White House utilized the spelling ‘Morsi’ in its official documents, and that spelling can be found a total of 86 times on the White House website, the website talkradionews.com reported.
“A readout provided by the White House today, however, featured the romanized ‘Morsy,’ a spelling that has only been repeated since by CNN. . . .”
Richard T. Griffiths, CNN vice president/senior editorial director, responded on Twitter on Wednesday, “So, why does #CNN spell #Morsy like that? Because it is what he told us he prefers. It is how he spells his name in English.”
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| Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency systems analyst who released sensitive documents on U.S. intelligence-gathering operations, has requested asylum from 20 countries, according to WikiLeaks. (video) |
Press-Freedom Group Urges Europe to Protect Snowden
In an op-ed in the French newspaper Le Monde, Christophe Deloire, general secretary of Reporters Without Borders, and Assange wrote, “On October 12, 2012, the European Union won the Nobel Peace Prize for contributing to the ‘advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe.’ The EU should show itself worthy of this honor and show its will to defend freedom of information, regardless of fears of political pressure from its so-called closest ally, the United States.
“Now that Edward Snowden, the young American who revealed the global monitoring system known as Prism, has requested asylum from 20 countries, the EU nations should extend a welcome, under whatever law or status seems most appropriate.
“Although the United States remains a world leader in upholding the ideal of freedom of expression, the American attitude toward whistleblowers sullies the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. . . .”
CBS News reported Wednesday, “Snowden has applied for asylum in Venezuela, Bolivia and 18 other countries, according to WikiLeaks, a secret spilling website that has been advising him. So far, he’s been rejected by Brazil, Finland, Germany, India and Poland. Several countries have punted on the decision, saying he has to be on their soil to apply, including Austria, Ecuador, Norway and Spain. Most countries, however, have yet to offer a firm response either way, including Venezuela, Bolivia, China, Cuba, France, Iceland, Italy, Ireland, Netherlands, Nicaragua, and Switzerland. . . .”
- Merlene Davis, Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader: Snowden is a traitor, not a hero
- Eric Deggans, Poynter Institute: Snowden’s leaks force media self-examination
- Hadas Gold, Politico: George W. Bush: Edward Snowden ‘damaged’ security
- Lucia Moses, Adweek: Washington Post Defends Controversial Snowden Editorial: After paper publishes leaks, Post calls for them to stop
- Reporters Committee on Freedom of the Press: Reporters Committee asks U.S. Supreme Court to ensure government contractors can’t hide behind FOIA exemptions
- David Sirota, Salon: Obama’s war on journalism (June 27)
- Trevor Timm, Press Freedom Foundation: Who is Leaking More: Edward Snowden or the Government Officials Condemning Him?
- Ana Veciana-Suarez, Miami Herald: Big Brother, and everybody else, is watching (June 22)
Blacks More Engaged With Top News Stories Than Whites
“The past several months have been a news-rich environment that has carried into the normally-slow summer news cycle, and The Pew Research Center’s latest news interest survey indicates that black people are significantly more engaged about a range of news stories than white people,” Tommy Christopher reported Tuesday for Mediaite.
“While you might expect such a result with stories like the George Zimmerman murder trial and embattled celebrity chef Paula Deen’s difficulties, the survey also found a disappointing disparity in interest on the Supreme Court’s gutting of the Voting Rights Act, and higher interest among black people even in the saga of NSA leaker Edward Snowden. In fact, black people showed more interest than whites in every story in the survey, with the exception of the Supreme Court’s marriage equality rulings, where interest was equal.
“Here are the news stories that white people were following closely last week, in order of strongest to weakest interest:
- “Same-Sex Marriage Rulings: 30%
- “Edward Snowden: 20%
- “George Zimmerman Trial: 18%
- “Immigration Bill: 18%
- “Paula Deen: 16%
- “Voting Rights Act Ruling: 15%
- “Texas Abortion Rights Filibuster: 13%
“And here are the news stories that black people were following closely last week, in order of strongest to weakest interest:
- “George Zimmerman Trial: 46%
- “Voting Rights Act Ruling: 36%
- “Same-Sex Marriage Rulings: 30%
- “Paula Deen: 27%
- “Texas Abortion Rights Filibuster: 23%
- “Edward Snowden: 22%
- “Immigration Bill: 20% . . .”
Zimmerman Trial Not the Meditation on Race Some Expected
In the case of George Zimmerman, accused in the killing of unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin, “An uncomfortable national conversation about race and justice had been touched off — in Sanford, at a ‘Million Hoodie March’ in New York and when President Obama called for ‘soul-searching’ and said if he had a son, ‘he’d look like Trayvon, ‘ ” Manuel Roig-Franzia wrote from Sanford, Fla., Tuesday for the Washington Post.
“Yet, 16 months later, this case that was so entwined with race has produced a murder trial in which race is a subtext rather than a central theme.
“Prosecutors have portrayed George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch enthusiast who shot the 17-year-old Martin, as being many things: profane, mendacious, overzealous, violent. But they haven’t called Zimmerman, who is claiming that he acted in self-defense, a racist. Instead of becoming a meditation on race, the courtroom action is unfolding as a police procedural, a saga of guns and vigilantism, a glimpse of civic rage and frustration.
“Outside the courtroom, the case is still widely perceived in racial terms.
“Some here had hoped for more from this trial, which entered its seventh day of testimony Tuesday. . . .”
HLN, which is carrying near gavel-to-gavel coverage of the case, has brought in extra anchor help in the form of T.J. Holmes, former CNN and BET host. An HLN representative told TVNewser that Holmes is doing freelance work for the network during the trial.
Holmes has been giving play-by-play of the court room on his Twitter page via @TJHolmes, Jawn Murray reported on his alwaysalist.com site. During testimony via Skype Wednesday by Scott Pleasants, a former college professor of Zimmerman, callers flooded the line, names popped up on the screen and testimony was interrupted. “They appear to be getting a kick out of seeing their name on TV,” Holmes tweeted.
“The trolling was successful — the frustrated judge demanded that attorneys call a different number and ditch the Skype session,” Pamela Engel reported for businessinsider.com.
- Jonathan Capehart, Washington Post: Five myths about the killing of Trayvon Martin
- Merlene Davis, Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader: 400 years later, Salem witch trials offer a lesson in tolerance
- Clyde Hughes, Journal & Courier, Lafayette, Ind.: Suddenly, Trayvon Martin’s friend is put on trial
- Jack Mirkinson, Huffington Post: George Zimmerman Trial Completely Dominates Cable News
- Noah Rothman, Mediaite: Limbaugh: Media ‘Agitating For Race Riots’ With Zimmerman Trial Coverage
- Noah Rothman, Mediaite: As George Zimmerman Prosecution Implodes, A Media Invested In His Guilt Grows More Shrill
- Mychal Denzel Smith, the Nation: Trayvon Martin and Black Manhood On Trial
- Matt Wilstein, Mediaite: ‘Race Is The Case’: O.J. Simpson Prosecutor Describes ‘Uphill Battle’ For Zimmerman Prosecution On Piers
- Damon Young blog: Rachel, Trayvon, And The Saddest Thing I’ve Ever Read
“The N Word” Special Boosts CNN Ratings by 90%
“CNN improved its ratings fortune a whopping 90% in the news demo of adults 25-54 and nearly 60% among viewers of all ages last night when it telecast the perfect-storm special, which brilliantly tapped into viewers’ summertime appetite for all things Paula Deen AND George Zimmerman,” Lisa de Moraes wrote Tuesday for Deadline Hollywood.
“An average of 612,000 people watched The N Word — 218,000 of them in the demo. The previous four weeks, CNN had averaged 388,000 viewers in the time slot, and 115,000 in the demo. Sure, CNN still finished fourth among cable news networks — third in the demo — with the controversial special. But, hey, up is up. . . .”
- Wayne Bennett, the Field Negro: Another chef cooking up the N-word.
- Jarvis DeBerry, NOLA.com | the Times-Picayune: Paula Deen’s word choice is not the worst that’s being alleged
- Josh Feldman, Mediaite: Explosive CNN Panel On The N-Word: ‘There Are Some Things’ White People Can’t Say!
- Eugene Kane, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: The power of a single word
- E.R. Shipp, HuffPost Media: Parsing the N-Word
- Damon Young blog: Why I’ll Never Stop Saying “Nigga”
Public Editor: Calling People “Mutts” Wasn’t Best Idea
“A column by David Brooks, entitled ‘A Nation of Mutts,’ has offended so many people that I thought it would be worthwhile to ask Mr. Brooks to respond,” Margaret Sullivan, public editor of the New York Times, wrote Wednesday. “On Tuesday morning, I sent him one of the many e-mails I’ve received from readers and he quickly wrote back. Below is the e-mail I sent, his response, and my brief take. . . .”
Sullivan quoted the email containing one reader’s objections, then published Brooks’ reply:
“In that column, I was trying to embrace and celebrate a more ethnically intermingled America. I conclude with this sentence: ‘On the whole, this future is exciting.’ To read this column as racist requires either a misreading or a strong desire to be offended, no matter what is on the page.
“As for the use of the word ‘mutts,’ history is filled with examples of groups who have taken derogatory terms and embraced them as sources of pride. To take the word ‘mutt’ as a derogatory term, you have to believe that purebred things are superior to mixed-breed things, whether it is dogs or people. But if you don’t believe that, there is nothing to be ashamed of in the word mutt.
“I seized on the headline after I was in a group of people talking about the future demography of the country and one participant said proudly, ‘We’re mutts.’ That seemed to capture the message I was trying to convey, so I used it in the headline and the piece.”
Sullivan responded, “My take: As I noted above, columnists have the right to express opinion as they wish, in the way they want. And their editors generally make a point of staying out of the way. I believe Mr. Brooks when he says he didn’t mean to offend. But comparing people to animals is always tricky, and ‘mutts’ is a loaded term. There must have been a better way to say this, especially in the headline. I wish he had found it himself or that an editor had insisted on it.”
- Stacy Parker Le Melle, HuffPost BlackVoices: About That Nation of ‘Mutts’: A Response to David Brooks
Short Takes
- “Kerry Washington is finally getting the magazine covers many have long said she deserves,” Esther Zuckerman wrote Tuesday for the Atlantic. “The Scandal actress had Elle all to herself in June and shared the cover of The Hollywood Reporter with other television actresses, but perhaps her biggest coup is August’s Vanity Fair cover, released today. Now the quest is on to make it sell, as a successful venture for Vanity Fair — and hopefully a change in some of the magazine industry’s most frustrating newsstand attitudes. . . . Magazines have a terrible habit of being reluctant to put black women on their covers. . . .”
- “Al Jazeera America now has a launch date, as it continues to staff up. AJAM will launch Tuesday, August 20, according to Ali Velshi on Twitter,” Alex Weprin reported Wednesday for TVNewser. “AJAM will be taking over the channel space currently occupied by Current TV in some 40 million U.S. homes. . . . ”
- “Justice Department researchers estimate that 1,390 juveniles in the facilities they examined have experienced sex abuse at the hands of the staff supervising them, a rate of nearly 8 percent,” Joaquin Sapien reported Tuesday for ProPublica. “Twenty percent who said they were victimized by staff said it happened on more than 10 occasions. Nine out of 10 victims were males abused by female staff.” Sapien called this “a particularly unexamined corner of the nation’s long-troubled juvenile justice system. . . . ”
- A Latino Decisions poll of likely Latino voters showed that in a 2016 presidential matchup between Democrat Hillary Clinton and Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., 66 percent said they would choose Clinton and 28 percent Rubio. Asked the same about a contest between Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Rubio, 60 percent said they would pick Biden, and 28 percent Rubio, Fox News Latino reported on Tuesday.
- In Philadelphia, “After only three years at CBS3, reporter Jericka Duncan is moving on up to the network,” Molly Eichel reported Wednesday for the Philadelphia Daily News, referring to KYW-TV. “Duncan, who has been with the station since coming down from Buffalo, NY, will be part of CBS’ Newspath coverage. (Think of Newspath like the Associated Press of CBS networks, with a team providing national news coverage for CBS’ local affiliates.) Last year, Duncan was named Journalist of the Year by the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists. . . .”
- Yanick Rice Lamb, Howard University associate professor and interim assistant chair of the Department of Media, Journalism & Film in the School of Communications, has been chosen a 2013 Summer Faculty Fellow at Howard’s Moorland-Spingarn Research Center. Lamb plans to “explore issues and concerns of black journalists before and during the Civil Rights Movement and examine the impact of the Kerner Commission Report on the Black press and on Black journalists who entered ‘mainstream media’ upon the demise of Jim Crow,” according to a June 8 announcement from the research center.
- Sherrie Johnson, reporter for WMAR-TV in Baltimore, has been hired as public information officer for the government of Harford County, Md., County Executive David R. Craig announced Monday, the Baltimore Sun reported.
- “Reporters Without Borders calls for the immediate and unconditional release of Mohamed Al-Azza, a Palestinian photographer held incommunicado and without charge in an unknown place of detention by the Israeli authorities for the past three days,” the organization said Wednesday. It added, “Azza was hospitalized after being hit in the face by a rubber-coated bullet fired by an Israeli soldier while covering an [Israeli Defense Forces] incursion into his refugee camp on 8 April. . . .”
- “A number of members of the Coordinating Committee of Press Freedom Organizations have approved a resolution expressing concern over a new media law recently implemented by the Republic of Ecuador,” the International Press Institute reported Tuesday. “Among other troubling provisions, the law establishes a state media council with the power to punish the press. . . .”
- “A year after becoming the first Caribbean country to decriminalise libel, Grenada last week appeared to take a step in the opposite direction by passing a sweeping cyber-crimes law that includes a provision for online defamation,” the International Press Institute said Tuesday, Scott Griffen reported for the institute.
- In commemorating the 89th anniversary of the International Sports Press Association and the world sports journalists day, Gianni Merlo, AIPS president, cited racism as one of sports journalism’s challenges. “The phenomenon of racism, which is very dangerous because too many people undervalue the issue and ignore it, is on the rise, Merlo wrote for the Point in the West African country of the Gambia. “It is clearly connected to the dark picture of corruption and doping. In addition, racism in the stadiums will become stronger in the rest of the social fabric, creating a very serious danger for civil co-habitation if it is not stemmed and fought straight away. . . . ”
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