Race Factor Raised in Graphic Images From Kenya
Balta Supports Cho for Unity President, but Won’t Vote
Mistaken for Shooter, He Says “Verify Before You Vilify”
Scant Live Coverage of Obama at Black Caucus Affair
NAACP Chair Insists That Women Have Led Organization
English, Spanish Speakers Learning the Other’s Language
“Last Real Indians” Confront White Supremacists
Petition Protests Chuck Todd’s Health Care Comments
Ann Curry’s Exclusive on Iran Called Old News
Race Factor Raised in Graphic Images From Kenya
On Saturday, the New York Times published remarkable close-up photographs by a staff photographer who happened to be near the bloody shopping center assault in Nairobi, Kenya, that killed at least 62 people.
But another Africa-based photographer asked in an open letter the next day, “Would the New York Times run photos of blood-soaked dead white Americans after one of the many mass shootings that occur in the United States? ” Both photographers are white.
The Times did not respond publicly to the question on Sunday or Monday, but the issue is not new. Public Editor Margaret Sullivan, to whom the letter was addressed, discussed reader questions about troubling images from Syria twice this month.
In an interview with Times reporter James Estrin, Tyler Hicks, the staff photographer who lives in Nairobi and was part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning team that garnered the Times honors for its coverage of Afghanistan and Pakistan, recounted Saturday:
“I was at a framing shop in an adjacent mall picking up some photographs that had been given to me as gifts by photojournalists who attended my wedding. I was very close. I didn’t have all of my equipment, just had a small camera that I always have with me in case something happens.
“I ran over to the mall and I was able to photograph until my wife [Nichole Sobecki], who is also a photojournalist and was at our house, was able to collect my Kevlar helmet and professional cameras before she came to cover the news herself..
“When I left the framing shop, I could see right away that there was something serious going on, because there were lots of people running away from the mall. I ran over there and within minutes I could see people who had been shot in the leg or stomach from what appeared to be small arms fire being helped by other civilians. This went on for about 30 minutes. . . .”
Under the headline, “Witness to a Massacre in a Nairobi Mall,” the Times ran Hicks’ photos and the interview with Estrin in the Lens blog on its website.
The next day, Michael Deibert, who identified himself as “an author and journalist who has reported from Africa off and on since 2007, having most extensively worked in the Democratic Republic of Congo,” objected in an open letter to Sullivan, as Richard Horgan reported for FishbowlNY.
“Quite honestly, as a journalist who has reported on conflict for going on quite a number of years, I was shocked and dismayed by this,” Deibert wrote. “Would the New York Times run photos of blood-soaked dead white Americans after one of the many mass shootings that occur in the United States? I doubt it. That they did so after the mass killings in Nairobi yesterday is very troubling, not just to me, but also to many other journalists, academics and analysts who focus on Africa.
“There are ways to depict violence so that people are not immediately recognizable to their loved ones, friends, and so on, and everyone, American, African, or whatever their nationality, deserves some dignity in death. One can show dead bodies without showing their faces, leaving people confronted for the rest of their lives with images of their family members and other loved ones soaked in blood and torn asunder. I’ve seen plenty of bodies dead through violence over the years, so I am not asking that the end result be sanitized, but rather wondering why some slight restraint was not used in allowing the bodies to be so immediately recognizable. . . .”
In fairness, most of Hicks’ photos were not graphic, and the Times accompanied them with a warning that some were. And, as Horgan wrote, “Deibert does not blame Hicks and the photographer’s wife for shooting the pictures that they did. Rather, he wonders why the NYT editors failed to show the proper restraint.”
The National Press Photographers Association’s code of ethics is open to interpretation. It says, “Treat all subjects with respect and dignity. Give special consideration to vulnerable subjects and compassion to victims of crime or tragedy. Intrude on private moments of grief only when the public has an overriding and justifiable need to see.”
[Tom Kent, a deputy managing editor and standards editor for the Associated Press, said by email on Wednesday, “Our general approach is to avoid close-ups of bodies, irrespective of nationality, especially where the faces can be identified. But it’s always a judgment call, since precise situations can vary so much.”]
Kenny Irby, senior faculty, visual journalism and diversity and director of community relations at the Poynter Institute, responded to the question of showing faces of the dead. He told Journal-isms by email that he does find an apparent double standard with brown faces, but in this case, “The challenge for me is one of balance… thus I did not find the single image ‘shocking.’
“Three things:
- “I do feel that it is the responsibility of the editors to preserve dignity in death for the victims and their families during the coverage of mass murders,” he said by email.
- “There continues to be an apparent double standard which I refer to as the ‘exotic rule’. The farther away and the browner the faces, the less sensitive I find the ethical rigor. For instance, I could not find a body in the Navy Yard or Boston Marathon shootings.
- “The Tyler Hicks coverage was courageous and compelling and of the 23 images in the gallery only one showed a body.
“Overall, if found the coverage to be balanced and authentic.”
The assault on Nairobi’s Westlake shopping mall, which kept security forces at bay for more than three days, is considered a terrorist attack. It included several militants from al-Shabab, a group allied with al-Qaeda, and participants from several countries, possibly even the United States.
In discussing two photos from Syria, Sullivan wrote, “Images of war matter. Some highly emotional photographs from Vietnam — the brutal execution of a Vietcong guerrilla, a naked Vietnamese girl burned by napalm — brought home the horror in a way that words never could. The same has been true more recently; think of the charred corpses of American contractors hanging from a bridge in Falluja, Iraq.
“Now Syria. These two images are capable of changing the narrative, possibly affecting the course of history. That’s all the more reason to handle them, and others, as thoughtfully and with as much awareness as possible. And to remember that, powerful as they are, they are only pieces of the emerging truth.” [Updated Sept. 25]
- Andrew Beaujon, Poynter Institute: Kenyan newspaper flipped bloody photo on front page
- Mark Brunswick, Star Tribune, Minneapolis: Twin Cities Somali leaders condemn Kenya terror attack (Sept. 24)
- Caroline Elkins, The Root: In Kenya, a Legacy of Resilience
- Stanley Gazemba, New York Times: ‘Those Are Our People’
- David Hanners, Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn.: Twin Cities Somali leaders deny local ties to Kenya mall attack
- Huffington Post: CNN Reporters Dodge Gunfire In Kenya Mall Battle (VIDEO)
- Steve Karnowski, Associated Press: Members of Minnesota’s Somali community condemn deadly attack on Kenya mall
- Caroline Mutoko, the Star, Kenya: Down But Not Defeated!
- Peter Ng’etich, the Star, Kenya: Quarcoo Mourns East FM Presenter Ruhila Adatia
- The Star, Kenya: Radio Africa Staff Tell of Horror in Mall Attack
- Darlene Superville, Associated Press: Obama: Kenyan Mall Attack A ‘Terrible Outrage’
Balta Supports Cho for Unity President, but Won’t Vote
Hugo Balta, president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, told Janet Cho of the Asian American Journalists Association, “I do hope you are elected” president of the Unity: Journalists for Diversity coalition, but told Journal-isms Monday that the four-member NAHJ delegation to the Unity board still does not plan to vote.
Balta made his declaration on the Unity Facebook page. Cho is running against David Steinberg, past president of the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association, which was invited to join the coalition in August 2011 after the National Association of Black Journalists pulled out over governance and financial issues.
Steinberg is the first white presidential candidate for the organization formerly known as Unity: Journalists of Color. The two candidates made their case Saturday to board members from the Asian American Journalists Association, the Native American Journalists Association and NLGJA, but not NAHJ. The election takes place among board members.
Balta has said the four NAHJ members on the Unity board “will not participate in any meeting of Unity until the NAHJ board definitely decides” NAHJ’s role in the coalition.
He said of Unity on the coalition’s Facebook page, “when you take the emotion out of it (and no decision like this should be made by emotion); what you’re left with is an antiquated system [whose] time has passed. There is an unwillingness to zero base it and start anew. So it was true for NABJ 2 years ago…so, it is now for NAHJ.”
However, he said no decision would be made without consulting NAHJ members.
Mary Hudetz, president of NAJA and nominating committee chair, said that electronic voting started Monday and that “the board gets several days to make their decision. Results will be announced by Friday at 4pm” Eastern time.
Meanwhile, Unity released audited financial statements late Monday, part of what NAHJ said it had been waiting for. But Balta asserted in another posting that they “fail to disclose (be transparent) its accounting mistakes that will cost NAHJ, AAJA and benefit NAJA and NLGJA. . . .”
Cho replied, “UNITY is not trying to hide anything, Hugo. When we made the final payments to the alliance associations at the end of 2012, we did so with the caveat that the payments were based on projected registration numbers for UNITY ’12. Now that the Audit Committee (including an NAHJ representative) has verified the numbers, the ledger has to be reconciled to reflect reality.”
Mistaken for Shooter, He Says “Verify Before You Vilify”
“Rollie Chance was home in Stafford [Va.], about 40 miles south of Washington, when he began watching the news about the shootings at the Washington Navy Yard Monday morning,” Tom Jackman reported Friday for the Washington Post. “A retired Navy lieutenant, he had worked in Building 197 on the fourth floor and was worried that some of his friends and former colleagues might have been killed.
“Then shortly after noon, he got a phone call from someone who said they were with ABC News. ‘They asked me if I knew Rollie Chance,’ Rollie Chance said. ‘Then they said, “Did you know Rollie Chance was the perpetrator of the Washington Navy Yard shootings?” ‘
“Chance, 50, thought the call was a joke. He told the caller, ‘I guarantee you 100 percent Rollie Chance didn’t do it,’ and hung up.
“Moments later, FBI agents arrived at his home. Soon after, reporters began piling up at the curb. And on Twitter, reporters for both NBC and CBS named Chance as the now-deceased killer. CBS also identified Chance on national radio. ABC, which called Chance, did not report any connection.
“The two network news outlets quickly retracted their tweets and CBS corrected its radio report. But Chance is wondering how he will ever erase the accusatory Internet trail that led to his door and is trying to work through days of anxiety for his family, including his 9-year-old daughter, whom he held out of school for a day.
” ‘Verify before you vilify,’ Chance implored in an interview Friday with his lawyer Mark Cummings. . . .”
Jackman also wrote, “Chance’s name filtered to the media because one of his identification cards reportedly was found near the body of Aaron Alexis, the man actually responsible for the shootings.”
- Charles M. Blow, New York Times: A Ghastly Ritual Repeats Itself
- Michael Calderone, Huffington Post: ‘Columbine’ Author Dave Cullen Criticizes Media’s Handling Of Mass Shootings
- Don Lemon, BlackAmericaWeb.com: REALITY CHECK: Let’s Talk About Guns
- Rochelle Riley, Detroit Free Press: Gun terror continues as Washington fiddles, then cowers
- Andrew Solomon, the New Yorker: An Avoidable Tragedy: Aaron Alexis and Mental Illness
- Annie-Rose Strasser, thinkprogress.org: How American Interest In The Navy Yard Shooting Quickly Fizzled Out, In One Chart
Scant Live Coverage of Obama at Black Caucus Affair
President Obama’s keynote appearance before the Congressional Black Caucus’ Annual Legislative Conference usually warrants live coverage on at least one network, but viewers searched in vain for the Phoenix Awards Dinner Saturday night.
NBC cameras provided pool coverage, but only MSNBC broadcast the speech live — for about six minutes before technical problems aborted the effort. “We had every intention of running the full speech but the live feed quality was poor – we started it but [it] did dip out before the end of the speech,” spokeswoman Lauren Skowronski told Journal-isms by email.
C-SPAN showed the speech [video] on Sunday at 12:09 a.m., 3:45 a.m., 6:30 a.m. and 2:45 p.m. “C-SPAN aired the speech soon as the scheduling allowed for the entire speech to be shown on the network,” spokesman Howard Mortman said.
“CNN did not take the President’s speech live, but did run parts of the speech during Sunday morning programming,” spokeswoman Christal Jones said.
A Fox News Channel spokeswoman did not respond, and the two major black-oriented networks said they covered the speech on the Internet.
Monica Neal, a TV One spokeswoman, said, “Roland Martin was at CBC gathering material for use in his upcoming News One Now daily show which you can see here: http://newsone.com/category/politics/congressional-black-caucus-foundation/.”
After Obama’s election in 2008, Black Entertainment Television covered the inauguration and even the new president’s news conferences. Chairman and CEO Debra L. Lee told Journal-isms then that the change in Washington helped prompt her to believe it was “time to sit back with my management team and say, ‘where are we going.‘ What do I want my legacy to be? After 30 years, what do we want to stand for?”
On Saturday, BET remained with its usual programming. “We didn’t televise the dinner but had extensive coverage of the conference on bet.com,” spokeswoman Jeanine Liburd told Journal-isms by email. “Pls check out as it was very comprehensive!”
- Michael H. Cottman, BlackAmericaWeb.com: Black Community Needs Obama’s Voice on Urban Gun Violence
- Hillary Crosley, The Root: At CBC, Obama Delivers Fiery Message to GOP
- Alan Hughes, Black Enterprise: Congressional Black Caucus Foundation to Help Strengthen Black Banks
- Joy-Ann Reid, the Grio: For Black Caucus, African-American politics in an age of austerity
NAACP Chair Insists That Women Have Led Organization
When Benjamin Jealous announced two weeks ago that he was stepping down as president of the NAACP, he set off a string of social media and other chatter decrying the organization’s resistance to female leadership.
“When he thinks about the organization’s future, he is reminded of a conversation he had with his 97-year-old grandmother, who was a lifelong NAACP member,” Krissah Thompson wrote in the Washington Post. “Jealous told her that he had been named president of the organization.
“He said she told him: ‘I was hoping the next president would be a woman. But if it has to be a man, I’m glad it is you.’
“Jealous said he agrees with his granny. He is hoping the next president will be a woman.”
Roslyn M. Brock, the NAACP’s chairman of the board, begs to differ. Receiving a leadership award Thursday in Washington at a reception of the National Newspaper Publishers Association, the trade group of black-press newspaper publishers, Brock said that “the NAACP was started by a woman” and that there had been four female national presidents. She introduced one of them, Hazel Dukes, from the audience.
NAACP spokesman Derek Turner told Journal-isms that there had actually been three female national presidents: Dukes, who served from 1989 to 1992; Enolia McMillan, 1984 to 1990; and Rupert Richardson, 1992 to 1995.
Moreover, four women, including Brock, have been chairman of the board: Mary White Ovington, 1919 to 1932; Margaret Bush Wilson, 1975 to 1983; and Myrlie Evers-Williams, 1995 to 1998. Brock has been chairman since 2010.
Four women also have been executive secretaries. Part of the confusion over the leadership roles has been that the responsibilities of the positions have changed over the years and to some degree depend on who is holding the posts.
Brock put her thoughts in a Huffington Post blog post, “Women of the NAACP: Exemplars of Achievement.”
“The NAACP has always been an organization that practices what it preaches,” Brock wrote. “Our mission statement is to ‘ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons’ — not just men. Women have always played a large role in helping us pursue that vision, and we are well positioned to continue doing so in the future.”
English, Spanish Speakers Learning the Other’s Language
“It’s no secret that more and more people are speaking español in the United States, but what you probably didn’t know is that in the future more of those Spanish speakers will not be Hispanic,” Cindy Y. Rodriguez wrote Saturday for CNN.
“That’s right — as immigrant families become more established here, future generations will follow the pattern of previous immigrants from Europe and Asia and stop using their native language.
“But at the same time, non-Latinos will be learning Spanish and helping their kids to grow up bilingual because they want to pass on what they learned in school, take advantage of business opportunities or even because they have a Spanish-speaking spouse.
” ‘On the one hand, the number of Spanish speakers is projected to grow to about 40 million by 2020 (from 37 million in 2011.) This reflects Hispanic population growth and a large number of non-Hispanics who will also speak Spanish,’ said Mark Hugo Lopez, director of Hispanic Research at the Pew Research Center.
” ‘But, even though the number of Spanish speakers is projected to grow, among Hispanics, the share that speak Spanish is projected to fall from about 75% now to 66% in 2020,’ Lopez said. . . .”
- Ruben Navarrette Jr., Washington Post Writers Group: Wrong exception on the undocumented
- Julia Preston, New York Times: Number of Illegal Immigrants in U.S. May Be on Rise Again, Estimates Say
- Geraldo Rivera, Fox News Latino: Immigration Reform? Not Anytime Soon
- Mary Sanchez, Kansas City Star: Managing the inevitable forces of global migration
- Ana Veciana-Suarez, Miami Herald: Being bilingual doubles the pleasure of language
Petition Protests Chuck Todd’s Health Care Comments
“NBC’s Chuck Todd just can’t escape the backlash over a stray comment he made about the media earlier in the week,” Jack Mirkinson wrote Saturday for the Huffington Post.
“The background, briefly: Todd was speaking with former governor Ed Rendell about Obamacare on Wednesday’s ‘Morning Joe.’ Rendell said that the White House had not sold the program successfully, and that most Americans opposed to Obamacare had probably been given incorrect information about it.
“Todd replied that, ‘more importantly,’ that incorrect information ‘would be stuff that Republicans have successfully messaged against it.’ He continued, ‘They don’t repeat the other stuff because they haven’t even heard the Democratic message.’
“Then came the fateful words:
” ‘What I always love is people say, “Well, it’s you folks’ fault in the media.” No! It’s the President of the United States’ fault for not selling it.’
Mirkinson continued, “Unfortunately for Todd, the controversy isn’t going away. The latest salvo: a petition on the website Credo Mobilize, which had drawn 50,000 signatures by Saturday afternoon, a day after it was posted online. The petition’s author, Nicole Belle, accused Todd of having ‘completely abdicated his responsibility as a journalist.’ “
- Charles M. Blow, New York Times: Kamikaze Congress
- Roland Martin, Creators Syndicate: House GOP Continues to Waste Time Targeting Obamacare
- Clarence Page, Chicago Tribune: Obama-scare politics of conservatives
- Mark Trahant, indianz.com: Republicans are willing to destroy IHS system
- Jeffrey Young, HuffPost BlackVoices: The Biggest Myth About Obamacare
Ann Curry’s Exclusive on Iran Called Old News
“On last night’s NBC Nightly News (9/18/13), correspondent Ann Curry had a big exclusive: a sit-down interview with new Iranian President Hassan Rouhani,” Peter Hart wrote Thursday for Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting. “The newscast kicked off with anchor Brian Williams announcing:
“Our NBC News exclusive: Ann Curry in Iran with that nation’s new president. His first interview tonight, big revelations about nuclear weapons.
“How big? Curry came on to explain that Rouhani was ‘clearly trying to send a message’ that ‘there is a different Iran.’
Hart also said, “If the big news here is that the president of Iran is saying the country is not developing nuclear weapons, and does not ever intend to do so, that’s not really news. In fact, the last Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said essentially the same thing almost exactly one year ago. And to an American journalist, no less! . . .”
- Chris Ariens, TVNewser: Ann Curry on How She Got the Interview with New Iranian President
Short Takes
- The website alldigitocracy.org produced “12 Of The Smartest Women of Color On Twitter” Sunday in response to Fast Company’s “25 Smartest Women on Twitter,” which was “severely lacking in terms of diversity.” Included were Kimberly Bryant, Sumaya Kazi, Raquel Cepeda, Stacey Muhammad, Viviana Hurtado, Deanna Sutton, Ory Okolloh, Chrys Wu, Shireen Mitchell, Sabrina Hersi Issa, Dori J. Maynard and Yumi Wilson.
- Bernadette Tuazon, who worked 24 years for the Associated Press, has joined CNN Digital as a senior photo editor, the network announced on Monday.
- Randall Pinkston, the former CBS correspondent who now freelances for Al Jazeera America, has been awarded the University of Mississippi’s Silver Em award, the highest award given by the University to a journalist. Pinkston is a Mississippi native and started his career there. The award is to be presented on campus Oct. 17.
- Edward Lewis, a co-founder of Essence magazine and senior adviser at Solera Capital, a private equity and venture capital firm, has been voted into the Advertising Hall of Fame by the American Advertising Federation, Lewis was told on Sunday. The ceremony is scheduled for April 7, 2014, in New York.
- Gerard Miller, an African American who came up with a “Blackskins” logo in support of those protesting the name of the NFL’s Washington Redskins, explained last week on the Indian Country Today Media Network, “I don’t have any friends who have majority of American Indian blood flowing through their veins, and I cannot recall the last time I saw an American Indian in a day-to-day setting. I began to realize that the American Indian was out of sight, out of mind. The only way I could fully come to understand how an American Indian feels, when seeing the Redskins mascot, was to imitate the scenario. . . .”
- “Annie Tin, a longtime senior producer for C-SPAN, will replace Jerry Gallegos as superintendent of the House Daily Press Gallery,” Hannah Hess reported last week for Roll Call. “Tin, who has served as the senior House and Senate Capitol Hill producer since 1997, was chosen by the Standing Committee of Correspondents based on her familiarity with Washington reporters. . . .”
- “Moroccan authorities on Tuesday arrested prominent journalist Ali Anouzla after the Arabic-language news website he directs, Lakome.com, posted an article about a video released by Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb,” Eric Goldstein reported Friday for Human Rights Watch. “He has now been detained for more than 72 hours without being presented to a judge, raising concerns that he is being held under Morocco’s anti-terrorism law, the only criminal law that permits detention this long without a courtroom appearance. . . .”
- In Angola, “At least three journalists were assaulted by police and briefly detained today while covering the release of seven individuals who were arrested during a protest on Thursday, according to the journalists and news accounts,” the Committee to Protect Journalists reported Friday. “Protesters had staged a demonstration against what they called the authoritarian regime of President José Eduardo dos Santos, the reports said. . . .” Reporters Without Borders and the International Federation of Journalists also protested.
- In Britain, the National Council for the Training of Journalists Journalism Diversity Fund has now helped more than 150 aspiring journalists fund their training, the Press Gazette reported Monday. “The milestone was celebrated at a lunch on Thursday last week hosted by The Sun for the latest group of grant recipients. Newspaper Licensing Agency managing director David Pugh used the occasion to hand over a cheque for £100,000 [$159,820.12] to help the fund continue. . . .”
Follow Richard Prince on Twitter @princeeditor
Facebook users: “Like” “Richard Prince’s Journal-isms” on Facebook.
