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Ray Suarez Quitting “PBS NewsHour”

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“Confident That Something Wonderful Will Shake Out”

“Confident That Something Wonderful Will Shake Out”

Ray Suarez, a senior correspondent for the “PBS NewsHour” since 1999 and one of the most visible Latino journalists on mainstream television, is leaving the program in two weeks.

“I am currently considering a wide range of very attractive options in broadcasting, print, and academia. Confident that something wonderful will shake out, I was ready to leave the NewsHour,” Suarez, 56, messaged Journal-isms on Sunday.

Suarez’s exit comes at a time of changes for the “NewsHour” and outside professional activity for Suarez. He did not indicate whether his exit was related to those developments.

“The news comes three days after NewsHour founders Jim Lehrer and Robin MacNeil announced they intended to transfer ownership of the program to presenting station and producing partner WETA in Arlington, Va.,” Dru Sefton reported Friday for Current.org.

In the last month, Gwen Ifill and Judy Woodruff became the show’s main anchors, making history as the first all-female national anchor team, and Hari Sreenivasan became weekend anchor of “PBS NewsHour Weekend.” That extends “NewsHour” across seven days and established the show as the one evening newscast without a white male anchor on any day of the week.

Suarez, meanwhile, wrote the companion book for “Latino Americans,” a three-part, six-hour PBS series that aired from Sept. 17 to Oct. 1, during Hispanic Heritage Month.

Sefton wrote on Friday that “NewsHour” “Executive Producer Linda Winslow told the staff in a memo late this afternoon that Suarez is leaving to ‘pursue several other ventures,’ including writing a book.

” ‘At the NewsHour, Ray has been a member of the Senior Correspondent team that has helped us cover an enormous array of topics (he even added football to his repertory this week) and story developments over the years,’ Winslow wrote in the memo, adding: ‘My Inbox is filled with rave reviews of his performances written by delighted station executives around the PBS universe.’

“Suarez joined NewsHour in October 1999 from NPR, where he had hosted the call-in news show Talk of the Nation since 1993. Previously he reported from Los Angeles for CNN, produced for the ABC Radio Network in New York, and reported for CBS Radio in Rome.”

Suarez has also written two other books, “The Old Neighborhood: What We Lost in the Great Suburban Migration, 1966-1999” (1999) and “The Holy Vote: The Politics of Faith in America” (2006), and reported on his own time for other television projects, such as a program on Haiti for “Destination Casa Blanca,” a weekly news show he hosted for the Hispanic Information and Telecommunications Network.

Taking on global health for the “NewsHour,” Suarez wrote a proposal for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation resulting in $3.6 million of funding for “NewsHour” programming on the subject, Columbia Journalism Review reported in 2010.

That year, Suarez was inducted into the Hall of Fame of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists (video), of which he is a lifetime member.

“In one generation, our family has gone from horrifying poverty in the northwest corner of Puerto Rico to this,” he said at his Hall of Fame induction, reaching for his award to applause.

In June, as he had done the previous year, Suarez hosted at his home “Una Noche con Periodistas,” a mixer and fundraiser for the Washington chapter of NAHJ.

He said on Saturday to his Twitter followers, “The question: Is there life after NewsHour? The answer: Just watch! Thanks for your good wishes.”

Obama’s War on Leaks Called Without Precedent

Returning October 14

Government Officials “Deeply Wary” of Talking to Media

Government Officials “Deeply Wary” of Talking to Media

“The Obama administration’s aggressive war on leaks and other efforts to control information are without precedent, according to 30 experienced Washington journalists interviewed for a new report released today by the Committee to Protect Journalists,” the Committee reported on Thursday.

“The report found that despite President Barack Obama’s promise to head the most open government in American history, White House policies have chilled the conversation between journalists and their sources.

“The report — ‘The Obama Administration and the Press: Leak investigations and surveillance in post-9/11 America,’ which is written by Leonard Downie Jr., former Washington Post executive editor and now the Weil Family Professor of Journalism at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication — found that the administration’s prosecution of suspected leakers, combined with broad electronic surveillance programs, have left government officials deeply wary of talking to the press. . . .”

CPJ made a series of recommendations that accompany the report.

“The Government Has Attacked Itself”

October 9, 2013

Shutdown Challenges WaPo’s Federal-Employee Columnist

Obama Fails to Call on TV Reporters at News Conference

N.Y. Times News-Page Policy: “Obamacare” in Quotes

“Redskins” Debate Said to Miss Diversity Among Indians

Rene Sanchez Named Top Editor at Star Tribune

Gannett Names Susan Leath Publisher in Wilmington, Del.

Author Invited, Disinvited in Cuba-Sensitive Miami

Average African Does Not Agree That “Africa Is Rising”

Book Says Coverage of Famine Did More Harm Than Good

“One of the Most Racially Charged Fashion Seasons Around”

Short Takes

Shutdown Challenges WaPo’s Federal-Employee Columnist

When you write a column about federal employees, a decision to shut down the federal government — even if only partially — lands squarely on your beat. For Joe Davidson, author of “The Federal Diary” column in the Washington Post, the shutdown has meant more work, more readers and a challenge not to repeat himself.

“The government has attacked itself. It’s almost like the government has some flesh-eating disease,” Davidson told Journal-isms by telephone.

That’s the way Davidson framed the development in his column of Oct. 1, the day the consequences of congressional inaction began taking their toll:

“The U.S. government attacked itself early Tuesday, shuttering much of its operation and forcing hundreds of thousands of federal employees from their workplaces,” the column began.

“Staff members had no choice but to surrender to the inaction of Congress, which could not agree on legislation to keep the government fully operational.

“Reports that Uncle Sam hung his head in shame could not be verified, but there certainly was reason for his elected leadership, particularly the right side of it, to be ashamed of their performance. . . .”

The column prompted a note from Donald E. Graham, chairman and CEO of the Washington Post Co. “saying it was the best piece in the paper that day,” Davidson told Journal-isms by telephone. “It was the day after the sale of the Post was finalized, so his note was particularly meaningful to me.”

Much of the coverage of the shutdown has been about partisan wrangling and gridlock. Some conservatives have argued that many Americans don’t perceive that their daily lives have been affected, and so the shutdown proves that we need less government. Others have said the media have not devoted enough attention to the shutdown’s effect on low-income people.

Davidson agrees that more can be reported about the effect of the shutdown on Head Start; the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) nutrition program and others that particularly affect people of color. However, he challenges those who say the government doesn’t matter as much as some think. “Then why is the House passing bills to restore various parts of it?” he asks.

In fact, Davidson wrote Monday, the stoppage is demonstrating just the opposite: “It shows people just what government does, even if you don’t realize it on a day-to-day basis. Sometimes you don’t appreciate something until you no longer have it,” he told Journal-isms.

Davidson, a co-founder of the National Association of Black Journalists who is a veteran of the Wall Street Journal, the Philadelphia Bulletin and other news organizations, began writing the Federal Diary column in 2008. The column has been a Post staple since Nov. 29, 1932.

Federal workers accounted in 2008 for about 27 percent of the jobs in Washington, but only 15 percent of federal employees are in the Washington area. Thus, there are opportunities nationwide and overseas to localize the story with fresh angles.

“You can do a number of stories about how federal employees are suffering during the shutdown, but it’s important for us as journalists to take the story further and get more in depth,” Davidson said.

On Tuesday, Davidson wrote a column on a development he described as counter-intuitive: Two Republican congressmen broke with House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, “by saying they would vote for a ‘clean CR,’ a temporary government funding measure not muddied by partisan attempts to defund or delay Obamacare.”

In the Oct. 1 column that Graham liked, Davidson went for another contradiction, comparing the level of activity in offices on the same floor:

“The quiet halls and empty cubicles in the Department of Housing and Urban Development provide stark evidence of the shutdown. Much of the building looked as if it had been hit by a strange force that vaporizes people while leaving their desks and the structure intact.

“The generally buzzing Dunkin’ Donuts store on the building’s third floor had customers, but it was unusually quiet. An adjacent snack shop was closed. The credit union down the hall, however, was busy as members got their money before the office closed. . . .”

They had no idea when they would be paid again.

Obama Fails to Call on TV Reporters at News Conference

“It was like the feeling when a crowd figures out that a pitcher hasn’t given up a hit in 5 innings: during President Obama’s press conference on Tuesday, everyone suddenly started noticing that he wasn’t calling on any television reporters,” Jack Mirkinson reported Tuesday for the Huffington Post.

“This was intriguing; someone from NBC or CBS or ABC or CNN or Fox News can reliably expect to be granted a question, but Obama kept calling on people from places like Roll Call, and the Financial Times, and Agence France-Presse. (He also called on HuffPost’s Sam Stein.)

“People started noticing:

“It wasn’t clear how the stiffed journalists were feeling, but, [toward] the end of the press conference, the normally silent throng started shouting questions at Obama.

” ‘I’m just going through my list guys,’ Obama said. ‘Talk to Jay,’ ” a reference to his press secretary, Jay Carney.

N.Y. Times News-Page Policy: “Obamacare” in Quotes

“A Times reader, Tom Bird, of East Lansing, Mich., raised a timely issue, given all that’s happening in Washington,” Margaret Sullivan, public editor of the New York Times, wrote on Tuesday. “He wrote that other news organizations, including The Associated Press, are putting the expression ‘Obamacare’ in quotation marks, ‘signifying that it is not a neutral expression, but instead is political rhetoric that is being used in a partisan way.’ And he added, ‘When will The Times wake up?’ “

Sullivan also wrote, “I asked Philip B. Corbett, the associate managing editor for standards, about the guidelines for the expression in the news pages. ‘For the most part, we have not used “Obamacare” as our standard term in news stories outside of quotations,’ he said. ‘Aside from the question of whether it’s politically charged, the term strikes me as informal — essentially a nickname — which is not our normal style for straight news articles. Most often we simply use a straightforward description, like “the health care law” or “the health care overhaul,” or occasionally the formal name, the Affordable Care Act.’

“However, in the opinion pages of The Times, where different style guidelines often apply, many examples crop up of Obamacare without quotation marks or description. . . .”

The comments section under Sullivan’s article indicated the range of views on the issue.

“Redskins” Debate Said to Miss Diversity Among Indians

“The name of a certain pro football team in Washington, D.C., has inspired protests, hearings, editorials, lawsuits, letters from Congress, even a presidential nudge,” Jesse Washington wrote Tuesday for the Associated Press. “Yet behind the headlines, it’s unclear how many Native Americans think ‘Redskins’ is a racial slur.

“Perhaps this uncertainty shouldn’t matter — because the word has an undeniably racist history, or because the team says it uses the word with respect, or because in a truly decent society, some would argue, what hurts a few should be avoided by all.

“But the thoughts and beliefs of native people are the basis of the debate over changing the team name. And looking across the breadth of Indian Country — with 2 million Indians enrolled in 566 federally recognized tribes, plus another 3.2 million who tell the Census they are Indian — it’s difficult to tell how many are opposed to the name.

“The controversy has peaked in the last few days. President Barack Obama said Saturday he would consider getting rid of the name if he owned the team, and the NFL took the unprecedented step Monday of promising to meet with the Oneida Indian Nation, which is waging a national ad campaign against the league.

“What gets far less attention, though, is this:

“There are Native American schools that call their teams Redskins. The term is used affectionately by some natives, similar to the way the N-word is used by some African-Americans. In the only recent poll to ask native people about the subject, 90 percent of respondents did not consider the term offensive, although many question the cultural credentials of the respondents.

“All of which underscores the oft-overlooked diversity within Indian Country. . . .”

Gannett Names Susan Leath Publisher in Wilmington, Del.

“Susan D. Leath has been named president and publisher of The News Journal Media Group, the Gannett Co. announced this morning,” the News Journal in Wilmington, Del., reported Tuesday.

“The media group includes The News Journal newspaper and delawareonline.com.

“Leath comes to The News Journal after serving as president and publisher of The Centre Daily Times in State College, Pa., since 2009.

“Before that, she was the top advertising and marketing executive at the paper from 2005. . . . “

The appointment represents a change of course for the nation’s largest newspaper company, which has been losing African American top editors and publishers.

When Samuel Martin resigned in April as president and publisher of the Advertiser Media Group, which publishes the Montgomery (Ala.) Advertiser, he became the last remaining African American publisher at Gannett.

Author Invited, Disinvited in Cuba-Sensitive Miami

“The author of a book arguing for the innocence of five convicted Cuban spies found himself disinvited from an appearance on Miami’s WLRN-FM last month, only to be reinvited after the station’s g.m. caught wind of the cancellation,” Mike Janssen reported Tuesday for Current.org, which reports on public broadcasting.

“Stephen Kimber, a journalism professor at the University of King’s College in Halifax, Nova Scotia, was slated to appear on WLRN’s Topical Currents Sept. 17 to discuss his new book, What Lies Across the Water: The Real Story of the Cuban Five.

“The book examines the 2001 Miami trial of the Cuban Five, who were convicted for conspiracy to spy on the U.S. and for failure to register as agents of a foreign government. One of the spies was also convicted for conspiracy to commit murder for his involvement in a 1996 incident in which Cuban jets shot down planes flying between Florida and Cuba, piloted by exiles. . . .”

Janssen wrote that WLRN General Manager John LaBonia apologized in a memo for host Joseph Cooper’s decision to cancel Kimber’s interview and announced that the author would appear on the Sept. 20 edition of “Florida Roundup.”

Janssen added, “Cuba ‘remains a highly sensitive matter in Miami, especially within the Cuban-American community,’ LaBonia wrote. ‘But we also realize that the local conversation about Cuba has evolved and become more broadminded over the past decade — and that it can accommodate opinions today that might have been too uncomfortable to engage a generation ago.’ . . .”

Average African Does Not Agree That “Africa Is Rising”

“African leaders, foreign investors and formal indicators of economic growth may say that ‘Africa is rising’ — but most ordinary Africans don’t agree,” John Allen reported Oct. 1 for allafrica.com.

“A pioneering new survey of public opinion in 34 countries across the continent suggests that the relatively high average growth in gross domestic product (GDP) reported in recent years is not reflected in the experiences of most citizens.

“An average of one in five Africans still often goes without food, clean water or medical care. Only one in three think economic conditions in their country are good. Fifty-three percent say they are ‘fairly bad’ or ‘very bad’.

“The survey suggests that either the benefits of growth are being disproportionately channelled to a wealthy elite or that official statistics are overstating average growth rates (or possibly a combination of both).

“The survey was directed by Afrobarometer, a research project coordinated by independent institutions in Ghana, Benin, Kenya and South Africa, with partners in 31 other countries. . . .”

Book Says Coverage of Famine Did More Harm Than Good

“It is almost 30 years since a single TV news report alerted the world to a massive humanitarian emergency unfolding in Ethiopia,” Katie Nguyen reported Friday for the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

” ‘Dawn, and as the sun breaks through the piercing chill of night on the plain outside Korem, it lights up a biblical famine, now, in the 20th century. This place, say workers here, is the closest thing to hell on earth,’ ” the piece began.

“Accompanied by shots of thousands of starving people arriving at feeding stations in northern Ethiopia, the report by the BBC’s Michael Buerk triggered an outpouring of donations and one of the biggest humanitarian efforts the world had ever seen. . . .”

Nguyen also wrote, “In the minds of many, the reporting of the famine and the subsequent humanitarian effort were a huge success. Yet, a new book by former BBC journalist-turned-academic Suzanne Franks shows the opposite to be true.”

“Reporting Disasters: Famine, Aid, Politics and the Media” “takes a comprehensive look at the iconic news event. Mining BBC and government archives, it concludes that media coverage of the crisis was misleading and inaccurate, and that the aid effort ultimately did more harm than good. . . .”

The story concludes, “Little has changed in the media reporting of famines in the years since the Ethiopian crisis, Franks said. Citing Somalia’s famine in 2011, she said there were a few but not many journalists willing to tell the ‘horrible and complicated story’ of why people were starving in the Horn of Africa country which was, at the time, mainly controlled by al Shabab militants.”

<h2><a name=”Fashion”></a><a href=”http://mije.org/node/8076/#Fashion”>”One of the Most Racially Charged Fashion Seasons Around”</a></h2>
<p>”<a href=”http://www.philly.com/philly/living/style/20131009_Mirror__Mirror__Racial_issues_on_the_runway.html#ZlgR5LxDFDWiWLOs.01 ” target=”_blank”>The Style &amp; Soul section produces four fashion issues a year, spring, bridal, fall, and   holiday</a>,” <strong>Elizabeth Wellington</strong>, fashion columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer, wrote   Wednesday.</p>
<p>”For September’s issue, I used a pretty, brown, girl-next-door type to show the season’s   wearable fashions.</p>
<p>”The comments started the morning the section was published and trickled in over the next   few days. They went something like this: Nice section, but why did you have to use only a   black model? It made me not want to buy the clothes.</p>
<p>”Ouch.</p>
<p>”Apparently, seeing a brown-skinned woman in a faux leather, cobalt blue peplum jacket   turned some readers off. One reader even accused us of reverse discrimination.</p>
<p>”It was a first to hear that kind of contempt — whether the model we’ve hired was   white or black or Latino or Asian. . . .</p>
<p>”But it seems rancor is going around, as this has been one of the most racially charged   fashion seasons we’ve seen in a while. And the talk has gone beyond the usual grousing   about the lack of color on the national and international runways. . . .”</p>

Short Takes

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