Survey: Black Women Portrayed Negatively in Media
Judge Orders Heart & Soul Owners to Pay Writers
Reginald Stuart, Rochester, N.Y., Paper Win for Diversity
ESPN Backs Columnist Reilly Over Redskins Quotations
Black Print Magazine Ads Drop, Latino Products Rise
Role of Ethnicity Varies Among 5 Hispanic Opinion Editors
“When Is It O.K. to Call a Scientist a Whore?”
Fusion Plans Current Events, Not “Traditional News”
Utah Has Its First Regular African American Anchorwoman
Survey: Black Women Portrayed Negatively in Media
In the media, “negative imagery of Black women is seen often twice as frequently as positive imagery,” according to a survey of more than 1,200 respondents appearing in the November issue of Essence magazine.
They “told us that the images we encounter regularly on TV, in social media, in music videos and from other outlets are overwhelmingly negative and fall into categories that make us cringe — Gold Diggers, Modern Jezebels, Baby Mamas, Uneducated Sisters, Ratchet Women, Angry Black Women, Mean Black Girls, Unhealthy Black Women, and Black Barbies,” Dawnie Walton wrote last week in advance of the issue’s appearance on newsstands Friday.
“The study also revealed six types we feel we don’t see enough in media, types we feel more genuinely reflect us and the Black women we know: Young Phenoms, Real Beauties, Individualists, Community Heroines, Girls Next Door and Modern Matriarchs. . . .”
Walton reported “surprising, bonus details and insights from our research”:
- “85% of our Black women respondents reported they regularly see representations of Baby Mamas in media, while only 41% said they often see Real Beauties. The type seen least often? Community Heroines.”
- “Modern Jezebels and Gold Diggers are the types that cause Black women the most embarrassment. . . .”
- “Our Black respondents said the typologies that best represent the Black women they know in real life are the positive ones — including Real Beauties, Modern Matriarchs, Girls Next Door and Individualists.
- “But non-Hispanic White women cited negative typologies as most representative of Black women they’ve encountered in real life — namely, Baby Mamas, Angry Black Women, Unhealthy Black Women and Uneducated Sisters.
- “Younger women — ages 18-29 — were more likely than older women to be aware of negative typologies and also more likely to find them compelling. . . .”
- “African-American women reported higher levels of happiness with their natural beauty and appearance, plus their spiritual lives and religious commitments. Meanwhile, White women reported higher satisfaction with their homes, their relationships with significant others, and their savings and investments.”
- “Both Black and White women reported that the strongest influence for boosting their sense of worth is themselves. But while Black women cited their mothers as the second strongest influence, White women say they look to their significant others to lift them up.
- “Interestingly, women who were compelled by negative typologies also reported they find physical features including lighter skin and straight hair to be most beautiful.”
Writing about the study for the Washington Post, Krissah Thompson reported Thursday, “The magazine’s study differs from other assessments of the portrayal of black women in the media in an important way: It proposes a solution.
“The problem with the current images is that they reflect extremity, according to the magazine and the researchers. The solution is to uplift images in the ‘invisible middle.’ Those include figures such as, ‘the acculturated girl next door,’ ‘community heroines,’ ‘young phenoms’ and ‘modern matriarchs.’
“Marketing expert Pepper Miller, who was interviewed by researchers for the report, wrote in her book ‘Black Still Matters [in Marketing]’ that ‘there are the high profile celebrities, entertainers, and sports figures on one side, and the impoverished, crime-ridden, and down and out on the other. This flawed perception results in the rest of us — The Invisible Middle — being ignored and marginalized.’ “
- Asha French, Ebony: Dear Beautiful Daughters Who Happen to Be Light
Judge Orders Heart & Soul Owners to Pay Writers
A Maryland judge has ordered the owners of Heart & Soul magazine to pay aggrieved writers $90,263 after many of them remained unpaid despite an April settlement under which a dozen freelance writers and editors would finally be compensated.
Since the Sept. 30 order from Judge Krystal Q. Alves of the Seventh Judicial Circuit of Maryland for Prince George’s County, four of the 12 women received checks, Larry Goldbetter, president of the National Writers Union, messaged Journal-isms on Friday. “They all appear to be for the agreed upon amount for May,” he said of the checks.
Heart & Soul has had a rough go since journalist George Curry and his partners in Brown Curry Detry Taylor & Associates, LLC of Silver Spring, Md., announced in January 2012 that they had bought the 18-year-old health and wellness publication from Edwin V. Avent, a Baltimore-based businessman who now heads the recently launched cable network Soul of the South.
The new Heart & Soul owners promised to compensate a group of angry writers who said they were owed more than $200,000 in back pay. But after failure to satisfy the writers and other setbacks, Curry said in November that he had resigned as executive vice president/content and editorial director.
The status of the publication could not be determined on Monday. The website features a story dated Sept. 25.
Reginald Stuart, Rochester, N.Y., Paper Win for Diversity
“Reginald Stuart, veteran journalist and corporate recruiter, and the Rochester (N.Y.) Democrat and Chronicle are the recipients of the 12th annual Robert G. McGruder Awards for Diversity Leadership, awarded by the Associated Press Media Editors in partnership with other journalism organizations,” APME announced on Friday.
“The McGruder Award for Diversity Leadership is given annually to individuals, newsrooms or teams of journalists who embody the spirit of McGruder, a former executive editor of the Detroit Free Press, managing editor of The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and a graduate of Kent State University. McGruder died of cancer in April 2002. A past president of APME and former member of the American Society of News Editors’ Board of Directors, McGruder was a relentless diversity champion. The awards will be presented Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2013, at the annual awards lunch at the APME conference in Indianapolis.
“This year, the 12th annual awards were sponsored by The Plain Dealer, Kent State University and the APME Foundation, and the Chips Quinn Scholars program of the Newseum Institute. The honorees will each receive $2,500 and a leadership plaque.
The announcement continued, “In the nominating letter for Stuart, a veteran journalist who has spent 45 years chronicling news stories and recruiting and placing journalists in various assignments — including the last 20 as a recruiter for Knight Ridder and then The McClatchy Co. — Stuart’s nomination celebrated him for placing more than 1,000 journalists into jobs.”
It also said, “In her nominating letter, Jennifer Leonard, president and CEO of the Rochester Area Community Foundation, saluted the Democrat and Chronicle for ‘its dedication to diversity in news content and leadership in providing tools, information and resources to promote intergroup understanding and equity in our upstate New York community.’
“She said that through its Unite Rochester initiative, the Democrat and Chronicle bolstered community conversations through a continuing series of news stories, deployed extensive online expertise and social media reach to stimulate community discussions, developed and publicized results of a countywide poll about racial attitudes, issues and solutions and took its leadership team on the road for town hall meetings to spur conversation about the issues and beliefs that divide Rochester. . . .”
ESPN Backs Columnist Reilly Over Redskins Quotations
ESPN is standing by columnist Rick Reilly, who defended the Washington Redskins team name only to have his father-in-law, a Blackfeet Indian elder, say that Reilly misquoted him as supporting the name.
The Native American Journalists Association on Friday called on ESPN “to review Reilly’s past work to ensure there have been no other instances in which sources may have been misquoted or their views misrepresented.” It also said, “Arguing that a racial slur is actually not offensive when members of the offended group say otherwise not only seems harmful, but almost deliberately cruel. . . .”
ESPN spokesman Mike Soltys told Journal-isms by email on Monday, “We reviewed the column and stand by Rick’s reporting.”
Reilly wrote on Sept. 18, “I know an atheist who is offended by religious names like the New Orleans Saints and Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. There are people [who] who don’t think Ole Miss should be the Rebels. People who lost family to Hurricanes. There are people who think Wizards promotes paganism. Shall we listen to all of them?”
He quoted his father-in-law, Bob Burns, as saying, “The whole issue is so silly to me. The name just doesn’t bother me much. It’s an issue that shouldn’t be an issue, not with all the problems we’ve got in this country.”
“But that’s not what I said,” Burns countered Oct. 10 in his own piece for the Indian Country Today Media Network.
“What I actually said is that ‘it’s silly in this day and age that this should even be a battle — if the name offends someone, change it.’ He failed to include my comments that the term ‘redskins’ demeans Indians, and historically is insulting and offensive, and that I firmly believe the Washington Redskins should change their name.
“When Rick’s article came out, it upset me to be portrayed as an ‘Uncle Tom’ in support of this racial slur. I asked him to correct the record. He has not, so I must do it myself. . . .”
Reilly sent out a tweet later that day, “While I stand by the reporting in my Sept. 18 column about the Washington Redskins nickname controversy, and felt I accurately quoted my father-in-law in the piece, clearly he feels differently. This is an incredibly sensitive issue, and Bob felt he had more to say on the subject after that column was posted on ESPN.com. We’ve spoken and cleared this up. I admire Bob and respect his opinions, and he’s welcome to express them. Bob and I are good and I’m looking forward to my next steak with him.”
- Rob Capriccioso, Indian Country Today Media Network: Reporter Defends ‘Redskins’; Doesn’t Mention Dad Is Team’s Crisis Manager
- Dallas Morning News: Jerry Jones on Redskins owner: Mistake ‘to think that Dan, who is Jewish, has a lack of sensitivity’
- Editorial, Washington Post: Dan Snyder continues to defend the indefensible
- Gregory Kane, Washington Examiner: Obama should stick to basketball and leave the Redskins alone
- Andrew Kirell, mediaite.com: Charles Krauthammer on Redskins Name: I Think It’s Over the Line’
- Cynthia Littleton, Variety: Bob Costas: Redskins Name Undeniably a ‘Slur’
- Indian Country Today Media Network: NCAI [National Congress of American Indians] Report: Redskins Name Has “Ugly and Racist Legacy”
- Indian Country Today Media Network: The Washington Post Polls Readers on Team Name
- Sean Kirst, Post-Standard, Syracuse, N.Y.: Marv Levy on ‘Redskins’ as a nickname: ‘A crude word,’ even if intent is not to insult
- Michael Martinez, CNN: A slur or term of ‘honor’? Controversy heightens about Washington Redskins
- Jake O’Donnell, sportsgrid.com: Rick Reilly’s Father-In-Law Just Dropped The Hammer On His ‘Redskins’ Defense Article
- Maria Recio, McClatchy Washington Bureau: What’s in a name? For D.C.’s NFL team, yards of controversy
- William C. Rhoden, New York Times: Redskins’ Owner Stubbornly Clings to Wrong Side of History
- Tim Rogers, D Magazine: Should the Redskins Be Forced To Change Their Mascot?
- Bob Ray Sanders, Star-Telegram, Fort Worth, Texas: It’s time for the Washington football team to drop the ‘Redskins’ mascot
- Michael David Smith, NBC Sports: Rick Reilly: I felt I quoted my father-in-law accurately, he disagrees
- Ryan Van Bibber, SB Nation: Rick Reilly allegedly misquoted Native American father-in-law in Redskins column
Black Print Magazine Ads Drop, Latino Products Rise
African American-oriented print magazines saw declines in advertising pages in the first nine months of the year compared with the same period in 2012, but Hispanic-oriented print magazines all showed gains, according to new figures from the Publishers Information Bureau. The exception was Siempre Mujer.
The figures are for print magazines only, not their fast-growing tablet magazine counterparts.
Among African American-oriented print magazines, Black Enterprise was down 46.1 percent (it reduced the number of issues in the measuring period from nine in 2012 to five in 2013); Ebony, down 1.3 percent; Essence, down 15.4 percent; and Jet, down 22.5 percent (it reduced the number of issues from 19 to 14).
However, Desiree Rogers, CEO of Johnson Publishing Co., publishers of Ebony and Jet, told Journal-isms by email, “Both magazines are up at the newsstand this year over last year for the first half– which is amazing. We are thrilled.” Rich Magid, chief financial officer, said Ebony is up 11.9 percent and Jet, 4 percent.
Among Hispanic print titles, Latina rose 14.8 percent, People en Español 4.2 percent, Ser Padres, 6.2 percent, and Siempre Mujer was down 13.9 percent.
Enedina Vega, vice president and publisher of Meredith Hispanic Media, responsible for Siempre Mujer (and Ser Padres), told Journal-isms that last year was an exception. “In 2012 we were fortunate to carry 2 inserts from one company which accounted for 75 PIB pages. That business is not running anywhere this year,” she said by email.
Overall, “digital editions are getting a small slice of the money that used to go solely to print,” Bill Cromwell reported Thursday for medialifemagazine.com. “The PIB found that tablet ad units grew 17.5 percent during third quarter, and when those were combined with print ads, total units were up 6.8 percent over last year.
“Still, it’s very likely that ad pages will never return to where they were a few years ago, let alone a decade ago, when the decline began. . . .”
Role of Ethnicity Varies Among 5 Hispanic Opinion Editors
“Some of us on the AOJ members-only discussion list were appalled but not surprised when AOJ diversity chair Richard Prince said he had found only five persons of apparent Hispanic ancestry serving as opinion-page editors of substantial U.S. dailies,” John McClelland, editor of the Masthead, a publication of the Association of Opinion Journalists, wrote Friday.
“He quoted one, Arnold Garcia. Prince wrote: ‘The Newspaper Association of America lists 1,382 daily newspapers in the United States. Arnold’s comment: “Doesn’t say much for recruitment efforts, does it?” ‘
“Media industries have been slow generally, since beginning to diversify purposefully in the (gulp!) 1960s. So now we wondered why so few of one of the most numerous and rapidly growing minorities are in key leadership roles in U.S. editorial floors. That’s too broad and deep an issue for this package, but we thought there would be good tales among the success stories. Perhaps a spark to discussion?
“This started with a seemingly routine query related to the waning weeks of Hispanic Heritage Month, Sept. 15 to Oct. 15. But it struck a nerve. So we asked the five to share a bit of what their world is like, to run before the AOJ convention Oct. 13-15.
“We suggested that they comment on highlights, lowlights, speed-bumps on the way to the EPE [editorial page editor] job, how cultural backgrounds affect this or other forms of journalism, and so on. These understandably busy people didn’t know us from Adam, but all responded well. . . .”
The five are Myriam Marquez, Miami Herald; Arnold Garcia, Austin (Texas) American-Statesman; John Diaz, San Francisco Chronicle; Brian Calle, Orange County (Calif.) Register; and Mariel Garza, Los Angeles Daily News.
- Olivia Exstrum, Daily Northwestern: NAHJ president Hugo Balta discusses media portrayals of Latinos
Fusion Plans Current Events, Not “Traditional News”
The new Fusion network, the joint English-language venture of Univision and ABC News that plans to target young Hispanics, will not be offering “traditional news. We are going to be covering current events, but we are going to be doing it through the filters” of the millennial generation, Isaac Lee, president of Univision News and recently named CEO of Fusion, said on Monday.
Lee told Jon Lafayette of Broadcasting & Cable, “My target audience is a millennial audience that today has a different set of values than what people think of. That lives in the digital world, but definitely enjoys television and enjoys good content and over-indexes in information.
“They are getting their breaking news via Twitter, they’re getting their opinions about everything that goes on in their Facebook pages. They are watching several YouTube channels and they are into cable and broadcast and movie theaters and they don’t have a network that is targeting only them that has the focus of creating content especially for them. . . .”
Lafayette asked, “How much of what you’re going to be doing is going to be traditional news?”
Lee replied, “I think that the key part is not going to be traditional news. We are going to be covering current events, but we are going to be doing it through the filters that I mentioned. Things do not have to be boring to be well done. You can be funny and relevant. You need to be consistent and you need to be outstanding and perceived to be authentic as well.
“So we are going to have a morning show. The morning show has an anchor, a beautiful female anchor [Mariana Atencio] from Venezuela. We have an anchor from Brazil [Pedro Andrade] who does a show out of New York for Globo. It has a guy from Brooklyn [Yannis Pappas] descended from a Greek family who has millions of followers on YouTube. And they are going to be doing a very different morning show that is going to be fun.
“That is going to be entertaining, that is going to be self-deprecating, they’re not going to take themselves seriously and they don’t pretend. They can actually be having a conversation with an audience that likes to see things plain and simple. They don’t need to be reading a Teleprompter. It can all be more casual and more real. . . . “
Utah Has Its First Regular African American Anchorwoman
Nadia Crow, 27, who grew up in Chicago, has become the first regular African American anchorwoman at a Salt Lake City TV station, KTVX-TV, Scott D. Pierce reported Sunday for the Salt Lake Tribune.
“She admits she had a few questions about Utah before she got here,” Pierce wrote.
Referring to News Director George Severson, who hired her, Crow said, “I asked George, ‘Is there somewhere I can get my hair done? Am I going to be able to go to the grocery store and see somebody that looks like me? What is going to happen if I come there? But coming here has really opened up my eyes. There is diversity here. And there are growing populations that people outside of Utah don’t realize are here.’
“Including her friends. A lot of them asked her if she’d be safe in Utah. If she would have to wear ‘old-timey clothes’ with long sleeves on the air. If she’d end up as someone’s third wife.
” ‘They have these “Big Love” ideas, because that’s what they see on TV,’ Crow said. ‘There are so many misconceptions outside of Utah of what the LDS [Mormon] faith is. And then when you come here, you realize that those things really aren’t true.’ . . .”
Short Takes
- “In the first nine months of 2013, white men dominated the guest lists on the broadcast network Sunday shows and CNN’s State of the Union. MSNBC was the only network achieving notable diversity in its guests, particularly on Melissa Harris-Perry’s show. Republicans and conservatives are hosted significantly more on the broadcast Sunday shows than Democrats and progressives,” Rob Savillo reported Friday for Media Matters for America in its ongoing monitoring of the Sunday morning talk shows on broadcast and cable networks.
- “Discovery Communications, the cable networks giant, has teamed with the British government to co-fund female education programs across Africa,” Stuart Kemp reported Friday for the Hollywood Reporter. “The cable operator, home of Discovery Channel, said it has teamed with the U.K. department for international development (DFID) and has pledged $19.6 million (£12.3 million) to the cause, a sum to be matched by the British government. Their focus will be in Ghana, Kenya and Nigeria. . . .”
- Five television stations in Columbus, Ohio, took part Friday in a collaboration of local media and businesses for the United Way to raise awareness about poverty in central Ohio, according to plans reported Thursday by TVNewsCheck. “Unite to Fight Poverty” featured television, print, radio, outdoor advertising and online communications telling the story of how United Way is helping people build pathways out of poverty. They created a “roadblock” for a day-long effort to flood the market with United Way messaging and stories in newscasts.
- “The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, joined by 36 other news media organizations, filed public comments calling on the president’s Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies to more carefully balance the secrecy sometimes required in national security investigations with the public’s right to know what its government is doing,” the committee reported Friday.
- “Since African Americans are disproportionately represented in public sector jobs — in other words they disproportionately work for the government — allDigitocracy took a cursory check around the Web to see how black news organizations are covering the U.S. government shutdown,” Tracie Powell wrote Friday. “Unfortunately, we didn’t find a whole lot specific to black folks. Of particular interest, however, is the fact that black publications with white owners — bigger budgets and larger staffs — are providing less shutdown coverage specific to their black audiences than smaller, black-owned counterparts that have limited resources. . . .”
- “Rob Wilson, meteorologist for Erie, PA, NBC and CBS affiliate WICU-WSEE, is leaving TV to be a financial planner,” Kevin Eck reported Friday for TVSpy. “Wilson told TVSpy his contract isn’t being renewed at the end of the year, ‘so after nearly 14 years here in Erie and almost 20 years in television I’ll be leaving the industry altogether.’ . . . “
- For the first time ever, one woman who has always made Fortune’s Most Powerful Women list dropped off: Oprah Winfrey. “Her cable network, OWN, seems to have overcome its startup struggles and is drawing bigger audiences, but the business isn’t big enough to put Oprah, No. 50 last year, on the 2013 list,” Patricia Sellers reported Thursday for Fortune.
- “When renowned radio personality Michael Baisden posted ‘A real man takes care of his kids no matter what the relationship is with the mother of the child,’ on his Facebook page, he never anticipated the over nine million views or one million plus likes and comments he received as feedback!,” according to a news release distributed on Baisden’s behalf. “The overwhelming response prompted him into immediate action. A diehard advocate for mentoring since 2010 with his ‘One Million Mentors National Campaign to Save Our Kids’ 72-city tour, Baisden has now launched a new initiative, the ‘One Dream One Team Mentoring Initiative.’ His specific goal is to help recruit African American male mentors for the 12,000 African American boys on the Big Brothers Big Sisters (BBBS) waiting lists for a one-on-one mentor match. . . .”
- Fox News Channel issued an on-air correction for its story about President Obama funding a Muslim museum, Media Matters for America reported Saturday. (video)
- In Venezuela, Reporters Without Borders said Friday it “shares the concerns voiced by organizations that represent journalists and media workers about the government’s 7 October decree creating a new intelligence agency called the Strategic Centre for Homeland Security and Protection, or CESPPA. The press freedom group also said, “The Radio, TV and Electronic Media Social Responsibility Law (RESORTEMEC) already poses major obstacles to freedom of information and now this new decree will directly violate the right to be informed, a right guaranteed by the Bolivarian Constitution. . . .”
- In Havana, Cuba, three dissident journalists were arrested within 24 hours at the end of last week, Reporters Without Borders reported, calling for their immediate release. “Mario Echevarría Driggs, a reporter for the Misceláneas de Cuba website, was arrested while covering a demonstration near the National Capitol on 10 October. David Águila Montero, head of the Independent Journalists’ Social Agency (ASPI), was arrested as he left his home the next morning. William Cacer Díaz, a reporter for the Hablemos Press news centre, was arrested by State Security (the political police) a few hours later as he was going to Hablemos Press headquarters. . . .”
- “Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa should end the use of criminal defamation laws to target his critics,” Human Rights Watch said Thursday. José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch, said, “President Correa has long made it clear that he’s willing to go after anyone who criticizes him, from civil society leaders to media critics. But with his most recent targeting of an opposition legislator, his abuse of power to suppress those he sees as his enemies has reached new and alarming heights. . . .”
- “Just three days after Justice Minister Counselor Christina P. Tah, on October 8, temporarily released Journalist Rodney Sieh from prison, the Supreme Court of Liberia in a writ dated 11 October, has summoned the Attorney General to show ’cause’ why she should not be held in contempt,” Winston W. Parley wrote Monday for the New Dawn in the capital city, Monrovia.
- In Congo, Gaïus Kowene, an independent journalist and a correspondent for Radio Netherlands, “was robbed of his backpack, containing materials he uses for work (including a laptop, a Zoom audio recorder, a passport, etcetera.) He was then intensely beaten” by six assailants before they disappeared into the woods, the Toronto-based International Freedom of Expression Exchange Clearing House reported Friday. “I told them I was a journalist,” Kowene said.
- “In northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), rural radio stations are used to protect civilians from violence,” Scott Ross wrote Thursday for African Arguments. “Part of a growing network of high frequency (HF) shortwave radios that connects rural villages in remote parts of the DRC and neighboring Central African Republic (CAR), these radios are switched on each day as local radio operators report their village’s status in relation to a widespread conflict in the region.” Ross also wrote, “This lifeline is now a part of the daily lives of many localities. Twice a day, the villages in the network check in and report on recent occurrences. These reports go to one of several network hubs in the region. . . .”
Follow Richard Prince on Twitter @princeeditor
Facebook users: “Like” “Richard Prince’s Journal-isms” on Facebook.