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CNN Reporter Watches Mob Beat Journalist

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Covering Armed Nigerians, Observer Feels Powerless

NPR Piece on Marine Clashes With Navajo Taboos

Philly’s Cesar Aldama Named News Director in Miami

Dan Rather Explains "Watermelon" Remark

Virginia Paper Moving Copy Editing to Chicago

Reported-On Reporters "Working in a Hall of Mirrors"

Journal-isms Gets an Honor, Asks Readers’ Feedback

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CNN reporter Christian Purefoy watches grieving families seek vengeance against a Muslim journalist after a burial in Dogo Na Huwa, Nigeria. (Video)

Covering Armed Nigerians, Observer Feels Powerless

A CNN reporter covering Christian-Muslim violence in Nigeria found himself witnessing angry mourners at a mass grave attempting to kill a Muslim journalist reporting on the event – and felt powerless to stop it.

The camera kept filming as reporter Christian Purefoy, in the central Nigerian village of Dogo Na Huwa, grew increasingly uneasy as he described the violence unfolding before him.

"The situation here is extremely tense," Purefoy said nervously as shots were fired near a mob of mourning families, a Muslim journalist in their midst.

"On the video that aired on CNN Wednesday morning, Purefoy is clearly afraid and openly questions whether he should get involved to help the journalist," Alison Bethel McKenzie, deputy director of the Vienna-based International Press Institute, wrote. "Meanwhile, he asks his cameraman to continue filming the beating. He decides that his involvement would make it worse for the Nigerian journalist and decides not to intervene, but to film.

"I understand Purefoy’s fear and reluctance. After all, another Nigerian journalist suspected of being Muslim, according to CNN’s website, was asked to recite the Lord’s Prayer to prove that he was a Christian, and an American and a Kenyan journalist from CNN had to wear caps identifying themselves as CNN journalists after locals asked if they were from Al-Jazeera, CNN said. If they were from Al-Jazeera, there would have been trouble, the locals allegedly warned."

McKenzie, a former Washington bureau chief for the Detroit News, went on to raise an ethical question. "I somehow found it very disturbing to watch the correspondent, well, stand by and watch – and indeed, film – a fellow journalist being attacked," she wrote.

"Although I believe the best practice is to avoid inserting yourself into the story at all costs, I still wonder where the line is drawn. Would Purefoy have stood by and allowed the man to be murdered? Would he have caught the murder on tape? Would that have been right? Some people criticized Dr. Sanjay Gupta, another CNN reporter, for getting involved in treating patients while on assignment in Haiti. But really, without his help some of the patients would definitely be in worse shape and some may have even died."

CNN later aired more on the incident on its "Back Story" show, including additional footage that showed Purefoy trying to get near the Muslim journalist. "We did try to help him, but even us getting involved was dangerous," Purefoy told his interviewer, Michael Holmes. "Police eventually dragged him to safety." But it was time to leave, he said in gripping footage from the scene. "We being there will only make that situation worse," he concluded. "They’re going to start shooting."

The video then shows shots being fired, presumably by police attempting to disperse the crowd. "We all got into a small car. There’s a small car behind us warning us that we’d better get out pretty quickly. We had to leave all of our stuff behind. There are lots of young men around with sticks and clubs," he said.

Another follow-up piece identified the Muslim reporter as an employee of Radio Nigeria and said he was badly beaten.

[Purefoy e-mailed Journal-isms on Friday, saying, “I immediately intervened to try and help the journalist — and would do so again in any similar situation where I hope my intervention might help save someone from being beaten to death without making the problem worse. The reason we then later stayed back was the intervention by the Nigerian police – any shooting, especially when it involves the Nigerian police in a chaotic situation – I believe, should be kept at a safe distance.”]

As the New York Times’ Adam Nossiter reported from nearby Jos, Nigeria, "On Monday and Tuesday, 332 bodies were buried in a mass grave in the village of Dogo Na Hawa, the Nigerian Red Cross said Wednesday. Human rights groups and the state government say that as many as 500 people may have been killed in the early hours of Sunday morning, in three different villages.

"Sunday’s killings were an especially vicious expression of long-running hostilities between Christians and Muslims in this divided nation. Jos and the region around it are on the fault line where the volatile and poor Muslim north and Christian south meet. In the past decade, some 3,000 people have been killed in interethnic, interreligious violence in this fraught zone. The pattern is familiar and was seen as recently as January: uneasy coexistence suddenly explodes into killing, amplified for days by retaliation."

 

U.S. Marine and Afghan army commanders confer after their men begin taking fire while on patrol in February. Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson of National Public Radio, who took the photo, traveled with the patrol. She became emotional when recalling the death of a Navajo Marine.

NPR Piece on Marine Clashes With Navajo Taboos

"Last Thursday, the family of a Navajo Marine who was killed in Afghanistan asked NPR to stop mentioning his name because of how the Navajo culture views death," Alicia Shepard, ombudsman at National Public Radio, introduced her column on Monday. "His death was the focal point of three NPR stories in two weeks. I am respecting the family’s request in this column although the U.S. military has made his name public and it’s easy to find.

" ‘He’s dead,’ yelled a female voice as gunfire erupted around the Marine unit in Marjah in Afghanistan," the piece began.

"Dead in an instant was a 23-year-old Navajo from Rock Point, AZ. He left behind a wife nearly five months pregnant with their first child.

"Listeners captivated by NPR Kabul correspondent Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson’s compelling audio, learned of his death through the anguished cries of his fellow Marines.

" ‘A bullet struck him in the head, killing him almost instantly,’ Nelson reported in a Feb. 19 story, three days after the battle. He ‘had planned to call his wife on my satellite phone that very night.’

". . . Some listeners found the piece extraordinarily powerful. However, an equal number were bothered by it, feeling that the moment of death was too private to share over the air. ‘A loved one should never be exposed to hear the last sounds of their hero passing in the defense of the nation,’ wrote Charles Walden, a retired Air Force colonel.

". . . ‘In our Navajo tradition, once we lay him to rest we cannot talk about his passing anymore,’ said his sister-in-law on March 4. ‘Culturally his spirit will not be at ease if we keep hearing about his death . . . It is hard for all of us to grieve the loss of [name withheld] with all this media attention it is getting and we know that this is not what he would have wanted. He was not the type of person to have wanted all this attention.’

"This story is fraught with ethical issues. Should NPR have aired the moment of death? Should his name be aired? Should NPR have notified the family before the piece aired?

". . . It is unfortunate that in executing this piece NPR bumped up against taboos in the Navajo culture. But what counts most is that the story was done with a great deal of care and that the young Marine was portrayed with dignity."

Philly’s Cesar Aldama Named News Director in Miami

Cesar Aldama, assistant news director for KYW-TV and WPSG-TV, the CBS-owned stations in Philadelphia, has been named news director at WFOR-TV in Miami, the CBS stations announced Wednesday.

"At CBS3/CW Philly, Cesar has been at the forefront of our technical advances in the news department from our latest coverage of the blizzard(s) of 2010 and the news department’s transition into our new high definition facility," Susan Schiller, vice president and news director, told Aldama’s Philadelphia co-workers.

"His editorial strengths have been instrumental in major story coverage for which Eyewitness News has been honored with a national Murrow award, several regional awards and Emmy awards for best newscasts and breaking news coverage."

"Born and raised at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo, Cuba, Aldama is an active member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and the National Association of Black Journalists. He also serves on the board of the Mid-Atlantic chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences," the Miami station added.

Aldama’s parents, twin brother and younger sister all live in Miami.

"He’s a tv gem in the fact that he’s a television manager and very active and supportive of his local NABJ chapter," Sarah J. Glover, president of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists, told Journal-isms via e-mail, referring to the National Association of Black Journalists.

Dan Rather Explains "Watermelon" Remark

Veteran television anchor Dan Rather cites the way his comments about watermelon and President Obama went viral as an example of the dangers of "an online and cable echo chamber that claims the banner of news but trades in gossip, gotcha, and innuendo."

Discussing health care reform Sunday on television’s syndicated "Chris Matthews Show," Rather said, "Obama couldn‚Äôt sell watermelons if you gave him the state troopers to flag down the traffic."

"It’s an expression that stretches to my boyhood roots in Southeast Texas, when country highways were lined with stands manned by sellers of all races," Rather wrote Wednesday on the Huffington Post site. "Now of course watermelons have become a stereotype for African Americans and so my analogy entered a charged environment. I’m sorry people took offense.

"But anyone who knows me personally or knows my professional career would know that race was not on my mind. Reporting on the injustices of race was part of the reason I became a reporter. I grew up in segregated Texas on the same side of the tracks as the African American community. . . . I do not take this issue lightly.

"I can understand why someone who just happened upon my comments could take offense or want clarification. But what has caused this comment to ‘go viral’ is the trumpeting of an online and cable echo chamber that claims the banner of news but trades in gossip, gotcha, and innuendo. Furthermore, even for those who brook no prejudice, when everything is condensed to 140 characters or a small YouTube clip, many people who got this ‘news’ did so without any context, just a headline that popped up on their phone or inbox."

Rather left "the CBS Evening News" in 2006 and now anchors for HDTV. When he left CBS, his African American colleagues praised him for his character.

Virginia Paper Moving Copy Editing to Chicago

"The Daily Press of Newport News, Va., is further streamlining its copy editing and production processes and is outsourcing some of those functions to its sister paper, the Chicago Tribune," Jennifer Saba reported Tuesday for Editor & Publisher.

"Chicago will mostly handle the layout, copy editing and some story selection for most of the paper.

"The Daily Press anticipates saving roughly $1 million by sending those functions to Chicago, Daily Press President Digby Solomon told E&P, adding, ‘That’s a big difference in a paper this size.’ Solomon said he expects the move to impact about 15% of the newsroom staff, which includes more than 80 people."

Asked how many newsroom jobs would be lost in Newport News, Editor Ernie Gates told Journal-isms, "We haven’t specified a number yet, and we haven’t communicated anything to any individuals yet."

As reported in February, The Ventura County (Calif.) Star is transferring the work of its copy desks to a sister E.W. Scripps Co. newspaper in Corpus Christi, Texas, leaving 15 copy editors and designers with the choice of moving to Texas if they want to keep their jobs.

Writing on cagle.com, Steve Greenberg wrote then that two smaller Scripps West Coast properties, the Redding (Calif.) Record Searchlight and the Kitsap Sun in Washington, were also transferring their copy desks to Corpus Christi.

Reported-On Reporters "Working in a Hall of Mirrors"

"Reporters have always kept an eye on other reporters. For a journalist, the only thing more interesting than what you are working on is what your competitor is working on," media writer David Carr wrote Monday in the New York Times.

"But what if watching your competitor becomes your whole story? More and more inside the echo chamber of mediated Manhattan, there are now published reports about what other reporters might be doing. On the Web, it takes nothing more than a rumor, or even a rumor of a rumor, and a push of a button to pull back the blankets on somebody else’s work.

"For working reporters, it can create the feeling that they are working in a hall of mirrors. In the last couple of weeks, The New York Times has been the subject of wild and wildly off-base rumors about its reporting on Gov. David A. Paterson. . . .

"As a media reporter, I’m obviously not one to suggest that the activities of journalists are not a legitimate source of inquiry. But I worry that the incremental needs of an always-on Web — everyone wants to know what the state of play is at any given moment — will imperil the practice of longer-form journalism, the kind that demands time, an open mind, a lot of questions and sometimes results in dead ends."

Journal-isms Gets an Honor, Asks Reader Feedback

The author of "Richard Prince’s Journal-isms" "is the recipient of the 2010 Robert G. McGruder Award. The award recognizes the accomplishments of media professionals who encourage diversity in the field of journalism," Kent State University, which bestows the award, announced this week.

"The School of Journalism and Mass Communication will present the McGruder Award at a special ceremony and lecture at 1 p.m. Tuesday, April 6, in the FirstEnergy Auditorium in Franklin Hall. A reception will immediately follow the lecture."

Journal-isms is asking readers to share anecdotes about how diversity has benefited the news business, as well as examples of the perils of failing to be diverse. Please send to rprince (at) maynardije.org so they might be incorporated into the lecture and otherwise shared.

McGruder, a 1963 Kent State graduate who died in 2002, "was a pioneer in both diversity and in the field of journalism. He was the first black editor of the Daily Kent Stater and the first black reporter for The Plain Dealer. In 1995, he was the first black to become president of the Associated Press Managing Editors group and in 1996 became the first black editor at the Detroit Free Press," the announcement said.

"Past recipients of the McGruder award are Greg Moore, editor of the Denver Post, in 2003; David Lawrence, Jr., retired Knight Ridder executive and The Miami Herald publisher, in 2004; Albert Fitzpatrick, retired Knight Ridder executive and Akron Beacon Journal editor, in 2005; and Leonard Pitts, Jr., Pulitzer Prize winner and columnist for The Miami Herald, in 2006."

Prince becomes the first recipient honored primarily for online work. "Richard Prince’s Journal-isms" is in its seventh year as an online column, although it began in print in 1991 in the NABJ Journal, publication of the National Association of Black Journalists.

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