Complaint Cites Story Choices, Pale Time Inc. Leadership
A discrimination lawsuit filed by black journalist Tasha Robertson against her former employer, People magazine, is notable because it cites People’s editorial choices and the white makeup of the leadership of the parent company, Time Inc., as evidence of discrimination, Robertson’s lawyer told Journal-isms on Friday.
“Maybe they should call it White People magazine,” Dareh Gregorian wrote in reporting on the suit Wednesday night for the Daily News in New York.
“The recently [laid off] lone black editor of People says she was discriminated against by her boss, and that the popular magazine is biased against African-Americans in general.
“People is ‘a discriminatory organization run entirely by white people who intentionally focus the magazine on stories involving white people and white celebrities,’ Tatsha Robertson’s bombshell lawsuit says.
“The 48-year-old Robertson, ‘the only Black Senior Editor the magazine has ever had,’ was laid off in May, according to the suit.
“She says only five of the mag’s 110 employees were black, and that now-former executive editor Betsy Gleick treated her like a second class-citizen when she came to the magazine from another Time Inc. publication, Essence, in 2010.
” ‘You need to talk like everyone else here. You’re not at Essence anymore,’ Gleick is quoted in the suit as saying. . . .”
David Gottleib, Robertson’s lawyer, told Journal-isms by telephone that he was surprised that Time Inc. did not issue customary denials of the assertions in the lawsuit. Instead, Time has made no comment.
He said it was significant that the suit includes coverage choices as evidence of discrimination.
“The discriminatory environment in which Ms. Robertson was forced to work also permeated the pages of People Magazine,” according to the complaint, filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. “Indeed, Ms. Gleick has repeatedly insisted that the only types of stories she and People Magazine were interested in printing were those concerning: ‘White middle-class suburbia.’
“Examples of this openly espoused discriminatory worldview at People Magazine are abundant.
“For instance, in February 2014, Ms. Robertson pitched a story regarding the death of Samira Frasch, an African-American model whose husband was a person of interest in her apparent murder.
“Despite the fact that this story was picked up by a number of media outlets, including CNN, Ms. Gleick responded to Ms. Robertson’s pitch by stating that the victim looked like a ‘slut’ and refused to print the story because the victim was Black, telling Ms. Robertson:
” ‘You know the rule — White suburban women in distress.’
“Tellingly, People Magazine ran an extremely similar story approximately one month later about a White model, Monica Olsen, whose husband reportedly attempted to have her murdered.
“The fact that Ms. Gleick would expressly decline to run a story because the victim was Black, yet run an extremely similar (though arguably even less compelling) story about a White victim, is illustrative of the racial biases condoned at People and which resulted in disparate treatment towards Ms. Robertson.
“By way of another example, People Magazine was at one point looking into a potential story concerning a woman who had been killed by her husband.
“Everyone at People Magazine was interested in the story, including Ms. Gleick, as well as another Top Editor and Executive at People Magazine.
“However, upon viewing a picture of the victim and realizing she was Black, the editor immediately changed his mind.
“The editor sent an email to Ms. Gleick (and copied Ms. Robertson) with a copy of the picture and the statement, in sum and substance, that:
“She’ll never make it into People.’ . . .”
The complaint also says, “All seven of People Magazine’s Top Editors — the level above Ms. Robertson — are White, and People has never had a single Black Top Editor.
“Incredibly, this utter lack of leadership diversity is not limited to People Magazine, but, as shown on Time, Inc.’s own website, every single one of the 11 members of Time, Inc.’s ‘Leadership’ is White. . . . “
ACLU Says Ferguson Events Brought Setbacks to the Press
“It is not a great time to be a journalist in America,” Noa Yachot, a communications specialist at the American Civil Liberties Union, wrote Thursday for the Huffington Post.
“The assault on the First Amendment by militarized police in Ferguson, Mo., continues unabated, and the press is not spared. Since the start of protests against the August 9 killing of Michael Brown, journalists in Ferguson have been arrested, fired on, threatened, and assaulted.
“After more than a week of heavy-handed police violence — through the use of tactics and weapons better suited for a warzone than an American suburb — freedoms of speech and the press were dealt a major legal blow on Tuesday. A federal court denied a motion from the ACLU of Missouri for an emergency order to prevent police from enforcing a ban on standing in place for more than five seconds. The ‘keep-moving mandate’ (also known as the five-second rule) remains in place, criminalizing constitutionally protected activity and placing a dangerous barrier on the ability of the media to bring us stories from this city under siege. As Tony Rothert, the legal director of the ACLU of Missouri, told MSNBC, ‘In many ways, the First Amendment has been suspended in Ferguson.’
“This defeat came on the heels of an earlier victory, in which the ACLU of Missouri reached an agreement with the police, stating that members of the public and the press can record on-duty police officers. That was good news — except it should never have been up for debate, because you always have the right to photograph what’s plainly visible in public. Including the police.’ . . .”
This Time, the New Yorker’s Cover Is Personal
They also wrote, ” ‘An artist friend of mine was killed by a cop in lower Manhattan, back in 1991. He happened to be black, and the police officer was never indicted.’ Drooker continues, ‘As a resident of Manhattan’s Lower East Side, I witnessed the blurring distinctions between the police and military during the Tompkins Square riots of the eighties. I’ll never forget the day the N.Y.P.D. showed up in a military tank to evict nonviolent squatter friends from buildings on Avenue B and Thirteenth Street, where I grew up. This incident triggered a vivid childhood memory of the police driving a similar armored tank on East Fourteenth street, in 1968, to quell possible ‘disturbances’ after Martin Luther King was assassinated.
“ ‘Of course, rubber bullets, tear gas, and Tasers have been used for a while — on nonviolent anti-war protests at the dawn of the Iraq invasion, not to mention Occupy — but the U.S. media has often chosen to ignore these images. Now that billions have been spent and the equipment is in place throughout the country, the intensive militarization of America’s police forces is finally being acknowledged after the horrors of Ferguson.’ ”
- Tanveer Ali, Columbia Journalism Review: What the numbers coming out of Ferguson say, and who is saying it best
- Dan Barry, New York Times: Police, Protesters and Reporters Form Uneasy Cast for Nightly Show in Ferguson
- Wayne Bennett, the Field Negro: The propaganda kings.