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A Bad Day for Don Lemon, Bill Cosby

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CNN Anchor Host Sorry for Question; Beloved Dad Becomes Pariah

Broadcast Networks Opt Out of Obama Immigration Speech

Coverage of Ebola Plummeted After Midterms . . .

. . . Firestone’s Role in Murderous Times Examined

NBC’s Senior Leadership Team Not So Colorful

Company Pulls Ads From KSTP-TV Over “#Pointergate”

USA Today Finds Widespread Racial Disparity in Arrests

Sharpton Calls N.Y. Times Report on His Taxes Misleading

NPR Looks at Asian Motivations for Eyelid Surgery

14 Nigerian Journalists Abducted by Youth Gang

Short Takes

CNN’s Don Lemon interviews Joan Tarshis Tuesday about her rape allegation against Bill Cosby. Tarshis came forward Sunday, saying she was sexually assaulted by Cosby in 1969, when she was a 19-year-old aspiring actress. (video)

CNN Host Sorry for Question; Beloved Dad Becomes Pariah

“CNN anchor Don Lemon took to the airwaves Wednesday afternoon to respond to the massive uproar over his Tuesday evening question to an alleged Bill Cosby rape victim,” Andrew Kirell reported for Mediaite.

The response took place on a day when “NBC — the network that roared back to television supremacy in the 1980s thanks to Cosby’s warmhearted family sitcom — joined the list of entertainment companies and TV programs that have abandoned projects or distanced themselves from the 77-year-old comedian and actor amid the cascade of shocking headlines,” as Paul Farhi reported for the Washington Post.

“NBC scrapped development of an upcoming TV sitcom starring Cosby, one day after Netflix, the video streaming service, backed away from a special that would have saluted Cosby for his long career and comic gifts. Also on Wednesday, cable’s TVLand channel said it would stop airing re-runs of ‘The Cosby Show,’ his iconic, career-making sitcom. Scheduled appearances on ‘The Queen Latifah Show’ and ‘Late Show with David Letterman‘ have also been canceled in recent weeks,” Farhi wrote.

Kirell quoted Lemon for Mediaite. ” ‘As a victim myself I would never want to suggest that any victim could have prevented a rape,’ Lemon said during today’s 3 p.m. broadcast. ‘If my question struck anyone as insensitive, I’m sorry as that was not my intention.’ 

“There has been an overwhelmingly negative reaction to Lemon telling Joan Tarshis that ‘there are ways not to perform oral sex if you didn’t want to do it,’ including ‘the using of the teeth.’ “

Some news accounts used words more graphic than the delicate phrasing Lemon attempted in his Tuesday interview. “CNN anchor Don Lemon faced biting criticism after suggesting to Bill Cosby rape accuser Joan Tarshis that she take a bite out of the comedian’s penis rather than perform oral sex,” reported the tabloid Daily News in New York.

Lemon has been criticized for his controversial comments since CNN elevated his profile last year and encouraged him to offer opinions. On Wednesday, Jessica Roy of New York magazine compiled “6 of Don Lemon’s Worst TV Gaffes.” The remarks have grated on some black journalists as CNN has eliminated or reduced the visibility of other black journalists considered to have more gravitas.

Lemon and Cosby have bonded over the issue of “personal responsibility” among African Americans. In September 2013, Mediaite reported on an appearance by Cosby on “CNN Newsroom,” hosted by Lemon. “Cosby talked to Lemon about young black men raising their kids, over-medication of juvenile inmates, and may have even coined a new word: ‘No-groes,’ ” Mediaite wrote.

It added, “For the past few months, Don Lemon has courted controversy with several segments pegged to his general agreement with comments by Fox News personality Bill O’Reilly, aimed at solving problems within the black community. Legendary comic actor Bill Cosby has also stirred controversy by airing grievances against his community, but neither Lemon nor Cosby have backed away from their criticisms. . . .”

The allegations about Cosby, some decades old, have given rise to charges that journalists have downplayed them over the years. Jim Naureckas of Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting asserted Monday that “the rape allegations have received remarkably little coverage since they first emerged almost a decade ago.”

Mark Whitaker, the former Newsweek editor whose biography of Cosby was published in September, has responded to such charges about his own book by stating the difficulty of establishing the truth.

“There are other stories and allegations about Cosby’s relations with women and behavior that have circulated but that ultimately I felt I couldn’t independently confirm,” Whitaker said recently. “There were no definitive court findings, either nothing into the criminal justice system or there were no independent witnesses and I knew that this was going to be talked about when my book came out but I didn’t want to be in a position where I repeated allegations that I couldn’t independently confirm.”

[On Thursday, the Associated Press released a Nov. 6 video clip of Cosby asking an AP reporter to “scuttle” an interview segment in which he refused to address the rape allegations.

[” ‘I would appreciate it if it was scuttled,’ Cosby says,” Amanda Taub reported for vox.com. ” ‘I think that if you want to consider yourself as serious, then it will not appear anywhere.’ An off-camera Cosby associate can then be heard insisting that another AP reporter, Lynn Elber, had agreed not to question Cosby about the rape allegations, implying that there was some sort of AP policy against covering the issue.

[“The AP obviously refused to accede to Cosby’s demands not to show the interview. But how many times, over the years, have reporters agreed not to question Cosby about the rape allegations? How many times has he succeeded in having such interview segments quashed? . . .”]

On Wednesday, blogger Ta-Nehisi Coates of the Atlantic recalled that he spent parts of 2006 and 2007 following Cosby around the country after the entertainer declared in 2004 that some black youth were, in Coates’ words, “morally unworthy of their very heritage.”

Coates wrote, “I published a reported essay in 2008, in this magazine, on these call-outs. In that essay, there is a brief and limp mention of the accusations against Cosby. Despite my opinions on Cosby suffusing the piece, there was no opinion offered on the rape accusations.

“This is not because I did not have an opinion. I felt at the time that I was taking on Cosby’s moralizing and wanted to stand on those things that I could definitively prove. Lacking physical evidence, adjudicating rape accusations is a murky business for journalists. But believing Bill Cosby does not require you to take one person’s word over another — it requires you take one person’s word over 15 others.

“At the time I wrote the piece, it was 13 peoples’ word — and I believed them. Put differently, I believed that Bill Cosby was a rapist.”

Coates concluded, “The subject was morality — and yet one of the biggest accusations of immorality was left for a few sentences, was rendered invisible.

“I don’t have many writing regrets. But this is one of them. I regret not saying what I thought of the accusations, and then pursuing those thoughts. I regret it because the lack of pursuit puts me in league with people who either looked away, or did not look hard enough. I take it as a personal admonition to always go there, to never flinch, to never look away.” [Updated Nov. 20]

Below a video of President Obama on Facebook, the White House declared Wednesday, “It’s time to fix our broken immigration system. Tomorrow night, President Obama will address the nation on new commonsense steps he’s taking to fix as much of it as he can.” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said, “In under an hour the video reached more than 1.2 million users on Facebook — 227,000 people had viewed it, another 12,000 people had shared it.” (video)

Broadcast Networks Opt Out of Obama Immigration Speech

Cable news television networks, but not their commercial broadcast counterparts, plan to carry President Obama’s prime-time address on immigration Thursday, in which he will assert “his authority to protect up to five million undocumented immigrants from deportation, the White House said, and setting in motion an immediate confrontation with Republicans about the limits of a president’s executive powers,” in the words of Michael D. Shear and Julia Preston of the New York Times.

“In a video posted on the White House website Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Obama said that he would deliver the 8 p.m. speech from the White House to announce ‘steps that I can take to start fixing our broken immigration system,’ ” they wrote.

Brian Flood wrote Wednesday for TV Newser, “According to network insiders, the White House did not request time from the networks for tomorrow night’s primetime speech.“

Dominic Patten added for Deadline Hollywood, “ABC has the fall finale for Grey’s Anatomy on at that time, while CBS has ratings powerhouse The Big Bang Theory, NBC has reality show The Biggest Loser and Fox has Bones. . . .”

Unlike the commercial broadcast networks, PBS will provide live “PBS Newshour” coverage starting at 8 p.m., spokeswoman Jan McNamara told Journal-isms.

Spokeswomen for ABC, NBC and CBS confirmed that their broadcast outlets will not carry the speech. However, Julie Townsend of ABC News added by email, “it will be carried on all our ABC News digital platforms, including Apple TV, and radio.”

Erika Masonhall of NBC News said by email, “We will stream it live on NBCNews.com and our NewsChannel service will offer a feed to stations — and I understand that MSNBC and Telemundo will carry it as well.”

At the Spanish-language networks, the speech seems more of a priority.

Monica Talan of Univision said by email, “Univision Network will air the POTUS announcement regarding Executive Action on Immigration live tomorrow. We will proceed with our coverage plans for the Latin GRAMMY’s, immediately following the President’s remarks. Complete coverage of the announcement, reactions and what it means for the US will be covered across Univision’s news platforms, as well as on the Network’s ‘Despierta America’ morning show.”

At Telemundo, “Besides the speech, which we will broadcast live, we will offer commentary and analysis with Jose Diaz-Balart and Maria Celeste Arraras from Washington, D.C.,” spokesman Camilo Pino messaged. At CNN en Español, Isabel Bucaram provided this schedule by email, all times Eastern:

Isabel Lara, spokeswoman for NPR, messaged, “we’re making the speech available with anchored coverage special 8-9 PM.”

Coverage of Ebola Plummeted After Midterms . . .

“In early October, the GOP developed a plan to make the federal government’s response to Ebola a central part of its midterm elections strategy,” Matt Gertz and Rob Savillo reported Wednesday for Media Matters for America.

“Television media played into Republicans’ hands, helping to foment panic about the disease. Following the diagnosis of a handful of U.S. Ebola patients, the major broadcast networks ran nearly 1,000 segments about the virus in the four weeks leading up to the elections. Coverage of the disease plummeted in the two weeks following Election Day, with the same networks running fewer than 50 total segments.”

. . . Firestone’s Role in Murderous Times Examined

Steve Engelberg and Robin Fields, editor-in-chief and managing editor, respectively, wrote this note to readers Wednesday for ProPublica:

“Uncovering buried history is one of the great traditions of investigative journalism.

“Today, with ‘Firestone and the Warlord,’ ProPublica, in collaboration with PBS FRONTLINE, publishes the extraordinary, untold story of one chapter in Liberia’s civil war, one of the 20th century’s ugliest. The story explores the unexamined role of an iconic American company in the rise to power of Charles Taylor, a murderous politician hungry for power in one of Africa’s most volatile and vulnerable countries. . . .”

They also wrote, “The history it lays bare reverberates into the present. With the world watching, Liberia’s civic institutions have buckled in the face of the crisis over Ebola. This story traces a critical passage in the wars that have left Liberia so wounded and imperiled. . . .”

NBC News Senior Leadership Team Not So Colorful

In January, “NBC News president Deborah Turness sent out this org chart of her senior leadership team,” Chris Ariens noted in TVNewser on Tuesday, referring to the chart above. Is there racial diversity in the leadership team? A NBC News spokeswoman did not reply to an inquiry from Journal-isms Wednesday asking that question.

The team once looked different. In 2007, Steve Capus, Turness’ predecessor as president of NBC News, received the Ida B. Wells Award from the National Association of Black Journalists for his diversity efforts. Capus was praised then for appointing two African American vice presidents, Mark Whitaker and Lyne Pitts, both of whom later left the network.

Capus’ departure from the network in 2013 meant an expanded role for Antoine Sanfuentes, senior vice president of NBC News and Capus’ chief deputy. However, Sanfuentes, then the highest ranking Latino at a mainstream network, left when Turness arrived. She is a former editor of Britain’s ITV News.

Company Pulls Ads From KSTP-TV Over “#Pointergate”

“UCare, a Minneapolis based health-insurance provider, has pulled its advertising from KSTP-TV after the station aired a controversial news story suggesting that Mayor Betsy Hodges and a young black canvasser posed for a photo while flashing a hand signal associated with a North Side gang,” Libor Jany reported Monday for the Star Tribune in Minneapolis.

“Dan Ness, UCare marketing director, declined to say how much the company spent a year on air time, but said that the number was in the five figures. ‘I pulled the ads, because I didn’t want the UCare brand associated with an organization that appeared to denigrate an entire (segment) of the community,’ Ness said on Monday afternoon. . . .”

The mayor told Minnesota Public Radio that the KSTP story wasn’t really about hand signals. “It was about judgments based on race,” she said, according to Michael Malone, reporting Wednesday for Broadcasting & Cable.

Malone added, “KSTP has, all the while, stood by its story, saying it showed the photo to as many as nine police officers, who agreed that the hand signals looked gang-related. . . .”

Meanwhile, the Minnesota Pro Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists and the Twin Cities chapters of the National Association of Black Journalists and the Asian American Journalists Association called for KSTP to disavow the story.

USA Today Finds Widespread Racial Disparity in Arrests

“When it comes to racially lopsided arrests, the most remarkable thing about Ferguson, Mo., might be just how ordinary it is,” Brad Heath reported Wednesday for USA Today.

“Police in Ferguson — which erupted into days of racially charged unrest after a white officer killed an unarmed black teen — arrest black people at a rate nearly three times higher than people of other races.

“At least 1,581 other police departments across the USA arrest black people at rates even more skewed than in Ferguson, a USA TODAY analysis of arrest records shows. That includes departments in cities as large and diverse as Chicago and San Francisco and in the suburbs that encircle St. Louis, New York and Detroit.

“Those disparities are easier to measure than they are to explain. . . “

NPR Looks at Asian Motivations for Eyelid Surgery

NPR’s “Code Switch” Monday began the first in a two-part series “looking at the history and motivations behind the Asian blepharoplasty, popularly known as ‘double- eyelid surgery.’

“Stepping past the controversy — Is it appropriate to get this surgery? What beauty standards are you abiding by or reinforcing? — I wanted to get at the why,” Kat Chow wrote. “Why some of us get the surgery, why some of us don’t, or why everyone seems to have an opinion about those who seek it. I spoke with many people who had the surgery, considered it or chose not to get it. But to understand how the surgery became so common, I found it helpful to dig into its history, which goes back more than a century.

“In February 1895, an unnamed special correspondent for the Los Angeles Times wrote about this surgery in Japan.

” ‘In their efforts to acquire recognition in the civilized world, the Japanese have found their greatest barrier in the unmistakable mark of their Mongolian origin,’ writes the unnamed author. ‘The prejudice against Mongolians is undeniable, and among the Japs, the slanted eye being its only evidence, the curse is being removed.’ . . .”

In 2013, talk and reality show host Julie Chen revealed that comments from a news director led to her developing a complex about her Asian heritage that ended in plastic surgery.

14 Nigerian Journalists Abducted by Youth Gang

“Fourteen Nigerian journalists were abducted in a speedboat ambush by a gang of youths and beaten in what appears to be part of the rivalry between two communities — the Ijaw and Itsekiri peoples — on the Niger Delta,” Roy Greenslade reported Wednesday for Britain’s Guardian newspaper.

“The journalists were returning by boat from an Itsekiri press conference about a $16bn gas project in the Warri area of the delta when the gang came alongside and boarded them.

“Several journalists were beaten when they refused to hand over cameras and recording equipment. The Ijaw gang then demobilised the boat and ransacked the belongings of the journalists and six other people aboard, who included Kiki, an Itsekiri youth leader.

“All were forced into other boats and taken hostage to what appeared to be the gang’s hideaway. The journalists were held for six hours, during which the boat driver and one of the journalists, Emma Arubi, senior correspondent of the Daily Independent, were badly beaten. . . .”

Short Takes

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