Maynard Institute archives

A Fatuous, Racially Glib Night With Oscar

by richard0559

Pulitzer Winner Wesley Morris Says He Has to Go There

. . . What a Difference Four Years Makes

Gannett Down to One African American Top Editor

Black Media Group Sues Comcast, Claiming Discrimination

O’Reilly Defends Himself Against Embellishment Claims

Journalism Group Challenges Police on Chicago Killing

Howard U. Students, Faculty Add Color to Wikipedia’s White

Al Jazeera Journalist Accuses Network of Negligence

Short Takes

Pulitzer Winner Wesley Morris Says He Has to Go There

“Last year’s hacked dump of private emails stolen from Sony Pictures Entertainment employees included a much-reported exchange between the company’s chairperson, Amy Pascal, and producer Scott Rudin, in which they joked about the kinds of movies President Obama might enjoy,” Wesley Morris, winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for criticism while at the Boston Globe, wrote for Grantland on Monday.

It was perhaps the sharpest critique to emerge from Sunday’s Academy Awards show along racial lines, from a critic who takes that approach sparingly.

“The choices were slave dramas or the comedies of Kevin Hart,” Morris continued. “The exchange wasn’t funny, but the participants seemed self-amused. What was dismaying about this LOL-fest was that it took place between two people with the power to expand the options. Also dismaying was how unremarkable and casually pervasive it seemed.

“Before Sunday’s Academy Award broadcast, The Hollywood Reporter ran the preferences of a handful of anonymous Academy voters. One, labeled ‘Brutally Honest Oscar Ballot No. 9,’ expressed dislike for Selma for its failure to give white characters favorable speaking parts, and then dismissed the movie — which is set in the United States of 1965 and centered around Martin Luther King Jr. — as a ‘left-wing, modern, rap version’ of history, as if describing Lin-Manuel Miranda’s new stage musical, Hamilton.

“Since the nominations in mid-January, the Academy has been pilloried with outrage and derision for featuring no actors of color among the 20 nominees and only two nominations for Selma. #OscarsSoWhite became a hashtag to place alongside #BlackLivesMatter. As a kind of apology, the Grammys last month ceded the broadcast’s final musical performances to a tandem of Selma-oriented numbers featuring Beyoncé, Common, and John Legend. The songs were striking while seeming incongruous to the matter at hand.

“I hadn’t planned to think about any of this during Sunday’s show, an event I watch as a professional but generally enjoy as a civilian. An awards show isn’t the forum to address racial grievances. The producers were smart in staging a diverse parade of stars. It’s up to Hollywood to give them something to do.

“It’s probable that Sean Penn’s jesting green-card remark in announcing Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman as the best picture will be the night’s most pungent insult. But the host, Neil Patrick Harris, seemed to embody the tenor of those emails and of Ballot No. 9’s brutal honesty. He coated an already fatuous evening in glibness. It wasn’t merely the subpar puns, shameful introductions, and careless jokes about the snubbed. It was the way he singled out Octavia Spencer to watch a briefcase that rested in a glass case on the stage (Harris’s Oscar predictions) or asked David Oyelowo to stand and speak in his natural English accent.

“Harris might have intended to boost these two into the pantheon of award-show sidekicks, to what Streep and Nicholson have always been. But Harris performs with bright, conceited entitlement. So when he approached Spencer and Oyelowo, he did so as a spoiled heir or a clueless boss. He turned them into employees and party tricks — and now a black British person!

“You can see what Harris was after, but his touch just left a stain. Steve Carell’s comical rejection of him made sense: He’s done the clueless-boss bit. And yet Harris persisted. In introducing Ben Affleck, he retitled Gone Girl, in which Rosamund Pike slits Harris open to kill him, Bitches Be Trippin’, Yo, as if a peon from The Office really were hosting the Academy Awards.

“Eventually, No. 9’s worst, left-wing, modern, rap nightmare took the stage. Yes, it was Common and John Legend to do ‘Glory,’ their triumph of easy listening from Selma. Legend’s singing and piano playing were even stronger than at the Grammys. I’ve listened to this song about 600 times, yet Common made me hear its lyrics anew. They were joined by a large, black, unrobed choir on a big set that featured a rendering of the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

“When it was over, Harris came on and said, ‘Fan. Tastic. Performance’ as though he were emceeing Star Search. He then immediately introduced the orchestra and music director Stephen Oremus, as if the only thing to chase ‘Glory’ with was a dose of Lawrence Welk. . . .”

. . . What a Difference Four Years Makes

With rapper Common and singer John Legend honored by Hollywood for their award-winning “Glory” theme from the “Selma” movie, it’s easy to forget that just four years ago, some in the media were deriding the Chicago rapper as a thug unworthy of appearing at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

“Despite the protestations of some media figures, a rapper performed in front of schoolchildren Wednesday evening at the White House,” Dan Zak wrote for the Washington Post on May 11, 2011. “Somehow, the Earth kept turning. . . .”

Zak also wrote, “This week, Common was deemed a ‘vile,’ ‘cop killer rapper’ in headlines on Fox Nation, a Web site run by Fox News. Criticism sprang from other conservative fountainheads, including former Alaska governor Sarah Palin (who tweeted her disapproval), the Daily Caller (which excerpted lyrics through which Common bemoaned police conduct and President George W. Bush’s initiation of the war in Iraq) and Fox News anchor Sean Hannity (who Tuesday devoted 10 minutes of his show to what the network branded ‘The Invitation’). . . .”

Gannett Down to One African American Top Editor

Gannett Co., the nation’s largest newspaper company, once known as a leader in media diversity, will soon be down to one top African American editor.

Jill Nevels-Haun, managing editor of the News-Messenger in Fremont, Ohio, and the News Herald in Port Clinton, Ohio, in her eighth year at the publications, was told Friday that she was not selected when employees reapplied for their jobs under a company directive.

Gannett operates 82 U.S. daily publications, including USA Today, and 443 non-daily local publications in 30 states and Guam.

Gannett is restructuring its news operation to provide the “newsroom of the future,” partially explained to readers this way by Hollis R. Towns, executive editor and vice president of the Asbury Park Press in Neptune, N.J.:

“We are putting more resources into digital. ­APP.com already is the leading news website in central and southern New Jersey, and we’ll continue to grow our presence with new apps, such as our new apps for tablet, iPhone and Android and our Go Jersey Shore app that provides the latest information on things to do at the Shore and beyond.

“We are flattening our management structure to be more nimble, with fewer hierarchical reporting lines and fewer managers. Reporters will be able to post to APP.com directly, cutting layers to give you the news more quickly and efficiently. Reporters will be empowered to roam for news and listen to you in a more self-directed way. The stories they write will be based on what you read and click on. . . .”

Towns will be the last remaining African American top editor within Gannett.

Nevels-Hahn told Journal-isms by telephone that she is hopeful that Gannett will find another role for her as an editor at a smaller paper or as a mid-level editor elsewhere. “I want to continue in the business, in daily journalism,” Nevels-Hahn, 44, said. She has been in journalism 21 years and was managing editor of Gannett’s Herald-Dispatch in Huntington, W.Va.

Black Media Group Sues Comcast, Claiming Discrimination

“Even though the FCC hasn’t yet ruled on the proposed merger between Comcast and Time Warner Cable, one group has already filed a lawsuit claiming at least $20 billion in damages from the way the two giants allegedly discriminate against black-owned media,” Eriq Gardner reported Monday for the Hollywood Reporter.

“The complaint, filed in California on Friday, comes from the National Association of African-American Owned Media, which also filed a similar suit against AT&T and DirecTV in December.

“This time, the plaintiff is not only targeting both Comcast and TWC on the eve of the two companies merging to become what would be the largest pay television distributor in the United States — but also various African-American advocacy groups and MSNBC host Al Sharpton for allegedly facilitating discrimination.

“Comcast is one of the biggest companies to employ a chief diversity officer, and its practices have been lauded by many including Black Enterprise magazine, which recently named it as one of the 40 best companies for diversity. The lawsuit figures to face many hurdles, from the sufficiency of its allegations to possibly the First Amendment, but for now it presents a larger portrait of a media company that isn’t carrying many fully owned black channels and the dangers of allowing it to grow bigger. . . .”

Bill O’Reilly said Friday on Fox News’ “The O’Reilly Factor,” “I had to spend hours last night on the phone with various reporters and crawling around my basement covered with dust trying to find documents from 33 years ago. Again it was a miracle I found them. All because an irresponsible guttersnipe, a far left zealot who has attacked fox news many times before spit the stuff out on the net. . . .” (video)

O’Reilly Defends Himself Against Embellishment Claims

“The Fox News host Bill O’Reilly on Monday stepped up his defense against reports that he embellished stories about his war reporting earlier in his career, while some former colleagues continued to say he had exaggerated his experiences,” Emily Steel and Ravi Somaiya reported Monday for the New York Times.

“Mr. O’Reilly is contesting an article in the magazine Mother Jones and subsequent interviews with former journalists at CBS News that accuse him of misrepresenting his coverage of the Falklands war in 1982 as a young correspondent for CBS News.

“The central dispute is whether Mr. O’Reilly reported from active war zones, as he has repeatedly said on the air and in his 2001 book, ‘The No Spin Zone: Confrontations With the Powerful and Famous in America.’

“Mr. O’Reilly has said that he had never claimed he reported from the Falkland Islands, where the fighting occurred. ‘I said I covered the Falklands war, which I did,’ he said last Friday. He went on to describe his coverage of protests in the aftermath of the war on the streets of Buenos Aires, some 1,200 miles from the Falklands. . . .”

The story also said, “Mr. O’Reilly’s efforts to refute the claims by Mother Jones and some former CBS News colleagues occurred both on the air and off on Monday. During a phone conversation, he told a reporter for The New York Times that there would be repercussions if he felt any of the reporter’s coverage was inappropriate. ‘I am coming after you with everything I have,’ Mr. O’Reilly said. ‘You can take it as a threat.’ . . .”

Journalism Group Challenges Police on Chicago Killing

“Chicago police officers shot Laquan McDonald 16 times, according to an autopsy report recently obtained by an organization pressuring the police department to clear up questions about the youth’s death,” Mary Mitchell wrote Monday in her Chicago Sun-Times column.

“Jamie Kalven, of the ‘Invisible Institute,’ a Chicago-based journalistic production company, and Craig Futterman, a University of Chicago professor, have challenged the police version of how the 17-year-old McDonald ended up dead.

“National attention was focused on the Michael Brown police-involved shooting case in Ferguson, Mo., and the Eric Garner police chokehold death in New York, few people seemed to care about what happened to McDonald. . . . “

Kalven wrote Feb. 10 for Slate, “Whatever happened, it’s very difficult to square the police narrative with the facts established by the silent testimony of Laquan McDonald’s corpse.”

He also wrote, “The Chicago press dutifully reported the police account of the incident. The reporter for the local NBC station called it ‘a clear-cut case of self-defense.’ It was also reported that the Independent Police Review Authority (IPRA), the city agency charged with investigating police shootings, would conduct an investigation, as it does in the case of every ‘police-involved shooting.’

“In its broad outlines, this is a familiar Chicago story: A black American is shot by a Chicago police officer. A police source says the shooting was justified. IPRA announces it is investigating. Then silence. After a year or two, IPRA issues a report confirming that the shooting was indeed justified.

“The statistics are stunning. According to IPRA reports, Chicago police officers shoot, on average, several residents a month. Roughly 75 percent of those shot are black. Civil rights lawyers and investigative journalists I’ve talked to who have covered the Chicago police for decades cannot remember the last time criminal charges were brought against a Chicago police officer for a shooting while on duty. . ..”

Al Jazeera Journalist Accuses Network of Negligence

“The al-Jazeera journalist Mohamed Fahmy, who is awaiting retrial after more than a year in an Egyptian prison, has accused the network of ‘epic negligence’ and said it was partially to blame for his arrest and imprisonment,” Patrick Kingsley in Cairo, and Ian Black reported Friday for Britain’s Guardian.

“Fahmy called it naive and misleading to see the case purely as a crackdown on press freedom because Qatar, which funds the al-Jazeera network, used it to ‘wage a media war’ against Cairo.

“Fahmy, who had both Egyptian and Canadian nationality before giving up his Egyptian passport in an attempt to speed up his deportation in December, and Baher Mohamed, an Egyptian, are due back in court next week following the release of their Australian colleague, Peter Greste, earlier this month. The three al-Jazeera English (AJE) employees were jailed last June on trumped-up charges of helping terrorists and spreading false news. . . .”

Short Takes

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