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All Eyes on Baltimore

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Some Outlets Strive to Counterbalance Sensationalism

. . . Sun Editorials Assail Use of “Thug,” Lack of Leadership

. . . Mom Who Struck Her Son, 16, Becomes Day’s Hero

Good News for Mobile, Podcasts in Latest Industry Survey

After Quake, Nepalese Newsroom Moves to Editor’s Lawn

Navarrette Dropped by CNN, Signs With Fox

Judge Rules Law Aimed at Abu-Jamal Violates Free Speech

Series on New York Police Dept. Among SPJ Winners

African Migrant Deaths Rarely Front Page on Continent

Short Takes

Some Outlets Strive to Counterbalance Sensationalism

The news media — particularly CNN and Fox News Channel — took their share of lumps Tuesday and Wednesday for sensationalizing coverage of the Baltimore uprising, but some outlets made an effort to explain the unrest’s decades-old underlying causes and resisted impulses to paint residents with a broad brush.

Editorial boards nationwide told readers that, yes, it could happen in their towns.

A mother who physically and publicly reprimanded her 16-year-old son after she saw him throwing rocks at police was hailed as a heroine but also criticized as too old-school. The video of the mother in action went viral.

Meantime, “The Baltimore Sun on Monday broke its record for daily pageviews, more than doubling its previous high mark, “Benjamin Mullin wrote Wednesday for the Poynter Institute, quoting Matthew Bracken, the newspaper’s director of audience engagement and development.

The Huffington Post named the Sun to its “What’s Working Honor Roll” after the newspaper announced on Monday that it would suspend its paywall and offer free access to its coverage.

On social media, the actions of ordinary Baltimoreans participating in cleanups and other peaceful actions were posted as a counterpoint to what users said was negative media coverage. Monday’s violence caused more than 150 fires, resulted in more than 200 arrests and left 15 police officers injured.

“Here are 10 powerful images showing a very different side to Baltimore than the one you saw on television,” Natasha Noman wrote Tuesday for mic.com.

However, medium.com demonstrated, not all photos posted on social media are genuine.

Morgan State University journalism students began producing stories on Baltimore for USA Today’s student news website. The first, by Aaliyah Turnage, was headlined, “Cleanup efforts begin in Baltimore.”

The Washington Post ran a front-page story by Michael A. Fletcher, “What you really need to know about Baltimore, from a reporter who’s lived there for over 30 years.”

NPR’s “Morning Edition” host Steve Inskeep visited the city and reported, “On the morning after Monday’s violence, residents of this area were busy on almost every street — bagging up debris from a looted liquor store or pushing brooms along the sidewalk.

“They did this even though they weren’t sure the violence was over. . .” 

However, television reporters such as Fox News’ Geraldo Rivera and CNN’s Don Lemon found news sources pushing or walking away from them, and community leaders, being interviewed, challenged some television hosts’ faulty assumptions.

Even President Obama commented on the television coverage Tuesday in a lengthy answer to a question at a White House Rose Garden news conference with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

“The violence that happened yesterday distracted from the fact that you had seen multiple days of peaceful protests that were focused on entirely legitimate concerns of these communities in Baltimore, led by clergy and community leaders,” Obama said. “And they were constructive and they were thoughtful, and frankly, didn’t get that much attention.

“And one burning building will be looped on television over and over and over again, and the thousands of demonstrators who did it the right way I think have been lost in the discussion. . . .”

Still, the Sun’s media critic, David Zurawik, wrote that his city needed the harsh media glare.

“We cannot let politicians try to blame the media for highlighting the dysfunction of Baltimore as Bernard ‘Jack’ Young, the city council president, did in a press conference with [Mayor Stephanie] Rawlings-Blake Monday night,” Zurawik wrote on Tuesday.

” ‘I just want to say this because I’m heartbroken and disturbed by the way the media is focusing on the negativity of this city and not the great things that are going on in the city,’ Young said. ‘We have young people who are out there protesting peacefully, but you’re not focusing on them. You’re focusing on those that are burning buildings and rioting through the streets of Baltimore. Show the positive people who are trying to stop them from doing this.’

“Number one, every channel I saw offered major coverage of ministers who walked the streets and tried to bring some order to them Monday.

“Number two, by and large, most channels avoided the TV tricks used to make civil unrest look more dramatic. They did not show the same one or two cars burning over and over to make it look like there were more fires than there actually were. By nightfall, there were plenty of fires to cover.

“And, thanks in large part to the heavy use of helicopter shots, almost no one relied on tight close-up shots that made small crowds look larger. Even on the ground, wide angle shots were widely used — shots that gave a more accurate representation of the size of the groups generating the violence.

“Young himself said what he saw reminded him of the riots in 1968 after the assassination of Martin Luther King.

“That’s the news, Mr. Young, the fact that somehow for all our talk of progress, we are back to a state of existence in Baltimore that reminds us of the violence, danger and chaos of 1968.

“That’s the story that needs to be covered with everything we’ve got — as unpleasant as it might be. And all the lame political-P.R. talk about how the media isn’t ‘positive’ enough isn’t going to get it any more. . . .”

. . . Sun Editorials Assail Use of “Thug,” Lack of Leadership

Editorial boards throughout the country told readers that a situation such as that in Baltimore could happen in their towns, but on the Baltimore Sun’s editorial pages the last two days, the focus was on the word “thug” and the accountability of local officials.

“At first, the word ‘thug’ was so consistently used by city, state and even national leaders to describe the Baltimore rioters — many of them teen-agers — that it seemed a deliberate, coordinated effort to send a message,” the Sun editorialized on Wednesday.

“Gov. Larry Hogan, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and City Council President Bernard C. ‘Jack’ Young all decried the ‘thugs’ hurling rocks at police, looting stores and setting fires throughout the city. But Tuesday, on the same day President Barack Obama joined in the refrain condemning the ‘handful of criminals and thugs who tore up the place,’ both Ms. Rawlings-Blake and Mr. Young backed away from the term.

” ‘We don’t have thugs in Baltimore,’ the mayor said. ‘They’re not thugs, they’re just misdirected,’ the council president said.

“The fact is, we do have thugs in Baltimore according to the dictionary definition of the word, given by Merriam-Webster as ‘a brutal ruffian or assassin, gangster, tough.’ (It could be argued that some of them were standing alongside Mr. Young and other council members at City Hall on Tuesday: the self-described Crips and Bloods gang members calling for an end to violence in the city.) But whether it’s a term that should be used as shorthand for the young people who angrily rioted — or even the looting opportunists — is a different matter. . . .”

The previous day, the editorial board criticized the city administration for lack of leadership.

“As Baltimore spun out of control Monday afternoon and evening, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake was nowhere to be seen for hours,” the board wrote. “When she did emerge for televised news conferences, her demeanor was calm to the point of being flat and expressionless. The city needed to hear about action, not the hours she spent behind the scenes dealing with the ‘T’s to be crossed and I’s to be dotted’ to make sure the executive order mandating an evening curfew was just right. . . .

The editorial concluded, “Baltimore has already suffered incalculable damage in terms of destroyed property, injured police officers and civilians, and the tarnished image of the city in the eyes of those who live here, in the suburbs and around the world. Repairing that damage is going to require real leadership. So far, we’re not seeing it.”

. . . Mom Who Struck Her Son, 16, Becomes Day’s Hero

Toya Graham pulled the mask from her son’s face and berated him for being on the Baltimore streets. (video)

“Amid Monday’s Freddie Gray-related ugly conflict in the streets of Baltimore, TV found a winning and upbeat story line in Toya Graham, who publicly reprimanded her 16-year-old son after she saw him wearing a hoodie and a mask and throwing rocks at police,” David Zurawik wrote Wednesday for the Baltimore Sun.

“As much as television gets accused of only looking for violence and negative stories, the truth is there’s nothing the medium loves more with big news stories like this than finding and celebrating heroes.

“When TV does it right, the audience is huge.

“After recognizing her son in the Monday afternoon battle between police and what appeared to be a predominantly teenage crowd, Graham came after him and started dragging him home. The video of her slapping him about his head as she pulled the mask from his face and berated him for being on the street went viral with monsters like CBS News doing its best to drive it.

“Scott Pelley’s Tuesday night newscast featured an interview with Graham and she was back on ‘CBS This Morning’ today. Her quote saying that her anger at her son was the result of her not wanting him ‘to be another Freddie Gray,’ was the soundbite of the day Tuesday. . . .”

Those opposed to corporal punishment disagreed, however.

Good News for Mobile, Podcasts in Latest Industry Survey

“Pew Research Center today released State of the News Media 2015,” our annual report surveying the landscape of U.S. journalism, covering topics ranging from the changes driven by mobile devices to the ups and downs of legacy news organizations,” Michael Barthel reported for Pew on Wednesday.

“Here are five key takeaways drawn from 13 media sectors we looked at.

Pew also released an African American media fact sheet and a Hispanic media fact sheet. 

After Quake, Nepalese Newsroom Moves to Editor’s Lawn

“When Superstorm Sandy flooding sideswiped the New York Daily News (where I previously worked) in October 2012, editors relocated to a Jewish weekly and a Manhattan law firm before the newsroom was reestablished in the paper’s New Jersey printing plant,” James Warren wrote Wednesday for the Poynter Institute.

“Now imagine what a prominent Nepalese newspaper editor did after Saturday’s earthquake.

” ‘With no electricity, we couldn’t work, or sleep, in the office due to the aftershocks,’ Kunda Dixit said by phone late Wednesday. ‘So we moved the whole operation to my living room.’

“Dixit is a Nepal native and 1985 graduate of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He’s the much-respected editor of both a Nepalese magazine and English language paper, the Nepali Times.

“And he’s now, rather unequivocally, battle-tested under the most extreme of operational challenges.

“Dixit’s two media outlets, including sales and marketing staff, occupy a three-story building in Kathmandu. But that edifice wasn’t secure in the immediate aftermath, so he moved as many of his folks as possible to his house, which has solar power and didn’t depend on the crippled local electricity grid.

“And when people were understandably anxious about aftershocks, or Wi-Fi wasn’t very consistent, he moved his temporary newsroom out onto his lawn and reported from there. . . . “

Navarrette Dropped by CNN, Signs With Fox

“When it comes to criticism, journalists are better at giving than receiving,” Ruben Navarrette Jr. wrote in his latest column for the Washington Post Writers Group.

“I ruffled feathers at CNN, where I was a contributor until a few weeks ago when we parted amicably. During an interview on a digital network, I said CNN news programs ‘cover the wrong stories.’ That can’t be a secret.

“Most viewers get their fill after three days of wall-to-wall coverage of missing airplanes, or overhyped East Coast mega-rainstorms that never materialize, or — as comedian Keegan-Michael Key joked at the correspondents’ dinner, as President Obama’s ‘anger translator’ — two weeks of around-the-clock Ebola coverage. . . .”

Navarrette told Journal-isms that he is now a contributor to the Fox News site. He said by email, “I’m really not in a position to tell you why the network top executives decided not to renew my contract. It’s impossible for me to know. You’d have to ask them. I know that the lawyers in Atlanta contacted my agent to renegotiate the contract, and, then a day later, called back to say: ‘Oops, we made a mistake. We’re not going to pick him up after all.’ My editors at CNN.com were also blindsided. Obviously, it was a decision that was made at the top. And that’s fine by me. . . .”

Also in the mix, Navarrette said, was that he had asked for more money. “My CNN columns got a ton of reaction, and I worked hard on them. That sort of thing deserves to be fairly compensated. They knew that the new contract was going to be more expensive than the old one, so that may have been a factor as well.”

Navarrette also messaged, “Latinos commentators under contract at CNN (Leslie Sanchez, Alex Castellanos etc) tend to last between 6-8 years. That’s where I was. And, aside from the contract, I’ve been on air at CNN for 20 years, from 1995 (back when I was hosting a radio show with Tavis Smiley in LA) to 2015. I had a really, really long run. I’m extremely grateful to CNN and the great people who work there.

“Now I’m excited to contribute to Fox News, and perhaps other networks. I’ve been contacted by a few. Latinos will figure prominently into the 2016 Presidential election. And so I imagine, as the most widely read Latino columnist in the country, I’ll be awfully busy and have lots to contribute. . . .”

A CNN spokeswoman could not immediately be reached for comment.

Series on New York Police Dept. Among SPJ Winners

New York public radio station WNYC-FM has won a Sigma Delta Chi Award in the Public Service in Radio Journalism category for “NYPD Bruised,” WNYC’s coverage of the NYPD’s use of force in low-level arrests, the station announced on Friday.

“This award recognizes a radio news organization that renders public service through extensive coverage of an issue facing the community it serves,” the station said in a news release. “Judges selected this year’s honorees from more than 1,600 submissions.

“Following the death of Eric Garner on Staten Island, Robert Lewis, WNYC’s criminal justice reporter, and Noah Veltman, a developer and reporter on WNYC’s Data News team, examined use-of-force practices of the New York Police Department. This series of in-depth reports, ‘NYPD Bruised,’ revealed that it is not uncommon for low-level arrests to spiral dangerously out of control, with a relatively small number of officers routinely using unnecessary force.

“While the NYPD devotes tremendous resources into spotting crime trends, it neglects to turn an eye inward, allowing these officers to continue this behavior without reprimand or removal from the streets. The series also found that blacks charged with low-level crimes are far more likely to also face a resisting arrest charge than whites. . . .”

African Migrant Deaths Rarely Front Page on Continent

“Tens of thousands of refugees risk their lives trying to get to Europe. Surprisingly this sort of news rarely makes front page in Africa,” Claus Stäcker reported Monday for Deutsche Welle, Germany’s international broadcaster.  ” ‘The migrant boat tragedy is not just Europe’s problem,’ a title by the ‘Daily Maverick’, a South African daily, silently screams.

“The African Union communications department has been very busy lately, issuing statements on subjects as varied and diverse as the Sudanese elections, the killing of Ethiopian citizens by ‘Islamic State’ (IS) in Libya, the xenophobic violence in South Africa and the marketing of Africa’s ‘Agenda 2063’ to Polish investors. Nothing, however, on the boatloads of Africans risking everything to escape the continent. Nothing on the hundreds of corpses floating in the Mediterranean. . . .”

Meanwhile, Melissa Bailey reported Tuesday from Perugia, Italy, for NiemanLab, “Before a dramatic capsizing sent European leaders scrambling to address an epidemic of migrant drownings, a team of independent journalists was quietly tracking the problem — and offering an example of cross-border journalism that’s rare in Europe.

“The journalists — a loose association of investigative reporters from across the continent — joined forces in 2013 to answer a seemingly simple question: How many people are dying trying to migrate to Europe?

“It turned out no one was tracking that data, according to French journalist Nicolas Kayser-Bril. Kayser-Bril led a team of journalists to create The Migrants Files — a database and map showing how, when, and where migrants are dying.

“Over 28,000 people have died trying to enter Europe since 2000, the group found. That was before April 18, when a boat of 950 Libyan migrants capsized in the Mediterranean, killing at least 800, and prompting European leaders to hold an emergency summit in Brussels and ramp up search-and-rescue efforts. . . .”

Short Takes

 

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