President Taking Leave of Absence to Fill Staffing Void
On L.A. TV News, Not Enough Latino Victims, Officers
N.Y. Times Stakeout Pays Off in Arrests of Soccer Officials
Sun-Times Runs a Photo That Police Didn’t Want Seen
Waco Columnist Calls Shootout a “Brawl” Lacking “Legs”
Charleston Paper Finds Faulty Oversight of Police Shootings
Why Sale of The Root to Univision Matters to Advertisers
Eric Newton to Become Innovation Chief at Cronkite School
Radio Journalist Sunni Khalid Acquitted; a Nightmare Ends
President Taking Leave of Absence to Fill Staffing Void
In a tremor rumbling through the leadership of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, the nation’s largest organization for Latino journalists abruptly parted ways with its executive director, Anna Lopez Buck; removed a board member, Cesar Arredondo, who they said had failed to show up for meetings; and said goodbye to Kevin Olivas, the point of contact for NAHJ members seeking jobs, NAHJ President Mekahlo Medina said on Tuesday.
Lopez Buck helped to steer the organization through a significant financial crisis as interim executive director in 2011 and was rewarded the next year with the job on a permanent basis. She had been NAHJ’s executive director from 1995 to 2003, and in her most recent stint, was agile enough to serve successive NAHJ boards with opposing philosophies of governing.
Lopez Buck was in the job as NAHJ withdrew from Unity: Journalists for Diversity, broke with most other journalism organizations and met with then-Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. over the Justice Department’s investigations of leaks, and revived NAHJ’s regional meetings in such places as San Antonio, Atlanta and Mexico City.
Medina said he could not disclose the circumstances of Lopez Buck’s departure, announced in terse language to members, because it was a personnel issue. “We can not discuss the details. We wish Anna well. Rest [assured] we have a plan in place to continue our mission,” he told Journal-isms by email.
Asked what she planned to do next, Lopez Buck messaged Journal-isms, “I have several options for next steps but I am currently planning to take some time to catch up with friends and spend much needed time with my family.”
After her first stint with NAHJ, Lopez Buck left in 2004 to serve in the same position at Unity: Journalists of Color, Inc. She had also been executive director for corporate diversity at the American Red Cross. Before she was rehired, the NAHJ board projected a $240,000 deficit for 2010 and accepted the resignation of long-serving executive director Ivan Roman, who had also been a former board member.
The organization returned to the black after instituting austerity measures that included eliminating its national office, operating virtually.
On Tuesday, Medina messaged NAHJ members:
“I want to take this time to inform you about a development concerning NAHJ. As of today, Anna Lopez-Buck is no longer employed by the association as our executive director and we wish her well.
“As President and chairman of the board, I have taken a leave of absence to handle the business of NAHJ on a voluntary basis as we transition to a new executive director.
“I’ve tasked Vice President of Digital Rebecca Aguilar, Financial Officer Francisco Cortes and Region 7 Director Michelle Rindels to lead a search committee for our next executive director.
“I will keep you all informed of this process on a weekly basis via emails and social media.
“With our plan in place, I can assure you that this transition will be completed swiftly and responsibly. We will continue our work toward growing NAHJ and advocating for more Latinos in newsrooms.”
In the latest diversity survey from the American Society of News Editors, Hispanics were 4.46 percent of journalists in mainstream newsrooms, though in 2010, the U.S. Census Bureau found Hispanics to be 16 percent of the total population [PDF].
Arredondo was elected Spanish at-large officer last year after helping to create a Los Angeles chapter, of which he became president. Ray Bradford, representative of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, said at the time that there had been no NAHJ chapter “out of respect for the . . . long time leadership of the California Chicano News Media Association, which preceded the formation of NAHJ. . . . “
Arredondo lists himself as principal at the Q&A Communications consulting firm and at the Web project LatinoEntertainmentPlus.com, which appears to be inactive.
He was removed from the NAHJ board, Medina told members, “because of unexcused absences from all three board meetings since his election last September. Board work requires active, engaged board members to carry out the business of the organization. The board will seek out an appointed replacement in the next few weeks.”
Besides the executive director, Olivas was the only staffer retained by NAHJ during its austerity measures of 2010-11, kept on part time as a contractor “to match members with jobs.”
From 2004 to 2010, Olivas directed NAHJ’s Parity Project, a partnership with news organizations with sizable Latino communities to increase the number of Latino journalists. Most recently NAHJ’s recruitment and guidance manager, Olivas told his Facebook followers on Monday, “After 13 years as a member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists’ staff, I have accepted another position, which I will post about separately soon.”
Medina told NAHJ members Sunday, “Many of us owe Kevin a great deal of gratitude. He has worked to connect many of you with employers and vice versa. Kevin has been a part of NAHJ for 13 years and before worked at CCNMA. He has worked part time for NAHJ the last few years and will stay in Washington DC at his current full time job. Kevin no doubt will still be a positive impact on NAHJ in the years to come. His last day will be at the end of the week.”
- American Society of News Editors: ASNE announces three Minority Leadership Institutes in 2015
In March, Media Matters for America reported that four major broadcast television stations in New York continued to give disproportionate coverage to crime stories involving African American suspects.
On L.A. TV News, Not Enough Latino Victims, Officers
A content analysis of Los Angeles television news programs shows that “Blacks, in particular, were accurately depicted as perpetrators, victims, and officers. However, although Latinos were accurately depicted as perpetrators, they continued to be underrepresented as victims and officers.
“Conversely, Whites remained significantly overrepresented as victims and officers.”
The study by Travis Dixon, now at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, was published in April in the bimonthly journal Communication Research as “Good Guys Are Still Always in White? Positive Change and Continued Misrepresentation of Race and Crime on Local Television News.”
The study was reported last week by John Wihbey of Journalist’s Resource, a project of the Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University and the Carnegie-Knight Initiative.
“Dixon notes the following with respect to the study’s methodology: ‘Television portrayals are compared with the perpetration and victim rates contained in data published by the California Department of Justice (CDOJ) and the Los Angeles Times. In addition, television portrayals of Los Angeles officers are compared with employment records published by the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) and Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department.’ News media reports were coded according to the racial portrayals within them.
“The study’s findings include:
“The data indicate some progress in terms of how frequently different races are portrayed in various roles in the context of crime: ‘Black depictions have greatly improved in this investigation compared with prior research. Blacks are accurately portrayed across all roles including as perpetrators, victims and officers.’ This is an ‘unexpected set of findings’ given that ‘African-Americans were greatly overrepresented as criminals in prior work.”’
“Dynamics with regard to Hispanics have also changed: ‘Latinos have previously been underrepresented as criminals; however, they were accurately presented as perpetrators in the current study. They also remain underrepresented in more sympathetic roles as officers and victims.’ One explanatory hypothesis is that demographic shifts ‘have led the Los Angeles news stations to focus more on Latino crime and less on African-American criminality.’
“Whites, however, continue to be given a dominant role as representing authority and police on television in this news market:
” ‘Whites were more likely to be portrayed as police officers on television (73%) than to be employed as officers in Los Angeles and Orange counties (53%). Given the confidence interval of 6% on either side of the estimate of white television officers on the news, this is a statistically significant 20 percentage-point difference.’
“Conversely, Latinos were less likely to be portrayed as officers on television news (16%) than to be employed as officers in Los Angeles and Orange counties (30%). There were no statistically significant differences for Blacks or for ‘Others’ on these programs. Blacks comprised 9% of the officers portrayed on television news and 12% of those employed as officers according to county records.
“Further, whites were more likely to be depicted as homicide victims on local television news (35%) than to be victimized by homicide according to crime reports (13%)’; and ”Others’ (e.g., Asians) were more likely to be portrayed as homicide victims on television news (18%) than to be victimized according to crime reports (4%).’
“Dixon acknowledges that a ‘larger sample of news shows and topics need to be explored in future work’ to help confirm these apparent changes in patterns of coverage. Further, he notes that ‘perhaps the focus of the news media has moved on to external threats such as immigration and terrorism, neither of which was directly explored in the current study…. Recent studies on both of these issues suggest that Latinos are linked to undocumented immigration while Muslims are linked to terrorism in the news.’ . . .”
- Lilly Workneh and Amber Ferguson, Huffington Post: ‘The Mugshot Series’ Reverses Ugly Stereotypes Of Black Men
N.Y. Times Stakeout Pays Off in Arrests of Soccer Officials
“Around 4 a.m. Wednesday, New York Times reporters Michael Schmidt and Sam Borden arrived at a five-star hotel in Zurich and tried to get breakfast,” Michael Calderone reported Wednesday for the Huffington Post.
“It was an unusual place for the pair to be, and not simply because breakfast wouldn’t be served for a couple more hours. Schmidt covers the FBI from Washington D.C., and Borden, a European sports correspondent based in Paris, should have been at the French Open. But the reporters were staking out the Baur au Lac hotel to witness the anticipated arrests of top officials with FIFA, soccer’s international governing body.
“Just before midnight at Times headquarters, or dawn in Zurich, the paper reported that Swiss authorities had arrested seven top FIFA officials on corruption charges stemming from an FBI investigation. The Department of Justice had indicted them and seven others on charges that included racketeering, wire fraud and money laundering. Matt Apuzzo and William Rashbaum, who cover the Justice Department and New York federal law enforcement, respectively, co-wrote the bombshell story with Schmidt and Borden. . . .”
Calderone also wrote, “The reporters had prime vantage points to give the play-by-play on Twitter, and thousands of users retweeted the descriptions and images they posted.
“Schmidt, who recently broke the news that Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton exclusively used a private email account while serving as secretary of state, said tweeting the arrests ‘was a different type of journalistic experience than a lot of things I’ve done before.’ Schmidt said he doesn’t typically tweet photos of a story playing out in real time.
“Borden tweeted a short video clip from the scene, though neither reporter used live-streaming apps like Periscope or Meerkat to broadcast what was happening. The Times also had a photographer posted outside the hotel to capture the proceedings.
“Clearly the Times suspected that arrests could be taking place in Zurich, as top FIFA executives met in the city, when it sent Schmidt and Borden there on Monday. But the editors and reporters who worked on the story pushed back against any suggestion they were fed the scoop.’ . . .”
Sun-Times Runs a Photo That Police Didn’t Want Seen
“Photographs can do a number of things.
“They can help frame a news story or put it into better context.
“They can convey details and nuances of a story that might otherwise be lost,” Jim Kirk, publisher and editor in chief of the Chicago Sun-Times, wrote Wednesday.
“But if we don’t know all the facts surrounding a photograph, some things are left open to interpretation. It is why news organizations are careful in considering the images they run and try as hard as possible to detail what is being displayed.
“Today on Page 18 and in digital editions, we ran a picture and a story about a shocking photograph that the Chicago Police Department didn’t want anyone to see. It depicts two white police officers posing with rifles standing over a black man on his stomach who has deer antlers on his head. The police have said that the unidentified man lying on the floor was a suspect in a crime.
“It’s an offensive image, so much so that this newspaper had to think long and hard before publishing it today. When two Chicago Police officers pose like hunters with rifles over a black man with deer antlers on his head, a responsible newspaper cannot withhold the image from its readers, especially when you consider that one of the officers, Timothy McDermott, was fired because of the image and is fighting to get his job back. (Jerome Finnigan, the other officer, was sentenced to prison 3½ years ago for leading a robbery ring and other crimes). . . .”
Other news organizations followed the Sun-Times’ lead and published the photo, including the Daily News in New York.
- Frank Main and Kim Janssen, Chicago Sun-Times: CPD cops posed for photo standing over black man dressed in antlers
Waco Columnist Calls Shootout a “Brawl” Lacking “Legs”
“For several days, big-city pundits have tried to channel the deadly Twin Peaks motorcycle-gang shootout through ideological prisms of police brutality, racism and journalistic shortcomings,” opinion editor Bill Whitaker wrote Sunday for the Waco (Texas) Tribune-Herald.
“Most of the results have been a stretch, oddly compelling but not very convincing.
“A synthesis of some of these dubious interpretations holds that Waco police handled the arrests of bikers (the ones not shot, that is) without incident because police and bikers are mostly white. A piece in Salon, for instance, faults some of the news media (Texas media primarily) for only employing the word ‘riot’ when communities of color are involved.
“All this overlooks inconvenient facts, including that last Sunday’s unrest was, whatever else, a biker brawl — bigger perhaps, certainly bloodier, and stupidly conducted at a modern shopping center along busy Interstate 35 rather than at some dusty outpost in rural stretches, but still a brawl. To call it a riot almost dignifies what unfolded when, according to one report, someone ran over someone else’s foot in the parking lot. . . .”
Whitaker also wrote, “Enjoy this while it lasts. The truth is the Twin Peaks story isn’t going to have ‘legs’ and command national attention for long — at least, not of the scope that we saw with the 1993 Branch Davidian fiasco, which erupted 10 miles east of Waco, settled into a 51-day standoff and since has sparked debates on religious liberty, gun control, federal overreach, law enforcement competency and the danger of apocalyptic cults. . . .”
- Charles M. Blow, New York Times: Of Bikers and Thugs (May 21)
- D.L. Chandler, newsone.com: NAACP Monitoring Black Biker Discrimination In Wake Of Waco
Charleston Paper Finds Faulty Oversight of Police Shootings
“An officer in Summerville pumps four bullets through the side and back windows of a fleeing car, killing a young man,” the Post and Courier in Charleston, S.C., reported on Wednesday.
“An officer in Duncan sees a woman climb into his cruiser, yells, ‘Get out or I’ll shoot you!’ and then does just that.
“An officer in North Charleston shoots eight bullets at Walter Scott’s back, killing him on the spot.
“Every 10 days on average, South Carolina law enforcement officers point their guns at someone and pull the triggers — 235 shootings since 2009. Eighty-nine people died, and 96 were wounded.
“Each shooting also triggered an investigation into whether officers were justified in using deadly force. With just a few notable exceptions, these officers were cleared of any wrongdoing. To be sure, many cases were open and shut: Armed robbers shooting their way out of convenience stores after holdups; rage-filled drunks bent on destruction; suicidal people daring cops to cut them down.
“But a Post and Courier investigation uncovered case after case where agents with the State Law Enforcement Division failed to answer key questions about what happened, failed to document the troubled backgrounds of the officers who drew their guns, and failed to pinpoint missteps and tactical mistakes that could be used to prevent future bloodshed.
“Never-before released dashboard videos also reveal a disturbing pattern of officers shooting at and into vehicles. . . .”
The series runs through Sunday.
- Monroe Anderson, Chicago Defender: Cops victim of Trigger Finger — it is epidemic
- Wayne Bennett, the Field Negro: State violence?
- Zak Cheney-Rice, mic.com: The Police Are Killing One Group at a Staggering Rate, and Nobody Is Talking About It (Feb. 5)
- Jeffrey Collins, Associated Press: Grand jury indicts cop on felony charge in on-duty shooting
- Herbert Dyer Jr., CounterPunch: Cleveland: The Verdict This Time
- Editorial, Plain Dealer, Cleveland: Cleveland police consent decree requires community to step up
- Editorial, Post and Courier, Charleston, S.C.: Consider oversight of police (May 28)
- Redditt Hudson, vox.com: I’m a black ex-cop, and this is the real truth about race and policing (May 28)
- Errol Louis, Daily News, New York: Petty crimes and uprooted lives
- Yvonne Wenger, Baltimore Sun: Unrest will cost city $20 million, officials estimate [accessible via search engine]
- Dave Zirin, the Nation: An NBA Player Is Missing the Playoffs Because the NYPD Broke His Leg — Why the Sports-Media Silence?
Eric Newton to Become Innovation Chief at Cronkite School
Eric Newton is leaving the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, where he has long championed — and funded — journalism innovation, to become innovation chief at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Rem Rieder reported Tuesday for USA Today.
“The idea, says the school, which has a wide array of professional programs including digital news bureaus in Phoenix, Washington and Los Angeles and an entrepreneurial innovation lab, is to ‘serve as a test bed for news industry innovations and experimentation.’ “
Newton, senior adviser to the president of the Knight Foundation, was an associate of Robert C. Maynard, co-founder of the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, and considered Maynard a mentor. He spoke May 4 at the memorial service for Dori J. Maynard, president of the Maynard Institute and Bob Maynard’s daughter.
“Newton, who will continue to consult for Knight, sees Arizona State as a perfect fit,” Rieder continued. “For 30 years, he says, he has been interested in the idea of journalism schools as teaching hospitals, where students learn by doing. In recent years, as traditional news outlets have cut back, more and more [J-schools] have established news bureaus, and more and more of their work is showing up in professional venues.
“But, quoting [Cronkite dean Christopher] Callahan, Newton says many of these J-school forays are more like clinics than hospitals. What is too often missing is the laboratory component from which creative solutions can emerge. . . .”
Radio Journalist Sunni Khalid Acquitted; a Nightmare Ends
Nineteen months after he was arrested and charged with assaulting his son, radio journalist Sunni Khalid has been acquitted by a jury in Harford County, Md., according to Baltimore news reports.
But the price of his ordeal has been the end of a 31-year marriage, five days in jail, loss of access to his children, a difficult time finding work as a journalist and first-hand experience with a criminal justice system he once covered.
“He says the deputies never interviewed him or other potential witnesses,” Edward Ericson Jr. reported May 21 for Baltimore City Paper. Two judges in the Maryland county recused themselves because they knew Khalid from his days as a Baltimore Sun reporter in the county, Khalid said.
Still, Khalid told Journal-isms by telephone on Wednesday, the nightmare is over. Khalid is now working for KGO-AM in San Francisco and freelancing for public radio station KQED-FM there, and in December plans to marry a woman he met in the Bay Area, where he relocated. The Baltimore City Paper’s Ericson and Alison Knezevich of the Baltimore Sun reported details of his ordeal.
Short Takes
Merlene Davis told readers Saturday that she was retiring as local columnist at the Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader, diminishing by one the number of African American newspaper columnists. “I had been working for the Lexington Herald-Leader since November 1983, and had watched as my life as a journalist had gone from being filled with excitement and expectation to being just another job,” Davis wrote. Peter Baniak, editor and vice president of the Herald-Leader, messaged Journal-isms on Wednesday that “no successor has been named for Merlene.”
- “Late last month at the first-ever podcast upfront in New York City, NPR unveiled a study showing that nearly 33 percent of its podcast audience is [composed] of people of color,” Tracie Powell wrote Friday for Columbia Journalism Review. “This is significant in light of public radio’s long struggle with trying to reach more diverse audiences, particularly African American, Latino, and Asian American listeners. While NPR is touting its success in expanding into new audiences, podcasts, generally, are growing among more digitally savvy audiences, which also happen to be more diverse. . . .”
- Sybril Bennett, professor of journalism at Belmont University known as “Dr. Syb,” is the National Association of Black Journalist’s 2015 Journalism Educator of the Year, NABJ announced on Wednesday. “The award recognizes the service, commitment and academic guidance of an outstanding journalism teacher, professor or educator who has helped increase the number of black journalists in newsrooms. . . .”
“Antonio Fins returns to a newsroom after a 3-year break working as Executive Director for the non-profit Guy Harvey Ocean Foundation,” Veronica Villafañe reported Tuesday for her Media Moves site. Fins, who was editorial page editor at the SunSentinel in Fort Lauderdale, is now business editor of the Palm Beach Post, effective May 18.
- Praya Ganapati, former reporter for Wired and the Wall Street Journal, is joining Quartz as its first platform editor and director of platform products, Richard Horgan reported Tuesday for FishbowlNY, quoting a memo from Quartz executive editor Zach Seward. “That refers to our existing and future products beyond qz.com, like the Quartz Daily Brief, Quartz on Flipboard, possible Quartz mobile apps, etc.,” Seward’s memo said.
- Farai Chideya, a former reporter and program host for ABC News, CNN and NPR and a Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, is joining the Intercept as a columnist and consulting editor who will “explore in her columns the ways technology shapes our lives — as each individual is shadowed by what Chideya calls a ‘cloud self’ that increasingly defines our existence at home, work and in social and political arenas,” Editor Betsy Reed wrote Wednesday for the Intercept, a site founded by muckrakers Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras and Jeremy Scahill.
- Are you going to believe the oral history passed down through the family or the bland contemporary account by the local newspaper? Jada F. Smith, a news assistant in the Washington bureau of the New York Times, chooses the family. She wrote in the Times on March 15 about a civil rights incident involving her family and reported at the time in the LaGrange (Ga.) Daily News. The newspaper’s account was watered down. “We tell those Auntie Jean stories and Uncle Bus stories and Grandaddy Frank stories because if we don’t, somebody else surely will.” Smith told Journal-isms by telephone Wednesday that readers told her they had similar experiences.
- “ProPublica announced today that it has hired Topher Sanders of The Florida Times-Union as a reporter covering racial inequality,” Nicole Collins Bronzan reported Wednesday for the investigative website. “Sanders has reported on education and city government for the Times-Union, of Jacksonville, Florida, since 2008. Named to the investigative team in 2013, he became the paper’s investigative editor in 2014. . . .” Nikole Hannah-Jones, who reported on racial inequality for ProPublica, has joined the New York Times Magazine.
- Daniel Shinun Kang of McGill University, Christine Chen of Stanford University and Priscilla Takondwa Semphere of Smith College, Sylvester Amponsah of Case Western Reserve University, Jason Heo of Swarthmore College, Naomi Kiarie of Framingham State University, Kalina Silverman of Northwestern University and Michael Devore of Claflin University are among 10 recipients of inaugural OZY Genius Awards for 2015, Ozy Media announced Tuesday. “Each recipient will get a stipend of up to $10,000 to pursue his or her project and will be part of an OZY Films documentary this fall that chronicles their progress. . . .”
- “Doing an interview with Fusion’s Jorge Ramos before a live studio audience?” Mark Joyella asked Tuesday for TVNewser. “Consider this: you might want to avoid comparing Mexican immigrants (legal or otherwise) to members of ISIS, and if someone in the audience offers you a hug of friendship, perhaps don’t blow them off. In an interview set to air on Fusion tonight at 10pmET, Ann Coulter, somehow, did both. Coulter has argued that Americans should ‘fear immigrants’ from Mexico ‘more than ISIS’ and she did not back down. . . .”
- “Chester Lampkin, STL native and weekend meteorologist for KSDK (Channel 5), is leaving the station and heading to New Zealand,” Joe Holleman reported May 11 for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “In June, Lampkin will start as a meteorologist for MetService of New Zealand, which he described as being akin to the National Weather Service for that nation. . . .”
- “Larry Starks tried out for his West Side high school’s basketball and baseball teams but didn’t make the cut,” Norman Parish wrote Monday for Chicago’s dnainfo.com. “But the former Austin [Ill.] resident’s writing skills in an English class at Holy Trinity High School helped him grab a spot on his school’s newspaper.” Parish also wrote, “Today, Starks is the NBA news editor for ESPN. He helps decide how news stories are handled during NBA broadcasts on ESPN and ABC. . . .”
- “Elaine Diaz has spent the last several months studying at Harvard as a Nieman Fellow,” Sarah Kessler wrote Friday for Fast Company. “She is the first of 1,400 winners in the 77-year-old program who is from Cuba, and she plans to launch a publication called Periodismo de Barrio when she returns to the country in June. The publication will focus on natural disasters . . . What is most unusual about her project, however, is its distribution strategy. Periodismo de Barrio will publish online, but it will also attempt to reach Cubans in a way they more commonly consume media: an offline version of the Internet called the ‘weekly packet.’ . . .”
- In Kenya, “A fresh warrant of arrest has been issued against television talk show host Jeff Koinange for failing to appear in court,” Paul Ogemba reported Monday for Business Daily in Kenya. “Principal magistrate Maisy Chesang not only ordered the arrest of Mr Koinange, but also directed that he forfeits a Sh100,000 [$1,020 U.S.] cash bail he deposited to gain his release last week after he was arrested over contempt of court charges. . . .” Koinange was the Africa correspondent for CNN and CNN International from 2001 to 2007. A warrant for his arrest was issued four days ago after his lawyer explained that he had traveled to Ivory Coast to attend a conference on the day he was due in court.
- Last week, a court in Angola indicated that libel charges against anti-corruption campaigner Rafael Marques de Morais would be dropped, but on Monday, the public prosecutor said he would proceed with a conviction, the London-based Index on Censorship reported on Tuesday. ““This backtracking by Angola in the case of Rafael Marques de Morais is outrageous,” said Index on Censorship CEO Jodie Ginsberg. “Rafael’s investigations into human rights abuses in Angola are crucial and should not be impeded. . . .”
- The Committee to Protect Journalists said Tuesday it “condemns the murder of Brazilian radio journalist Djalma Santos da Conceição and calls on authorities to investigate and bring all those responsible to justice. Santos da Conceição’s body was found with signs of torture on Saturday in the northeast state of Bahia, one day after the journalist was kidnapped by armed assailants, according to news reports. The journalist’s murder occurred less than a week after the killing of Evany José Metzker, a critical blogger who was found decapitated on May 18 . . .” In the Daily Beast, Martha Mercer wrote about Metzker Monday under the headline, “In a Small Town in Brazil, a Journalist Is Beheaded.”
- In Quebec, “A prominent French-language foreign correspondent says he will withdraw from public life to prepare a response, following allegations that he fabricated and embellished some of his stories,” the CBC reported on Monday. “François Bugingo has been suspended indefinitely from contributing to several Montreal media outlets, including 98.5 FM, Le Journal de Montréal and TVA. . . .” Bugingo, 41, is a native of Congo who moved to Montreal in 1997 and is considered a media star.
- “Sudanese security forces seized the Monday print runs of 10 newspapers and suspended the publishing licences of four of them in a major media crackdown, editors and NGOs said,” Agence France-Presse reported on Monday.
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