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Columnist Sees Irony in Univision’s Defense of Mexicans

Another Reporter Quits; Can’t Afford to Live on Her Salary

Nigerian Journalist Says He Was Beaten Into a Coma

Journalists Advised to Add Context to Church Burnings

Police Killings of Mentally Ill Demonstrate Lack of Training

Textbooks, Monuments Still Lie About Confederacy

Obama Opposition to Team Name Thwarts Move

5 Reasons Puerto Rico Is Treated More Like a Colony

ProPublica Offering $4,500 Stipends to Students of Color

Short Takes

Columnist Sees Irony in Univision’s Defense of Mexicans

“Rapper Flo Rida, the Macy’s department store chain and football Hall of Famer Emmitt Smith all had something in common on Wednesday: They’re the latest to distance themselves from Donald Trump following his remarks about Mexican immigrants,” David Bauder reported Wednesday for the Associated Press.

“The Republican presidential hopeful’s team is struggling to hold the Miss USA pageant together following defections by hosts, performers, judges and the two television networks that were scheduled to broadcast the event on July 12. Trump, who fired back at Macy’s, owns the Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants. . . .”

In addition, “Mexico dropped out of the pageant and Bogota withdrew its candidacy to host his Miss Universe show,” Agence France-Presse reported.

In his syndicated column for the Washington Post Writers Group, Ruben Navarrette Jr. found “surreal” Trump’s battle with Univision, which like NBC severed ties with Trump over comments in his speech announcing his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination on June 16.

“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best,” Trump said. “They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”

Navarrette wrote Wednesday, “let’s remember, this whole thing started because Trump sees Mexican migrants as inferior — a view that, judging from its own regular programming, the nation’s largest Spanish-speaking television network seems to tolerate and perpetuate.

“Have you ever seen one of those popular Mexican soap operas that make Univision so much money? Or taken a good look at the anchors and reporters who deliver the news on the network? Generally speaking, you won’t find a more light-skinned and fair-haired bunch.

“These are hardly the sort of folks who get doors slammed in their faces in Mexico and can’t wait to migrate to the United States. These are the kind of people who are content to stay in Mexico. The network stars might give lip service to supporting migrants, but I don’t see how they could possibly relate to them.

“It’s both ironic and sad that a network that made billions broadcasting throughout Latin America looks nothing like most of Latin America. Now Univision, in its war with Trump, emerges as the de-facto savior for Mexican immigrants. How did that happen? . . .”

Trump said after Macy’s announcement, “Clearly, NBC and Macy’s support illegal immigration, which is totally detrimental to the fabric of our once great country. Both Macy’s and NBC totally caved at the first sight of potential difficulty with special interest groups who are nothing more than professional agitators, who are not looking out for the people they purport to represent, but only for themselves.

“It is people like this that are actually running our country because our leaders are weak and ineffective.”

Another Reporter Quits; Can’t Afford to Live on Her Salary

Eyebrows were raised in April when Natalie Caula Hauff was announced as part of a team awarded the Pulitzer Prize for public service. Hauff had already left the Post and Courier in Charleston, S.C., for public relations, saying that newspaper work was too demanding.

Her story was similar to that of Rob Kuznia of the Daily Breeze in Torrance, Calif., who shared a Pulitzer for local reporting. He, too, was working in public relations when the prizes were announced. “He said it was too difficult to make ends meet on his newspaper salary while renting in the LA area,” Kevin Roderick reported for LAObserved.

Now it’s Courtenay Edelhart’s turn.

Edelhart wrote Monday to her Facebook friends, “I have been a newspaper reporter all my adult life. No, before that. I wrote for all my school newspapers as a kid. I made homemade newspapers out of spiral notebooks in kindergarten. That’s how long I’ve loved journalism. Except for a couple fast food gigs in high school, it’s the only job I’ve ever had.

“But print media are dying, hemorrhaging advertisers and readers at an alarming rate. Journalists are being laid off in droves, and the survivors are asked to take round after round of pay cuts. Today, after 26 years in this business, my annual salary is only about $10,000 more than my first entry-level job out of college. I can’t support a family on what I make. I can’t even support ME on what I make. Something has to give.

“Now. So today, with a heavy heart, I gave notice. Effective Aug. 14, I am resigning from The Bakersfield Californian. I will be enrolling at College of the Canyons in August to begin a two-year paralegal program. It’s still research and writing, which is pretty much all I know how to do. . . . So, farewell Bakersfield. It’s been a good run — seven years. I could never have survived as long as I did without the safety net of cherished friends and a synagogue that refused to let me feel poor. I love you all, and I will miss you, but it’s time to jump off this cliff. I choose to believe I will not crash onto rocks below. I choose, instead, to soar.”

Edelhart added for Journal-isms Wednesday that she is a Chicago native whose family now lives in Los Angeles.

“My ultimate career goal was to get hired at either my hometown newspaper, The Chicago Tribune, or the Los Angeles Times, located in my adopted, post-college home,” she messaged. But Tribune Co., parent company of both newspapers, filed for protection from bankruptcy. “So that’s how I landed in Bakersfield, possibly the last family-owned newspaper in the state.”

Robert Price, executive editor of the Californian, told Journal-isms on Wednesday that he understood.

“We live and work in a time of difficult transition,” Price said by email. “Media executives — those of us who still have jobs — are working hard to recapture lost revenue and discover new so that this vital thing we all cherish can endure.

“We’re working hard to create and restore connections with consumers of news in an era of dramatic change. In the meantime, budgets have been cut, jobs frozen, salaries locked. So, yes, it’s very difficult for many journalists today. Industrywide, we’re losing good people like Courtenay Edelhart. I wish it weren’t so.”

Bernie Lunzer, president of the Newspaper Guild-Communications Workers of America, called the trend “tragic and dangerous. We know that as journalism is hollowed out, valuable information will go missing,” he said by email.

“You can’t have a functioning America without quality, trusted information. It is time to examine the digital revolution and what it has wrought. Is it right for Google (or Facebook) to use others’ content to sell ads against, and provide little or nothing new of their own? I think many of us see the problem, yet the solution eludes us.

“Media organizations need to band together to find a way to protect and charge for their content. Otherwise we’ll continue to have excellent journalists leaving for legal, PR, lobbying and other pursuits. Who loses — everyone.”

Nigerian Journalist Says He Was Beaten Into a Coma

A Nigerian journalist says that suspected smugglers upset by reporting about them beat him into a coma last week “in full glare of the public” on the premises of the Nigeria Customs Service, according to news reports Wednesday.

Comrade Deji Elumoye, an official of the Nigeria Union of Journalists, said Tuesday that “the leadership of the union has instructed its team of lawyers to file charges, which includes but not limited to attempted-murder, accessory, aiding and abetting, manslaughter, harassment and assault, among others, against the Service and some of its officers, in order to see that justice is done on the matter,” Nigeria’s PM News reported.

The journalist, Yomi Olomofe, who is executive director and editorial board chairman of the Badagry-based Prime Magazine, gave this account to the Vanguard newspaper:

“I was with another colleague of mine on a visit to the command, when some smugglers, who claimed that journalists have been writing negative stories about them, pounced on me.

“While beating me, they threatened to kill me so as to serve as deterrent to journalists writing stories about them.

“I was there with the correspondent of Tide Newspaper, thank God a friend from Rotary Club came to take me away, I would have been dead, because I was left there almost lifeless.

“These hoodlums are not unknown. They are known to everybody, but they are above the law. They even told me that they have killed many people and nothing happened.”

Adunni Amodeni added for naij.com, “He claimed he had been invited there by Ibrahim Turaki, an assistant comptroller general in-charge of import activities, to mediate between the commission and a journalist from Tide newspaper, who was working on an investigative story concerning the impropriety in import activities at the border.”

Amodeni also wrote, “Telling of his ordeal to Punch Metro, Olomofe claimed that the customs officers looked away as he was being attacked.

“He said: ‘There were four men who pounced on me while I was on the NCS, Seme Area Command premises. They were shouting on top of their voices, “We will kill you today. When we kill you today, other journalists will leave this place alone.” The most notorious of them is known as Alhaji Momoh, otherwise called Basket. The others are Elijah and Shehu. The fourth person is unknown. They came with cudgels before they carried me to a nearby refuse dump. It was when they hit me on the head that I knew they intended to kill me’.

Elumoye, the union official, “enjoined journalists in the country not to be deterred by what happened to ‘one of our colleagues’ but rather brace up for more challenges in the course of duty, if they are to live up to their billing in exposing the ills and rots in the society ,” PM News Nigeria reported.

Journalists Advised to Add Context to Church Burnings

“Over the last two weeks, six Black churches in the south have been burned to the ground,” Denise Clay wrote Wednesday for alldigitcracy.org.

“While there are reports that the latest church burning, the Mount Zion African Episcopal Church in [Greeleyville], South Carolina, was the result of the church being struck by lightning, it, and the other six church burnings, are still under state and federal investigation.

“Since many of these fires have occurred in the days following last month’s shootings at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, the incidents have brought back memories for some of the days when organized hate groups would bring their campaigns of racial intimidation and fear to the sanctuary doors of the black church.

“But so far, the majority of the news media has been hesitant to make the connection, which has led to conversations like this:

Clay offered this advice for journalists, “A) Do your homework: Journalism is as much about patterns as it is anything else. If you’re getting information like, say, six black churches being burned to the ground in two weeks, dive into your history books. See if there’s a pattern and include that in your reporting.

“Also, you can go to the Southern Poverty Law Center and access their treasure trove of information on things like this and their reports on hate and extremism can give you a lot of useful information. The organization’s blog Hatewatch also has a lot of information that comes in real time. (Disclosure: I used to write for Hatewatch.)

“(B) Do some legwork: The neighborhoods where these church burnings are taking place are filled with people who can help you with the context you need to cover stories like this thoroughly. There are stories and information that they have that you won’t get if you don’t go out and gather it. . . .”

Police Killings of Mentally Ill Demonstrate Lack of Training

“Nationwide, police have shot and killed 124 people this year who . . . were in the throes of mental or emotional crisis, according to a Washington Post analysis,” Wesley Lowery, Kimberly Kindy and Keith L. Alexander reported for the front page of the Washington Post’s Tuesday print edition. 

Their report is part of a continuing series in which the Post is compiling a database of every fatal shooting in the United States by a police officer in the line of duty in 2015.

“The dead account for a quarter of the 462 people shot to death by police in the first six months of 2015,” the story continued.

“The vast majority were armed, but in most cases, the police officers who shot them were not responding to reports of a crime. More often, the police officers were called by relatives, neighbors or other bystanders worried that a mentally fragile person was behaving erratically, reports show. More than 50 people were explicitly suicidal.

“More than half the killings involved police agencies that have not provided their officers with state-of-the-art training to deal with the mentally ill. And in many cases, officers responded with tactics that quickly made a volatile situation even more dangerous.

“The Post analysis provides for the first time a national, real-time tally of the shooting deaths of mentally distraught individuals at the hands of law enforcement. Criminal-justice experts say that police are often ill equipped to respond to such individuals — and that the encounters too often end in needless violence. . . .”

Textbooks, Monuments Still Lie About Confederacy

“History is the polemics of the victor, William F. Buckley allegedly said,” author James W. Loewen, emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Vermont, wrote Wednesday for the Washington Post.

“Not so in the United States, at least not regarding the Civil War. As soon as Confederates laid down their arms, some picked up their pens and began to distort what they had done, and why. Their resulting mythology went national a generation later and persists — which is why a presidential candidate can suggest that slavery was somehow pro-family, and the public believes that the war was mainly fought over states’ rights.

“The Confederates won with the pen (and the noose) what they could not win on the battlefield: the cause of white supremacy and the dominant understanding of what the war was all about. We are still digging ourselves out from under the misinformation that they spread, which has manifested in both our history books and our public monuments.

“Take Kentucky. Kentucky’s legislature voted not to secede, and early in the war, Confederate Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston ventured through the western part of the state and found ‘no enthusiasm as we imagined and hoped but hostility . . . in Kentucky.’ Eventually, 90,000 Kentuckians would fight for the United States, while 35,000 fought for the Confederate States. Nevertheless, according to historian Thomas Clark, the state now has 72 Confederate monuments and only two Union ones. . . .”

Loewen is author of “Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong” and “The Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader: The ‘Great Truth’ about the ‘Lost Cause’. “

5 Reasons Puerto Rico Is Treated More Like a Colony

“Everyone born on the island of Puerto Rico is a U.S. citizen who enjoys the same rights as any other citizen — provided they’re willing to move to one of the 50 U.S. states,” Roque Planas and Adriana Usero wrote Wednesday for HuffPost LatinoVoices.

“Those who remain on the island, however, are subject to a series of rules that limit their self-determination and participation in U.S. democracy.

“Despite the fact that Puerto Ricans are full-fledged Americans, the island is neither a U.S. state nor an independent country. The name for its unique status in U.S. law is ‘commonwealth.’ Yet for all intents and purposes, this political status has granted the island a separate and unequal designation more akin to a colony.

“Being treated as a possession rather than a partner has made it much more difficult for Puerto Rico to dig itself out from under its more than $70 billion debt. The island is facing a historic default on its debt, which Gov. Alejandro García Padilla said this week is ‘unpayable.’

“Here are five ways Puerto Rico is being treated more like a colony than a U.S. state or an independent country — making it harder for the island to tackle its economic disaster. . . .’

ProPublica Offering $4,500 Stipends to Students of Color

“Are you a college student of color interested in doing great journalism?” ProPublica asked on Monday.

“ProPublica wants to help. We are a nonprofit investigative newsroom and we’re offering stipends to five minority students who work or want to work at college journalism outlets — newspapers, websites, radio stations or TV stations. We want to make college journalism accessible to students for whom it would otherwise be economically out of reach. Students can apply for the stipends annually. Those selected will receive $4,500 per semester.

“Each student in our Emerging Reporters Program will also receive ongoing mentoring from ProPublica’s reporters and editors. We’ll also bring you to our newsroom in New York for a week. . . .”

Meanwhile, the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland announced a Saturday-only, four-course graduate program aimed at moving careers into overdrive. “The two-semester, 12-credit graduate certificate program (two classes each semester) is designed for working professionals. Classes meet on Saturdays, so there’s no conflict with work schedules. . . .”

Short Takes

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