Maynard Institute archives

Who’s Prosecuting? Almost Always, He’s White and Male

by richard0601

Women of Color Said to Be Especially Vulnerable

Dylann Roof’s Racism Will Be Nurtured in Prison

“Blacks in the South Aren’t Submissive, but Practical”

Cosby’s “Blame the Media” Strategy Didn’t Work

Judge Upholds Cancellation of Washington Team Trademark

Latinos Pass Whites as California’s Largest Ethnic Group

Donald Trump Says He’ll Win Latino Vote

Appeals Court Upholds Unpaid Internships

D.C. NPR Affiliate Brings Diversity to Underwriting Voices

Short Takes

Women of Color Said to Be Especially Vulnerable

“While the nation’s prisoners are predominantly people of color, the officials who put them there are overwhelmingly white,” Emily Peck wrote Tuesday for the Huffington Post, “to an extent that surprises even those who study racial bias in the criminal justice system.

“A stunning 95 percent of the nation’s elected prosecutors are white, a new report reveals. The data, compiled by the nonpartisan Center for Technology and Civic Life, was released Tuesday by the Women Donors Network, a group of about 200 female philanthropists dedicated to social justice issues.

“White men constitute 79 percent of the country’s 2,437 elected prosecutors. Only 4 percent are men of color and only 1 percent are women of color.

” ‘I did not expect the numbers to be encouraging, but I did not expect them to be this stark, even knowing 90 percent of elected officials are white,’ Brenda Choresi Carter of the Women Donors Network said on a conference call Tuesday afternoon. ‘If we saw these kinds of numbers in another country, we’d recognize that something was very seriously wrong.’

“The study looked at state and local prosecutors — not those on the federal level, who are appointed. . . . “

Lynn M. Paltrow, executive director of the National Advocates for Pregnant Women, told Journal-isms by telephone Wednesday that the study points to the need for journalists to ask hard questions of prosecutors. “The fastest growing group of people targeted for nonviolent drug offenses are African American women,” she said.

One reason their ranks are growing, she said, is that black women are less likely to have information to trade for a plea deal.

Paltrow wrote in 2013 for the American Journal of Public Health, “In 1977, the number of women in prison was 11,212 and in 2009, it was 105,197,” an increase of more than 800 percent.

“Today, more than 200,000 women are behind bars, and more than one million women are on probation or parole. The fact that a woman is also a mother caring for one or more children is no deterrent to incarceration.

“Two thirds of the incarcerated women in the United States have at least one minor child, and approximately five percent of women are pregnant when they begin their incarceration.”

Paltrow told Journal-isms that in a study she co-authored with Jeanne Flavin, she documented more than 400 arrests or equivalent deprivations of liberty in which the fact that a woman was pregnant was the reason for her arrest or an explicit factor justifying punishment.

“You can’t know what any individual will do by knowing their race, gender or class, but this disparity requires journalists to ask questions,” Paltrow added, speaking of the overwhelming number of white male prosecutors.

“There are some things we do know — when 70 percent of the prosecutors are white men, you can safely assume they are never going to become pregnant, give birth, experience a miscarriage or stillbirth, have an abortion or be subjected to shaming because of a pregnancy.”

Journalists might ask about prosecutors, “How will their experience and privilege affect what things they consider to be criminal and whether they will misuse the law to treat some women, especially women of color who become pregnant, as proper subjects of the criminal law? With arrests of women who have experienced pregnancy losses, attempted home abortions, refused cesarean surgery, or been in a dangerous location while pregnant, this is an important question to ask,” she added by email.

“We also see male prosecutors use their wives as the basis for judging other women — who are likely of a different race and class from their wives — and deciding that women who they perceive as behaving differently during pregnancy from their wives — deserve to be prosecuted.

“In addition to targeting low income African American mothers for arrest and prosecution that separates them from their children, prosecutors have also used their authority to obtain court orders to force women to have cesarean surgery over their objections.”

In its announcement Tuesday, the center said, “Americans are taking a new look at the relationship between race, gender, and criminal justice — in the failures to indict police officers who killed unarmed Black men and women from Ferguson to Staten Island, in the rogue prosecutions of women who terminated their pregnancies from Indiana to Idaho, and in the ongoing epidemic of mass incarceration that disproportionately affects communities of color.

“Prosecutors decide whether to pursue a criminal case or not, whether a crime will be charged as a misdemeanor or a felony, and even whether prison time is served and for how long. Elected prosecutors have an enormous influence on the pursuit of justice in America, yet four out of five of them are white men whose life experiences do not reflect those of most Americans.

“And, shockingly, this power goes virtually unchecked: 85% of elected prosecutors run un-opposed, perpetuating the imbalance of power without accountability to the communities they are meant to serve and protect.”

A 2005 study from the American Civil Liberties Union, the Brennan Center for Justice and Break the Chains: Communities of Color and the War on Drugs also documented racial and gender differences in incarceration.

“Women of color use drugs at a rate equal to or lower than white women, yet are far more likely to be affected by current drug laws and policies,” [PDF] said the report, “Caught in the Net: The Impact of Drug Policies on Women and Families.”

“In 1997, 44% of Hispanic women and 39% of African American women incarcerated in state prison were convicted of drug offenses, compared to 22% of white women, and 26% and 24% of Hispanic and African American men, respectively. . . .”

Dylann Roof’s Racism Will Be Nurtured in Prison

“Prison yards have produced white supremacists like Dylann Roof for decades,” James Kilgore wrote Wednesday for the Marshall Project, a site devoted to criminal justice issues.

“High-quality ink permeates these yards: swastikas on foreheads and knuckles, the word ‘skinhead’ neatly scrolled across chests, ‘Thank God I’m White’ etched on the back of sunburnt necks. From 2006 to 2009, I was incarcerated in the heart of this old, Jim Crow world — the medium- and high-security prison yards of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

“The yards are violent; killings took place at double the national average from 2001 to 2012. Part of the reason was that the CDCR facilities have been breeding grounds for racial division and hatred. As a white elder, an O.G. (‘original gangster’ in prison parlance), and a lifetime anti-racist, I had to find a way to live with the power of white supremacy, with youngsters like Dylann Roof who had found it their mission to perpetuate hate.

“Ever since I first saw Dylann Roof’s picture after the Charleston massacre, in which he killed nine people in a church shooting, I have been imagining what would have happened if he had landed in a California prison. He would certainly find instant camaraderie with the Peckerwoods, the Skinheads, the Dirty White Boys, the Nazi Low Riders. His admirers, men with handles like Bullet, Beast, Pitbull, and Ghost, would vow to live up to Roof’s example, either by wreaking havoc when they hit the streets or maybe even the very next day in the yard. . . .”

In an editor’s note, Kilgore is described as a visiting lecturer in the Global Studies Program at the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign).

“He spent six and a half years in prison for crimes related to his participation in political violence in the 1970s and his subsequent period of more then two decades as a fugitive. Since his release from prison in 2009, he has published three novels, all of which he drafted during his time in prison. His most recent book, Understanding Mass Incarceration: A People’s Guide to the Key Civil Rights Struggle of Our Time, will be published by The New Press in September.”

[“In historic votes early Thursday, the South Carolina House of Representatives ordered the permanent removal of the Statehouse’s Confederate battle flag,” Cynthia Roldan reported for the Post and Courier in Charleston].

“Blacks in the South Aren’t Submissive, but Practical”

“Blacks in the South, Carlton told me, are submissive,” Issac J. Bailey wrote July 1 for Politico Magazine. “He was a young African-American man from Kansas City. We were sitting in a classroom in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. A teacher friend of mine had asked me to mentor him and another of her high school students.

“Blacks in the South are submissive.

“It rolled off his tongue, not as indictment, but as description.

“His family sent him ‘down South’ for that very reason, to get him away from, Carlton said, the kind of black people who stand up for themselves and firmly against injustice — personal and otherwise — the kind of black people he had been getting in trouble with as they fought back … against whatever it was they were fighting, something he couldn’t quite explain. . . .”

Bailey, a columnist at the Sun News in Myrtle Beach, S.C., was a 2014 Nieman Fellow. On Wednesday, he referred his Myrtle Beach readers to his Politico Magazine piece, headlined, “I’m a Black Southerner Who’s Seen Racism All My Life. Why Do I Stay Silent?”

He wrote, “I suspect most white people in South Carolina would be outraged if Jews had to live in a Germany flying the Nazi flag to honor the bravery of the Nazi soldier without realizing that’s what black South Carolinians have been forced to do.

“But that doesn’t make them racist any more than black Southerners are submissive because blacks refuse to caricature white Southerners the way too many non-Southerners do.

“. . . Blacks in the South aren’t submissive, but practical.

“There are fights that can’t be avoided and fights we must choose wisely. In a state like South Carolina that has been controlled by the Republican Party, full of Confederate sympathizers and apologists, for the past quarter of century, a realistic chance to remove the flag comes along maybe every other decade or so, as it has again. . . .”

Bailey also wrote, “On the cover of my book, Proud. Black. Southern. (But I Still Don’t Eat Watermelon in front of White People), is the image of a black man’s arm with a Confederate flag tattooed on his biceps.

“It’s not a tribute, but rather a reminder that no matter what happens to that flag at the State House, or on the shelves of Walmart and Target or in the hearts and minds of men and women in South Carolina and elsewhere, it’s been imprinted on the souls of Southern black folks, for good and for ill, just as much as it is revered by white Confederate flag wavers. Not even the blood of nine black people spilled in a church can change that.”

Last year, the Associated Press released a Bill Cosby interview conducted Nov. 6, 2014, in Washington, in which reporter Brett Zongker asks him about “long circulated” rape allegations. Cosby asked that the exchange be edited out in the interests of what Cosby considered responsible journalism. (video)

Cosby’s “Blame the Media” Strategy Didn’t Work

“Bill Cosby’s team had a strategy late last year when it came to battling all the allegations that the veteran entertainer had drugged and sexually assaulted an expanding list of accusers,” Erik Wemple wrote Tuesday for the Washington Post.

” ‘Hush Accusers, Insult Them, Blame the Media,’ wrote the New York Times in abridging the Cosby approach. Representatives for Cosby threatened to sue organizations that published the accounts of accusers and otherwise questioned their journalistic integrity. ‘There appears to be no vetting of my husband’s accusers before stories are published or aired. An accusation is published, and immediately goes viral,’ argued the star’s wife, Camille Cosby, in a statement.

“Now check out this journalistic integrity: The Associated Press reported yesterday that Cosby testified in 2005 that he ‘got Quaaludes with the intent of giving them to young women he wanted to have sex with, and he admitted giving the sedative to at least one woman and “other people.” ‘

“That scoop came courtesy of reporter Maryclaire Dale, not to mention a news organization committed to unearthing newsworthy documents. As Dale made clear to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow last night, the AP’s fight for these documents dates back to 2005, when Andrea Constand, an employee of Temple University, sued Cosby in federal court for drugging and raping her. Gayle Sproul, a Philadelphia-based partner in the firm Levine Sullivan Koch & Schulz LLP, notes that before discovery in the case had been completed, the parties settled, leaving key filings under seal.

“Under the ‘local rules’ of the Pennsylvania’s Eastern District Court, civil case material is subject to unsealing at the conclusion of a two-year period, though a party may object to such action. In such a case, the court decides on a case-by-case basis. Sproul indicates that the routine unsealing process never occurred in Constand-Cosby case. Accordingly, the files just sat untouched for years, until the comedian’s conduct became an issue late last year.

“The AP said, well, they haven’t done it. Let’s ask them to do it now,’ says Sproul, who gives credit to Dale. ‘She remembered this and she wanted to look into it.’

Wemple also wrote, “For anyone following Cosby’s evasions and maneuvering vis-a-vis the allegations from dozens of women, [Judge Eduardo C.] Robreno’s ruling is a must-read.

“And it’s an especially fun ruling for media critics who’ve followed Cosby’s attacks on organizations that have dared to publish the claims against him.

“Here’s one underappreciated snippet of the opinion: ‘At the end of this exercise, punctuated by vigorous verbal combat between counsel, what emerged from those portions of the deposition testimony that were filed with the Court is Defendant’s version of certain of the events surrounding this lawsuit — in his own words.’

“Bold text added to highlight the ultimate diss. The guy who lashed out at the media now has no choice but to find a different tack. Because in this case, the media dug up his own words. This time, there’s no ‘vetting’ issue.”

Judge Upholds Cancellation of Washington Team Trademark

“The Washington Redskins lost the biggest legal and public relations battle yet in the war over the NFL team’s name after a federal judge Wednesday ordered the cancellation of its federal trademark registrations, opposed for decades by Native American activists who call the name disparaging,” Ian Shapira reported for the Washington Post.

“The cancellation, called a ‘huge victory’ by the activists, doesn’t go into effect until the team has exhausted the appeals process in the federal court system. And Redskins President Bruce Allen vowed Wednesday that the team would appeal. . . .”

In applauding the decision by U.S. District Judge Gerald Bruce Lee, the Native American Journalists Association noted that Amanda Blackhorse, a Navajo Nation member from Arizona who is well-known for leading massive protests against the team outside stadiums wherever it plays, would deliver keynote remarks at the National Native Media Awards Banquet on Saturday in Arlington, Va., as part of the Native American Journalists Association’s 31st annual conference. Blackhorse is a plaintiff in the case.

The plenary panel discussion “Race, Journalism and Sports: The Dilemma of the Washington NFL Team Name” is also on the conference agenda for Saturday.

Latinos Pass Whites as California’s Largest Ethnic Group

“The demographers agreed: at some point in 2014, Latinos would pass whites as the largest ethnic group in California,” Javier Panzar reported Wednesday for the Los Angeles Times.

“Determining when exactly that milestone would occur was more of a tricky question. Counting people isn’t like counting movie ticket receipts.

“The official confirmation had to wait until new population figures were released by the Census Bureau this summer. The new tally, released in late June, shows that as of July 1, 2014, about 14.99 million Latinos live in California, edging out the 14.92 million whites in the state. . . .”

Appeals Court Upholds Unpaid Internships

“For a while, it seemed that unpaid internships were about to become relics of history,” Jordan Weissmann reported July 2 for Slate.

“In 2013, a federal trial court judge in New York ruled that Fox Searchlight should have paid interns who worked on the production of its Oscar-winning film Black Swan, because they were indistinguishable from regular employees, tasked as they were with fetching coffee, taking phone calls, handling paperwork, and in one case apparently buying a non-allergenic pillow for director Darren Aronofsky.

“The decision helped usher in a wave of lawsuits by former interns against their employers in the media business. Companies including Condé Nast, NBC Universal, Viacom, and Warner Music eventually ponied up for settlements totaling millions of dollars.

“Perhaps they should have waited a little longer before making a payout. Today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit reversed the lower-court’s decision in the Black Swan case, as well as a similar suit involving magazine publisher Hearst, essentially finding that unpaid internships can be legal if they’re educational enough. Should the ruling stand, it may be all but impossible for former interns to sue their ex-bosses in the future.

“In his 2013 opinion, Judge William Pauley III found that Fox Searchlights interns should have been considered employees under federal law and were entitled to at least the minimum wage. In doing so, he relied on a six-part test advocated by the Department of Labor, which says that workers are owed a paycheck if their employer gets an ‘immediate advantage’ from their labor (that includes, presumably, convenient access to caffeine and luxury bedding).

“But according to today’s decision, Pauley’s approach was too strict. The 2nd Circuit ruled that interns could go unpaid so long as a job benefited them more as a learning experience than it benefits their employer financially. . . .”

Diversity advocates have long challenged unpaid internships, saying that requiring interns to work only for the experience or for college credit amounts to favoring students with well-to-do parents.

D.C. NPR Affiliate Brings Diversity to Underwriting Voices

WAMU-FM, the NPR News affiliate in the nation’s capital, has ventured where few if any other public radio stations have dared — it has brought diversity to the voices that proclaim that “support for this station comes from . . .”

The voice of underwriting credits — de facto commercials — is often overlooked in conversations about public broadcasting diversity. Yet Reeves Wiedeman, writing in 2013 for the New Yorker, called the underwriting voice for NPR, “by unofficial estimate, the most widely heard in the history of public radio.” He was writing about the voice of Frank Tavares, whom listeners heard for 31 years.

WAMU acted on a suggestion from this column to bring diversity to this part of its programming. The current voice of the NPR network, heard three times an hour night and day, is not part of any similar move toward diversity.

WAMU’s new voices are James Barbour, who is African American, and Sarah Cumbie, a WAMU traffic specialist who is white.

“Our experiment with James Barbour, who is an African-American underwriting rep at WAMU, is part of a larger, longer-term effort to rethink WAMU looking toward the future,” General Manager J.J. Yore told Journal-isms by email.

“My goal is to make WAMU more inclusive and attract an audience that is more diverse — racially, ethnically, geographically, and by age. We are still defining what we can accomplish, how, and over what time frame. All this is coming out of a major strategic planning and operational improvement project. We expect our plans to start rolling out in the last few months of the year, and lead into a fundraising campaign to support the effort.”

Yore is a veteran producer credited as a creator of the public radio show “Marketplace.”

Short Takes

  • “Former syndicated radio host and attorney Warren Ballentine was convicted of six counts of fraud in October 2014,” Radio Ink reported on Tuesday. “At his sentencing hearing on Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Matthew Kennelly felt Ballentine was ‘a relatively minimal participant’ in only three of the counts. Because of that, Ballentine was sentenced to three years of probation, 300 hours of community service, and restitution of $140,940. That is far less than . . . the maximum he could have received: 30 years in prison, plus a fine of up to $6 million.” Reach Media spokesman Marty Raab did not respond to a Journal-isms inquiry about whether Ballentine could have his old job back. Reach Media stopped syndicating Ballentine’s show in January 2013.
  • “Today the News is offering a buyout to 167 newsroom employees whose age and years of service total at least 60 years,” Mike Wilson, editor of the Dallas Morning News, wrote to staff members on Monday, Eric Celeste reported Tuesday for D magazine. “All editorial areas, including Al Dia, NeighborsGo, FD [lifestyle magazine], Briefing and GuideLive.com, are included. This is a voluntary program. Eligible employees may ask to participate beginning on July 20, 2015. We anticipate granting about 30 requests on a first-come, first-served basis. . . .”
  • Last year, the departures of Michael Feeney, Enid Alvarez, Simone Weichselbaum and Jennifer H. Cunningham left the Daily News in New York with an alarmingly low number of African Americans and Hispanics covering the majority-minority city. However, on Wednesday, Managing Editor Robert F. Moore confirmed that Leonard Greene, a black journalist who has worked at the Boston Herald and New York Post tabloids, would join the News’ rewrite desk. With the move, Greene will have worked at three New York tabloids, counting the old New York Newsday.

  • “NBC Nightly News With Lester Holt finished No. 1 across the board for a second consecutive week, increasing its audience and widening its advantage in all categories over the competition compared to previous week,” Lisa de Moraes reported Wednesday for Deadline Hollywood.
  • Michel Martin of NPR is filling in this week for Tom Ashbrook as host of “On Point,” a news talk show that originates at WBUR-FM in Boston. The show is carried by NPR and Sirius XM Insight on these stations. 
  • “Journalism isn’t brain surgery — a distinction wrapped in a witticism that CNN’s Sanjay Gupta must be tired of hearing,” David Folkenflik reported Wednesday for NPR. “Yet while he was covering the aftermath of a deadly earthquake in Nepal this year, the journalism evidently proved trickier than the brain surgery. Gupta, a star news correspondent and Emory University trauma neurosurgeon, appears to have misidentified a patient on whom he operated. The tale of how that happened, both twisty and subtle, throws fresh light on Gupta’s dual roles as doctor and reporter. . . .”
  • “The University of Nevada, Las Vegas’ journalism school is in need of a major overhaul, according to an external review report,” Danielle Miller reported Wednesday for KVVU-TV in Las Vegas. “Class size and graduation rates are just two of the areas that need to be addressed, the report stated.” Miller also wrote, “The study also notes that with Las Vegas’ diversity, it’s disappointing the faculty doesn’t have one member of color.” Lawrence Mullen, director of the Hank Greenspun School of Journalism and Media Studies, “said he hopes to expand the staff. ‘We want to have people who are experts and bring them in from the field,’ he said. . . .”
  • “Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson made news with his announcement Sunday at a church that he and his girlfriend, pop singer Ciara, were practicing sexual abstinence after ‘God spoke to’ him, ” Des Bieler reported Tuesday for the Washington Post. “On Tuesday, Bomani Jones expressed skepticism about whether they would, in fact, stay celibate, but his own choice of words wound [up]  getting him embroiled in a very public Twitter debate with fellow ESPN writer/analyst Chris Broussard,” an active Christian who took issue with Jones’ questioning of the couple’s celibacy. 
  • “Back in December 2014, longtime La Opinión politics reporter and columnist Pilar Marrero left the paper after 24 years to become the communications deputy for new Los Angeles County Supervisor Hilda Solis,” Kevin Roderick reported Tuesday for LAObserved. “I posted the news here. On Monday, Marrero disclosed in a public Facebook video that she has had second thoughts about leaving journalism as the 2016 election approached. She has left Solis’ staff and accepted an offer to return to ImpreMedia. That’s the parent company of La Opinión. Marrero says she will be part of a new politics project around the election. . . .”
  • “You cannot physically find Black Twitter,” Karen Grisby Bates reported for NPR Wednesday in a story that quoted this columnist. “It’s not a place, although its members have a prominent online presence. Look at what’s trending on Twitter any day and many of the top trends come from Black Twitter.” Bates concluded, “if the media can engage with Black Twitter instead of just taking from it, that would be a good thing, too.”
  • “Rob Elgas will join the ABC 7 Eyewitness News team as a reporter and fill-in anchor it was announced today by Jennifer Graves, Vice President and News Director ABC 7. The appointment is effective July 7,” Chicago’s WLS-TV reported on Monday. The station also said, “Elgas joined ABC7 from NBC 5 in Chicago where he anchored the early afternoon news and reported for the late evening news. . . .”
  • “Denise Rolark Barnes, the new chair of the National Newspaper Publishers Association, says the federation of more than 200 black-owned newspapers will continue to not only thrive but grow as it begins its 75th year,” Hazel Trice Edney wrote Monday for TriceEdneyWire. “With most newspapers in an economic struggle industry wide and black newspapers enthralled in a historic battle against advertising discrimination, Barnes says NNPA’s new leadership team will encourage a keen focus on issues that continually plague black communities, while initiating strategies to expand. . . .” Barnes is publisher of the Washington Informer.
  • “Five bloggers and journalists held in Ethiopia for more than a year have been freed after the charges were dropped, their lawyer said Thursday, weeks before US President Barack Obama is due to visit the country,” Agence France-Presse reported. “In a separate case, journalist Reeyot Alemu, jailed in June 2011 after being found guilty of plotting a terrorist act, was released on Thursday, campaigners said. . . .”

  • “The Nigeria Union of Journalists on Tuesday picketed the premises of ThisDay newspapers in Apapa, Lagos to protest the non-payment of nine months arrears of salaries owed its members,” Bassey Udo reported Tuesday for Nigeria’s Premium Times. “The newspaper has also failed to remit personal income tax, pension cooperative deductions and check-off dues from paid salaries in the last four years.” ThisDay is published by media mogul Nduka Obaigbena, who recruited several African Americans to work for his Arise Television.
  • “Rwanda’s progress towards a more liberal media environment has been short-lived, Sue Valentine wrote Wednesday for the Committee to Protect Journalists. “In May Fred Muvunyi, the head of the Rwanda Media Commission, fled the country for fear of being detained or attacked, and the country’s telecommunications regulator suspended the operation agreement for the BBC’s Great Lakes radio service indefinitely. . . .”

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