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Covering Black Tragedy Takes a Toll

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Returning Aug. 24

More Newsroom Diversity Would Ease the Burden

Video Shows Confrontation Between Clinton, Activists

Veteran Rep. Louis Stokes Dies, Dad to Two Journalists

Smaller Newspapers Typically Have No Reporters of Color

“News One Now” to Compete With Morning News Shows

Public Urged to Spread Flower Petals in Bond Tribute

. . . N.Y. Times Regrets Using “Slave Mistress” in Bond Obit

Chicago Columnist Misfires, Offends With Katrina Analogy

Reporter Says a Good Vetting Would Make Trump Vanish

Journalists Seeking Asylum Often Left in Limbo

Short Takes

More Newsroom Diversity Would Ease the Burden

“As calls for newsroom diversity get louder and louder — and rightly so — we might do well to consider what it means that there’s an emerging, highly valued professional class of black reporters at boldface publications reporting on the shortchanging of black life in this country,” Gene Demby wrote Wednesday for the NPR “Code Switch” blog.

“They’re investigating police killings and segregated schools and racist housing policies and ballooning petty fines while their loved ones, or people who look like their loved ones, are out there living those stories. What it means — for the reporting we do, for the brands we represent, and for our own mental health — that we don’t stop being black people when we’re working as black reporters. That we quite literally have skin in the game. . . .”

Under the headline “How Black Reporters Report On Black Death,” Demby quoted Trymaine Lee of MSNBC, Wesley Lowery of the Washington Post and Yamiche Alcindor of USA Today, who have been in the thick of the unrest in cities roiled by police shootings of unarmed African Americans.

“Over the past month, I’ve talked to a dozen other black reporters who’ve covered race and policing since Michael Brown’s death [in Ferguson, Mo.] — or even further back, since Oscar Grant [in 2009 in Oakland, Calif.] or Ramarley Graham [in 2012 in the Bronx] — and it’s been a relief to learn that I’m not the only one. That sinking feeling when a hashtag of a black person’s name starts trending on Twitter, the guilty avoidance of watching the latest video of a black person losing his life, the flashes of resentment and irritation at well-meaning tweets and emails sent by readers asking me to weigh in on the latest development in the latest case.

“The folks I talked to for this story share many of the same, contradictory impulses I wrestle with when a new case comes to light, torn between wanting to jump on a plane — or start sketching out a long essay, as the case may be — and wanting to log out of Twitter and block out emails from my editors. . . .”

Demby also wrote, “But if ‘diverse’ reporters help newsrooms do better journalism, are newsrooms doing enough to make sure someone like Trymaine has the support and backup he needs to not burn out or even break down in the process? We ask journalists to keep some critical, dispassionate distance from their stories. But what happens when the stories they’re covering are not abstractions, not just things that happen to other people? What happens when echoes of those stories keep sounding off in their own lives? . . .”

He also said, “I’ve written about the problem of being The Only One in the Room — the unwanted burden of representing the concerns of an entire group of people, coupled with the anxious desire to do a good job of it. It does seem there’s one good way of preventing black journalists who cover black death from burning out, or relegating their own well-being to ‘minor importance’ status . . . Hire enough of us that no one black reporter or editor in a newsroom has to feel like it’s entirely ‘fallen upon him’ to tell these stories. . . .”

Meanwhile, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, joined by 38 other news outlets and media organizations, sent a letter to St. Louis County officials protesting the recent filing of criminal charges against Lowery and Huffington Post reporter Ryan Reilly over incidents that occurred during the protests in Ferguson, last summer, the committee said Tuesday.

The coalition letter called the charges “particularly egregious, as they were not even involved in a contentious or dangerous atmosphere.”

Michael Calderone noted for the Huffington Post on Wednesday that although the charges were for trespassing and interfering with police at a McDonald’s restaurant, the fast food chain has not commented.

He wrote, “Just hours after the arrests, Keith Eyer, the manager of the location in question, described the incident between the journalists and police as ‘a terrible thing.’ . . .”

McDonald’s also did not respond to an inquiry from Journal-isms.

Video Shows Confrontation Between Clinton, Activists

“Hillary Clinton and Black Lives Matter activists had a frank and at times tense discussion last week behind closed doors, and thanks to video released Monday, the American public is now hearing exactly what the two sides said to each other,” Dan Merica reported Tuesday for CNN.

“Throughout the 15-minute conversation, Clinton disagreed with the three activists from Black Lives Matter who had planned to publicly press the 2016 candidate on issues on mass incarceration at an event earlier this month in Keene, New Hampshire.

“The 2016 candidate even gave suggestions to the activists, telling them that without a concrete plan their movement will get nothing but ‘lip service from as many white people as you can pack into Yankee Stadium and a million more like it.’

” ‘Look, I don’t believe you change hearts,’ Clinton said, arguing that the movement can’t change [deep-seated] racism. ‘I believe you change laws, you change allocation of resources, you change the way systems operate. You’re not going to change every heart. You’re not. But at the end of the day, we could do a whole lot to change some hearts and change some systems and create more opportunities for people who deserve to have them, to live up to their own God-given potential.’ . . .”

In a separate development, “Janelle Monàe’s Friday morning performance on NBC’s ‘Today’ was lively, original and cut short — right when she started to talk about police brutality,” Kim Bellware reported Friday for the Huffington Post.

An NBC employee who did not want to be identified by name told Journal-isms on Wednesday that one of Monàe’s songs ran overtime and the show had to go to a commercial break. The show is programmed for that break at the same time every day, the employee said. 

Veteran Rep. Louis Stokes Dies, Dad to Two Journalists

Louis Stokes, a 15-term congressman from Ohio and part of an illustrious family that included his brother, former Cleveland Mayor Carl B. Stokes, daughter Lori Stokes, an anchor at New York’s WABC-TV, and son Chuck Stokes, editorial director of WXYZ-TV in Detroit, died Tuesday. He was 90.

“The older brother of former Mayor Carl B. Stokes had an aggressive form of cancer, diagnosed in late June,” Brent Larkin reported Wednesday for the Northeast Ohio Media Group.

“A proud, personable and gracious man whose dress and manner exuded dignity, Stokes never wanted to be a politician, aspiring instead to become Cleveland’s leading black lawyer.

“But the reluctant officeholder who came to Congress in 1969 left it 30 years later as a towering political figure both in Washington and at home. . . .”

Son Chuck Stokes, whose given first name is Louis, was the subject of a 2007 Black History Month story in the Michigan Chronicle.

” ‘It’s really no big secret who my family is,’ said Stokes. ‘In Cleveland and throughout Ohio, the Stokes family name is well known. I suppose it would have been easy to find work there, but I was raised to stand on my own, not lean on our good name. In many ways working in Detroit has been not only been rewarding, but easier.’

“Easier in a sense that Stokes would never be compromised in writing a story, or reporting, even when his family was the subject of the news.

” ‘I imagine it would have been inevitable that I would find myself having to cover a story or event that my father, uncle or even siblings might be involved in,’ said Stokes.

” ‘Regardless of the tone of the story, or how fair I was, people would read something into it. Working in Detroit has allowed me the luxury of being my own person and standing on my own merits. I have been blessed to have been exposed to the things I have through my family. It has helped shape my view of the world and given me the advantage of their wisdom in my own efforts.’ “

Chuck Stokes is a former president of the National Conference of Editorial Writers, now the Association of Opinion Journalists.

He and Lori Stokes interviewed their father in January for the City Club of Cleveland (video).

For the congressman’s 90th birthday on Feb. 23, Lori Stokes wrote on Facebook, “Happy 90th birthday to my father Louis Stokes. I asked him what he was going to do on last day of being 89. He told me he had some errands to run… Nordstrom and get a manicure. Then he gave me some financial advice. Just another day for him. So many blessings… Happy birthday daddy.”

Smaller Newspapers Typically Have No Reporters of Color

“Last month I wrote about how editors have explained a lack of minority journalists in newsrooms as a ‘pipeline problem’ (i.e., editors claim they aren’t hiring minorities because there aren’t enough minority applicants), but how data collected from colleges and newsrooms across the country rejects this idea,” Alex T. Williams wrote Tuesday for Columbia Journalism Review.

“The problem isn’t a lack of qualified candidates; it’s unequal hiring.

“But there’s another problem: Minority journalists are more likely to leave journalism than their white counterparts. As a PhD student interested in the future of journalism, I wanted to study this issue from a new vantage point. So in addition to looking at retention rates in newsrooms, I also requested unpublished data from the American Society of News Editors (ASNE) to review how many reporters of color a typical newsroom employs. Even with low expectations, the results were surprising.

“Illustrating what many journalists of color refer to as ‘being the only one in the room,’ newspapers with a circulation of less than 50,000 typically employ 0 reporters of color in their newsrooms. While this number is frustrating for a number of reasons, I want to focus on the burden it places on reporters of color when they are hired, and how that burden may affect retention. . . .”

“News One Now” to Compete With Morning News Shows

“News One Now,” the “first morning news program to focus on news and analysis of politics, entertainment, sports, and culture from an explicitly African American perspective,” is moving from 9 a.m. to 7 a.m. ET beginning Monday, Sept. 14, TV One announced on Tuesday.

The one-hour program, hosted by Roland S. Martin, will continue to air live weekdays.

“After almost two years on the air as the only live daily news program targeting the African American viewer, we are confident News One Now is ready to take on the traditional morning news crowd,” Martin said in a media advisory.

“In this uber-competitive news landscape, it is imperative we make available to the broadest audience possible the in-depth relevance our unique perspective provides. We know viewers have a multitude of options at 7 a.m. for their first news of the day, and we believe the diversity of our focus and continual coverage of issues of import to the African America community will resonate significantly.”

“News One Now” has averaged 105,000 viewers per episode this year, according to the Nielsen research company. 

Public Urged to Spread Flower Petals in Bond Tribute

The family of Julian Bond plans a private service in which his body will be cremated and his ashes committed to the Gulf of Mexico, but is inviting admirers to spread flower petals in a nearby body of water at the same time.

“This final request will be carried out in a burial at sea on Saturday, August 22, 2015 at 2:00 pm, Central Daylight Time,” a family statement said Tuesday.

“Since we fully understand and appreciate that many of you consider Julian to be part of your family and would like to be a part of his official home going, we extend the following invitation.

“We invite you to gather at a body of water near your home and precisely at 2:00 pm, CDT, spread flower [petals] on the water and join us in bidding farewell to Horace Julian Bond. This gesture will mean a great deal to us as a family and also provide some comfort in knowing that you share our loss.

“Finally, as we join together as a family to help each other through this time, we are well aware that there must be a public opportunity for all of Julian’s friends, Civil Rights Colleagues, students and admirers to come together in a memorial celebration of his life to share memories and expressions of love and appreciation. We will announce plans for such a gathering very soon.”

The family also said, “Please consider making a donation to the University of Virginia College and Graduate School of Arts and Science “Julian Bond Professorship of Civil Rights and Social Justice.” Your donation will honor his legacy and advance teaching and scholarship of the civil rights era for future generations of students. Donations can be made online.

The iconic civil rights leader died Saturday from vascular disease at age 75.

. . . N.Y. Times Regrets Using “Slave Mistress” in Bond Obit

The New York Times regrets using the term “slave mistress” in its obituary of Julian Bond, Margaret Sullivan, the Times’ public editor, wrote on Thursday.

She said, “Many readers were bothered by a single sentence in the front-page article:

” ‘Julian Bond’s great-grandmother Jane Bond was the slave mistress of a Kentucky farmer.’

“Many readers wrote to me to protest the phrase, on the grounds that a slave, by definition, can’t be in the kind of consensual or romantic relationship that the word ‘mistress’ suggests. One of them noted it wasn’t the first time the phrase had appeared in a Times obituary.”

Sullivan also wrote, “I brought the concerns to the attention of Times editors on Wednesday; they were already aware of the complaints. After meeting with editors to discuss it, the executive editor, Dean Baquet, responded. (Mr. Baquet, it’s worth noting here, made history last year when he was named the first African-American editor to lead The Times newsroom.)

“He said that The Times regretted using the expression: ‘It is an archaic phrase, and even though Julian Bond himself may have used it in the past, we should not have.’ . . .” [Added Aug. 20]

Reporter Says a Good Vetting Would Make Trump Vanish

“I have covered Donald Trump off and on for 27 years — including breaking the story that in 1990, when he claimed to be worth $3 billion but could not pay interest on loans coming due, his bankers put his net worth at minus $295 million,” David Cay Johnston wrote for the National Memo on July 10.

“And so I have closely watched what Trump does and what government documents reveal about his conduct.

“Reporters, competing Republican candidates, and voters would learn a lot about Trump if they asked for complete answers to these 21 questions. . . .”

Johnston, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter, discussed his questions for Trump on Wednesday on Pacifica Radio’s “Democracy Now!”

He told host Amy Goodman, “What I don’t understand, Amy, is not one major news organization has even tried to check these things out. I got one phone call from The Washington Post about this piece, ’21 Questions for Donald Trump.’ Nothing has appeared. And that’s because, in this country, politics reporters cover the horse race, and they do not vet the candidates the way they should. And Trump, if vetted properly, would quickly disappear from the polls. . . .”

Johnston’s “21 Questions” piece continued:

“So, Mr. Trump…

“1. You call yourself an ‘ardent philanthropist,’ but have not donated a dollar to The Donald J. Trump Foundation since 2006. You’re not even the biggest donor to the foundation, having given about $3.7 million in the previous two decades while businesses associated with Vince McMahon’s World Wrestling Entertainment gave the Trump Foundation $5 million. All the money since 2006 has come from those doing business with you.

“How does giving away other people’s money, in what could be seen as a kickback scheme, make you a philanthropist? . . .”

Journalists Seeking Asylum Often Left in Limbo

“Mexican journalist Ricardo Chávez Aldana was leaving his home, his job, and his country behind as he hurried across the border into El Paso, Texas in December 2009,” Allison Griner reported Monday for Columbia Journalism Review.

“Chávez had been covering drug cartels and corruption for Radio Cañón in Ciudad Juárez, and he believed that his reporting had made him and his family targets for cartel retaliation. His two teenage nephews had just been murdered. His family was receiving death threats, and he feared further violence.

“So he and his wife and children slipped across the Bridge of the Americas from Mexico into the United States. There, at the El Paso border crossing, they asked for political asylum and received a six-month humanitarian visa.

“Five and a half years later, his asylum case is still winding its way through the US Immigration Court in El Paso. Chávez had his final hearing before a judge last month. He now awaits a written decision.”

Chavez was one of three Mexican journalists who appeared before the National Association of Hispanic Journalists in 2011 urging the U.S. government to speed up approval of their asylum requests.

Griner continued, “Chávez is part of an ever-growing population of journalists forced into exile by fear of persecution. In June, the Committee to Protect Journalists’ annual ‘Journalists in Exile’ report tallied 82 new cases in the past year alone, based on cases in its Journalist Assistance Program, which offers aid and legal support to vulnerable journalists and their families. The actual number of exiled journalists worldwide might in fact be much higher.

“Reporters Without Borders released its own statistics late last year, indicating a 106 percent increase in exiled journalists between 2013 and 2014. It counted 139 professional journalists and 20 citizen journalists who had fled their home countries, fearing reprisals for their reporting.

“Forced exile is ‘as violent an aggression against press freedom as imprisoning journalists,’ said María Salazar-Ferro, coordinator of CPJ’s Journalist Assistance Program.

” ‘It’s a very easy, very underreported way of silencing critical voices,’ she said. ‘You send someone somewhere else where, yes, they’re able to survive, but they’re not able to continue working, and they’re most certainly not able to continue being critical.’ In the last year, only 2 percent of journalists were able to continue working in exile. . . .”

Short Takes

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