Some on Right Link Reporting to Texas Deputy’s Slaying
Editorial Writer: “Birthright Citizenship” Issue Is Personal
Stories on Va. Shooter Say Co-Workers Offered Help
Wrong Man’s Photo Circulated as Va. On-Air Shooter
Media Coverage of Katrina Said to Fail, Like the Levees
Military Writers Honor Package on Troops’ “Moral Injury”
That Line About Armor and Other Asian American Issues
Sharpton to Keep Same Salary for Doing One Show Weekly
Six Black Women on Covers of September Magazines
Some on Right Link Reporting to Texas Deputy’s Slaying
“Texas deputy Darren Goforth was shot ‘execution-style’ fifteen times while he was pumping gas on Friday night,” Aviva Shen wrote Monday for the progressive website ThinkProgress.
“A suspect, who is black, is in custody and has been charged with capital murder. No motive has yet been revealed for the shooting, but that hasn’t stopped police and right-wing news outlets from pinning the responsibility on the Black Lives Matter movement, which calls for police to respect black people’s civil rights.
“Harris County Sheriff Ron Hickman announced the charges against Shannon Miles in a press conference on Saturday afternoon, speculating that recent criticism of police misconduct had something to do with the murder. ‘The general climate of that kind of rhetoric can be influential on people to do things like this,’ Hickman said. Earlier on Saturday, he remarked, ‘Cops’ lives matter, too. So why don’t we drop the qualifier and say lives matter.’ . . .’
“Soon after, Fox News called Black Lives Matter a [‘ “murder” movement‘] perpetuated by ‘cop-haters.’
Shen listed “five tragedies that black and brown people have been asked to answer for.”
In an opinion piece for yourhoustonnews.com, Rep. Kevin Brady, a Houston area Republican, wrote, “While the national media hotly debates whether ‘black lives’ or ‘all lives’ matter, it conveniently ignores the consequences of carelessly fanning the flames of hostility against local law enforcement. . . .”
Miles walked up behind Goforth at the gas station at Telge and West at about 8:20 p.m. Friday and shot him repeatedly in the back without any apparent provocation or motive, said Harris County Sheriff Ron Hickman, who called the crime ‘cold blooded’ and ‘cowardly’ at a press conference Saturday, St. John Barned-Smith and John D. Harden reported Sunday for the Houston Chronicle.
The article added, “There was scant information about Miles available Sunday and no motive had been identified.”
Barned-Smith and Harden also wrote, “Reaction from law enforcement to the deputy’s killing centered around growing hostility they said they are encountering from the public, the aftermath of a nationwide examination of police practices in the wake of the shooting of an unarmed African-American in [Ferguson], Mo. and other police shootings.”
The reporters quoted Deray McKesson, a leader of the Black Lives Matters movement, responding to Hickman’s criticisms by saying: “I grieve for the victims of violence. It is unfortunate that Sheriff Hickman has chosen to politicize this tragedy and to attribute the officer’s death to a movement that seeks to end violence.”
Alberto Rivera, past president of the Mexican American Sheriff’s Association, said public attitudes toward police have changed, and instead of officers getting help from citizens when they are making an arrest, they are being recorded, the article said.
“With all the media going on, and the Black Lives Matter, they’re making cops seem bad and we’re seeing it on the streets,” Rivera said. “It’s gotten worse where with all the media attention, people don’t want to cooperate. When you have a (traffic) stop, they want to record you, and that’s fine we have our cameras too. It’s one of those things like they say, ‘I don’t trust cops.’ That’s the first thing that comes out, ‘How do I know you’re not going to do something to me.’ “
In the Dallas Morning News, an editorial Monday cited a larger issue.
“So this is our world? A 47-year-old man pumping gas in suburban Houston is ambushed and assassinated, for no apparent reason beyond his Harris County sheriff’s deputy uniform?,” it began.
“Another day, another slaying. Today, a criminal suspect is killed; tomorrow, a police officer falls. Moral equivalency isn’t the issue, as much as the numbing drumbeat of death. . . .”
In a separate editorial Monday, the Morning News commented on the death of another civilian in police custody. “Deputies aggressively restrained Joseph Hutcheson moments after the Arlington handyman staggered into the lobby of the Dallas County Jail on Aug. 1. Hutcheson wound up dead, a victim of a tragedy that could — and should — have been averted.
“Surveillance video of the bizarre episode shows a man behaving erratically but not violently. Yet after one deputy wrestled Hutcheson to the ground, another jumped in and, in the process, appeared to put a knee into the man’s neck and throat.
“The Dallas County medical examiner’s office on Monday labeled the death a homicide with ‘combined effects of cocaine and methamphetamine, compounded by hypertensive cardiovascular disease and physiologic stress associated with struggle and restraint.’
“Talk about a seemingly minor incident careening off the rails into a homicide. . . .”
- Tom Boggioni, Raw Story: Fox News brands Black Lives Matter as a ‘murder movement’ during discussion of slain Texas deputy
- James Causey, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: A critic of Black Lives Matter simplifies a complex problem
- Editorial, Buffalo News: The lack of will to tackle gun violence dishonors our problem-solving history
- Mara H. Gottfried, Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn.: Black Lives Matter chant threatening to officers, police say
- Michael Graczyk, Associated Press: A look at the slaying of suburban Houston sheriff’s deputy
- Philip Holloway, CNN: Police lives matter
- Chenjerai Kumanyika, NPR “Code Switch”: A White Teen Was Killed By A Cop And No One Took To The Streets. Is That A Problem?
- Matt Levin, Houston Chronicle: Ted Cruz blames Obama for death of Harris County sheriff’s deputy
- Courtland Milloy, Washington Post: Cacophony conceals fallacy of D.C. mayor’s plan to address homicide rate
- Kolten Parker and Mark D. Wilson, Houston Chronicle: Video shows San Antonio man shot by sheriff’s deputies while his hands are up
On MSNBC, Beth Fouhy, left, interviews NBC News contributor Raul Reyes and Rebecca Aguilar, vice president of online of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, on the impact of Univision anchor Jorge Ramos’ expulsion from (and readmittance to) a Donald Trump news conference last week. (video)
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Editorial Writer: “Birthright Citizenship” Issue Is Personal
“There’s this vintage George Carlin joke,” O. Ricardo Pimentel wrote for the San Antonio Express-News Sunday print edition. Pimentel sits on the newspaper’s editorial board, coordinates a Sunday commentary section and writes a weekly column on public policy. He has also been president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and editorial page editor at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Pimentel told readers that for him, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s proposal to revoke birthright citizenship is personal.
“The Vatican had just rescinded the ban on eating meat on Fridays. And two guys, sweating it out in a very hot place after they’ve passed away, look to the heavens and shout up in plaintive, pleading voices, ‘Is it retroactive?’
“I’ve got much the same question for the guy commanding the GOP heights at the moment. Mr. Trump, will your elimination of birthright citizenship be retroactive? And, if it is, will I be one of the ‘good’ ones allowed to return after I’m deported? . . .”
Pimentel also wrote, “Yes, in the words Jeb Bush borrowed from the xenophobes, I’m an ‘anchor baby.’ Wait — he now says he was talking about Asians. Whatever. Get used to the idea, Mr. Trump, you’ll need a constitutional amendment to undo the 14th to get rid of us, whether our roots are Mexican or Chinese.
“My parents — born in Zacatecas and Guanajuato — came to this country separately, met in California, married and had three sons. They gained legal residency sometime after I started school. And before and after, they were, Mr. Trump, paying many of the same taxes you do — though perhaps at a higher rate since they didn’t have tax attorneys. Oh, and though this wouldn’t have stopped you from calling them this, they were never unemployed or criminals. This is actually the norm for immigrants. . . .”
On MSNBC, NBC News contributor Raul Reyes and Rebecca Aguilar, vice president of online of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, discussed the impact of last week’s confrontation between Trump and Univision anchor Jorge Ramos on Hispanics.
“It’s almost impossible” to [overstate] the influence of Jorge Ramos in the Latino community,” Reyes said. He cited a Cornell University study showing that Latinos who consume Spanish-language television were twice as likely to vote as those who did not.
Aguilar said Latino journalists were as professional as any others and not automatically anti-Trump. Nor do they all view their jobs as Ramos does. “Everyone has a different style, everyone has a different approach,” Aguilar said.
- Gabriel Arana, Huffington Post: Jorge Ramos Producer Speaks Out About Press Conference Incident
- Fred Barbash, Washington Post: Donald Trump meet Wong Kim Ark, the Chinese American cook who is the father of ‘birthright citizenship’
- Wayne Bennett, the Field Negro: Finally, some right wing suggestions for immigration reform, and Jamycheal Mitchell’s life mattered as well.
- Lewis Diuguid, Kansas City Star: No floor to anti-immigration rhetoric in GOP presidential campaign
- Editorial, Kansas City Star: Birthright citizenship distracts us from the real issues
- Benjamin Fang, NPR “Code Switch”: Roundup: Some Of The Best Thoughts On Jeb Bush’s Asian ‘Anchor Babies’ Remark
- International Federation of Journalists: IFJ backs Univision’s journalist booted out of Donald Trump’s press conference over immigration policy
- Christine Mai-Duc, Los Angeles Times: In taking on Jorge Ramos, Donald Trump may have tussled with the wrong media star (accessible via search engine)
- Ruben Navarrette Jr., Washington Post Writers Group: Self-serving ‘reporter’ helps Trump and damages journalism
- Clarence Page, Chicago Tribune: Trump vs. Ramos: A clash of icons
- Julio Ricardo Varela, the Guardian: Trump’s immigration plan would require every Latino to show their papers, please
- Matt Wilstein, mediaite.com: Fox’s Juan Williams: Ramos No More Opinionated than O’Reilly, Hannity
Stories on Va. Shooter Say Co-Workers Offered Help
“The rambling, 22-page suicide note written by Vester L. Flanagan II called out a series of tormentors who had made his life unbearable: bosses, co-workers, even high school football coaches more than two decades ago,” Dan Morse and Mary Pat Flaherty reported Saturday for the Washington Post’s Sunday print edition.
” ‘I have a right to be outraged!’ the former television broadcaster, 41, wrote before going on to fatally shoot two former colleagues at Roanoke’s WDBJ7 on live television Wednesday and later killing himself.
“But court records and interviews with more than a dozen former co-workers throughout Flanagan’s career indicated the contrary. He was well-liked when he arrived at TV stations. Older colleagues tried to mentor and support him. Complaints he made were taken seriously by superiors. Even his harshest critics seemed to want him to succeed.
“In Savannah, Ga., co-workers put up with his eccentricities, such as when he wore a clown suit to work on Halloween and when he opened an ambulance door to try to interview a car crash victim strapped to a gurney. In Tallahassee — where Flanagan complained to his news director that colleagues were teasing him for being gay — the director met with staff members and told them to cut it out.
“In the southwestern Virginia city of Roanoke, where supervisors were trying to calm co-workers threatened by Flanagan’s outbursts, they wrote disciplinary memos to him that were framed in the context of trying to work things out.
” ‘It’s not like he didn’t have people trying to help him,’ said Michael Walker, who as weekend producer for WTWC in Tallahassee supervised Flanagan. ‘He was really self-absorbed — more self-absorbed than anyone I’ve ever met.’ . . .” Walker, like Flanagan, is African American.
The Post story was one of several over the weekend that examined Flanagan’s background. They left at least one reader thinking that Flanagan had serious mental issues and lacked a network of support to deal with them. His news managers, on the other hand, apparently did not have the contacts to understand from Flanagan’s previous employers the kind of personality they were dealing with.
“We can probably screen more,” Jeff Marks, general manager of WDBJ-TV, told Erik Eckholm and Richard A. Oppel Jr. of the New York Times last week. They added, “though he went on to speak about how difficult it is to get an honest reference from a former employer. . . .”
Wrong Man’s Photo Circulated as Va. On-Air Shooter
“Sherman Lea Jr. stopped at a gas station on the way to Halifax County for a company picnic Wednesday when he got the news of the murders of two WDBJ-TV journalists,” Matt Chittum reported Thursday for the Roanoke (Va.) Times.
“On his iPhone, he saw the grainy image of the shooter captured from slain photojournalist Adam Ward’s video camera. “
“Then he saw a candid picture of the suspected killer himself, seated with murdered reporter Alison Parker.
“Lea knew that face. It was his.
“Before Lea, 35, of Roanoke could do anything about it, apparently before Vester Lee Flanagan II was identified by police as the real killer, Lea’s image had crossed the country via social media identified as the murderer.
“He was miles from home in a place where no one knew him and it seemed the whole world had been told he was a wanted killer. For all he knew, he said, people in the gas station where he stopped were pegging him for the guy in the picture they’d seen right at that moment.
” ‘I felt like a sitting duck,’ he said Thursday.
“Lea, a Roanoke civic activist and owner of New Hope Supportive Services, was himself the source of the photo.
“He knew Parker from a story she did about a basketball tournament he and his father, Roanoke City Councilman Sherman Lea Sr., hosted over the winter.
“In April, he ran into Parker and her boyfriend, WDBJ anchor Chris Hurst, and joined them for pizza downtown.
“He tweeted a picture of the three of them with the message: ‘Big slice night cap @bennymarconis with the hometown favorites @chrishurstwdbj and @AParkerWDBJ7.’ Parker later retweeted the photo.
“It’s seemingly impossible to figure out who first found the photo and offered it as the image of the killer with one of his victims, touching off a wildfire of misinformation. . . .”
Lea said Monday on TV One’s “News One Now” with Roland Martin that he feared for his life and that his Facebook “friends” contacted media outlets, urging them to remove photos that identified Lea as the suspect.
- Duncan Adams and Neil Harvey, Roanoke (Va.) Times: WDBJ shooter’s history sheds light on workplace threats
- Ralph Berrier Jr., Roanoke (Va.) Times: TV stations consider changes to protect reporters
- Denise Clay, alldigitocracy.org: Will the Virginia Shootings Impact Newsroom Diversity?
- Nancy Dillon and Jason Silverstein, Daily News, New York: EXCLUSIVE: Mother of on-air murderer Vester Flanagan had ‘violent outbursts,’ threatened to kill husband and kids, docs reveal
- Oren Dorell, USA Today: Former co-workers say Vester Flanagan had problems with work, anger, racism
- Tammerlin Drummond, Oakland Tribune: A life of promise goes off the rails
- Daily Mail: Vester Flanagan’s father was drafted for the Green Bay Packers by legendary coach Vince Lombardi in 1960
- Dan Friedman and Leonard Greene, Daily News, New York: After on-air murders in Va., lawmakers, advocacy groups decry existing mental health laws
- Elizabeth Jensen, NPR: Gunshots And Screen Grabs: Reactions To NPR’s Coverage Of The Virginia Shooting
- Phillip Morris, Plain Dealer, Cleveland: Murder was the one thing at which Vester Flanagan would not fail
- Tony Norman, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Latest killings should be tipping point
- Leonard Pitts Jr., Miami Herald: Virginia shooter forced us to be witnesses
- Tiffany Stevens and Amy Friedenberger, Roanoke (Va.) Times: Officials say WDBJ attack was ‘well-planned,’ ‘premeditated’
Media Coverage of Katrina Said to Fail, Like the Levees
“This time a decade ago, Hurricane Katrina was about to make landfall in the U.S.,” Dade Hayes wrote Friday for Broadcasting & Cable. “What ensued is well known and unfortunately still not fully surmounted — tens of billions in damage and some 1,833 people killed in New Orleans and surrounding areas.
“It will take at least another decade to untangle the many strands of the story — especially the role of governmental branches from the police to FEMA to the Army Corps. of Engineers. But the media coverage of the storm, to many critics, is nearly as big of a failing as that of the levees that let floodwaters run through the streets. It isn’t easy to say this, but the critics have a point.
“Take the issue of race, so inextricably a part of the events on the ground but yet so often handled clumsily, if at all, by those capturing the scope of the slow-motion tragedy to TV viewers. In our current climate of Ferguson and videotaped police shootings, race remains a bedeviling, thorny part of society, but it is prominent in coverage. Not so, for the most part, during Katrina. . . .”
- Baltimore Sun photo staff: Covering Katrina: Sun photographers remember hurricane’s devastation (video)
- Jarvis DeBerry, NOLA.com | the Times-Picayune: Hearing and seeing Hurricane Katrina; escaping the rising water
- Jarvis DeBerry, NOLA.com | the Times-Picayune: Ten years after Katrina, my old neighborhood is new
- Jarvis DeBerry, NOLA.com | the Times-Picayune: Katrina anniversary brought lots of media attention, interview requests
- Editorial, Houston Chronicle: Katrina: 10 years later
- Tyler Falk, Current.org: New Orleans stations tell their Katrina stories
- Trymaine Lee, “Meet the Press,” NBC: Reporting from Katrina Then and Now: MSNBC’s Trymaine Lee, who reported for the Times-Picayune newspaper during Hurricane Katrina, revisits someone he met during the tragedy. (video)
- Heather Smith, grist.org: People are still living in FEMA’s toxic Katrina trailers — and they likely have no idea
- Tyrone Turner, National Geographic: New Orleans Door to Door (audio)
Military Writers Honor Package on Troops’ “Moral Injury”
This virtual reality prototype is designed to help troops confront and talk about morally challenging situations in wartime. It was created by University of Southern California psychologist Albert “Skip” Rizzo, a specialist in virtual reality at the school’s Institute for Creative Technologies. (video)
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A “powerful, fascinating, thoroughly reported, humanized and particularly well-written, well-produced three-part multimedia package examining the prevalence, complexity and impact of ‘moral injury’ that plagues so many who have fought sought since 9/11″ won a top award from Military Reporters & Editors, the group announced Monday.
The Joe Galloway Award went to David Wood of the Huffington Post.
“Moral injury is a relatively new concept that seems to describe what many feel: a sense that their fundamental understanding of right and wrong has been violated, and the grief, numbness or guilt that often ensues,” Wood wrote in his introduction to the series. “However we individually feel about the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, these enduring moral wounds, to young Americans who fought on our behalf, must be counted among the ultimate costs.”
One section of the package reads, “The moral injury of Sendio Martz involved neither killing a child nor disillusionment with the mission. It was the weight of command responsibility, and the guilt and shame he feels for having been unable to bring all his guys home safe.
“Martz is a stocky man, soft-spoken with a gentle manner. Haitian-born, adopted and home-schooled by religious American parents, he’s got a pretty firm grip on moral values and personal responsibility. That made him a good squad leader, responsible for the lives of a dozen or so Marines. . . .
“It was a young Afghan boy, Martz found out later, who detonated 40 pounds of explosives beneath Martz’s squad. He was one of the younger kids who hung around the Marines. Martz had given him books and candy and, even more precious, his fond attention. The boy would tip them off to IEDs and occasionally brought them fresh-baked bread. One day, as Martz’s platoon walked a routine patrol, the boy yanked a trigger wire from a hidden position. Whether he had been a secret enemy all along or whether some incident had turned him against the Americans are questions Martz wrestles with to this day.
“But the effects of the blast were immediate. . . . .”
Sharpton to Keep Same Salary for Doing One Show Weekly
The Rev. Al Sharpton says that when he shifts from five-day-a-week “PoliticsNation” to one show weekly at 8 a.m. ET Sunday, “MSNBC will continue to pay him the same reportedly seven-figure salary for one-fifth of his previous work,” Lloyd Grove reported Friday for the Daily Beast.
Grove also wrote, “Sharpton said his goal is to compete with NBC’s Meet the Press, CNN’s State of the Union, Fox News Sunday and other such programs to make and break news — with guests as diverse as Obama administration Cabinet officials and hip-hop mogul Jay-Z — although that newsy ambition might be hampered by his plan to tape the show on Fridays rather than do it live on Sundays.
“Sharpton, 60, said anchoring a nightly program along with a three-hour radio show every day — to say nothing of traveling the country to put his stamp on various political and social controversies in troubled communities on behalf of his advocacy group — had been taxing of late.
” ‘I always put myself under more pressure than anybody because at the end of the day, I always want to be successful, so that I’ve got a platform for the causes I represent,’ Sharpton said . . .
” ‘I have a contract,’ he said, adding that it runs ‘for a good while,’ but declining to specify how much longer.
“He added: ‘I’m as happy as I could be.’ . . .”
Six Black Women on Covers of September Magazines
“In another first for African Americans, six black women have made it to the covers of September’s all-important magazine covers: singers Beyoncé and Ciara are on Vogue and Shape, actors Kerry Washington, Amandla Stenberg and Willow Smith are on Self, Dazed, and i-D; and American Ballet Theater’s principal dancer Misty Copeland is on Essence,” Kristal Brent Zook wrote Sunday for the Guardian.
“Tennis star Serena Williams graced the August cover of New York [magazine]. They make up a cornucopia of beauty and talent, all positioned to sell what has traditionally been the most profitable monthly issue for consumer magazines.
“But why now? It’s been 50 years since Donyale Luna became the first black model to appear on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar, prompting advertisers in southern states to pull their business from the publication and angering the magazine’s owner William Randolph Hearst. A year later she became the first black woman to grace the cover of Vogue. In the meantime a lot — and little — has changed. . . .”
Zook also wrote, “Seven covers does represent something fundamental about fame right now — there are a lot of big-name black celebrities making waves right now — what it says about the magazine industry is more prosaic. Magazine covers need to sell and the magazine industry has finally convinced itself that black celebrities can do that. . . .”
Short Takes
- Michelle Morgante, who has served in various news and management roles with the Associated Press since the early 1990s and is currently editor of the AP’s Latin America desk in Mexico City, has been named managing editor of the Merced (Calif.) Sun-Star, the newspaper announced Aug. 26. Last year, the paper had a daily print circulation of 15,123 and an average 393,086 monthly unique digital visitors, according to the McClatchy Co., its owner.
- KWHY-TV in Los Angeles, a MundoMax subsidiary (formerly World Fox) owned by Meruelo Media Group, ended its news programming, costing at least 60 people their jobs, the Spanish-language Hoy Los Angeles reported on Monday. According to an announcement Monday from owner RCN Television Group, “Starting in September, MundoMax will introduce one-minute local and national news briefs, that will air during commercial breaks, anchored by former Noticias 22 Los Angeles lead anchor Palmira Pérez. The Network will be debuting three new series this fall and return in 2016 with a revamped national news format. . . .” [Media Moves account]
- “On Sunday, Hungarian police, using blatant racial profiling, stood in front of Budapest’s main train station, allowing white and lighter-skinned people to pass through but stopping and demanding papers from virtually all darker-skinned people,” Anthony Faiola and Michael Birnbaum reported for the Washington Post. “The policy has led to an expanding tent city, where hundreds of exhausted migrants, mostly from Syria and Iraq, sat on the sidewalk. . . .”
- Friday was the 60th anniversary of the killing of Emmett Till, a black 14-year-old Chicago boy who was visiting his great-uncle in Mississippi during the summer of 1955. “It is said that the boy said something to, and whistled at, a white woman,” Charles M. Blow recalled Monday in the New York Times. He quoted Christopher Benson, a University of Illinois professor: “Before Trayvon Martin, before Michael Brown, before Tamir Rice, there was Emmett Till. This was the first ‘Black Lives Matter’ story. . . . What we come to see with the loss of Emmett is just what racism has cost us in this country. What it costs us still, in the loss of so many bright, gifted kids. Partly through untimely deaths. But also in the limited opportunities many have to excel, because of mass incarceration or even unwarranted tracking in schools. . . . “
- The Online News Association Monday announced its slate of board of directors candidates. They include new candidates Ting Cai, group product manager, Bing/Microsoft; and Alan Soon, founder and CEO, The Splice Newsroom; and incumbent P. Kim Bui, West Coast producer, First Look Media. Voting opens Sept. 24 and ends Oct. 9. Winners are to be announced Oct. 20.
- “Conservative media are outraged by President Obama’s decision to restore the name of Alaska’s Mount McKinley to Denali, the name used by Alaska Natives, lamenting the move and calling it an ‘executive power grab,’ ” Brennan Suen reported Monday for Media Matters for America.
- “Audience data indicate that two segments of the U.S. population will be hit especially hard by the upcoming FCC auction selling off television airwaves to wireless carriers: minorities, especially Latinos, and public television viewers,” John Lawson wrote in a commentary republished Monday by Current.org. “Where these two large groups of Americans overlap will be ‘ground zero’ of this government-engineered shift from free, over-the-air television to a data plan near you. . . .”
- “This week, the politics and news outlet Politico lost two reporters of color, Manu Raju and Tarini Parti,” Brendan James reported Friday for International Business Times. “Those departures wouldn’t necessarily constitute news except, as International Business Times reported last month, Politico operates one of the least-diverse newsrooms among major online news publishers, and is significantly less diverse than major legacy print newsrooms, including cross-town rival the Washington Post. . . .”
- “It was nearly a year ago that Detroit News reporter Darren Nichols suffered a stroke while on the job in City Hall,” Lauren Abdel-Razzaq reported Saturday for the Detroit News. “Now his colleagues are working to help Nichols pay for his medical expenses as he recovers. Detroit News reporter Christine Ferretti, WWJ city beat reporter Vickie Thomas and the Detroit chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists will host a fundraiser at the Anchor Bar, 450 W. Fort Street, on Sept. 25 from 6-9 p.m. Nichols, 44, will attend the event, which is scheduled exactly one year after his stroke. . . .”
- “The PBS NewsHour with Gwen Ifill and Judy Woodruff has launched a yearlong series focusing on diversity, divisions and various efforts and ideas to bridge and heal these issues,” PBS announced Monday. “This series includes a deep look at the enduring and painful issues we will call [Race Matters]. . . . Returning to the NewsHour to take a leading role in this project is special correspondent Charlayne Hunter-Gault. . . . Slated to make broadcast Tuesday, September 1, 2015 is a conversation with Harvard University Visiting Professor Raj Chetty about his research into race and community. . . .”
- “A statue of Jefferson Davis was removed from its pedestal Sunday on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin, days after a court rejected an appeal from a Confederate heritage group,” the Associated Press reported.
- “Hispanic Heritage Month begins on the 15th and while the intention of the four weeks is to recognize the achievements and contributions of Hispanic and Latino Americans in the United States; I do not self-identify as one,” Hugo Balta, senior director of multicultural content at ESPN, wrote for Fox News Latino. “Think about it. No one ever says, ‘Hi, I’m Hispanic. Where are you from?’ We first self-identify with either the country in which we were born in or trace our roots to. Hi, I’m Hugo Balta and I am Peruvian-American. . . .” Balta is immediate past president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.
- “In 2007, a celebration marked the 50th anniversary of Althea Gibson becoming the first African-American tennis player to win a singles title at what eventually became the U.S. Open,” Julie Hinds reported Saturday for the Detroit Free Press. She also wrote, ” ‘American Masters: Althea’ will look at both sides of her journey when it airs at 10:30 p.m. Friday on Detroit Public Television (WTVS-TV). . . .” Check local listings.
- MadameNoire, a lifestyle and news website for black women, announced Monday that Kweli Wright, associate editor, MommyNoire.com, will become parenting editor effective immediately. “The appointment is part of an internal restructuring that will see MommyNoire.com, the standalone parenting site targeting black mothers, become a more integrated part of the MadameNoire brand.”
- In Nigeria, “Popular columnist and broadcaster, Ms. Donu Kogbara, was kidnapped in front of her house in the Nkpogu area of Port Harcourt yesterday morning,” Ernest Chinwo reported Monday for ThisDay. “Although details of her abduction were sketchy, THISDAY gathered that armed men in police uniforms, who drove in a Honda CRV mid-sized sports utility vehicle, accosted and abducted Kogbara in front of her house. . . .”
- “This week, as caste-related clashes in the western Indian state of Gujarat made headlines globally, journalists trying to cover the unrest were among those injured,” Sumit Galhotra reported Friday for the Committee to Protect Journalists. “Among reports of the press being assaulted by police was a case in Outlook magazine of two journalists said to have been injured on August 25 when police charged at protesters in Gujarat, the home state of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. . . .”
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