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Obama Cheered, Mocked Over Gun Moves

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AP Says Measures Would Not Have Stopped Slaughters

AP Nixes “Militiamen” Term in Oregon, Favors “Armed Men”

Maynard Institute Is “Reconsidering Everything”

After N.Y. Times Editorial, Cleveland Writer Defends City

Pushback on L.A. Times Editorial Favoring Deportation

Asian Americans Say Court Win Shouldn’t Help Redskins

Douglass: Without Photographs, There Is No Progress

“Why Small Debts Matter So Much To Black Lives”

Challenging Visual Underrepresentation of Africa’s Positives

Short Takes

President Obama grew visibly emotional Tuesday when he recalled the fatal shooting of 20 first-graders and six staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., three years ago. (Credit: NBC News) (video)

AP Says Measures Would Not Have Stopped Slaughters

“The gun control measures a tearful President Barack Obama announced Tuesday would not have prevented the slaughters of 20 first-graders at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, or 14 county workers at a holiday party in San Bernardino, California,” Michael R. Sisak reported Wednesday for the Associated Press.

Among other media reactions to the gun control measures, “Several conservative media figures attacked President Obama for crying as he spoke about child victims,” Oliver Willis reported Tuesday for Media Matters for America.

By contrast, the Daily News in New York continued its crusade against gun violence Wednesday with a front page that proclaimed the Republicans “The Party of Pro-Death” and declared, “The News says: Republican leadership is composed of pandering liars stoking irrational fear. Their answer to Obama’s measured plan to stop crazies from getting guns is simple deceit. All in a blood-soaked race for cheap votes.” Key words were in red.

The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, the Washington think tank on African American issues that has reduced its activities amid financial challenges, nevertheless issued a statement Wednesday on the importance of the gun issue.

“President Obama’s recent actions to improve background checks on gun purchases are important steps in protecting Americans of all backgrounds from mass shootings,” President Spencer Overton wrote. “We should recognize, however, that mass shootings are a very small percentage of U.S. firearm homicides, and that the President’s actions also work to improve the quality of life in communities of color.

“In 2014, African Americans accounted for 13 percent of the U.S. population, but over 57 percent of the victims of homicide by firearm. Firearm homicide was the leading cause of death for African American males ages 15-34, and the third leading cause of death for Latino males in the same age group (and would be second if combined with suicides in which firearms were used). Firearms were used in over 91 percent of homicides of African-American males ages 15-34, and in 81 percent of homicides of Latino males in this age group. . . .” .

Sisak’s analysis for the Associated Press continued, “Obama’s executive action expands mandatory background checks to gun shows, flea markets and online sales, adds more than 230 examiners and staff to help process them and calls on states to submit accurate and updated criminal history data.

“Those measures are seen as crucial to stemming gun suicides — the cause of two-thirds of gun deaths — by blocking immediate access to weapons. But, an Associated Press review shows, they would have had no impact in keeping weapons from the hands of suspects in several of the deadliest recent mass shootings that have spurred calls for tighter gun control. 

“The shooters at Sandy Hook and San Bernardino used weapons bought by others, shielding them from background checks. In other cases, the shooters legally bought guns. 

“In Aurora, Colorado, and at the Navy Yard in Washington, D.C., men undergoing mental health treatment were cleared to buy weapons because federal background checks looked to criminal histories and court-ordered commitments for signs of mental illness. The Obama administration is making changes in that realm by seeking to plug certain Social Security Administration data into the background check system and by helping states report more information about people barred from gun possession for mental health reasons. 

“The suspect in a shooting at a church in Charleston, South Carolina, should have been flagged at the time, but errors and delays cleared the way for his purchase. 

“Though the moves probably wouldn’t have prevented recent mass shootings, Obama rejected the idea that undermines the changes.

” ‘We maybe can’t save everybody, but we could save some,’ Obama said. 

“A look at how some recent mass shooting suspects got their weapons. . . .”

AP Nixes “Militiamen” Term in Oregon, Favors “Armed Men”

“Tom Kent, The Associated Press’ standards editor, shared guidance on Tuesday for how to refer to the men involved in the standoff in Oregon,” Kristin Hare reported Tuesday for the Poynter Institute.

“Kent counseled against terms such as ‘militia’ and ‘militiamen’ and for terms including ‘armed men’ or ‘armed ranchers.’:

” ‘AP content must be clear for readers around the world, and ‘militiamen’ may be confusing — readers might think that the people involved are members of a government-sanctioned paramilitary force who are rebelling against government authority.’ “

Meanwhile, columnists continued to debate whether the group was receiving kid-gloves treatment from authorities compared with people of color, or whether, in the words of headline Tuesday in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, “The Oregon insurrection is more farce than fierce.”

Maynard Institute Is “Reconsidering Everything”

“How do you reinvent an entire organization, while still hanging on to the founders’ original vision? Where do you even start, faced with that kind of question?,” Shan Wang asked Tuesday for NiemanLab.

“You ask more questions, Martin G. Reynolds told me. Reynolds is currently a senior fellow at the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, a leading voice promoting diversity in journalism, and he’s leading the Institute’s gargantuan six-month effort to set a new course for its future programming, following the death last February of its longtime president Dori J. Maynard.

” ‘[Dori] desperately wanted to retool the organization,’ Reynolds said. ‘The last board meeting before she got really sick, it got brought up to the board that something needed to occur. So there were seeds of the project before she passed.’

“Maynard Re-Imagined, as it’s being called, isn’t about brainstorming ways to expand on the Institute’s sought-after diversity trainings, or to shore up its media watchdog columns. It’s starting at the very core of MIJE: Who is the intended audience (or is the more suitable word now ‘customers’)? What concrete offerings should it make available to those audience? How should it be funded moving forward? . . .”

Wang also wrote, “The six-month effort kicked off at the end of November. Members of the Maynard Re-Imagined committee members spent a weekend together at the Arlington [Va.] offices of Politico, along with facilitator Tran Ha of Stanford’s Institute of Design; Reynolds; and the Institute’s executive director Evelyn Hsu.”

He continued, “MIJE, Reynolds believes, can’t expect to lean on the same foundation funding and the people who’ve paid for its training programs. The Maynard mandate to promote diversity in ‘staffing and content’ also needn’t apply only to newsrooms. It could mean promoting diversity on the business side, on the management side, on the engineering end. Tech companies and other large, non-journalism groups are also in need of diversity training. Would Maynard serve those companies, moving forward?

” ‘When the Institute began, it began with programs that were lengthy and immersive. But nowadays, time is at a premium,’ Hsu said. ‘We still have people who ask for our trainings. But we are reconsidering everything from the shape to length to the means of delivery.’ . . .”

After N.Y. Times Editorial, Cleveland Writer Defends City

Columnist Phillip Morris of the Plain Dealer in Cleveland has taken strong exception to a New York Times editorial about his city that was headlined “Cleveland’s Terrible Stain” and began, “Tamir Rice of Cleveland would be alive today had he been a white 12-year-old playing with a toy gun in just about any middle-class neighborhood in the country on the afternoon of Nov. 22, 2014.”

The Times editorial, published Dec. 29, continued, “But Tamir, who was shot to death by a white police officer that day, had the misfortune of being black in a poor area of Cleveland, where the police have historically behaved as an occupying force that shoots first and asks questions later. To grow up black and male in such a place is to live a highly circumscribed life, hemmed in by forces that deny your humanity and conspire to kill you. . . .”

Morris wrote Wednesday, “The headline felt like a sucker punch to the gut from long distance. It painted in broad strokes and took liberal license with the narrative of a town that it does not know well or fully understand.

“The newspaper clearly yearned for an indictment [of the officers] — as did countless national and local residents. But failing to recognize that outcome, the paper offered a thundering judgment, not only of Cleveland’s police department but also seemingly of an entire Midwestern town. I’m not going to lie. The essay — with its national platform — left me apoplectic. . . .”

Morris also wrote, “What exactly did the editorial mean when it declared that Tamir had ‘the misfortune of being black in a poor area of Cleveland’? It’s not a misfortune to be black in Cleveland, New York City or anywhere else for that matter. The essay offered nothing other than an amplified and reckless hypothesis capable of stoking racial tension and hampering civil discourse. . . .”

Pushback on L.A. Times Editorial Favoring Deportation

“On December 29, The Los Angeles Times editorial board wrote a horrific, incompetent and hysterical opinion article titled ‘Why The Obama administration is right to deport migrants ordered to leave,’ ” lawyer Bryan Johnson wrote the next day for Latino Rebels.

Johnson is identified as “a partner at the law firm of Amoachi and Johnson, PLLC in New York. His office represents over 300 Central American children in fighting their deportation by securing permanent legal protection through asylum and special immigrant juvenile status.”

He continued, “Putting aside the cowardly premise, this article’s gravest flaw is that the basis for its conclusion is on its face a work of fiction. Bad fiction.

“I will break it down, paragraph by excruciatingly bad paragraph, starting with the paper’s total failure to comprehend the most basic facts as they have played out in the real world.

“From the start, the editorial leaps to a conclusion based on pure fantasy:

“To not deport those whom an immigration judge has ruled ineligible to remain in the country is to throw over any notion of enforceable immigration law. And that is an indefensible position

“The editorial imputed that ‘immigration advocates’ (without citing . . . one immigration advocate) are opposing ICE raids against immigrant children, toddlers, babies and mothers because their ‘position’ is open borders.

“This is pure fantasy. Who stated that no one should be deported after an immigration judge ordered them to leave? Please, enlighten us, LA Times editorial board.

“The article then reveals in the immediate following paragraph that it has no idea what it’s talking about . . .”

Asian Americans Say Court Win Shouldn’t Help Redskins

A court victory by an Asian American band that won the right to keep the name the Slants is wrongly being interpreted as justification for the Washington NFL team to keep the name “Redskins,” Simon Tam, a member of the band, told Indian Country Today Media Network.

“On December 22, 2015, the Washington NFL team appeared to get an early Christmas present,” Jacqueline Keeler wrote Monday for ICTMN. “In the case In re Tam, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled 9 to 3 that the Trademark Office cannot deny registration of a trademark even if it is considered derogatory. Headlines in the press announcing the ruling invariably linked The Slants’ case as helping billionaire Dan Snyder’s football franchise to regain cancelled trademark registrations for the ethnic slur ‘Redskins.’ . . .

“It’s no secret,” Tam noted, “that the lead judge in these hearings both in the panel hearing which restricted our arguments as well as the one who wrote the opinions, Judge Kimberly Moore, is a huge Redskins fan. A very outspoken one. She’s written papers specifically about the team. So when you look at the written opinion and why she keeps referring to the football team instead of what was actually at hand, one must consider if she had other motives about this. . . .”

“The court hijacked my case,” said Tam, who opposes the Redskins name. “My goal was to develop culturally competent laws and marginalized identities are being silenced because the government is not culturally competent or being lazy. Who [bears] the cost of this? It’s always marginalized groups.”

“Tam’s attorney has pointed out that his appeal differs from Pro Football’s as his was a First Amendment argument and theirs is a Fifth Amendment argument about government seizure of property. He also said: ‘Our case had to deal with a trademark registration, theirs is dealing with a trademark cancellation … it’s subtle but it’s extremely important in terms of what’s being argued and what will most likely move forward.’ . . .”

“Why Small Debts Matter So Much To Black Lives”

“If you are black, you’re far more likely to see your electricity cut, more likely to be sued over a debt, and more likely to land in jail because of a parking ticket,” Paul Kiel wrote Dec. 31 for ProPublica in a piece headlined, “Why Small Debts Matter So Much to Black Lives.”

The story also appeared Jan. 6 in the New York Times SundayReview.

“It is not unreasonable to attribute these perils to discrimination. But there’s no question that the main reason small financial problems can have such a disproportionate effect on black families is that, for largely historical reasons rooted in racism, they have far smaller financial reserves to fall back on than white families.

“The most recent federal survey in 2013 put the difference in net worth between the typical white and black family at $131,000. That’s a big number, but here’s an even more troubling statistic: About one-quarter of African-American families had less than $5 in reserve. Low-income whites had about $375.

“Any setback, from a medical emergency to the unexpected loss of hours at work, can be devastating. It means that harsh punishments for the failure to pay small debts harm black families inordinately. Sometimes, the consequence is jail. Other times, electricity is cut, or wages garnished.

“The modern roots of the racial wealth gap can be traced back to the post-World War II housing boom, when federal agencies blocked loans to black Americans, locking them out of the greatest wealth accumulation this country has ever experienced. More recently, the bursting of the housing bubble and subsequent recession slammed minorities. In 2013, the median wealth of white households was 13 times the median wealth of black households, the widest gap since 1989.

“Earlier this year, my colleague Annie Waldman and I took a close look at debt-collection lawsuits in three major American cities. We expected to see a pattern driven by income, with collectors and credit card lenders suing people most often in lower-income areas.

“But income was just half the story. Even accounting for income, the rate of court judgments from these lawsuits was twice as high in mostly black communities as it was in mostly white ones. In some neighborhoods in Newark and St. Louis, we found more than one judgment for every four residents over a five-year period. Many were families who, knocked off their feet by medical bills or job loss or other problems, had simply been unable to recover. . . .”

Challenging Visual Underrepresentation of Africa’s Positives

“Lagos is an African megacity humming with chaotic energy,” Finbarr O’Reilly reported Monday for the New York Times “Lens” blog.

“Potholed roads and even the city’s superhighways are crowded with traffic, overloaded vendors, earsplitting noise, choking pollution, piercing colors and powerful smells. Extreme wealth is set against a backdrop of grinding poverty, hope battles despair, daily acts of kindness and generosity are offset by cruelty, greed and corruption, and creativity is inspired by necessity because of the city’s broken infrastructure and the looming threat of ruin. Between these extremes, and usually to the background drone of a generator, exist the rich and textured lives of some 20 million people.

“Lagos is long overdue for a book that captures this kaleidoscope of random energy, disorder and color. ‘Africa Under the Prism,’ just published by Hatje Cantz, gathers work shown during the first five years of LagosPhoto, an international arts festival begun in 2010 to reflect African perspectives and realities.

“The festival’s aim is to challenge Afro-pessimism and the visual overrepresentation of Africa as a continent of the dying, desperate and helpless. . . .”

Short Takes

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