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Black Colleagues Moved by Reporter’s Killing

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Fla. Sheriff’s Deputies Arrest Suspect, 19

Harris Urges HBCU Students to Diversify Media

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Fla. Sheriff’s Deputies Arrest Suspect, 19

Journalists of color joined colleagues Thursday in mourning and decrying the death of an Orlando television journalist who was among three killed in a string of shootings in Orange County, Fla., Wednesday.

“Our jobs can be as dangerous as it can be rewarding. Please be safe out here in these streets and know that each of you are in my prayers,” the Central Florida Association of Black Journalists said in a statement.

Jerry Askin (pictured) a Black journalist reporting for Channel 6, told viewers as he stood from the Orlando Regional Medical Center, “I’m trying to keep it together, you know, because we’re people. And in the field when we’re out here covering stories, we’re friends. Even though we’re competitors, we’re friends out here in the field.

“It’s sad to hear about anyone passing away, but it’s definitely sad to hear that you’re just killed while working on the job.”

“Reactions have come pouring in from across the country,” Thomas Mates, digital storyteller, reported for WKMG-TV in Orlando.

TV crews who were also reporting on the morning shooting tried to give medical aid to the Spectrum 13 journalists, the station reported.

“Orange County deputies said Keith Melvin Moses, 19, is responsible for the shootings. He has been arrested but so far has only been charged with the shooting death of the woman. Sheriff John Mina said he expects additional charges as the investigation continues.

“According to Mina, deputies said they initially found a woman in her 20s shot to death around 11:20 a.m. in the 6100 block of Hialeah Street.

“Later on Wednesday, deputies said Moses returned to the scene of the homicide, where a Spectrum News 13 reporter and photographer were covering the story. Deputies said the suspect approached the news vehicle and shot both men before walking up Harrington Street and entering a house, where he then shot a woman and her 9-year-old girl. . . .”

The car was unmarked, so it was not clear whether the shooter was specifically targeting journalists.

“During a news conference, Mina extended his condolences to the community of journalists who cover Central Florida,” Mates continued.

Keith Melvin Moses is taken into custody. (Credit: Orange County Sheriff’s Office)

“ ‘I want to acknowledge what a horrible day this has been for our community and our media partners. I’ve worked closely with all of you and know many of you and know the very difficult job that you do and also the very important job that you do for our community and for law enforcement,’ Mina said. ‘No one in our community — not a mother, not a 9-year-old, certainly not news professionals — should become the victim of gun violence in our community.’ ”

David Harris, Amanda Rabines and Jeff Weiner reported for The Orlando Sentinel, “A Florida Department of Law Enforcement criminal history report listed more than a dozen arrests for Moses dating back to January 2018, when he was arrested on motor vehicle theft and domestic violence battery charges as a juvenile. He pleaded no contest and was sentenced to a year of supervision.

“Later arrests included charges of obstructing law enforcement, resisting arrest, burglary, failure to appear in court, grand theft and repeated probation violations, records show. Many of the arrests came when Moses was a minor and arrest reports were not available Wednesday night.

“Court records show his most recent Orange County arrest occurred in Nov. 21, 2021, when he and two other young men were seen smoking suspected marijuana in a car near Balboa and Hernandez drives in Pine Hills. As deputies approached the vehicle, someone tossed a firearm from the passenger side, an arrest report said.

“Moses, who was on felony probation from a juvenile case at the time, was arrested on charges of possessing cannabis and drug paraphernalia. The case was dropped the following month, with an assistant state attorney writing it was ‘not suitable for prosecution.’ . . . ”

Grady Judd, sheriff of neighboring Polk County, Fla., said, “We would like the news media who report in Polk County to know that if you ever find yourselves in a situation or an area where you feel unsafe, to please call us and we will send deputies out to your location to protect you. We appreciate the jobs that you all do, and we will always be here to ensure you are safe while doing them.”

Comment:

Under current federal law, people under the age of 18 can’t legally buy a gun , have possession of or access to a handgun, and federal law also imposes a gun ban for convicted felons and drug use. 

Florida’s minimum age to purchase a handgun is 21 — but possession can be legal at 18, depending on criminal record and other factors. 

In the case of 19 year old Keith Melvin Moses, it’s probable we can check a number of boxes of why this society should do a far better job of making it next to impossible for a person like Keith Melvin Moses to have easy gun access .


Yes, America’s Gun Violence Problem is at root “Easy Gun Access.” And we’d all be better off or at least safer if our news media made a better and sustained effort to tell the story of “Easy Gun Access.” 

Greg Fuller

Detroit

Keisha Lance Bottoms, White House senior adviser for public engagement, and Vice President Kamala Harris engage with HBCU student journalists. (Credit: White House/YouTube)

Harris Urges HBCU Students to Diversify Media

Vice President Kamala Harris told student journalists from historically Black colleges and universities Thursday that “sadly, there is still a lot that we are counting on you” to do to educate “the people of our country and our world who we are as Americans.” She was accusing the current media of failing to fully tell the story of the nation’s diversity.

Harris cited the example of mentioning the Divine Nine while she was campaigning for vice president, and seeing press corps members look at each other for an explanation of the term, which encompasses African American fraternities and sororities.

Imagine that, Harris said. “People who are covering the [candidates for] president and vice president of the United States not familiar with the Divine Nine. . . . The history of the Divine Nine is very much a part of the history of our country.”

Harris, a graduate of Howard University, is a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha, founded at Howard in 1908 as the country’s first Black sorority.

Vice President Kamala Harris assured the student journalists of the administration’s commitment to historically Black colleges and universities. (Credit: White House)

Harris and Keisha Lance Bottoms, the former Atlanta mayor and a Delta Sigma Theta member who is senior adviser for public engagement, met at the White House with HBCU student journalists. The students represented 47 historically Black colleges and universities, small and large, and asked questions for a little less than 90 minutes.

Many of the questions were about the level of support for HBCUs, with the first question from a student at Florida A&M University, Bottoms’ alma mater and a state school, about the effect on HBCUs of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ targeting of diversity, equity and inclusion funding in higher education.

Bottoms (pictured) replied that she had “debated and debated” whether to speak out, fearing it might be counterproductive, but found DeSantis’ comments “frightening. It’s disheartening. It makes me angry.”

Bottoms said the issue underscored the importance of voting in local elections. “All the funding in the world can’t stop what the governor is doing, and what he’s doing is disgraceful,” Bottoms said. She recalled that the legislature shut down FAMU’s law school, which had opened in 1951, in 1968. The school was transferred to majority-white Florida State and FAMU’s law school was not re-established until 2002.

Harris also told the student journalists they had a responsibility to portray people as multidimensional. In Africa, she said, when people meet each other, they don’t say “pleased to meet you,” but “I see you.” “You have an incredible gift, to see all the dimensions of the people you cover,” Harris said.

Students asked about the effect of racial disparities on climate change and how administration officials keep in touch with ordinary people, questions that led to discussions of environmental justice and assistance to small businesses.

Overall, the vice president said, journalists have the responsibility to alert readers and viewers to such practical information as how to maintain a good credit score, why that is important and how essential blue-collar work will be in transitioning to new technologies.

She said that at HBCUs, students will develop the confidence to hold their own in places where there are few other people of color, as have she and Bottoms.

Harris opened with mention of a T-shirt with the inscription, “I am my ancestors’ wildest dreams.”

“All of you should be wearing that T-shirt,” she said.

Lemon to Undergo ‘Formal Training’

Feb. 21, 2023

CNN Anchor to Return to Work Wednesday
A ‘Desi’ Reporter on Biden’s Historic Trip to Ukraine
Awards Go to Reporting on DeSantis, Israel, Uvalde
Setting Record Straight on Washington Post Black History

Short Takes: Cleveland police setback on transparency; Aungelique Proctor; Monica Roberts; changing complexities in language about race; Cedar Rapids Gazette, GBH News and Maynard Institute; editor urges letters to Cleveland Council about schools; security at Hannah-Jones speech; Black crosswords; search of BBC’s India offices; Bangladesh newspaper suspended; U.K.-based Iranian broadcaster moves.

Homepage photo: Don Lemon apologizes (Credit: CNN)

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The fateful conversation on “CNN This Morning” Thursday in which CNN anchor Don Lemon declared that a woman’s prime is in her 20s, 30s or “maybe her 40s.” (Credit: “Breaking Points”/YouTube)

CNN Anchor to Return to Work Wednesday

“Anchor Don Lemon will return to work Wednesday after he receives formal training for his comments about Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley on ‘CNN This Morning,’ network CEO Chris Licht said in an email to employees Monday night,” the Associated Press reported Tuesday.

“Lemon has not been on the air since Thursday, when during a discussion on ‘CNN This Morning’ about the ages of politicians he said that the 51-year-old Haley was not ‘in her prime.’ A woman, he said, was considered in her prime ‘in her 20s, 30s and maybe her 40s.’ . . .

“ ‘I sat down with Don and had a frank and meaningful conversation. He has agreed to participate in formal training, as well as continuing to listen and learn. We take this situation very seriously,’ Licht said in a memo sent Monday night obtained by The Hollywood Reporter,” Abid Rahman reported for that publication.

“ ‘It is important to me that CNN balances accountability with fostering a culture in which people can own, learn and grow from their mistakes. To that end, Don will return to CNN This Morning on Wednesday,’ Licht added.”

Michael M. Grynbaum and John Koblin reported in The New York Times that Licht’s memo was a terse 75 words sent at 10:37 p.m. Monday. “Mr. Licht’s decision to address the matter in the waning hours of a holiday weekend reflected just how large a shadow the episode had cast over his network.

“A CNN spokesman said on Monday night that ‘the company has a number of resources and Don is committed to our recommendation.’ The spokesman declined to elaborate further, saying the network did not comment on personnel matters. . . .”

Stephen Battaglio wrote for the Los Angeles Times that “The note put to rest speculation that Lemon would be fired over the imbroglio, which has become a major distraction for the network.”


Message from Sabrina Siddiqui of the Wall Street Journal to fellow White House reporters. (Credit: Twitter)

A ‘Desi’ Reporter on Biden’s Historic Trip to Ukraine

 Only two journalists accompanied President Biden on his secret flight to Ukraine Sunday and Monday, and one was Sabrina Siddiqui (pictured) of The Wall Street Journal. Her heritage is South Asian and Italian, she has discussed her journalism at an event promoted by the South Asian Journalists Association and she has written about covering a Donald Trump presidential campaign as a Muslim.

The other journalist was Evan Vucci, Associated Press Chief Photographer in Washington, who delivered historic photos. Siddiqui’s reporting won kudos from her colleagues. “@SabrinaSiddiqui of the @WSJ filed an epic press pool report today on Biden’s trip to Kyiv,” tweeted Paul Farhi of The Washington Post. Mike Memoli of NBC News called Siddiqui’s report “incredible.”

For the Journal, Siddiqui wrote a straight-news story about the visit, but also “Biden’s Kyiv Visit Was Months in the Making“

She wrote there, “Only two journalists, rather than the typical pool of about a dozen who trail a president on such trips, were gathered at Andrews Air Force Base in the early hours of Sunday. One of them was with The Wall Street Journal. They were instructed to turn over their phones and were barred for security reasons to do any reporting on Mr. Biden’s whereabouts in real time. The president was joined by just three members of his senior staff: national security adviser Jake Sullivan, deputy chief of staff Jen O’Malley Dillon and personal aide Annie Tomasini.“

 Siddiqui also tweeted as a new mom (pictured). “Thanks for the kind words, everyone. I was kind of a wreck going into this trip thinking about traveling without my baby girl for the very first time — and that’s when I thought we were just going to Warsaw! Glad Sofia’s mama will have a pretty cool story for her one day.”

Before joining the Journal in 2019, Siddiqui covered the White House and the 2016 presidential election for the Guardian. There, she wrote an opinion piece, “Reporting while Muslim: how I covered the US presidential election.”

“Unlike my friend Asma Khalid, who eloquently chronicled her experience, there was nothing obviously Muslim about me. I don’t wear a hijab and, to most who have a certain image of what Muslims look like, the woman in the sleeveless, knee-length dresses wasn’t it,” she wrote.

“It was perhaps because they did not make the connection that voters often opened up to me with their candid thoughts about Muslims.

“There were many more chilling conversations with those who . . . wished aloud for violence and concentration camps. . . .”

In March 2021, Siddiqui appeared on a panel sponsored by the group Desis for Progress with “groundbreaking Desi women reporters. Join us to hear from three fantastic panelists about their paths, how their identity as Desi women has influenced their work, and the importance of diversity in the newsroom and media,” it said.

“Desi” is a term for a person of South Asian birth or descent who lives abroad.

How were Siddiqui and Vucci chosen for the secret flight to Kiev?

The White House had already announced that Biden was going to Poland. “In short, Sabrina was the print pooler for the planned flight to Warsaw,” Tamara Keith of NPR (pictured, by Ali Oshinskie/New Hampshire Public Radio) president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, messaged Journal-isms Tuesday.

“So, we just moved her up to the secret flight. Evan was the AP photographer on the Warsaw manifest. Because stills don’t normally pool, I did a drawing for which outlet would be on the secret trip and AP won. They are both total professionals and the press corps was served very well by them.”

Keith wrote this note Monday to members of the association:

“As you now know, President Biden made a covert trip to Kyiv.

“He was accompanied all the way by two members of our White House press corps: print pooler Sabrina Siddiqui from the Wall Street Journal and Evan Vucci of AP, who pooled his photos. They were joined in Kyiv by a two-person TV crew from CBS that traveled in the president’s motorcade.

“At the presidential palace, another 9 journalists were added, filling out the traditional 13-person traveling press pool.

“Although presidents and vice presidents have taken secret trips before, they have always flown into countries where the US had a base of operation. In this case, President Biden visited the heart of a country at war, a war in which the US is not actively engaged on the ground and where the US doesn’t have a military base.

“As WHCA president, I advocated at every turn for additional press access. I expressed grave concern that the public’s access to information would suffer without a full pool with the president while in transit. But in the end, the White House, at the insistence of security officials, held firm that only two journalists would be able to travel with the president from start to finish.

“It was WHCA advocacy, in collaboration with the White House and the US Embassy team in Kyiv, that made it possible to build a full pool on the ground to cover the joint statements at the palace and the outdoor walk with President [Volodymyr] Zelensky. I made sure, to the greatest extent possible, that the composition of outlets in that pool matched the manifested pool for the President’s originally planned flight to Warsaw. In the end, our press corps and the public we serve got robust coverage of this historic visit.

“Please share your gratitude with Evan and Sabrina, who took on this difficult assignment without hesitation and delivered superb journalism, as well as the journalists who joined them on the ground in Kyiv. We are all in their debt.”

Migrants, their faces obscured, outside the plane that ferried them from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard, Mass. Florida taxpayers paid for the charter. (Credit: El Nuevo Herald)

Awards Go to Reporting on DeSantis, Israel, Uvalde

Reporting about the killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ “cruel calculus” in transporting South American refugees under misleading circumstances, and the failed law enforcement response to the mass school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, were among winners in the George Polk Awards announced by Long Island University Monday.

The university said of these winners, cited among those in 15 categories:

Black Washington Post veterans gathered in 2012 for the 40th anniversary of the Metro Seven. Top row, from left, Ivan C. Brandon, Sandy Davis, Craig Herndon, Michael B. Hodge, Richard Prince, Leon Dash, Ronald A. Taylor. Bottom row: Hollie West, Angie Brown Terrell, Alice Bonner, Bobbi Bowman, Courtland Milloy Jr. (Photo by Judy Brandon)

Setting Record Straight on Washington Post Black History

In “When Americans Lost Faith in the News” in the New Yorker’s Feb. 6 issue, Louis Menand’s reporting was incomplete when he wrote, “The Washington Post hired its first Black reporter in 1951. He was assigned his own bathroom, and left the paper after two years. ([Author Kathryn J.] McGarr says that the Post did not hire another Black reporter until 1972, but that’s incorrect: the paper hired Dorothy Gilliam in 1961, and Jack White in 1968.)

“Far into the civil-rights movement, the [New York] Times had very few Black reporters. The record of general-interest magazines, including this one, was hardly better.”

It is true that Simeon Booker, in 1951, became the Post’s first Black reporter. He was followed by Luther Jackson in 1959, Wallace Terry in 1960 and Gilliam in 1961.

But Jesse W. Lewis Jr. became a full-time reporter in 1964, later becoming the Post’s first Black editorial writer, Carl W. Sims started in 1965, and William Raspberry, who had been a teletype operator and later a columnist, was dispatched to cover the riots in Watts in 1965. Leon Dash, Hollie I. West, Ronald Smothers and Robert C. Maynard became staff writers in 1967. George Davis, Ivan Brandon and Richard Prince started as reporters in 1968. White, also hired in 1967, was on the ground covering the 1968 uprising in the nation’s capital. Michael B. Hodge started in 1969. Bernadette Carey reported in the late ’60s for the section then known as “For and About Women.”

Penny Mickelbury, Bobbi Bowman and Ronald A. Taylor arrived in 1971. By 1972, there were enough Black reporters for the group known as the “Metro Seven” to take the Post before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on a complaint of discrimination in hiring and promotions. That group included Bowman, Brandon, Dash, Hodge, Mickelbury, Taylor and Prince. Herbert Denton, Joseph Whitaker and Angela Terrell were also on the reporting staff. Roger Wilkins was an editorial writer who began at the paper in 1972, composing Pulitzer Prize-winning editorials about the Watergate scandal.

Short Takes

Flyers seen in the Washington suburb of McLean, Va. (Credit: WUSA-TV)



 

Don Lemon Remains Off Air

February 20, 2022

To Clyburn, Haley’s Age Isn’t the Problem

Homepage photo: Don Lemon on air in his much-discussed outfit. (Credit: CNN)


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Don Lemon, whose outfit as co-anchor on “CNN This Morning” became a subject of discussion that went viral, responded that views on acceptable attire are changing. (Credit: CNN)

To Clyburn, Haley’s Age Isn’t the Problem

“Don Lemon, a co-host of ‘CNN This Morning,’ is still off the air, four days after apologizing on Twitter and internally for describing Nikki Haley on the show last Thursday as ‘past her prime,’ “ Vanessa Friedman wrote Monday for The New York Times. “His comment, while discussing her presidential bid, seemed to refer implicitly to the Republican candidate’s appearance and age in a derogatory and retrograde way, setting off a public firestorm that is still reverberating.

Separately, Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., the House assistant Democratic leader, who is 82, took a swipe at Haley, his fellow South Carolinian, Sunday at the Journal-isms Roundtable (video, 52:51). It was not because of her age, but her indulgence of questionable characters, including the “racist” who introduced Haley at her campaign announcement.

Friedman continued, “Mr. Lemon, of all people, should have known better.

“After all, Mr. Lemon has himself experienced criticism because of his appearance and pushed back, vocally, less than a month before his dismissal of Ms. Haley. It was only in late January that he went on something of a spiel saying he understood what it was like to be a woman and be judged on appearances, because the same thing had happened to him.

“The occasion, back then, was his decision to wear a hoodie with a suit jacket while on the air, which proved such an unexpected sartorial choice for an anchorman that it went viral, creating its own mini-news cycle. Stephen Colbert called out the look, saying he always watched the CNN show but was ‘a little taken aback’ because of what Mr. Lemon was wearing.

“ ‘I know they want to add some comedy to CNN, and this is hilarious,’ Mr. Colbert said. ‘How do you report the news in that outfit? How do you talk about tragedy wearing that? Because what could be more tragic than that look?’

“Mr. Colbert, who generally wears a suit and tie on-air, described Mr. Lemon’s look as ‘a high school track teacher who went for a run,’ then stopped at a nice restaurant and was told he had to wear a jacket, so he ‘stole a jacket from an extra from ‘ “Guys and Dolls.” ‘

“Mr. Lemon responded in turn on his show, though unlike Mr. Colbert, he did not seem to find anything funny in the subject. . . . ” though he said he was a fan of Colbert and added that views on acceptable attire are changing.

Speculation continues about Lemon’s future on “CNN This Morning,” as network spokesman Matt Dornic told the New York Post that Lemon had been scheduled to be back in the anchor chair Monday but opted to take off for Presidents’ Day.

“I thought he was coming back tomorrow but he is taking the holiday,” Dornic said in an email to the newspaper.

However, the Daily Mail reported Monday, “When asked if it was true that Don Lemon is being inched towards the exit door in the wake of this latest scandal, another spokesperson for CNN told DailyMail.com, ‘it is patently false to say Don is being pushed to resign’.“

 

Pastor John Hagee, founder and head of Christians United for Israel, and Nikki Haley. (Credit: Christians United for Israel)

Meanwhile, Clyburn was asked at the Journal-isms Roundtable Sunday about Haley and her fellow South Carolina Republican, Sen. Tim Scott, who is said to be weighing a presidential race.

Clyburn (pictured below at Sunday’s Journal-isms Roundtable, by Sharon Farmer) said he had not yet heard from Scott, but that “All you need to know about Nikki Haley’s candidacy are these two things:

“Number One. When she made her announcement in person, she had the invocation given by a gentleman
who is a preacher, Reverend Hagee. I want y’all to look him up.

“John Hagee. H-A-G-E-E.

 “John Hagee gave me the invocation. This is the man who talked about Ebola being God’s wrath upon us. This is the man who blamed Barack Obama . . . saying . . . the big problem with Katrina is because Barack Obama wanted to divide Jerusalem,” [though George W. Bush was president during that catastrophic hurricane]. . . . This guy is so racist, so when he endorsed John McCain, John McCain refused the endorsement.

“He gave the prayer for Nikki Haley, and Nikki Haley went to the mic, she looked over at him, thanked him for being there, and says, ‘I want to be just like you when I grow up.’ . . .

“And that’s not to get to the fact that Ralph Norman, the congressman from South Carolina, brought her up. . . . He was the one, by misspelling martial law, he spelled it like the name Marshall, and asked that the president invoke ‘Marshall Law’ to keep Joe Biden from becoming president of the United States. That’s who brought her up.

“Those are the only two things you need to know about Nikki Haley, if you have a problem doing research.”

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 “John Hagee gave me the invocation. This is the man who talked about Ebola being God’s wrath upon us. This is the man who blamed Barack Obama . . . saying . . . the big problem with Katrina is because Barack Obama wanted to divide Jerusalem,” [though George W. Bush was president during that catastrophic hurricane]. . . . This guy is so racist, so when he endorsed John McCain, John McCain refused the endorsement.

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