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Bodyguards Hired for Trump Reporters

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Updated Aug. 11

Journalists More Willing to Discuss Threats

. . . Boston Globe Leads National Response to Trump

. . . Capehart Relates to Trump’s Attack on Lemon

26% Say President Should Be Able to Close Media

NPR Defends Interview With Hate Group Leader

Washington Post Defends Story on White Workers

Chastened Sports Radio Host Appears Before AAJA

. . . AAJA Opens Convention With 750 Attendees

Omarosa Said to Have Secretly Recorded Trump

Michelle Ferrier Named J-Dean at FAMU

Plenty of #blackgirlmagic on Magazine Covers

Tamron Hall to Develop Disney/ABC Talk Show

Color of Change Claims Some Credit for End of Merger

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Jim Acosta of CNN has frequently clashed with President Trump’s press secretaries. (Credit: Twitter)

Journalists More Willing to Discuss Threats

“Notebooks, mics, cameras, hairspray — those are all things TV reporters are used to having with them at political rallies. Now, in the age of President Donald Trump, they’ve added another: security guards,” Edward-Isaac Dovere reported Thursday for Politico.

“The networks are employing them, according to reporters, at Trump’s high-octane political rallies, where the media often serves as the No. 1 rhetorical punching bag.

“Last weekend, NBC News White House correspondent Geoff Bennett posted a picture on Instagram of himself with a member of the NBC security detail at Trump’s Ohio rally, commenting, ‘We need security guards when covering rallies hosted by the President of the United States. Let that sink in.’ Meanwhile, ABC News reporter Tara Palmeri tweeted and wrote about covering the Ohio rally, ‘for the first time with a bodyguard.’

“Networks deployed security at Trump events as far back as the 2016 campaign. But in the wake of the shooting in the Capital Gazette newsroom in Annapolis, Maryland, and with the president ramping up both his rally schedule and his rhetoric against the media — he has tweeted that reporters are the ‘enemy of the people’ five times in the past month, while he’d used the line just twice on Twitter before that — news outlets now find themselves increasingly facing the question of whether they’re doing enough to keep journalists safe.

“And reporters are starting to discuss the threats they face more often. . . .”

. . . Boston Globe Leads National Response to Trump

“The Boston Globe is proposing a coordinated editorial response from publications across the U.S. to President Donald Trump‘s frequent attacks on the news media,” Bob Salsberg reported Friday for the Associated Press.

Marjorie Pritchard

” ‘We are not the enemy of the people,’ said Marjorie Pritchard, a deputy managing editor of The Boston Globe, referring to a characterization of journalists that Trump has used in the past. . . .

“The Globe has reached out to editorial boards nationwide to write and publish editorials on Aug. 16 denouncing what the newspaper called a ‘dirty war against the free press.’

“As of Friday, Pritchard, who oversees the Globe’s editorial page, said about 70 outlets had committed to editorials so far, with the list expected to grow. The publications ranged from large metropolitan dailies, such as the Houston Chronicle, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Miami Herald and Denver Post, to small weekly papers with circulations as low as 4,000.

“The newspaper’s request was being promoted by industry groups such as the American Society of News Editors and regional groups like the New England Newspaper and Press Association. It suggested editorial boards take a common stand against Trump’s words regardless of their politics, or whether they generally editorialized in support of or in opposition to the president’s policies.

” ‘Our words will differ. But at least we can agree that such attacks are alarming,’ the appeal stated, acknowledging that newspapers were likely to take different approaches. . . .”

. . . Capehart Relates to Trump’s Attack on Lemon

“CNN anchor Don Lemon revealed that in 2011, then-private citizen Donald Trump once branded him a ‘racist.’ “ Jonathan Capehart wrote Thursday for the Washington Post. “Why? ‘I was racist,’ the African American journalist said Tuesday, ‘because of the way that I challenged him.’ Funny, Trump did the same thing to me four years later. But I’ll get to that in a minute.

“Lemon found himself revisiting that moment seven years later thanks to a racially tinged Twitter stink-bomb Trump lobbed last Friday after hate-watching Lemon’s interview with LeBron James about his new school in Akron, Ohio. In that sit-down, the basketball phenom understandably had nothing nice to say about Trump. So, the president of the United States lashed out.

“Lemon interviewed Trump on May 1, 2011, and challenged Trump on his views on race and the promotion of the racist birther against then-President Barack Obama. The on-air conversation was fine. Lemon recalled after that interview, an irked Trump ‘vowed he’d never come back and do an interview with me because I was racist.’

“When I read the item about all this in The Post’s Reliable Source on Thursday, I had a sense of deja vu. Trump announced his candidacy on June 16, 2015. The same day he said Mexico was sending ‘rapists’ over the U.S. southern border. By July 6, I’d seen and heard enough and wrote a post decrying Trump’s retweet (and then deletion) of an offensive dig directed at former Florida governor Jeb Bush:

That he retweeted such an offensive comment speaks ill of his judgment. That he would get so personal with a rival speaks ill of his temperament. That he felt comfortable endorsing such a hateful remark speaks ill of the GOP, which has turned a blind eye to this low-boil hate for so long that it has lost all ability to squelch it.

“Well, that didn’t go over well with the Queens-born builder. As was his wont, Trump had my piece printed out, then he scribbled out a quick missive atop it and had a PDF sent to me.

Jonathan — You are the racist, not I. Get rid of your “hate.” Best wishes …

(Credit: Jonathan Capehart)

“Trump’s response was laughable then. Three years later — more than 18 months into his presidency — such a remark remains stunning. . . .”

26% Say President Should Be Able to Close Media

“Even if they are not ‘fake news’ or ‘the enemy of the people’, it is clear that the reputation of the news media is under siege,” the Ipsos Public Affairs research practice reported Tuesday. “According to the General Social Survey, the number of Americans with some or a great deal of trust in the press has dropped 30 percentage points since the late 1970s.

“Ipsos recently conducted a survey with the American public to better understand how Americans currently view the press and public support for efforts to restrict journalism. While we found that the large majority of Americans support the concept of the 1st Amendment, there are worrying signs that freedom of the press might be conditional to many people.

“First off, the good news. The large majority of Americans, 85%, agree that the ‘Freedom of the press is essential for American democracy.’

“Additionally, two-thirds (68%) say that ‘reporters should be protected from pressure from government or big business interests.’ Majorities of both Democrats and Republicans agree with these two statements signaling deep support for the concept of freedom of the press.

“Some of the limits of public support for freedom of the press are made stark with a quarter of Americans (26%) saying they agree ‘the president should have the authority to close news outlets engaged in bad behavior,’ including a plurality of Republicans (43%). Likewise, most Americans (72%) think ‘it should be easier to sue reporters who knowingly publish false information.’

“Unanimity starts to break down as we ask more grounded questions. . . .”

MSNBC’s Trymaine Lee, right, and the New York Times’ John Eligon took a two-week journey through the South to understand the deep connections between the white South and their Confederate monuments. The results can be seen on nbc.com and in the Times. (Credit: NBC News and New York Times)

NPR Defends Interview With Hate Group Leader

“Sunday’s [white supremacist] rally in the shadow of the White House is being organized by Jason Kessler, who also led last year’s C’ville rally,” Brian Stelter reported Friday for his “Reliable Sources” newsletter, referring to Charlottesville, Va.

“He was interviewed on NPR’s ‘Morning Edition’ by co-host Noel King on Friday, and there was an uproar about his appearance.

“Aaron Rupar of ThinkProgress called it a ‘disaster,‘ pointing out that a Black Lives Matter activist was interviewed right afterward, ‘a setup implying that white supremacists and people advocating for racial justice are two sides of the same coin.’ Slate’s Jamelle Bouie said the interview was ‘absolute journalistic malpractice,’ and later added, ‘To repeat a point I make a lot on here, “why can’t you just talk to white supremacists” is a question you ask when you think of racism as an error of processing and not a deeply-held ideology.’

“In response to some of the criticism, King tweeted that ‘Morning Edition’ ‘thought long and hard before airing this.’ When I reached out to comment, an NPR spokeswoman stood up for the segment: Interviewing people ‘does not mean NPR is endorsing one view over another. Our job is to present the facts and the voices that provide context on the day’s events, not to protect our audience from views that might offend them.’

“What NPR articulated there is a common POV among journalists. But here’s the counterpoint from [The Guardian’s Lois] Beckett:

“In the 1920s, a series of newspaper investigations helped the Ku Klux Klan gain hundreds of thousands of new members. The stories were intended to expose the Klan. Instead they helped massively increase its membership and its political power.” She recommended historian Felix Harcourt’s account of how this happened…”

Heaven Engle, 20, and her boyfriend, Venson Heim, 25, sit in the break room at the Bell & Evans Plant 2 facility in Fredericksburg, Pa., before the start of their shift. (Credit: Michael S. Williamson/Washington Post) (screen grab)

Washington Post Defends Story on White Workers

The Washington Post is defending a story about resentful white workers at a Pennsylvania chicken plant who find themselves in the minority among a growing number of Latino workers.

“On Monday, The Washington Post published a story by Terrence McCoy called ‘White, and in the minority,‘ ” Latino Rebels wrote Aug. 1, echoing sentiments uttered by other Latino journalists on social media. “Under the headline, it also published this: ‘She speaks English. Her co-workers don’t. Inside a rural chicken plant, whites struggle to fit in.’ . . .”

The critique also said, “McCoy makes us all want to take out the tissues and cry for our two white tragic heroes (seriously, that’s how it reads), but it’s McCoy’s ridiculous depictions of the ‘foreign’ Latino workers (who lack any humanity in any part of the piece) that stand out, while [Heaven] Engle and [Venson] Heim (even with their racism) come across as these misunderstood figures who need sympathy.

“Fuck sympathy, especially when, in his attempt to ask the serious question of what a changing demographic looks like in the U.S., McCoy does nothing to humanize anyone else in his story except for Engle and Heim. In fact, McCoy does a really fantastic job in presenting the Latino workers in the story as dangerous, distant, cliquey and yes, threatening. . . .”

Asked to comment, Post spokeswoman Shani George replied Aug. 3, “The Washington Post has a long tradition of narrative reporting on the experiences of immigrants and minorities in America, as recent work by a number of Post reporters vividly demonstrates. Many of their stories recount the experiences of immigrants as they adapt to America and confront discrimination, shifting policies and other challenges.

“Terrence McCoy’s story captured the perspective of those who feel displaced by demographic change, by conveying what it is like for two white Americans who must themselves adapt to a new America. McCoy portrays their fear, resentment and xenophobia — as well as their responses to the attempts of their Latino co-workers to interact with them. McCoy’s work will continue to explore the emergence of a multicultural majority in America.”

Anne Vasquez, a former managing editor of the South Florida SunSentinel who wrote her own critique on medium.com, messaged Journal-isms, “The story of the growing white minority is absolutely worth telling. It’s the story’s execution that fell disappointingly short.”

The story was mentioned briefly in a session at the Asian American Journalists Association convention in Houston. Corinne Chin of the Seattle Times’ Diversity and Inclusion Task Force made the connection after noting that the task force had dissected a much-criticized New York Times piece from last November, “The Nazi Next Door,” which critics said had attempted to “normalize” extremists.

Chastened Sports Radio Host Appears Before AAJA

Christian Fauria with the Boston Globe’s Shirley Leung. (Credit: Richard Prince)

In February, Christian Fauria, a former NFL player who is now a midday host on Boston’s WEEI sports radio, was suspended for five days after mocking New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady’s agent with a racially insensitive Asian accent.

On Friday, a chastened Fauria appeared before the Asian American Journalists Association on a panel titled “Changing the Game of Racial Ignorance Towards Asians in Media: Learning from the WEEI Incident.”

“In today’s climate of heightened awareness, ignorance can make a seemingly innocent remark offensive and the backlash can be explosive,” the booklet for the annual convention, held this year at Houston’s Marriott Marquis hotel, observes.

The subject of the 75-minute session would be an instructive case study for anyone studying responses to media transgressions on race.

Some salient points:

Fauria said he recognized immediately that he had crossed a line. He contacted the target of his insult, Don Yee, for a conversation that resulted in Fauria’s appearance before AAJA. “Don really inspired me,” Fauria said. He again apologized profusely.

That Fauria is mixed race and describes his four children with his first wife as Asian American — of Japanese and Korean ancestry — did not prevent him from using a stereotypical Asian accent in his bit. To explain to his family what led to his suspension, Fauria said he played audio of his remarks “and one of my daughters ran off crying. They were very upset. It was a learning experience for all of us,” he said.

Asked by an audience member to define his “mixed race,” Fauria said he had white, Native American (Choctaw Indian), black, Italian and Irish blood. His kids additionally have German, French, Japanese and Korean ancestry.

Yee is of Chinese descent, was born in the United States, and speaks English without an Asian accent. What Fauria did is “the worst thing that can happen to an Asian American,” Boston Globe columnist Shirley Leung, another panelist, said. Mocking his or her speech, real or imagined, is a signal that “they are a foreigner and will never be treated as an American. I’m first generation. My parents are immigrants,” Leung said. Her parents told her “you will always be treated as a foreigner.”

Such “joking” also has been called the equivalent of blackface and minstrelsy.

Media outlets contribute to the racial character of a city, panelists maintained. Although Boston is now majority-minority, it still maintains a reputation as racist, Leung said. “If Boston is a racist town, in part is it because of WEEI?” she asked.

Jonathan Choe (credit: Yi-Chin Lee/Houston Chronicle)

Allies are important, said Jonathan Choe of WBTS-TV, known as NBC Boston, a startup that he said has “the highest number of Asian Americans in the entire market.”

But locally, after stories about Fauria’s gaffe appeared in such national media as Deadspin and ESPN, “nobody was (reporting) this story. There wasn’t a single person in Boston who was going to condemn this on the record. AAJA New England “was the only Asian American group in the state of Massachusetts to condemn this on the record.”

Eventually, Choe said, public radio stations WBUR and WGBH pursued the subject.

Later, Choe invoked the spirit of the now-defunct Unity: Journalists of Color coalition, which originally consisted of black, Hispanic, Asian American and Native American journalism associations.

“I was really disappointed that we didn’t have the Urban League, the NAACP, the blacks and Hispanics to back us up,” Choe told the group. “There is strength in numbers. Remember Unity.”

He did not mention the Boston Association of Black Journalists, believing them not to be very active, Choe said. Gary Washburn, president of the Boston Association of Black Journalists, responded to a Journal-isms query Saturday messaging, “We dealt with Joy [Nakrin] of the local AAJA chapter and retweeted their statement regarding Fauria’s comments.”

Leung, who writes a business column in the Globe, had called for an advertiser boycott of WEEI and said she received substantial pushback from readers and those on social media who did not think Fauria’s offense was so grave. After all, don’t people make fun of Italians or Irish people? “We don’t take them to task,” they said. For some advertisers, however, “my columns were the last straw for them.”

Choe noted that Asian Americans who used to leave Boston after attending school there are now remaining in the city to work in the biotech field, and that their buying power is increasingly important.

More than Fauria’s apology, Cheung argued, structural change was necessary at the station. “You have to look at the diversity of hosts on air. Do you have a black host? An Asian American host?” she asked Fauria. “That’s another way you’re committed to diversity. Also, women [hosts]. I feel physically sick when I listen to the audio [of Fauria’s gag]. What if you had a woman there or another person of color?”

Fauria said that David Field, president and chief executive of parent company Entercom, “really took a hands-on approach” in responding to the controversy.

In February, the station closed for a day of sensitivity training and plans another such session. “I’m proud that we’re obviously on the ground floor,” Fauria said. “We’re going to get better and [be] part of the learning process.”

Choe repeated several times that he believed Fauria’s sincerity. But he also told the group, “Asian Americans are saying if it happens again, we know now how to organize.”

. . . AAJA Opens Convention With 750 Attendees

The Asian American Journalists Association said it had about 750 attendees Thursday as it began its 2018 convention in Houston, preparing to elect a new president and hearing that it is financially healthy.

Michelle Ye Hee Lee, a Guam-raised reporter on the national political enterprise and accountability team at the Washington Post, is running unopposed for national president in an organization that current president Yvonne Leow told a membership meeting had 1,485 members on July 8. Some came from Japan or Hong Kong to attend the convention. Comparable figures from 2016 showed AAJA with 1,118 total members, with 838 convention attendees in 2015.

In what Leow declared “the year of the member,” board members announced these awards:

Other activities included a private screening Wednesday night of the movie “Crazy Rich Asians,” to be released in the United States this coming Wednesday.

The gala scholarship and awards banquet Saturday featured question-and-answer sessions with student journalists Christy Ma and Nikhita Nookala, seniors at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., scene of one of the deadliest mass shootings in modern history on Feb. 14; and Angela Kang, showrunner and chief content officer of the hit AMC cable series “The Walking Dead.”

Neither student journalist said she plans to pursue journalism in college, and both said the newspaper staff decided not to name the shooter after an initial reference in order to deny him the fame or infamy he sought. They said emotions were too raw to answer some of the questions their professional counterparts were asking, and praised some and called out others for their varying degrees of sensitivity.

Omarosa Said to Have Secretly Recorded Trump

“Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former personal attorney and fixer, isn’t the only one with secretly recorded audio of the president,” Lachlan Markay, Asawin Suebsaeng and Maxwell Tani wrote Wednesday for the Daily Beast.

Bryan Monroe

“Multiple sources with direct knowledge of the situation tell The Daily Beast that Omarosa Manigault-Newman, the infamous former Apprentice star who followed Trump to the White House, secretly recorded conversations with the president — conversations she has since leveraged while shopping her forthcoming ‘tell-all’ book, bluntly titled UNHINGED.

“For months, it has been rumored that Manigault had clandestinely recorded on her smartphone ‘tapes’ of unspecified private discussions she had in the West Wing. Audio actually does exist, and even stars Manigault’s former boss.

“One person confirmed to The Daily Beast they had heard at least one of her recordings featuring President Trump. Multiple sources familiar with the ‘Omarosa tapes’ described the recorded conversations between Trump and Manigault as anodyne, everyday chatter, but said they did appear to feature Trump’s voice, either over the phone or in-person. . . .”

The book’s contents might surprise, even shock some, but not Bryan Monroe, a former president of the National Association of Black Journalists.

“We’ve been friends for more . . . than a decade and I have been an editor and personal advisor on the project,” Monroe messaged,, referring to Manigualt-Newman. Monroe is Verizon chair and professor at Temple University.

The book is due on Tuesday.

Michelle Ferrier Named J-Dean at FAMU

Michelle Ferrier, Ph.D., an associate professor at the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University, has been named dean of the School of Journalism & Graphic Communication at Florida A&M University, FAMU announced Wednesday.

Michelle Ferrier

“I am delighted to be joining FAMU in this role. We are immersed in a digital culture that has transformed journalism and graphic communications in deep ways. My mission is to grow our graduates to be leaders and innovators in this new landscape that create inclusive and representative media,” Ferrier said in the announcement.

At Ohio University, Ferrier was named one of the top 20 journalism innovation educators for 2018. She is also founder of TrollBusters.com, “a just-in-time rescue service for writers and journalists experiencing online harassment,” the announcement said.

Ann Wead Kimbrough was dean of the school from 2012 to 2017. She was replaced by interim dean Dhyana Ziegler.

Vogue’s September cover

Plenty of #blackgirlmagic on Magazine Covers

“Beyoncé said it herself, in her own words, while reflecting on her historic Vogue cover and spread,” Lisa Respers France reported Wednesday for CNN.

” ‘When I first started, 21 years ago, I was told that it was hard for me to get onto covers of magazines because black people did not sell,’ she said in a personal reflection for the iconic magazine. ‘Clearly, that has been proven a myth.’

“Clearly, indeed.

“Looking across the spectrum of magazine covers this month, there is plenty of #blackgirlmagic.

“Joining Beyoncé, who is on the cover of the American Vogue that dropped Monday, is singer and actress Rihanna, who is on the cover of British Vogue, and Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o, on the cover of Porter magazine.

” ‘Blackish’ star Tracee Ellis Ross is on the September cover of Elle Canada, and actresses Zendaya and Tiffany Haddish are featured on the covers of Marie Claire and Glamour, respectively. . . .”

Tamron Hall to Develop Disney/ABC Talk Show

Tamron Hall

“Former ‘Today’ co-host Tamron Hall has signed a deal to develop and host a new daytime talk show for Disney/ABC, the company announced Wednesday,” Stephen Battaglio wrote Wednesday for the Los Angeles Times.

“The program is to be syndicated on TV stations starting in fall 2019.

“Hall had been a popular fixture for years at NBC News, where she anchored a daily program on cable network MSNBC from 2007 to 2017. She was also a co-host of the 9 a.m. hour of its morning franchise ‘Today’ from 2014 to 2017. The role made her the first African American woman to serve as a host of ‘Today’ in the program’s more than six-decade history. . . .”

Color of Change Claims Some Credit for End of Merger

“Tribune Media has filed a lawsuit against Sinclair Broadcast Group over their failed merger and is seeking $1 billion in damages,” Variety reported Thursday.

“Tribune bailed out of the long-pending sale agreement on Thursday in the face of opposition from the FCC and questions about whether Sinclair tried to mislead the government with its divestiture plan, in which it sought to sell some stations to parties close to Sinclair. . . .”

The online civil rights group Color of Change claimed some of the credit.

“Sinclair Broadcast Group is a right-wing corporation that owns around 200 TV stations that reach 40% of U.S. households and takes their talking points directly from the Trump administration,” it had said in a petition urging local advertisers to boycott the company. “With their uncritical parroting of half-truths, misinformation, and outright lies, Sinclair furthers the white [supremacists’] rhetoric of the current administration and creates toxic media narratives that are destructive to Black communities. . . .”

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