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Columnist Pitts Handcuffed After Hoax Caller Tells Police Someone Was Killing Pitts’ Wife

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‘It Felt Surreal, Like I Was in a Movie,’ Writer Says

Leonard Pitts Jr. said, “I think anybody who does what I do for a living has experience with some version of this. Technology is cheap terrorism.” (Credit: Marice Cohn Band/MCT)

‘It Felt Surreal, Like I Was in a Movie,’ Writer Says

“More than half a dozen police officers showed up at the home of Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts Jr. in Maryland early Sunday after a hoax call to 911 reporting that someone had been murdered inside the home,” Carli Teproff reported Sunday for the Miami Herald.

“Pitts, a Pulitzer Prize winning writer and award-winning author whose columns appear in about 250 newspapers nationwide, said he was cuffed, questioned and eventually released after officers realized it was a hoax.

“ ‘It was an interesting way to start the morning,’ Pitts said Sunday afternoon. ‘It felt surreal, like I was in a movie.’

“Pitts was fast asleep in bed with his wife when his cell phone rang just before 5 a.m. He said the phone is on ‘do not disturb,’ but if someone calls twice in a row it will ring. The caller ID said City of Bowie, Maryland.

“He answered and was told that police had received a call that someone was killing his wife inside. He was told to stay on the phone and go outside. He complied.

“ ‘I knew that if I remained calm, it would be fine because there was nothing to hide,’ Pitts said.

“Someone on a loudspeaker told him to put the phone on the ground, put his hands up and walk toward a spotlight shining at him. He was then told to drop to his knees and put his hands behind his back.

“He was taken behind a police car where he was questioned. His wife, adult daughter, her wife and his 3-year-old granddaughter were all inside at the time. They were told to go outside, but were not cuffed, Pitts said. Meanwhile other officers searched his home.

“These types of hoaxes are usually considered ‘swatting’ incidents — someone makes a false report in order to provoke a SWAT team response. Swatting, which has become all-[too]-familiar nationwide, is often used to target celebrities and other prominent people. . . .”

Ex-Anchor: My Friend Described Trump Rape

June 29, 2019

Carol Martin Says Writer Told of Store Incident

Hispanics Gain in Local TV Newsrooms

Youngstown Vindicator to Fold After 150 Years

Pundits, Google, Twitter Award Debate to Harris

Editorials Pan Ruling on Gerrymandering

Pa. Dems Train Staff to Think ‘Language Is Power’

Graphic Photo Goes Viral, but NAHJ Sees a Problem

‘Race and Guns’ Among Winners for Diversity

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Carol Martin on New York’s WCBS-TV in 1993. (Screen grab)

Carol Martin Says Writer Told of Store Incident

An African American former New York news anchor confirmed this week that her friend E. Jean Carroll told her at the time that Donald Trump sexually assaulted Carroll in 1996 in a New York department store.

Carol Martin, the first African American female news anchor on WCBS-TV’s noon, 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. newscasts, told the New York Times that Carroll confided in her about the alleged assault in a kitchen conversation that took place within three days of the incident, which Trump denies took place.

“She doesn’t break down easily. There was none of that . . . that she started crying or anything, or nothing frantic . . . . It was like ‘I can’t believe this happened,’ ” Martin told Times reporter Megan Twohey.

Martin’s comments and those of another friend, Lisa Birnbach, author of “The Official Preppy Handbook,” were recorded for the Times’ public radio show “The Daily” and posted online as part of the article by Twohey, Jessica Bennett and Alexandra Alter.

“I said, ‘don’t tell anybody. I wouldn’t tell anybody,’ ” Martin told Twohey.

” ‘These traumas stay with you,’ Ms. Martin said. ‘I didn’t know what to do except listen,’ ” The Times story said.

E. Jean Carroll

Carroll writes “Ask E. Jean” for Elle magazine, which her book publisher calls the longest, currently running advice column in the United States, with 8 million readers. Now 75, she has been steeped in the New York media scene and is author of the forthcoming “What Do We Need Men For?“, in which an 11-page chapter is devoted to the Trump department store episode, which Carroll describes as “not long.”

“The three women didn’t speak about the incident again until Ms Carroll began preparing for her forthcoming book, they said. It became public last week when Ms. Carroll, in a New York magazine excerpt from the book, accused the president of sexually assaulting her years ago,” Twohey reported. “It was the most serious of multiple allegations women have made against him, all of which he has denied.”

Twohey also wrote, “Ms. Birnbach and Ms. Martin, who haven’t previously spoken publicly about Ms. Carroll’s account, say they are doing so now to bolster their friend, especially since she has been attacked in recent days by skeptics and some supporters of Mr. Trump. . . .”

Despite Twohey’s observation that Carroll’s is “the most serious of multiple allegations women have made against him,” the news media have been criticized for downplaying Carroll’s accusation.

“Despite the litany of claims against Trump, Carroll is only the second woman to publicly accuse him of rape,“ Jon Allsop wrote for the Columbia Journalism Review Monday, before the names of Carroll’s confidants were known.

“Her account is graphic and detailed; was corroborated by two friends who recall Carroll telling them about it at the time; and echoes what Trump told Billy Bush, in the Access Hollywood tape, about grabbing women ‘by the pussy.’ You’d think, then, that it would have been a much bigger story over the weekend. Many commentators were furious that it was not,” Allsop wrote.

In a Times story Monday, Times Executive Editor Dean Baquet acknowledged that “We were overly cautious.”

Twohey, Bennett and Alter wrote, “Ms. Carroll invited Ms. Birnbach and Ms. Martin to lunch last year and showed them the chapter depicting the encounter with Mr. Trump and the friends’ discussions about it. (Their names do not appear in the book.) In it, she wrote that she and Mr. Trump had recognized each other at Bergdorf’s,” the department store, “talked playfully about what gift he might buy for a woman, and ended up in the lingerie department, challenging each other to try on a lilac bodysuit. She remembered thinking it would make a great story.

“But in the dressing room, with no one nearby, Ms. Carroll said Mr. Trump pushed her against a wall, pulled down her tights and put his penis inside her. ‘It was violent, I fought, but didn’t think of it as …’ she trailed off, never saying ‘rape.’ ‘I have a hard time even saying that word,’ she said. . . .”

In the recorded excerpt of the interview, Carroll explains, “Every woman gets to choose her word. Every woman gets to choose how she describes it. . . . My word is fight. My word is not the victim word. I have not been raped. Something has not been done to me. I fought. That’s the thing.”

Martin, 70, worked at WCBS from 1975 to 1995. Afterward, Twohey,Bennett and Alter wrote, Carroll and Martin both had shows on America’s Talking, the cable channel run by Roger Ailes, the late founder of Fox News Channel. A LinkedIn profile lists Martin as president of the New York area-based Flying Minds Productions, Inc.

 

(Credit: Radio Television Digital News Association)

Hispanics Gain in Local TV Newsrooms

Hispanics made the biggest gains in local television newsrooms in 2019, and Hispanic local TV news directors are at a record 6.9 percent, according to the latest annual survey of the Radio Television Digital News Association and Hofstra University.

“Almost all the metrics for people of color in TV news are up from a year ago,” reported the survey, dated June 13. “Every newsroom in the top 50 markets had at least one person of color and, on average, they were 30% people of color. Every Fox and non-commercial station had at least one staffer of color, and all the network affiliates were at least in the 90s. All had workforces of color of 20% or higher.”

However, the report added, “Yet the bigger picture for people of color remains unchanged. In the last 29 years, the population of people of color in the U.S. has risen 12.8 points; but in TV news it is up just 8.1. Still, the gap in representation that widened after 2005 has steadily shrunk for the last three years.”

Asked for comment, National Association of Hispanic Journalists spokesperson B.A. Snyder messaged Journal-isms, “While we’re pleased to see a slight improvement, the fact remains the need for diversity and inclusion is not moving quickly enough for our newsrooms to accurately reflect all the communities of the United States as we approach the 2020 Election and Census.

“If the smallest, local newsrooms currently retain the least in representation of minority communities, and even a few newsrooms of up to 50 staff report not a single person of color are on the news team, how do we claim we are acting as the best resources of information to increase civic engagement?

“There are too many underserved communities across the nation needing us to do better.

“While many areas of the report show a slight Latinx representation uptick in Local TV News, the bigger picture for people of color remains unchanged, and if one of us is behind, we’re all behind. It’s bigger than just our community.”

Bob Papper, professor emeritus at Hofstra who has long authored the report, listed these highlights:

Youngstown Vindicator to Fold After 150 Years

The Vindicator in Youngstown, Ohio, the newspaper that first published the legendary civil rights reporter Simeon Booker — when he was a fourth grader — is ceasing production, J. Breen Mitchell and Danielle Cotterman reported for WFMJ-TV in Youngstown on Friday, updated Saturday.

Simeon Booker at his retirement party. (Credit: Hamil R. Harris/ Washington Post)

“144 employees and about 250 carriers will lose their jobs on August 31, 2019, after the [paper’s] last publication . . . .”

The closure of the only newspaper in Ohio’s ninth largest city comes at a time of growing concern about the loss of local newspapers.

According to an Associated Press analysis of data compiled by the University of North Carolina, more than 1,400 towns and cities in the United States have lost a newspaper over the past 15 years, the AP’s Michael Casey wrote in March. “Many of those are in rural and lower-income areas, often with an aging population.”

As Gregory L. Moore, former editor of the Denver Post, wrote for the Pulitzer Prizes in April, “local journalism is where accountability journalism matters most. It is focused on how dollars are spent and how priorities are set on the local level. It is often that base level reporting that becomes the seed corn for bigger national stories with datelines from the heartland and the tiniest suburbs. . . . ”

Mitchell and Cotterman continued, “According to the Vindicator’s General Manager, Mark Brown, he has been trying to find a buyer for the paper since December 2017.

” ‘We never thought we would be in this position, being that it was in the family you didn’t want to shut it down or lose it but the only way we could see this continue is if we found another buyer,’ said Brown.

“Brown adds that most of the revenue comes from the print product. The Vindicator will not be able to keep their website due to Google and Facebook driving down rates for advertising.

“The announcement came Friday afternoon, just days after the newspaper marked its 150th anniversary. . . . ”

The Vindicator has a circulation of 62,100 daily and 87,000 Sunday. It did not participate in the 2018 newsroom diversity survey by the American Society of News Editors. Questions about the newspaper’s diversity were directed to Brown, who was not immediately available on Saturday.

The paper was a champion for wider recognition of Booker, the civil rights-era reporter for Ebony and Jet magazines. Covering Booker’s Washington funeral in 2018, the Vindicator said Booker “was born in Baltimore but raised in the Mahoning Valley and attended then-Youngstown College before becoming the Washington Post’s first black reporter in 1952.”

The Vindicator posted a petition for Booker to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The paper’s Katie Montgomery messaged Journal-isms in 2016, “Reaching the goal of 100,000 signatures on the petition isn’t our biggest priority, although it would be nice of course. It’s more of an awareness campaign than anything else; we’re using the petition as another way to talk about Booker and share his work with as many people as we can.”

Nevertheless, a letter to then-President Barack Obama endorsing the proposal was signed by U.S. Sens. Sherrod Brown and Rob Portman, Maryland senators and 31 members of the House of Representatives, the newspaper reported in 2015.

The Vindicator was the first to publish Booker’s words, when he was a fourth-grader at Madison Elementary School around 1928.

“Spring is coming, this I know, for the robin told me so. Flowers and grass are going to grow, Winter goes with ice and snow,” Booker wrote, Editor Todd Franko recalled for the paper in 2013.

Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Kamala Harris at Thursday night’s debate.

Pundits, Google, Twitter Award Debate to Harris

“California Senator and 2020 Democratic candidate Kamala Harris seemed to captivate Twitter audiences during Thursday’s debate,” Hayley Prokos reported Friday for Newsweek. “Going by mentions and searches on the social media site, Harris seemed to come out of the two-hour event as a winner. . . .”

CBS News added that Harris, “followed by Indiana mayor Pete Buttigieg, was the most-searched candidate on Google in the majority of states by the end of the second Democratic debate Thursday night. For a while, Harris was the top-trending topic in search on all of Google in the U.S.

“Author Marianne Williamson — with unusual comments like her claim her first act in office would be to call the leader of New Zealand — was the most searched candidate as the debate drew to a close, according to Google. . . .”

Harris was also declared the winner by pundits, who cited her exchange with former vice president Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Harris “spurred the signature exchange of the night — a planned effort, clearly, but an effective one — by going after former vice president Joe Biden on his record on race,” Aaron Blake wrote for the Washington Post. ‘‘ ‘I do not believe you are a racist,’ she began, before calling it ‘hurtful’ that Biden played up his working relationships with segregationist senators. Then she worked in Biden’s past opposition to federal busing, talking about a little girl who was ‘bused to school every day, and that little girl was me.’ Others tried to engage Biden, but Harris actually got it done. And she made it personal, speaking about the issue like nobody else onstage could. . . .”

Jon Allsop wrote for Columbia Journalism Review, “The Biden–Harris exchange was not a gaffe, or a stunt, or a corny zinger. It was a substantive argument that crystallized — in five riveting minutes — issues of historical and ongoing racial injustice, the nature of power in America, and the generational and ideological divisions shaping this Democratic primary and, by extension, the possible future direction of the country. As Eric Lach writes for The New Yorker, ‘There are moments in political debates that get overblown, spun, or misconstrued. Thursday’s exchange… on race won’t be one of them.’ . . . ”

“The second presidential debate of the 2020 cycle was the highest-rated Democratic debate in Nielsen ratings history,” NBC said Friday.

“Thursday night’s contest, which featured four of the top five polling candidates, including front-runner Joe Biden, drew 18.1 million viewers over three broadcasts on NBC, MSNBC and Telemundo,” Caitlin Oprysko reported for Politico. “The network said the debate brought in an additional 9 million viewers who livestreamed the event on NBC’s websites, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.

“The first 2020 debate, which kicked off the campaign cycle on Wednesday, garnered 15.3 million viewers, around 200,000 fewer than the previous record holder, the first 2015 Democratic debate between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. . . .”

 

Federal judges recently ruled that Republicans unconstitutionally gerrymandered two North Carolina congressional districts by race. (Credit: Nicole L. Cvetnic and Patrick Gleason, McClatchy)

Editorials Pan Ruling on Gerrymandering

“When North Carolina drew its most recent political maps, state leaders split a historically black university in Greensboro into two congressional districts that critics say diluted the voting power of African Americans on campus,” Jesse J. Holland wrote Thursday for the Associated Press.

“Lawmakers defended it as partisan gerrymandering — a tactic that the U.S. Supreme Court refused to block Thursday. But opponents cite it as a classic example where political gerrymandering can have racial consequences. . . .”

Leading newspapers in North Carolina and Maryland — states whose maps went to the court — editorialized strongly Thursday against the high court’s decision.

“[W]e shudder to imagine how badly political hacks with mapping software are about to fracture our democracy,” the Baltimore Sun wrote.

In North Carolina, the Charlotte Observer said, “If there ever was a time for the Supreme Court to give voting back to the voters, it was now. The Justices had before them two cases of egregious district drawing — one from Republicans in North Carolina and one from Democrats in Maryland. Together, they were a reminder that gerrymandering is a bi-partisan scourge on voters, an affliction perpetrated by the powerful wanting to keep power, regardless of political party. . . .”

Opinion writers in other states also took note.

“The U.S. Supreme Court’s 5-to-4 approval of partisan gerrymandering is one of the most scandalous, intellectually corrupt decisions in its history,” charged the South Florida SunSentinel.

“The ruling leaves federal courts powerless to hear cases about a ruling state political party drawing political lines to help elect its candidates.

“It reeks of cynicism and Republican Party politics even more than earlier ones that gutted the Voting Rights Act and unleashed unlimited political spending by corporations. Those at least left the people theoretically at liberty to reverse them through their votes for Congress. The redistricting decisions announced Thursday from North Carolina and Maryland make that an all-but-impossible mountain to climb.

“If today’s justices had been sitting in the 1960s, Florida’s least populated counties would still control the Legislature under an 1885 Constitution that prevented the Legislature from apportioning itself fairly, even had it cared to, which it did not. . . .”

Pa. Dems Train Staff to Think ‘Language Is Power’

Chris Rabb

Reading from Journal-isms that Maurice DuBois, anchoring the “CBS Evening News,” chose “enslaved people” over “slaves” and “people of color” over “minorities,” among other word choices, Pennsylvania State Rep. Chris Rabb, D-Phila., replied Monday on Facebook.

“I successfully amended the House Democratic Caucus rules to create an Equity Committee in 2018 which has already trained over 100 staffers to understand language is power & must be used in alignment with our espoused values,” Rabb wrote.

“By year’s end, all staffers and new hires will receive an equity lexicon that simply explains why we as Dems do not say/write ‘slave’, ‘minorities’, ‘illegals’, ‘handicapped’, ‘gay marriage’, etc.”

(Credit: New York Times)

Graphic Photo Goes Viral, but NAHJ Sees a Problem

“A photograph of a migrant father and his 23-month-old daughter lying face down on the muddy bank of the Rio Grande added an emotional charge on Wednesday to the immigration policy debate consuming Washington,” Michael D. Shear and Julie Hirschfeld Davis wrote Wednesday for the New York Times, but the National Association of Hispanic Journalists criticized the Associated Press for placing the photo in a tweet without giving readers a chance to refuse to look at it.

“Followers of the Associated Press Twitter account did not have a choice on whether or not they wanted to view the graphic photograph of a man, who apparently wanted a better life for he and his family,” NAHJ said in a statement dated Tuesday and posted Wednesday. “This potentially triggering image . . . was thrust into news feeds without discretion for the viewers or the migrant family the Associated Press exploited. . . .”

The photograph went viral, and anyone who wanted to avoid seeing it had his or her work cut out.

The photo topped at least one network evening newscast, and in Britain, took up the cover of the Evening Standard tabloid. Its headline was, “The picture that shames America.”

As Shear and Davis wrote in the Times, “The image of the tiny girl, tucked into her father’s shirt, her right arm draped around his neck, seemed to crystallize the human tragedy playing out at the border, and it was everywhere: on cable channels, the internet, where the usual political warfare was for a moment tempered by sadness, and on the Senate floor, where the chamber’s top Democrat forced colleagues to confront a blown-up copy of the photo.

“ ‘President Trump, I want you to look at this photo,’ said the minority leader, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York. ‘These are not drug dealers or vagrants or criminals; they are people simply fleeing a horrible situation. . . . ”

The NAHJ also said, “While pertinent to the struggles of migrant families crossing the border, the picture, as the ‘website card’ is both insensitive and disrespectful. It dehumanizes the plight of a community that are risking their lives, and the lives of their families, out of desperation. Pushing people to look at a shocking image that isn’t in context, is not beneficial for the viewers, it is not beneficial for journalists, and it is absolutely detrimental to the immigrant community. . . .”

Kelly McBride wrote Wednesday for the Poynter Institute that she disagreed with NAHJ. “The shocking image joins a small portfolio of iconic photographs that magnify the suffering of children caught in geopolitical chaos, including Kevin Carter’s 1993 picture of a starving Sudanese child collapsed outside a feeding center during a widespread famine, Nick Ut’s 1972 picture of a naked girl burned by napalm in Vietnam, and Nilufer Demir’s 2015 picture of 4-year-old Syrian refugee Alan Kurdi washed ashore in Turkey. . . .”

“It’s irresponsible for a news organization to shield its audience from hard truths,” McBride continued. “While most journalists took some steps to warn their viewers and readers of the upsetting nature of the picture, the methods varied (most TV anchors gave a heads up, while many news sites required a click through). The AP is first and foremost a newswire. And the tweet on the first day was a story about the shock of the photo.

“Going forward, the press will be challenged to use the photo with specific purpose, rather than for sensational reasons. The decision about what, if any, speed bumps should be inserted to protect an audience member’s sensitivities has more to do with tone and the implicit editorial pact a newsroom makes with its audience. It makes sense that NPR didn’t lead with photo, but website readers see the image as they scroll down. The Dallas Morning News ran the picture with an opinion column about the sting of the photo on the sensibilities of one Latino Texas Republican. The Los Angeles Times didn’t use the image on its homepage, but it runs at the top of the story.

“The AP’s initial story and tweet were appropriate for the time and context of the story. And social media is first and foremost a visual platform, and images are the most valuable currency. . . .”

The Poynter Institute did not immediately show readers the photo, instead writing, “Editor’s note: You can see the photo this column references by scrolling to the end of this story.”

‘Race and Guns’ Among Winners for Diversity

Projects involving a female firefighter dealing with unwanted advances, the intersection between race and guns, and an interactive feature on the Jim Crow-era Green Book won awards in the Society for Features Journalism’s “diversity in digital features” category, the society announced Wednesday.

“Voices of Change”: Carlitos Rodriguez

Among those winning more than one award were Carlos Frias, a son of Cuban immigrants who is food editor of the Miami Herald, and Liz Balmaseda, food editor and dining critic for the Palm Beach Post (Fla.) Post.

“Voices of Change,” a digital project on the intersection between race and guns from the SunSentinel in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., is “rooted in the aftermath of the murders of 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School,” judges said.

The project “gives voice to the stories of survivors focusing on black and Latino students, teachers and community members. The work honors those speaking up about how gun violence in the U.S. is not experienced equally and their efforts to address that,” judges continued. “The video testimonies, coming one after another, are extremely powerful.” Photos and videos were by Mike Stocker; reporting by Doreen Christensen; development by Yiran Zhu.

“Fuel, Oxygen and Heat,” winner in the diversity category for the smallest circulation class, was written by Emily Wolfe of the Montana [Mountain] Outlaw. “Wolfe takes readers into the heat of the action, and she shows what it feels like to be at the scene of a fire — and to be a female firefighter dealing with unwanted advances,” the judges said.

“Traveling While Black: Some Americans Are Afraid to Explore Their Own Country, Concerns that Evoke the Jim Crow-Era Green Book” was produced by Rhonda Colvin, Ashleigh Joplin and Jorge Ribas of the Washington Post. It won for diversity in the largest circulation category. “The graphics are enlightening — and frightening — and the stories heartbreaking. We appreciated the time the team spent gathering these stories to show how racism exists, past and present. The illustrated videos were a nice touch,” the judges said.

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Russ Ewing (Credit: Chicago Sun-Times)

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