In Debate, Truth, Empathy in Short Supply
Welker Is Latest Target of N.Y. Post Smears
Whitlock Talks to Trump, Says Black Men Relate
Days to Retire From Philadelphia Inquirer
In Debate, Truth, Empathy in Short Supply
President Trump’s stance on such issues as the separation of immigrant children from their parents, his characterization of Black Lives Matter as a hate group and his failure to demonstrate that he understood why Black parents give their children “the talk” about police brutality contributed to Trump’s losing the second and final presidential debate to Democrat Joe Biden, according to commentators Thursday night.
The Republican was credited with toning down his rude performance in the first debate Sept. 29, where he constantly interrupted and talked over Biden, but three instant polls showed that most debate-watchers thought Biden prevailed again: 54 percent to 35 percent in a YouGov poll, 53 percent to 39 percent in CNN’s survey and 52 percent to 41 percent in a Data for Progress tally.
Kristen Welker of NBC News, the first Black woman to moderate a presidential debate since Carole Simpson of ABC News in 1992, won praise for her handling of her duties, contrasting with Chris Wallace of Fox News, who lost control of the first Trump-Biden matchup.
“Kudos to @kwelkernbc for a job well done tonight, and a service to our nation,” tweeted Susan Page of USA Today, who moderated the Oct. 7 debate between vice presidential candidates Sen. Kamala Harris, the Democrat, and Vice President Mike Pence.
“I’m jealous,” Wallace said on Fox. “I would’ve liked to have been able to moderate that debate and get a real exchange of views instead of hundreds of interruptions.”
Still, Jon Allsop wrote for Columbia Journalism Review, while “some of Welker’s questions “elicited instructive (or at least revealing) answers from the candidates. . . . Welker also wasted time on a question about the foreign business dealings of Hunter Biden, Joe’s son, that was, predictably, grist for Trump’s new favorite talking point. (There was no such question about the dodgy conduct of Trump’s children.) And she failed to push back on many obvious Trump lies. Daniel Dale, the CNN fact-checker, observed at one point that Trump was lying ‘even worse’ than during the first debate. . . .”
Alexander Burns and Jonathan Martin reported for The New York Times, “Of all the disagreements between the two candidates, none blazed more brightly than their assessments of the American experience battling the coronavirus,” which, of course, has disproportionately affected people of color.
Fact checkers judged Trump’s sunny response that “we’re rounding the turn, we’re rounding the corner, it’s going away” to be one of the many lies.
Commentators said Trump’s response to the issue of migrant children separated from their families, many of them Latino, was among those that demonstrated a lack of empathy.
Burns and Martin wrote, “Days after it was reported that the government had failed to locate the parents of more than 500 migrant children separated from them by the Trump administration, the president repeatedly evaded questions about how he intended to reunite those families. ‘We are trying very hard,’ Mr. Trump said, before attempting to pivot into an attack on the Obama administration’s border policies.
“But Mr. Biden castigated the president for imposing a family separation policy in the first place. ‘Those kids are alone — nowhere to go,’ Mr. Biden said. ‘It is criminal. It is criminal.’ “
Trump replied, “Let me say this. They worked it out, we brought reporters and everything. They are so well taken care of. They’re in facilities that were so clean — “
CNN’s Van Jones said the answer betrayed “a shocking lack of humanity.”
The lack of compassion was also apparent in a response to Welker’s rarely asked question about environmental racism.
Nexus Media went on a tour of the Deep South to talk with communities about the pollution they deal with every day, including those in “Cancer Alley” in Plaquemines Parish, La. (Credit: YouTube)
“President Trump, people of color are much more likely to live near oil refineries and chemical plants,” Welker said. “In Texas, there are families who worry the plants near them are making them sick. Your administration has rolled back regulations on these kinds of facilities. Why should these families give you another four years in office?”
“Trump’s response? “The families that we’re talking about are employed heavily and they are making a lot of money, more money than they’ve ever made” because of his policies.
On MSNBC, a pair of assertions from Trump about Black Lives Matter and Biden’s support of the 1994 crime bill, which critics have said contributed to mass incarceration, drew extensive responses from network hosts Joy Reid and the Rev. Al Sharpton.
“Mr. President, you’ve described the Black Lives Matter movement as a symbol of hate,” Welker said as she began her questions on race. “You shared a video of a man chanting ‘white power’ to millions of your supporters. You’ve said that Black professional athletes exercising their First Amendment rights should be fired. What do you say to Americans who say that that kind of language, from a president, is contributing to a climate of hate, and racial strife?”
Trump answered: “You have to understand, the first time I ever heard of Black Lives Matter, they were chanting, ‘Pigs in a blanket,’ talking about police.”
But the chant did not come from Black Lives Matter marchers, said Reid, who told viewers she covered that protest of the 2014 fatal New York police choking of Eric Garner, who famously pleaded, “I can’t breathe.” Reid said the chant came from a fringe group.
Tasneem Nashrulla added for BuzzFeed, “As CNN reported in July, those words were chanted at a 2015 protest march held by a group in St. Paul, Minnesota, that was independent of, and not affiliated with, the national Black Lives Matter organization.
“Rashad Turner, the organizer of the protest, told the St. Paul Pioneer Press at the time that the chant was not promoting violence against police, but to express that police who kill Black people should ‘fry’ as other murderers do.
“The chant lasted about 30 seconds during the hours-long march, protesters told the paper. . . .
To Trump’s attacks on Biden for his support of the 1994 crime bill, Reid read from Trump’s 2000 book, ” ‘The America We Deserve’. “
John A. Tures wrote for the Observer last year that “evidence shows that Trump’s own crime policies from that era, written in his book for his Reform Party campaign in 2000, were far tougher than anything Biden ever supported. Trump’s own support of criminal justice reform late last year reverses his prior hard core crime positions, but he’s got to battle his own party and administration on it.”
Sharpton said that in 1994 he was one of the few marching against the 1994 crime bill, but “many of the black leaders were for the crime bill. There was an overreaction” to the crack epidemic that was raging at the time, Sharpton said. It is important to understand the context of the times, he and Reid said.
Biden subsequently came to meetings of Sharpton’s National Action Network and to other groups calling it necessary to commute the sentences of those most harshly punished under the law, and that the Obama administration did so.
Meanwhile, Sharpton said, Trump supports a national stop-and-frisk policy, and Patrick Lynch, who heads the Police Benevolent Association in New York and supported the officer who choked Garner, spoke at the GOP convention and was invited to the White House.
The debate took place amid increased attention to the number of young Black men supporting Trump, in contrast to Black women. An African American man was among CNN’s focus group of undecided voters.
On Reid’s “The ReidOut” this week, Sharpton had an answer for such men: Trump’s 1989 call for the death penalty for the Black and brown men then known as the Central Park Five. They were later exonerated and Trump has never apologized.
Michelle Garcia (scroll down) blogged Thursday for NBC News, “The young men were later exonerated for the crime after having served years in prison, but Trump’s messaging might have contributed to the support that drove the crime bill into law: While he didn’t name the teens, Trump ran full-page ads in The New York Times calling for the return of the death penalty in New York state because of the ”reckless and dangerously permissive atmosphere which allows criminals of every age to beat and rape a helpless woman.’
“One of the five, Raymond Santana, recently told NBC News that Trump’s campaign ratcheted up public opinion into a frenzy against the boys. Some experts also say his rhetoric opened the door for harsher punishment of juvenile offenders. As The Atlantic pointed out, from 1995, when the word ‘superpredator’ was made famous, to 2005, when the Supreme Court banned the death penalty for juvenile offenders, 62 percent of the children placed on death row across the U.S. were Black or Latino.”
As for “The Talk,” Welker said, “Mr. Vice President, in the next two minutes, I want you to speak directly to these families. Do you understand why these parents fear for their children?” Both candidates said they did, but while Biden replied, “The fact of the matter is there is institutional racism in America,” commentators noted that Trump went on a tangent about Biden’s record and his own, never addressing the question about parental fears.
That the question was asked at all raised another issue, media critic Margaret Sullivan wrote for The Washington Post.
“Anyone could have asked it, but Kristen Welker was the one who did,” Sullivan wrote. “And because the NBC News correspondent is Black, the question carried an extra measure of seriousness and authenticity.
“It not only prompted some of the most enlightening answers of Thursday night’s final presidential debate. It also perfectly illustrated why American journalists in newsrooms across the country have been so righteously indignant in recent months about matters of race in their own organizations.”
Welker Is Latest Target of N.Y. Post Smears
“The smear campaign against Kristen Welker (pictured) — who is moderating Thursday’s second and final presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden — began last Saturday with a hit piece by Trump-friendly New York Post reporter Jon Levine,” Lloyd Grove and Maxwell Tani reported Thursday for the Daily Beast.
“ ‘Kristen Welker, upcoming presidential debate moderator, has deep Democrat ties,’ screamed the headline, while Levine insinuated that the longtime NBC White House correspondent, a registered independent, must not only embrace the same politics as her parents — generous donors to Democratic causes and candidates — but that she also allows her parents’ beliefs to steer her journalism.
The story, which ignored facts provided by NBC News which contradicted Levine’s thesis, falsely suggested that Welker, also a Weekend Today co-anchor, is a liberal partisan advocate who once “celebrated Christmas at the White House with the Obamas,” illustrated by a photo of Welker posing with Barack and Michelle Obama.
Grove and Tani also wrote, “As the Nov. 3 election rapidly approaches, the Post has become a clearing house for Trumpworld’s breathless opposition research dumps, such as the recent dubious yarn about the alleged contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop, provided to the tabloid by Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani.
“Welker is simply the latest target.”
Whitlock Talks to Trump, Says Black Men Relate
“Indianapolis native Jason Whitlock, a controversial voice on sports and Black issues — and an outspoken advocate for Donald Trump — was at the White House Wednesday for a sit-down interview with the president,” Dana Hunsinger Benbow reported Wednesday for the Indianapolis Star.
“In a dark, pin-striped suit and gray sneakers, Whitlock sat across from Trump outside the president’s home just one day before his final debate with Democratic challenger and former vice president Joe Biden.
“Whitlock asked Trump if he has any changes in strategy from the previous debate.
” ‘No, but I’ll listen to you,’ Trump told Whitlock. ‘If you have any ideas, I’ll take them.’
” ‘Let Joe Biden talk,’ Whitlock told the president. “He’ll do the work for you.”
“The interview aired on Outkick.com, a newly launched website that features Whitlock and Clay Travis, host of Fox Sports radio, and focuses on politics and sports.
“Whitlock left Fox Sports in June, where he co-hosted ‘Speak for Yourself’ on FS1 for four years alongside Marcellus Wiley. Before that, the Warren Central and Ball State graduate worked for ESPN.”
Benbow also wrote, “An hour before the interview aired, Whitlock appeared on Tucker Carlson Tonight on Fox News to discuss his time with Trump.
” ‘I think there is some clear momentum for President Trump, particularly with Black men,’ he told Carlson. ‘I think we’ve been carrying on a façade for three and a half years as Black men that somehow we can’t relate to Donald Trump, that we didn’t celebrate him in hip hop music for decades, that he wasn’t friends with countless Black athletes, celebrities, entertainers.’
“Whitlock said there’s been a charade of Black men pretending they don’t have something in common with Trump and that is starting to end.
” ‘The masculinity of Trump, he represents the patriarchy,’ Whitlock said. ‘He is not politically correct. Those are things, I’m just, I’m sorry, a lot of Black men can relate to. It’s not really surprising to me he’s starting to make [headway] in that direction.’ “
Frank Newport wrote Sept. 25 for Gallup, “Gallup’s aggregated data from polls conducted July 30-Aug. 12 and Aug. 31-Sept. 13 show Trump approval — a rough surrogate for likelihood to vote for Trump — at 11% among Black Americans, with disapproval at 87%.
“In a moment of hyperbole on the campaign trail in 2016, Trump promised that if elected president, he would get 95% of the Black vote in 2020, but in reality, it is highly unlikely that dramatic change in the underlying structure of presidential vote preferences among racial and ethnic subgroups will occur.”
- Reginald Dwayne Betts, New York Times Magazine: Kamala Harris, Mass Incarceration and Me
- Joe Biden, National Newspaper Publishers Association: EXCLUSIVE OP-ED: My Plan to Lift Every Voice in Black America
- Stacy M. Brown, National Newspaper Publishers Association: NNPA Publishers Respond to Joe Biden’s Commitment and Plan for Black America
- Joshua Cho, Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting: Press Worries About a Fracking Ban’s ‘Risk’ to Democrats — Not Fracking’s Threat to Planet (Oct. 16)
- Danica Coto and Adriana Gomez Licon, Associated Press: Puerto Rico, unable to vote, becomes crucial to US election
- Bartees Cox, Quartz: Environmental racism has left black Americans three times more likely to die from pollution (March 13, 2018)
- Richard A. Fowler, The Grio: An open letter to Black men on the 2020 presidential election (Oct. 7)
- Sam Fulwood III, The Hill: Black male voters are tired of being taken for granted
- Morgan Gstalter, The Hill: Trump when asked if he’d be kinder in his second term: ‘Yes, I think so’
- Averi Harper, ABC News: Kamala Harris’ connection to Caribbean voters could make difference in Florida
- John F. Harris and Daniel Lippman, Politico: The news media helps Trump avoid the stench of death
- DeMicia Inman, The Grio: Latino voters pitted against BLM in false Spanish media
- Claudia Lauer, Associated Press: Black officers break from unions over Trump endorsements
- Ed Mazza, HuffPost: Eyewitness Exposes The ‘Sick’ Truth About Trump’s Treatment Of Migrant Children
- Patricia Mazzei and Jennifer Medina, New York Times: False Political News in Spanish Pits Latino Voters Against Black Lives Matter
- PEN America: The Reporters Guide to Covering the 2020 Election
- Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press: Election Legal Guide
- Erika D. Smith, Los Angeles Times: To understand why some Black men support Trump, start with Ice Cube
- Alanna Vagianos, HuffPost: Moderator Kristen Welker Won The Presidential Debate
Days to Retire From Philadelphia Inquirer
“Michael Days, a nationally recognized news leader and a prominent Philadelphia journalist for decades, has decided to retire,” Lisa Hughes, publisher and CEO, announced Thursday to the staffs of The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News and philly.com. “He will stay through the end of the year to help me with our important diversity and inclusion work, including searching for his replacement.
“Mike’s numerous contributions to Philadelphia journalism cannot be overstated. A son of the city, Mike arrived at The Philadelphia Daily News in 1986 and then spent the next 25 years at the tabloid, as a reporter, business editor, managing editor and editor. He led the Daily News for ten years over two stints, and it was under his tenure that the paper won a Pulitzer Prize for investigative journalism.
“History will record him as the last editor of the Daily News before it merged with The Inquirer and Philly.com to create a unified newsroom. He was also the Inquirer’s managing editor in 2011 and 2012. But his imprint on journalism extends beyond delivering the news.
“He has been a guide and mentor for scores of journalists and has held leadership positions in prominent news organizations, including as vice president of the national board of the Associated Press Media Editors (APME) and as the first president of the News Leaders Association after the merger of APME and the American Society of News Editors. He was also inducted into the National Association of Black Journalists Hall of Fame in 2017 and has been honored by the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists.
“Mike has been Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion since 2018. Our search for a replacement will be conducted by The Christopher Group, which has a DEI practice led by Pamela Noble.
“Mike will also continue to contribute even after retirement. He has agreed to be a member of our Community Advisory Council, to be set up by board member Keith Leaphart. He will also continue to serve as a mentor in the Lenfest Constellation program.
“Mike has been a professional journalist for 42 years, a career that began at the Minneapolis Tribune and later took him to Rochester, N.Y., Louisville, Ky. and then to the Philadelphia bureau of the Wall Street Journal. He has spent most of his career in his hometown – and Philadelphia is the better for it.”
Days messaged Journal-isms that his term as president of the News Leaders Association also ends Dec. 31, the day he retires. “likely going to find myself on some non-profit boards, set my own schedule and maybe have a public opinion or two,” he added. Referring to his wife, journalist Angela Dodson, Days said, “Angela and I have a couple of projects in mind, but won’t be talking about them until they are fully baked.”
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View previous columns (after Feb. 13, 2016).
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