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Few but Right Wing Praise Tiffany Cross Ouster

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Joy Reid Says, ‘Watch This Space’

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Joy Reid Says, ‘Watch This Space’

If MSNBC thought its audience would applaud its letting go of weekend morning host Tiffany Cross for what it portrayed as journalistic reasons, it badly miscalculated. Instead, many are seeing the action as a cave-in to Tucker Carlson, Fox News and the right-wing attack machine.

“More than 40 Black leaders have sent a letter to MSNBC President Rashida Jones in protest of the cancellation of ‘The Cross Connection With Tiffany Cross’ and have demanded a meeting to ‘discuss a path forward that is restorative to the reputation and dignity of’ the cable news host,” Philip Lewis reported Monday for HuffPost.

“By firing #TiffanyCross two wks after she was targeted by Tucker Carlson, @MSNBC has further empowered a dangerous man who has a huge platform, emboldening him to target others,” tweeted Sherrilyn Ifill, former president and director-general of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. “Many of us have had our turn as Tucker’s target of the night & endured the response of his minions.”

Ifill added, “For a rival network to give the appearance of acquiescing to his demands and firing one of their highest rated anchors is a boost [I’m thinking] he never dreamed was possible. It has encouraged his use of his platform to target & silence.”

Attorney Benjamin Crump, the former president of the National Bar Association best known for representing the families of African Americans shot by police, tweeted, “MSNBC needs to explain why they decided to part ways with The Cross Connection’s host Tiffany Cross — an extremely smart and insightful Black woman. Tiffany has been a beacon of diversity at MSNBC and the Black community deserves to know why one of their voices has been let go!”

TheGrio headlined a column by Michael Harriot, “Firing Tiffany Cross shows what MSNBC thinks about its Black viewers.”

Journalist Wesley Lowery tweeted that “msnbc abruptly canceling its highest rated weekend show – days before midterms – amidst bad faith harassment campaign against @TiffanyDCross led by Tucker Carlson is a much bigger story than current level of coverage suggests,” and CUNY journalism professor Jeff Jarvis noted that curiously, The New York Times had not reported the story.

MSNBC’s decision not to renew “The Cross Connection” and to end the show immediately was not tied to any single statement, Sarah Ellison wrote in the Washington Post, citing three people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive negotiations between the former host and MSNBC. “MSNBC’s president, Rashida Jones,” the first Black president of a mainstream network, “was deeply involved in the decision to cut ties with Cross, two of these people said.”

The decision came a day after Cross, who has not been shy about calling out white supremacy and dog whistles by such politicians as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, appeared on the jokey “Hell of Week With Charlemagne” (video) on Comedy Central.

“Cross was asked which state Democrats could afford to lose in the upcoming mid-term elections,” Mark Joyella wrote Friday for Forbes. Referring to the shape of the state, Cross said, ” ‘Florida literally looks like the d—k of the country, so let’s get rid of Florida,’ ‘Let’s castrate Florida.’

“In the same appearance, Cross said that it was impossible to separate the Republican Party from ‘right wing extremists,’ saying they had ‘merged right now.’ ” The appearance might have been the “final straw,” Joyella wrote Friday.

While not all welcomed Cross when she debuted in 2021, an internal MSNBC ratings memo obtained by Mediaite earlier this year said that in May “The Cross Connection is the highest-rated weekend show on MSNBC” and that the show’s audience “skews 55% female and 35% African American.”

The memo also said that the show “averages the 2nd most African-American viewers of any weekend cable news show (second only to MSNBC’s “Politics Nation with Al Sharpton.”)

However, right-wing media made Cross a target. Just two weeks ago, Fox host Tucker Carlson claimed that Cross was inciting a “race war” against white people in the United States.

Podcaster Megyn Kelly, onetime Fox News and NBC host, called Cross a “moron” and “dumbass ” and called Cross “the most racist person in all of television.” Kelly celebrated when MSNBC took its action on Friday.

Cross had been firing back, and in recent weeks had reportedly clashed with management over the back-and-forth and whether the comments were appropriate journalistically.

Harriot noted in theGrio, “Tiffany Cross used her platform to feature a diverse array of voices that are usually absent from cable news coverage, including trans women, native Americans and an African American elf who disparaged Caucasian Santa Claus (no disrespect to Megyn Kelly). When Tiffany Cross called out Clarence Thomas, she was echoing the sentiments of her audience.

“When she suggested that whites should ‘sit out’ the debate over Will Smith slapping Chris Rock, she was just saying what many of her viewers thought (By the way, this is not my interpretation; I was actually part of that panel discussion). She was doing exactly what she told MSNBC she’d do when they hired her.”

Keith Olbermann, who was forced out at MSNBC in 2011 after clashes with management for going “too far” in his advocacy for Democrats, in the words of one source at the time, spoke out on iHeart Radio Monday.

“Where is the protest by Lawrence O’Donnell? By Chris Hayes? By Alex Wagner? Where is the threat to walk out, to boycott, to stand on principle, by Rachel Maddow? (3:10) NBC had to retract a fabricated Today Show story that reignited the fascists’ homophobic conspiracy theory about Paul Pelosi.

“The correspondent was not fired. The Today Show executive was not fired. The head of news was not fired. Tiffany Cross? She was fired. . . .”

Joy Reid, whose Saturday morning slot Cross filled, was among the many speaking up for Cross. Reid waited until the end of MSNBC’s “TheReidOut” Friday to address the subject.

“Before I go, I really do just want to say one quick thing about my friend, colleague and sister, Tiffany Cross,” Reid said.

“She’s not just my friend, she is my sister. I love her, I support her, I was boosting for her to get the show that she created, ‘The Cross Connection,’ which she put her heart and soul into every day, and I just want to say that those on the far right who are attacking her on a social media app that I won’t name, you don’t understand how sisters move. So, watch this space. We will be here, her sisters will be here to support anything Tiffany Cross ever does. Know that. Believe that.”

How ‘Dr. Oz’ Duped the News Media

November 6, 2022

Tearful Victim Actually a Campaign Worker

Conservative Group: Coverage Favors Democrats
N.Y. Times Editorials to Take on Political Violence
Marsalis Says the Press Doesn’t Take Jazz Seriously
‘Racism and Abuse Toward Black Migrants’
Weak Immigration Coverage Has Consequences
BBC Details Beating Deaths of African Migrants
‘Jerry’ Vazquez of Telemundo Houston Dies at 54

Short Takes: Comics journalist Josh Neufeld and Kansas City reparations; News Leaders Association’s diversity survey; CCNMA: Latino Journalists of California; James Finch; Ron Claiborne; latest Hollywood diversity report; Andrew Humphrey; “NextGenRadio: Indigenous”; training “citizen journalists”in Salem, Ore., and Syracuse; reviving the Nashville Banner; documentary on displaced Black New Orleanians; Gloria Rojas; Latinos and proposed abortion bans; Los Angeles Times’ Día de Muertos digital altar,” Hawaii’s pop-up newsrooms; UC Berkeley’s Geeta Anand; Janet Wu;

Enlace Latino NC, Montana Free Press and Santa Cruz Local; deleting Liberian news site’s investigation; Britain’s first visibly Black TV journalist; changes for BBC’s Africa Service journalists; outsize coverage for anti-Arab, far-right Israeli politician; Russian funding of U.S. media; closing CBC’s Beijing bureau; unprecedented targeting of Sudan’s media; Pegasus spyware in Mexico; arrest of female Iranian journalists; Somali journalists killed with impunity

Homepage photo: In Philadelphia, Republican U.S. Senate candidate Mehmet Oz talks with Sheila Armstrong, whose nephew and brother were fatally shot and killed. (Credit: Alejandro A. Alvarez/Philadelphia Inquirer)

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Oz/Trump supporters, most prominently Sheila Armstrong, confront a small group of Germantown residents protesting a Dr. Oz campaign stop in the East Germantown section of Philadelphia. (Danielle Finger/YouTube)

Tearful Victim Actually a Campaign Worker

“A touching moment at a recent campaign event for Dr. Mehmet Oz in Philadelphia — in which a Black woman broke down in tears as she described the fatal shootings of her brother and nephew, and was comforted by the Republican Senate candidate — made for riveting television, and brought to mind the former daytime TV host’s old namesake show,” Robert Mackey reported for the Intercept.

“Three weeks later, after the encounter was featured in local and national news reports, journalists who covered the event discovered that they had been duped by the Oz campaign into reporting as news a scene that had more in common with reality TV.

“The woman, Sheila Armstrong, sat next to Oz at a September 19 event his campaign described as a ‘community discussion’ in Philadelphia’s Germantown neighborhood. Armstrong held a handmade sign which said that her lost relatives were ‘gone but not forgotten,’ and her anguished tears were broadcast to the city that day by the local NBC News affiliate, and described in reports on the event by the Philadelphia Inquirer and KYW Newsradio.

“The emotional encounter between the candidate and a victim of gun violence who had suffered so deeply was brought to national attention this week by The Associated Press,” Mackey wrote Oct. 13, “in a feature story on the competition over Black voters in the Pennsylvania Senate race between Oz and his Democratic opponent, John Fetterman, the state’s lieutenant governor. When the AP story was first published on Tuesday, it began this way:

” ‘As Sheila Armstrong grew emotional in recounting how her brother and nephew were killed in Philadelphia, Dr. Mehmet Oz — sitting next to her inside a Black church, their chairs arranged a bit like his former daytime TV show set — placed a comforting hand on her shoulder.

” ‘Later, he gave her a hug, and said, “How do you cope?”

“That text account . . . was posted on the AP’s website, and distributed to the hundreds of news organizations that reprint AP reporting, accompanied by a photograph of Armstrong drying her tears as Oz leaned in to hug her.

“As the text and photo accounts of the exchange between Oz and Armstrong were reproduced by news organizations across the country that subscribe to the AP’s wire service, Fetterman’s campaign manager, Brendan McPhillips, complained on Twitter that the AP had failed to share a pertinent fact with readers: that Armstrong is not an ordinary voter but a paid member of the Oz campaign staff,” with Armstrong earning more than $2,000 at the end of June, according to FEC data.

“Although the AP updated the text of its report to add a reference to Armstrong’s employment . . . it seems clear that the news organization only became aware of her status after publication. ‘As soon as AP learned of Armstrong’s campaign affiliation and confirmed it, we updated our story,’ a spokesperson for the news organization told me in an email. . . .

“There is nothing new about a political campaign carefully stage-managing a public event to get good publicity or using the news media to broadcast a favorable message to the public. But by inviting reporters to cover a community discussion with Oz and not revealing that a featured speaker, Armstrong, was a paid staffer, the former TV host’s aides seem to have successfully tricked reporters into presenting a staged, reality TV scene as if it were news.

“What’s more, despite Armstrong’s suggestion that the whole point of the event was to discuss gun violence, the four-part plan to ‘fight for Black communities’ Oz unveiled during his visit to Philadelphia that day made no mention of any measures to take guns off the city’s streets. . . .”

Conservative Group: Coverage Favors Democrats

“Four years ago, TV’s midterm coverage hammered Republican candidates and then-President Trump with 88 percent negative spin while sparing Democrats similarly bad press,” Rich Noyes wrote Nov. 1 for the right-wing Media Research Center.

“This year, Democrats are in charge of the White House and both chambers of Congress, yet a new Media Research Center study of ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts finds that Republicans are receiving coverage that is just as negative (87% negative) as in 2018, while Democrats — including the President — are drawing far less scrutiny than the party out of power.

“And another favor for Team Blue: the dominant topics within these campaign stories — GOP candidate controversies, abortion rights and the danger of ‘election deniers’ — perfectly match the topmost items in Democrats’ campaign playbook. Our study shows discussion of these issues within campaign stories far eclipsed that of the economy and inflation, issues that voters deem most important. . . .”

Members of the Ku Klux Klan and others set fire to a boat representing Vietnamese shrimping boats in 1980. “There is no federal anti-paramilitary law, though Congress should consider one,” the New York Times editorializes. “States, however, do have legal instruments to deal with these extremist groups, even if they rarely show the will to use them. When they do, these laws are effective.” (Credit: Houston Metropolitan Research Center, Houston Public Library)

N.Y. Times Editorials to Take on Political Violence

“On Thursday, The New York Times editorial board introduced a series called ‘The Danger Within,’ urging readers to understand the danger of extremist violence and possible solutions,” Tom Jones reported for the Poynter Institute. The first piece is headlined, “America Can Have Democracy or Political Violence. Not Both.”

In an accompanying column, Kathleen Kingsbury (pictured), Opinion editor of the Times, wrote, “Americans are right to be nervous about the coming midterm elections, and not only about the results. It will be the first time that the nation’s electoral machinery will be tested after two years of lawsuits, conspiracy theories, ‘audits’ and all manner of interference by believers in Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 election.

“I’m nervous for another reason as well: the embrace of violent extremists by a small but growing faction of the Republican Party. Today’s editorial, the first in a series on violent extremism, will explore this peril and what we can do about it. . . .”

Kingsbury concluded, “In the past few years, there have been plenty of points at which it feels as if the future of the nation hangs in the balance. Peaceful politics are all we have to manage our deeply divided democracy. Lose that and the country is headed for a dark place — that’s what this series of pieces on extremism is trying to help avoid.”

(Credit: David Rubenstein Show/YouTube)

Marsalis Says the Press Doesn’t Take Jazz Seriously

“The average white jazz writer is actually a rock fan who’s for a long time wished that jazz could actually be something else without Black folks at the core of it, or that maybe jazz would just die away,” according to Wynton Marsalis, the esteemed trumpeter who is managing and artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center.

The center says its 2022-23 season “illuminates, actualizes, and reaffirms the notion of jazz as a global language and the music’s power to bridge divides and coalesce distinct communities.”

Marsalis made the comments on PBS’ “The David Rubenstein Show: Peer-to-Peer Conversation.” (video). The interview was recorded Oct. 31, 2020, but shown this past week.

Rubenstein, who is also a billionaire investor and philanthropist, asked Marsalis, “Do you feel that in the music world you are not treated as you would be if you were white?”

Marsalis replied, “Yes, I feel that.

“I feel it in the level of patronization that I receive. The low level of criticism of our music.

“I’m subject to things, of course, nothing like what I grew up with, nor do I make a habit of complaining about it constantly, because I’m also treated in a way — with so much respect by so many people that for me to complain would be past gratuitous.

“So if you ask me the question directly, yes, I have been treated unfairly by newspapers, something like The New York Times; the way our institution, Jazz at Lincoln Center, has been covered is abominable.

“Even though we get articles, the quality of those articles [is] always very poor, poorly researched. The writers oftentimes down through the history lack the intelligence and depth of engagement with the form to be qualified to speak on it in the paper of record, but because it’s jazz, it doesn’t matter. So that’s only in direct response to your question. I don’t want to confuse it with when I was growing up or the situations that I found myself in, or my father’s situation or grandfather’s or let’s go back in the generations.

“I’m not doing that, and I’m very, very grateful for how I’ve been treated by people all over this country of all kinds.”

One can’t separate the way jazz, “our national art form,” is treated from how African Americans are, Marsalis continued.

“The central question of jazz’s position in our country concerns the relationship of slavery to the American identity in our mythology as a country. Black Americans by and large in our country have little or no knowledge of jazz, and jazz is the greatest achievement of the Afro-American culture in the context of the American culture, meaning it’s Afro-American but it applies to all Americans, as many things in American culture apply to all Americans.

“Our poor public education system makes sure that a certain group remains ignorant, and the average white jazz writer is actually a rock fan who’s for a long time wished that jazz could actually be something else without Black folks at the core of it, or that maybe jazz would just die away.

“That’s why if you study jazz, there’s a longstanding tradition of article after article in decade after decade saying, ‘Is jazz dead?’ That’s probably one of the most questions that’s been asked since the 1930s. Now all of this investment in the destruction of jazz is to further obscure a big lie that jazz uncovers, and it’s important to look at this because it’s a serious thing to consider if we are to transform our nation.

“If we say our nation is based on human freedom, and we’re the first on Earth founded on the glorious celebration of human freedom, dignity and rights, how do we then reconcile and correct the systemic dehumanizing ownership and brutalizing of a large underclass of people for free labor because of their skin color?

“It’s too much injustice to correct, so we’re forced to say that those people are responsible for the problem, they’re less than human, and it’s just their condition, but if they aren’t, it’s not their condition, it means that our mythology and belief about ourselves is not true. Now is Elvis going to not be the king? Man, where you gonna put jazz if Elvis is the king? . . .”

A New York Times spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

U.S. Border Patrol agents deter Haitians from returning to the United States on the bank of the Rio Grande after migrants crossed back to Mexico for food and water in Del Rio, Texas, on Sept. 19, 2021. (Credit: Omar Ornelas/El Paso Times)

‘Racism and Abuse Toward Black Migrants’

“After analyzing the records of nearly 17,000 calls between 2016 and 2021 from its national immigrant detention hotline, Freedom for Immigrants released a report Wednesday that it and other advocacy groups say indicates a pattern of racism and abuse toward Black migrants,” Andrea Castillo reported Oct. 27 for the Los Angeles Times.

“Among the findings of the report, the groups concluded that 28% of 2,200 abuse-related reports came from detainees from predominantly Black countries, despite accounting for 6% of the detained population in 2019, according to their analysis of the most recent population data by country of origin from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a nonpartisan data research organization at Syracuse University. Freedom for Immigrants and the other groups behind the report, including the Black LGBTQIA+ Migrant Project, the Black Alliance for Just Immigration and the UndocuBlack Network, advocate for the abolition of immigrant detention.

“According to the study’s methodology, the analysis assumes that detainees calling from Black-majority countries are Black. The authors filtered call records for phrases indicating verbal or physical abuse, such as ‘medical neglect,’ ‘assault,’ and ‘N Word.’

“Alexxis Pons Abascal, a spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said in a statement to The Times that the agency is committed to ensuring that everyone in custody is safe and under the appropriate conditions of confinement. He said ICE encourages people to report allegations of misconduct.

” ‘Personnel are held to the highest standards of professional and ethical behavior, and when a complaint is received, it is investigated thoroughly to determine veracity and ensure comprehensive standards, which ICE is required to follow, are strictly maintained, and enforced,’ Pons Abascal wrote.

“Black migrants are placed in solitary confinement at higher rates than non-Black migrants, according to the Black Alliance for Just Immigration. In some facilities in the South, including Etowah County Jail in Alabama, Stewart Detention Center in Georgia and Richwood Correctional Center in Louisiana, Black people were almost twice as likely to report experiencing abuse compared with detainees of other races, the groups’ report notes. . . .”

Define American video points out inadequacies of news coverage of immigrants in North Carolina media.

Weak Immigration Coverage Has Consequences

“The failure to reflect the full diversity of the immigrant population came through in our content analysis of 22 news outlets that spanned the state and media type,” Liz Robbins of the group Define American, founded by former reporter Jose Antonio Vargas, wrote Oct. 27 for the Poynter Institute.

Robbins was referring to Define American’s report “Reimagining Immigration News: North Carolina’s Case for the Nation,” which used the state as “a bellwether for the nation” in analyzing immigration coverage.

North Carolina’s “media landscape also reflects wider trends in the journalism industry: a collapse of legacy news, reliance on early-career reporters to cover underrepresented communities, and the rise in nonprofit niche outlets.”

Robbins continued, “Conducted by the Media Ecosystems Analysis Group, the analysis showed that while Latinx communities dominated, news outlets severely neglected Asian American and Pacific Islander communities. They represent nearly a third of all immigrants in the state (compared to the half that are Latinx), but were only featured in less than 5% of news stories.

“Consistent coverage of immigrant communities matters because of the prevailing misinformation that news consumers receive about immigrants. The University of Florida’s Center for Public Interest Communications conducted a survey of 1,160 North Carolinians for our report. Those who said they knew the most about immigration actually knew the least –- and were most likely to believe harmful stereotypes.

“We found, however, that good journalism can help shift those perspectives.”

Jaskaran Malhotra, captain of the Morrisville Cardinals, right, laughs with teammates before a match between the Cardinals and the Atlanta Param Veers during the inaugural Toyota Minor League Cricket Championship at Church Street Park in Morrisville, N.C., on Aug. 8, 2021. The story was cited as an example of productive coverage of immigrants. (Credit: Ethan Hyman/News & Observer)

Other key findings:

Robbins added for Poynter, “In 2021, the News & Observer of Raleigh published a story about immigrants from India who established a local minor league cricket team.

The piece, by a former Report for America corps member, Laura Brache, showed how the players encouraged the town to build world-class cricket facilities that drew crowds and spurred the local economy.

“In our survey, 46% of the audience said they believed that immigrants took jobs and opportunities away from those born in the United States. We don’t know if they changed their minds about this, but we know that after reading the story, 94% of the participants saw the immigrants in the story, at least, as ‘good citizens for our country.’

“The lesson is a powerful one: Immigration coverage shouldn’t just be about policy, but people. . . .”

BBC Details Beating Deaths of African Migrants

“At dawn on 24 June, a large group of African migrants surged towards a border fence separating Morocco from the tiny Spanish enclave of Melilla“ (map) on the African continent, Ed Thomas, Adam Walker and the BBC Africa team reported Tuesday under the headline, “How Spain looked on as dozens were crushed to death at its border“ (story and videos).

“In the hours-long chaos, many of the migrants were beaten, and crushed between an 8m-high (26 feet) fence and Moroccan border guards, who deployed batons and tear gas. Videos circulated online show dozens of people packed in one area of the border post, some lying motionless, some bleeding, others visibly in distress.

“At least 24 migrants died, but the death toll is believed to be higher as more than 70 people are missing. What happened that day at the heavily fortified border crossing known as Barrio Chino — a gateway into Europe?

“In the days after the incident, Spanish and Moroccan authorities defended their actions, saying the migrants had been violent, and reasonable force had been used.

“But a BBC investigation has uncovered new details about the events, raising questions about the official versions.

“We can reveal that:

Jerry Vazquez in center with Ubaldo Martinez, Alejandro Mendoza, Crystal Ayala and Carlos Robles (2018 photo taken for mikemcguff.com courtesy of Telemundo Houston KTMD)

‘Jerry’ Vazquez of Telemundo Houston Dies at 54

“Gerardo ‘Jerry’ Vazquez, 54, the Vice President of News for Telemundo Houston KTMD, has lost his battle with cancer,” television blogger Mike McGuff reported Monday.

“Vazquez joined KTMD in August 2014 where he rebuilt the station’s news department after Comcast bought the NBCUniversal owned station from General Electric.

” ‘When you have the right team in place together you can accomplish anything,’ Vazquez told me in 2018. ‘In my opinion we have assembled a team of the best producers, anchors, reporters, photographers and assignments desk!’

“Under the leadership of Vazquez, President and General Manager Tony Canales, Vice President of Marketing JC Perez and others, KTMD moved to the top of the ratings in Houston.

“Vazquez came to KTMD from abc13 KTRK (2001 to 2014) where he oversaw the 5, 6 and 10pm newscasts as executive producer when the newscasts were the number one shows in their timeslots. . . .”

Short Takes

From left, Cerise Castle, Mc Nelly Torres and Elisa Lees Muñoz at the International Women’s Media Foundation Courage in Journalism awards on Oct. 27. (Credit: Philip Salata)

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