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Reporter Posted Piece on ‘White Women’s Tears’

Paper Urges Restraint as Trump Bashes Immigrant

Daughter Denies Key Quote in New Till Case

Fearful Cuban Journalist Seeks Asylum in U.S.

Garcia to Receive Diversity Leadership Award

Aretha Services to Be Streamed, Televised

Threats Prompt April Ryan to Hire Bodyguard

CNN Suspends Trump Surrogate After Revelation

N. C. Papers Praise Students’ Takedown of Statue

38 J-Students Travel Nation to Document Hate

Chicago Photographers Recall ’68 DNC Riots

Short Takes

Lisa Benson (screen shot)

Reporter Posted Piece on ‘White Women’s Tears’

“Lisa Benson Cooper was already in an uncomfortable position when she shared an article on her private Facebook page about a phenomenon known as ‘white women’s tears.’ ” Toriano Porter, editorial writer and columnist for the Kansas City Star, wrote Wednesday.

“The longtime reporter for KSHB Channel 41 was suing her employer for racial discrimination. Then, when she posted a story online about racial tensions in the workplace, it cost Cooper her job.

“Journalists understand the pitfalls of expressing personal opinions on social media. But firing a reporter for sharing an article — without comment — to a private account sets a dangerous precedent.

“Cooper told Ruby Hamad, the Arab-born author of the white tears article that appeared in The Guardian, that she was ousted from KSHB for making what management called ‘broad, unfair characterizations of white women as a group based on their race and gender.’

“Never mind that Cooper made no such sweeping characterizations by simply posting an article to her Facebook page.

“The incident was the latest in a string of dustups between Cooper and the station. Cooper, who is known on air as Lisa Benson, claims in court documents that she was subjected to unfair treatment in retaliation for a discrimination lawsuit she filed in 2016.

“She filed suit after being passed up for promotions. Suspensions and eventually, termination followed. She amended the original suit to include retaliation. Cooper’s case is scheduled for trial next year in federal court.

“Cooper and her attorney Dennis Egan declined comment when reached by The Star.

“KSHB News Director Carrie Hofmann would only say the station stands by its commitment to diversity and inclusion.

“In the May 7 article headlined ‘How white women use strategic tears to silence women of colour,’ Hamad argues that white women play the role of victim when women of color assert themselves . . . ”

Cristhian Bahena Rivera is charged with first-degree murder in the death of Mollie Tibbetts, 20, who disappeared from her Iowa hometown on July 18. (Credit: Des Moines Register)

Paper Urges Restraint as Trump Bashes Immigrant

The Des Moines Register warned Wednesday that the killing of University of Iowa student Mollie Tibbetts “is not an opportunity to demonize undocumented immigrants and Latinos in general as dangerous, violent criminals,” but President Trump, Fox News and Republican operatives seized on the case as an example of the need to tighten restrictions on immigration.

Meanwhile, Allan Richards, “the attorney for Cristhian Bahena Rivera, the 24-year-old who is accused of killing Mollie Tibbetts, . . . reiterated his insistence that authorities and the public have jumped to several unsubstantiated conclusions,” Stephen Gruber-Miller reported Thursday for the Register.

Tibbetts quickly became “Trump’s new rallying cry,” Politico’s Natasha Korecki reported Wednesday.

Axios reported that day, “Former Speaker Newt Gingrich emailed Axios’ Mike Allen to make sure that we’d be covering this story, which Fox News led with on air and online Tuesday evening, ahead of the Cohen-Manafort news.” On Tuesday, Michael D. Cohen, the president’s former lawyer, implicated Trump in payoffs to two women before the 2016 election, and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort was convicted of eight felonies.

“His take: ‘If Mollie Tibbetts is a household name by October, Democrats will be in deep trouble. If we can be blocked by Manafort-Cohen, etc., then GOP could lose [the House] badly.’ ”

The Register editorial said of the suspect, “Regardless of his immigration status or whatever statements police say he made, he is entitled to due process and the right to a defense. This is a time to show restraint and wait for the facts before rushing to judgment. That goes for the media outlets reporting and commenting on the story as well.

“It’s an important reminder that there are still hundreds of other Iowa children who are listed as missing. They have not had the same media spotlight that Tibbetts’ family was able to ignite. We should examine reasons for that while we resolve to ensure that every one of these children matters just as much as she did. . . . ”

“There are also many ways we, in the glare of the national media, can misinterpret this infuriating event in a way that harms our people and our state:

“This is not an opportunity to demonize undocumented immigrants and Latinos in general as dangerous, violent criminals. A relative clearly didn’t want her death to become a cause for racism. A Facebook post from Billie Jo Calderwood reads:

“Please remember, Evil comes in EVERY color. Our family has been blessed to be surrounded by love, friendship and support throughout this entire ordeal by friends from all different nations and races. From the bottom of our hearts, thank you.

“People who enter the country illegally are no more prone to crime than people who were born here, research has shown. . . .”

While insisting that Tibbetts “should not become another poster child for those who want to reinstate the death penalty,” the Register conceded that the “drum beat has already begun, even before an autopsy had determined a cause of death. . . .”

Daughter Denies Key Quote in New Till Case

Emmett TIll

“Timothy Tyson’s book on Emmett Till became a bestseller thanks to the bombshell quote he attributed to Carolyn Bryant Donham — that she lied when she testified about Till accosting her,” Jerry Mitchell reported Tuesday for the Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Miss.

“Donham’s daughter-in-law, Marsha Bryant, who was present for the two tape-recorded interviews Tyson did with Donham, said her mother-in-law ‘never recanted.’

“Adding to the intrigue is the fact [that] the quote Tyson attributed to Donham isn’t on the recordings.

“Bryant said people unfortunately believe the 84-year-old played a role in Till’s murder when ‘she had nothing to do with it. They think she should die or go to jail forever. They think what happened to Emmett Till should happen to her.’ . . .”

In March, Mitchell reported that “The FBI is once again investigating the 1955 killing of Emmett Till. . . . The case is being examined again because Carolyn Bryant Donham has admitted she lied when she testified in 1955 that Till touched her. . . .”

Fearful Cuban Journalist Seeks Asylum in U.S.

Serafín Morán Santiago

“A Cuban journalist who says he was accused of spreading propaganda and working as a paid agent of the American government is being detained in Texas while he pleads with federal officials to grant him asylum in the United States,” Franco Ordoñez reported Monday for the McClatchy Washington Bureau.

“Serafín Morán Santiago, 40, a freelance journalist who has worked for Univision 23, Telemundo and Cubanet.com, arrived at the U.S. border in April after, he says, being targeted for his political writings and criticism of the Cuban government.

“ ‘In Cuba, they see the opposition as worse than criminals,’ Morán told asylum officers in his first interviewing seeking protection in the United States, according to a copy of the transcript obtained by McClatchy.

“Morán’s case reflects the challenges Cubans now face seeking refuge in the United States. Less than two years ago, Moran simply could have arrived at the border and he would have been welcomed.

“Now, he is being held at a Texas detention center with thousands of Central Americans and other foreign nationals who are also trying to convince federal authorities to allow them to remain in the United States. . . .”

Garcia to Receive Diversity Leadership Award

Manny Garcia

“Manny Garcia, Ethics & Standards Editor for the USA TODAY Network, is the winner of the 16th annual Robert G. McGruder Award for Diversity Leadership from the Associated Press Media Editors and the American Society of News Editors,” ASNE and APME announced on Wednesday.

“The McGruder Award for Diversity Leadership is given annually to individuals, newsrooms or teams of journalists who embody the spirit of McGruder, a former executive editor of the Detroit Free Press, managing editor of The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and a graduate of Kent State University.

“McGruder died of cancer in April 2002. A past president of APME and former member of the ASNE Board of Directors, McGruder was a relentless diversity champion. . . .”

Garcia is a former editor of the Naples Daily News. He spent 23 years as a reporter and editor at the Miami Herald and el Nuevo Herald, is mentoring a newly formed Diversity Committee at USA Today, is a board member of ASNE and chair of the ASNE Leadership Committee, and has spent countless hours volunteering to coach and mentor managers of color in the ASNE Emerging Leaders Institute, the news release said.

Last week, Garcia joined the Boston Globe’s call for a coordinated media response to President Trump’s efforts to discredit journalists. “Journalism is mission work, an honest cause beyond our eyes,” Garcia wrote. “Like nursing, teaching and police work, it’s built on a foundation of accuracy, trust, wisdom and character.”

He then shared some of his background, saying his family fled communist Cuba in the early 1960s and that his career has included both loading trucks for UPS and persuading a stoned drug dealer not to shoot him.

Aretha Services to Be Streamed, Televised

Cheryl Corley

The Aug. 31 “celebration of life” for Aretha Franklin is expected to be streamed and televised worldwide, her publicist told Journal-isms Friday.

Gwendolyn Quinn said those arrangements are not complete, however, nor are those for media coverage.

Cheryl Corley, an NPR reporter, announced on Facebook Wednesday that she had been invited to report from Detroit’s Greater Grace Temple, but Quinn said not everyone in the media seeking admission to the private service can be accommodated.

“I just received an email from Aretha Franklin’s publicist inviting me to the funeral,” Corley wrote. “I was heading there anyway! I’ll be covering the memorial events before and the funeral itself along with another NPR colleague (Debbie Elliott). I’ve covered floods, tornadoes and all kinds of death…I’ve listened to Aretha’s music all my life so covering the Queen’s funeral and celebration will be both an honor and a challenge.”

Meanwhile, Quinn announced Friday, “Former President William Jefferson Clinton; Eric Holder, former U.S. Attorney General; pastor of The Potter’s House, Bishop T.D. Jakes; Operation Rainbow P.U.S.H. founder Rev. Jesse Jackson; National Action Network founder Rev. Al Sharpton, Motown legend Smokey Robinson, Sony Music Entertainment Chief Creative Officer Clive Davis, and Academy Award-nominated actress Cicely Tyson are among the distinguished speakers confirmed. . . .”

Quinn announced on Thursday, “Stevie Wonder, Faith Hill, Ronald Isley, Chaka Khan, Fantasia, Jennifer Hudson, Yolanda Adams, Pastor Shirley Caesar, The Clark Sisters, Jennifer Holliday, Tasha Cobbs-Leonard, Bishop Marvin Sapp, The Williams Brothers, Vanessa Bell Armstrong, classical artist Audrey DuBois Harris, soprano Alice McAllister Tillman, Franklin’s son Edward Franklin, the Aretha Franklin Orchestra and the Aretha Franklin Celebration Choir are among the notable artists expected to perform . . . .”

In addition, “To honor the Queen of Soul at her Aug. 31 funeral, pink Cadillac owners have been called to line their rosy vehicles along Seven Mile near Greater Grace Temple in Detroit,” Melody Baetens reported Wednesday for the Detroit News. “More than 100 pink Caddies are expected to file in outside the church at 8:30 a.m., and owners will be permitted to attend the private funeral, the church’s first lady Crisette Ellis said. . . .”

Franklin died of pancreatic cancer on Aug. 16. She was 76.

Threats Prompt April Ryan to Hire Bodyguard

“Few reporters have lived the Trump administration’s war against the press more vividly than April Ryan, a 21-year veteran of the White House press corps who has seen her national profile grow along with concerns about her physical safety,” Jeremy Barr reported Tuesday for the Hollywood Reporter.

” ‘They’ve put a target on my head…. I’ve had death threats. I’ve had craziness,’ said Ryan, who revealed to The Hollywood Reporter that she recently hired a bodyguard to protect her.

‘All I’m going to say for my safety is: I have a team.’ (She said the White House should pay for her protection.)

“On Sept. 1, Rowman & Littlefield will publish her new book, Under Fire: Reporting From the Front Lines of the Trump White House (former Today show co-host Tamron Hall wrote the book’s forward). Ryan is scheduled to promote the book on The Daily Show With Trevor Noah, This Week with George Stephanopoulos‎ and across CNN, the network that employs her as a contributor. (Her main gig is covering the White House and Washington for American Urban Radio Networks.)

“She spoke to THR about her contentious relationship with White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, her public split from ex-friend Omarosa Manigault Newman, and the overall climate of hostility toward the press that President Trump has fostered.

“Ryan alleged that Manigault Newman teased and then promoted a revelation about a tape of Trump saying the N-word because she wanted to distract attention away from Aretha Franklin’s failing health and passing as an act of retribution. ‘She did it because Aretha Franklin didn’t want her at her birthday party,’ Ryan said. ‘That’s how vindictive Omarosa is.’ . . .”

Paris Dennard  has denounced the attempt to “shame me into silence for my support of President Trump and the GOP.” (Credit: Facebook Watch)

CNN Suspends Trump Surrogate After Revelation

“A conservative commentator who was lauded by President Trump this week as ‘wonderful’ and who has argued that past sexual indiscretions should have no bearing on Trump’s presidency was fired from Arizona State University four years ago for making sexually explicit comments and gestures toward women, according to documents and a university official,” Aaron C. Davis reported Wednesday for the Washington Post.

“An internal investigation by the university concluded that Paris Dennard, a surrogate during the campaign and now a member of the President’s Commission on White House Fellowships, told a recent college graduate who worked for him that he wanted to have sex with her. He ‘pretended to unzip his pants in her presence, tried to get her to sit on his lap, and made masturbatory gestures,’ according to a university report obtained by The Washington Post.

“According to the 2014 report, Dennard did not dispute those claims but said he committed the acts jokingly. The investigation began after the woman and a second female employee told superiors Dennard’s actions went too far and had made them uncomfortable.

“Dennard, a CNN political commentator, opinion contributor to the Hill, and regular guest on NPR’s ‘Here & Now,’ was working at the time as events director for ASU’s McCain Institute for International Leadership. . . .

“Shortly after The Post published this article Wednesday night, a CNN spokeswoman said the network was suspending Dennard while it reviews the allegations.

“In an email exchange with The Post, Dennard declined to answer specific questions about the investigation or his departure from the McCain Institute. He said he had not seen the full report and ‘was led to believe’ it was ‘sealed and proprietary.’

“ ‘I cannot comment on items I have never seen regarding allegations I still believe to be false,’ Dennard wrote. ‘This is sadly another politically motivated attempt to besmirch my character, and shame me into silence for my support of President Trump and the GOP.’ . . . ”

“Silent Sam” falls after University of North Carolina students took action Monday night. (Credit: Khadejeh Nikouyeh/News & Record)

N. C. Papers Praise Students’ Takedown of Statue

“On Monday night, students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill toppled ‘Silent Sam,’ the statue of a Confederate soldier that has stood on the campus for over a century,” Nicole Hemmer wrote Wednesday for CNN.

Their actions were condemned as unlawful by university officials, but in an unusual development, the state’s three largest newspapers applauded the students.

“Silent Sam came down Monday night in Chapel Hill, long after he should have and no thanks to the people who should have done it,” the News & Observer in Raleigh, the state’s second largest newspaper, editorialized Tuesday.

The Charlotte Observer, the News & Observer’s sister paper and the state’s largest, asked, “What if Rosa Parks had adhered to the rule of law and given up her seat on the bus that day in Montgomery? How much slower would change have come? What if Martin Luther King hadn’t led the bus boycott? How much longer would it have taken for Alabama to end segregated seating?

“What if the Greensboro Four had followed the rule of law and not sat down at that Woolworth’s lunch counter? How much longer would segregation have persisted without that brave act of civil disobedience? What if the crowds had not crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge and endured Bloody Sunday? How much slower would civil rights progress be without that insistence on equality? . . .”

The News & Record in Greensboro wrote Tuesday, “It is, of course, true that Monday’s protesters violated the law and damaged public property. It also is true that their actions were dangerous and could have turned much uglier. But their cause was just, if not their methods. And it’s easy to understand their mounting frustration and anger.

“Anger that the Republican-led legislature not only rebuffed calls to remove Confederate monuments but appointed itself as their protector, passing a law in 2015 that forbids their removal without lawmakers’ consent.

“Anger that the UNC Board of Governors refused even to discuss Silent Sam at last week’s meeting after promising to address it. . . .

“Blame ‘mob rule’ if you will. But it was poor leadership in Chapel Hill and Raleigh that ultimately led to Monday night.”

On the last night of June, at least four Proud Boys were hospitalized in Portland, Ore., after taking part in one of the most violent protests since the Unite the Right rally last August in Charlottesville, Va. Here, Proud Boys brawl with Antifa as an unconscious man is dragged away by his comrades shortly before the event was declared a riot and police dispersed the crowds. (Credit: Brendan Campbell/News21)

38 J-Students Travel Nation to Document Hate

“Behind the anonymity of white faces illuminated by tiki torches, beyond the bloodied fists of street brawls, there are communities of young men who gather on weekends to camp and fish and train in combat sports,” Rosanna Cooney reported Thursday for News21.

“The face of hate is changing in America, and the new right is a ‘millennial male phenomenon,’ said Heidi Beirich, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Alabama, an advocacy group that tracks hate and bigotry toward marginalized communities.

“Brewing among some young men is an intolerance and hatred that’s bringing bias-motivated violence to the streets and white-nationalist politics to the political forefront. . . .”

The report “is part of the ‘Hate in America’ project produced by the Carnegie-Knight News21 initiative, a national investigative reporting project by top college journalism students and recent graduates from across the country and headquartered at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University,” the project explains.

“Each year, students selected into the program report in-depth on a single topic of national importance.

“This year, 38 journalism students from 19 universities traveled to 36 states, including a 7,000-mile road trip around the country. They conducted hundreds of interviews, reviewed thousands of pages of federal-court documents, FBI data and state and federal statutes. Reporters interviewed nearly 300 people. They also produced a documentary and a five-episode podcast following the [life cycle] of hate.

“The students’ work began in January 2018 with a video seminar that included reporting and research. In May, they started working in a newsroom at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University’s downtown Phoenix campus.

“This year’s team also partnered with ProPublica’s ‘Documenting Hate’ project, which collects, researches and report incidents. . . .”

Bob Black in Chicago Tribune video. (sreeen grab)

Chicago Photographers Recall ’68 DNC Riots

“In the wake of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination and amid protests of the Vietnam War, Democrats came to Chicago for their national convention in August 1968,” the Chicago Tribune says in a recollection narrated by retired photojournalists Bob Black of the Chicago Sun-Times and Walter Kale and Val Mazzenga of the Chicago Tribune.

“Inside the convention hall, demonstrations erupted and angry words were traded among attendees. Outside the convention hall, rioting by ‘hippie’ protesters took over Chicago and images of police beating the demonstrators were broadcast around the world.”

Black says in the video, “I did get myself whacked across the back with a billy club, and it was not a pleasant experience.” However, he adds, “after that, I could cover anything that was thrown at me. . . . It made me know that this is how things are in the real world.”

According to The HistoryMakers, “As a member of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ), Black was one of the founders of the Visual Task Force, an organization of still and video photographers within the NABJ. He is also a founding member of the Chicago Alliance of African American Photographers (CAAAP), established in 1999 to bring together local African American photographers to promote their work and educate future generations. . . .”

Short Takes

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