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First Amendment Not for Whites Only

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Inclusion Lacking in Some Discussions of Free Press

BBC Journalist Finds Colorism Alive, Well in U.S.

Today’s Diversity Issues Sound Familiar

Who’s the ‘We’ in ‘We Made This Country?’

How to Tell Rumor From Fact: A Refresher

‘Your Heroes Are Not Necessarily Our Heroes’

Dissenters Held as Most Pipeline Protesters Leave

To Its ‘Shame,’ L.A. Times Recalls Internment

Short Takes

Benjamin Holden at a conference in Kosovo in 2013. Holden drafted and circulated a model handbook for Kosovan journalists and judges, which detailed how a free press and an independent judiciary interact. He is seated next to Ron Keefover, former public information officer for the Kansas City Supreme Court. (Credit: Atdhetar Ajvaz/Office of Security and Cooperation in Europe)

Inclusion Lacking in Some Discussions of Free Press

Donald Trump’s demonizing of the news media affects African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans and Native Americans, too, although you might not realize it from some of the conversations about the First Amendment taking place in the media and other public spaces.

“The American press is stronger than any demagogue but President Trump’s attacks do present real challenges,” CNN’s Brian Stelter told viewers as he opened his “Reliable Sources” media criticism show on Sunday. But the experts he discussed it with all were white. No one was present to tell them that they might have brought the current situation on themselves, as veteran journalist Earl Caldwell believes. More on Caldwell below.

Not long after Sunday’s show, Columbia Journalism School and the Columbia Journalism Review announced a daylong discussion, “Covering Trump: What Happens When Journalism, Politics and Fake News Collide.” It’s such a hot topic that the 75 spaces for the luncheon March 3 are already sold out.

Sabrina Siddiqui, a political reporter for the Guardian who is of South Asian descent, is the only one of color listed among 13 speakers. The organizer, Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR, said by telephone Wednesday that he is awaiting a response to invitations issued to potential speakers of color and that “diversity is an important issue for us.”

Ernest R. Sotomayor

Ernest R. Sotomayor, dean of student affairs and director, Latin American Initiatives at Columbia Journalism School, says the issue of inclusion in such discussions is not new. “We have, for decades, many of us, advocated for, pleaded and made strong cases for why people of color should be included in ALL of the discussions about news, in the process of collecting and disseminating it, in the hiring of journalists, etc.,” Sotomayor told Journal-isms by email. He is a past president of Unity: Journalists of Color and a past officer of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.

“So, the need for including people of color in this newest round of discussions about First Amendment controversies is as important as it ever was. And, excluding people of color from these discussions is as damaging as it ever was. Simply, they are left without representation at what are sometimes very high-profile events/forums. That shouldn’t be happening anymore.

“What I worry about as this administration continues a fierce offensive against journalism is that smaller news media companies/outlets will be affected in particular if they are attacked sharply by huge numbers of Trump supporters. The biggest of the outlets will have the resources and corporate stamina to survive these assaults, but will many of the ethnic publications that are newer, not as large, not as financially set?”

Truth be told, says Caldwell, an assistant professor at the Hampton University School of Journalism and Communications, Trump’s threats to the news media have not gone beyond bluster. As for the media, “you reap what you sow,” he said by telephone. When Walter Cronkite ruled in the 1960s, the CBS News anchor was considered the most trusted man in America. Now, no journalist holds that title.

Earl Caldwell

“We had trust but we squandered it,” Caldwell said. Among the unkept promises: “Foremost was diversity.” In 1968, the news media embraced the Kerner Commission report on the racial uprisings of the late ’60s, which declared that an unrepresentative news media was part of the problem. But the news media did not follow through on the embrace.

The New York Times abandoned Caldwell in 1970 when he was ordered to reveal to a federal grand jury his sources in the Black Panther organization, threatening his independence as a newsgatherer. His case, which went to the Supreme Court as Branzburg v. Hayes, decided whether requiring news reporters to appear and testify before state or federal grand juries abridges the freedom of speech and press guaranteed by the First Amendment. The court ruled that it did not. But it established, for the first time, a basis for some form of constitutional journalistic privilege.

The decision was historic and prompted the founding of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. The Times’ abandonment of the case also helped to undermine confidence that reporters would protect their sources in the black community, Caldwell said.

Of those convening to discuss Trump’s threats, “They think it’s all about them,” Caldwell said.

The absence of people of color is not for lack of credentials. Benjamin Holden has been a practicing media lawyer, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal and an editor in chief of a daily newspaper, the Columbus (Ga.) Ledger-Enquirer. Holden has spent three media consulting stints in Kosovo, a nation created in 2008 with U.S. military and financial aid from the war-torn former Yugoslavia.

Working with Kosovo’s top judges, journalists, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the U.S. State Department, Holden drafted and circulated a model handbook for Kosovan journalists and judges that detailed how a free press and an independent judiciary interact.

“I interviewed 18 journalists, 15 judges, six actual or prospective court PR folks and a ton of regular Albanians and Serbians who were eager to talk to the first Black American they’d ever seen who wasn’t doing a rap song or dunking a ball,” Holden wrote for the Journal-isms site. He teaches media law and news reporting in the Department of Journalism at the University of Illinois/Urbana-Champaign College of Media.

“They were eager to embrace American values and ideals of a free press and an impartial, independent judiciary.

“But in less than a month, this perplexing and frankly childish Trump Press Polemic threatens to undermine generations of American leadership worldwide in advocacy for transparency, separation of press from politics and the well-settled belief that so-called sedition — or punishment for criticism of government — is anathema to a healthy and functioning democracy.”

That’s an important point for Latinos, according to Mario H. Lopez, president of the Hispanic Leadership Fund.

“When you come from a country where journalists are arrested, beaten, or killed, or where the government owns the media and uses it to force feed a constant stream of lies to the public, it is easy to see and appreciate the role that freedom of the press plays and why it is enshrined in the First Amendment,” Lopez said by email. “I don’t believe this connection is made often enough.”

A free press is an issue for Native Americans, too, but in a different way. “The most pressing First Amendment issue in Indian Country is the lack of a free press in most tribes,” Bryan Pollard, president of the Native American Journalists Association, said by email.

The Slants

“A small handful of tribes have enacted legislation that ensures press freedoms, but the vast majority of tribes have tribal media that is funded by the tribe. In those cases, tribal officials often control or try to control the activities of the press. NAJA is the only organization in the country that recognizes this problem and works with Native journalists and tribal governments to remedy it.”

Asian American First Amendment watchers have their eyes on the Supreme Court. Madhavi Sunder, senior associate dean at UC Davis School of Law and Martin Luther King, Jr. professor of law, wrote by email, “One case about to be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court involves the all-Asian rock band called The Slants. They are a pro-Asian band, and we had the lead singer of the band give the Keynote at our Conference of Asian Pacific American Law Faculty (CAPALF) conference here in Davis last April (his name is Simon Tam).

“The Court will consider a provision of the trademark act under which the Slants were denied a trademark (the act denies trademarks to marks that disparage a racial, ethnic or religious group). The Court will decide whether this provision of the trademark act is unconstitutional as violating the First Amendment.”

More First Amendment discussions are planned. On March 9, the National Press Club is hosting “Fact Checking, Fake News and the Future of Political Reporting,” produced by the Missouri School of Journalism, the Reynolds Journalism Institute and the National Press Club Journalism Institute.

Three people of color are among 16 speakers: Michelle Ye Hee Lee, a Washington Post fact-checker who is Asian American; April Ryan, Washington correspondent for American Urban Radio Networks, who is African American; and Mizell Stewart III, president of the American Society of News Editors, who is African American.

“As ASNE president, I am prepared to take part in discussions on relationships between the administration and the media,” Stewart said by email.

 

BBC Journalist Finds Colorism Alive, Well in U.S.

A black British journalist traveled to the United States and found that African Americans are still color-struck, buying into European beauty standards that put dark-skinned women at a disadvantage.

However, Valley Fontaine, a BBC journalist who is dark-skinned, found that the presence of Michelle Obama as first lady went a long way toward boosting the self-esteem of dark-skinned African American women.

Fontaine’s radio documentary, “Michelle Obama: Black Like Me,” keyed to Valentine’s Day, aired this week and last on public radio stations. Not everyone will agree with its conclusions; it seems to deny that the “black is beautiful” movement of the 1960s and 1970s changed attitudes.

Interviewees included singer India.Arie and Washington Post fashion critic Robin Givhan. After recording black women recounting their experiences with hurtful prejudices, the hour-long piece concluded by naming white supremacy as the real villain. The phenomenon is worldwide, it said.

“In terms of reaction, to me personally it has only been positive,” Fontaine told Journal-isms by email. “But I did two Facebook Lives (video) for the BBC where we discussed elements from the documentary and the reaction went from one extreme to the other.”

The BBC offered this description of the piece:

“In 2008, Valley Fontaine was watching the Democratic National Convention on television with a couple of girlfriends in a London pub, when she saw Michelle Obama for the first time. What struck Valley was not Michelle Obama’s words, but her looks — she was a darker-skinned woman married to a lighter-skinned man. In the world of entertainment, sports and celebrity culture, the trend is usually that black men pair with women who are lighter skinned, who have more European attributes.

“The roots of these preferences are long standing. Right after abolition, African Americans in the United States used a barometer to admit lighter skinned people into certain institutions and clubs, excluding their darker skinned peers. Today, this prejudice — ‘colourism’ — lingers.

“For darker skinned black women, finding value and acceptance is often harder when it comes to all spectrums of life, from employment to dating. But could Michelle Obama’s powerful presence change colourism’s contradictions? Could she change the way darker-skinned black women and girls view beauty, power and access to opportunity in their own skin? Valley travelled to the US to explore the history of colourism, its persistence, and the ways it affects women’s lives today.”

Today’s Diversity Issues Sound Familiar

“If the 1960s epitomized the modern civil right movements, then the 1980s were the golden age of affirmative action,” Paul Delaney, a retired New York Times senior editor, wrote Wednesday for Columbia Journalism Review.

“In the wake of deadly riots and widespread civil disobedience that rocked urban America into near revolution in the earlier decade, diversity — nee affirmative action, integration, desegregation — was seen as the workplace answer to the problems.

Paul Delaney

“Whether from guilt, fear or earnest efforts to correct the damage wreaked by centuries of racism, Americans — well, some of them — went on a tear to repair, even repent. All branches of the federal government, and a few state and local governments, participated in the efforts to turn around the past.

“Some major industries and business leaders joined the battle. My own chosen profession, journalism, became intimately involved, chastised over how media could cover the issue, point finger at others, yet not clean their own house. My career at The New York Times switched from reporting and editing to helping the company to become less white and more inclusive.

“And it worked. For a while.

“. . . I never dreamed my chosen profession would be confronting the exact same racial issues in the 21st century as it did in mid-20th century and earlier periods. . . .”

Who’s the ‘We’ in ‘We Made This Country?’

“In today’s White House press briefing, April D. Ryan, White House correspondent and Washington bureau chief for American Urban Radio Networks, asked White House press secretary Sean Spicer about the lessons that President Trump may have taken from his visit Tuesday to the National Museum of African American History and Culture,” Erik Wemple wrote Tuesday for the Washington Post. “She asked:

” ‘What did the president gain from his tour today? You talked about where he visited, the exhibits that he visited. Did he also visit slavery? And the reason why I’m asking is, is because when he was candidate Trump, he said things like “we made this country,” meaning white America, and not necessarily black. Did he gain —’

“Not appearing terribly pleased with the premise, Spicer responded, ‘I don’t know why you would say that. What do you mean?’ In turn, Ryan said, ‘No, no, no, he said that. I heard him say that.’ With that, Spicer ventured an explanation of the president’s ‘eye-opening’ tour of the museum.

“The exchange left folks wondering precisely what material Ryan was sourcing for her claim about the president. Over at Mediaite, Alex Griswold put this question in a headline: ‘April Ryan Accuses Trump of Saying White People Made America. What Is She Talking About?’

“So the Erik Wemple Blog rang her up. She cited remarks that candidate Trump made in mid-March 2016, such as this quote from a Ohio rally: ‘We’re people that work very hard. We’re people who’ve built this country and made this country great. And we’re all together and we want to get along with everybody, but when they have organized, professionally staged wise guys, we’ve got to fight back, we’ve got to fight back.’ . . .”

How to Tell Rumor From Fact: A Refresher

“With cries of ‘fake news’ coming from all sides, schools are stepping up — teaching media literacy to help students distinguish rumor from fact, hoax from reality,” Margaret Sullivan wrote Tuesday for the Washington Post.

“As President Trump’s bizarre suggestion of a recent terrorist attack in Sweden proved last weekend, he needs a crash course.

“We’re here to help. . . ”

Sullivan also wrote, “So let’s review some basics. . . .”

(Credit: Native Sun News Today)

‘Your Heroes Are Not Necessarily Our Heroes’

“There was once a painting by a young Indian woman that was exhibited at an Oklahoma art show,” Native Sun News Today editorialized on Feb. 15. “The title of her painting was ‘Your heroes are not necessarily our heroes’ and the painting advised white people to try to see that Indians do not accept all of their heroes as our heroes.

“This painting is especially poignant this year as America celebrates [Presidents] Day, a day that honors all of America’s past presidents.

“There are four faces of past presidents carved in the side of a hill in the Sacred He Sapa (Black Hills). As we have done in the past it is important that some of the warts on those faces be known. . . .”

Dissenters Held as Most Pipeline Protesters Leave

“Most of the Dakota Access pipeline opponents abandoned their protest camp Wednesday ahead of a government deadline to get off the federal land, and authorities moved to arrest some who defied the order in a final show of dissent,” Blake Nicholson and James MacPherson reported Wednesday for the Associated Press.

“The camp has been home to demonstrators for nearly a year as they tried to thwart construction of the pipeline. Many of the protesters left peacefully, but police made some arrests two hours after the deadline.

“Earlier in the day, some of the last remnants of the camp went up in flames when occupants set fire to makeshift wooden housing as part of a leaving ceremony. . . .”

Manzanar Relocation Center, 300 miles from Los Angeles in the desert region of California, was the wartime home for scores of Japanese American families evacuated from their homes. (Credit: L.A. Library)

To Its ‘Shame,’ L.A. Times Recalls Internment

“Seventy-five years ago today, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, declaring parts of the United States to be military zones from which particular groups of people could be ‘excluded’ for security reasons,” (accessible via search engine) the Los Angeles Times editorialized Sunday.

“The order set the stage for the relocation and internment, beginning the following month, of 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry, most of whom were American citizens living on the West Coast.

“To our lasting shame, here’s what The Times editorial page had to say about the matter at the time:

“ ‘This is war. And in wartime, the preservation of the nation becomes the first duty. Everything must be subordinated to that. Every necessary precaution must be taken to insure reasonable safety from spies and saboteurs so that our armed forces can function adequately and our industrial machinery may continue to work free from peril.’

“And this:

“ ‘The time has come to realize that the rigors of war demand proper detention of Japanese and their immediate removal from the most acute danger spots. It is not a pleasant task. But it must be done and done now. There is no safe alternative.’ . . .”

Short Takes

“He’s the only columnist consistently writing about issues pertaining to journalism and diversity. He has quite a following, and he has helped shape coverage. . . .”

— The late Dori J. Maynard, left, then president of the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, speaking in 2008. She commissioned “Journal-isms” as an online column in 2002. Dori is shown with Arlene Notoro Morgan, now assistant dean for external affairs at Temple University’s School of Media and Communication. She is presenting Prince with a “Let’s Do It Better Award” at Columbia University in 2007. (Credit: Rebecca Castillo/Columbia University)

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