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In Ukraine, Black Anchor Told She’s ‘Ratings Risk’

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Casual Racism Still Plagues Post-Soviet Countries

Idris Diaz, Muslim Reporter, Later U.S. Envoy, Dies

Short Takes: “Passionate” Hmong journalists, Connie Chung, Greg Stanford, William Monroe Trotter

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Karolina Ashion said, “I cried in the kitchen and made the decision to quit my job. Obviously it was impossible to stay.”

Casual Racism Still Plagues Post-Soviet Countries

“In an exclusive interview with The Daily Beast, famed Ukrainian television presenter and producer Karolina Ashion shared what she describes as the most painful moment of her career: when her former boss — then the director of Ukraine’s 1+1 media conglomerate and current Minister of Culture Alexander Tkachenko — allegedly told her that her appearance on a popular morning show would hurt the network’s ratings,” Anna Nemtsova wrote Friday, updated Sunday, for the Daily Beast.

“Ashion is a Black Ukrainian. Her father came to Leningrad, USSR, from Nigeria to study engineering. Even now, six years after the incident took place, Ashion is emotional talking about it, and struggles to find the words to describe her manager’s behavior.

“The presenter said the conversation with her then-boss began when she asked him why nobody would invite her to take part in the morning show’s broadcasts. She was working as an on-air talent at two weekly television shows at the time, but had a long-time dream to be featured in the major lifestyle program Snidanok z 1+1, the Ukrainian equivalent of Good Morning America.

“ ‘I remember Tkachenko telling me: “Have you seen yourself in the mirror? Our channel’s audience is not really… I am not ready to risk our ratings,” ‘ Ashion told The Daily Beast. After coming home the day of the encounter, Ashion told her husband about the conversation with her boss. ‘I cried in the kitchen and made the decision to quit my job,’ she told The Daily Beast. ‘Obviously it was impossible to stay.’

Activists and supporters of Ukrainian nationalist parties burn flares, torches and smoke grenades during a 2018 march to mark the 76th anniversary of the creation of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) in Kyiv. (Credit: Oleg Petrasiuk/Kyiv Post)

“But Ashion’s career did not freeze. She was offered positions with other television channels and primetime shows, and her popularity flourished. If not for a more recent incident, Ashion might have swallowed the pain in silence, as many people of color often do in post-Soviet countries and across Eastern Europe. But on June 26, the presenter said she ran into the minister and his wife in the city of Lviv, after attending a Chris Botti jazz concert.

“Instead of solving this problem easily by just shaking my hand and giving some friendly ‘Forgive me,’ minister Tkachenko said with a smirk: ‘What do you want from me now? An apology?’ Ashion claimed. ‘His comments sent me back to the six-year-old incident. The minister demonstrated his confidence. He felt right back then, and he has no shadow of doubt he is right now’ . . .”

Nemtsova also wrote, “Tkachenko refused to apologize and declined to address the issue, even as it became widely discussed in Ukraine. And then, this week, another racism scandal erupted when a Black Ukrainian, comedian Victor Vemun, spoke out [about] being invited to an openly racist show, Taras the Papuan, which has mocked Black people as ‘whites who’ve been burned over the fire.’

“Vemun and his sister rejected the offer. ‘For as long as they say from our country’s most popular stages that the color of our skin is just burnt white skin, Ukrainian parents will tell their kids, that we, black people, are black because we are burnt, smoked humans,’ Vemun said in his Instagram post captioned, ‘We plummet to new depths.’

“Casual racism has long plagued post-Soviet countries. ‘For a long, long time I’d [only] get invited to castings for porn star or Cuban stripper roles,’ Moscow movie actor Jean-Michel told The Daily Beast. ‘It is important to speak about this issue. I often notice that on seeing a Black guy… or a girl with big Afro hair, people can’t even fathom that the person was actually born in Russia.’. . .”

The “casual racism” has gone beyond insults and casting stereotypes. A Black American diplomat, not assigned to Ukraine, was attacked in Kiev in 2005 by a group of men in an apparent hate crime. The diplomat sustained minor injuries.

Journal-isms asked then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (pictured, 2019, by Michigan Daily) about the incident at a State Department briefing with the National Conference of Editorial Writers, now part of the News Leaders Association.

“As soon as it happened we were in touch with the Ukrainian Government,” Rice said at the April 4, 2005, session. “I’ve talked to my own counterpart about it.

“Look, it’s a very ugly incident. It is not an unknown fact about Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, that this kind of behavior by skinheads, particularly against people of color, has been a problem in the past. This is an area of the world I know really well both as a specialist and as a person of color, and so I’m very aware of these problems.

“And the Ukrainian Government was deeply embarrassed by it, promised and I think is conducting a full investigation. They don’t want this sort of stain on their new democracy either. They’re dealing with really bad elements that have grown up in that part of the world over a long period of time. But they are not just aware of it; I think they really are trying to do something about it.”

Idris Diaz, Muslim Reporter, Later U.S. Envoy, Dies

Idris M. Diaz, perhaps the first Muslim to write about taking part in the annual hajj to Mecca for a mainstream American newspaper, and who then went on to become a lawyer and State Department envoy, died July 22 of a rare stream of leukemia, his brother, Francisco Diaz, told Journal-isms Saturday. He was 61 and lived in the District of Columbia suburb of Bethesda, Md.

Diaz, a New York native and the son of a Black Honduran father and a mother from New Orleans, earned a master’s degree in journalism at Columbia University in 1983, then spent three and a half years at the Courier Journal in Louisville, Ky., and five at the Philadelphia Inquirer.

In his 1994 book, “American Jihad: Islam After Malcolm X” [PDF], Steven Barboza wrote that Diaz, who converted to Islam after having been raised Catholic, “found himself the sole representative of his faith wherever he has worked.

“As the staff expert, reporters and editors alike would call his home at all hours to ask for advice when covering news about Islam. The experience enlightened him about the media’s shortcomings in treating Islam knowledgeably and fairly.

“ ‘I think there’s just not the sensitivity in the portrayal of Muslims. Look at the World Trade Center bombing [of 1993],’ he says. ‘You see a spate of stories talking about Muslims as a threat. You don’t get a picture that there’s another side to the religion.’  

“Diaz himself ended up writing the piece of his lifetime: covering his own hajj experience. He painted a picture of the scope of the annual hajj event for readers by asking them to imagine the entire population of Philadelphia descending on the city of Allentown for a few weeks’ stay. Entitled ‘For the Love of Allah,’ the piece made the cover of The Philadelphia Inquirer Magazine on April 2, 1989.”

Diaz wrote, “After it was published, I got tons of letters from Muslims and from non-Muslims. I got letters from people telling me they didn’t have much of a clear sense of what the religion was about until they read that. Muslims told me they were glad that my piece was out there. And I got a couple of letters from people telling me that I should burn in hell for putting out propaganda.”

Francisco (Frank) Diaz said his younger brother decided he “just wanted to do something else.” So, according to the family obituary, Diaz “graduated with honors from Howard Law School in1994, and worked briefly in corporate law at Arent Fox in Washington, D.C. But, as he’d long been fascinated with international affairs, he soon left to work at the U.S. Department of State on a legal team tasked with resolving international crises.

“From there, he joined the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), where, during his 15-year-tenure he rose through the ranks, working in a variety of posts at embassies in Dakar, Senegal; Kabul, Afghanistan; [and] Islamabad, Pakistan, culminating in his role as deputy mission director in New Delhi, India.

“At the time of his retirement from USAID in 2019, Diaz worked as the agency’s assistant general counsel for Africa, responsible for ensuring the $7 billion annual budget of USAID’s Africa Bureau was implemented in accordance with all applicable laws and regulations.

“Diaz was a student of diverse philosophies and religious faiths, a master of Aikido with a second-degree black belt, and an avid yoga practitioner who’d recently become a certified yoga teacher.”

Washington Post reporter Vanessa Williams messaged Journal-isms, “I worked and was friends with Idris back in Philly. He was smart, funny and just so chill, unflappable. I agree with the description in the remembrance that he had eclectic cultural tastes in food and music; he really did lean into exploring and appreciating different tastes and sounds.”

Survivors include his partner, journalist Marilyn Milloy. A memorial service is planned, perhaps in October, Frank Diaz said.

Short Takes

New Yorker Illustration by Paul Rogers

How Much Did TV Raise Pressure on Biles?

July 30, 2021

Critic Says NBC Made Olympics the ‘Simone Games’
NPR Bends Some on Journalists Marching for Causes
Fox Hosts Leave Officer Dunn ‘Angry but Unwavered’
War on Drugs Took Uneven Racial Toll
San Antonio Station Drops Longtime Latina Anchor
Glen Ford, Journalist of the Left, Dies at 71
How Military Quashed Press Freedom in Myanmar

Short Takes

Homepage photo: Simone Biles walks off the floor after winning the silver medal in the women’s team gymnastics final. (Credit: Robert Deutsch/USA Today)

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American gymnast Simone Biles withdrew from the team and individual all-around finals during the first week of the Tokyo Olympics. (Credit: Allie Caren/Washington Post)

Critic Says NBC Made Olympics the ‘Simone Games’

“As the leading promoter of the Olympics in the U.S., it is a bit rich for NBC to report on the psychological pressures” faced by champion gymnast Simone Biles “without also reflecting on the ways in which its choice to make Tokyo the Simone Games surely intensified those pressures,” Justin Peters wrote Wednesday for Slate.

“It’d be sort of like if your boss announced to an auditorium filled with your co-workers that the fate of the company was riding on your work output, and then took you aside to sympathetically observe that you looked stressed, and that the key to happiness was a healthy work-life balance.”

As Peters explained, “During the women’s team gymnastics finals that day, Biles had abruptly withdrawn from the event after landing a subpar vault, citing diminished trust in her own abilities and a desire to avoid potential injury.”

He continued, “While I cannot blame NBC for featuring Biles as its star attraction, the network ought to be able to candidly assess and admit the ramifications of its own wall-to-wall coverage. Simone Biles made herself a champion. NBC tried to make her into a superhero. The fact that she chose to reject the cape should prompt a reevaluation of the process by which it was sewn for her in the first place. . . .”

Greg Hughes, senior vice president, NBC Sports Group Communications, did not respond to a request for comment.

Tom Jones added Thursday for the Poynter Institute:

“Some of the usual professional trollers are criticizing Biles’ decision — middle-aged white guys such as conservative talk show host Clay Travis, Trump activist Charlie Kirk and Piers Morgan. Meanwhile, Fox News had on J.D. Vance, who is seeking the Republican nomination for Senate in Ohio next year, and teed him up to criticize the media for applauding Biles’ decision to prioritize her mental health. (Although, it should be noted that Fox News’ medical contributor Dr. Nicole Saphier supported Biles’ decision on ‘Outnumbered,’ as did host Harris Faulkner and panelist Dagen McDowell.)

“But, mostly, Biles seems to be getting support.

“The headline on a smart Candace Buckner column in The Washington Post: ‘For exceptional Black women like Simone Biles, greatness is never enough.’ Buckner wrote, ‘Whenever Biles pulls on her leotard, it’s as though she’s tightening a cape around her neck. She’s the hero tasked with saving a sullied sport, embodying some trite belief in American dominance — and also carrying a gender and an entire race. That’s a heavy cape, and it chokes. But it’s one that exceptional Black women, and women of color, are told to wear. Because simply being great isn’t good enough.’

“Buckner added, ‘They have to be superlative, as well as trailblazers. They have to be avatars of progress and change, and also fulfill a deeper societal responsibility as role models who break glass ceilings while breaking records. But here’s the thing: It’s okay for Biles just to be amazing. Let her greatness stand on its own. We can be wowed and celebrate her without also expecting her to single-handedly revive gymnastics after a sexual abuse scandal, while also leading little Black girls to balance beams all over the nation.”

(Credit: Carlos Carmonamedina for NPR public editor)

NPR Bends Some on Journalists Marching for Causes

“NPR rolled out a substantial update to its ethics policy earlier this month, expressly stating that journalists may participate in activities that advocate for ‘the freedom and dignity of human beings’ on both social media and in real life,” Kelly McBride wrote Thursday as NPR’s public editor.

“The new policy eliminates the blanket prohibition from participating in ‘marches, rallies and public events,’ as well as vague language that directed NPR journalists to avoid personally advocating for ‘controversial’ or ‘polarizing’ issues.

“NPR’s current ethics policy was first drafted in the early 2000s, and then given an overhaul in 2010-2011.

“The new NPR policy reads, ‘NPR editorial staff may express support for democratic, civic values that are core to NPR’s work, such as, but not limited to: the freedom and dignity of human beings, the rights of a free and independent press, the right to thrive in society without facing discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual identity, disability, or religion.’

“Is it OK to march in a demonstration and say, ‘Black lives matter’? What about a Pride parade? In theory, the answer today is, ‘Yes.’ But in practice, NPR journalists will have to discuss specific decisions with their bosses, who in turn will have to ask a lot of questions. . . .”

McBride also wrote, “Black, Hispanic, Asian and Native American journalists have argued that they have been disproportionately confined by — even disciplined over — policies that limit personal expression. . . .”

Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn with Don Lemon on CNN: ” You know what hurts more than — or just as much as — what happened on January 6th, the attacks?” (Screen shot)

Fox Hosts Leave Officer Dunn ‘Angry but Unwavered’

“Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn joined CNN’s Don Lemon Wednesday night to talk about his testimony before the January 6th select committee and reactions from Fox News hosts,” Josh Feldman reported Wednesday for Mediaite.

“Lemon prefaced the interview by playing comments from Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham swiping at and mocking the testimony of the four officers, including Ingraham’s ‘best performance’ awards. She ‘awarded’ Dunn for ‘blatant use of partisan politics.’

“The CNN host said ‘that is some twisted you-know-what’ and called them both ‘cowards.’

“In the next segment, Dunn addressed that when he talked to Lemon about his testimony.

“ ‘You know what hurts more than — or just as much as — what happened on January 6th, the attacks? The attacks on our credibility and that we’re lying and that we don’t love our country and we’re fake police officers and we’re not real cops,’ he said.

“Referencing ‘the Laura Ingrahams and the Tucker Carlsons,’ Dunn said, ‘An act? That was an act? Wow… It’s frustrating. It’s more than frustrating. It makes you so angry, but unwavered.’ . . . ”

War on Drugs Took Uneven Racial Toll

“Fifty years ago this summer, President Richard Nixon declared a war on drugs,” Aaron Morrison wrote Friday for the Associated Press. “Today, with the U.S. mired in a deadly opioid epidemic that did not abate during the coronavirus pandemic’s worst days, it is questionable whether anyone won the war.

“Yet the loser is clear: Black and Latino Americans, their families and their communities. A key weapon was the imposition of mandatory minimums in prison sentencing. Decades later those harsh federal and state penalties led to an increase in the prison industrial complex that saw millions of people, primarily of color, locked up and shut out of the American dream.

“An Associated Press review of federal and state incarceration data shows that, between 1975 and 2019, the U.S. prison population jumped from 240,593 to 1.43 million Americans. Among them, about 1 in 5 people were incarcerated with a drug offense listed as their most serious crime.

“The racial disparities reveal the war’s uneven toll. Following the passage of stiffer penalties for crack cocaine and other drugs, the Black incarceration rate in America exploded from about 600 per 100,000 people in 1970 to 1,808 in 2000. In the same timespan, the rate for the Latino population grew from 208 per 100,000 people to 615, while the white incarceration rate grew from 103 per 100,000 people to 242. . . .”

Morrison also wrote, “Another major player in creating hysteria around drug use during the crack era: the media. . . .”

And, “As much as the legacy of the war on drugs is a tragedy, it is also a story about the resilience of people disproportionately targeted by drug policies, said Donovan Ramsey, a journalist and author of the forthcoming book, ‘When Crack Was King.’ . . .”

“I am heartbroken beyond measure,” Iris Romero said.

San Antonio Station Drops Longtime Latina Anchor

“In a Facebook post on Tuesday, Isis Romero announced her departure from KSAT after more than a decade with the San Antonio TV station,” Taylor Pettaway reported Wednesday for the San Antonio Express-News.

“The former anchor said that KSAT did not renew her contract and ‘terminated her duties moving forward.’

” ‘As you can imagine, the past two weeks have been filled with tremendous sadness, and words cannot fully express my emotions. I am heartbroken beyond measure,’ Romero wrote. . . .”

In a separate story, Pettaway reported, “The San Antonio Association of Hispanic Journalists on Tuesday said it was ‘shocked and troubled’ . . .

” ‘She has been part of our association family for years,’ said Laura Garcia, the organization’s president. ‘The lack of representation of Latinos and Hispanic journalists in news in San Antonio is beyond disappointing. Her departure means one less Latina at the anchor desk.’

“Earlier this year, Romero helped lead a diversity audit of San Antonio TV anchors. It found that only 21 percent of KSAT’s anchors were Latino, despite Latinos making up 65 percent of San Antonio’s population. Across all of the Alamo City’s TV stations, only a quarter of the anchors at the time the report was published in May were Latino, according to the audit.

” ‘KSAT 12 has always strived for a workplace reflective of our vibrant and diverse community both in front of and behind the camera. This is a cornerstone of our culture and will continue to be so,” KSAT Vice President and General Manager Phil Lane said in a statement issued to MySA.com. . . .”

Jared Ball, professor of Africana and communication studies at Morgan State University, calls Glen Ford “The James Brown of Black Radical Media” (video)

Glen Ford, Journalist of the Left, Dies at 71

Glen Ford, a veteran broadcast, print and digital journalist who hosted the first nationally syndicated Black news television interview program before going on to found the Black Agenda Report website, advocating a Black leftist agenda, has died, according to reports.

He was 71, Bruce C.T. Wright wrote for NewsOne.  Ford’s colleague Margaret Kimberley told Journal-isms that he died in New York Wednesday after a long illness.

“Democracy Now” added that Ford was “a vocal critic of President Obama.”

A brief bio on the blackagendareport site reads, “The son of famed disc jockey Rudy ‘The Deuce’ Rutherford, the first Black man to host a non-gospel television show in the Deep South – Columbus, Georgia, 1958 – Glen was reading newswire copy on-the-air at age eleven. Glen’s first full-time broadcast news job was at James Brown’s Augusta, Georgia radio station WRDW, in 1970 – where ‘The Godfather of Soul” shortened Glen’s surname to ‘Ford.’

“Glen Ford worked as a newsperson at four more local stations: in Columbus, Georgia, Atlanta, Baltimore – where he created his first radio syndication, a half-hour weekly news magazine called ‘Black World Report’ – and Washington, DC. In 1974, Ford joined the Mutual Black Network (88 stations), where he served as Capitol Hill, State Department and White House correspondent, and Washington Bureau Chief, while also producing a daily radio commentary. In 1977, Ford co-launched, produced and hosted “America’s Black Forum” (ABF), the first nationally syndicated Black news interview program on commercial television. . . .”

“Ford was a founding member of the Washington chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists. . . .” 

Human Rights Watch released this video of the media crackdown in Myanmar.

How Military Quashed Press Freedom in Myanmar

“Myanmar’s junta has effectively criminalized independent journalism, arresting and charging journalists, closing news outlets, restricting access for international reporters, and driving journalists underground or into exile,” the Committee to Protect Journalists headlined Wednesday over a “special report” by Shawn W. Crispin. “Within a few months of the February military coup, the country has become one of the world’s worst jailers of journalists.”

Separately, Reporters Without Borders retraced “the various stages by which the junta harassed, threatened and intimidated journalists and brought the press freedom situation to its current dire state.

“The situation has been worsening steadily,” RSF said Tuesday, updated Wednesday. “According to figures verified by RSF, 43 journalists are currently held in Myanmar’s prisons. In all, 98 have been arrested in the past six months. The immense majority are being prosecuted under article 505(a) of the criminal code, under which spreading ‘fake news’ is punishable by three years in prison.

“Dozens of other journalists are working clandestinely or have fled the country in order to continue covering the story from abroad. What follows is the story of the six months of persecution that allowed Myanmar’s generals to crush the free press. . . . .”

Short Takes

In April 1975, the New Howard Theater Corporation presented an evening of entertainment to salute the reopening of the District of Columbia theater. Comedian Redd Foxx headlined the featured acts. (Credit: Stiefel Family Papers Collection)
“About 200 community members gathered to celebrate the unveiling of the Ida B. Wells statue Friday in Downtown Memphis,” Astrid Kayembe reported July 16 for the
Memphis Commercial Appeal. “A life-size statue honoring the pioneering journalist, educator and civil rights advocate now stands at Beale and Fourth streets, adjacent to the original office of Wells’ The Free Speech and Headlight newspaper. The unveiling culminated a full week of festivities celebrating Wells’ life and legacy in Memphis. . . .”
Roger S. Glass stands in front of a photo of his great-great grandmother Lucy Ann Jackson at the Nelson Heritage Center in Nelson County, Va., on July 18. (Credit: Nick Cropper/Nelson County Times)
A photocopy of a Chinese worker’s permit from 1895 in Antioch, Calif., one of many California cities where white residents lynched Chinese people or burned down their neighborhoods in the late 1800s and early 1900s. (Credit: Los Angeles Times)
(Credit: @BlackWomenPhotographers/Ibtasam Elmaliki)

 

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Richard Prince’s Journal-isms originates from Washington. It began in print before most of us knew what the internet was, and it would like to be referred to as a “column.” Any views expressed in the column are those of the person or organization quoted and not those of any other entity. Send tips, comments and concerns to Richard Prince at journal-isms+owner@groups.io

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