Site icon journal-isms.com

Inmates for Clinton and Guards for Trump

richard

Prisoner: ‘I Don’t Want My President to Be a Creep’

Another Theory on Why Media Didn’t ‘Get’ Trump

Media Critic Says Brazile’s Conduct Not So Unusual

FCC Faulted on Pace of Telecom Diversity

Champs

Journalist Shot by Police Near Standing Rock

Japanese American Paper to Stay Alive Through ’17

4 Black Caucus Members Demand Facebook Change

ABC Crew Said to Fake Police Tape at Crime Scene

Short Takes

Prisoner: ‘I Don’t Want My President to Be a Creep’

Hillary Clinton’s use of the term “superpredators” in 1996 to describe some black youths — a term for which she has apologized — has served as justification for some to declare that they cannot support her bid for president.

Such an argument apparently hasn’t gained traction with inmates of color in at least one storied prison. For them, Clinton is the candidate of choice.

“Those conversations you overhear in the coffee shops and at the water coolers? I overhear them on the tiers and at the guards’ station. Everyone is talking about the 2016 election, Hillary or [Donald J.] Trump. Most black and brown prisoners are for her, most white guards are for him,” begins an essay from John J. Lennon published Thursday by the Marshall Project in cooperation with Vice.

Lennon, who is white, is serving 28 years to life for second-degree murder at the Attica Correctional Facility in New York. His essay is part of “Life Inside,” a series offering “perspectives from those who work and live in the criminal justice system.”

“The day we heard Trump talking about groping women on a hot mic, a young Blood member yelled down the tier to one of his homies, ‘Yo… this dude Trump is outta line! Trump sounds like a straight-up creep,’ ” Lennon continued.

“In prison, we have a social hierarchy, and rapists and child molesters are at the bottom. It’s one of the only things Attica guards and prisoners agree on. But while some prisoners thought Trump’s words were inappropriate, the guards I talked to didn’t.

“ ‘Come on Lennon, that was pure guy talk,’ one said.

“I don’t want my president to be a creep, though — I want his or her words to represent an ideal.

“In June 2015, a hate-filled white boy shot and killed nine loving black folks attending a bible study in their church in Charleston, S.C. Afterwards, it was uncomfortable for me, a white boy in Attica. ‘Fuckin racist white mothafucka!’ I heard tumble through cell bars, down the tier. ‘That’s the kind of hate these crackas up in here have.”

“The tension was palpable in the days that followed. Then President Barack Obama went to Charleston and gave a moving speech, soothing America, singing ‘Amazing Grace.’ We watched in our cells. I had tears in my eyes.

“Attica guards dig that Trump proclaims himself the ‘law and order’ candidate, because that’s the ol’ lock-em-up language — and that’s their livelihood. To a lot of guards, Trump’s words have resurrected the us-versus-them climate, validating the idea that things ain’t like they used to be. This comes at a time when Attica guards have had to show restraint because the historically hands-on prison has recently been fitted with cameras and mics after intense media scrutiny.

“But most prisoners don’t want things to be like they used to be. Anthony ‘Jalil’ Bottom, a former Black Panther who’s been behind bars for 45 years, is one of the New York Three convicted in 1975 of killing two cops — one white, one black. The Nixonian ‘law and order’ era, Jalil said, was a shameful part of American history.

“Take the 1971 Attica uprising: President Nixon supported then-Governor Nelson Rockefeller when he sent armed federal and state authorities to take back the prison. That raid resulted in 39 people — 29 prisoners and 10 hostages — being shot dead. . . .”

In Jest from The News Literacy Project on Vimeo.

The News Literacy Project created this video linking news literacy to voting knowledgeably.

Another Theory on Why Media Didn’t ‘Get’ Trump

“Donald Trump is a moral, intellectual and spiritual failure. He lies, he cheats, he insults, he practices the rankest hypocrisy. He manipulates the tax code to avoid paying taxes. He wields bankruptcy to avoid paying his creditors,” Lee Siegel wrote Oct. 28 for Columbia Journalism Review.

“And yet. He does not hide behind professions of virtue while practicing his vices. He falters, sins, fails in his obligations, falls prey to his impulses, gives vent to his rage, all in public view. He does not pretend to be decent while behaving indecently.

“For millions of decent people, who nevertheless falter in the obligations, surrender to their impulses, make mistakes in the eyes of the tax code and the law, Trump is the antidote (at least up until the allegations of sexual assault) to the prim, priggish, self-congratulatory liberal code of virtues. Trump’s followers forgive his abusiveness, callousness and mendacity because it embodies, in the phrase made famous by Isaiah Berlin, ‘the crooked timber of humanity.’ His failures of character allow them to forgive him his wealth and power.

“What his followers cannot forgive is the liberal media’s smug enforcement of the straight and narrow path to happiness and success, a smugness and prescriptiveness often born in conditions of prosperity and privilege that are far removed from the way the majority of Americans exist.

“Most American define success in terms of their families, their work — if they’re lucky enough to be working, and at a job with dignity — and their attachment to their communities. For most of the media, success is the right school, the right style of parenting, the right cultural products, the right job, the right etiquette in every social situation, the right social attitudes, and the right workout.

“That difference between how the media defines success and failure and how much of the rest of the country does, is one of the great causes of the divide between the press and the tens of millions of Americans who have rallied behind the exceptionally flawed Republican standard-bearer.

“It is a reason most of the media never grasped the rise of Trump’s base of support. Unless it’s addressed, one of the legacies of the 2016 election will be a permanent, and deepening, mistrust of and alienation from the mainstream press. Here is my idea of a newsworthy profile . . .”

Media Critic Says Brazile’s Conduct Not So Unusual

“Interim Democratic National Committee Chair Donna Brazile has taken a public flogging — and lost her sinecure as one of CNN’s talking heads — for allegedly leaking primary debate questions the network planned to ask Hillary Clinton to her presidential campaign,” Jack Shafer wrote Thursday for Politico.

“Brazile’s conduct — revealed in emails hacked from John Podesta’s account and posted by WikiLeaks — especially outraged CNN President Jeff Zucker, who according to a blind-sourced report by Huffington Post’s Michael Calderone, characterized Brazile’s tattling as ‘unethical’ and ‘disgusting’ in an editorial meeting earlier this week. ‘I have no tolerance for her behavior or that kind of behavior,’ Zucker allegedly told his staffers.

“While Brazile deserves criticism — I shamed her for her alleged leak earlier this week — calling her behavior ‘disgusting’ takes the whole castigation thing a tad too far. What Brazile did — violating the confidence of a (part-time) employer — is what makes the wheels of journalism turn. If the press, including Zucker’s own CNN, could not rely on employees to breach basic ethical understandings, nondisclosure pacts and promises to keep lips zipped in order to leak information, journalism would cease to exist.

“Zucker has every right to say, ‘I have no tolerance for her behavior or that kind of behavior,’ but if his tolerance really was zero, he would have to sack his staff, turn out CNN’s lights and go home. Watch any half-hour of CNN news coverage or scan CNN.com and count the number of times anonymous sources are credited with supplying information. . . .”

FCC Faulted on Pace of Telecom Diversity

The Federal Communications Commission is touting its actions on “net neutrality” — keeping the internet open to all — as its primary effort to eliminate barriers to greater diversity in the telecommunications business, but one of the organizations pressing for that diversity said Friday that the agency could be doing much more.

Broadcast ownership, one of the issues under FCC jurisdiction, remains disproportionately low for people of color. For instance, African American television station ownership dropped from 12 stations in 2009 to 10 in 2011, or less than 1 percent of the nation’s 1,348 full-power television stations, the FCC said in November 2012.

As part of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, Congress ordered the FCC to report every three years on its efforts to eliminate “market entry barriers for entrepreneurs and other small businesses in the provision and ownership of telecommunications services and information services.” With little fanfare, the FCC released such a report on Oct. 27.

“The Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council (MMTC) recognizes the steps the Commission has taken to improve diversity and lower barriers for small, minority-, and women-owned businesses (collectively, SDBs and MWBEs) in the media, telecom, and tech sectors,” the nonprofit advocacy organization said Friday.

“In 2014, MMTC supported the Commission’s vote to ultimately do away with joint sales agreements (JSAs) for which there are few or no public interest benefits, an action that served to protect many small and diverse broadcast owners from predatory licensing agreements.

“Last year, the Commission took several steps to revitalize AM radio, including the unanimous adoption of several engineering proposals from MMTC’s 2009 Radio Rescue Petition. The Commission also last year reformed its designated entity rules for spectrum auctions, ultimately leading to diversity of spectrum ownership and competition in the wireless industry — two important policy goals that MMTC has long championed.

“Unfortunately, MMTC believes the Commission should have gone further in its efforts. The Commission has failed to conduct the Adarand studies necessary to collect data to support the implementation of race-conscious policies to advance diversity, as required by the 1995 Supreme Court case; it has allowed equal employment opportunity enforcement to diminish to nearly zero; it has not extended its diversity procurement rule to all technologies; and it has released its Section 257 triennial diversity report, which was due in 2012, nearly four years late. . . .”

“Adarand studies” refers to the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision in Adarand v. Pena that ruled “for the first time that all federal laws that create racial classifications, whether meant to burden or benefit minorities, when challenged, must be tested by the same stringent standard i.e., strict scrutiny, this meaning that the government must show that the program was established to meet a compelling state interest and that it is narrowly tailored to achieve that purpose,” according to the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.

 

Champs

The Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times were selling souvenirs of the Chicago Cubs’ World Series victory. The Tribune’s “Chicago Cubs 2016 World Series Champions Photo Mint” is $59.99. An unadorned copy of Tuesday’s Chicago Sun-Times is $10.

Journalist Shot by Police Near Standing Rock

“As peaceful protests over the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline again turn violent, one journalist near the Standing Rock Sioux Indian reservation in North Dakota captured shocking video showing herself being shot by police out of nowhere as she conducted an interview,” Katherine Krueger reported Thursday for Fusion.

“Erin Schrode, an activist and journalist, was doing an interview at the edge of the Cantapeta Creek when police shot her with a rubber bullet. In her video of the incident, Schrode can be heard screaming, ‘Ow!’ before crumbling to the ground.

“In a Facebook post, Schrode, who has written for Fusion in the past, said she was badly shaken after ‘militarized police’ shot her at ‘point-blank range.’

“Speaking to me on Thursday, Schrode said that, when she was shot, she couldn’t fully comprehend what had just happened but just remembered being in ‘excruciating pain.’ . . .”

Krueger also wrote, “At first, Schrode didn’t know she’d captured video of the incident. After writing about the experience on social media, she woke up on Thursday to a flurry of supportive messages. But there were others who questioned her story, even suggesting she was lying about the whole thing. . . .”

Mark Nakakihara and Ellen Endo discuss plans for the Rafu Shimpo. (Credit: J.K. Yamamoto/Rafu Shimpo)

Japanese American Paper to Stay Alive Through ’17

“One of the nation’s longest running Japanese American newspapers will live another year,” Randall Yip reported Thursday for his AsAmNews.

“Rafu Shimpo announced to its readers that it will stay open at least through the end of 2017.

“The paper has lost $750,000 over the last three years and was projected to lose another $350,000 this year.

“It had announced earlier this year it would shut down at the end of this year if it could not turn things around.

“A circulation drive fell short of its goal [of] 10,000 new subscriptions, but definitely helped to keep the paper going.

“ ‘With all the changes that we’ve made over the last seven months, with many more coming up in the next two months, the owners of The Rafu Shimpo have agreed to continue with the paper through the year 2017,’ said Mark Nakakihara, special consultant.

“‘Hopefully, the changes that we made and the ones that we are making will keep the paper going for many years after that. This wouldn’t be possible without thanking the publisher, Mickey Komai, and his family for allowing us to make these changes.’ . . . ”

4 Black Caucus Members Demand Facebook Change

“Four members of Congress wrote Facebook Tuesday demanding that the company stop giving advertisers the option of excluding by ethnic group,” Eric Umansky reported Thursday for ProPublica.

“The letter came in response to ProPublica’s story that Facebook allows advertisers to not show ads to those with an ‘ethnic affinity’ for various minority groups. We bought an ad in Facebook’s housing categories that excluded those with an “affinity” for African-American, Asian-American, or Hispanic people.

“ ‘This is in direct violation of the Fair Housing Act of 1968, and it is our strong desire to see Facebook address this issue immediately,’ wrote the lawmakers, who are members of the Congressional Black Caucus.”

They are Reps. Robin L. Kelly, D-Ill.; G.K. Butterfield, D-N.C.; Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo.; and Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y.

“Under the Fair Housing Act, it’s illegal to ‘to make, print, or publish, or cause to be made, printed, or published any notice, statement, or advertisement, with respect to the sale or rental of a dwelling that indicates any preference, limitation, or discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status, or national origin.’ Violators face tens of thousands of dollars in fines.

“Facebook says it polices advertising on its platform. ‘If we learn of advertising on our platform that involves this kind of discrimination, we will take aggressive enforcement action,’ the company wrote in a blog post this weekend. . . .”

ABC Crew Said to Fake Police Tape at Crime Scene

“ABC News correspondent Linsey Davis stood in a field in Woodruff, South Carolina, and relayed the gruesome details of how a 30-year-old woman had been held captive in a storage container allegedly by a registered sex offender,” Dylan Byers reported Friday for CNNMoney.

“Behind her, yellow police tape with the words ‘SHERIFF’S LINE DO NOT CROSS’ flapped in the wind, indicating the scene of the crime.

“In fact, the police tape was tied to ABC News’ own equipment just off-camera, a photograph obtained by CNNMoney shows. Sources with knowledge of the matter say the tape was placed there by ABC News for the purpose of its inclusion in the live shot.

“The photograph, sent by an anonymous source, shows the tape running no more than 30 feet and tied to camera stands at both sides. In Davis’ segment, which was broadcast on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” it is impossible to tell where the tape ends.

” ‘This action is completely unacceptable and fails to meet the standards of ABC News,’ Julie Townsend, the vice president of communications at ABC News, told CNNMoney. ‘As soon as it was brought to our attention, we decided to take the producer out of the field, and we’re investigating further.’ . . .”

Short Takes

Facebook users: “Like” “Richard Prince’s Journal-isms” on Facebook.

Follow Richard Prince on Twitter @princeeditor

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@yahoogroups.com

To be notified of new columns, contact journal-isms-subscribe@yahoogroups.com and tell us who you are.

About Richard Prince

View previous columns (after Feb. 13, 2016).
View previous columns (before Feb. 13, 2016).

 

Exit mobile version