Articles Feature

Jackson Praises ‘Freedom Fighter’ Curry

by richard01754

‘His Mission Was Greater Than His Job’

CBS, Others Falsely Equate Trump, Clinton on Race

‘You’re Asian, Right? Why Are You Even Here?’

Clinkscales Leaves Revolt After Three Years

Bloomberg Discloses Aerial Surveillance in Baltimore

U. of Chicago’s Knock of ‘Safe Spaces’ Has a Catch

Wendy Tokuda Leaves Bay Area TV After 30 Years

Short Takes

‘His Mission Was Greater Than His Job’

The Rev. Jesse L. Jackson praised journalist George E. Curry Friday as one whose “mission was greater than his job” and a “freedom fighter for journalists” who rose from humble beginnings to be celebrated by admirers from South Africa to Paris to Mississippi.

Jackson spoke at a program at Elizabeth Baptist Church in Tuscaloosa, Ala., Curry’s hometown. He said at the service that he arrived by private plane because of a packed schedule that included visiting the flood zone around Baton Rouge, La.; delivering the eulogy Friday in Milwaukee for Sylville Smith, who was shot and killed two weeks ago by a Milwaukee police officer; and participating at an education conference sponsored in Detroit Thursday by the A. Philip Randolph Institute.

The funeral for the champion of the black press, who died Aug. 20 at age 69 of heart failure, is scheduled Saturday at 11 a.m. Central Time at Weeping Mary Baptist Church, 2701 20th St., Tuscaloosa. A viewing on Saturday takes place from 8:30 a.m. to 11 a.m. Central Time. The Rev. Al Sharpton is to give the eulogy. (Livestream: <https://www.facebook.com/rolandsmartinfanpage/posts/10153941076607831>. The church holds about 1,000 people, according to Curry’s fiancee, Ann Ragland.

“You have to negotiate with what you have to work with,” Jackson said of Curry’s early life in the Jim Crow South. Fortunately, he said, Curry had a good mind, was physically strong and had the courage of his convictions and a point of view.

“You will live as long as we remember you, and we will not forget,” Jackson said of Curry. “Many of us come from the cracks in the sidewalk, but work our way out and take flight as George Curry did…   others stay in the crack, make room in the crack, complain about the crack and grow a crack mentality.”

Early in his remarks, Jackson asked journalists in the room to stand to be acknowledged. Jackson’s interest in the role of black journalists dates at least to 1984, when he spoke to the National Association of Black Journalists at its convention in Atlanta. He told the journalists that they worked in pain and that “there’s another power not on the table: the fight for appraisal power.”

He also said then, “The African American journalist is trapped in this two-ness. One one hand you are covering a community that is enraged, and fighting for freedom and power. You were born into it, bred into it.

“You’re covering a community that is enraged, in anguish and pain. But you’re reporting to another community that is resisting and usurping and disallowing the sharing of power. And then you’re judged by the appraisers, the owners, the chief beneficiaries of the status quo, the editor and the publisher. What a crossfire!”

Others talked about Curry as one who delighted in his family.

Journalist Roland S. Martin of TVOne, a friend of Curry, arranged for Friday’s service to be livestreamed on his Facebook fan page and planned to do the same for the Saturday service.

CBS, Others Falsely Equate Trump, Clinton on Race

“A series of racially charged accusations dominated the presidential campaign Thursday, with Democrat Hillary Clinton accusing Donald Trump of ‘taking hate groups mainstream,’ while the Republican nominee repeatedly claimed that Clinton is a ‘bigot’ toward African Americans,” John Wagner and Jenna Johnson wrote for the Washington Post.

Leonard Green's column made the front page of the Daily News in New York.
Leonard Greene’s column made the front page of the Daily News in New York.

On the “CBS Evening News” that day, substitute anchor James Brown introduced the program with a graphic that read, “The Race Turns to Race” and declared, “The presidential campaign may have hit a low point today and there are 75 days to go.” (video)

Clinton, however, was merely restating what others have reported for months — so what’s the low point?

“RNC Spokesperson Can’t Name A Single Inaccuracy From Clinton’s Speech Linking Trump To The ‘Alt-Right,’ ” read a headline from Media Matters for America. Another read, ‘Sound Of Silence’: No Republican Leaders Have Defended Trump After Clinton Linked Him To The ‘Alt-Right.’ ”

CBS was engaging in false equivalence, and it wasn’t alone. Ed Kilgore wrote Friday for New York magazine, “if major media organizations treat everything Trump says as equivalent in gravity and proximity to the truth as everything Clinton says, it could get even worse. After all, Trump throws out insults all the time, at nearly everybody. If insults equal fact-based attacks, the sheer volume of insults could win in the end.”

Journal-isms asked CBS News about the “low point” comment.

Kim Godwin, senior broadcast producer who works on the “CBS Evening News,” replied, “The reporting was an accurate depiction of the day’s political activity. We presented a balanced, thorough look at the charges and counter-charges from each campaign as well as the underlying issues. While doing so, we accurately noted the level of political discourse in this presidential campaign has sunk to a new low.”

‘You’re Asian, Right? Why Are You Even Here?’

An Asian American intern at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel who was thrown to the ground and punched repeatedly by a group of people as he reported on the city’s racial disturbances two weeks ago has written his reflections on the incident.

“The voice that stuck in my head over the next few days, as I talked to my relatives and friends about it, belonged to a woman who’d come up to me in the afternoon scrum: ‘You’re Asian, right?‘ she said to me. ‘Why are you even here?’,” Aaron Mak, a Yale University student, wrote Tuesday for Politico Magazine.

Aaron Mak (Credit: Twitter)
Aaron Mak (Credit: Twitter)

“In one sense, the answer was obvious: I am a journalist,” Mak continued. “I’ve covered protests against police brutality before, and see it as a responsibility of the press to convey the pain and grief that can result from misuse of power.

“But as an Asian-American who’s concerned with systemic racism, it would be naive for me to pretend — especially in moments like this, when anger over the treatment of African-Americans bubbles over into violence — that race wasn’t part of why people came out to protest in Milwaukee, or part of sifting out who belongs there.

“As race and police violence become a higher-profile issue in America, many Asian-Americans are still trying to figure out where — or if — we fit in to the movement. . . . Should Asian-Americans like me count ourselves part of the same effort to fight for minority rights, or are we at odds with it? . . .”

Clinkscales Leaves Revolt After Three Years

Keith Clinkscales
Keith Clinkscales

“Revolt CEO Keith Clinkscales has stepped down from his role at the company, TheWrap has learned,” Reid Nakamura reported Thursday for TheWrap.com

“In a memo sent to staffers on Thursday, Clinkscales announced his departure from the music-themed network that was founded by Sean ‘Puffy’ Combs, thanking his team and assuring them that the company remains on ‘exceptional footing.’

“Chief Operating Officer Derek Ferguson will temporarily take the reins while Revolt searches for Clinkscales’ replacement. . . .” Clinkscales did not disclose the reason for his departure.

Bloomberg Discloses Aerial Surveillance in Baltimore

“The Baltimore Police Department on Wednesday acknowledged testing aerial surveillance technology over the city since January and defended the previously undisclosed program against critics,” Monte Reel reported for BloombergBusinessweek. “A police spokesman said the aerial surveillance program would continue for at least a few more weeks.

“Following a Bloomberg Businessweek report about the program published on Tuesday, several civil liberties groups expressed outrage over the surveillance, which is conducted by a private company based in Dayton, Ohio, called Persistent Surveillance Systems Inc. The national office of the ACLU in Washington issued a statement saying the program shouldn’t have been launched without a public debate. . . ”

Reel also wrote, “At a news conference Wednesday afternoon, police spokesman T.J. Smith cast the program as a natural extension of Baltimore’s CitiWatch program, which uses more than 700 ground-based cameras to keep an eye on city streets.

“The aerial program, however, operates on a vastly larger scale than ground-based cameras, capturing a continuously updated image of an area measuring roughly 30 square miles. The images are archived, and police can effectively follow the movements of vehicles or individuals backward and forward in time using the technology. . . .”

U. of Chicago’s Knock of ‘Safe Spaces’ Has a Catch

“The University of Chicago was widely praised this week when a letter to incoming freshmen decried so-called ‘trigger warnings’ and intellectual ‘safe spaces’ in the interest of preserving freedom of expression and intellectual curiosity,” (accessible via search engine) Angie Leventis Lourgos reported Friday for the Chicago Tribune.

“Except some student leaders were quick to point out the elite South Side college does, in fact, maintain what it calls ‘safe spaces.’ The University of Chicago website includes an LGBTQ ‘Safe Space Ally Network’ where students can find haven with trained peers and faculty across campus. And one of those Safe Space allies listed on the website is Jay Ellison — the dean who authored the letter to the Class of 2020 that set off the internet firestorm. . . .”

Wendy Tokuda works during a busy day at KPIX in 1990. According to the photo caption, she's returning calls, and the bear is from a young fan. (Credit: Liz Hafalia/San Francisco Chronicle)
Wendy Tokuda works during a busy day at KPIX in 1990. According to the photo caption, she’s returning calls, and the bear is from a young fan. (Credit: Liz Hafalia/San Francisco Chronicle)

Wendy Tokuda Leaves Bay Area TV After 30 Years

“I have these moments where I’m like, ‘Wow, what will this feel like?’ said Wendy Tokuda on the eve of the final television broadcast of her decades-long career in California,” Bill Disbrow reported Wednesday for sfgate.com.

“Tokuda, a Bay Area television staple for more than 30 years, retired from broadcast journalism on Friday, Aug. 19. But that night’s sign-off wasn’t the first time Tokuda has stepped out of the Bay Area spotlight.

“The veteran journalist established herself as the face of KPIX for more than a decade before leaving for a job in Los Angeles in the early 1990s. The Seattle native would later return to Bay Area living rooms as an anchor for both the local NBC and CBS affiliates, and then gave up the anchor chair in 2010.

“Now, after six years working primarily as a feature reporter, Tokuda is retiring from local television for good. . . .”

Short Takes

"It’s photos like this and census data about the news industry that prompted the National Association of Black Journalists and National Association of Hispanic Journalists to make continued lack of diversity in newsrooms a topic at their recent joint convention in Washington," Alicia Shepard wrote Friday for billmoyers.com
“It’s photos like this and census data about the news industry that prompted the National Association of Black Journalists and National Association of Hispanic Journalists to make continued lack of diversity in newsrooms a topic at their recent joint convention in Washington,” Alicia Shepard wrote Friday for billmoyers.com.

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