CNN Anchor to Return to Work Wednesday
A ‘Desi’ Reporter on Biden’s Historic Trip to Ukraine
Awards Go to Reporting on DeSantis, Israel, Uvalde
Setting Record Straight on Washington Post Black History
Short Takes: Cleveland police setback on transparency; Aungelique Proctor; Monica Roberts; changing complexities in language about race; Cedar Rapids Gazette, GBH News and Maynard Institute; editor urges letters to Cleveland Council about schools; security at Hannah-Jones speech; Black crosswords; search of BBC’s India offices; Bangladesh newspaper suspended; U.K.-based Iranian broadcaster moves.
Homepage photo: Don Lemon apologizes (Credit: CNN)
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The fateful conversation on “CNN This Morning” Thursday in which CNN anchor Don Lemon declared that a woman’s prime is in her 20s, 30s or “maybe her 40s.” (Credit: “Breaking Points”/YouTube)
CNN Anchor to Return to Work Wednesday
- Feb. 22 update: CNN’s Don Lemon tweets another apology, returns to work (David Bauder, Associated Press)
“Anchor Don Lemon will return to work Wednesday after he receives formal training for his comments about Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley on ‘CNN This Morning,’ network CEO Chris Licht said in an email to employees Monday night,” the Associated Press reported Tuesday.
“Lemon has not been on the air since Thursday, when during a discussion on ‘CNN This Morning’ about the ages of politicians he said that the 51-year-old Haley was not ‘in her prime.’ A woman, he said, was considered in her prime ‘in her 20s, 30s and maybe her 40s.’ . . .
“ ‘I sat down with Don and had a frank and meaningful conversation. He has agreed to participate in formal training, as well as continuing to listen and learn. We take this situation very seriously,’ Licht said in a memo sent Monday night obtained by The Hollywood Reporter,” Abid Rahman reported for that publication.
“ ‘It is important to me that CNN balances accountability with fostering a culture in which people can own, learn and grow from their mistakes. To that end, Don will return to CNN This Morning on Wednesday,’ Licht added.”
Michael M. Grynbaum and John Koblin reported in The New York Times that Licht’s memo was a terse 75 words sent at 10:37 p.m. Monday. “Mr. Licht’s decision to address the matter in the waning hours of a holiday weekend reflected just how large a shadow the episode had cast over his network.
“A CNN spokesman said on Monday night that ‘the company has a number of resources and Don is committed to our recommendation.’ The spokesman declined to elaborate further, saying the network did not comment on personnel matters. . . .”
Stephen Battaglio wrote for the Los Angeles Times that “The note put to rest speculation that Lemon would be fired over the imbroglio, which has become a major distraction for the network.”
Message from Sabrina Siddiqui of the Wall Street Journal to fellow White House reporters. (Credit: Twitter)
A ‘Desi’ Reporter on Biden’s Historic Trip to Ukraine
The other journalist was Evan Vucci, Associated Press Chief Photographer in Washington, who delivered historic photos. Siddiqui’s reporting won kudos from her colleagues. “@SabrinaSiddiqui of the @WSJ filed an epic press pool report today on Biden’s trip to Kyiv,” tweeted Paul Farhi of The Washington Post. Mike Memoli of NBC News called Siddiqui’s report “incredible.”
For the Journal, Siddiqui wrote a straight-news story about the visit, but also “Biden’s Kyiv Visit Was Months in the Making“
She wrote there, “Only two journalists, rather than the typical pool of about a dozen who trail a president on such trips, were gathered at Andrews Air Force Base in the early hours of Sunday. One of them was with The Wall Street Journal. They were instructed to turn over their phones and were barred for security reasons to do any reporting on Mr. Biden’s whereabouts in real time. The president was joined by just three members of his senior staff: national security adviser Jake Sullivan, deputy chief of staff Jen O’Malley Dillon and personal aide Annie Tomasini.“
Before joining the Journal in 2019, Siddiqui covered the White House and the 2016 presidential election for the Guardian. There, she wrote an opinion piece, “Reporting while Muslim: how I covered the US presidential election.”
“Unlike my friend Asma Khalid, who eloquently chronicled her experience, there was nothing obviously Muslim about me. I don’t wear a hijab and, to most who have a certain image of what Muslims look like, the woman in the sleeveless, knee-length dresses wasn’t it,” she wrote.
“It was perhaps because they did not make the connection that voters often opened up to me with their candid thoughts about Muslims.
“There were many more chilling conversations with those who . . . wished aloud for violence and concentration camps. . . .”
In March 2021, Siddiqui appeared on a panel sponsored by the group Desis for Progress with “groundbreaking Desi women reporters. Join us to hear from three fantastic panelists about their paths, how their identity as Desi women has influenced their work, and the importance of diversity in the newsroom and media,” it said.
“Desi” is a term for a person of South Asian birth or descent who lives abroad.
How were Siddiqui and Vucci chosen for the secret flight to Kiev?
“So, we just moved her up to the secret flight. Evan was the AP photographer on the Warsaw manifest. Because stills don’t normally pool, I did a drawing for which outlet would be on the secret trip and AP won. They are both total professionals and the press corps was served very well by them.”
Keith wrote this note Monday to members of the association:
“As you now know, President Biden made a covert trip to Kyiv.
“He was accompanied all the way by two members of our White House press corps: print pooler Sabrina Siddiqui from the Wall Street Journal and Evan Vucci of AP, who pooled his photos. They were joined in Kyiv by a two-person TV crew from CBS that traveled in the president’s motorcade.
“At the presidential palace, another 9 journalists were added, filling out the traditional 13-person traveling press pool.
“Although presidents and vice presidents have taken secret trips before, they have always flown into countries where the US had a base of operation. In this case, President Biden visited the heart of a country at war, a war in which the US is not actively engaged on the ground and where the US doesn’t have a military base.
“As WHCA president, I advocated at every turn for additional press access. I expressed grave concern that the public’s access to information would suffer without a full pool with the president while in transit. But in the end, the White House, at the insistence of security officials, held firm that only two journalists would be able to travel with the president from start to finish.
“It was WHCA advocacy, in collaboration with the White House and the US Embassy team in Kyiv, that made it possible to build a full pool on the ground to cover the joint statements at the palace and the outdoor walk with President [Volodymyr] Zelensky. I made sure, to the greatest extent possible, that the composition of outlets in that pool matched the manifested pool for the President’s originally planned flight to Warsaw. In the end, our press corps and the public we serve got robust coverage of this historic visit.
“Please share your gratitude with Evan and Sabrina, who took on this difficult assignment without hesitation and delivered superb journalism, as well as the journalists who joined them on the ground in Kyiv. We are all in their debt.”
Awards Go to Reporting on DeSantis, Israel, Uvalde
Reporting about the killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ “cruel calculus” in transporting South American refugees under misleading circumstances, and the failed law enforcement response to the mass school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, were among winners in the George Polk Awards announced by Long Island University Monday.
The university said of these winners, cited among those in 15 categories:
- “The award for Political Reporting goes to Sarah Blaskey, Nicholas Nehamas, Ana Ceballos, Mary Ellen Klas and the staff of the Miami Herald for exposing the cruel calculus behind two flights taking 49 misled South American refugees from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard at the behest of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. The stories traced the operation to recruiters who lured them and other migrants with false promises of work in a political stunt the Herald calculated cost Florida taxpayers $1.565 million.
- “The award for National Television Reporting goes to Shimon Prokupecz and his CNN crew for groundbreaking coverage of the failed law enforcement response to a mass school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. Through recorded evidence and in interviews with survivors and relatives of the 19 children and two teachers who died before the gunman was shot dead, CNN’s coverage disputed official accounts and demonstrated that an inexplicable delay of over an hour in challenging the gunman probably cost lives.”
Black Washington Post veterans gathered in 2012 for the 40th anniversary of the Metro Seven. Top row, from left, Ivan C. Brandon, Sandy Davis, Craig Herndon, Michael B. Hodge, Richard Prince, Leon Dash, Ronald A. Taylor. Bottom row: Hollie West, Angie Brown Terrell, Alice Bonner, Bobbi Bowman, Courtland Milloy Jr. (Photo by Judy Brandon)
Setting Record Straight on Washington Post Black History
In “When Americans Lost Faith in the News” in the New Yorker’s Feb. 6 issue, Louis Menand’s reporting was incomplete when he wrote, “The Washington Post hired its first Black reporter in 1951. He was assigned his own bathroom, and left the paper after two years. ([Author Kathryn J.] McGarr says that the Post did not hire another Black reporter until 1972, but that’s incorrect: the paper hired Dorothy Gilliam in 1961, and Jack White in 1968.)
“Far into the civil-rights movement, the [New York] Times had very few Black reporters. The record of general-interest magazines, including this one, was hardly better.”
It is true that Simeon Booker, in 1951, became the Post’s first Black reporter. He was followed by Luther Jackson in 1959, Wallace Terry in 1960 and Gilliam in 1961.
But Jesse W. Lewis Jr. became a full-time reporter in 1964, later becoming the Post’s first Black editorial writer, Carl W. Sims started in 1965, and William Raspberry, who had been a teletype operator and later a columnist, was dispatched to cover the riots in Watts in 1965. Leon Dash, Hollie I. West, Ronald Smothers and Robert C. Maynard became staff writers in 1967. George Davis, Ivan Brandon and Richard Prince started as reporters in 1968. White, also hired in 1967, was on the ground covering the 1968 uprising in the nation’s capital. Michael B. Hodge started in 1969. Bernadette Carey reported in the late ’60s for the section then known as “For and About Women.”
Penny Mickelbury, Bobbi Bowman and Ronald A. Taylor arrived in 1971. By 1972, there were enough Black reporters for the group known as the “Metro Seven” to take the Post before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on a complaint of discrimination in hiring and promotions. That group included Bowman, Brandon, Dash, Hodge, Mickelbury, Taylor and Prince. Herbert Denton, Joseph Whitaker and Angela Terrell were also on the reporting staff. Roger Wilkins was an editorial writer who began at the paper in 1972, composing Pulitzer Prize-winning editorials about the Watergate scandal.
Short Takes
- “Cleveland Director of Public Safety Karrie Howard’s decision to remove police officers’ names and badge numbers from internal department bulletins that detail discipline cases has prompted new questions about the level of transparency required for a department under federal oversight,” Rachel Dissell and Mark Puente reported Monday for the Marshall Project .”Howard said in an email to The Marshall Project – Cleveland that he made the decision in October, but it wasn’t announced to officers or the public. The formal write-ups, distributed monthly, detail police department employee discipline ranging from warning letters for failing to turn on a body camera to serious brutality or dishonesty that result in firings. . . .”
- “Veteran Fox 5 reporter Aungelique Proctor is back on air with Fox 5 more than a year after being diagnosed with stage 2 stomach cancer,” Rodney Ho reported for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, referring to WAGA-TV. “ ‘It’s fairly amazing how well I’m doing,’ Proctor told her TV station recently. ‘I have energy. I’m working out, I’m eating.’ ” She added in a text: ‘I am feeling great and am thanking God for my healing. My first three-month scan showed no signs of cancer.’ . . .”
- ‘The New York Times had a chance to earnestly grapple with a serious critique of its trans coverage by a serious group of professionals, including journalists The Times believed were credible enough to have a byline in the paper or contribute in other ways,“ Issac J. Bailey contended for Nieman Reports. “Instead, it decided to demean them as activists who aren’t truly interested in the goal of quality journalism. It’s a tired tactic, one that is often trotted out to brush back groups who have long been left out of such discussions but are demanding a rightful place at the table. . . .”
- “Race is used as a catch-all to convey everything from skin color and nose shape to white supremacist assumptions about intrinsic value, intelligence, and culture,” Sydnee Thompson wrote Saturday for BuzzFeed News. “But as is so often the case when it comes to Western societal constructs, racial categorizations are steeped in white supremacy and obscure much more than they reveal. Why is it, for example, that calling someone mixed conjures up images of beautiful people with beige skin, wavy brown hair, and hazel eyes for some people instead of someone with skin and hair like walnut and full lips?” Separately, Samantha Chery wrote the same day for The Washington Post under the headline, “Biracial women say Meghan is proof racism and privilege coexist.“
- The Gazette in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and GBH News in Boston have been selected to participate in the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education’s Equity and Belonging Newsroom Transformation Program, the institute announced Tuesday. “The pilot program, funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, pairs news organizations with consultants who have a wealth of experience training journalists on diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging (DEIB) issues. The goal is to help transform workplace structures, organizational cultures and news coverage to be more inclusive and reflective of the United States.”
- Attendees at the sold-out speech Sunday for “The 1619 Project’s” Nikole Hannah-Jones, the subject of articles about her $35,350 speaking fee (second item), were greeted with magnetometers after white supremacist flyers were found in McLean, Va., neighborhoods. The flyers, “attributed to the group Loyal White Knights were placed inside plastic bags with bird seed, and read, “Fairfax County Taxpayers! Do you feel [it’s] worth paying over $60k for two anti-white black power speakers???“” Brittney Melton and Rafael Sanchez-Cruz reported Friday, updated Saturday, for WUSA-TV. Anti-racism speaker Ibram X. Kendi had spoken previously. “Registration for the event filled quickly and we also had a waitlist of more than 400 people,” messaged Jessica Hudson, director of Fairfax County Public Library. She did not say how many attended.
- “Indian tax officials have ended their days-long search of the BBC’s offices in New Delhi and Mumbai, the British broadcaster announced Thursday,” Manveena Suri, Kunal Sehgal and Rhea Mogul reported for CNN. “Officials had spent three days raiding the spaces following the country’s ban on a BBC documentary that was critical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s alleged role in deadly riots more than 20 years ago. . . .”
- “The only newspaper of Bangladesh’s main opposition party has halted printing after a government suspension order was upheld by a watchdog, stoking fears about media freedom in the South Asian nation,” Al Jazeera reported Monday, incorporating news-service dispatches. “The Dainik Dinkal, a Bengali-language broadsheet, has been a mouthpiece of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) for more than three decades. It employs hundreds of journalists and press workers. . . .”
- “A UK-based Iranian broadcaster has moved its operation to the US after mounting threats and safety concerns against its journalists from Tehran,” the Guardian reported Saturday. “Acting on advice from the Met police, Iran International TV ‘reluctantly’ ‘closed its London studios after state-backed threats, a statement said, as safety concerns made it no longer possible to protect the channel’s staff and the surrounding public. . . .”
Don Lemon Remains Off Air
February 20, 2022
To Clyburn, Haley’s Age Isn’t the Problem
Homepage photo: Don Lemon on air in his much-discussed outfit. (Credit: CNN)
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To Clyburn, Haley’s Age Isn’t the Problem
“Don Lemon, a co-host of ‘CNN This Morning,’ is still off the air, four days after apologizing on Twitter and internally for describing Nikki Haley on the show last Thursday as ‘past her prime,’ “ Vanessa Friedman wrote Monday for The New York Times. “His comment, while discussing her presidential bid, seemed to refer implicitly to the Republican candidate’s appearance and age in a derogatory and retrograde way, setting off a public firestorm that is still reverberating.
Separately, Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., the House assistant Democratic leader, who is 82, took a swipe at Haley, his fellow South Carolinian, Sunday at the Journal-isms Roundtable (video, 52:51). It was not because of her age, but her indulgence of questionable characters, including the “racist” who introduced Haley at her campaign announcement.
Friedman continued, “Mr. Lemon, of all people, should have known better.
“After all, Mr. Lemon has himself experienced criticism because of his appearance and pushed back, vocally, less than a month before his dismissal of Ms. Haley. It was only in late January that he went on something of a spiel saying he understood what it was like to be a woman and be judged on appearances, because the same thing had happened to him.
“The occasion, back then, was his decision to wear a hoodie with a suit jacket while on the air, which proved such an unexpected sartorial choice for an anchorman that it went viral, creating its own mini-news cycle. Stephen Colbert called out the look, saying he always watched the CNN show but was ‘a little taken aback’ because of what Mr. Lemon was wearing.
“ ‘I know they want to add some comedy to CNN, and this is hilarious,’ Mr. Colbert said. ‘How do you report the news in that outfit? How do you talk about tragedy wearing that? Because what could be more tragic than that look?’
“Mr. Colbert, who generally wears a suit and tie on-air, described Mr. Lemon’s look as ‘a high school track teacher who went for a run,’ then stopped at a nice restaurant and was told he had to wear a jacket, so he ‘stole a jacket from an extra from ‘ “Guys and Dolls.” ‘
“Mr. Lemon responded in turn on his show, though unlike Mr. Colbert, he did not seem to find anything funny in the subject. . . . ” though he said he was a fan of Colbert and added that views on acceptable attire are changing.
Speculation continues about Lemon’s future on “CNN This Morning,” as network spokesman Matt Dornic told the New York Post that Lemon had been scheduled to be back in the anchor chair Monday but opted to take off for Presidents’ Day.
“I thought he was coming back tomorrow but he is taking the holiday,” Dornic said in an email to the newspaper.
However, the Daily Mail reported Monday, “When asked if it was true that Don Lemon is being inched towards the exit door in the wake of this latest scandal, another spokesperson for CNN told DailyMail.com, ‘it is patently false to say Don is being pushed to resign’.“
Meanwhile, Clyburn was asked at the Journal-isms Roundtable Sunday about Haley and her fellow South Carolina Republican, Sen. Tim Scott, who is said to be weighing a presidential race.
Clyburn (pictured below at Sunday’s Journal-isms Roundtable, by Sharon Farmer) said he had not yet heard from Scott, but that “All you need to know about Nikki Haley’s candidacy are these two things:
“Number One. When she made her announcement in person, she had the invocation given by a gentleman
who is a preacher, Reverend Hagee. I want y’all to look him up.
“John Hagee. H-A-G-E-E.
“He gave the prayer for Nikki Haley, and Nikki Haley went to the mic, she looked over at him, thanked him for being there, and says, ‘I want to be just like you when I grow up.’ . . .
“And that’s not to get to the fact that Ralph Norman, the congressman from South Carolina, brought her up. . . . He was the one, by misspelling martial law, he spelled it like the name Marshall, and asked that the president invoke ‘Marshall Law’ to keep Joe Biden from becoming president of the United States. That’s who brought her up.
“Those are the only two things you need to know about Nikki Haley, if you have a problem doing research.”
- Wajahat Ali, MSNBC: Nikki Haley’s ‘model minority’ trope isn’t surprising. But it’s still dangerous
- Sue Halpern, New Yorker: Why Is Nikki Haley Running for President?
- Hanna Panreck, Fox News: Whoopi Goldberg echoes Don Lemon in attacking Nikki Haley: ‘You’re not a new generation, you’re 51’.
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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@
View previous columns (after Feb. 13, 2016).
View previous columns (before Feb. 13, 2016)
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- Book Notes: Is Taking a Knee Really All That? (Dec. 20, 2018)
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