Articles Feature

Media Call Trump on His ‘Dog Whistle’

by richard02439

Candidate’s Tweet Quickly Tied to Anti-Semitism

Toni Randolph Dies; Diversity Champion, Mentor

Essence Festival Draws More Than 450,000

Investigative Reporter Wins J-Educator Award

Alternative Perspectives on the Fourth of July

Curry Faults N.Y. Times Story on Black Media

73% of Black British Voters Wanted to Stay in EU

Islamic State Shows Killing of 5 Media Activists

Feeling Pressure, Chinese Journalists Leaving Field

Short Takes

Donald Trump tweeted, ""Dishonest media is trying their absolute best to depict a star in a tweet as the Star of David rather than a Sheriff's Star, or plain star!"
Donald Trump tweeted, “Dishonest media is trying their absolute best to depict a star in a tweet as the Star of David rather than a Sheriff’s Star, or plain star!”

Candidate’s Tweet Quickly Tied to Anti-Semitism

The news media, once criticized as giving Donald Trump free publicity for thinly veiled racist pronouncements, pounced so hard on a tweet sent Saturday by the GOP candidate that Trump quickly altered its controversial image and accused the media of being “dishonest.”

“Donald Trump tweeted a meme Saturday that used dog-whistle anti-Semitism to announce that his political rival, ‘Crooked Hillary,’ had ‘made history,’ ” Anthony Smith reported Sunday for mic.com.

“The meme Trump tweeted prominently featured the Star of David, a holy symbol of the Jewish religion that Nazis attempted to pervert by forcing Jews over the age of 6 to sew it onto their clothing during Hitler’s reign.

“Emblazoned onto the Star of David in Trump’s meme are the words ‘Most Corrupt Candidate Ever!’

“The star lies atop a giant pile of money. . . .”

David Weigel added Sunday in the Washington Post, “For at least the fifth time, Trump’s Twitter account had shared a meme from the racist ‘alt-right’ and offered no explanation why.

“ ‘We’ve been alarmed that Mr. Trump hasn’t spoken out vociferously against these anti-Semites and racists and misogynists who continue to support him,’ said Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). ‘It’s been outrageous to see him retweeting and now sourcing material from the website and other online resources from this crowd.’

“The offending image first appeared in a June 15 tweet by @FishBoneHead1, an account with fewer than 1,000 followers and a penchant for memes that mock Muslims, black Democrats and ‘cucks’ — an alt-right term derived from the word ‘cuckold,’ for people they deem insufficiently conservative. According to Anthony Smith, a reporter for the news site Mic, it was shared June 22 on a racist section of the 8Chan Web forum.

“Trump’s official Twitter account shared the image, with no hint of its origin, at 9:37 a.m. Saturday. It came under fire immediately, with Trump critics such as the conservative pundit Erick Erickson accusing him of ‘play[ing] to the white supremacists.’ By 11:19 a.m., the tweet had been deleted, and the image was uploaded again with the star switched out for a circle.

“That was more than enough time for critics and supporters to ask what exactly Trump was doing. On white-supremacist forums, Trump was cheered for apparently declaring his solidarity through not-so-subtle code. . . .”

Marina Fang wrote Monday for the Huffington Post, “Former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski on Sunday insisted that a blatantly anti-Semitic tweet from the presumptive GOP presidential nominee was not controversial, calling the response to it ‘political correctness run amok.‘

“. . . Despite the blatant anti-Semitism contained in the image, Lewandowski — who now serves as a paid commentator for CNN after Trump fired him last month — continued to defend the tweet on Sunday.

“ ‘You are saying that’s a simple star, a simple star that you would expect, like a star you would give a child, a sticker. A star that would be used would have five points, not six,’ CNN’s Brianna Keilar said. . . .”

“Lewandowski insisted that using the star wasn’t meant to be offensive and that the media created the controversy.

“It’s the same star that sheriff’s departments use to represent law enforcement. To read into something that isn’t there is — that’s the mainstream media trying to attack Donald Trump for something that really isn’t there,” he said.

“They put a new tweet up with a circle. The message is the same,” he continued. “The message is that Hillary Clinton is corrupt. The bottom line is, this is political correctness run amok.”

Trump repeated Lewandowski’s position in a tweet at 9:42 a.m. Monday. “Dishonest media is trying their absolute best to depict a star in a tweet as the Star of David rather than a Sheriff’s Star, or plain star!”

Meanwhile, Columbia Journalism review on Friday named “The best and worst journalism of June 2016.” On David Uberti’s “best” list was “The Washington Post spotlights Donald Trump’s charitable giving, or lack thereof.” Among the “worst” was “CNN hires Trump’s former campaign manager.”

Toni Randolph Dies; Diversity Champion, Mentor

Toni Randolph, “whose quiet, steady presence guided colleagues, young reporters and listeners to a deeper understanding of each other and of journalism” as Minnesota Public Radio’s editor for new audiences, died Sunday, the station reported.

Toni Randolph
Toni Randolph

“Toni was undergoing surgery for cancer,” Bill Davis, who hired Randolph as news director at WBFO-FM in her Buffalo, N.Y., hometown in 1988, wrote on Facebook. “She’d been diagnosed three years ago — and most of her colleagues were unaware of the diagnosis, much less that she was often working in debilitating pain.” Her age was not immediately available. [April Simpson of current.org reported it Tuesday as 53.]

Meg Martin wrote for MPR, “She was a tireless champion within her newsroom — and far beyond, as an active member of the National Association of Black Journalists — for voices unheard and voices that needed lifting up. She challenged her colleagues toward inclusion, broad thinking and deeper empathy, in their reporting and in their work.

” ‘Having diverse voices in our news stories should be part of the fabric of what we do,’ Randolph said in 2014. ‘We’ll reap more benefits than we can imagine when newsrooms truly reflect our communities.’

“She had a special devotion to young journalists — and steered the stories and reporting of countless high school and college students through MPR News’ Young Reporters Series, its Generation Next training program and the University of St. Thomas’ ThreeSixty Journalism high school program, whose board she joined in February. At the time of her death, she was in the midst of preparing for the fall season of Generation Next’s young journalist classes. . . .”

Essence Festival Draws More Than 450,000

“Just hours after Puff Daddy and The Family closed out Essence Festival 2016, with an ‘I’ll Be Missing You’ sing-along, the festival management announced that more than 450,000 attended the music, culture and fashion festival this year,” Doug MacCash reported Tuesday for NOLA.com | the Times-Picayune in New Orleans.

“A festival spokesperson pointed out that last year’s attendance was higher, with almost 500,000 fans. But the 2015 festival was four days long, counting an opening evening appearance by comedian Kevin Hart, while the 2016 festival was only three days long.

“The 2014 20th anniversary Essence Festival holds the record with 550,000 fans. . . .”

Publication-branded events are increasingly becoming part of media companies’ bottom lines.

In a story about the travails of black media, Sydney Ember and Nicholas Fandos wrote Saturday for the New York Times, “Earl G. Graves Jr., the president and chief executive of the business-focused magazine Black Enterprise, said his company was ‘not as strong as it was,’ but preferred that it remain independent. Like many magazines, it has cut its publication schedule and focused more on its events business as a potential revenue source. . . .”

Members of the News Lab Class of 2015-16 in their classroom at Georgia State University. James Salzer, center, a reporter for Atlanta Journal-Constitution, center, recently taught the class about how to analyze campaign finance reports. (Credit: News Lab)
Members of the News Lab Class of 2015-16 in their classroom at Georgia State University. James Salzer, center, a reporter for Atlanta Journal-Constitution, recently taught the class about how to analyze campaign finance reports. (Credit: News Lab)

Investigative Reporter Wins J-Educator Award

“David G. Armstrong, a Georgia State University professor who trains student journalists in investigative reporting as director of the Georgia News Lab, is the recipient of the 2016 Barry Bingham Sr. Fellowship,” the Association of Opinion Journalists Foundation has announced.

David Armstrong
David G. Armstrong

“The $1,000 award, given in recognition of an educator’s outstanding efforts to encourage students of color in the field of journalism, will be officially presented at the American Society of News Editors (ASNE) annual convention in Philadelphia on Sept. 13,” the June 28 announcement said. “A merger of AOJ and ASNE, approved by the AOJ board on May 15, is expected to be completed later this year.

” ‘The Bingham fellowship brings to the ASNE convention an outstanding faculty member who has shown great initiative in mentoring college students. ‘We’re proud to honor David for his work with the News Lab. He is exactly the sort of person the Barry Bingham Fellowship was meant to recognize,’ said David D. Haynes, president of AOJ and editorial page editor of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

“Armstrong was nominated by Ken Foskett, senior editor for investigations at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

“He wrote, ‘With support from Cox, our parent company, the News Lab was started two years ago at Georgia State to train young journalists in investigative reporting and improve diversity within the ranks of investigative reporting, which tends to be dominated by white males. The program draws students from Atlanta’s historically black universities (Clark Atlanta, Spelman and Morehouse), as well as Georgia’s large public universities — UGA, Kennesaw State and GSU. . . .’ ”

This rendering of slave resistance, courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University is the cover art for Gerald Horne's 2014 book, "The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America."
This rendering of slave resistance, courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University, was used as cover art for Gerald Horne’s 2014 book, “The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America.”

Alternative Perspectives on the Fourth of July

“A central myth of American history teaching is that the American Revolution was fought for the ‘life, liberty and pursuit of happiness’ of each person,” Alan Gilbert wrote Monday for the Daily Beast in one of many alternative remembrances of the Fourth of July.

“By each, Jefferson sadly meant mainly white farmers.

“This patriotic myth — what I call a Founding Amnesia — drove Frederick Douglass, in 1852, to declare that the Fourth of July was not for slaves.

“But perhaps in contrast to its long history of racist exclusion, the Daughters of the American Revolution should first honor black Patriots. As Georg Daniel Flohr, a German private who fought at the decisive battle Yorktown with the French Royal Deux-Ponts for the Patriots, noted while walking around the field of battle the next day: ‘all over the place and wherever you looked, corpses… lying about that had not been buried; the larger part of these were Mohren [Moors, blacks].’

“And as I emphasize in Black Patriots and Loyalists (2012), the acme of freedom in the American Revolution was the gradual emancipation of slaves in Vermont (not yet a state) in 1777, in Pennsylvania in 1780, in Massachusetts in 1782, in Connecticut and Rhode Island in 1784, in New York in 1799, and in New Jersey in 1804.

“If we ask the central question in American history: how did there come to be a free North to oppose bondage in the Civil War, the answer is, surprisingly: gradual emancipation during and just after the American Revolution. Thus, black Patriots and their white abolitionist allies played a central, undiscussed role both in battle and in the deepening of American freedom. . . .”

Curry Faults N.Y. Times Story on Black Media

George E. Curry, twice editor-in-chief of the news service created by the trade organization for the black press, has taken aim at a front-page story in the Sunday New York Times headlined, “Pillars of Black Media, Once Vibrant, Now Fighting for Survival.”

“The story correctly observes that many Black media outlets have been purchased by White-owned companies: Black Entertainment Television, created by Robert L. Johnson and his then-wife, Sheila, was sold to Viacom in 2001 for nearly $3 billion,” Curry wrote for his new emergenewsonline.com. “In 2005, Ed Lewis, Clarence O. Smith and their partners sold Essence, the premier Black women’s magazine, to Time, Inc.

“The story failed to mention that Black-oriented digital outlets also are now in non-Black hands. For example, The Root, created by Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Donald E. Graham, former publisher of the Washington Post, was sold last year to Univision Communications. The site went from being owned by Graham Holdings Company, a majority White company, to one that carries the tagline, the ‘Hispanic Heartbeat of America.’

“The larger failure was not addressing the importance of Black-owned and operated media.

Curry also wrote, “The issue is not race or ethnicity per se — it’s an issue of trust. African Americans trust the Black Press and distrust the White-owned corporate media. . . .”

73% of Black British Voters Wanted to Stay in EU

“Brexit has re-awakened extreme racism in Britain,” Kehinde Andrews, a professor at Birmingham City University in the UK, wrote Wednesday for Ebony.

“The United Kingdom is coming to terms with the majority of the British people voting to leave the alliance of 28 member states that make up the European Union (EU). ‘Brexit,’ as it has been dubbed, has created a shockwave that led to the resignation of the prime minister, $2 trillion in global equity share losses and endless debates about a divided nation.

“According to a local poll, Scotland wanted to stay in the EU, England voted to leave; 73% of 18 to 24 year olds backed the EU, while 60% of over 65 wanted to leave; and a majority of the employed voted to stay, whilst most of the unemployed opted to go.

“The discussion in Britain has mostly missed out one of the biggest divides that the vote uncovered: 53% of White voters wanted out and 73% of Black voters wanted to stay in the EU. Black voters overwhelmingly supported staying in, not because of any love for the union but because they recognized that the driving force behind the desire to leave was racism. . . .”

Islamic State Shows Killing of 5 Media Activists

“Isil has executed five media activists in Syria’s eastern province of Deir Ezzor, warning that anyone who tries to document the group’s atrocities will never be safe from retribution,” Zia Weise reported June 26 from Istanbul for the Telegraph in London.

“The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a London-based monitoring group, said it had received a video depicting the activists’ deaths, carried out on various charges including ‘acting against the Islamic State, communicating with outside parties and receiving funds’.

“The Observatory reported that the jihadists murdered one of the activists by hand-cuffing him to his explosives-rigged laptop and detonating it. Another was killed while tied to his camera. . . .”

Feeling Pressure, Chinese Journalists Leaving Field

“China has long been a hostile place for journalists, but the growing pressure from censors under President Xi Jinping and the allure of less-risky, better-paying jobs at Internet companies such as Tencent and Alibaba Group Holding is squeezing the profession even more,” Li Yuan reported Wednesday for the Wall Street Journal.

“A widely circulated online quip sums up the mood: ‘Chinese lawyers are either in jail or on their way to jail, and Chinese journalists are either working for Alibaba or on their way to working for Alibaba.’

“The risks are no joke. The Committee to Protect Journalists says China imprisoned 44 journalists in 2014 and 49 in 2015, more than any other country, and both more than any year since the New York-based group started tracking jailed journalists in 1990. Gao Yu, a 72-year-old journalist, was sentenced to seven years in prison last year for leaking state secrets. Her sentence was later reduced to five years and she was granted a medical release, allowing Ms. Gao to serve the rest of her term outside prison.

“While there is no independent media in China as in the Western sense — all media outlets are required to have a government sponsor — there was a boom of more market-oriented media between the mid-1990s and early 2010s. Some publications managed to do investigative reporting and lured graduates from top universities. . . .”

“ 'I grew up close to the shore, and I have always loved spending time at the beach,' the Los Angeles-based artist Kadir Nelson says of his cover for this week’s issue," Françoise Mouly, art editor at the New Yorker, wrote Monday for the magazine. “ 'When I was young it meant time with my dad, and now that I’m a father myself I relish the long summer days spent with my own children.' ” Nelson was also featured on CBS-TV's "Sunday Morning." (video)
“ ‘I grew up close to the shore, and I have always loved spending time at the beach,’ the Los Angeles-based artist Kadir Nelson says of his cover for this week’s issue,” Françoise Mouly, art editor at the New Yorker, wrote Monday for the magazine. “ ‘When I was young it meant time with my dad, and now that I’m a father myself I relish the long summer days spent with my own children.’ ” Nelson was also featured on CBS-TV’s “Sunday Morning.” (video)

Short Takes

August's Teen Vogue
August’s Teen Vogue

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