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Media Reach for Superlatives on Obamas

by richard01111

‘Star Power’ Adds to ‘Powerful’ Speeches at DNC

Homepage photo: Barack and Michelle Obama spoke on Tuesday, the second night of the Democratic National Convention, in the United Center in Chicago. (Credit: Ashlee Rezin/Chicago Sun-Times)

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‘Star Power’ Adds to ‘Powerful’ Speeches at DNC

“In Chicago, Obamas electrify DNC,” read the banner headline in the print edition of Wednesday’s Washington Post. And judging from the media reports on the speeches Tuesday night by first Michelle and then Barack Obama at the Democratic National Convention, they electrified the journalists as well.

“Obama steps back into the spotlight — and absolutely skewers Trump,” said a Politico headline.

“CNN anchor Anderson Cooper lauded former first lady Michelle Obama’s speech during the second night of the Democratic National Convention, calling it the ‘most powerful political speech I’ve ever heard,’ ” reported Caroline Vakil for The Hill.

On MSNBC, Rachel Maddow said Michelle Obama stood out for delivering “one of the best convention speeches I have ever seen by anybody in any circumstance.“

Not all newspapers led their print editions with the Obamas.

But many did, and even Fox News joined in the praise for them.

Fox host Bret Baier said Barack Obama’s speech showed why he was “such a star” for the Democrats, but that the former first lady “perhaps overshadowed” him, Newsweek reported.

The former first lady “gave an amazing speech that got this crowd on their feet, to say do something in refrain after refrain,” Baier said. “She had some tough shots against the former president [Donald Trump], but really [it] was a call for action for this Democratic Party to come behind this new ticket, saying America is ready for a new chapter.”

“Co-host Martha MacCallum agreed,” Newsweek continued. ” ‘Absolutely Bret,’ she said, suggesting Obama was linking Kamala Harris‘ 2024 campaign with her husband’s own.”

What exactly did the Obamas say?

This is what the Associated Press reported:

“If the Republican convention was all about Trump, the Democrats on Tuesday wanted to put Harris in a pantheon with past presidents,” wrote Josh Boak and Nicholas Riccardi.

“The biggest validators of the night were former President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle. The latter linked [Democratic presidential nominee Kamala] Harris with her husband by telling the rapt crowd, ‘America, hope is making a comeback.’

“Barack Obama, for his part, reached back to his own 2004 convention speech to tie Harris to his legacy. ‘I am feeling hopeful — because this convention has always been pretty good to kids with funny names who believe in a country where everything is possible,’ he said.

Boak and Riccardi also wrote, “The Obamas did not hold back in lacing into Trump. Michelle Obama’s well-worn adage from years past that ‘when they go low, we go high’ no longer seemed operative.

“Barack Obama called Trump ‘a 78-year-old billionaire who hasn’t stopped whining about his problems since he rode down his golden escalator nine years ago.’

“Michelle Obama also took a personal swipe, saying: ‘For years, Donald Trump did everything in his power to try to make people fear us. His limited and narrow view of the world made him feel threatened by the existence of two hardworking, highly educated, successful people who also happened to be Black.’

“Playing off her famous line about Republicans going low, Michelle Obama suggested that Trump was going ‘small’ and that ‘it’s unhealthy, and quite frankly, it’s unpresidential.’”

Mark Z. Barabak and Anita Chabria offered a more succinct summary in the Los Angeles Times: “Michelle Obama confronted Trump with molten anger. The former president filleted him with cool disdain.”

As with most journalism, the context into which the reporters placed the remarks was significant.

“Obamas Spotlight Trump’s Monstrous Ego From DNC Stage,” headlined the Daily Beast.

In the Los Angeles Times, James Rainey, Daniel Miller and Faith E. Pinho wrote of Barack Obama’s message, “The sharp-edged humor offered by Obama continued a pattern of Harris’ campaign: treating Trump as both a menace and a buffoon. Analysts have said previous attacks that labeled Trump only as a threat to democracy had resulted in the perverse outcome of increasing the Republican’s stature.”

Jim Geraghty wrote in The Washington Post, “It’s still Obama’s party — not in the sense that Obama is the shadow president, pulling the strings of the Biden administration, but clearly he is still the center of gravity.“

Fellow Post columnist Robin Givhan wrote under the print-edition headline, “In Michelle Obama, a barometer of the nation’s anxiety, rage and hope.”

“Obama has had a panoramic view of what it means to be a Black woman in the White House. Her office might have been in the East Wing, rather than the West, but she nonetheless was schooled in the language of low expectations and ad hominem attacks — including from Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump,” Givhan wrote.

“Hers is the civilian face of institutional dismay and grassroots frustration. Her stages of worry and grief have been a measure of the mayhem and meanness that have infected our democracy. Her expression of optimism Tuesday evening held the promise of a cure.”

Givhan added context to Obama’s decision to drop the 2016 mantra “When they go low, we go high.”

When she gave the advice in 2016, “The crowd cheered her on. And then [Hillary] Clinton lost the election to Trump and the new mantra among Democrats became, ‘when they go low, we kick them.’ ”

On Vox, Zack Beauchamp discussed political philosophy: “Former President Barack Obama made no secret of his disdain for Donald Trump. But his speech was more than just a partisan broadside: It was a philosophical brief in defense of liberalism, a kind of first-principles moral argument that no other major convention speaker offered.

“Liberal, in this context, does not refer to the term’s use in partisan American politics. It refers instead to the centuries-old philosophical tradition that sees politics as fundamentally oriented around the values of freedom and equality. Government, for liberals, exists to enable people to live according to their own vision for their lives; it has no business telling people what god to worship or giving certain groups of people more rights than others.

“Obama was a thoroughly liberal president, and Trump a thoroughly illiberal one. . . .”

Journalists offered consensus that the Tuesday speeches reaffirmed the Obamas’ star power. Many made connections to the excitement Barack Obama created as a presidential candidate in 2007 and 2008.

“Obama’s speech offered something of a transition between [President] Biden’s valedictory Monday night address, which focused heavily on his and Harris’ four years of accomplishments, and the final two nights of programming centered around the revamped Democratic ticket,” Eli Stokols and Jonathan Lemire wrote for Politico.

“It also reaffirmed his role as perhaps the party’s most effective and beloved messenger — along with Michelle, who delivered a rousing speech of her own connecting the enthusiasm Harris’ weeks-old campaign has generated with the same hope her husband inspired during his first, historic run.”

The pair presented “a star power that may never be rivaled,” Zachary Basu wrote for Axios.

Meanwhile, Trump was the object of Democratic ridicule as well as scorn — stories duly noted a double entendre from Barack Obama about Trump’s obsession with crowd sizes. On Wednesday, he said the Democrats’ spent too much time talking about him.

“I was mentioned, I think, almost 200 times,” Trump told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on “The Hugh Hewitt Show.” “And they mentioned the economy about five times. They mentioned the border maybe none. They mentioned crime almost none. So I mean, they’re out of control. These people are out of control. And they’re ruining our nation. Our nation is going to hell,” Trump said.

Separately, BET News announced live coverage of the convention’s final night, airing on Thursday at 9 p.m. ET on the cable station. Hosted in-studio by journalist Ed Gordon, “BET News Presents: Black America Votes the 2024 DNC” is to feature live reports, in-depth analysis, and coverage of notable primetime speeches.

“Gordon will be joined in-studio by journalists Jemele Hill and Van Lathan for commentary on the historic 2024 Democratic National Convention and the critical issues at stake for the Black community. This special will also serve to inform viewers on the importance of civic engagement and voter participation,” an announcement said.

“Jason Samuels is the executive producer, and Steven Ramey is the supervising producer of BET News. This news special furthers BET’s steadfast commitment to empowering Black voters and amplifying their voices in the upcoming elections to harness the power of collective action to drive meaningful change.”

Asked why BET did not offer similar coverage on the other convention nights, a spokesperson replied, “BET’s coverage is not limited to broadcast. The Network continues to report from the DNC around the clock on BET.com and its social platforms, including Brittany Packnett Cunningham’s daily recap reels. Viewers can watch her first reel HERE.“

Harris Surge or Not, Most Whites Back Trump

Aug. 19, 2024

Split Between College-Educated and Others
In Marines, JD Vance Was Considered a Journalist!
Why Harris Should Hold a News Conference — or Not
Summer Conventions Not Spared From Covid Surge
Might Be OK for NABJ, NNPA to Take Campaign Money

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Organizers said 200,000 people joined a “White Dudes for Harris” Zoom fundraiser that poured almost $4.5 million to the Harris campaign. (Credit: etsy.com)

Split Between College-Educated and Others

Despite the surge of support for Vice President Kamala Harris since she became the Democratic presidential candidate last month, white voters are still backing former president Donald Trump, according to two new surveys. The polls show stark racial divides, and the Trump support among whites is strongest among those without college degrees.

“On balance, White voters continue to back Trump (52% Trump, 41% Harris),” the Pew Research Center reported Wednesday, though that margin is somewhat narrower than it was in the July matchup against [President] Biden (50% Trump, 36% Biden).”

A Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll reported Sunday found that “Among White voters with college degrees, Harris leads Trump by 10 points and is faring about the same as Biden with this group. Among White voters without college degrees, her deficit against Trump is 27 points, also similar to the 31-point deficit for Biden in July.”

White voters without a college degree were about 35 percent of all 2020 voters, and about 52 percent of all white voters, John J. DiIulio Jr. has written for the Brookings Institution.

In 2015, the Census Bureau published a report [PDF] projecting that by 2044, the United States’ white majority would become merely a white plurality: immigration and fertility trends would lead to America’s ethnic and racial minorities outnumbering its white population.

This might make some whites receptive to Trump’s appeal to racial grievance, even though the majority of white voters have voted for Republicans in presidential elections anyway, going back to the 1960s. Lyndon Johnson was the last Democrat to win the white vote.

But Trump is not just any Republican. After all, it was Trump’s wink to white supremacists in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017 that Biden says persuaded him to run for president in 2020.

“It’s very important to understand that Trump is building on a 50-year tradition,” Ian Haney Lopez, author of “Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism & Wrecked the Middle Class,” said in 2019, as Trump mounted his last presidential run.

“Dog whistling starts in the 1960s with language that is transparently supportive of segregation masked in the language of states’ rights. Later it becomes a way of talking about criminals versus the innocent, about lazy welfare cheats versus hardworking people, and citizens versus illegals. Underlying all of that rhetoric is a basic racist story that becomes widely accepted as a form of political common sense, even among many Democrats and people of color.

“[Dog whistles] have become such a basic part of the American political and cultural fabric that they no longer operate like a ‘secret handshake’ [as they did in the 1960s] in which Donald Trump says something racist and his supporters know he means something racist but publicly deny it. Dog whistling today is like a used-car fraud. Donald Trump is peddling a story that he pretends is about common sense and patriotism and taking care of deserving people. And people don’t know that what they’re buying into is a racist story.”

Unsurprisingly, the Post/Ipsos poll found that more people said they trusted Harris to deal with race relations than Trump, though only 13 percent cited that as one of the single most important issues in their vote.

The Pew survey, taken July 1-7 and Aug. 5-11, also found:

  • “77% of Black voters support or lean toward Harris. This compares with 64% of Black voters who said they backed Biden a few weeks ago. Trump’s support is unchanged (13% then vs. 13% today). And while 21% of Black voters supported Kennedy in July, this has dropped to 7% in the latest survey.”
  • “Hispanic voters now favor Harris over Trump by a 17-point margin (52% to 35%). In July, Biden and Trump were tied among Hispanic voters with 36% each.
  • “By about two-to-one, Asian voters support Harris (62%) over Trump (28%). Trump’s support among this group is essentially unchanged since July, but the share “of Asian voters backing Harris is 15 points higher than the share who backed Biden in July.”

Within these groups, however, there are differences.  

As DiIulio wrote in April for Brookings, “When it comes to presidential primaries and general elections, it is useful to understand the ‘white vote’ as comprised of at least four sub-electorates: white evangelicals with college degrees; white evangelicals without college degrees; white Catholics and other non-evangelical whites with college degrees; and white Catholics and other non-evangelical whites without college degrees.”

Juan Williams added Aug. 12 in The Hill, “Most white women did not vote for the white woman running against Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election,” referring to Hillary Clinton. “Most white women did not vote for a white man running against Trump in the 2020 presidential race,” referring to Biden.

“So now we have to ask: Will white women vote for a Black woman?”

Kamala Harris at a Detroit barber shop in 2020. This year, a Black Men Vote PAC is training barbers to serve as voting ambassadors. (Credit: X)

Still, 200,000 people joined a “White Dudes for Harris” Zoom fundraiser that poured almost $4.5 million to the Harris campaign, according to its organizers. There were similarly successful Zooms for Black women, Black men, white women, Black queer men, South Asian women, Latinas and Native women. The Harris campaign said it raised $310 million in July, the best fundraising month in presidential history.

A Black Men Vote PAC “has already spent more than $6 million on the civic engagement this cycle alone according to officials, including on a pilot program that trains barbers to serve as voting ambassadors and encourage their patrons to register,” Brakkton Booker reported Sunday for Politico.

Yet Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Erica L. Green reported Aug. 11 for The New York Times, “A small but significant slice of Black men have historically been hesitant to support Black women seeking the highest positions of power. The numbers are on the margins but could be crucial to carrying Ms. Harris to victory in November.”

Among Latinos, Fernanda Figueroa wrote Aug. 11 for the Associated Press, “Harris was criticized for comments she made in 2021 telling migrants not to come to the U.S, when she was tasked with overseeing diplomatic efforts to deal with issues spurring migration in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras as well as pressing them to strengthen enforcement on their own borders.

“But Harris’ being a daughter of immigrants provides a sense of representation to many Latino families, which could help her get their vote, civic engagement advocates say.”

Univision announced Sunday, “A new Noticias Univision/YouGov poll released this morning on ‘Al Punto con Jorge Ramos’ shows that if the election were held today, 55% of registered voters would elect Democratic presidential candidate and Vice President Kamala Harris, compared to 38% who would choose Republican candidate and former President Donald Trump.”

The differences are less pronounced for Asian Americans and Indigenous people.

KQED in San Francisco headlined this 2021 story, ” ‘‘She’s Black and Indian Like Me’: What Seeing Kamala Harris Means to 6-Year-Old Sumaya (and Her Parents)” Photo shows Bongo Sidibe and Joti Singh, with their children, Sumaya (standing) and Jaleela. (Credit: Jamey Firnberg/Courtesy Bongo Sidibe and Joti Singh)

While some South Asians have complained that Harris does not emphasis her Indian roots enough, Reena Diamante reported Aug. 14 for Spectrum News in Texas, “With Harris’ presidential campaign in full swing, many Asian Americans are not only thinking about what her historic candidacy means for them but also how their vote could influence the race. Harris’ father was from Jamaica and her mother from India, an identity some groups in Texas think can boost enthusiasm among some voters.”

Acee Agoyo wrote Aug. 12 for Indianz.com, “instead of elevating Indian issues during his rally in Montana, home to 12 tribal nations and a strong Native voter base, Trump once again turned to insults. Speaking in Bozeman on Friday evening, the one-term former president lashed out against a Democratic lawmaker from [a] state more than 2,000 miles away.

“ ‘You remember Pocahontas?’ Trump said of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) who once claimed to be Native despite not having a connection to any tribe.

‘I have more Indian blood in me than she has in her — and I have none,’ Trump said to laughter, invoking a harmful stereotype used to denigrate Native people based on their supposed blood quantum.”

(Photo: Harris discusses tribal sovereignty at a rally in Glendale, Ariz., on Aug. 10.)

In Marines, JD Vance Was Considered a Journalist!

Few knew that in the Marine Corps, Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, the Republican nominee for vice president, was considered a journalist.

But the word is getting out now that Vance has attacked his Democratic counterpart, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, over his 24 years in the Army National Guard, accusing Walz of “stolen valor,” a phrase that involves falsely claiming military service, rank, medals earned, or duties and actions while serving.

Perhaps no one can frame the reaction like Malcolm Nance (pictured), the former counterintelligence agent, author and onetime counterintelligence analyst for MSNBC.

Nance wrote Wednesday on his Substack account, “Special Intelligence”:

“The Republican Vice Presidential nominee, JD Vance, generally doesn’t want people to know that when he served in the US Marine Corps as a journalist (called a Combat Correspondent) deployed to Iraq, his name was not JD Vance.  

“He was Corporal James D. Hamel.  Corporal Hamel was assigned in the relatively safe, air-conditioned spaces on an al-Assad airbase in Western Iraq, where he put out press releases for the 2ndMarine Air Wing for a year.  There was danger. Every US base was rocketed, and the roads were dicing with death, but writing press releases for The Eagle and Crescent base newspaper was his daily job.  

“At the end of four years, he got out without any distinguishing award or the coveted Combat Action Ribbon. No matter, he served honorably. But his attack this week on retired Master [Sergeant] Tim Walz, the homey beloved governor of Minnesota, went about twenty steps too far. He claimed that Walz had ‘Stolen Valor,’ a term that means that an individual faked, did not earn, or exaggerated their military service.

“Also, he claimed Walz did it to benefit financially and personally tangibly; in other words, he is claiming Walz committed a crime under the Stolen Valor Act of 2005 /2013 by using the title Command [Sergeant] Major (CSM), a position which Walz did achieve.  Like his boss Donald Trump, JD Vance is … to use a military phrase, a straight-up motherfucking liar.

“In the military, we call vets who attack other vets Blue Falcon, which is an acronym for Buddy Fucker.  JD Vance has decided to be that guy, the one we warn service members about — a person who does not have your back. . . .”

Vice President Kamala Harris at a campaign event in Romulus, Mich., on Aug. 7. (Credit: Erin Schaff/New York Times)

Why Harris Should Hold a News Conference — or Not

“The press has questions for Vice President Kamala Harris. She isn’t giving a whole lot of answers,“ Michael M. Grynbaum wrote Aug. 8, updated Monday, for The New York Times.

“In the nearly three weeks since President Biden withdrew his candidacy, catapulting Ms. Harris to the top of the Democratic ticket, the vice president has shown little eagerness to meet journalists in unscripted settings. . . .

“Asked on Thursday if she might sit for an interview anytime soon, Ms. Harris suggested that she would get through the convention first. ‘I want us to get an interview scheduled before the end of the month,’ she said, as aides signaled to the scrum of journalists that question time was over.

“Ms. Harris’s lack of engagement with the media has become a constant rallying cry on the political right, with Republican critics and Fox News stars accusing the vice president of ducking scrutiny. The Harris campaign says it is being thoughtful about how best to deploy its message, and to introduce a new candidate to crucial voters in battleground states. . . .”

Perhaps counterintuitively, some journalists agree. Jon Allsop, writing Aug. 12 in Columbia Journalism Review, notes that like Biden, Harris has “taken questions from reporters between campaign stops; unlike Biden, she has, per Politico, spoken routinely with journalists on her plane, albeit without going on the record. This, Semafor’s Dave Weigel noted in the middle of last week, might be ‘one reason that you haven’t seen as much media grumbling about access — the outlets paying for the plane are getting facetime’ .”

Margaret Sullivan (pictured), media columnist for the Guardian, takes a more traditional view. “I don’t have a lot of confidence that the broken White House press corps would skillfully elicit the answers to those and other germane questions if given the chance,” Sullivan wrote. “But Harris should show that she understands that, in a democracy, the press – at least in theory – represents the public, and that the sometimes adversarial relationship between the press and government is foundational.”

John F. Harris, editor in chief and founding editor of Politico, told Journal-isms at the recent Asian American Journalists Association conference that not taking questions leaves voters to wonder whether what the Republicans are saying about her is in fact true, and raises the stakes when she does have a news conference.

But does the public care? Ben Mathis-Lilley wrote Wednesday for Slate, “undecided and otherwise persuadable voters are not going to sit down at the kitchen table, eyeglasses perched on the ends of their noses, to compare the Harris and Trump plans for America. It would be like comparing apples to a goldfish. The ‘Trump plan’ does not really exist, and to the extent it does, it’s so wildly different from what any Democrat would do as to make the details of Harris’ ideas immaterial.”

At Bloomberg, Erika D. Smith (pictured), who covered Harris in California as a Los Angeles Times columnist and Sacramento Bee editorial board member, did not argue for or against a news conference but wrote that Harris should not let the Republicans define her.

“Harris would be wise to get ahead of the narrative, clear up misconceptions about her record as San Francisco district attorney and California attorney general, and, more importantly, define her overarching philosophy about criminal justice,” Smith wrote on Aug. 12.

“If not, others will do it for her. . . .

“ ‘I took on perpetrators of all kinds,’ Harris said at a packed campaign rally in Philadelphia last week. ‘Predators who abused women. Fraudsters who ripped off consumers. Cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain. So hear me when I say: I know Donald Trump’s type.’

“That talking point never fails to get raucous applause from Democrats who want to lock Trump up. But being known as a prosecutor without any additional context still carries a risk — one that Republicans will surely exploit, amping up misinformation in a desperate attempt to undermine support for Harris.

“Too many still don’t know, for example, that while Harris oversaw more than 1,900 convictions for cannabis in San Francisco, most offenders never went to jail. Or that California’s violent crime rate dropped 10% during Harris’ first four years as attorney general. Or that she was among the early backers of the reform-minded restorative justice movement. Or that police unions have endorsed her in the past. Or that she took on the big banks, demanding more money for consumers and more protection for homeowners after the subprime mortgage crisis that devastated California in 2008.

“They also don’t understand why Harris supported a law that allowed parents to be prosecuted for their chronically truant children — a law that she rightly apologized for years later. Harris regretted the law’s ‘unintended consequences’ even though she said she never jailed any parents, and attendance rose by 30%. . . .”

The White House said July 17 that President Biden had tested positive for Covid. The same month, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, the Indigenous Journalists Association and the National Association of Black Journalists all held conventions, with the Asian American Journalists Association following in August. (Credit: KDFQ-TV, Dallas-Fort Worth/YouTube)

Summer Conventions Not Spared From Covid Surge

“As of Wednesday, August 14, we have been informed of five more positive COVID-19 cases among #AAJA24 attendees,” the Asian American Journalists Association announced Friday in an email. ” In the event that you test positive for COVID-19 please inform recent close contacts and isolate.”

Asked to elaborate, AAJA spokesperson Andrew Sherry added, “We advised participants via the app of two on Saturday, so this would make 7.”

The association posted its Covid-19 policy on its website for the Austin, Texas, convention and again at its registration desk. As with most of the conventions this summer, few wore masks. Only a relatively small number reported to their associations that they had become infected.

Nathaniel Weixel reported Saturday for The Hill, “A surge in COVID-19 infections has swept the country this summer, upending travel plans and bringing fevers, coughs and general malaise. It shows no immediate sign of slowing.

Two or three people contacted the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, which met in Los Angeles, to say they had tested positive, said Sherry, who is also a spokesperson for that group.

At the Indigenous Journalists Association, Executive Director Rebecca Landsberry-Baker messaged Monday, “I recorded 3 cases of COVID post-conference among attendees — these were all self-reported but IJA isn’t actively collecting any health data from participants.” IJA met in Oklahoma City.

The National Association of Black Journalists, which staged the largest of the four journalists-of-color conventions, could not provide figures Monday on whether any attendees reported catching the virus. But Will Sutton, a past president of NABJ and a columnist for NOLA.com, told readers that he might have caught it on the way to the Chicago meeting.

Sutton (pictured) wrote Aug. 9, “I isolated when I caught the virus. Once. Twice. Thrice.

“Days ago, a home test confirmed a nagging feeling. I tested positive for the fourth time.

“I thought I’d been careful.

“We’re soooo close to getting a new vaccine — in a matter of weeks — that I took the risk of waiting.

“I visited a sister, then planned to attend a national journalism convention in Chicago. On my nonstop flight there, all 143 passenger seats were filled. A guy in the window seat in the row in front of me was coughing. Hacking, really. I’m certain that what he spread is what I caught.

“He ruined my family visit. He caused me to miss the convention.

“From a few yards away, I listened as National Association of Black Journalists Executive Director Drew Berry told his board of directors the day before the event started, ‘Masks aren’t required’ at the convention. ‘If you’re sick, go home.’

“I left for the day, with a slight cough, with plans to return the next day.

“That night I tested positive. I did not return to the convention hotel.

” Isolated — again. This time in my sister’s Southside Chicago basement with a sore throat, a cold, chills and a temperature that shot up to 101.8. . . .”

Francisco Vara-Orta (pictured), DBEI [diversity, belonging, equity and inclusion] director at Investigative Reporters and Editors, caught the virus as well.

” I regularly test because of elderly and immunocompromised parents and up that when training to stop spread. I tested negative on the Sunday and Wednesday before I left for IJA but positive on Friday and immediately left the event masked to fly home. . . . always masking when flying and at sessions if feel more packed,” Vara-Orta said by email.

“After three days on Paxlovid I tested negative but isolated for 5 and masked for another 5 and now just getting more out and about. Some lingering symptoms but to be expected.”

Vara-Orta plugged IRE’s upcoming AccessFest, a two-and-a-half-day DBEI event taking place online Oct. 17-19. It’s virtual because it’s “so important to not leave anyone behind who can’t go in person,” he said.

The IRE website says, “AccessFest focuses on expanding IRE’s efforts to provide more accessible training centered on belonging, equity, and inclusion in the newsroom and through better news coverage of inequities in the communities journalists serve.”

Might Be OK for NABJ, NNPA to Take Campaign Money

“Generally, both 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(6) organizations may accept funds from political campaigns,” a spokesperson for the Internal Revenue Service messaged Journal-isms, responding to an inquiry about whether tax-exempt nonprofit organizations such as the National Association of Black Journalists and the National Newspaper Publishers Association may accept money from political campaigns.

The National Newspaper Publishers Association, the organization of Black-press publishers, boasted in June that it had made history as “the first trade association with a presidential campaign as an event sponsor.“

NNPA received campaign money from the Biden-Harris effort. NNPA has 501(c)(6) status. At an Aug. 3 NABJ business meeting, Executive Director Drew Berry said accepting such money would be a violation of NABJ’s 501(c)(3) nonprofit status. NNPA condemned NABJ for including former president Donald Trump in the convention.

The IRS spokesperson referred Journal-isms to a Federal Election Commission web page on supporting tax-exempt organizations, which says, in part:

“A federal candidate or officeholder (or individual acting on behalf of either) may make a general solicitation on behalf of a 501(c) tax-exempt organization, or an organization that has applied for this tax status, without limits on the source or amount of funds, if:

“The organization does not engage in activities in connection with elections; or

“It is not the principal purpose of the organization to conduct election activities, including certain federal election activity; and

“The solicitation is not to obtain funds for activities in connection with an election, including certain federal election activity.”

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