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Brazile Flatly Denies Giving Questions to Clinton

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‘I’m Not Going to Allow the Lies to Stand’

Media Score Trump Budget’s Impact on Poor

Trump Says He Likes Going Around the Media

Claude Lewis, Philly Pioneer, Dies at 82:

Columnist Co-Founded Two Black Journalist Groups

Whitaker Says Race Kept Dad From Being Journalist

Journalist: Substitute Teaching a Heartbreaker

Md. Boasts More Diversity but Resegregated Schools

211 Journalists, Citizen Journalists Died in Syria

Short Takes

Donna Brazile was a CNN commentator until last summer. (Credit: CNN)

‘I’m Not Going to Allow the Lies to Stand’

Donna Brazile, the veteran Democratic political strategist who parted ways with CNN last year amid WikiLeaks revelations appearing to show that she provided the Hillary Clinton campaign with questions she would be asked in a televised CNN town hall, flatly denied Saturday that she had done so.

“At no time did I receive or participate in the drafting or dissemination of questions provided by CNN,” Brazile told Journal-isms by email.

In a follow-up telephone conversation, Brazile said, “I’m not going to allow the lies to stand.”

She said she needed no prompting to advise Clinton to discuss the contaminated water crisis in Flint, Mich. “I as a black woman wanted Flint to be front and center in our conversation about who should be the next president,” she said.

Brazile is a New Orleans native who had witnessed Hurricane Katrina. “Am I supposed to sit there and let people get poisoned?” she asked.

A second question was about the death penalty. She noted that Black Lives Matter was vocal during this period.

Brazile said she felt more at liberty to speak out now that she is no longer interim chair of the Democratic National Committee. In fact, she disclosed that she had been accepted as a fellow at the Joan Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University in the fall and plans to write about punditry and journalism.

Former Labor Secretary Tom Perez was elected new party chair on Feb. 25.

Brazile spoke with Journal-isms after publishing an essay in Time magazine that some reporters interpreted as confirming that she had passed along town hall questions to Clinton.

Adam Shaw wrote Friday for Fox News, “In an essay for Time published Friday, called ‘Russian DNC Narrative Played Out Exactly As They Hoped,’ the Democratic strategist said she had in fact passed on topics, despite saying she had not when her communications with the campaign were leaked by WikiLeaks in October. . . .”

In his “Reliable Sources” email newsletter, also distributed Friday, Brian Stelter of CNN wrote, “In a new column for Time mag, ex-DNC chair and ex-CNN commentator Donna Brazile admits (for the first time so explicitly) that she did ‘share potential town hall topics with the Clinton campaign.’ ” Stelter also wrote, “She does not specify how she obtained the potential Q’s.”

Similar interpretations were put forward Friday and Saturday by ABC News, the Washington Times, the Washington Free Beacon, the Cox Media Group and the Hill. Joe Concha’s story in the Hill, headlined, “Brazile: Sending Clinton town hall topics ‘mistake I will forever regret’,” had drawn 2,292 comments by 3 p.m. ET Saturday.

Brazile’s essay was worded differently from those headlines. “In October, a subsequent release of emails revealed that among the many things I did in my role as a Democratic operative and D.N.C. Vice Chair prior to assuming the interim D.N.C. Chair position was to share potential town hall topics with the Clinton campaign,” she wrote.

“I had been working behind the scenes to add more town hall events and debates to the primary calendar, and I helped ensure those events included diverse moderators and addressed topics vital to minority communities. My job was to make all our Democratic candidates look good, and I worked closely with both campaigns to make that happen. But sending those emails was a mistake I will forever regret.

“By stealing all the DNC’s emails and then selectively releasing those few, the Russians made it look like I was in the tank for Secretary Clinton.”

The hacked emails came from the account of John Podesta, chairman of the 2016 Hillary Clinton presidential campaign. “My emails were never hacked,” Brazile noted.

Hadas Gold reported for Politico on Oct. 31 that “the hacked emails show that Brazile, on two separate instances, tipped off the Clinton campaign ahead of time on questions that might come her way at CNN events.

“In the first instance, ahead of a March 13 CNN town hall, it appears that guest-moderator Roland Martin from TV One may have shared his contributions to the questions with Brazile. In an email the day before the town hall to senior Clinton staffers, Brazile wrote: ‘From time to time I get the questions in advance’ and included the text of a question about the death penalty.

“An email later obtained by POLITICO showed that the text of the question Brazile sent to the Clinton campaign was identical to a proposed question Martin had offered CNN. (A similar, though not identical question, was ultimately posed to Clinton at the town hall).

“The Martin connection was seemingly cemented on Monday when WikiLeaks published more of that thread, featuring a newly released reply in which Brazile promises to send additional questions.

“ ‘I’ll send a few more,’ Brazile wrote, adding, ‘Though some questions Roland submitted.’ . . .”

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump leaped on the emails and declared that the DNC should fire Brazile.

Asked to respond to last fall’s reporting, Brazile said by email, “First and foremost, I can not substantiate any of the hacked stolen emails published by Wikileaks.

“They were not my emails and I can only inform the public of my own intentions.

“As it relates to the various leaked emails, I go back to my initial reply: At no time did CNN provide me as an on air contributor access to or information on questions used for any of the forums they sponsored or hosted.

“CNN never supplied me with questions in advance and I never had access to any of the editorial meetings or discussions.”

Brazile has maintained throughout that the focus should be on the Russian hacking, which since then has consumed more media attention.

“The media were complicit,” Brazile said of the Podesta email story, in “treating it as if it was the cat’s meow,” adding that it played into the hands of WikiLeaks and the Russians. “Context matters,” she added. “WikiLeaks’ intention was always to disrupt” and to sow discord between Clinton and Bernie Sanders followers, she said.

Demonstrators in Brooklyn, N.Y., protest proposed local and federal cuts in housing and urban development aid. (Credit: Right to the City Alliance)

Media Score Trump Budget’s Impact on Poor

“During his campaign for president, Donald Trump pledged to help inner cities and African American communities in particular,” Alana Semuels wrote Thursday for the Atlantic. “But his proposed budget eliminates programs that have helped these communities for years, and would deal a particular blow to Americans with the lowest incomes.”

It was an example of how the news media have leaped on Trump’s budget proposal, issued Thursday, as evidence of the president’s hypocrisy and willingness to inflict hardships on poor people at home and abroad.

On the “CBS Evening News” on Friday, Michelle Miller reported from central Georgia on the Meals on Wheels program, which delivers hot and cold meals to elderly people who can’t get out of the house and, she said, receives one-third of its budget from the federal government. (video)

After interviewing residents who depend on the program, Miller cut to Mick Mulveney, director of the Office of Management and Budget.

“We can’t spend money on programs just because they sound good,” Mulveney said. “We’ll take the federal money and give it to the states and say we want to give you money for programs that don’t work.”

Miller then cut to a caregiver in central Georgia who said, “Excuse me. I see these people waiting for their food to come every day. It works.”

Miller’s report was followed by a piece from anchor Scott Pelley in South Sudan, previewing a segment for Sunday’s “60 Minutes” on the humanitarian crisis in that country, which would bear some of the cuts in U.S. humantarian aid.

Nahal Toosi and Josh Dawsey wrote Thursday for Politico, “With his new budget plan, President Donald Trump has a stark message for foreign governments and aid workers seeking Washington’s help to stop famines, shelter refugees and deal with other crises: Don’t count on America.

“But a furious, diverse and largely united cast of critics has a response to that: You’ll regret this. . . .”

The critical print, web and and broadcast coverage has not escaped the notice of right-wing media and Trump supporters — and even some skeptical reporters for progressive publications.

Nicholas Fondacaro reported for Newsbusters.com on Thursday, “The Big Three networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) pulled out all the stops and sharpened their knives for their effort to tear into the White House’s budget proposal on Thursday.

” ‘President Trump has unveiled his first budget proposal covering all the things the federal government pays for and how he wants to spend the money,’ announced anchor Lester Holt during NBC Nightly News, ‘There’s a lot more money for the military but there are critics who say popular programs and the poor would pay the price.’

” ‘It’s the primary promise of the Trump presidency,’ reporter Peter Alexander declared after Holt’s announcement. ‘A budget blueprint spending nearly $60 billion more on defense, Homeland Security and Veterans’ care offset by deep and in some cases unprecedented cuts,’ he seemed to whine, ‘The State Department slashed by 29% targeting foreign aid. The environmental protection agency sliced by 31% including programs to combat climate change.’ . . .”

Kevin Drum wrote Friday in Mother Jones that the “Meals on Wheels” case was misreported by many in the mainstream. Trump has proposed to zero out Community Development Block Grants, but not specifically Meals on Wheels.

“I’m no expert on community block grants. I don’t know if they’re a good idea or not. And God knows the Trump ‘skinny budget’ is a disgraceful piece of work for the richest country on the planet,” Drum wrote. “But spinning this as ‘Mulvaney guts Meals on Wheels’ is pretty ridiculous. The vast majority of federal funding for Meals on Wheels — which comes via HHS’s Administration on Aging, not HUD’s CDBGs [Community Development Block Grants] —remains intact. Someone managed to plant this idea with reporters, and more power to them. Good job! But reporters ought to be smart enough not to fall for it.”

Still, it’s not only reporters who detect hypocrisy.

“For Donald Trump, being a ‘compassionate conservative’ like George W. Bush wasn’t good enough,” Heidi M Przybyla reported Friday for USA Today.

“During his campaign, he cast himself as an uncompromising populist who would fight for forgotten poor, rural Americans. But his budget blueprint is a betrayal of those people and his populist message, according to several former Republican budget officials. . . .”

Semuels’ Atlantic piece went into further detail on cuts to programs aiding the poor. “The proposed budget, announced Thursday, would slash funding from federal agencies that lend assistance to poor people who live in cities, including the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Education, and the Department of Health and Human Services.

” ‘This budget seriously harms low-income people and communities at the expense of everyone else,’ says Elyse Cherry, the CEO of Boston Community Capital, a nonprofit that provides funding to organizations that work on affordable housing and jobs in low-income communities. . .  .”

Trump Says He Likes Going Around the Media

“President Donald Trump said Friday that his administration ‘can get around the media when the media doesn’t tell the truth, so I like that,’ ” Dylan Byers reported Friday for CNN Money.

“The president was referring to his Twitter account. But recently he has taken steps to control news coverage.

“The Trump administration has given preferential access to favorable outlets while excluding others — a move critics say is dangerously reminiscent of state-controlled media.

“In the latest incident, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson invited Fox News to cover his meeting at the Korean Demilitarized Zone, on the North-South Korea border, but denied access to the press pool that provides all media outlets with an account of the secretary’s activities.

” ‘Fox unilateral network team was allowed into this meeting — pool asked for access and was blocked,’ wrote CNN’s Pamela Boykoff, the author of Friday’s pool report. ‘Local embassy official told the pool it was “the Secretary’s decision.” . . . ‘ ”

“Tillerson was already being criticized for refusing to allow pool reporters to accompany him on his plane during the trip, which had been a standard practice for his predecessors at the State Department. Tillerson did allow a reporter from the conservative Independent Journal Review to accompany him, but not as a pool reporter.
That reporter, Erin McPike, has not filed any stories from the trip so far — a source of consternation among other members of the media.. . .”

This photo of Claude Lewis at the Philadelphia office of the National Leader accompanied an Associated Press story on Dec. 19, 1982, about the weekly’s launch. (Credit: AP Newsfeatures)

Claude Lewis, Philly Pioneer, Dies at 82:

Columnist Co-Founded Two Black Journalist Groups

“Claude Lewis, 82, of Cherry Hill, a distinguished journalist who made history as the first person of color to write a regular newspaper column in Philadelphia and inspired generations of African Americans to follow him into the profession, died Thursday, March 16,” Bonnie L. Cook reported for the Philadelphia Inquirer, which displayed the obituary on the front page of its print edition Friday .

“After battling diabetes for years, Mr. Lewis died of complications from the disease at Virtua Voorhees Hospital, said his daughter, Beverley Wilson. The illness claimed his vision beginning a decade ago, she said. . . .”

Apart from his career at the old Philadelphia Bulletin and then the Inquirer, Lewis was a co-founder of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists in 1973 and the National Association of Black Journalists in 1975.

Moreover, Lewis articulated the aspirations of many journalists of color when in 1982 he became founding editor of the National Leader, the first black national newspaper about African Americans.

“I always felt I wanted to play some role in creating a black image in America, and telling the truth about it,” Lewis told the Associated Press at the time.

Joe Davidson, now a Washington Post columnist, was among those quoted in the Inquirer obituary. “After the Bulletin closed in 1982, Mr. Lewis, Davidson, and lawyer Ragan Henry joined forces to establish the National Leader, a weekly publication based in Philadelphia aimed at black readers,” Cook wrote. Davidson was managing editor.

“Though the publication lasted only a few years, Davidson recalled, ‘it was one of the most rewarding parts of my career.’ ”

Lewis echoed that. When Henry died in 2008, Lewis told Michel Martin on NPR’s “Tell Me More,” “It was probably the best job I ever had.”

“Claude was an important force in journalism in the 1970s,” Davidson added in NABJ’s announcement of Lewis’ death. “He meant a lot to me personally and to a lot of black journalists professionally. He lured me away from The Inquirer to work as managing editor at The Leader. It was an opportunity to serve the black community with high quality journalism. . . .”

Cook continued, “In 1985, Mr. Lewis was hired by the Inquirer to serve on its editorial board and produce a column called ‘Looking at America.’ He chronicled this country ‘in all its flawed glory,’ Jane Eisner, then editorial page editor, wrote when he stepped down from the assignment in October 1997. He retired from the newspaper in 2009.

“ ‘Claude,’ she wrote, ‘never seemed to forget whom he was writing for, the ordinary American struggling with change, confronting senseless violence, racism, poverty, and a loss of respect for life.’ ”

The NABJ release noted that “Lewis covered the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, meeting and interviewing such icons as Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. In 1968, Lewis left a meeting in Philadelphia to join the King family in Memphis immediately after receiving the news that King was shot.

” ‘Claude was a journalist miles ahead of his time, and he achieved recognition long before many recognized him,’ said NABJ Founder Paul Brock. . . .”

Langston Hughes

Hughes influenced Lewis’ decision to become a journalist, according to a 1991 interview Lewis gave to Wayne Dawkins for Dawkins’ “Black Journalists: The NABJ Story,” published in 1993.

“I was born in the Bronx and I grew up in Harlem,” Lewis said.

“Langston Hughes came to my school and invited us — eight to nine students — to write poetry.

“We mailed it to him.

“Hughes’ responses came by mail. He said mine was bad.

“I sent a second poem. He said it was worse. ‘One thing I like about you,’ Hughes told me, ‘you’re persistent and you could be a newspaperman.’ . . .  ”

Vanessa Williams, a national reporter with the Washington Post and a former NABJ president, said in the NABJ statement, “I remember Claude as a friendly and encouraging colleague when we worked together at the Philadelphia Inquirer. His door was always open and he didn’t hesitate to share his contacts, expertise and advice to young journalists.

“He and Acel [Moore] were like these twin towers of black journalism excellence in Philly. We should honor them by continuing their tradition of being fierce advocates for the truth, especially in this current political climate.”

Sarah Glover, current NABJ president, said in the release, “Claude lives on in all of us. I thank him for instilling in me, and my peers, a deep level of tenacity and commitment to the cause.”

According  to Cook’s obituary, “The body will be cremated. A public memorial service will follow, possibly in April.”

Whitaker Says Race Kept Dad From Being Journalist

Bill Whitaker

“Longtime CBS News correspondent Bill Whitaker said journalists must remain free to ‘hear the dispossessed, free to challenge the status quo,’ and ‘free to present truth to the powerful,’ ” John Eggerton reported Thursday for Multichannel News.

“Whitaker was speaking at the Radio-Television Digital News Foundation dinner this week, where he was given the Leonard Zeidenberg First Amendment Award, named after the former B&C senior correspondent.

Eggerton also wrote, “He said his father had been a waiter at the famous Cotton Club in Harlem in the 1930s, a club in Black Harlem, but for whites only. ‘My father could work there, but he couldn’t come in the front door,’ Whitaker said. He said his father had come from tobacco country in North Carolina wanting to be a journalist, but that as a black man in the 1930s he couldn’t make much of a living as a journalist, so when he married he became a welder.

“He said his father was a welder and a news junkie. The evening news was like church in his household, with the kids required to keep [quiet] . . . The times were momentous, the news important, said Whitaker. It was the time of the Civil Rights movement and Whitaker’s dad went to the March on Washington.

“He fast-forwarded to today, saying, as a journalist, he was living the life his father could only have dreamed of. ‘The reason I am able to stand here tonight is because Americans, like my father, stood up, raised their voices, seized their First Amendment right to assemble, to be heard, and demand on the streets that the country change, and it did.

” ‘And that movement for change was laid out before us all by the press, a press free to hear the dispossessed, free to challenge the status quo, free to present truth to the powerful.’ . . .”

Journalist: Substitute Teaching a Heartbreaker

Pam Saulsby

The experience of substitute teaching left Pam Saulsby, a multimedia journalist who worked in the Raleigh, N.C., television market, so frustrated that she wrote about it in June for the News & Observer in Raleigh.

“I wrote the column out of frustration, disappointment, and hurt that too many young men and boys of color were failing to reach their potential in the classroom,” Saulsby told Journal-isms by email on Friday.

“I wanted to share my experiences so that attention would be paid, and perhaps discussions might lead to fresh ideas that could change the course for too many boys and young men of color. I am a seasoned journalist, and I have chronicled extensively inequalities in education that contribute to higher rates of school suspension, expulsions, and made up minds not to finish high school.

“What I’d never encountered was the day-to-day experience of seeing the overwhelming numbers of black males who were outright written off as failures — and who wildly acted out as if they had abandoned any dreams of brighter futures for their lives. I maintain they’re worth caring about.

“What I learned was that the students who give teachers the most trouble, are the ones who need teachers the most.

“I am no longer substitute teaching. It was a short term job. I am from a family of educators. An opportunity to get involved in taking up assignments was presented to me, and I had the time and space to enthusiastically give it a go. My true calling is in developing content and telling great stories that listeners remember and respond to. . . .”

Saulsby is now in the Washington area, job hunting.

Md. Boasts More Diversity but Resegregated Schools

“At a time when Maryland’s population is growing more diverse, the schools are becoming more segregated,” the Baltimore Sun reported Friday in introducing its project, “Bridging the Divide: The struggle to move past segregated schools.”

“Baltimore Sun reporters Liz Bowie and Erica L. Green examined local attempts to better integrate schools by race and class. Along with photographer Lloyd Fox, they interviewed students, teachers, parents and researchers. The Sun also commissioned an analysis from the Maryland Equity Project at the University of Maryland to create a database that breaks down every public school’s racial and socioeconomic makeup. This project was supported with a grant from the Education Writers Association, a professional organization of members of the media who cover education at all levels.”

Among the findings: “Educators across the country are looking back to the successes that followed the Supreme Court’s 1954 order to desegregate schools. In the 1970s and 1980s, when schools were the most integrated they would be, black students made stunning gains in national tests in reading and math. In some subjects, they cut the so-called achievement gap with white students in half — and white achievement did not suffer.

“But after a backlash against busing in the 1970s, the courts backed away from requiring districts to integrate. In 2007, the Supreme Court struck down even voluntary school desegregation plans, making it illegal for schools to assign students based solely on race.

“Schools have gradually resegregated, and progress in closing the achievement gap has mostly stalled. None of the efforts to shrink it — by setting higher standards, imposing more testing, holding teachers more accountable — have worked. . . .”

211 Journalists, Citizen Journalists Died in Syria

“A total of 211 journalists and citizen journalists have been killed in the course of Syria’s civil war, which began with a wave of protests exactly six years ago,” Reporters Without Borders said Thursday. The group said it “urges all parties to the conflict to protect the journalists who cover it on the ground.

“Syria has for years been the world’s deadliest country for journalists and citizen journalists, who are caught between the Assad regime and its allies, Islamic State and many other radical Jihadi groups, and the Kurdish forces.

“Acts of intimidation, arrests, kidnappings and murders are all frequent and constitute a gruesome tableau.”

The press freedom group said that at least 26 journalists and citizen journalists are imprisoned and that at least 21 journalists and citizen journalists, and seven foreign ones, are being held hostage.

Short Takes

 

“Thanks for keeping us connected, Richard!”

— Clarence Page, syndicated Chicago Tribune columnist and Tribune editorial writer. (Credit: ChrisWeigant.com)

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