Articles Feature

Credibility, Race Helped Holt Win Exclusive

by richard03827

Capitol Police Lt. Gets ‘Horrific Racist Threats’
Where Did the Corporate Anti-Racism Money Go?
A Wordsmith, He Wrote His Own Obituary
Godwin Says She Wants Independent Probe at ABC
​Beyoncé Called Out for Promoting ‘Blood Diamond’
Algorithms Feed Bias in Home Loans
Humorist Sorry For Piece Indians Found Insulting
Anna López Returns to Journalism World
Short Take

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In an exclusive interview with Lester Holt that aired Thursday, Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd describes why he’s choosing to identify himself. Byrd shares his account of the Jan. 6 riot, as officers barricaded the door and he fired a single shot, killing Ashli Babbitt. (Credit: NBC News/YouTube)

Capitol Police Lt. Gets ‘Horrific Racist Threats’

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NBC News anchor Lester Holt’s race and his “impeccable credibility” helped him secure his exclusive interview Thursday with Capitol Hill Police Lt. Michael Byrd, the man who fatally shot Capitol insurrectionist Ashli Babbitt, Mark Schamel, Byrd’s lawyer, told Journal-isms on Saturday.

Byrd and Holt are African American, and Byrd’s race has been a subtext in the campaign by former president Donald Trump and his supporters to demonize the Capitol Police officer who fired the shot during the Jan. 6 insurrection, even though Byrd’s identity was withheld until recently.

On April 14, for example, conservative activist Dinesh D’Souza spoke Byrd’s name before the officer’s identity was widely known and proclaimed in his podcast, “If you’re Black, and on the left, you really have a sort of pass in our culture.”

Schamel messaged Journal-isms that Holt’s skill and competence were primary factors in his selection. However, he said, “Lester is one of the most respected journalists and candidly, I liked the idea of an African American journalist if they were going to get into some of the horrific racist threats that the Lt. had received. In a world where a career law enforcement officer is forced to defend himself and combat the lies, it was imperative that he felt comfortable and the journalist was above reproach.”

In 2015, Holt became the first African American to serve as the solo anchor of a weekday evening newscast.

In the interview, “Byrd, a 28-year veteran with the Capitol Police, said he only fired his gun that day as a ‘last resort,’ and that he was trying to protect about 60 to 80 House members and staff who were sheltering beyond the glass doors of Speaker’s Lobby outside the House chamber,” Amy B Wang and Aaron C. Davis wrote in The Washington Post.

‘” ‘Once we barricaded the doors, we were essentially trapped where we were,’ Byrd told ‘NBC Nightly News’ host Lester Holt. ‘There was no way to retreat. No other way to get out.’

​”Babbitt was among a group of supporters of former president Donald Trump who made their way into the Capitol on Jan. 6 to try to stop the certification of President Biden’s election victory. The pro-Trump mobs overran the Capitol complex in a violent siege that ultimately resulted in five deaths.”

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Schamel (pictured) told Journal-isms, “The  Lt. had his choice of any journalist in the world. Everyone wanted to and ultimately needed to, hear the truth. The lies and the threats and the misinformation were bringing the world down around this hero and he had no other option but to speak the truth to the American people. Nobody wanted his name out there with the death threats, but with the zealots already posting his name and photo, we had to try to stop the lies.  

“The Lt. understands that the majority of Americans are decent people, support law enforcement, value democracy and the ideals of our constitution and know that he did his job without bias or malice. Nobody with morals values was comfortable with what the rioters did on January 6th and even those who believed the lie that the election was stolen, had to see that what happened was indefensible and wrong. We have to use peaceful protest and the vote to get our ideas heard. Those same decent Americans needed to hear Lt. Byrd tell the truth about what happened, to understand the facts and to see this terrible situation for what it was. It combats the lies and stops the conspiracy theories.  

“Given that, the Lt. had to choose someone of impeccable credibility and without a political agenda. The far right and the far left could not be part of the discussion, so that limited us to a few media outlets. Lester is one of the most respected journalists and candidly, I liked the idea of an African American journalist if they were going to get into some of the horrific racist threats that the Lt. had received. In a world where a career law enforcement officer is forced to defend himself and combat the lies, it was imperative that he felt comfortable and the journalist was above reproach.”

Wang and Davis wrote in the Post, “The group Babbitt was with was battering the doors to Speaker’s Lobby, the hallway outside the House chamber where some lawmakers and House staff members were sheltering, when Babbitt attempted to crawl through a shattered window pane in the doors.

“Byrd, who was standing on the far side of the doors, fired a single shot at Babbitt, sending her tumbling backward onto the floor. Babbitt was hit in the shoulder and later died.

The Washington Post obtained video showing the chaotic moment before 35-year-old Ashli Babbitt was fatally shot as rioters rushed toward the Speaker’s Lobby. (Credit: Joyce Lee/Washington Post)

“ ‘I tried to wait as long as I could,’ Byrd told Holt. ‘I hoped and prayed no one tried to enter through those doors. But their failure to comply required me to take the appropriate action to save the lives of members of Congress and myself and my fellow officers.’

“Without naming Byrd, an internal investigation by the Capitol Police found no wrongdoing by the officer who shot Babbitt, the law enforcement agency announced this week. The probe determined the officer’s use of force was within the department’s guidelines, which allow deadly force only when an officer believes they are protecting themselves or others from serious harm.

“The finding followed a similar assessment by the Justice Department, which declined to pursue criminal charges against Byrd in April. . . .”

Byrd has been in hiding since right-wing websites leaked his identity earlier this year. Meanwhile, he has been demonized by such personalities as Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham of Fox News, as well as by Trump himself. “If that person were on the other side, the person who did this would be strung up and hung,” Trump said in July.

On Joy Reid’s “The ReidOut” on MSNBC Friday, Reid asked Mary Trump, the former president’s niece, whether Trump was aware then that Byrd was Black. “He was in a position to know, and I think he kept it under wraps and just hinted about it to stir up anxiety and to build drama because that’s what he does, and of course he handed it off to other people like of course D’Souza and [Carlson] and they run with it and continue to engage in this fascistic rhetoric. . . .”

Mary Trump also said, “It’s a quiet irony that Lt. Byrd is a Black man and that Ashli Bobbitt is a white woman because that’s a horrible trope that I’m sure the right is going to take advantage of, and we can’t let that happen.”

(Credit: Luisa Jung/Washington Post)

Where Did the Corporate Anti-Racism Money Go?

“After the murder of George Floyd ignited nationwide protests, corporate America acknowledged it could no longer stay silent and promised to take an active role in confronting systemic racism,” Tracy Jan, Jena McGregor and Meghan Hoyer reported Monday for The Washington Post.

They also wrote, “To date, America’s 50 biggest public companies and their foundations collectively committed at least $49.5 billion since Floyd’s murder last May to addressing racial inequality — an amount that appears unequaled in sheer scale.

“Looking deeper, more than 90 percent of that amount — $45.2 billion — is allocated as loans or investments they could stand to profit from, more than half in the form of mortgages. Two banks — JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America — accounted for nearly all of those commitments.

“Meanwhile, $4.2 billion of the total pledged is in the form of outright grants. Of that, companies reported just a tiny fraction — about $71 million — went to organizations focused specifically on criminal justice reform, the cause that sent millions into the streets protesting Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer.

“The $4.2 billion in grants, to be disbursed over as long as a decade in some cases, represents less than 1 percent of the $525.6 billion in net income earned by the 50 companies in the most recent year, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence.”

Jan, McGregor and Hoyer also wrote, “It will be difficult to assess whether corporations deliver measurable results. There is no single entity tracking the corporate promises. Nor are corporations required to report on where all of their money is going or its impact. . . .”

David Alfonso, known by his friends as Fonz, worked at the Tampa Tribune for 20 years. (Credit: Courtesy Janice Alfonso)

A Wordsmith, He Wrote His Own Obituary

“I was a Latino in South Tampa when such things still mattered, but I always held my head high,” reads one of the lines in the obituary of David Alfonso, who worked at the Tampa Tribune for 20 years. That’s right, the obituary was written in the first person.

“On his third week in the hospital, David Alfonso started thinking about his obituary,” Kristen Hare reported Monday for the Tampa Bay Times.

“His body was beginning to shut down after 25 years with chronic lymphocytic leukemia. If the journalist died suddenly, his wife told him, she wouldn’t be able to tell his story as well as she knew he could.

“Back home, the collection of friends he shared emails and Thursday lunches with for years started to visit. When former co-workers Tom Keyser and [Mike O’Keefe] stopped by, Mr. Alfonso told them he had a story to tell. He just needed to work up the energy.

“When he did, on oxygen from a hospital bed in his Largo living room, Mr. Alfonso started writing on a yellow legal pad. He took breaks to watch Pardon the Interruption on ESPN, The Paul Finebaum Show and the Olympics.

“A week after their first visit, O’Keefe and Keyser stopped by again. Mr. Alfonso, known to his friends as Fonz, had filled five or six pages with the story of his life. Keyser read it and asked a few questions, then took it home to copy edit and type it up.

“A day later, Keyser emailed Mr. Alfonso a final draft.

“ ‘I thought, “That’s my David,” Janice Alfonso said after she read it. ‘He’s so frank. He has wit. It’s David.’

“It was ready just in time.

“The next day, at 73, Mr. Alfonso died from leukemia. . . .”

Michael Corn had been executive producer of “Good Morning America.” (Credit: ABC)

Godwin Says She Wants Independent Probe at ABC

In her first high-profile leadership challenge as ABC News president, “Kim Godwin told staffers on a conference call Thursday that she has requested an independent investigation into how the network handled allegations of sexual assault against the former executive producer of ‘Good Morning America,’ ” Joe Flint reported Thursday for The Wall Street Journal.

“The comments came a day after a lawsuit was filed that alleged the producer, Michael Corn (pictured), sexually assaulted a current ABC News staffer and a former staffer in separate incidents. Mr. Corn denied wrongdoing and called the allegations fabrications. In response to a request for comment Thursday on the call for an ABC probe, a lawyer for Mr. Corn referred to his previous statement.

“ ‘We can’t have us investigating us. We need an independent person,’ Ms. Godwin said, according to a recording of the conference call. ‘The process has to be independent.’

The lawsuit also named Walt Disney Co.’s . . . ABC as a defendant, saying the company didn’t adequately respond to complaints of alleged misconduct by Mr. Corn from several women.

“On the call, Ms. Godwin (pictured) said the ABC News staffers who were involved in handling complaints against Mr. Corn would get due process, but their role would be probed.

“Ms. Godwin joined ABC News in May from CBS News and wasn’t there when Mr. Corn departed in mid-April. She told staffers she isn’t going to be ‘sweeping this under the rug.’ She said she has heard from enough people over the past day ‘to know we have a problem.’ . . .”

​Beyoncé Called Out for Promoting ‘Blood Diamond’

“Diamonds, I’m sorry to say, aren’t Beyoncé’s best friend — even if the Grammy Award-winning artist and her new corporate partner, Tiffany and Co., would like to make it so,” Karen Attiah wrote Thursday for the Washington Post.

Attiah is the Post’s founding Global Opinions editor and the National Association of Black Journalists‘ 2019 Journalist of the Year.

“On Monday, Tiffany released a new campaign featuring Beyoncé, husband Jay-Z — and the famed 128.54 carat yellow Tiffany diamond, discovered in South Africa in 1877 at the Kimberley Mine by Charles Lewis Tiffany. His iconic company gleefully lauded the fact that Beyoncé is only the fourth woman — and first Black woman — to wear the glamorous necklace; her predecessors include Audrey Hepburn, who wore the stone in publicity photos for her 1961 movie, ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s.’

“Tiffany may be trying to rebrand, but it has badly misjudged the ethos of the moment. Its campaign does not celebrate Black liberation — it elevates a painful symbol of colonialism. It presents an ostentatious display of wealth as a sign of progress in an age when Black Americans possess just 4 percent of the United States’s total household wealth. If Black success is defined by being paid to wear White people’s large colonial diamonds, then we are truly still in the sunken place. . . .”

(Credit: The Markup)

Algorithms Feed Bias in Home Loans

“An investigation by The Markup has found that lenders in 2019 were more likely to deny home loans to people of color than to White people with similar financial characteristics — even when we controlled for newly available financial factors that the mortgage industry for years has said would explain racial disparities in lending,” Emmanuel Martinez and Lauren Kirchner reported Wednesday for The Markup.

The Markup is a nonprofit journalism initiative that focuses on technology in society. It launched last year.

“Holding 17 different factors steady in a complex statistical analysis of more than two million conventional mortgage applications for home purchases, we found that lenders were 40 percent more likely to turn down Latino applicants for loans, 50 percent more likely to deny Asian/Pacific Islander applicants, and 70 percent more likely to deny Native American applicants than similar White applicants. Lenders were 80 percent more likely to reject Black applicants than similar White applicants. These are national rates.

“In every case, the prospective borrowers of color looked almost exactly the same on paper as the White applicants, except for their race. . . .”

They also wrote, “Who makes these loan decisions? Officially, lending officers at each institution. In reality, software, most of it mandated by a pair of quasi-governmental agencies.

“Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were founded by the federal government to spur homeownership and now buy about half of all mortgages in America. If they don’t approve a loan, the lenders are on their own if the borrower skips out. . . . Fannie and Freddie require lenders to use a particular credit scoring algorithm, ‘Classic FICO’ . . .

“It’s widely considered detrimental to people of color because it rewards traditional credit, to which White Americans have more access. It doesn’t consider, among other things, on-time payments for rent, utilities, and cellphone bills — but will lower people’s scores if they get behind on them and are sent to debt collectors. Unlike more recent models, it penalizes people for past medical debt even if it’s since been paid. . . .”

Humorist Sorry For Piece Indians Found Insulting

“Washington Post humor columnist Gene Weingarten has apologized for a piece he wrote last week about his eating habits, in which he inaccurately described Indian cuisine as ‘based entirely on one spice,’ “ Kerry Flynn reported Tuesday for CNN.

“In the August 19 piece titled ‘You can’t make me eat these foods,’ Weingarten ticked through a number of foods at which he turned his nose up such as Old Bay seasoning, hazelnuts and anchovies, among others. Regarding Indian food, he wrote that ‘If you like Indian curries, yay, you like Indian food!’

“The illustration at the top of the column depicts a mustached man in a bib literally turning his nose up at spoonful of food being offered to him.

” ‘I don’t get it, as a culinary principle,’ he added. ‘It is as though the French passed a law requiring every dish to be slathered in smashed, pureed snails.’

“Those statements sparked backlash with critics saying it’s inaccurate and dismissive. Indian American author and model Padma Lakshmi, who hosts Bravo’s ‘Top Chef’ and Hulu’s ‘Taste the Nation,’ tweeted, ‘What in the white nonsense is this?” Indian American actress and screenwriter Mindy Kaling tweeted, ‘You don’t like a cuisine? Fine. But it’s so weird to feel defiantly proud of not liking a cuisine. You can quietly not like something too.’

“Weingarten tweeted an apology on Monday and acknowledged that his column was ‘insulting.’

” ‘From start to finish plus the illo, the column was about what a whining infantile ignorant d—head I am,’ Weingarten tweeted. ‘I should have named a single Indian dish, not the whole cuisine, & I do see how that broad-brush was insulting. Apologies. (Also, yes, curries are spice blends, not spices.)”

The Post ran a piece by Lakshmi Wednesday accusing Weingarten of “regurgitating an unimaginative, racist joke with no punchline.”

Anna López Returns to Journalism World

Anna López (pictured), former executive director of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and later Unity: Journalists of Color, has been chosen director of partnerships for the 6,000-member Investigative Reporters & Editors.

 “López will lead IRE’s foundation, fundraising, sponsorship and partnership management,” IRE announced Tuesday.

“She will also head IRE’s scholarship and fellowship programs. ‘We are delighted to have Anna’s expertise and talents on board at IRE,’ said IRE Executive Director Diana Fuentes. ‘Her energy, positive attitude and skill in bringing together diverse interests for the benefit of all will help our members and our industry at a critical time for journalism.’

“López has extensive experience in diversity and equity initiatives, resource development and engaging communities across a broad range of projects. Before joining IRE, she served four years as program director for National League of Cities.

“Before that, she served twice as executive director of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists [1995-2003 and 2011-2015] and also served as executive director of Unity: Journalists of Color [2003-2006]. She has 20 years of experience leading and fundraising for nonprofit organizations.

” ‘I am very excited and honored to join IRE and be part of a team that’s dedicated to providing exceptional training opportunities for its members,’ López said. ‘I look forward to being able to help IRE further its mission of empowering journalists to enhance their news coverage.” López succeeds Chris Vachon, who left IRE in June after five years in the position.”

Short Take

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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@groups.io

About Richard Prince

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