Articles Feature

‘Rigged’ Election — Against People of Color?

by richard12012

Writers Call Voter Suppression the Real Crime

Anti-Semitic Tweets Hit Jewish Journalists

Debate Renewed Over Journalists’ Politics

Man Hurls N-Word at Reporter; Cops Called

Media Take a Pass on Police Killings of Natives

Kardashian Presses Case Against MediaTakeOut

Texas’ Racial Image Can Scare Away Interns

Subjectivity in Media Business Enables Racism, Sexism

Ali Velshi Joins MSNBC

Short Takes

Writers Call Voter Suppression the Real Crime

The headline coming out of Wednesday’s Hillary Clinton–Donald Trump presidential debate was Trump’s refusal to commit to accepting the Nov. 8 election results, following his claims that the process was “rigged.”

In fact, many observers have written, it is Republicans who are “rigging” the election through voter suppression of people of color.

The 2016 election is the first presidential contest in 50 years without the full protections of the Voting Rights Act — and the country is witnessing the greatest rollback of voting rights since the act was passed five decades ago, as Ari Berman, contributing writer for the Nation and author of “Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America,” has written.

Those observers don’t include only journalists. As Robert Barnes and Ann E. Marimow reported in July for the Washington Post, U.S. District Judge James D. Peterson wrote of Wisconsin’s voter ID law, “The evidence in this case casts doubt on the notion that voter ID laws foster integrity and confidence.

“The Wisconsin experience demonstrates that a preoccupation with mostly phantom election fraud leads to real incidents of disenfranchisement, which undermine rather than enhance confidence in elections, particularly in minority communities. To put it bluntly, Wisconsin’s strict version of voter ID law is a cure worse than the disease.”

[Green Party candidate Jill Stein made the same point about voter suppression in commenting on the debate Thursday on “Democracy Now!”]

GOP footprints on voter suppression run deep. Paul Waldman, a senior writer at the American Prospect, wrote Monday in the Post, “How is it possible that the Republican nominee for president would be able to convince so many people that the voting will be rigged? Maybe it’s because conservative media figures and Republican politicians have for years been saying that ACORN, an organization that was focused in part on registering poor people to vote, was in the business of stealing elections.

“Indeed, even though ACORN went out of business in 2010, for years afterward Republicans continued to insert provisions into spending bills banning the group from receiving federal money. A group that no longer existed. After the 2012 election, half of Republicans said in one poll that they believed this non-existent organization stole the election for [President] Obama.

“If you’re wondering why when he’s in Pennsylvania, Trump will tell his nearly all-white audiences to watch the polls in ‘certain areas,’ look no further than Fox News’ extraordinary campaign to convince its viewers that a 2008 incident in Philadelphia — in which a couple of knuckleheads from the New Black Panther Party stood outside a polling place glaring menacingly at voters — was a crime on par with the Rape of Nanking or the Armenian genocide.

“In one two-week period in 2010, Megyn Kelly did 45 separate segments on the New Black Panther case, despite the fact that George W. Bush’s Justice Department decided it was too trivial to merit any criminal charges. . . .”

Trump’s running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, has played a part. Sophia Tesfaye wrote Monday for Salon, “Republican vice presidential nominee Mike Pence is being applauded for publicly rebuking his running mate Donald Trump’s repeated claims of a ‘rigged’ election, yet what’s gone under the radar is that [the] Indiana governor may be allowing voter suppression in his own state.

“On Sunday when Pence appeared on CBS’ ‘Face the Nation,’ host John Dickerson asked him about Trump’s claims that the election is ‘absolutely rigged’ and his calls for supporters to closely monitor polling places for voter fraud. ‘I don’t think any American should ever attempt to make any other American nervous’ when voting, Pence responded.

“Dickerson did not question Pence, however, about why Indiana State Police recently seized 45,000 voter-registration applications, most of them from black voters. So while viewers may have given Pence credit for seeming relatively reasonable compared with his running mate, alleged voter suppression in his own backyard went largely unnoticed amid the hoopla over Trump’s hysterical claims. . . .”

Berman wrote Monday for the Nation, “Trump is pouring gasoline on a fire his own party created.

“The GOP’s voter-fraud crusade dates back to the 2000 election in Florida. That year, the state of Florida wrongly purged thousands of voters from the rolls, as I reported in a Nation excerpt from my book Give Us the Ballot. . .

” ‘The NAACP sued Florida after the election for violating the Voting Rights Act (VRA). As a result of the settlement, the company that the Florida legislature entrusted with the purge — the Boca Raton-based Database Technologies (DBT) — ran the names on its 2000 purge list using stricter criteria. The exercise turned up 12,000 voters who shouldn’t have been labeled felons. That was 22 times Bush’s 537-vote margin of victory.’

” ‘No one could ever determine precisely how many voters who were incorrectly labeled felons were turned away from the polls. But the US Civil Rights Commission launched a major investigation into the 2000 election fiasco, and its acting general counsel, Edward Hailes, did the math the best that he could.

“If 12,000 voters were wrongly purged from the rolls, and 44 percent of them were African-American, and 90 percent of African-Americans voted for [Democrat Al] Gore, that meant 4,752 black Gore voters — almost nine times Bush’s margin of victory — could have been prevented from voting. It’s not a stretch to conclude that the purge cost Gore the election. . . .”

The ADL report included this anti-Semitic tweet sent to a journalist: The gates of the Auschwitz concentration camp, modified to say “Machen Amerika Great,” with a Trump insignia printed underneath. (Credit: Washington Post)
The ADL report included this anti-Semitic tweet sent to a journalist: The gates of the Auschwitz concentration camp, modified to say “Machen Amerika Great,” with a Trump insignia printed underneath. (Credit: Washington Post)

Anti-Semitic Tweets Hit Jewish Journalists

“Nearly 20,000 anti-Semitic tweets have been directed at more than 800 journalists since the 2016 presidential campaign began, often because those journalists voiced critical opinions about Donald Trump, the Anti-Defamation League said Wednesday,” Dylan Byers reported for CNN Money.

“The anti-Semitic Twitter attacks, which have increased as the campaign has gone on, represent what the ADL describes in a new report as a ‘disturbing’ and ‘execrable’ trend.

” ‘There is evidence that a considerable number of the anti-Semitic tweets targeting journalists originate with people identifying themselves as Trump supporters, ‘conservatives’ or extreme right-wing elements,” the ADL report states.

“While the ADL is careful to note that Trump did not support these tweets, the group says he ‘may have contributed to an environment in which reporters were targeted’ because of his anti-media rhetoric, which has included labeling reporters ‘absolute scum’ and saying that while he did not want to kill reporters, he did ‘hate them.’

“The ADL says that of the 2.6 million tweets containing anti-Semitic language between August 2015 and July 2016, the top 10 most targeted journalists (all of whom are Jewish) received 83 percent of them.

“Julia Ioffe, a Washington-based journalist, received tweets that referred to her using slurs and said ‘Back to the Ovens!’ after she wrote a profile of Melania Trump for GQ.

“Jonathan Weisman, an editor at The New York Times, was sent images of ovens and of himself wearing Nazi ‘Juden’ stars after tweeting about casino magnate Sheldon Adelson’s support for Trump, and after making note of the responses to Ioffe’s article.

“Hadas Gold, a reporter at Politico, recently received an image of herself wearing a Nazi ‘Juden’ star with a bullet hole in her head because she had been critical of Trump. . . .”

Byers also wrote, “Asked to comment on the ADL’s report, a Twitter spokesperson said the company would be introducing new safety improvements in the weeks ahead. . . .”

Debate Renewed Over Journalists’ Politics

“The Center for Public Integrity has issued a report claiming to detail how ‘journalists’ have donated to Hillary Clinton’s campaign far more than to Donald Trump’s,” Terry Krepel wrote Tuesday for Huffington Post.

The report [PDF] became a talking point for the Trump campaign in the post-debate analysis Wednesday night,  as Trump and his surrogates charged media bias.

The report Monday said, “In all, people identified in federal campaign finance filings as journalists, reporters, news editors or television news anchors — as well as other donors known to be working in journalism — have combined to give more than $396,000 to the presidential campaigns of Clinton and Trump, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis.

“Nearly all of that money — more than 96 percent — has benefited Clinton: About 430 people who work in journalism have, through August, combined to give about $382,000 to the Democratic nominee, the Center for Public Integrity’s analysis indicates.

“About 50 identifiable journalists have combined to give about $14,000 to Trump. . . .”

However, Krepel wrote, “But if you read the report closely — which the right-wing media has no interest in doing — it’s obvious that CPI is using an overly broad definition of ‘journalist.’

Carole Simpson (Credit: C-SPAN)
Carole Simpson (Credit: C-SPAN)

“The star finding, usually cited in right-wing stories on the report, is that former ABC anchor Carole Simpson has donated $2,800 to Clinton. What CPI doesn’t make clear: Simpson left ABC in 2006 and currently works as a college professor.

“Insisting that Simpson continue to be held to the standards of a job she has not held for a decade — CPI offers no evidence that Simpson made any political donations while employed as a journalist — is simply dishonest. . . .”

Simpson would certainly agree.

She told Journal-isms by email, “When I worked for CBS, NBC and ABC as a broadcast journalist, there was never any doubt in my mind that giving money, campaigning, or wearing political buttons was strictly forbidden. A clause was even in our contracts that this behavior was grounds for reprimand and even firing. The restriction was understandable. Reporters are to be objective at all times because to be trusted, the public should have confidence that you are not biased.

“But I retired 10 years ago from reporting the news and became an academician. I have been teaching at Emerson College since 2007. Hillary was a friend and someone who could potentially become the first female president of the United States. I was invited to a fundraiser and accepted. I believe that since I am no longer a working journalist, I should be able to exercise my political rights like every other citizen[,] have the same political rights as any other citizen . . . not in journalism.

“Okay?”

The center’s report also cited ESPN’s Claire Smith. “At ESPN, baseball news editor Claire Smith has made numerous small-dollar contributions to Clinton’s campaign that add up to almost $600. Smith, who in a tweet last week described Trump as a ‘would-be dictator & sexual predator,’ did not return requests for comment, and ESPN spokesman Ben Cafardo declined to comment.

“But ESPN’s political advocacy policy states that employees such as Smith ‘must avoid being publicly identified with various sides of political issues’ and that the sports network ‘discourages public participation in matters of political advocacy or controversy among editorial employees.’ . . .”

Cafardo referred Journal-isms to the political advocacy policy. Smith messaged Journal-isms  on Thursday, “There is no issue of a policy violation. That much is clear, as affirmed by the company for which I proudly work. ”

 

The issue of journalists’ support for candidates comes up every presidential election cycle.

In 2007, Bill Dedman wrote for MSNBC.com:

“The TV reporter in Omaha who posted a photo of herself on Facebook.com with a congressional candidate, urging her friends to vote for him, is no longer working at the station.

“Also out: an editorial cartoonist who said he didn’t ‘give a rat’s ass’ about his newspaper’s policy on campaign contributions by journalists.

“And one newspaper has dropped the syndicated column ‘The Ethicist’ by New York Times writer Randy Cohen because of his donation to MoveOn.org, which he said he had thought of as ‘nonpartisan.’ . . .”

Man Hurls N-Word at Reporter; Cops Called

“A Virginia man was arrested after a street confrontation in Charleston in which racial slurs were directed at Steve Crump, a veteran WBTV (Channel 3) reporter and maker of award-winning civil rights documentaries,” Mark Washburn reported Tuesday for the Charlotte Observer.

Charleston Mayor John Tecklenburg contacted Crump later on the day of the incident to apologize on behalf of the city.

“Brian Eybers, 21, is in the Charleston County Detention Center with a Friday court date on charges of disorderly conduct and possession of drug paraphernalia, a glass pipe like that used to smoke crack, police said,” Washburn reported.

“Crump said Tuesday that he was in Charleston Oct. 8 to cover Hurricane Matthew. He had completed an interview and was returning to his news van when a man on the street began making an iPad video of him.

“ ‘He was doing commentary of the neighborhood,’ said Crump. ‘Then he starts off saying, “There’s a black guy walking around here, no he’s a slave, no he’s the n-word.” ‘

“Crump, 59, the great-great grandson of Kentucky slaves who has produced hours of specials for public TV about civil rights in addition to his reporting work for Channel 3, walked up to Eybers and asked him what he’d just said.

“ ‘I went from zero to 60 like that,’ Crump said.

“ ‘Steve isn’t going to let something like that lie,’ said Dennis Milligan, WBTV’s news director.

“In the video, Crump is heard asking the man to spell the word he was just called.

“ ‘N as in Nancy, I as in indigo, G as in grant,’ he began.

” After Crump turned to leave, Eybers stood in front of the news van, blocking it from leaving. Crump called police. . . . ”

In April, the National Association of Black Journalists selected Crump as the recipient of its first Journalist of the Year Award recognizing a journalist in a small or medium-sized market.

Rate of law enforcement killings, per million population per year, 1999-2011. Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics.
Rate of law enforcement killings per million population per year, 1999-2011. (Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics.)

Media Take a Pass on Police Killings of Natives

In 2014, Mike Males, senior researcher at the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, reported that Native Americans are 3.1 times more likely to be killed by police than white Americans, based on his analysis of data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 1999 to 2014.

“The racial group most likely to be killed by law enforcement is Native Americans, followed by African Americans, Latinos, Whites, and Asian Americans,” Males reported then.

Apparently, few were paying attention. In the October issue of In These Times, posted Monday, Stephanie Woodyard reports on the media coverage of these deaths.

“. . . these killings of Native people go almost entirely unreported by mainstream U.S. media,” Woodyard writes.

“In a paper presented in April at a Western Social Science Association meeting, Claremont Graduate University researchers Roger Chin, Jean Schroedel and Lily Rowen reviewed articles about deaths-by-cop published between May 1, 2014, and October 31, 2015, in the top 10 U.S. newspapers by circulation: the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, New York Daily News, New York Post, Chicago Sun-Times, Denver Post, Washington Post and Chicago Tribune.

“. . . Of the 29 Native Americans killed by police during that time, only one received sustained coverage — Paul Castaway, a Rosebud Sioux man shot dead in Denver while threatening suicide. The Denver Post ran six articles, totaling 2,577 words. The killing of Suquamish tribal member Daniel Covarrubias, shot when he reached for his cell phone, received a total of 515 words in the Washington Post and the New York Times (which misidentified him as Latino). The other 27 deaths received no coverage.

“Compare this media blackout with the coverage of the next-most-likely group to be killed by police. The researchers found that the 10 papers devoted hundreds of articles to the 413 African Americans killed by police in that period, as well as to Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests and police violence more broadly.

“That’s largely a testament to the power of the BLM movement, which exploded after the Aug. 9, 2014 killing of Michael Brown. When Minneapolis police killed both White Earth Ojibwe tribal member Philip Quinn, 30, and African-American Jamar Clark, 24, during the fall of 2015, Clark’s story was well-reported, while Quinn’s passing, like those of almost all other Native victims, was barely noted.

“Nor did major media report on a spate of Native jailhouse deaths in 2015. . . .”

Kardashian Presses Case Against MediaTakeOut

If the owners of the MediaTakeOut gossip site thought a contrite apology published Friday would quash a libel suit filed by reality-show star Kim Kardashian West, they were wrong.

“What they published did not end the lawsuit,” Kardashian West’s lawyer, Andrew B. Brettler, told Journal-isms by telephone on Wednesday.

As Nicole Bitette reported Saturday for the Daily News in New York, “The 35-year-old reality TV personality was tied up and robbed at gunpoint of $5.6 million dollars worth of jewelry in a Paris hotel on Oct. 3.”

Lisa Respers France reported Oct. 12 for CNN Money, “The reality star filed suit in a federal lawsuit in New York against MediaTakeOut.com — and its founder Fred Mwangaguhunga — alleging they libeled her.

“According to the suit Media Takeout published a series of stories ‘in which they claimed, without any factual support whatsoever, that Kardashian faked the robbery, lied about the violent assault, and then filed a fraudulent complaint with her insurance company to bilk her carrier out of millions of dollars.’ . . .”

Mwangaguhunga did not respond to an emailed request for comment Wednesday.

This year's college and high school summer interns at the Dallas Morning News. (Credit: David Woo/Dallas Morning News)
This year’s college and high school summer interns at the Dallas Morning News. (Credit: David Woo/Dallas Morning News)

Texas’ Racial Image Can Scare Away Interns

African Americans are missing from the photo above of the 2016 class of college interns at the Dallas Morning News and its Spanish-language offshoot, Al Día. One reason might be surprising.

“Sometimes, it’s difficult to attract kids of color who may have heard stories — whether those stories are true or not — about bad race relations in Texas,” Selwyn Crawford, assistant metro editor/public safety and  internship coordinator, told Journal-isms by email on Wednesday. “But we’ll never stop trying.”

Crawford also wrote, “For the 2016 class of college interns, The Dallas Morning News had 16 budgeted (paid) positions. Some of those were not pictured in the flyer because of prior obligations. Of those 16 positions, six (6) — 37.5 percent — were filled by racially or ethnically diverse candidates. In addition, two other diversity candidates, both African-American females, initially accepted an internship offer from us then subsequently, and unexpectedly, withdrew their acceptance. One of those did so just days before her internship was scheduled to begin.”

The News is accepting applications for the 2017 class. The deadline to apply is Oct. 31. For more information, visit www.dallasnews.com/internships.

Kara Lawson at Morgan State symposium. (Credit: Brent Lewis/the Undefeated)
Kara Lawson at Morgan State symposium. (Credit: Brent Lewis/the Undefeated)

Subjectivity in Media Business Enables Racism, Sexism

“At the beginning of her career as an ESPN broadcaster, Kara Lawson, a 2008 Olympic gold medalist in women’s basketball, found it difficult to see a path forward,” Jill Hudson wrote Tuesday for the Undefeated. “Success as a TV analyst wasn’t as clearly defined as athletics, where it is obvious how fast a player can run or how many points she scored.

“As a broadcaster, ‘I’ve watched people be promoted over me,’ said Lawson, who played college basketball under legendary head coach Pat Summitt at the University of Tennessee. ‘That can be defeating to see other people get opportunities that you are afraid you won’t have because subjectivity plays such a part in your advancement in this business. That has been very, very challenging to deal with.’ ”

Hudson was part of a panel discussion Tuesday at Morgan State University, the first symposium in a year-long research and journalism partnership between Morgan State and the Undefeated.

“Changing an old and established narrative can sometimes feel like an impossible task,” Hudson continued. “But a shift in the public perception of black female athletes is long overdue, even as images of powerful and accomplished African-Americans are more prevalent in the wider culture. . . .”

Hudson also wrote, ” ‘Public conversations around the experience of black female athletes can be shaped by people who don’t necessarily understand their backgrounds, upbringing and challenges. The mainstream sports media is still overwhelmingly white and male, which means there are often a lot of problematic spots in the portrayal of black women athletes, said Lonnae O’Neal, a senior writer for The Undefeated.

“ ‘There aren’t a lot of African-American sports writers or editors — and certainly not black females — and that shapes the kinds of coverage we get,’ she said. ‘We lack the language, the sensibility and even the expertise for people to evaluate us on an even playing field.’ . . .”

Ali Velshi Joins MSNBC

Business journalist Ali Velshi, a host on Al Jazeera America, which closed in April, joined MSNBC on Wednesday.

Ali Velshi
Ali Velshi

“Ali brings a unique mix of experience and perspective on both domestic and international issues,” MSNBC president Phil Griffin said in a memo the staff. “He was most recently a primetime anchor at Al Jazeera America and previously had a long career with CNN as an anchor and chief business correspondent.

“Ali made a name for himself covering tragic events in Pakistan and Turkey, the debt crisis in Greece, and the impact of devastating hurricanes here at home. He has earned a first-rate reputation as a business expert through his reporting on the 2008 financial crisis, the U.S. government’s bailout plan, the automobile industry, and the debt ceiling and budget debates.

“Ali’s sharp economic analysis will be a valuable asset to MSNBC as we dig deeper into every angle of the news and build on our ratings momentum in all dayparts. . . .”

Short Takes

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1 comment

Greg Thrasher October 20, 2016 at 9:21 am

Trump is correct about ‘rigger’ elections and Black Americans can affirm this from the efforts to suppress our votes to centuries of only White males as POTUS.

The ban against Black Americans have a felony conviction from voting is another aspect of a ‘rigged’ election. The absence of third party candidates on the stage debating in the presidential election is yet another aspect of a’rigged’ election.

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