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Saudis’ Story Is ‘Utter Bull—- ’

by richard0737

Editor’s Reaction to ‘Fable’ on Khashoggi Death

On Caravan, Trump Makes ‘Important Point’ on Aid

Cuban Journalist Claiming Torture Granted Asylum

San Diego Paper Touts Area’s Diversity

Big Gap Between GOP, Democrats on Race Issues

A Proposal for the Powhatan Tribe on Warren

At Newseum, ‘Journoladies’ Honor a Forebear

Reporter Relates to Paper’s Black Shoeshine Man

Short Takes

Support Journal-isms

Editor’s Reaction to ‘Fable’ on Khashoggi Death

“The Washington Post editor who worked with Jamal Khashoggi is not buying the story from Saudi officials who say the columnist died during an altercation at Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul,” William Cummings reported Sunday for USA Today.

Karen Attiah (courtesy)
Karen Attiah (courtesy)

” ‘I still believe, and the Post as an institution still believes, that this is not an explanation. This is an attempt at a cover-up,’ Karen Attiah, the global opinions editor at the Post, told George Stephanopoulos Sunday on ABC’s ‘This Week.’

“The Saudi government claimed in a statement on Friday that Khashoggi went to the consulate because he was interested in returning to Saudi Arabia. The statement said that the ‘discussion’ led to a quarrel and that Khashoggi died in an ensuing ‘brawl.’

“Attiah said it was ‘absolutely untrue’ that Khashoggi wanted to return to Saudi Arabia. She also rejected the notion that Khashoggi, whom she described as ‘kind and calm and gentle,’ would have been involved in a brawl.

” ‘If anything, if we’re going to give any sort of credence to this, he walked into an ambush,’ she said.

“The Washington Post Editorial Board on Saturday wrote that ‘the new account offered by the regime of King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is utterly devoid of credibility.’ The editorial said the evidence was clear that the prince was ‘the instigator of a premeditated, cold-blooded and brutal murder, followed by the dismemberment of Mr. Khashoggi’s body.’

“The Post’s editorial board also criticized President Donald Trump for appearing to accept the Saudi explanation as credible. The editorial said Trump’s reaction ‘only underlines his shameful intent to assist in the attempt of the regime — and, in particular, the crown prince — to escape meaningful accountability.’

“The Post called for investigations in Khashoggi’s death by the United Nations and Congress, ‘including of whether the Trump administration is conspiring with Saudi officials to cover up the murder of a distinguished journalist.’

“Later Saturday, Trump told the Post that ‘obviously there’s been deception and there’s been lies’ from the Saudis. ‘Their stories are all over the place.’

“But the president also defended Mohammed bin Salman as a positive political figure in Saudi Arabia and said he had seen evidence implicating, or exonerating the prince. Trump said it was possible things ‘went awry’ in the consulate and that the prince only learned what happened later. . . .”

Attiah has worked as a freelance reporter for the Associated Press, Huffington Post, Sahara Reporters and several other news outlets. Born in Desoto, Texas, to a Nigerian-Ghanaian mother and Ghanaian father, she has a master’s degree in international relations from Columbia University.

She has worked tirelessly to keep Khashoggi’s case before the public, saying she considers it personal as well as professional. Attiah also appeared Sunday on CNN’s media show “Reliable Sources.”

On Caravan, Trump Makes ‘Important Point’ on Aid

“Last week, a group of migrants set out from San Pedro Sula, Honduras, to make the 1,000-plus-mile trip to the U.S. border in hopes of asylum,” the Dallas Morning News editorialized on Friday. “At this writing, the number of people in that group has grown to 4,000, who have reached the Guatemalan border with plans to traverse north through Mexico and on to Texas and other border points.

“President Donald Trump has dealt with the crisis the way he so often does, taking to Twitter to lash out with all of the subtlety of a bull in a china shop. He has warned Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala that he’ll cut off their financial aid if they don’t stop their people from attempting to make it to the United States.

“What disappoints us is the president’s attempt to make people fleeing those countries out to be perpetrators, hoping to storm the United States, instead of victims, fleeing their home country for the chance at a better life.

“But while Trump might lack empathy for those suffering, he does make an important point about the use of U.S. aid money to governments that appear increasingly incapable of protecting their own citizens inside their own borders.

“Had Trump addressed the issue more diplomatically, he would be more likely to build support for the idea that the way the U.S. administers aid to Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras should be on the table for reconsideration.

“Drug trafficking, human trafficking, gang violence and corruption have created a climate where people feel safer making the dangerous journey to the U.S. border instead of remaining at home — even as hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. assistance pour in each year. . . .”

Serafín Morán Santiago
Serafín Morán Santiago

Cuban Journalist Claiming Torture Granted Asylum

“After an almost four-hour hearing, a judge in the state of Texas, U.S., granted asylum to Cuban journalist Serafín Morán Santiago, who had been detained since last April, according to the freedom of the press organization Fundamedios USA,” Silvia Higuera reported Oct. 16 for the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas.

“According to a press release signed by that organization and by Reporters Without Borders (RSF, for its initials in French) – two of the entities that have supported Morán since his detention – the asylum was granted on the grounds that Morán ‘was the subject of torture and persecution for his work as an independent journalist in Cuba who criticized his government.’

“Although the entities said they were ‘elated’ by the judge’s decision on Oct. 11, they said the journalist ‘should never have been detained in the first place’ by U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE). . . .”

Higuera also wrote, “As explained by the journalist, in Cuba he was the victim of aggression, harassment, multiple detentions, abduction and torture. In June 2016, he was allegedly abducted and beaten by Cuban security officials, according to RSF. In September 2017, he was allegedly arrested and his equipment confiscated after interviewing an opposition leader, RSF added.

“As Fundamedios USA explained at the time, Morán had also ‘successfully’ passed the credible fear test that is carried out in the U.S. to grant asylum. . . .”

In their news release, Fundamedios and Reporters Without Borders said,  “Upon his release, Moran plans to bring his family to the United States and hopes to work with the Hispanic press and pursue human rights activism focusing on the safety of journalists in Cuba. . . .”

One part of the project declares, "These 60 people represent the foreign-born residents of San Diego County. To hear their stories, click on the photos." (Credit: San Diego Union-Tribune)
One part of the San Diego Union-Tribune’s project declares, “These 60 people represent the foreign-born residents of San Diego County. To hear their stories, click on the photos.” (Credit: San Diego Union-Tribune)

San Diego Paper Touts Area’s Diversity

A five-part series by the San Diego Union-Tribune on immigration in San Diego County went on display Friday at the New Americans Museum in the California county, to be on view through Feb. 3.

“San Diego County is home to 799,357 foreign-born residents, according to the most recent estimates by the U.S. Census Bureau,” John Wilkens, Kate Morrissey and Luis Cruz wrote when the series began Sept. 16. “That’s 24.1 percent of the region’s total population, higher than the national average, which is 14 percent. The immigrant population here has gone up 8.5 percent since 2011.

“They are restaurant owners and doctors, university professors and musicians, writers and farmers, beauticians and lawyers, engineers and cashiers, architects and nurses — almost every kind of pursuit imaginable.

“And some that seem unlikely, even to the people doing the pursuing. . . .”

One part of the project declares, “These 60 people represent the foreign-born residents of San Diego County. To hear their stories, click on the photos.”

Big Gap Between GOP, Democrats on Race Issues

“With less than four weeks until the midterm elections, Republican and Democratic voters differ widely in views of the seriousness of numerous problems facing the United States, including the fairness of the criminal justice system, climate change, economic inequality and illegal immigration,” according to the Pew Research Center.

Pew’s Oct. 15 report also said, “More striking, several of the issues that rank among the most serious problems among Democratic voters — including how minorities are treated by the criminal justice system, climate change, the rich-poor gap, gun violence and racism — are viewed as very big problems by fewer than a third of Republican voters.

“For example, 71% of Democratic voters say the way racial and ethnic minorities are treated by the criminal justice system is a very big problem for the country, compared with just 10% of Republican voters. Other issues have a similarly large partisan gap: Democratic voters are 61 percentage points more likely than Republican voters to say climate change is a very big problem and are 55 points more likely to say this about the gap between the rich and poor.

“By contrast, illegal immigration is the highest-ranked national problem among GOP voters, but it ranks lowest among the 18 issues for Democratic voters (75% and 19%, respectively, say it is a very big problem). . . .”

A Proposal for the Powhatan Tribe on Warren

Elizabeth Warren
Elizabeth Warren

“If there are any members of the Powhatan Tribe reading this I have a very serious proposition for all of you, and if you don’t read this, maybe the leaders of another tribe will read it and consider it,” Tim Giago wrote Wednesday for indianz.com.

“Senator Elizabeth Warren has released a DNA test that provides ‘strong evidence’ she had a Native American in her family tree dating back 6 to 10 generations.

“Most Native Americans know that just because one claims Indian blood does not mean they are a member of any tribe. One must be enrolled to have this honor. Lord knows that my newspapers over the years [have] helped children adopted out of their tribe to find their way back.

“Donald [J.]. Trump has made the unbelievable racial slur of calling Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) ‘Pocahontas.’ Warren is seriously considering running for the job of President of the United States. You can rest assured that Trump and his ilk will immediately seize every opportunity to smear her and inadvertently, every Native American. He is already claiming that the Cherokee Nation agrees with him. And right on cue, a Cherokee spokesperson accommodates his racial slurs.

“Trump has this sickening habit of giving nicknames to anyone he considers to be a political enemy. I am surprised he has not taken to calling Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-California) ‘Aunt Jemima.’ But to call Warren ‘Pocahontas’ right in front of Peter McDonald, former President of the Navajo Nation and a Navajo Code Talker takes the cake. McDonald is pushing 91 years old and if he was younger he probably would’ve knocked the Orange One on his butt.

“Lying Ted Cruz and Little Marco Rubio have both lined up to forgive, forget and kiss Trump’s butt. I don’t think Warren will be so forgiving and forgetful. The only Republican with the guts to stand up to Trump and not forgive and forget is Jeb Bush.

“So consider what I am proposing. If the Powhatan Tribe would adopt Elizabeth Warren into their Tribe and give her the Indian name ‘Pocahontas,’ what would that do to Trump’s smart-assed name calling? The Powhatan Tribe would be doing a great favor to every Indian tribe in America. Plus, every time Trump called Warren ‘Pocahontas’ he would be calling her by her actual Indian name. And to top it off, the national and international publicity that would befall the Powhatan Nation would be priceless. It will put the Tribe back on the map. . . .”

 

At Newseum, ‘Journoladies’ Honor a Forebear

“So a couple dozen journoladies popped into the Newseum today to pay tribute to Alice Allison Dunnigan, the first black woman to cover the White House,” Sonya Ross, race and ethnicity editor for the Associated Press,” wrote Saturday on Facebook.

“There were flowers, libation, brief speeches, tons of photos, smiles, hugs, joy — and a watch.

“Specifically, a watch that belonged to Michel Martin’s father. Michel,” an NPR host, “laid it at the feet of Dunnigan’s statue in symbolic appreciation of the fact that this barrier-breaking correspondent worked for wages so low that she had to pawn her watch every week to make ends meet.

“It felt good to be together in this sacred space for journalists, celebrating the great lady who made careers in American media possible for us.

“Afterward a few of us went to brunch, and decided to do our part going forward to be good stewards of Alice Dunnigan’s legacy.

“#knowyourhistory

“#proud

“#BlackGirlMagic”

Ross spoke to journalist Alicia Shepard about what it was like when she joined the White House press corps as Associated Press reporter in 1995:

“There were strong similarities between my first day there, and the first day Alice described in her book. Some people were welcoming, some didn’t notice my presence and some ignored me altogether. Their sense of entitlement about being there like it wasn’t a big deal was obvious. It was definitely a big deal for me, something I didn’t take for granted.”

The statue of Dunnigan went on display Sept. 21 and is to remain at the Newseum until Dec. 16, when it is to be taken to Dunnigan’s hometown of Russellville, Ky., and installed on the grounds of the West Kentucky African American Heritage Center as part of a park dedicated to the civil rights movement.

John W. Fountain wrote, "I suspected that some in the newsroom saw shining shoes as the kind of trade for which we black folks — even reporters — were best suited."
John W. Fountain wrote, “I suspected that some in the newsroom saw shining shoes as the kind of trade for which we black folks — even reporters — were best suited.”

Reporter Relates to Paper’s Black Shoeshine Man

“As I sat at my desk in the newsroom of a big-city newspaper that fall afternoon in 1989, I could plainly see through the glass office the head of another black man bobbing up and down — up and down,” John W. Fountain wrote Friday for the Chicago Sun-Times.

“I sat inside my cubicle, writing. I could see the frail, dark-skinned elderly gentleman doing something indiscernible from my cushy chair that yielded a partial view into the editor’s office.

“ ‘What in the hell?’ I wondered.

“I couldn’t resist. I stood up to see. There it was. In plain view:

“The gray-haired black man was on his knees. The editor leaned back in his swivel chair, like a modern-day massa’, while the wiry black man, dressed in a blue custodial uniform, buffed out a shine.

“Nobody else in the newsroom seemed unusually stricken by the sight. When I inquired of a veteran black reporter, he shrugged and chuckled, explaining that it was part of the regular goings-on ’round here and that I should get used to it.

“It was my rude awakening to the American newsroom. And I was certain that I could never get used to it. . . .”

Fountain also wrote, “I suspected that some in the newsroom saw shining shoes as the kind of trade for which we black folks — even reporters — were best suited. I felt like just another slave on the plantation. . . .”

Short Takes

At 20, Leonard Pitts, left, interviewed singer Stevie Wonder at Roscoe’s House of Chicken and Waffles in Hollywood, Calif. Pitts, a syndicated columnist for the Miami Herald, used the photo by Bruce W. Talamon in a column Friday headlined, No offense, Nicki Minaj, but the music of Aretha, Stevie, Marvin and the Tempts feels like home." (Credit: (c) 1977 All Rights Reserved)
At 20, Leonard Pitts, left, interviewed singer Stevie Wonder at Roscoe’s House of Chicken and Waffles in Hollywood, Calif. Pitts, a syndicated columnist for the Miami Herald, used the photo by Bruce W. Talamon in a column Friday headlined: No offense, Nicki Minaj, but the music of Aretha, Stevie, Marvin and the Tempts feels like home. (Credit: [c] 1977 Bruce W. Talamon; All Rights Reserved.)
  • Chris Quinn, editor and president of Cleveland.com/Advance Ohio, “has changed Cleveland.com’s policy of automatically using mugshots (‘the worst photos people will ever take’) with minor crime stories,” Laura Hazard Owen reported Thursday for Nieman Lab, introducing a Q-and-A with Quinn. “It no longer names perpetrators of minor crimes in its stories. . . . And now, Cleveland.com is launching a coordinated, organized effort to review people’s requests to remove their names from old stories. (Similar efforts have taken place at outlets like the nonprofit New Haven Independent.) It’s a process that starts from a place of compassion, abandons the idea of doing things just because they’ve always been done that way, and injects nuance throughout a newspaper’s editorial decisions. . . .”
  • Cheryl W. Thompson, who is associate professor of journalism at George Washington University School of Media and Public Affairs, a contributing investigative reporter at the Washington Post and board president of Investigative Reporters and Editors, is joining the NPR Investigations Team as a correspondent, NPR announced Friday. The school said, “In 2019, Thompson will take leave from SMPA to pursue this opportunity, but she will remain engaged with the SMPA community and plans to return to the faculty. . . .”
  • A Go Fund Me campaign established Oct. 12 to aid the family of music journalist Rashod Ollison, who died Wednesday at 41, had raised $6,104 of a $5,000 goal as of Monday morning. The Virginian-Pilot’s obituary of Ollison, who died of complications from non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, was published Thursday and updated Saturday.
  • “A judge on Friday dismissed a defamation lawsuit filed against the Miami Herald for its coverage of the 2014 death of a female prison inmate and the state’s ensuing investigation,” Martin Vassolo reported Friday for the Herald. “The lawsuit, filed in Miami-Dade County, was brought by former Lowell Correctional Institution officers Patrick Lee Quercioli and Dustin Thrasher, whose attorney raised nine causes of action for defamation and defamation by implication. . . .” Herald attorney Sandy Bohrer said in the story, “We are pleased to see the judge vindicated the First Amendment rights of the Herald and its journalist, Julie K. Brown, whose award-winning series on Florida’s prisons opened the eyes of people all over Florida to some of the appalling conditions in our prisons. The judge’s ruling not only confirms the terrific reporting job of our clients and dismisses all the claims, but also awards us attorneys’ fees as well.”
  • “For a brief time, the police department managed to label approximately 64,000 black males in Kansas City as suspects” in a shooting in the city’s Country Club Plaza area, the Kansas City Star editorialized Friday. “That’s exactly what occurred with this tweet: ‘We are still looking for one more subject of interest. The only description we have right now is a black male. So we ask everyone around the area to please be aware of their surroundings. And we continue to ask those who are not already @ThePlazaKC to avoid the area.’ About 33 minutes passed before officials released a more detailed description of the suspect. Police know better than to identify an entire group of people based on generic information. . . .” Many news organizations apply similar rules on racial identification of suspects in news stories.
  • Juan Williams was introduced as “Fox News contributor,” but Williams was a roundtable panelist on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday, and not in his usual spot on “Fox News Sunday.” Williams is promoting his new book, ” ‘What the Hell Do You Have to Lose’?: Trump’s War on Civil Rights.” Networks sometimes allow their employees to appear on competing networks in such cases.
  • “The New York Times responded to critics Thursday by defending a profile of far-right activist Gavin McInnes that ran in the paper earlier this week,” Jon Levine reported Thursday for the Wrap. He also wrote, “Leading the criticism were journalists at the liberal HuffPost. Writer Andy Campbell attacked the piece as ‘tone deaf’ and accused it [of] ‘gloss[ing] over’ key facts about McInnes’ sordid history. . . .”
  • “WNYC’s Kai Wright explores the life of Ida B. Wells and her decision as a young woman activist to take on a deadly fight, and not let up,” the New York public radio station announced on Oct. 16, introducing a live broadcast. “Wells biographer Paula Giddings will join us to discuss what made Wells a woman who refused to stop, even in the face of constant threats on her life. Writer and cultural critic Jamilah Lemieux, racial justice activist Linda Sarsour and Saily Avelenda will have an intimate conversation about their own lives — walking in Wells’ footsteps, pushing hard for change in a society that struggles with the idea of powerful women. . . .”
  • Vince Sanders
    Vince Sanders

    Broadcaster Vince Sanders, a co-founder of the National Association of Black Journalists, died Oct. 10 at 83 after a decade-long struggle with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, Stephen Hudak reported Wednesday for the Orlando Sentinel. Sanders had lived in Central Florida since 1997 after retiring from a long career in the news and entertainment fields. “Sanders served as a news anchor, talk-show host, news director and later as a broadcast executive for the National Black Network, the first coast-to-coast radio network wholly owned by African Americans. . . .” NABJ statement

  • Under the name “Proyecto Ser Humano,” CNN en Español will launch a year-long multi-platform campaign to report on discrimination and explore how the US Hispanic community can overcome it, Cynthia Hudson, senior vice president and general manager of CNN en Español and Hispanic strategy for CNN in the United States, announced on Wednesday. The announcement came after a showing of “Voices of Immigration,” a forthcoming documentary on family separations, held at George Washington University before about 70 people. A panel discussion found some decrying the relative lack of publicity to deportations under former president Barack Obama and racist rhetoric from President Trump that has produced a climate of fear for many Hispanics.
  • At the annual Journalism and Women Symposium Conference and Mentoring Program, in a breakout session, “Let’s get intentional: building diversity into your news team and news content,” panelists made clear the difference between diversity and inclusion, Taylor Mulcahey wrote Tuesday for the International Journalists Network. “ ‘Diversity is getting people in the room,’ said Summer Fields, an engagement consultant at Hearken. ‘The key next step is [exploring] how you can make them show up as their full selves.’ This — the ability for team members to feel comfortable leaning into their full identity — is inclusion. . . .”
  • A new interactive database called Miseducation allows parents, journalists and others to look up their local schools and see “in a clear and comprehensive way – the racial inequities at play,” ProPublica announced Wednesday.
  • Michael Paul Williams, columnist for the Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch, endorsed on Oct. 15 a proposal by the nephew of tennis great Arthur Ashe Jr. to honor one of its most famous native sons by renaming the street simply known now as North Boulevard and South Boulevard to the Arthur Ashe Jr. Boulevard. “This is the third attempt to do so since 1993, the year Ashe died of complications related to AIDS” (digital subscriber paywall), Williams noted.
  • Kaity Tong
    Kaity Tong

    In New York, “Longtime WPIX anchor Kaity Tong is back on the desk after a six-month medical leave,” Stephanie Tsoflias Siegel reported Oct. 15 for TVSpy. “The weekend anchor had been in and out of the hospital, and ended up having colon surgery. . . .”

  • “Asian immigrants are underrepresented on television despite having outnumbered new Latino immigrants since 2010, a new study examining the portrayal of immigrants on television found,” Saleah Blancaflor reported Wednesday for NBC Asian America. “The study, ‘Immigration Nation: Exploring Immigration Portrayals on Television,’ released Wednesday by Define American in collaboration with the USC Annenberg Norman Lear Center’s Media Impact Project analyzed 143 episodes from 47 television shows that aired between 2017 and 2018. It found that while Asian immigrants made up 26 percent of the current immigrant population, only 16 percent of immigrants on television are Asian/Pacific Islander. . . .”
  • “Essence Communications, the leading media, technology and commerce company serving Black women, today announced a record-breaking economic impact of $280 million for its 2018 ESSENCE Festival® presented by Coca-Cola,” the company announced Wednesday. “Growth in Festival attendance, which reached more than 510,000, and a boost in tourism spending within the host City and State of New Orleans, Louisiana, garnered the highest fiscal input in the event’s 24-year history. . . .”
  • “Facebook has removed a video from controversial Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan’s account, in which he compared Jews to termites,” Bruce Haring reported Thursday for Deadline: Hollywood. “The video was removed because of its violation of the Terms of Service. The video is still posted on Twitter, which, so far, has not removed it. In the video, Farrakhan claims that he is not an anti-Semite, as some critics contend. Rather, he says that he is ‘anti-termite.’ ‘So when they talk about Farrakhan, call me a hater, call me anti-Semite. Stop it. I’m anti-Termite. I don’t know nothing about hating somebody because of their religious preference,’ Farrakhan claimed in the video. . . .” It is not clear from the speech what Farrakhan meant with his termite reference.
  • “Andrew Gillum is the best candidate to pull Florida back to the center, back to making sure the middle class and working class don’t continue to bear the brunt of Tallahassee’s misguided spending; back to acting on behalf of the Floridians denied health insurance by the current administration; back to putting public schools, which serve the majority of the state’s children, in the spotlight; back to being a leader in the fight against sea-level rise and the degradation of the environment,” the Miami Herald editorialized on Sunday. Gillum, a Democrat, would be Florida’s first black governor.
  • “Media entrepreneur Strauss Zelnick replaced Richard Parsons as the chairman of the CBS Corp. board of directors Sunday . . .,” Brian Steinberg reported Sunday for Variety. ” ‘As some of you know, when I agreed to join the board and serve as the interim chair, I was already dealing with a serious health challenge — multiple myeloma — but I felt that the situation was manageable. Unfortunately, unanticipated complications have created additional new challenges, and my doctors have advised that cutting back on my current commitments is essential to my overall recovery,’ Parsons said in a statement Sunday night. . . .”
  • “All Americans should recoil from the president’s praise for a violent assault on a reporter doing his Constitutionally protected job,” Olivier Knox, president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, said in a statement Friday. “This amounts to the celebration of a crime by someone sworn to uphold our laws and an attack on the First Amendment by someone who has solemnly pledged to defend it. We should never shrug at the president cheerleading for a violent act targeting a free and independent news media.”
  • “A Black teenager was dead and a Chicago police officer was being held responsible for shooting him 16 times. There was a video to prove it,” Erick Johnson reported Friday for the Chicago Crusader. “And, there was also an FBI investigation and a state criminal investigation to find out why Officer Jason Van Dyke needed to shoot Laquan McDonald so many times on October 20, 2014. On April 13, 2015, six Black aldermen were among 18 aldermen who were given these facts at a meeting at City Hall. . . . For more than three years, neither these aldermen nor even the Chicago Black Caucus, sent a press release or statement as to the details of this meeting, their role in approving a settlement and whether they were aware of a police video that eventually brought shame on the city, its police department and convicted murderer Van Dyke.”
  • “In all, Maryland law enforcement agencies got 398 reports of hate or bias last year — up by more than a third from 2016,” the Baltimore Sun reported Thursday. “An investigation by Baltimore Sun reporter Catherine Rentz took a close look at all of the nearly 700 reports filed over two years. The Sun built a database from the reports, which were made to local authorities and collected by the Maryland State Police. . . .”
  • “The New York Post appeared to steal a page from state Republicans’ playbooks with a story this week headlined: ‘Rapping Dem raised $3.8M for campaign against Republican,’ ” Sara Boboltz reported Wednesday for HuffPost. “Briefly, the ‘rapping Dem’ is Antonio Delgado, who is running as a Democrat to represent New York state’s 19th district in Congress. He received a prestigious Rhodes scholarship to attend the University of Oxford in England, where he earned a master’s degree in philosophy and political science after completing undergraduate studies at New York’s Colgate University. Then he went to Harvard Law School, where he met his wife. . . .” The headline was later changed to “Ex-rapper raised . . . “
  • In Indiana, “many journalists seem to have treated the state’s Fifth District Congressional race, between three-term Republican incumbent Susan Brooks and Democratic challenger Dee Thornton, as a foregone conclusion,” Nadia Brown wrote Friday for Columbia Journalism Review. “A Democrat has not won the district since 1993. . . . Thornton is a Black woman candidate running in a district that is 84 percent White, and typically Republican. Given the national climate of politically contentious culture wars, we see that voters are looking for members of marginalized groups to represent different voices and communities in Congress. . . .”
  • The Native American Journalists Association said Friday it was “disappointed in the lack of due diligence demonstrated by the Los Angeles Times in publishing the op-ed ‘Does the Indian Child Welfare Act protect tribal interests at the expense of children?’ We call on the organization and the opinion section to review their policies and practices in light of its unchecked dissemination of anti-Indian propaganda. The Times published an Oct. 12 op-ed by Naomi Schaefer Riley in which Schaefer Riley advocates for the elimination of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) by deliberately misrepresenting the law to readers — a tactic organizations labeled hate groups have used in an attempt to undermine the law. . . .”
  • Reporters Without Borders Wednesday condemned the previous day’s “murder of a young Pakistani newspaper reporter who dared to violate the code of silence surrounding drug trafficking, and calls on the country’s authorities to create a mechanism for protecting journalists. Sohail Khan was gunned down by two men in Haripur district, 60 km north of Islamabad in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, shortly after filing a request for protection at the Haripur district police station because of the death threats he had received. . . .”
  • While covering the opening of a Hindu temple Wednesday, “dozens of journalists, above all women journalists, were attacked with unprecedented violence by hundreds of Hindu fundamentalist protesters opposed to an Indian supreme court decision to lift a ban on women aged from 10 to 50 from entering the temple,” Reporters Without Borders said Thursday, updated Friday. “The pilgrimage is due to continue until 22 October. . . .”
  • “Brother Kanye West, You owe Africans, the African Diaspora and the global community an apology for meeting with Uganda’s dictator Yoweri Museveni,” Uganda-born Milton Allimadi, who publishes www.blackstarnews.com, wrote Thursday for theGrio.com. Allimadi also wrote, “Malcolm met Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere, Tom Mboya, and Gamal Abdel Nasser. You, on the other hand, met with Museveni, an enemy of Africa. . . .”  Jenifer Lewis

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