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Terror Again Puts U.S. Muslims on Defensive

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N.J. Writer Tells Their Story; Somalis Meet Media

N.Y. Times Calls Trump a Liar in News Headline

. . . ‘No Good Answers’ for TV Questioners

. . . Editorial Asks Whether Trump Was Born Male

Wilkerson, McBride to Receive Humanities Medal

ONA Honors Reports on Prisons, Police Force

No Blacks Among ‘Best’ American Sports Writing

Media Day Heightens Buildup for New Museum

The Mainland City With an Asian American Plurality

Mississippi Reporter, 22, Dies of ‘Natural Causes’

Short Takes


In Minnesota, Somali-American community leaders stress that an attack on nine people in St. Cloud was perpetrated by a single individual and say he does not represent the Somali-American or Muslim community. They expressed support for the victims. (St. Cloud Times video)

N.J. Writer Tells Their Story; Somalis Meet Media

“Yesterday morning, as bombing suspect Ahmad Khan Rahami was shot and arrested after exchanging gunfire and wounding two Linden police officers, Imam Aljaaber Jaaber held a funeral for Al-Yasin Anthony, 20,” Mark Di Ionno wrote Monday for the Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J. “He was shot and killed on an Elizabeth Street three days ago in an incident that had nothing to with anything except the violence that plagues our cities. Another American story.

“As the mourners departed the mosque for Anthony’s burial, media trucks were parked a mile away, with cameras zooming in on the blue and white awning of First American Fried Chicken. That’s the take-out joint owned by Rahami’s family, which immigrated from Afghanistan. Mayor Christian Bollwage stood there, in front of reporters on Elmora Avenue, detailing what he knew about longstanding tensions between the family and the city over late-night noise complaints.

” ‘ It was strictly about neighbors calling about noise,’ Bollwage said. ‘It was never ethnicity or religion or beliefs, or anything like that.’ . . .”

Di Ionno also wrote, “Around lunchtime, a half-dozen police and a K-9 unit descended on a wet cardboard box on Westminster Avenue, not far from the Dr. Orlando Edreira Academy public school. The dog sniffed, a police officer toed it open. It was empty, just a case of unflattened recycling.

“This was two blocks from Masjid Dar-Ul-Islam, where Jabari Jaaber, 19, the son of the imam, found himself once again explaining his religion.

” ‘Islam is a religion of peace, not violence,’ he said. ‘We say salaam (as a greeting). It means “peace.” ‘

” ‘What he (Rahmani) did was a non-Muslim act,’ said Sayyid Nash, 19. ‘This is not what we are about.’ . . .”

It was yet another attempt by American Muslims to distinguish themselves from terrorists. While some critics ask why Muslims don’t condemn terrorist acts, others note that their condemnations aren’t always reported.

Meanwhile, in Minnesota, “A group of St. Cloud Somali-American leaders, as well as other community leaders, spoke out in a nationally televised press conference on Sunday afternoon at Lake George,” Ben Rodgers reported for the St. Cloud Times, which posted the entire news conference on its website.

“The press conference came after an incident Sunday night involving a stabbing attack at the Crossroads Center in St. Cloud,” in which nine people were hurt. “The community leaders used it as an opportunity to stress the attack was perpetrated by a single individual, that it does not represent the Somali-American and Muslim community and to express support for the victims. . . .”

Kirsti Marohn reported for the Times that although the FBI said Sunday that it was investigating the St. Cloud stabbings as a potential act of terrorism, “St. Cloud Police Chief Blair Anderson said Monday that investigators so far have not uncovered any connection between ISIS and the suspect in attacks Saturday evening at Crossroads Center.” Still, ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack, and called the suspect one of its soldiers.

Nevertheless, Lul Hersi, one of Somali-Americans speaking at the news conference, noted, “ISIS is a different faith from Islam. Isis has their own religion and they have their own belief.”

As reported in this space in April, Malcolm Nance, a counterterrorism expert for MSNBC and author of “Defeating ISIS: Who They Are, How They Fight, What They Believe,” has told journalists that the news media had failed to emphasize the repudiation of ISIS by mainstream Muslims, who have bluntly declared that “ISIS is the enemy of Islam.”

“This is not a terrorist group, it’s a cult” that “doesn’t believe Islam is valid any more,” Nance said. “They step back into the 7th century,” believing they should re-enact battles of that era leading to a clash of civilizations. To them, “all 1.6 billion Muslims are apostates.”

The attacker has been identified by the Somali community as Dahir Adan. He was fatally wounded in Macy’s by Jason Falconer, an off-duty Avon, Minn. police officer.

In an interview Friday that aired Sunday on CBS News’ “Face the Nation,” Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., said that when Donald Trump first raised the issue of Barack Obama’s birthplace in 2011, “I thought it was shameful.” He added, “When you make mistakes, when you’re wrong, you should admit you’re wrong, and ask people to forgive you.” video

N.Y. Times Calls Trump a Liar in News Headline

“Last Saturday, The New York Times published an extraordinary story,” Peter Beinart reported for the Atlantic. “What made the story extraordinary wasn’t the event the Times covered. What made it extraordinary was the way the Times covered it.

“On its front page, top right — the most precious space in American print journalism — the Times wrote about Friday’s press conference in which Donald Trump declared that a) he now believed Barack Obama was a US citizen, b) he deserved credit for having established that fact despite rumors to the contrary and c) Hillary Clinton was to blame for the rumors. Traditionally, when a political candidate assembles facts so as to aggrandize himself and belittle his opponent, ‘objective’ journalists like those at the Times respond with a ‘he said, she said’ story. . . .”

Beinart also wrote, “Its headline read, ‘Trump Gives Up a Lie But Refuses to Repent.’ Not ‘falsehood,’ which leaves open the possibility that Trump was merely mistaken, but ‘lie,’ which suggests, accurately, that Trump had every reason to know that what he was saying about Obama’s citizenship was false.

“The article’s text was even more striking. It read like an opinion column. It began by reciting the history of Trump’s campaign to discredit Obama’s citizenship. ‘It was not true in 2011,’ began the first paragraph. ‘It was not true in 2012,’ began the second paragraph. ‘It was not true in 2014,’ began the third paragraph. Then, in the fourth paragraph: ‘“It was not true, any of it.’ . . ”

. . . ‘No Good Answers’ for TV Questioners

Television questioners Sunday pressed surrogates for Donald Trump, armed with talking points attempting to explain away Trump’s longtime position that Barack Obama was not born in the United States, a stance Trump retracted only on Friday.

The verdict: “Trump Surrogates Have No Good Answers for the Birther story,” Chuck Todd, Mark Murray and Carrie Dann wrote Monday for NBC News in their “First Read” column.

“That’s our conclusion after watching the Sunday shows. Here was New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie on CNN: ‘It’s not true that he kept it up for five years [after President Obama released his birth certificate in 2011].’ In fact, we’ve listed these post-2011 tweets and statements that Trump made questioning Obama’s citizenship.

“Here was Campaign Manager Kellyanne Conway when asked on ‘Meet the Press’ what led Trump to conclude that Obama was indeed born in the USA: ‘You’ll have to ask him that. That’s a personal decision.’ (The problem: Trump hasn’t held a news conference in weeks.)

“And here was VP running mate Mike Pence on ABC on what proof he had that Hillary Clinton was responsible for promoting the Birther story: ‘I understand the desire of many in the national media to change the subject from Hillary Clinton’s disastrous record and her dishonesty, we’re just not going to play that game. Donald Trump and I are going to continue to focus right where the American people are focused, and that’s not on the debates of the past, it’s on their future.’

“So you see why this Birther story isn’t a good one for the Trump campaign: The campaign and surrogates have no good answers. . . .”

Ezra Klein, editor-in-chief of vox.com, posted this video on Aug. 2 and has seen it go viral. Klein captioned it, “I dare you to watch this and defend voting for Donald Trump in November.”

. . . Editorial Asks Whether Trump Was Born Male

“Imagine, for a moment, that Hillary Clinton went on live television to announce she now believes that Donald Trump is a biological man,” the editorial board of the Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J., wrote Monday under the headline, “Was Donald Trump born male?”

“Imagine the speaker she chose to introduce her at this much-hyped media event was a fellow conspiracy theorist who had also long argued that ‘Donald’ is actually a woman.

“Imagine that after ignoring Trump’s release of his birth certificate and continuing for years to insist he has secret lady parts — and managing to convince more than half of Democrats of this — Clinton offered not an apology, but a demand for credit.

“Yes, credit; for having finally spritzed a little water on the wild inferno that she herself ignited. Now imagine her quickly leaving the podium, as reporters shout questions like, ‘When did you change your mind about Trump being a woman?’

“This would be the equivalent of Donald Trump’s Friday ‘news’ dump, where he announced — less than two months before the election — that he now believes President Barack Obama was born in the United States.

“Minus a few additional sideshows, of course. . . .”

Wilkerson, McBride to Receive Humanities Medal

Journalist and author Isabel Wilkerson and journalist-turned-author James McBride are among 12 recipients of the National Humanities Medal, to be presented by President Obama Thursday at the White House.

Isabel Wilkerson

They will join such figures as public radio host Terry Gross and composer and musician Wynton Marsalis as recipients of the medal. Twelve others will receive the National Medal of Arts. They include Mel Brooks, the actor, comedian and writer; author Sandra Cisneros; actor Morgan Freeman; composer Philip Glass, Berry Gordy, founder of Motown Records; and actress and singer Audra McDonald.

Wilkerson, a former New York Times reporter, is author of “The Warmth of Other Suns: the Epic Story of America’s Great Migration,” published in 2010. She is being honored “for championing the stories of an unsung history. Her masterful combination of intimate human narratives with broader societal trends allows us to measure the epic migration of a people by its vast impact on our Nation and on each individual life.”

James McBride

McBride wrote for the Washington Post, the Boston Globe and People magazine before moving on to books, film and fiction writing. He won the National Book Award for fiction in 2013 for “The Good Lord Bird,” a novel about a slave who unites with John Brown in Brown’s abolitionist mission.

He might be best known for “The Color of Water: A Black  Man’s Tribute to His White Mother,” his 1996 biography of his Jewish mother of black children, but has won critical acclaim for his recent biography of James Brown, “Kill ’Em and Leave: Searching for James Brown and the American Soul.”

McBride is being honored “for humanizing the complexities of discussing race in America. Through writings about his own uniquely American story, and his works of fiction informed by our shared history, his moving stories of love display the character of the American family.”

Also honored is the Prison University Project, whose mission is “to provide excellent higher education programs to people incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison; to create a replicable model for such programs; and to stimulate public awareness and meaningful dialogue about higher education and criminal justice in California.”

Under the project’s auspices, Prof. William Drummond of the University of California at Berkeley taught an introductory journalism course for dozens of inmates at San Quentin Prison in 2012 and 2014.

ONA Honors Reports on Prisons, Police Force

“Superlative reporting on leaked data, prison reform and undue police force led coverage that garnered top honors for 35 media organizations Saturday night at the 2016 Online Journalism Awards, which ended the Online News Association Conference,” Jeremiah Patterson reported Saturday for ONA.

“At the 16th annual awards dinner, emceed by NPR’s Al Letson, The Texas Tribune, Quartz, AJ+ Digital News Publishing and The New York Times each took home a $3,000 General Excellence Award, courtesy of the Gannett Foundation. The $15,000 University of Florida Awards for Investigative Data Journalism were won by The Intercept’s ‘The Drone Papers’ and The Orlando Sentinel for ‘Focus on Force: An Investigation In Use of Force by the Orlando Police Department.’

“The Panama Papers, an exhaustive examination by over 100 media outlets of secretive offshore companies, led by The Center for Public Integrity’s International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, took top honors in the Investigative category.

“The Knight Award for Public Service, with a $5,000 prize from the Knight Foundation, went to The Huffington Post for ‘Prisons Reporting.’ Breaking News won the $5,000 Gannett Technical Innovation in the Service of Digital Journalism Award for its news tip-sharing app, ‘Nearby Tipping.’ Oregon Public Broadcasting and The New York Times dominated the Breaking News categories and New York Magazine was honored in the Large Feature category for its bold, compelling presentation of ‘Cosby: The Women.’ . . .”

No Blacks Among ‘Best’ American Sports Writing

“For the past 25 years, The Best American Sports Writing has been published every autumn, recognizing the year’s finest magazine articles and, occasionally, newspaper columns, on sports ranging from basketball to fishing,” Pete Vernon wrote Friday for Columbia Journalism Review. “The 2016 edition, to be released on October 4, highlights the work of 30 journalists.

“Twenty-five of them are white men.

“In a year in which race and sports have become entwined in the national debate — driven in part by NFL player Colin Kaepernick’s protest of the national anthem — so, too, have race and journalism. As The Undefeated noted, it is perhaps not surprising that the story of Kaepernick’s protest was broken by an African-American reporter, Steve Wyche of the NFL Network.

“If part of the goal of The Best American Sports Writing series is to reflect the larger conversation around sports, the lack of work from a single African-American journalist in a year riven by racial tensions is striking. Series editor Glenn Stout referred CJR’s inquiries to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt executive editor Susan Canavan, who oversees the series.

Canavan told CJR that the editors tried to be mindful of inclusion, but that the ultimate criteria is which pieces provoked the most conversation and were simply the best journalism. Any lack of diversity in the selection, she said, ‘is sort of a larger portrait of the industry and who’s doing the writing.’ . . .

The Era of Segregation Gallery, including the segregation train car. (Credit: National Museum of African American History and Culture.)

Media Day Heightens Buildup for New Museum

About 300 journalists attended Media Day at the Smithsonian Institution’s new National Museum of African American History and Culture on Wednesday, and they immediately began to prime readers and viewers for the opening of the long-awaited project on the National  Mall on Saturday, its official opening day.

“Inside the space, there were just as many hardhats as reporters,” Sam Sanders reported for NPR. “You could hear drills humming on every floor, even as a grand opening is set for 10 days from now. Lonnie Bunch is the founding director of the museum. And this morning, he reminded people just how far the museum has come from a dream of black Civil War veterans over a century ago from still just being a dream last decade. . . .”

The Washington Post Magazine devoted its edition Sunday to the museum, featuring a Q-and-A by Marcia Davis with Oprah Winfrey, who donated $21 million; an essay by Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., who pushed in Congress for the museum’s creation; and another by documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, “Why the African American history museum belongs to all of us.”

C-SPAN plans live coverage of the opening ceremony at 10 a.m. ET.

“In addition to airing the 10am outdoor dedication ceremony, American History TV on C-SPAN3 will begin coverage at 8am ET with sights and sounds from the museum and feature past programming including a recent ‘hard hat’ tour of the new museum,” the network announced on Monday.

“Opening Ceremony speakers include President Obama and founding Museum Director Lonnie Bunch. Also attending: First Lady Michelle Obama, former President George W. Bush and Mrs. Laura Bush, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, Rep. John Lewis (D-Georgia) and Smithsonian Secretary David Skorton. Jazz musician Wynton Marsalis will perform a composition created for the opening.

“The program will re-air on American History TV Saturday, September 24 at 4 pm, 8 pm and midnight ET and at 8 am ET on Sunday, September 25. . . .”

David Nguyen and his wife, Sarah Le and daughter, Charlotte, four next month, were the first to move into their block in the brand new Portola Springs, Calif., community two years ago. (Credit: Matt Masin/Orange County Register)

The Mainland City With an Asian American Plurality

“Two years ago, David Nguyen, his wife and his daughter were the first to move into their block in Irvine’s new Portola Springs neighborhood,” Tomoya Shimura and Ian Wheeler reported Sunday for the Orange County Register.

“Within a few months, they saw the street fill up with two Indian families next door, and Filipino, Korean and Latino families across the way. Their meticulously planned community may appear beige and cookie-cutter to passers-by, but its residents are far from culturally homogenous.

“ ‘I was surprised in a positive way,’ said Nguyen, whose parents were Vietnamese refugees. ‘There’s Asian diversity here.’

“Portola Springs symbolizes a milestone reached by one of Southern California’s fastest-growing suburbs.

“New census estimates show that, for the first time, Irvine has more Asian than white residents. It’s a thin lead, well within the report’s margin of error, but the strongest evidence yet of what many residents, scholars and real estate professionals see as an accelerating trend.

“Using the new census figures, a Register analysis indicates Irvine now is — or soon will be — the largest city in the continental United States with an Asian plurality. Among larger municipalities, only Honolulu has more Asians than any other race. . . .”

Mississippi Reporter, 22, Dies of ‘Natural Causes’

Melanie Dotson

“WJTV-TV reporter Melanie Dotson died Friday,” Sarah Fowler reported Friday for the Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Miss.

“The station reported Dotson’s death Friday afternoon.

“Hinds County Coroner Sharon Grisham Stewart said Dotson died of natural causes at St. Dominic Hospital in Jackson on Friday afternoon. Stewart said she was told Dotson was 22.

“Dotson joined WJTV in April. A native of Brandon, Dotson came to WJTV from WXVT-TV in Greenville.

“She was a 2015 graduate of Tougaloo College, where she earned her degree in mass communication with an emphasis in radio and television broadcasting. . . .”

 
 

Short Takes

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