Articles Feature

‘Trenchant Views’ From Media Women of Color

by richard02025

Abbreviated column today

Report Cites Micro-Aggressions, Low Numbers

Public Favors Greater Diversity Among Journalists

Short Take

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Four women power players in digital media spoke to a standing-room-only audience in 2016 at the joint conference of the National Association of Black Journalists and National Association of Hispanic Journalists in Washington. (video) (Credit: Cassie M. Chew/YouTube)

 

Report Cites Micro-Aggressions, Low Numbers

“Fifty years after the Kerner Commission criticized the news media for not sufficiently covering race issues, a new special report shows that women of color continue to be underrepresented in U.S. newsrooms and face multiple challenges in achieving equality in hiring
and promotions,” the Women’s Media Center announced on Tuesday.

The report, “The Status of Women of Color in the U.S. News Media 2018,” “offers a rare look at where women journalists of color are — and aren’t — in legacy print, radio, TV, and digital news. It is an important extension and extrapolation of data previously published in the Women’s Media Center’s annual ‘The Status of Women in the U.S. Media’ study, and includes data about minority journalists released after the most recent version of that report was produced in 2017.

‘Whether intentional or not, it seems like there is a cap on people of color in newsrooms,’ said Rummana Hussain, assistant metro editor, Chicago Sun-Times.”

Comparable figures for men of color are 8.58 percent in print and online, according to the annual survey of the American Society of News Editors; and 11.7 percent in local television and 5.5 percent in local radio, according to the Radio Television Digital News Association.

“Among the journalism professionals offering their trenchant views in the report on what’s broken for women journalists of color, and how to repair the breach are journalist and author Dana Canedy, the first black female and youngest person to helm the Pulitzer Prize organization; such marquee broadcast news leaders as Soledad O’Brien, Ann Curry, Maria Hinojosa and Joy Reid; MacArthur ‘genius grant’ winner Nikole Hannah-Jones; freelance journalist Jenni Monet; and women of far less fame who likewise excel in practicing their craft,” the news release continued.

“ ‘There are so many micro-aggressions that come with being a journalist and female and not White,’ according to Soledad O’Brien, founder and CEO, Starfish Media Group. ‘If you spend too much time seeing yourself — in terms of how they see you — as only those things, you will lose your mind. Because there are just a lot of slights.’ . . . ”

Public Favors Greater Diversity Among Journalists

“To mark the 50th anniversary of the Kerner Commission Report, the Ford Foundation is looking at the public perception of the news media today,” the foundation said on Feb. 27. “The Kerner Report was tasked with determining the factors that led to civil unrest in 1967 in Detroit, Newark, and elsewhere. One factor identified was the lack of adequate representation among the people assigning, reporting, and editing the media coverage. . . .”

Key findings [PDF]:

  • “A majority of people of all races think greater diversity among reporters and editors would improve the news. . . .
  • “About half of the population believes the media portrays race relations as worse than they actually are. . . .
  • People of all races agree that African Americans are more negatively portrayed in the media than in reality. . . .
  • “Nearly half of Hispanic Americans (45%) and African Americans (48%) believe that Hispanic Americans are portrayed more negatively than the reality. . . .
  • “Across races, most people, including Asian Americans themselves, think that Asian Americans are accurately portrayed by the media. . . .
  • “White Americans are almost three times as likely as African or Asian Americans to believe that they (whites) are portrayed more negatively in the media than the reality. . . .
  • More than 7 in 10 agree that fake news is a serious issue. . . .
  • “People of all races are generally feeling less optimistic about where America is headed. . . .
  • “While most people read the news daily (67%), the starkest differences are by age. . . .”

Short Take

50 Years After Kerner, Some Say It Wasn’t Taken Seriously

March 2, 2018
On assignment

Media Were ‘Shockingly Backward’ on Blacks

Tweets Show Media Are Considered Clueless

. . . Income Inequality, Wealth Gap Have Widened

Tapper Blasts Politicians Who Meet With Farrakhan

Indian Country Today Revived; Trahant to Edit

Amy Holmes to Co-Host Conservative PBS Show

Brazile Calls Russian Hacking ‘National Emergency’

RTDNA Asks Journalists to Counter NRA Claim

Writers Union, Ebony Reach Settlement Agreement

NAHJ Complaint Followed by Unexpected Change

Short Takes

 

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(Credit: University of California, Berkeley) (video)

Media Were ‘Shockingly Backward’ on Blacks

“ ‘Shockingly backward.‘ That’s how the 1968 Kerner Commission report described U.S. journalism’s representation of Black Americans,” Janine Jackson wrote Wednesday for ColorLines. “Formally the ‘Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders,’ the Kerner report indicted news media, along with police and politicians, for their role in driving the racial divisions that roiled the country in the late 1960s. . . .”

Jackson, who is also program director at Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR), also wrote, “The Kerner report didn’t call for ‘diversity.’ It called for U.S. journalism to de-center its White male view. Media ‘report and write from the standpoint of a white man’s world, the Commission declared; coverage ‘reflects the biases, the paternalism, the indifference of white America.’ This is not merely lamentable; it is ‘not excusable in an institution that has the mission to inform and educate the whole of our society.’

Janine Jackson
Janine Jackson

“For Kerner, the meaningful representation of Black people in editorial roles was not a sop, or a nicety, but a core value. It recognized that media’s White supremacy problem couldn’t be solved with a few sensitivity seminars. Inclusion was crucial as a means toward an end — media that would ‘meet the Negro’s legitimate expectations in journalism.’

“If the media industry has fallen short in Kerner’s goals for hiring and retaining journalists of color, that has much to do with its failure to take seriously that more radical charge.

“We see that failure all around. It’s there in the contrast in corporate media’s depictions of Black and White protestors, or their compassionate coverage of opioid addiction among White people compared to their pathologizing treatment of crack cocaine, or their ‘balancing’ bogus charges of voter fraud with documented evidence of voter suppression.

“Above all, it’s reflected in elite media’s continued disinterest in confronting the forms of institutional racism — redlining, job discrimination, over-incarceration — impacting African Americans as crises, rather than simply stories to (sometimes) cover. The problems that send Black people into the street, Kerner famously stated, are not ‘just another story.’ . . .”

Tweets Show Media Are Considered Clueless

“In 2016, the Toronto Star‘s long-serving film critic, Peter Howell, suffered an internet beat-down to remember,” Cliff Kuang reported Tuesday for fastcodesign.com. “In an attempt to praise the film Moonlight, he called out director Barry Jenkins’s resistance to any kind of ‘coatswitching’ — cleaning up street vernacular, to better gain acceptance with mainstream society.

“There was just one problem: The term isn’t ‘coat switch.’ It’s ‘code switch.’ Twitter flayed Howell, then boiled his bones for soup. The hashtag #coatswitch almost immediately became a byword for racial cluelessness. Thus did a well-meaning attempt to support a black filmmaker end up making its author look like a fool.

Deen Freelon (Credit: Sharon Farmer)
Deen Freelon (Credit: Sharon Farmer)

“This might seem like a goofy accident, readily avoided by anyone else keen on the mores of social media. But a surprising new study sponsored by the Knight Foundation, out today, reveals that the #coatswitch incident isn’t the exception when it comes to how the media [deal] with minority communities on Twitter — it’s the rule.

“And when media outlets do try to cover minority groups, they actually drive up disdain on the platform. Not only [are] hate-tweeting articles a real thing, [they] may be the dominant mode for how minorities talk about media coverage about their communities.

“The study was authored by Deen Freelon, a media studies professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (and son of architect Phil Freelon), and three co-authors: Lori Lopez, University of Wisconsin, Madison; Meredith D. Clark, University of Virginia; and Sarah J. Jackson, Northeastern University. Freelon led the quantitative part of the study.

“The ingenuity lay in the setup. To figure out the boundaries of three virtual Twitter communities — Asian Americans, African Americans, and feminists — his team pored over the hashtags used by community leaders and scraped news coverage mentioning both those groups and also containing a hashtag. Freelon then turned those terms into a cloud of affiliated hashtags that provided a rough map of the community. . . .”

The study follows up on one that Freelon co-authored in 2016. It concluded that the advent of social media has meant that the Black Lives Matter movement and other protesters have generally been “able to circulate their own narratives without relying on mainstream news outlets,” making more critical the need for mainstream media to staff their newsrooms with journalists whom protesters can trust if the news outlets want the story.

Olivier Kamanda added for the Knight Foundation, “On March 8 Knight Foundation will host a Twitter chat at noon E.T. to answer questions about the report and connect with people around ways to strengthen the relationship between journalists and these communities. And on March 26 Knight will host an event in New York in collaboration with Postlight; the event will be streamed live on Knight’s Twitter page starting 3 p.m. ET.”

. . . Income Inequality, Wealth Gap Have Widened

“When dozens of urban areas across the country erupted in flames in the late 1960s, a commission appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson concluded that pervasive poverty and racism were major causes of the unrest,” Vanessa Williams reported Monday for the Washington Post.

“Fifty years later, those twin conditions are again causing friction in American society, say the authors of a new report, who include the last living member of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders. The report calls for a commitment by political leaders to large-scale social spending at a time when the administration of President Trump and a Republican-controlled Congress are preparing for drastic cuts to programs for low-income families and individuals.

“ ‘Healing our Divided Society,’ a report to be released Tuesday by the Eisenhower Foundation, acknowledges strides in closing the economic, social and political gaps between racial groups in America. The African American and Hispanic middle classes have grown significantly, and the United States elected and reelected a black man as president.

“But since the late 1960s, the percentage of American children living in poverty has increased, income inequality and the wealth gap have widened, and segregation has crept back into schools and neighborhoods.

“ ‘Racial and ethnic inequality is still with us. It’s a real problem and it is worsening,’ said Fred Harris, a former senator and member of the panel that came to be known as the Kerner Commission, named for its chairman, Otto Kerner Jr., a Democrat who was then governor of Illinois. . . .”

Tapper Blasts Politicians Who Meet With Farrakhan

“CNN’s Jake Tapper was incensed when Reverend Louis Farrakhan gave a blatantly anti-Semitic speech for Saviours’ Day, a national convention organized by the Nation of Islam, and it was attended by thousands, including Womens’ March co-chair Tamika Mallory. (Tapper incorrectly identified her as a co-founder.),” Rachel Dicker reported Wednesday for Mediaite.

(Farrakhan’s title is “Minister,” as “Reverend” is a Christian appellation.)

“Tapper unleashed a tweetstorm noting the time stamps of some of Farrakhan’s most heinous comments, including that ‘the Jews were responsible for all of this filth and degenerate behavior that Hollywood is putting out turning men into women and women into men.’

“The CNN anchor condemned not only Farrakhan and Mallory, but also the political leaders who have given Farrakhan a platform despite his views and statements.

“ ‘This is who Farrakhan is. It’s why folks are legitimately so offended when they found out that then-Sen. Obama and members of the CBC met with him in 2005,’ Tapper tweeted, including a picture of Barack Obama smiling with the reverend. . . .”

The reference is to a photo taken during a mid-2005 Congressional Black Caucus meeting on Capitol Hill showing Farrakhan and then-Sen. Obama, newly released in a book by journalist Askia Muhammad, a member of the Nation. Muhammad ultimately surrendered the disk to Farrakhan’s chief of staff so as not to damage Obama’s political career.

Muhammad reported on the speech Tuesday in the Final Call. “When they found that picture in his book, did you know the Jews went crazy,” said Min. Farrakhan. Think, he said, what have I done that they hate me so much that they want Mr. Obama to denounce me again? “He hasn’t done it yet and I hope he doesn’t,” said the Minister.

“Jesus the prophet and the last prophet to the Jews was 2,000 years too soon but I’m on time, said Min. Farrakhan. These are wicked Jews, not righteous Jews that you find in revelations, that’s what the late Rev. Billy Graham said to Richard Nixon, he added. . . .”

Farrakhan also said, “The government is my enemy. The powerful Jews are my enemy. And scared to death Negroes are my enemy. And weak Muslims and hypocrites are my enemy, but here I stand! I told President Trump, he Tweets everybody, but he won’t Tweet back at me, and here I stand!”

Indian Country Today Revived; Trahant to Edit

Mark Trahant (Credit: indianz.com)
Mark Trahant (Credit: indianz.com)

“The demise of Indian Country Today will be short-lived following a Wednesday announcement by the National Congress of American Indians that it plans to relaunch the publication and hire a veteran Native journalist to lead it,” Kevin Abourezk reported Wednesday for indianz.com.

“Mark Trahant, an independent journalist and journalism faculty member at the University of North Dakota, will serve as editor of the publication, which will be under the ownership of NCAI.

“’We are excited to have Mark Trahant on board to help us lead this next chapter of Indian Country Today,’ said NCAI President Jefferson Keel in a statement. ‘Mark is respected in and beyond Indian Country for his professionalism, journalistic skills and keen insight into issues and developments impacting tribal nations.’

“Trahant, a citizen of the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes, has had a storied journalism career, having worked at a host of mainstream daily newspapers like the Arizona Republic, Seattle Post-Intelligencer and Salt Lake Tribune, as well as tribal publications like the Navajo Times and Sho-Ban News.

“He is the former president of the Native American Journalists Association and publishes a blog called TrahantReports.Com.

“NCAI also has hired Vincent Schilling, 50, as the publication’s associate editor. Schilling brings his 10 years of experience with Indian Country Today as the former arts and entertainment, sports and powwows editor. He is the author of four books promoting role models in Indian Country and a U.S Army veteran.

“Trahant said the third iteration of Indian Country Today likely won’t include a print edition and will have a much smaller staff than its most recent one. . . .”

Abourezk also wrote, “Trahant told Indianz.Com he plans to run the publication more as a news service that will offer its content to tribal newspapers, radio stations and websites at no cost with proper credit attributions. . . .”

Amy Holmes to Co-Host Conservative PBS Show

Amy Holmes
Amy Holmes

“Columnist Michael Gerson and commentator Amy Holmes are teaming to start a conservative-oriented talk show on PBS that takes its cue from William F. Buckley’s Firing Line, which aired from 1966 to 1999,” David Bauder reported Wednesday for the Associated Press.

“The new show, ‘In Principle’, will air Friday nights starting April 13. PBS will decide after an eight-week run whether to continue.

“The hosts plan to interview two guests each show, hoping for an in-depth discussion on issues and their formative political experiences. No guests have been announced yet, but Gerson said he’d like to discuss issues like race, gun control and whether conservatism is the right message for the working class. . . .”

Bauder also wrote, “Gerson is known to the PBS audience as a frequent guest on ‘NewsHour’. Holmes worked on MSNBC and for Glenn Beck’s media company . . .”

 

Donna Brazile tells the Journal-isms Roundtable in Washington on Tuesday, " "This hacking stuff is real." Trump should "stop focusing on 2016. Focus on 2018. ".(Credit: Sharon Farmer/sfphotoworks)
Donna Brazile tells the Journal-isms Roundtable in Washington on Tuesday, “This hacking stuff is real.” President Trump should “stop focusing on 2016. Focus on 2018. ” (Credit: Sharon Farmer/sfphotoworks)

Brazile Calls Russian Hacking ‘National Emergency’

Donna Brazile, who has authored a book about the trauma of being hacked by the Russians while interim chair of the Democratic National Committee, is pleading with President Trump to take the continuing Russian efforts seriously.

“Call Merkel. Call France. Call the Netherlands” and ask for help, Brazile told the Journal-isms Roundtable on Tuesday, referring to German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

“I don’t think the White House has taken any prudent steps. The only thing they [the Russians] will understand is building a firewall. Every state should get a grant to update their election systems. Call it a national emergency.

“I’m a Democrat but I’m an American. I love my country. I’m willing to help President Trump,” Brazile continued. “I am that desperate to help our country right now. My family has been there for over 300 years. . . .”

Brazile also said, “This hacking stuff is real.” Trump should “stop focusing on 2016. Focus on 2018. Make sure we have the firewall. We need presidential leadership. Without that, we need congressional leadership.”

As the roundtable proceeded, NBC News reported, “The U.S. intelligence community developed substantial evidence that state websites or voter registration systems in seven states were compromised by Russian-backed covert operatives prior to the 2016 election — but never told the states involved, according to multiple U.S. officials.”

A story credited to Cynthia McFadden, William M. Arkin, Kevin Monahan and Ken Dilanian reported, “Top-secret intelligence requested by President Barack Obama in his last weeks in office identified seven states where analysts — synthesizing months of work — had reason to believe Russian operatives had compromised state websites or databases.. . .”

Brazile, whose “Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-ins and Breakdowns That Put Donald Trump in the White House” was published late last year, said she was proud of the investigative coverage of the hacking that she’d seen in the Washington Post and the New York Times. “But in 2016, it wasn’t there,” she said.

She also called upon black leaders to be more outspoken. “Trust Russian embassies to use bots and trolls to sow racial division. We haven’t heard the end of what they did,” she said. Of the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who disclosed in November that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, she said, “I miss that voice.”

African Americans of means should be investing in political candidates who share their vision, she added, saying that under Obama, the Democrats lost 1,000 state legislative seats.

RTDNA iaunches its "This is Journalism" campaign (Credit: RTDNA)
RTDNA launches its “This is Journalism” campaign (Credit: RTDNA)

RTDNA Asks Journalists to Counter NRA Claim

“The Radio Television Digital News Association is asking journalists to take a stand on social media against the National Rifle Association’s claims that the media loves mass shootings,” Stephanie Tsoflias Siegel reported Monday for TVSpy.

“ ‘Still reeling from the NRA’s outrageous claim that legacy media loves mass shootings? Take action and widely circulate on your social media channels,’ wrote RTDNA executive director Dan Shelley in a Facebook post.

“The campaign, which aligns with the organization’s First Amendment Task Force, focuses on journalists beliefs and their contributions to the community.

“Last week, NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch addressed the Conservative Political Action Committee conference telling them ‘legacy media love mass shootings.’. . .”

Writers Union, Ebony Reach Settlement Agreement

“The National Writers Union has reached a final settlement agreement with the Ebony Media Organization and CVG Group LLC (which acquired Ebony magazine in 2016), over the magazine’s failure to pay freelance writers, editors and designers for contracted and published work, the union said Tuesday.

“This settlement covers 45 freelancers who are collectively owed $80,000 by the new owners of the iconic magazine. Six writers who were part of the original group non-payment grievance were paid-out about $8,000 before this settlement.

“According to the terms of the agreement, Ebony will pay all of the freelancers 100% of their owed invoices in four quarterly payments, starting with the oldest invoices first. Almost half of the invoices go back to 2016. The payments are guaranteed by Ebony’s ownership group, CVG, who also signed the settlement agreement.

“Ebony writer and Editor Adrienne Gibbs said, ‘This is a great success for the Ebony writers and NWU. That said, settlement agreements are only as good as the cleared checks. I hope that Ebony magazine and its parent company make good on their renewed promise to pay.’ . . .”

NAHJ Complaint Followed by Unexpected Change

“Austin-based Texas Monthly, the award-winning magazine that covers politics and culture in the Lone Star State, has a new face at the helm, at least temporarily,” Cary Darling reported Thursday for the Houston Chronicle. The announcement came three days after Editor Tim Taliaferro met with James Barragain, president of the Central Texas Chapter of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists,over a mislabeled photograph in Texas Monthly’s newsletter that confused one Latino state senator for another.

Carlos Sanchewz
Carlos Sanchez

The mislabeled photo was not cited as a reason for the reassignment of Taliafferro to the position of chief innovation officer. Rather, Darling noted that Taliaferro had indicated he wanted to move the magazine in more of a lifestyle direction and that he had been accused of putting the founder of a dating app company on its February 2018 cover in a “pay for play” move. He denied the allegations.

Rich Oppel, who had been brought on last month as the publication’s first ombudsman, is now the interim editor-in-chief.

“But that’s not all: Carlos Sanchez, recently the executive editor at The Monitor in McAllen, joins as news and politics editor while Megan Creydt, fresh from stints as a senior editor and copy chief at Grantland and MTV News, will be digital managing editor,” Darling reported.

Asked about Texas Monthly’s reputation among people of color, Sanchez messaged Journal-isms, “TM does have a bad reputation for diversity. That’s about to change!”

On the photo mixup, “The magazine immediately apologized and re-issued the story with the correction. The magazine also alerted the wire service, where the image was mislabeled, who immediately corrected it,” the NAHJ Central Texas Chapter reported Wednesday on its Facebook page.

Taliaferro “immediately responded by phone to an NAHJ representative, apologizing for publishing the incorrect photo, scheduled time to speak with NAHJ President Brandon Benavides and jumped at an opportunity to work with the association,” the chapter said.

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