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Were Media Fair to Kamala Harris?

Narrative Said to Be Bullish Toward White Men

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Narrative Said to Be Bullish Toward White Men

Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., tweeted this photo of himself and Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., hugging after she announced her withdrawal from the presidential race. They were the only two African American candidates. (Credit: Twitter)

Over Thanksgiving, the Washington Post and the New York Times both published brutal stories about the state of Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign,Jon Allsop reported Wednesday for Columbia Journalism Review.

“The Post said she was ‘teetering,’ burdened by ‘indecision within her campaign, her limits as a candidate, and dwindling funds.’ The Times obtained a scathing resignation letter in which Kelly Mehlenbacher, a senior aide, criticized campaign leadership for inconsiderate management, including laying off employees without notice.

“‘ ‘This is my third presidential campaign and I have never seen an organization treat its staff so poorly,’ Mehlenbacher wrote. (She has since joined Michael Bloomberg’s campaign.) On Friday, Politico’s Playbook newsletter shared both pieces, calling them ‘two nail-in-coffin stories for Kamala Harris.’

“Yesterday, Harris called it quits. ‘I’ve taken stock and looked at this from every angle, and over the last few days have come to one of the hardest decisions of my life,’ she told supporters.

” ‘My campaign for president simply doesn’t have the financial resources we need to continue.’ Yesterday, the inevitable postmortems blamed the internal dysfunction and rancor; Harris’s enduring slump in the polls, aided by other candidates, including Joe Biden, eating away at her early support; her vacillation on important policy issues, most notably healthcare; and her past criminal-justice record, which made her candidacy anathema to many progressives. Most centrally, they cited Harris’s failure to pick a clear message and stick with it.

” ‘Kamala Harris was never as easy to put on a bumper sticker as some of the others,’ Chelsea Janes, who wrote the Post’s Thanksgiving story on Harris, said on PBS. ‘She sort of lost clarity in exactly who she was, and why she was running.’

“Some commentators identified another culprit: the media. On Sunday, before we knew Harris would drop out, MSNBC’s Joy Reid said the Harris-crisis stories illustrated a broader truth about the standards to which different candidates are held: ‘The narrative around the Democratic primary seems to be very bullish toward white, male candidates, and lukewarm on women and minorities.’

“Yesterday, post-dropout, the Rev. Al Sharpton echoed Reid’s point. ‘I’ve never seen a candidate taken apart the way she was in the last several days,’ he said, also on MSNBC. ‘Yes, there were organizational problems. Yes, there were financial problems. But you have people on that debate stage who have no organization at all.’ . . .”

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“Thirteen years old is when a black kid in Mississippi learns he’s an adult. Isaiah figured it out at the beginning of seventh grade when he got into trouble at his favorite place in town,” began the report from Reveal, from the Center for Investigative Reporting.

  • The Asian American Journalists Association is partnering with Mathison, which describes itself as a company “committed to bridging the gap between underrepresented communities and employers committed to equity and inclusion.” The company plans “to pilot a new platform to connect AAJA members with employers,” the association said Tuesday. “The pilot, which is supported by the Knight Foundation, aims to increase career opportunities for organizations with memberships like ours and bolster employers’ diversity and inclusion efforts. This partnership came about from initial work to determine how best to serve our members who are freelancers. . . .” The Native American Association announced a similar partnership on Nov. 8.
  • Upcoming primetime anchors for the forthcoming Black News Channel include former CNNer Fred Hickman, Laverne McGee and Anthony Amey, R. Thomas Umstead reported Monday for Multichannel News. Byron Pitts of ABC News remains available for special reports, Gary Wordlaw, vice president of news and programming, told Journal-isms by telephone Wednesday. Asked how many households the network will launch with in January, former congressman J.C. Watts, the network’s co-founder and chairman, told Umstead, “I think, [in terms of] households, we’ll be in the 33 million range, but we’ll significantly increase our reach with some mobile deals. I feel comfortable in saying we’ll be able to announce those partnerships in the next three to four weeks. . . .”

  • In fiscal year 2019, NPR’s newsroom makeup was just over 28% people of color and just under 71% white,” Elizabeth Jensen, NPR’s public editor, wrote Nov. 19. “Nearly 57% of the staff was female, according to newsroom staff diversity statistics provided, at the request of the Public Editor’s office, by NPR’s human resources department.” Jensen also wrote, “Another fact that jumps out: The percentage of newsroom employees who identify as Hispanic or Latino (that’s how NPR phrases the choice) stayed flat year to year, due partly to employees leaving. The actual number of self-identified Hispanic or Latino newsroom employees stayed even, at 32. . . .” (Credit: NPR)

  • In the end, the Newseum’s name was a bit whimsical, but its mission was critical,” Ken Paulson, a former editor of USA Today, wrote Monday for the publication. “Unless we understand and embrace the vital role a free press plays in our democracy, we encourage politicians of all stripes to denigrate and dismiss the journalists who daily keep a check on corruption and government abuse. . . .” The news museum has sold its building on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington and is closing at the end of the month. Its primary funder, the Freedom Forum, promises a new incarnation.
  • Journalist and digital content strategist Teresa Frontado (pictured) will join KUT 90.5, Austin’s NPR Station, as executive editor in January,” Erin Geisler reported Monday for KUT. Geisler also wrote, “Frontado joins KUT from WLRN, South Florida Public Media in Miami. As digital director there, she designed and implemented a digital strategy to increase audience engagement on all digital platforms -– from web, to app, to social media channels, to podcasts. She previously worked in roles at Univision, as director of social media for news, and at the Miami Herald, including as senior editor for online and production of El Nuevo Herald, the Miami Herald Publishing Company’s Spanish-language publication. . . .”

“Ghost River: The Fall and Rise of the Conestoga,” a graphic novel and public art exhibition at the Library Company of Philadelphia that debuted last month, reinterprets a genocidal campaign and its aftermath from the perspective of the indigenous peoples. (Credit: Lee Francis and Will Fenton)

  • ESPN has officially designated Dec. 4 as “Stuart Scott (pictured) Day,” in honor of the ‘SportsCenter’ anchor who lost his hard-fought battle with cancer in January 2015 at age 49, ESPN announced Monday,” Debbie Emery reported for the Wrap. “Throughout Dec. 4, ESPN will celebrate with frequent content of Scott’s love of life and perseverance through his fight with cancer.. . . The coverage is part of the ESPN’s 13th annual ‘V Week for Cancer Research,’ which runs Sunday, Dec. 3 through Dec. 14. . . .”

  • Jeffrey Dale (pictured), a white copy editor who in September quit the Patriot Ledger in Quincy, Mass., after his paper published the N-word in full on the front page, is now working at the Boston Herald. “My title is, ‘Regional Editing Assistant,’ mainly because I’m working on three different papers: The Herald, The Fitchburg Sentinel & Enterprise and The Lowell Sun,” Dale messaged Journal-isms last week. “The editing hub is another layer of editing after local reporters and editors at each paper give a first read. Our role is also to communicate w/ designers in the design hub, which is in Boulder, Co.” The hedge fund firm Alden Global Capital acquired the paper in 2018, cut pay and dissolved the union. “The cut pay hasn’t been as bad as I originally thought it would be. The new company’s health insurance is a lot cheaper than what it was before,” Dale said.
  • Under the title “How UT Alumna Beverly White (pictured) Became One of the Most Trusted Voices in News,” Gretchen Sanders wrote about White Nov. 1 for the Alcalde, alumni magazine of the University of Texas. White, who has been with KNBC -TV in Los Angeles for 27 years, “grew up admiring Texas-born journalism legends Sam Donaldson and Dan Rather. But it was Carole Simpson, the first African-American woman to anchor a major network newscast, and Iola Johnson, an African-American anchor for WFAA in Dallas, who ignited her imagination. ‘Iola Johnson was a pioneer, White says. ‘She was smart, classy, and traveled. Journalism just looked like an amazing job to have, and for a change I saw someone who looked like me who had it. . . .”
  • ““What drives me more nutty than the president -— who I think is obviously a terrible human being in a lot of ways — is the way in which the media does not know how to handle him,Soledad O’Brien told Lloyd Grove of the Daily Beast on Nov. 18. “Quoting people who are saying lies is a really bad strategy. When President Trump says the moon is made of cheese, well, it’s not,” she continued, speaking metaphorically. “What drives me really crazy is to see all the mistakes the media makes around [the problem of], how do you report on somebody who’s a liar, who won’t hold press conferences in a place where you can ask real questions?” O’Brien continued. “How do you use your access? Every so often, someone writes a story about Ivanka [Trump] that sounds like it’s been written by Ivanka. And you can tell that this is the access piece, so you can get that little drip, drip, drip that she’s giving. . . .”

Doreen Peter Noni , “East Africa’s Oprah” (Credit: ozy.com)
  • When Tanzanian media owner and talk show host Doreen Peter Noni first encountered depression in late 2017, she had no name for it . . .,” Anne Kidmose reported Nov. 20 for ozy.com. Since a trip to Portugal last year, “the 30-year-old entrepreneur has come up with a plan to unlock the conversation about mental health in East Africa. Her upcoming TV show, Peter’s Daughter, features young Africans who have battled depression or anxiety while attempting to realize their business idea. . . . The conversation is largely absent in many African countries due to the stigma attached to those living with mental illness, local beliefs that mental disorders cannot be treated and the myth that depression is a Western phenomenon. . . .”

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