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Who Came to Jim Acosta’s Defense?

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Returning Jan. 16, barring breaking news

N.Y. Press Club Protests Trump’s Behavior

In Poll, 51 Percent Have Unfavorable View of Trump

Coretta King Urged Congress to Block Sessions in ’86

‘A Workplace Where Harassment Is Endemic’

. . . Fox Settled Harassment Charges Against O’Reilly

. . . In Tanzania, ‘Sexual Corruption’ by Journalists

Amid Whoops, a Last Chance for Obama to Control

Alcindor, Burch, Romero, Salas, Stockman in N.Y Times Changes

Modern-Day Magazine Design Winner

Short Takes

CNN reporter Jim Acosta yelled at Donald Trump at Wednesday’s news conference, “Mr. President-elect, since you have been attacking our news organization, can you give us a chance?” “No! Not you. No! Your organization is terrible,” Trump shot back. (CNN video)

N.Y. Press Club Protests Trump’s Behavior

“The most confrontational moment of Donald Trump’s first press conference in 168 days featured the President-elect pointing his finger at a CNN reporter and declaring, ‘You are fake news,’ ” Pete Vernon wrote Wednesday for Columbia Journalism Review.

“CNN Senior White House Correspondent Jim Acosta stood pleading with Trump to acknowledge his question, referencing earlier attacks made by Trump and his press secretary about the accuracy of a CNN report detailing Trump’s ties to Russia. ‘Mr. President-elect, since you have been attacking our news organization, can you give us a chance?’ Acosta yelled above the scrum of reporters.

“ ‘No! Not you. No! Your organization is terrible,’ the President-elect shot back. When Acosta persisted in shouting for recognition, Trump pointed a finger at him and said, ‘Don’t be rude. No, I’m not going to give you a question.’

“Trump then turned to the next question, and the press conference proceeded from there. It was a striking moment not only for the direct confrontation between the two men, but also for the fact that it seemed to have no effect on other journalists in the room. No one immediately leapt to Acosta’s defense.

“In the hothouse of a packed Trump Tower lobby, with dozens of reporters trying to get their questions in, it’s understandable that no one stopped to consider the implication of Trump’s actions. But watching on television, I wished those journalists in attendance had picked up Acosta’s line of questioning, or even refused to continue asking questions, until the President-elect acknowledged the organization he had earlier attacked. . . .”

After Vernon’s article was posted, the New York Press Club wrote Trump in protest.

“. . . Mister President-elect, you are not always going to like or agree with everything that is reported by the news media,” [PDF] Press Club President Steve Scott told Trump.

“But, an integral part of a free and open Press is to field questions from a broad cross-section of journalists, including those with whom you disagree. To shout down a journalist, refuse to take his question and label his news organization as ‘fake news’ serves no good purpose. The New York Press Club respectfully calls on you to end this practice of exclusion. We urge you to accept and answer questions from all journalists.”

Vernon also wrote, “Acosta later said on CNN, ‘Sean Spicer, the incoming press secretary, did say to me that if I were to do that again, I was going to be thrown out of this press conference.’ It would not be the first time that team Trump had ejected a reporter to whose work the President-elect objects. In August of 2015, Univision anchor Jorge Ramos was ejected from an Iowa press conference after challenging Trump on his comments about Mexicans as rapists.

“Ramos was soon allowed back into the room due, at least in part, to the lobbying of Tom Llamas from ABC and Kasie Hunt from MSNBC. This fall, Ramos told CJR that he appreciated their support, but also noted that no other journalists in the room came to his defense. . . .”

In a segment on Fox News, anchor Shepard Smith said no journalists should be treated the way Trump treated Acosta, Jenna Amatulli reported for the Huffington Post.

In Poll, 51 Percent Have Unfavorable View of Trump

“As honeymoons go, Donald Trump’s wasn’t much to write home about. He was voted in as the most unpopular president-elect in modern history and got slightly less unpopular in the weeks that followed, as the goodwill flowed,” Aaron Blake reported Tuesday for the Washington Post.

“Even then, though, he clearly remained the most unpopular president-elect in modern history. Again, that was the honeymoon.

“And now it’s over.

“A new poll from Quinnipiac University suggests that Trump has reverted to his pre-election standing, with Americans having major concerns about his temperament and the direction in which his presidency will lead the country. Trump’s continued controversies seem to have put him right back where he was before he won the election.

“Quinnipiac is the first high-quality pollster to poll on Trump twice since the election. And while its poll in late November showed his favorable rating rising from 34 percent to 44 percent, that number has dropped back to 37 percent, which is about where it stood for much of the campaign. That’s tied for Trump’s worst favorable rating in a poll since his election. And a majority — 51 percent — now have an unfavorable view of him. . . .”

(Credit: Washington Post)

Coretta King Urged Congress to Block Sessions in ’86

“Coretta Scott King, the widow of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., urged Congress in a letter to block the 1986 nomination of Jeff Sessions for federal judge, saying that allowing him to join the federal bench would ‘irreparably damage the work of my husband,’ ” Wesley Lowery reported Tuesday for the Washington Post. “The letter, previously unavailable publicly, was obtained on Tuesday by The Washington Post.

“ ‘Anyone who has used the power of his office as United States Attorney to intimidate and chill the free exercise of the ballot by citizens should not be elevated to our courts,’ King wrote in the cover page of her nine-page letter opposing Sessions’s nomination, which failed. ‘Mr. Sessions has used the awesome powers of his office in a shabby attempt to intimidate and frighten elderly black voters. For this reprehensible conduct, he should not be rewarded with a federal judgeship.’

“Thirty years later, Sessions, now a senator, is again undergoing confirmation hearings as President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general, and he is facing fierce opposition from civil rights groups. . . .”

Karla Amezola (credit: Twitter)

‘A Workplace Where Harassment Is Endemic’

“On Facebook, Karla Amezola came off as a fun-loving TV news anchor,” Gene Maddaus wrote Wednesday for Variety. “She posted candid photos of the team at Noticias 62 — the flagship station of the Estrella TV network — alongside news from Latin America, vacation photos from Caribbean beaches, and family photos from Tijuana.

“But occasionally she would post something darker and more cryptic. Beginning two years ago, she would write fictional stories about a woman named Olivia, who was struggling with an abuser. She produced more and more ‘chapters’ in which she detailed the abuser’s manipulations.

“In June 2016, she wrote that Olivia had been subject to ‘years of innumerable, incessant and filthy petitions, those that come into your mind and consume you little by little.’

“Olivia — also a reporter — resolved to make use of the tools of her job to expose the abuse. Amezola’s Facebook friends didn’t know quite what to make of this, and began to ask if she was OK.

“Then she dropped a bombshell.

“In a lawsuit filed in L.A. Superior Court, she alleged that Andres Angulo, Estrella’s vice president of news, had been sexually harassing her for years. When she refused his advances, according to the suit, she lost her anchor chair on the 5 p.m. broadcast. The suit quoted Angulo directly — ‘Do you want to see my cock?’ ‘I’m dying to f— you’ — because Amezola had been secretly taping him for years. ‘She recorded session after session,’ says Dan Levy, a former producer at Estrella. ‘There are hours of recordings.’

“The scandal bore a striking resemblance to the one at Fox News, which exploded around the same time, when former anchor Gretchen Carlson filed a sexual harassment suit against the network’s influential CEO, Roger Ailes. Carlson’s claims, and harassment allegations by other women, led to the forced resignation of Ailes within weeks.

“But whereas Carlson was paid a $20 million settlement and Ailes was ousted, there has been no such accountability at Estrella TV. Aside from a few articles in the Spanish-language press, the story has gotten little attention. Angulo continues to work as news director.

“And Amezola seems unlikely to walk away with a significant settlement. A clause in her contract mandates that all disputes be settled in arbitration. . . .”

Maddaus also wrote, “Amezola is far from alone. In recent weeks, Variety spoke with dozens of current and former Estrella employees, many of whom related similar stories about Angulo and other male supervisors.

“Liberman Broadcasting, the privately held company that owns Estrella, has faced numerous lawsuits alleging various forms of harassment. But due to the arbitration clauses, many of those lawsuits have gone nowhere, ending in private payouts for modest sums. According to the former employees who spoke to Variety, the result is a workplace where harassment is endemic. . . .”

. . . Fox Settled Harassment Charges Against O’Reilly

“In the weeks after Roger Ailes was ousted as the chairman of Fox News in July amid a sexual harassment scandal, company executives secretly struck an agreement with a longtime broadcast personality who had come forward with similar accusations about the network’s top host, Bill O’Reilly,” Emily Steel and Michael S. Schmidt reported Tuesday for the New York Times.

“The employee, Juliet Huddy, had said that Mr. O’Reilly pursued a sexual relationship with her in 2011, at a time he exerted significant influence over her career. When she rebuffed his advances, he tried to derail her career, according to a draft of a letter from her lawyers to Fox News that was obtained by The New York Times. . . .”

. . . In Tanzania, ‘Sexual Corruption’ by Journalists

“With just three years and a few months left to the next general elections in 2020, women who vied for various political positions in the previous polls have cautioned against male scribes who extort sexual favours from female candidates to publish or air their campaigns,” Hazla Omar reported Tuesday for the Tanzania Daily News in Dar es Salaam. The article was reposted by allafrica.com.

“The revelation was among the concerns raised during a Tanzania Media Women’s Association (TAMWA) forum on how the country’s media outlets covered reports of election campaigns for female candidates in particular and, generally, on women, children and disadvantaged people during the 2015 polls and how best the situation can be remedied in time for 2020.

“Ms Rehema Mohamed, who vied for ward councillor seat, revealed how reporters asked for money before giving her coverage as some male journalists allegedly went . . . to the extent of demanding sexual favours from female candidates during campaigns to provide them with interviews and ‘premium’ coverage. ‘Failure by the women candidates to comply with scribes’ demand is what caused poor coverage of their activities in the local media,’ Ms Mohammed claimed.

“Presenting the findings’ report, Ms Rashida Shariff, the United Nations’ Woman Leadership and Political Participation Programme Coordinator (UN Woman) revealed that, when it comes to media coverage, most outlets and their reporters were biased in favour of male candidates, snubbing women in the process. . . .”


“While he is not shy about invoking the horrors of slavery,” Vinson Cunningham wrote in the New Yorker, President Obama, in his farewell speech in Chicago Tuesday, “never drops the word ‘racism’ — with its civil-rights-era-descended promise of eventual eradicability — in favor of the phrase ‘white supremacy,’ which has lately come to signal an almost mystical belief in racial oppression as our founding national fact. . . . ” (Credit: YouTube.com)

Amid Whoops, a Last Chance for Obama to Control

” ‘You can tell I’m a lame duck,’” Barack Obama joked before his farewell address, on Tuesday night, in Chicago, ‘because nobody’s following instructions,’ ” Vinson Cunningham wrote Wednesday for the New Yorker.

“This was a teasing reference to the unbridled whoop of cheers that had gone up as he’d appeared at the podium; despite his best efforts, the President couldn’t convince the twenty-thousand-person congregation of true believers and long-standing aides to quiet down and take a seat.

“The quip also worked as a mordant description of the wider atmosphere of chaos and unpredictability that has taken hold during the two months since Donald Trump’s still-shocking election as Obama’s successor. To the extent that there exist ‘instructions’ for a dignified transfer of power in America, they would seem to include the principle of ‘one President at a time,’ a willingness on the part of the President-elect to communicate at reasonable intervals via press conference rather than Twitter outburst, and a general disinclination to comment on the fortunes of once-storied reality shows or the Golden Globes.

“Trump, in shredding these unwritten rules to ribbons, has made them seem instantly outdated. In the hours before Obama’s speech, a series of news reports and document dumps concerning the role of Russian interference on Trump’s behalf only served to deepen the impression of disorder.

“The farewell address gave Obama one last opportunity to exert control, if only of the rhetorical kind, over national events. . . .”

Audra D.S. Burch

Alcindor, Burch, Romero, Salas, Stockman in N.Y Times Changes

Last month, Public Editor Liz Spayd scolded the New York Times over the scant diversity in its newsroom: “Only two of the 20-plus reporters who covered the presidential campaign for The New York Times were black,” Spayd wrote on Dec. 17. “None were Latino or Asian. That’s less diversity than you’ll find in Donald Trump’s cabinet thus far. Of The Times’s newly named White House team, all six are white, as is most everyone in the Washington bureau. . . .”

While the following changes were in the works before Spayd’s column, the Times this week took a few steps that address the imbalance. Executive Editor Dean Baquet told Journal-isms by email that there were “more in the works.”

Yamiche Alcindor, an African American national reporter who distinguished herself on the campaign trail, told Facebook friends on Tuesday, “I’m headed to D.C. to cover social safety net programs under the Trump administration. My new beat means I’ll write about how Trump’s decisions touch people’s lives, social justice issues and of course, race. . . .”

Simon Romero

On Wednesday, national editor Marc Lacey announced the hiring of Audra D.S. Burch, a black journalist at the Miami Herald who “plays her keyboard like a virtuoso,” and the addition to his desk of Simon Romero, a veteran Times foreign correspondent in Latin America who is Hispanic; Farah Stockman, a biracial Times politics writer who won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for commentary for her columns in the Boston Globe on the legacy of busing; and Dagny Salas, a black journalist who becomes an assistant national editor.

” When news broke during the long campaign for the presidency, our Politics team had a secret weapon that kept us ahead of the competition — Dagny Salas,” Lacey wrote. “She lived, breathed and alerted what turned out to be an epic election. . . . She arrived at The Times in 2013 after almost four years at the Voice of San Diego, where she was an investigative fellow and then the web editor.”

Romero, a 2015 winner of Columbia University’s Maria Moors Cabot Prizes for coverage of Latin America, is to be “based in Albuquerque, N.M., his home state, and will roam widely as part of our immigration team.”

Burch “won the 2015 Selden Ring Award for Investigative Reporting and the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting for a project exploring how more than 500 children died of abuse or neglect after falling through Florida’s child welfare safety net. . . . . When she starts in the coming weeks, she will split her time between Hollywood, Fla. and Atlanta. . . .”

Stockman will be based in Boston.

As reported on Nov. 30, Sopan Deb of CBS News, who is described as of “Indian-origin” by an Indian news outlet and emerged as a standout reporter last year for his coverage of Trump, joined the Times culture desk.

Andrew Haynes is second from left at bottom.

Modern-Day Magazine Design Winner

Andrew Haynes is art director for Gear Patrol, a digital brand that recently added a print magazine. He is one of the “best editors and designers in magazine media,” according to folio:, which covers the magazine industry.

folio: senior editor Greg Dool messaged Journal-isms, “This year Gear Patrol earned awards for best overall design in two different categories at the annual Eddie and Ozzie Awards, which honor editorial and design in magazines. That photo was from our awards ceremony in November. As art director, Andrew was on hand to accept the awards. We had a photographer on hand and loved all of the enthusiasm of the winners, so we decided to put some of them on our December cover!”

Haynes, 33, descibes Gear Patrol as “a modern day men’s publication specializing in product journalism and the culture surrounding products affluent men are into across various areas of interest (outdoors, tech, style, etc).”

Before joining Gear Patrol in July 2015, Haynes worked at traditional advertising agencies.

Short Takes


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