Articles Feature

A Comic That’s as Serious as a Virus

by richard04004

‘Comics Journalist’ Tackles Race Disparity
Paynes’ Malcolm X Bio Wins National Book Award
L.A. Times Food Critic Alleges Pay Disparity
Smith, Starks Among 300 ESPN Layoffs
New News Network to Target the ‘Underserved’
Obama Book Already Drawing Blowback
HBO Adaptation of Coates Book Debuts Saturday
CNN Fills Slots Created After Floyd Killing

Short Takes


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‘Comics Journalist’ Tackles Race Disparity

Early beliefs in some quarters that Blacks could not get COVID-19 — which contributed to disproportionate harm to communities of color — are part of a historical pattern of racism that African Americans themselves were helping to spread, according to research now illuminated by an artist who uses what he calls “comics journalism.”

The cartoonist-journalist is Josh Neufeld, “whose comics have covered a wide range of topics, including public health crises, academic research and journalism itself,” Carmen Nobel wrote Monday for Journalist’s Resource.

Neufeld put into comic form some of the findings of three doctors of color who traced the false idea that Blacks were immune from infectious diseases to similar tropes during the 1918 influenza pandemic, the 1862-1867 smallpox outbreak and as far back as the 1792-1793 yellow fever epidemic.

In the yellow fever case, “white physicians, such as Benjamin Rush, asked black community leaders Absalom Jones and William Gray to ‘furnish nurses to attend the afflicted’ because of the erroneous assumption that blacks could not contract the disease,” the health workers — Lakshmi Krishnan, MD, PhD, S. Michelle Ogunwole, MD and Lisa A. Cooper, MD, MPH — wrote in Annals.org in June, republished in the Annals of Internal Medicine in September.

“Before 1918, epidemic disease already exacted a disproportionate toll on black Americans, who, for example, accounted for an overwhelming number of the 50,000 deaths in the 1862–1867 smallpox epidemic,” they added.

The authors said, “Rebuttals to these innate immunity theories circulated in the black print media. . . . In December 1918, African American columnist William Pickens debunked the claim of a white West Virginian who claimed the ‘influenza germ had shown that God was partial in favor of black people.’ Pickens countered that for whites, ‘when Negroes die faster, it is often escribed [sic] to their inferiority,” but if spared, ‘well, that proves they are not human like the rest of us. ‘ ”

African Americans played into the racist beliefs when they repeated these claims of immunity.

In April, Terry Gross, host of WHYY-FM’s “Fresh Air,” transmitted to NPR stations from Philadelphia, asked actress Kerry Washington how she felt when Black people asked her whether African Americans could get COVID.

“It speaks to kind of how separate our communities remain in this country . . .,” Washington replied. “There’s a huge gap between worlds in a lot of ways that we don’t always — if we watch the news and we don’t see somebody who looks exactly like us, we don’t necessarily think that it has to do with us.”

In his comic, Neufeld shows how such sentiments were expressed this year on social media.

The three journal authors attribute misinformed Black responses to the pandemic to “critical structural inequities and health care gaps” that “have historically contributed to and continue to compound disparate health outcomes among communities of color.” The news media played a role in the earlier epidemics, they said. Racist coverage “provided justification for draconian public health ordinances and restrictive housing covenants that maintained housing color lines and prevented black Chicagoans from leaving overcrowded conditions.”

The doctors praise the “resilience” of communities of color despite those obstacles and say the solution today is “health equity.”

“Perhaps the most important conclusion drawn from an analysis of the 1918 influenza pandemic is that minority communities are resilient, are resourceful, and find restoration in community,” they say.

Unsurprisingly, the authors see a role for the media, in partnership with communities. “Within the African American community, specific communication barriers, augmented by a lack of COVID-19–related demographic data, contributed to underestimating the pandemic’s effect. Misinformation and recycled, erroneous narratives about black immunity circulated through social media. . . . Historical distrust of biomedicine amplified these effects. . . .

“However, as available data emerged outlining COVID-19’s devastating disparities, black organizations, leaders, and media outlets aggressively campaigned to dispel myths, implored citizens to heed sanitation and containment advice, and advocated for community resources. This kind of community-led strategy has repeatedly been critical in counteracting national failures to protect minorities.”

ESPN prepared this video about Claire Smith when she entered the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2017. (Credit: YouTube)

Smith, Starks Among 300 ESPN Layoffs

Veteran sports journalists Claire Smith and Larry Starks are among the reported 300 ESPN staffers laid off in reaction to cost pressures from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Smith and Starks have been news editors since 2007. Before that, he was assistant managing editor at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for more than eight years.

Smith has worked as a sportswriter and editor for more than 30 years at news organizations that include The New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Bulletin and Hartford Courant.

She was the first African American female newspaper reporter to cover Major League Baseball on a daily basis, and in 2016 won the J.G. Taylor Spink Award, the top honor for a baseball writer.

Smith could not be reached for comment, but Starks, news editor for the NBA, messaged Journal-isms, “There was a group of five event news editors embedded with the sports [that] ESPN has broadcast rights deals with — NBA, MLB, NFL, college basketball and college football. It was established in 2007.

“Each of those editors, along with six other news editors in the universal news group were cut. The news editors edit scripts for all the SportsCenter shows and also [deal] with reporters whose stories go on the front page of ESPN.com. The event news editors were also part of the universal news group.”

Stephen Battaglio wrote Nov. 5 for the Los Angeles Times that ESPN was slashing 500 jobs, according to a memo from Jimmy Pitaro, president of the Walt Disney Co.-owned unit. In addition to the 300 layoffs, another 200 open positions will be eliminated, the company said. ESPN has more than 5,000 employees worldwide.


DuJuan McCoy is one of a handful of African American television station owners. “We believe MNN will change the way Americans view news while providing a national platform for many underserved, diverse communities that are voiceless in America’s current national news media landscape,” he said.

New News Network to Target the ‘Underserved’

“Multicultural News Network (MNN), a nonpartisan, national news network that will bring ‘an unbiased national forum for the voices of America’s underserved multicultural communities,’ will launch in the second half of 2021,” Mark K. Miller reported Wednesday for TVNewsCheck.

The network was founded by DuJuan McCoy, one of a handful of African American television station owners.

“MNN will produce live, daily news and other programming serving multicultural communities including, but not limited to: Blacks, Hispanics, LGBTQ communities, Asians, Native Americans, people of Middle Eastern descent and others,” Miller reported. “Much of MNN’s content will be produced and delivered by its respective multicultural community to ensure their authentic voice is being heard on a regular and national basis.

“MNN will be based in Indianapolis, in a 69,000 square foot facility — also home to Circle City Broadcasting’s WISH (CW) and WNDY (MNT [MyNetworkTV]). Additional news bureaus will be located around the country. Launch advertisers, sponsors and distribution partners will be announced in the near future.”

McCoy, owner and CEO of Circle City Broadcasting, “will serve as MNN’s chairman and CEO. MNN has also begun to forge strategic relationships with Circle City Broadcasting and Cox Media Group (CMG). MNN plans to use stations, newsrooms and news bureau resources in dozens of markets across the U.S. including Washington, D.C. . . .”


Barack Obama sat down with Oprah Winfrey on Apple TV to discuss the years leading to his historic presidency and some of his most pivotal moments in the White House. (Screenshot)

Obama Book Already Drawing Blowback

Former president Barack Obama is decrying the damage perpetrated by conservative media, weighing in on the Trump-like values absorbed by some rappers, commenting on his intellectual banter with author Ta-Nehisi Coates and saying of Donald Trump, “For millions of Americans spooked by a Black man in the White House, he promised an elixir for their racial anxiety.”

“A Promised Land,” the 768-page memoir that retails for $45 and is only the first of a projected two-book offering, is on its way to becoming the best-seller of the year.

Pre-order sales, plus first-day sales, totaled 887,000 units “in all formats and editions in the U.S. and Canada,” Penguin Random House said on Wednesday.

Obama’s assertions about journalism are already receiving blowback, however.

“I’m glad that Obama sees the mess we’re in now,” the Washington Post’s Margaret Sullivan wrote on Tuesday.

“And I heartily agree with his emphasis on local journalism and the way rampant misinformation is damaging our democracy.

“But I haven’t forgotten what happened when he was in charge,” Sullivan concluded, citing the Obama administration’s war on leakers and a lack of transparency.

On the damage encouraged by right-wing media, Obama told Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, “I come out of this book very worried about the degree to which we do not have a common baseline of fact and a common story. We don’t have a Walter Cronkite describing the tragedy of Kennedy’s assassination but also saying to supporters and detractors alike of the Vietnam War that this is not going the way the generals and the White House are telling us. Without this common narrative, democracy becomes very tough.

“Remember, after Iowa my candidacy survives Reverend [Jeremiah] Wright, and two minutes of videotape in which my pastor is in kente cloth cursing out America. And the fact is that I was able to provide context for that, and I ended up winning over a huge swath of the country that has never set foot on the South Side of Chicago and was troubled by what he said. I mean, that’s an indicator of a different media environment.

“Now you have a situation in which large swaths of the country genuinely believe that the Democratic Party is a front for a pedophile ring. This stuff takes root. I was talking to a volunteer who was going door-to-door in Philadelphia in low-income African American communities, and was getting questions about QAnon conspiracy theories. The fact is that there is still a large portion of the country that was taken in by a carnival barker.”

The 44th president also decried the commonality some rappers feel with Trump. “It’s interesting -— people are writing about the fact that Trump increased his support among Black men [in the 2020 presidential election], and the occasional rapper who supported Trump. I have to remind myself that if you listen to rap music, it’s all about the bling, the women, the money. A lot of rap videos are using the same measures of what it means to be successful as Donald Trump is. Everything is gold-plated. That insinuates itself and seeps into the culture.”

Obama said he enjoys his dialogues with Coates. “First of all, I love Ta-Nehisi,” he told Goldberg. “I love his writing; I love him personally. He’s such a gracious, thoughtful, humble person. He’s a good-hearted person, very open-minded, trying to figure this stuff out. I think the world of him.

“I think the dialogue he and I had is one I have with myself. Being optimistic doesn’t mean that five times a day I don’t say, ‘We’re doomed.’ . . .

“The discussion I had with Ta-Nehisi typically revolved around the basic belief that, in fact, things had gotten better. This is not a cause for complacency but rather a spur to action. It doesn’t mean that things can’t get worse, either.”

Although Obama walked a fine line on racial matters while president, he is now allowing himself more freedom.

“Even as Donald Trump, the man who would eventually succeed him, incessantly peddled the racist birther lie against him, Obama seemed careful to avoid the obvious — instead dismissing, as he released his longform birth certificate in 2011, the ‘silliness’ that was being put forth by ‘sideshows and carnival barkers.’ “ Eric Lutz wrote Thursday in Vanity Fair.

“The vitriol and conspiracy theories directed against him were more than mere silliness, of course. As Obama writes in his forthcoming memoir, they were a racist reaction to his historic election, and foundation on which Trump would build his own cruel, paranoid, nativist political movement.

” ‘It was as if my very presence in the White House had triggered a deep-seated panic, a sense that the natural order had been disrupted,’ Obama writes in one of the book’s several candid discussions of race, according to excerpts reported on by CNN Thursday. ‘Which is exactly what Donald Trump understood when he started peddling assertions that I had not been born in the United States and was thus an illegitimate president.’

“ ‘For millions of Americans spooked by a Black man in the White House,’ Obama continues, ‘he promised an elixir for their racial anxiety.’ ”

If you were wondering about reaction to Obama’s book from the Black left, one prominent member, Obama critic Cornel West, tweeted, “Obama’s #APromisedLand shows how he got there & left most of his people behind. It shatters any lingering illusions of him being a fighting Joshua & shows his captivity to Wall Street greed, Pentagon militarism & refusal to confront massive black social misery & U.S. poverty!”

HBO Adaptation of Coates Book Debuts Saturday

“Between The World And Me, based on Ta-Nehisi Coates’ #1 New York Times bestselling account, is coming to HBO as a special event,” the cable network announced. The adaptation debuts Saturday.

“First published in 2015, Between The World And Me was written as a letter to Coates’ teenage son, and recounts the author’s experiences growing up in Baltimore’s inner city and his growing fear of daily violence against the Black community. The narrative explores Coates’ bold notion that American society structurally supports white supremacy.

“Based on the 2018 adaptation and staging of the book at the Apollo Theater, the HBO Special will combine elements of the Apollo’s production, including powerful readings from Coates’ book, and incorporate documentary footage from the actors’ home life, archival footage, and animation.

“It will include appearances by Ta-Nehisi Coates, Mahershala Ali, Angela Bassett, Angela Davis, Alicia Garza, Tip ‘T.I.’ Harris, Jharrel Jerome, Mimi Jones, Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Ledisi, Janet Mock, Jason Moran, Joe Morton, Wendell Pierce, Phylicia Rashad, Greg Alverez Reid, Mj Rodriguez, Kendrick Sampson, Yara Shahidi, Nate Smith, Tariq ‘Black Thought’ Trotter, Courtney B. Vance, Olivia Washington, Pauletta Washington, Susan Kelechi Watson, Michelle Wilson and Oprah Winfrey. . . .”

That’s not all that Coates is up to. In a lengthy story on him posted Monday by the Washington Post, Helena Andrews-Dyer wrote, “Coates’s debut novel, ‘The Water Dancer,’ an intimate story about an enslaved Virginian man grappling with his own gifts, came out in paperback this month. Last year, the bestseller got Oprah Winfrey’s coveted anointing and brought back her book club. Last week, it was announced that Winfrey and Brad Pitt are teaming up to produce the film adaptation. Coates is now tasked with writing the screenplay.”

CNN Fills Slots Created After Floyd Killing

CNN has filled the positions on the Race & Equality and the police reporting teams it announced in July in the midst of protests over the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Jeff Zucker, president of CNN Worldwide, announced to staff members Nov. 12. 

On the Race & Equality team, led by Delano Massey (pictured), a supervising producer, are Dalila-Johari Paul, a digital editor for CNN for nearly four years; Nicquel Terry Ellis, formerly of USA Today; Nicole Chavez, on CNN’s national news desk, also for nearly four years; and Priya Krishnakumar, joining CNN after six years at the Los Angeles Times. She will be data and visuals editor.

“The new Race & Equality team, led by Delano, will make CNN’s reporting on these beats richer and ensure we are leading the way in telling the many stories that need to be told across race and equality,” Zucker wrote.

“The struggles, progress and triumphs. How race is woven into every beat, including business, politics, sports, media, housing, healthcare, and education. From the lack of representation in so many industries to the still-present signals and symbols of racism, to the voices who provide solutions and inspiration.”

The policing team is led by Pervaiz Shallwani (pictured), senior editor, investigative-enterprise. Peter Nickeas fills a writing position there, joining CNN “after more than nine years with the Chicago Tribune where he became the expert on covering violence in the city of Chicago.” 

Zucker added, “The dedicated team will bolster policing coverage at CNN, not only raising the quality of breaking news stories that involve police but also delving into issues raised by the way police operate in America, including reform, accountability, and transparency. . . . But as we discussed this summer, not all race stories are police stories, and vice-versa.” 

Both beats will report into Matthew Hilk, vice president/news and domestic managing editor at CNN, and Catherine Straight, executive editor, national news at CNN Digital.

Short Takes

(Credit: YouTube)

  • “ ‘Count every legal vote’ sounds like a good, rule-abiding idea,” The Angry Grammarian, otherwise known as Jeffrey Barg, wrote Nov. 11 for the Philadelphia Inquirer. “Too bad it’s also racist. Even before Donald Trump lost, he and his supporters settled on ‘count every legal vote’ as their mantra — at least in cities like Philadelphia, Detroit, and Atlanta, all of which have a plurality if not a majority of Black residents. It’s a crucial difference from ‘count every vote.’ . . .”

  • One of the many Black women across movements and industries who worked for the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, Angelica “Angie” Nwandu, the CEO and founder of The Shade Room, stands out, Hanaa’ Tameez wrote Nov. 11 for Nieman Lab. “The Shade Room, a media company focused on Black culture that started out as a celebrity news site, is incredibly popular. Nwandu, an accountant at the time, founded it in 2014 because she loved celebrity gossip, but quickly realized that it would become more than just a side hustle. Today, it has 5.1 million likes on Facebook and more than 21 million Instagram followers, who are known as ‘the roommates.’ . . .”  

  • Dell Alann“CBS News has promoted Dell Alann (pictured) to Los Angeles Deputy Bureau Chief,” Alexandra Del Rosario reported Tuesday for Deadline. “The news network announced the move Tuesday. ‘He has great knowledge and contacts around the region and the network,’ said CBS News West Coast bureau chief Mark Lima, who was named to that post in August. ‘He runs an efficient and responsible desk, and he is a tireless worker.’ . . .”

  • “ProPublica announced on Monday six local reporters who have been selected as the inaugural members of the ProPublica Distinguished Fellows program,” the investigative website reported. “The program will fund the reporters’ salaries and benefits for three years as they produce important investigative projects from their home newsrooms on topics affecting their communities.” The six are Kyle Hopkins, special projects editor of the Anchorage Daily News; Molly Parker, reporter for The Southern Illinoisan in Carbondale, Ill.; Rob Perez, investigative reporter at the Honolulu Star-Advertiser; Jennifer Smith Richards, reporter at the Chicago Tribune; Wendi C. Thomas, editor and publisher of Memphis-based MLK50: Justice Through Journalism; and Ken Ward Jr., longtime investigative reporter in West Virginia.

  • CNN photojournalist Eddie Gross has won this year’s Jerry Thompson Memorial Award, named after the late CNN photojournalist, the Radio and Television Correspondents Association announced, John Eggerton reported Monday for Broadcasting & Cable. “Eddie embodies the ideals of the Jerry Thompson Award for his hard work, selfless demeanor, constant smile, and most importantly being a friend to all,” the organization said.


At The Atlantic, Jemele Hill  has called out the Big Ten for resuming games amid coronavirus outbreaks and held Jay-Z’s feet to the fire over his cozy relationship with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell. (Courtesy of The Atlantic)

  • Jemele Hill, a contributing writer for The Atlantic, is one of “Adweek’s Most Powerful Women in Sports: 31 MVPs Showing Brands and Fans the Way to Win,” T.L. Stanley wrote Sunday. for Adweek. The “veteran reporter speaks her mind, unapologetically and fiercely, on issues far beyond the playing field. . . . : Hill will produce a docuseries on Colin Kaepernick as part of the former football star’s deal with Disney, an alliance she says signals ‘a significant culture change.’ “


Margaret Johnson talked about how her personal connection with television viewers goes back to when she started at WXII in WInston-Salem, N.C.
“When I first arrived in the Triad in 1988, you would see me on the air standing out in the cold, the snow, the rain, the sleet – whatever – and you would sometimes call me on the phone and say, ‘Margaret, put a hat on,’ or ‘Margaret, you need to put on a bigger coat,’ “ Johnson said.

  • “When journalists are targeted, ‘societies as a whole pay a price’, the UN chief said on [Nov. 2], the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists,” the United Nations reported. ” ‘If we do not protect journalists, our ability to remain informed and make evidence-based decisions is severely hampered,’ Secretary-General António Guterres spelled out in his message for the day. And when they cannot safely do their jobs, ‘we lose an important defense against the pandemic of misinformation and disinformation that has spread online’, he added. . . .”

  • “In the last 48 hours, agents of the State Security of the Ministry of the Interior of Cuba (Minint), a feared apparatus that acts as political police of the communist regime of Havana, unleashed a wave of arrests of opponents and human rights activists, sources of Cuban dissidence denounced today, the LatAm Journalism Review reported Monday, citing El Universal in Mexico. The story also said, “Independent or non-official journalists, human rights defenders, artists, musicians, writers and other dissidents were victims of the operation […].”


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Richard Prince’s Journal-isms originates from Washington. It began in print before most of us knew what the internet was, and it would like to be referred to as a “column.” Any views expressed in the column are those of the person or organization quoted and not those of any other entity. Send tips, comments and concerns to Richard Prince at journal-isms-owner@yahoogroups.com

 

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