Maynard Institute archives

CNN Pushes Back on Ted Cruz Allegation

by richard0921

Texan Cites Network in Spreading Falsehood About Carson

Reporter Fired Over Fabrications, Impersonations

Michael Feeney Fund Exceeds $20K Goal; Services Set

10,000 Copies of Fake, Pro-Palestinian N.Y. Times 

Danyel Smith, Former Vibe Editor, Joins the Undefeated

. . . Merida: I Root for Posties, Hope They Root for Me

Black Lives Matter: Circumventing Local Media Is Crucial

Media Said to Downplay Asian American Problems

Sinclair Establishes $500K Scholarship Fund for Minorities

Photographer Captures “Humanity” of Colombia’s FARC 

Short Takes

Texan Cites Network in Spreading Falsehood About Carson

“CNN has accused the campaign of Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz of making false statements about the network’s reporting on the campaign of GOP rival Ben Carson,” Mark Joyella reported Wednesday for TVNewser. ‘Senator Cruz’s claims about CNN are false,’ the network said in a statement Wednesday evening. ‘At no point did the network indicate Dr. Carson would suspend his campaign.’

“The network’s reporting — that Carson would make a trip to Florida before resuming his campaign — came as voters in Iowa were preparing to make the first solid votes of the 2016 campaign. CNN’s statement said ‘Dr. Carson’s staff informed CNN that he would return home to take a “deep breath” before resuming his activities on the trail. That information was reported accurately by CNN across TV and digital.’

“That’s not quite how the story was shared by the Cruz campaign, which spread word in Iowa that Carson seemed to be suspending his campaign. Cruz later blamed CNN for getting its facts wrong. . . . “

Billionaire Donald Trump, who came in second in the Iowa Republican caucuses, charged the Texas senator with “fraud” and called for a do-over of the Iowa caucuses, Kathleen Hennessey and Steve Peoples reported for the Associated Press. They also wrote, “Ted Cruz didn’t win Iowa, he stole it,’ Trump tweeted, and his campaign accused Cruz of dirty tricks in telling Ben Carson’s supporters their man was dropping out and they should turn to the Texan. . . .”

Meanwhile, Kathie Obradovich noted in the Des Moines Register that “Republicans, turning out in record numbers, awarded their caucus win for the first time to a candidate with a Hispanic heritage, Sen. Ted Cruz.” Right-wing media outlets seized on the failure to trumpet that development as evidence of media bias.

“Because the DC Media believe it is a powerful weapon that benefits Democrats, nothing will ever stop them from using it,” John Nolte wrote Tuesday for brietbart.com.

“But if this same media truly believed in science and objectivity, the results in Iowa would forever end their relentless smears against conservatives as racists. Tuesday night, one of the whitest and most conservative states in the country — Iowa — gave 60% of the Republican vote to two Hispanics and a black man.

“Moreover, for the first time in history a Hispanic won a presidential primary. But due to the fact that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is Republican, no one on the media dares say so. . . .”

Andrés Oppenheimer, Latin American affairs columnist for the Miami Herald, was not impressed.

“Judging from the anti-immigrant rhetoric from Republican hopefuls in the Iowa caucuses, the Republican Party is marching straight to its third consecutive defeat in the November presidential elections,” Oppenheimer wrote Wednesday.

“The three Republicans who received the most votes in Iowa — Ted Cruz, Donald Trump and Marco Rubio, in that order — competed to woo extreme-right primary voters by claiming to be the toughest against undocumented immigrants, and promising to build a wall on the border with Mexico. They seemed oblivious to the fact that Republicans lost the most recent elections because they alienated too many Hispanic voters.

“The three ‘amigos’ — Cruz, Trump and Rubio — are following the steps of failed Republican candidate Mitt Romney, who famously proposed the ‘self-deportation’ of undocumented immigrants in 2012. Romney lost the 2012 elections in large part because he got only 27 percent of the Hispanic vote, compared to the 71 percent obtained by President Barack Obama. . . .”

Reporter Fired Over Fabrications, Impersonations

Juan Thompson claimed to have interviewed a cousin of Dylann Roof, who is accused of fatally shooting nine people in a Charleston, S.C., church. (Credit: BRIC TV/YouTube) (video)

“The news website The Intercept said on Tuesday that a former reporter had fabricated quotations in some of his articles and impersonated other people by using email accounts in their names,” Daniel E. Slotnik reported Tuesday for the New York Times.

“Betsy Reed, the news organization’s editor in chief, said that the first evidence appeared in late December and that the reporter, Juan Thompson, was fired on Jan. 4. In an online note to readers, she listed four articles that had been corrected and one that had been retracted.

“Ms. Reed wrote that an internal investigation turned up instances in which Mr. Thompson quoted people who later said he had never interviewed them, could not remember speaking with him or whose identities could not be confirmed. She added that he had also quoted unnamed people he claimed to have met at public events whose words could not be verified and that he had used an email account in someone else’s name to impersonate a source.

“The note also said he had created an account in her name.

” ‘We apologize to the subjects of these stories; to the people who were falsely quoted; and to you, our readers,’ Ms. Reed wrote. ‘We are contacting news outlets that picked up the corrected stories to alert them to the problems.’

“The retracted article was based on an interview with someone presented as Scott Roof, the cousin of Dylann Roof, who is accused of murdering nine people in a racially motivated attack in a church in Charleston, S.C., last June. In the article, Scott Roof is quoted saying that Dylann Roof’s hatred may have stemmed from a girl who chose to date a black man rather than him.

” ‘After speaking with two members of Dylann Roof’s family, The Intercept can no longer stand by the premise of this story,’ the retraction on top of the article says. ‘Both individuals said they do not know of a cousin named Scott Roof.’ . . .”

According to its mission statement, “The Intercept, launched in 2014 by Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras and Jeremy Scahill, is dedicated to producing fearless, adversarial journalism . . . .”

Meanwhile, Jason Silverstein reported Wednesday for the Daily News in New York, “The pattern of lies looks all too familiar to Jayson Blair.

“The disgraced former New York Times reporter — one of journalism’s most infamous fabricators — said Wednesday that he sympathizes with Juan Thompson, who was fired from The Intercept for making up stories.

“Blair couldn’t help but see a little humor in the situation, though.

” ‘It’s like watching a train wreck in slow motion,’ Blair told the Daily News, chuckling about Thompson’s apparent brazen lies and coverups.  ‘It’s bad, man. It’s bad,’ Blair said. . . .”

Blair “never tried to reenter journalism, and advised the same for Thompson,” Silverstein wrote.

” ‘It’s very hard for someone to recover from something like this,’ the infamous fabulist said. . . .”

Michael Feeney Fund Exceeds $20K Goal; Services Set

The fund created to honor the memory of journalist Michael J. Feeney exceeded its $20,000 goal in two days — raising $23,975 as of 10:30 p.m. ET on Wednesday. A count on the website showed that 499 people contributed.

Feeney, 32, died in New York on Sunday as he was about to begin a new stage in his career as an entertainment journalist at CNN. The family said he died from complications from a staph infection to his kidneys.

They announced services Monday and Tuesday in New York and Englewood, N.J.

The Monday service takes place at First Corinthian Baptist Church, 1912 Adam Clayton Powell Blvd. (formerly 7th Avenue), New York, NY 10026, at 116th Street. Viewing is from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m., with the funeral service immediately following.

On Tuesday, a service takes place at Community Baptist Church, 224 First St., Englewood, N.J. 07631. Viewing is scheduled from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m., with the service immediately following.

Dawn Tennent, a cousin, told Journal-isms by email that the money raised online will go to the family for funeral costs, with $10,000 to start his endowment fund for scholarships.

10,000 Copies of Fake, Pro-Palestinian N.Y. Times

” ‘Congress to Debate U.S. Aid to Israel,’ reads the front page of the latest edition of The New York Times — or, rather, the latest fake edition of the Times,” Ben Norton reported Wednesday for Salon.com.

“Activists from progressive Jewish human rights groups created a very convincing-looking fake edition of The New York Times to protest the leading newspaper’s coverage of Israel.

“The parody publication is written from a left-wing, anti-racist, anti-Islamophobic perspective that criticizes Israel’s violations of international law and Palestinian human rights, along with what the groups say is the Times’ failure to adequately address these crimes.

“Early Tuesday morning, the activists, under the name The New York Times, sent an email out to reporters across the country titled ‘NYT Announces New Editorial Policy: Rethinking Our Coverage of Israel-Palestine.’ The email included a link to an entire website modeled on the Times’ own site, www.NewYorkTimes-IP.com, which the activists created.

“Less than 24 hours after the site was made public, on Tuesday evening, it was taken down. . . .” The publishers distributed 10,000 copies of the fake paper for free in downtown New York on Tuesday morning.

Norton and Jane Hirschmann, a member of Jews Say No! in New York, appeared Wednesday on Pacifica Radio’s “Democracy Now!“

“What can we do about this, the fact that the coverage never has any context to what’s going on in Israel and Palestine?” Hirschmann said. “People are not aware that there’s a 67-year occupation, that they’re not two equal peoples. The press — and it’s not just The New York Times, it’s really all the press. They always typecast the Palestinians as the terrorists, and the poor Israelis are the victims. And we felt that the time had come to really put out the news, the real news, about it. . . .”

Danyel Smith, Former Vibe Editor, Joins the Undefeated

Danyel Smith, a former editor of Vibe magazine who started a book-shaped magazine called HRDCVR two years ago with her husband, hip-hop journalist Elliott Wilson, is joining the ESPN project the Undefeated as senior culture writer, ESPN announced on Wednesday.

The announcement came the same day that Washington Post media writer Erik Wemple quoted Post executive editor Martin Baron addressing the loss of several black journalists to the Undefeated, headed by his former managing editor, Kevin Merida.

“Asked about the departures, Washington Post Executive Editor Martin Baron said, ‘We always hate to lose talented people,’ ” Wemple wrote. “What the departure announcements don’t quite convey, says Baron, is the number of people who’ve chosen to stay despite offers, a number that he declines to detail. Also: Departures tend to get more attention than hires, notes Baron, pointing out that the Washington Post has been growing and so has diversity. . . .”

Wemple also wrote, “Diversity in leadership ranks, Baron acknowledges, is a matter separate from the overall newsroom minority numbers. . . .”

The media writer said of the Post, “There isn’t an African-American among the eight officials listed under the news and editorial/opinion operations. (The Erik Wemple Blog, who is white, works under the latter.) The highest-ranking African-American editor at The Post is Jesse Lewis, who oversees more than forty editors who serve as the last line of defense for the paper’s print and digital journalism. Of approximately 15 deputy editors, two are African-American. . . .”

On Monday, Andrew Beaujon reported for Washingtonian magazine that Clinton Yates of the Post’s sports department was the latest Post journalist to “get poached” by the Undefeated. From the Post, “Soraya Nadia McDonald, Michael Fletcher, and Lonnae O’Neal have joined. Former Posties Steve Reiss and Jason Reid have gone over, and former sports section star Mike Wise announced in November 2014 he’d join the publication, which was at the time headed by Jason Whitlock. . . .”

There was no indication about the future of Smith’s HRDCVR project. Smith’s LinkedIn profile says, “The former editor of Billboard, Smith is also the former chief content officer of VIBE Media Group. She’s a former Time Inc editor-at-large, and has written for NPR, CNN, ESPN, Elle, Time, Essence, the New Yorker, Rolling Stone, Condé Nast Media Group, and the New York Times.

“Smith often comments on music and culture for NPR, MSNBC, CNN, VH1, and ABC. She’s written two novels, and she is working on a history of African-American women in pop music (Dey Street/HarperCollins). . . .”

Wemple also wrote, “For his part, Merida notes that he’s been shopping for talent in all kinds of places. ‘I haven’t gotten every single person that I’ve wanted to get from any place,’ he says. As for The Post: ‘There’s no intentional effort to hurt the cause of diversity there or to decimate The Post of black staffers or anything like that. I don’t like the term ‘raid’ because it sounds like it’s some kind of diabolical thing,’ says Merida. . . .”

. . . Merida: I Root for Posties, Hope They Root for Me

Kevin Merida, editor-in-chief of The Undefeated, the ESPN site that covers the intersection of sports, race and culture, responds to observations that he is hiring disproportionately from his former employer, the Washington Post, by declaring, “There is no diabolical effort to hurt an institution I will always love.”

He provided this statement to Journal-isms:

“We are trying to build the best staff we can build at The Undefeated, and build it quickly. We’re a startup, and there is a lot of energy and excitement around this project that I want to capitalize on.

“The journalists we’ve hired from The Post are people whose work I know well. I know what they can bring to The Undefeated, and that’s helpful when you’re starting something new and you’re new at it. But we’ve been deluged with interest from talented journalists everywhere, and have hired and recruited from all over — not just from The Post. Some of our hires have not yet been announced, and there is more hiring to be done.

“I think the term raid, which was invoked, suggests some targeted campaign aimed at a place I have deep affection for. In recruiting from The Post, there is no diabolical effort to hurt an institution I will always love. It’s simply part of an effort to field the best team for The Undefeated.

“If you’ve been a manager in our profession, you know you will experience both sides of this divide. Sometimes you land someone terrific from another media outlet, and sometimes you have to part with someone you hate to lose. I have been on both sides of that. That’s the nature of our business. Those who have joined us thus far, and regrettably we don’t even have enough room for everyone who wants to join us, they realize this is a special opportunity that doesn’t come around every day.

“The Undefeated is not for everybody. But I think we’re going to provide some opportunities that people have never had, and nurture some talent that hasn’t been nurtured. To my friends and colleagues at The Post, I root for them every single day and am proud to have worked there. I hope they will root for me.”

Media Said to Downplay Asian American Problems

“African-American students and others at MU were quite vocal last fall in protesting a climate of racism and discrimination on campus,” Sean Na reported Wednesday for the Columbia Missourian.

“Their continued demonstrations, including Concerned Student 1950’s protest during the Homecoming parade and its days-long campout on the Mel Carnahan Quadrangle, helped lead to the resignation of former University of Missouri System President Tim Wolfe and, in part, to then-MU Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin.

“Although MU’s Asian students will say anecdotally that they experience the same types of racist episodes that African-Americans do, they also are reluctant to report them. Russell Hsu, a third-year journalism student and vice president of the Taiwanese Student Association, said one reason for the generally passive attitude of Asian students is their ‘fear of persecution’ from non-Asian peers.

” ‘We don’t have that many people whom we know anyway,’ Hsu said. ‘So, our social circles are a lot tighter. So, you don’t want to offend anybody and (get) everything broken up.’

“Zack Morrison is president of the Asian American Association, the largest Asian student organization at MU. He said the media’s portrayal of Asians and the way Asian parents raise their children might explain why Asians’ concerns are under-reported.

” ‘It ties back to representation in the media,’ Morrison said. ‘We are always treated as the silent model minority. We always have to do good. We have to be the best at math, and we can’t be troublemakers.’ . . .”

Sinclair Establishes $500G Scholarship Fund for Minorities

“Sinclair Broadcast Group has established a $500,000 scholarship fund to help minority students finance their undergraduate studies related to broadcasting or journalism,” TVNewsCheck reported Wednesday.

” ‘This fund complements our existing widespread internship program,’ said Don Thompson, Sinclair SVP of human resources. ‘We have long-standing relationships with numerous colleges, including historically black colleges and universities in markets where we have stations. These relationships are a great source for talent, and many student interns become full-time employees.

“This scholarship fund is another way for us to invest in the future of broadcast television, by ensuring that students dedicated to careers in broadcasting can complete their educations.’

“Sinclair’s goal is to distribute up to $50,000 per year in grants of up to $5,000 each. The fund is open to minority students enrolled at an accredited four-year college and who have a demonstrated financial need. Additional qualifications will be set forth in the scholarship application, which will be available this spring on the Sinclair website (www.sbgi.net). The first grants will be awarded by the summer of 2016, applicable toward fall 2016 tuition. . . .”

Photographer Captures “Humanity” of Colombia’s FARC

“The guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as FARC, have been at war against the Colombian state for five decades, one of the word’s longest-running insurgencies,” Kirk Semple reported Tuesday for the New York Times “Lens” blog.

“The conflict has killed hundreds of thousands of people, displaced millions, cost the state many billions of dollars, fractured the nation and destabilized the entire region.

“But negotiations that began in Havana in 2012 have now brought the possibility of peace into sharper focus than ever. The sides have reached tentative agreements on a range of key issues and set a March 23 deadline for a final deal.

“Since the talks began, Federico Rios, 35, a Colombian photographer who lives in Medellín, has made several trips into the Colombian hinterlands to spend time with the rebels and photograph them. His aim, he said, was to demystify them and ‘capture the humanity’ of the group’s fighters during what may well be the insurgency’s final days before they lay down their arms. . . .”

Short Takes

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