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Black Journalists Out Front at Jackson Tributes

by richard0143

Black Journalists Out Front at Jackson Tributes:
More Than 100 Journos Covered Chicago Funeral
What Was Jesse Jr. Really Saying?
. . . Diversity Push Less Successful in Hollywood
Ron Nixon, Diversity Advocate, News Leader, Exits AP

ESPN Hires Six Vets From Washington Post
ICE Says It Did Have Warrant for Reporter’s Arrest
New Iran Leader No Friend of Press Freedom
Venezuela Event Is Opened to Independent Press
A Black Retelling of U.S. History

Short Takes: Byron Allen; Rashida Jones; New Yorker illustration; Jon Jeter; climate reporting decline on CBS; online magazine from Palestine Festival of Literature; Black Public Media; Books for Africa.

Homepage photo by Ashee Rezin/Chicago Sun-Times

WGN News asked veteran Chicago journalists Monroe Anderson, Chinta Strausburg and Bob Jordan for their perspectives on Jesse Jackson. Anderson said he also did two different podcasts about the Reverend. (Credit: YouTube)

More Than 100 Journos Covered Chicago Funeral

The homegoing service for the Rev. Jesse Jackson was live on local and network television. It was on cable. It was streamed on YouTube, on phones, and on multiple websites. If you were in a South Side Chicago barbershop Friday, it was on the screen there, too.

If you were a member of the Chicago chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists, you might have covered it or participated in some other way. And if you were a news consumer — even outside the United States, more than 100-plus journalists were on the scene to report on the event for you, according to publicist Mary Datcher. Four hundred members of the media had RSVP’d, she said.

C-SPAN’s commercial-free coverage started almost as soon as Jackson died Feb. 17 at 84.

At the locus of all the attention, the House of Hope, a 10,000-seat arena just south of the city, satellite trucks filled the parking lots, reporters were lined up around the building, and the lines of mourners stretched for “six-seven-eight blocks,” according to Dorothy Tucker (pictured) of WBBM-TV, known as CBS2.

“People just patiently stood there and waited their turn to go in,” she told Journal-isms, even though there was a threat of a thunderstorm. “Every person I approached was more than willing to share their stories.” One told Tucker she met Jackson while her mother was carrying her in her womb.

The good feelings were shared by fellow journalists who were competing with each other. One crew member offered her a protein bar, she said, “because we knew it was going to be a long day.”

Tucker is a former president of the National Association of Black Journalists. “Rev. Jackson played a major role locally for so many Black journalists in Chicago,” she said.

“NABJ-Chicago was invited to be a part of the celebration of life festivities, with members hosting the global livestream of the public visitation and having the opportunity to interview various dignitaries, celebrities activists and friends of the Jackson family,” Brandon Pope (pictured), president of NABJ – Chicago, messaged Journal-isms.

“Jesse Jackson built a legacy in partnership with the Black press and Black journalists,” Pope continued. “He aways made sure we had a seat at the table and had coverage access. In light of that, it was great to see so many Black journalists of many generations take part in the coverage.” Pope also gave a shout-out to the Black-female-led public relations firms, APS and Associated and RIse Strategy Group, who “made sure that we were all treated with the respect and dignity that the Rev. Jesse Jackson championed.”

Pope, a journalist, television host, podcaster, media critic and columnist, gave these specifics:

  • “WVON, historic Black radio station was broadcasting live throughout and providing great guests and analysis.
  • “Roland Martin’s Black Star Network was live throughout with coverage.” Martin was name-checked by Jesse Jackson Jr. during the eldest son’s remarks, the way a preacher would call the names of congregants during a sermon.
  • “Black talent at local NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox and WGN were front and center on the TV side leading live coverage.
  • “Alden Loury and Somer Van Benton led the charge for [public broadcaster] WBEZ on the ground, while Sasha Ann Simons and Natalie Moore anchored live around the clock coverage of the nearly 5 hour memorial.
  • “NPR and NABJ Chicago’s Cheryl Corley was on the ground with coverage.

Readers learned that Jackson was a loyal customer at Hyde Park’s Valois Restaurant, sometimes coming in twice a day, for more than 40 years, routinely ordering scrambled eggs, grits and sausage patties.

Sophia Tareen and Matt Brown wrote Friday for the Associated Press, “From former presidents to an NBA Hall of Famer to prominent pastors, stories of the Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr.’s influence on politics, corporate boardrooms and picket lines loomed large Friday at a celebration honoring the late civil rights leader.

“The public tribute — with appearances by Grammy-winning gospel singers and Jennifer Hudson — felt at times like a church service and others like a political rally. Many, from former President Bill Clinton to the Rev. Al Sharpton, a civil rights leader and founder of the National Action Network, likened Jackson’s death to a call to action, from speaking out against justice to voting in the midterms.”

Not everyone viewed that as a positive. Conservative columnist Armstrong Williams, who praised his fellow South Carolinian in a column after Jackson’s death, recalled that Jackson Jr. had asked that the service not be politicized.

It was anyway.

“What began as a memorial service occasionally felt more like a political convention with a choir,” Williams wrote on Facebook.

“One can only imagine the late Reverend Jackson watching the spectacle and shaking his head with a familiar refrain:

“Keep hope alive… but maybe keep the campaign speeches for another day.”

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What Was Jesse Jr. Really Saying?

“Whatever the media has to say about him, it has nothing to do with what each and every one of us knows about who Jesse Jackson was and is in our thinking,” Jesse Jackson Jr. declared Saturday during his father’s homegoing service.

It was another blast at the news media from the onetime “Country Preacher’s” eldest son, a former congressman who is running again for his old seat after having served 30 months for misusing $750,000 in campaign funds.

The day after his father’s passing, Jackson had said at a family news conference, “the caricature that you’ve created as a media of who our father is, is not the reality of who we know him to be,” possibly suggesting  that the media often missed the deeper significance of his father’s work.

But it was another comment from the eldest son Saturday that led organizations such as Fox News, Newsweek, the New York Post , EURweb and Mediaite to conclude that Jackson was also denouncing the three former presidents who spoke at Friday’s service. The son was said to have accused them of turning his father’s funeral into a campaign rally after he specifically asked them not to.

Journal-isms put the question to Rev.com’s artificial intelligence program: What was Jackson really saying?

“Based on the provided transcript, Jesse Jackson Jr. does not criticize speakers for politicizing the occasion. In fact, he makes quite the opposite point,” the AI program responded.

“Jesse Jackson Jr. explicitly states that three U.S. Presidents who spoke did not know his father personally, and he uses this to emphasize the authenticity and consistency of his father’s message. He says: ‘Yesterday I listened for several hours of three United States Presidents who do not know Jesse Jackson. He maintained a tense relationship with the political order, not because the presidents were white or Black, but the demands of our message, the demands of speaking for the least of these, those who were disinherited, the damned, the dispossessed, the disrespected, demanded not Democratic or Republican solutions, but demanded a consistent prophetic voice that at no point in time ever sold us out as a people.”

“Rather than criticizing politicization, Jesse Jackson Jr. appears to be defending his father’s political stance as principled and consistent. He emphasizes that his father’s message was prophetic rather than partisan, and that it transcended typical Democratic or Republican politics. He also reinforces that the family’s message has already been delivered through Congressman Jonathan Jackson’s speech, stating: ‘Give Jonathan Jackson another great round of applause for delivering our family message to the world’ and  ‘there’ll be no different message that leaves this service than the one that Jonathan Jackson has blessed us with.’ ”

In a wide-ranging conversation in a 1975 episode of “Black Journal,” hosted by Tony Brown, Jesse Jackson complains about comedian Flip Wilson’s “Reverend Leroy” character on his “Flip Wilson Show” as demeaning toward the Black clergy. The show ran from 1970 to 1974. Actress Diahann Carroll joins the conversation.e (Credit: WNET/YouTube)

. . . Diversity Push Less Successful in Hollywood

Jesse Jackson has been hailed as a champion of Black journalists, who welcomed his support of diversity efforts. But Jackson was less successful in Hollywood, according to veteran journalist Greg Braxton, writing in the Los Angeles Times.

“In 1994, the Rev. Jesse Jackson declared war on Hollywood,” Braxton (pictured) wrote Feb. 17, the day that Jackson died.

“The civil rights leader . . . set his sights on the entertainment industry, accusing it of ‘institutional racism’ and calling out the lack of representation of people of color and women, an issue that reverberates today.

“Jackson aimed his trademark fiery dynamism at studio and network executives, forming the Rainbow Coalition on Fairness in the Media — an offshoot of his Rainbow Coalition that focused on social justice and economic equality — and threatening boycotts against projects that excluded minorities. . . .

“But despite his characteristic command and media savvy, Jackson’s campaign never gained true momentum, scoring mixed results. Black actors and creators within Hollywood for the most part failed to rally around him, and leaders of some advocacy groups accused him of losing focus. Whoopi Goldberg made fun of him while hosting the 1996 Oscars.

“By 1997, the battle had fizzled out and Jackson had moved on to more political concerns. ..  ..

Braxton also wrote, “In a separate interview, he targeted politically oriented Sunday news shows, saying they excluded Black journalists and news figures: ‘Those all-white hosts determine their guests and set the political agenda for public policy for Monday morning. That’s not America.’

His newly formed commission was researching network hiring practices and minority images. He vowed that boycotts and other actions would take place if there was not significant change.

“But those demonstrations never materialized, and no boycotts were called. Roughly a year after his initial declaration, observers inside and outside the industry said networks had mostly ignored Jackson, and that little had changed.

“Some leaders at the time questioned his commitment, saying he did not seem truly dedicated to aggressive action.

“Sonny Skyhawk, founder and president of American Indians in Film, one of the organizations that had joined forces with Jackson, said the campaign against the networks should have been stronger.

“ ‘I would hate to criticize him for not being more diligent, but it is frustrating,’ said Skyhawk in a 1995 interview about the initiative. “I don’t know where (the issue) is or why he is not continuing on this. But I think he got sidetracked on a lot of other things.”

“Sherrie Mazingo, who was then head of broadcast journalism at USC, said she was not surprised that the Jackson campaign had lost steam: ‘What happened last season isn’t new, it’s perennial, and may even be cyclical. Protests and accusations and talk like this goes on all the time, and nothing ever happens. ” ‘Nothing.” ”

Today, Kristen Welker (pictured), who is biracial, anchors NBC’s “Meet the Press,” and Tom Llamas (pictured below), who is Latino, last year became anchor of “NBC Nightly News” succeeding Lester Holt, a Black Journalist who stepped down after 10 years in the job, “17 if you include my years on the weekends.”

In reporting on the UCLA’s annual Hollywood Diversity study in 2025, Jeremy Fuster wrote for The Wrap, “ ‘Last year, we celebrated some historic highs for people of color in the industry,’ Ana-Christina Ramón, co-founder of the report and director of UCLA’s Entertainment and Media Research Initiative, said. ‘But 2024 saw a widespread reversal, as film studios retreated from racial and ethnic diversity in front of and behind the camera.’”

Reporting on a survey by the Writers Guild of America, Katie Campione wrote last year for Deadline, “Despite a sharp decrease in the total number of jobs, the WGA did find that the percentage of BIPOC writers increased by 8.5% to represent 40.4% of total employed TV writers during the 2023-24 season.

“Also, white writers made up 45.4% of series employment in 2023-24, an 8.6% decrease. It is worth noting that 14.2% of series writers did not report an ethnicity.”

‘
Ron Nixon speaks in 2023 to Sophie Kirby of deutsche welle , sharing what makes for effective investigations teams, and leaders. (Credit: YouTube)

Ron Nixon, Diversity Advocate, News Leader, Exits AP

Ron Nixon, whose seven years at the Associated Press included time as the one of the news agency’s two highest ranking Black journalists, left the news cooperative on Monday, Nixon told Journal-isms.

Nixon was director of the Associated Press Local Investigative Reporting Program, created last year “to accelerate our longstanding efforts to support newsrooms across the U.S.” Nixon brought to the job “deep experience leading global investigations and training journalists around the world,” the AP’s Feb 20, 2025, announcement said.

He had been vice president, news and Head of Investigations, Enterprise, Partnerships and Grants at the news agency, sharing the distinction of highest-ranking Black AP journalist with Amanda Barrett, vice President of News, Standards and Inclusion, and vice president of news and head of audience.

Nixon oversaw the 2024 investigations that won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, co-founded the diversity-focused Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting, and has reported from Rwanda, Uganda, Belgium, Canada, Mexico, South Africa, Nigeria, Senegal, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Senegal, Mozambique, Burundi, Kenya, El Salvador, the United Kingdom, Peru, Brazil, Tanzania, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

“I’ll be taking on something new soon, but still trying to nail down the final details,” Nixon messaged. “But for now, I’m going to take a few weeks off for the first time in about 20 years to decompress.”

The Mississippi native and former Marine, 59, came to the AP from 13 years at The New York Times, where he was Washington correspondent covering homeland security and projects reporter on the computer-assisted reporting team. He is author of the 2015 book “Selling Apartheid: Apartheid South Africa’s Global Propaganda War” and earlier called out the Black press for a too-cozy relationship with a Nigerian autocrat.

At a Journal-isms Roundtable in 2023, Nixon gave the chilling backstory behind the AP’s Pulitzer for documenting the siege by Russian troops of the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, reporting while very often under assault, after all other news organizations had pulled out.

The siege, which lasted more than two weeks, included smuggling out gigabytes of information past Russians by storing the data in a tampon, and journalists disguising themselves in medical scrubs given them by Ukrainian hospital workers.

(Credit: ESPN)

ESPN Hires Six Vets From Washington Post

“ESPN is significantly strengthening its journalism operation with the hiring of six accomplished reporters from The Washington Post” — including two of color — “underscoring the company’s continued investment in original reporting, newsgathering, investigations and enterprise storytelling,” ESPN announced Monday.

“ ‘Adding these six outstanding journalists and the reputation of The Washington Post will enhance an ESPN team that is already the best in the business,’ said Jimmy Pitaro, ESPN Chairman. ‘We are proud to advance our robust commitment to journalism, which is core to our mission of serving sports fans. Today’s news strengthens our position as the place to turn for the latest and most in-depth sports news, reporting and feature stories across every platform.’ ”

The journalists of color are:

“Kareem Copeland – Copeland has covered the WNBA, NBA, college basketball, the Washington Commanders, other NFL assignments, additional collegiate sports and the Olympics. Prior to the Post, he reported for the Associated Press. At ESPN, he will be based in the Midwest covering women’s college basketball and the WNBA.

“Robert Klemko – Klemko was part of a Pulitzer Prize‑winning team at the Post in 2024 for a series that covered the rise of the AR‑15 rifle. After covering the NFL for Sports Illustrated and USA Today, he reported on policing, immigration and covered the Russian invasion of Ukraine at the Post. At ESPN, Klemko will focus on sports‑related crime, investigations and major scandals working mostly in the investigative wing of the larger unit. . . .”

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In a court filing Friday, lawyers for ICE attached what appears to be an iPhone photo of a crumpled-up warrant dated March 2, with no file number and the Certificate of Service section left blank. (Credit: Nashville Banner)

ICE Says It Did Have Warrant for Reporter’s Arrest

Federal immigration agents’ detention of Nashville-based Spanish-language journalist Estefany Maria Rodriguez Florez (pictured) last week has sparked a legal battle over her immigration status and press freedom. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) says she overstayed her 2021 tourist visa, while Rodriguez’ lawyers cite pending asylum and residency applications and dispute the arrest procedure.

The case has intensified debate over whether immigration enforcement is being used to target critical reporting.

In a filing at noon Friday, lawyers for ICE “disputed Rodríguez’s claim that she was taken into custody without a warrant,” Mikeie Honda Reiland, Eden Turner and Araceli Crescencio reported for the Nashville Banner. “To support their claim, attorneys attached what appears to be an iPhone photo of a crumpled-up warrant dated March 2, with no file number and the Certificate of Service section left blank.

“Rodríguez’s legal team hit back in its response at 3 p.m. Rodríguez told her immigration attorney, Joel Coxander, that an ICE agent had a photo on his phone of the Honda she and her husband, Alejandro Medina III, were driving, which was wrapped with the Nashville Noticias logo. Based on photos and video of the scene, multiple trucks and SUVs and several officers participated in the detention.”

Even “amid the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement operations, Ms. Rodriguez is an unusual target for detention,” Emily Cochrane and Hamed Aleaziz wrote for The New York Times. “She has an active asylum case, a pending green card application through her American husband and no criminal record. In the past, immigrants applying for green cards through their American spouses were not subject to detention, even if they had overstayed their visas.”

“Katherine Jacobsen, a program coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists, warned that the United States, which has long served as a safe haven for journalists fleeing retaliation, is now showing ‘a cruel disregard for this tradition.’

“As of Friday, Ms. Rodriguez was being held in Alabama, according to court filings.” Coxander said he expected that she would be transferred to a detention center in Louisiana.

“Judge Eli J. Richardson of the Middle District of Tennessee, who was appointed during President Trump’s first term, will decide whether to approve an emergency request for Ms. Rodriguez’s release,” the Times said.

Anita Wadhwani reported Sunday for Tennessee Lookout, “A federal judge has given Immigration and Customs Enforcement a deadline of midnight on Monday to file a written justification” for Rodriguez’s arrest and continued detention.

A GoFundMe campaign begun by her husband five days ago had raised more than $15,000 toward its $20,000 goal by Monday afternoon.

In Britain on Feb. 5, Sir John Whittingdale, a member of Parliament, questions Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper on press freedom in Iran. (Credit: YouTube)

New Iran Leader No Friend of Press Freedom

“Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has pledged allegiance to Mojtaba Khamenei, the country’s newly-elected supreme leader,” Al Jazeera reported Monday.

“While some Iranians have celebrated, many are dismayed the 56-year-old cleric, accused of human rights abuses, has ascended to the country’s highest office.

” ‘That will likely mean expanded authority for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, harsher domestic controls and sweeping repression to crush dissent,'” Samia Nakhoul and Parisa Hafezi reported for Reuters.

” ‘The world will miss the era of his father,’ a regional official close to Tehran told Reuters. ‘Mojtaba will have no choice but to show an iron fist… even if the war ends, there will be severe internal repression.’ ”

Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei ruled for more than 36 years until he was killed when the United States and Israel opened strikes on Iran on Feb. 28. The selection of his son is not the only troubling news for press-freedom advocates.

Last week,” Israeli airstrikes across Lebanon targeted the offices of Al-Manar TV and Al-Nour Radio in Beirut, and Sawt Al-Farah Radio in Tyre in southern Lebanon,” the International Federation of Journalists reported, joining its Lebanon affiliate “in deploring the destruction of media offices by Israel and reiterates that the targeting of journalists and media facilities constitutes a flagrant violation of international and humanitarian law.”

On Friday, Human Rights Watch declared that “Iranian authorities should immediately end the ongoing internet shutdown and communications restrictions, which place civilians at risk of further harm.

“Iranian authorities have a track record of imposing internet disruptions and shutdowns during times of conflict and crisis, including during protests, to restrict access to information, conceal atrocities they commit, and obstruct independent documentation of violations,” the group said.

“Journalists, activists and ordinary citizens trying to document what’s going on the ground are facing the option of finding a way to circumvent restrictions, risking arrest, or remain silent,” Mostafa Zadeh, an international journalist based in Tehran, told Wired Middle East. “Journalists pay the highest price. The right to information is always the first victim when the government prioritizes its security objectives,” Zadeh added.

In the void, the Iranian government “is waging an information war parallel to the real-world fighting, blending fact and fiction, often using unproven claims and fake videos generated using artificial intelligence,” Tiffany Hsu, Steven Lee Myers and Stuart A. Thompson wrote Wednesday for The New York Times.

Al Jazeera reported that “The younger Khamenei’s ascension is a clear sign that more hardline factions in Iran’s establishment retain power, and could indicate that the government has little desire to agree to a deal or negotiations in the short term.”

Venezuela’s National Union of Press Workers (SNTP) recently recalled that the legal framework that has allowed the criminalization of the press is still in force. (Credit: El Nacional archive)

Venezuela Event Is Opened to Independent Press

For “the first time in at least 10 years, independent media outlets were accredited to cover a presidential event, ” Isaac González Mendoza reported Thursday for Venezuela’s El Nacional.

The breakthrough followed statements of the acting president, Delcy Rodríguez, and U.S. Secretary of the Interior, Doug Burgum, who arrived in the country to address energy and mining issues.

“Despite the call and the fact that the president of the National Assembly, Jorge Rodríguez, recently stated that journalism can be freely practiced in Venezuela thanks to the new ‘political moment’ being experienced,”  a reference to the United States’ January’s ouster of President NIcolas Maduro, “journalists from the independent media outlets El Nacional, Tal Cual, Efecto Cocuyo, El Pitazo and El Diario were initially denied access to the Miraflores Palace, after waiting for hours in the Ezequiel Zamora Hall for accreditation for the event,”the El Nacional story continued..

“A formal request, submitted in writing to the Ministry of Communication, was required to cover the event, even though a message requesting access had already been sent. The journalists waited for a few minutes in front of the main entrance of the White Palace, hoping to be granted entry. However, officials from the institution asked them to leave, and they were escorted out by security personnel.

“The journalists, however, remained for at least an hour a few blocks from Miraflores Palace, still waiting for the doors to be opened. It was only when Burgum’s team arrived at the Executive headquarters that their entry was arranged once again. All the journalists who had been turned away returned to the Ezequiel Zamora Hall, received their accreditation, and were able to enter the Presidential press area for the first time in at least a decade. . . . ”

A Black Retelling of U.S. History

February marked 100 years since Americans first held the celebration that would eventually become Black History Month. On the video podcast “Settle In” from the “PBS News Hour,” Geoff Bennett commemorated this anniversary Feb. 26 with journalist Michael Harriot, best known for his stints at TheGrio and the Root.

The publisher describes Harriot’s most recent book, “Black AF History,” as “a searingly smart and bitingly hilarious retelling of untold American history that corrects the record and showcases the perspectives and experiences of Black Americans.” (Credit: PBS News Hour/YouTube)

Short Takes

“Byron Allen (pictured) is back in the media M&A [mergers and acquisitions] business,” Alex Weprin wrote Friday for The Hollywood Reporter. “The mogul, whose Allen Media Group owns The Weather Channel, a production company, local TV stations and streaming platforms, is buying a significant stake in the premium pay-TV brand Starz. Allen has acquired a 10.7 percent stake in Starz through his investment firm and family office Allen Family Capital. According to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Allen is paying $25 million for the stake, acquiring it from the investment fund Liberty 77, led by former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. . . .” TheGrio, an Allen property, noted, “Allen Media Group, which Allen founded in 1993, owns and/or operates 27 ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox network affiliate broadcast television stations in 21 different U.S. markets and features 10 television networks that serve nearly 300 million subscribers, including the Weather Channel, theGrio and HBCU Go.”

“We are proud to announce Jon Jeter (pictured) as The Kansas City Defender’s first International Correspondent,” the Black digital outlet’s founder, Ryan A. Sorrell, announced on social media. “Jon is a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, former Washington Post bureau chief in southern Africa and South America, Knight Fellow at Stanford, and the author of Flat Broke in the Free Market, one of the most important books written this century about how Western economic policy has devastated Black and working-class communities across the globe. He is currently reporting from Nairobi.”

  • “In recent years, Media Matters’ climate studies have found that CBS has played a leading role in broadcast journalism on the issue,” Allison Fisher and Evlondo Cooper (pictured) wrote Wednesday for Media Matters, “routinely airing the highest volume of climate segments, featuring more climate scientists and experts than its peers, and devoting greater attention to climate solutions. That leadership has functioned as an anchor within the broadcast ecosystem, helping to sustain climate visibility even as other networks have fluctuated. Now, tectonic shifts at the network, sparked by new ownership and Trump’s campaign targeting legacy media, means its leadership on climate coverage could be slipping away, with notable changes in tone and volume of coverage already underway. . . .”
  • “Last week saw the launch of The Key, an an online magazine, which is a project of the Palestine Festival of Literature,” Columbia Journalism Review reported Monday. “It will focus on ‘high-quality analysis, interviews, essays, reviews and reportage about Palestine’ and aim to be ‘a home for journalists who have had their stories spiked in mainstream outlets.’ The editor in chief is Sara Yasin, the former managing editor of the LA Times. In a lucid essay on press coverage of the Israeli war on Gaza, she wrote that, for journalists, ‘questioning the calcified “both sides” approach meant risking being branded a troublemaker or an ‘activist,’ even when their reasoning was rooted in conventional journalistic standards.”
  • ” Black Public Media is the focus of an upcoming episode of CUNY-TV’s series ‘Frame by Frame: NYC Filmmakers’ premiering on Friday, March 13, at 2 p.m. and running through April 5 (check local listings),” the organization announced Monday. The program, which will begin streaming on CUNY’s YouTube Channel on March 13 and run through April 9, will also be available on CUNY TV’s app. . . .”Frame by Frame: NYC Filmmakers in Focus” spotlights filmmakers through in-studio conversations and curated screenings. The March 13 episode centers on BPM, which was founded in 1979 and continues to fund, distribute and produce stories about the global Black experience. Frame by Frame showcases a range of BPM-supported projects and the creators behind them.”

“A 2023 study of 1,422 South African participants by the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund found that 40% of the households surveyed had no books at home,” Talia McWright reported March 1 for the St. Paul Pioneer Press. Here’s a chance for book-collecting journalists to help. “Growing up in Nigeria as a child, [Mike] Essien (pictured) said he was lucky to live in a home filled with books. His parents were both educators, and there was no shortage of stories in his home — something not all the other kids in his neighborhood could relate to. For 32 years, Essien has been involved with Books for Africa, a St. Paul-based nonprofit that “promotes literacy for underprivileged children in Africa.” Essien, of Woodbury, serves as the country director for Nigeria, meaning he leads the book-donation drives for his home country. In 2025, Essien led projects that sent more than 150,000 books to young people in Nigeria, he said.”

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