Articles Feature Archives

Black Reporters, Black Protesters the Same?

by richard2 1896

Writers Are the ‘Other’ at Conservative Meeting

Analysts See Geographic Divide Among Blacks

5 Michigan TV Stations Plan Telethon for Flint

Cokie Roberts Presses Trump on Racial Harassment

Administration Worked Against More FOIA Access

Spike Lee to Make Film on Mizzou Protests

Michaela Pereira Leaving CNN’s ‘New Day’ for HLN”

Blacks, Hispanics Biggest Viewers of Live TV

Journalists Barred From Access to Refugees

Short Takes

At the 2016 Conservative Political Action Conference, Huffington Post reporters Tyler Tynes and Julia Craven wrote, "Some people stared openly at our clothes and our kinky hair." (Credit: Akbar Ahmed/Huffington Post)
At the 2016 Conservative Political Action Conference, Huffington Post reporters Tyler Tynes and Julia Craven wrote, “Some people stared openly at our clothes and our kinky hair.” (Credit: Akbar Ahmed/Huffington Post)

Writers Are the ‘Other’ at Conservative Meeting

It was Thursday, March 3, the second day of the 2016 Conservative Political Action Conference outside Washington, D.C., and Julia Craven, politics reporter at the Huffington Post, and Tyler Tynes, a politics fellow there, were gathering material for what would become a piece the Huffington Post headlined, “What Happened When 2 Black Reporters Attended The Biggest Conservative Conference In The U.S.” The subhead was, “A lot of staring, for one thing.”

“Before we arrived at CPAC, we didn’t have much of an idea of what we were getting into,” Craven and Tynes wrote Tuesday. “Within a few minutes, however, we realized we’d stepped into one of those environments. You learn to recognize them pretty quickly — they’re the places where whiteness is the default way of thinking and being.

“It’s not that people of color are met with open hostility if they show up at places like these (at least most of the time). But it always becomes clear, in a million little ways, that we’re an afterthought, an Other. In places like these, if someone gets up and makes a speech about ‘people,’ they don’t always mean ‘people.’

“A lot of the time, they just mean ‘white people.’

“Most of CPAC’s 2,600-plus attendees this year were white, and during the two days we were there, we saw maybe 30 black people. At times, it seemed as though people thought we were protesters instead of reporters.

“During our interactions with attendees, two assumptions kept coming up: that we were writers for HuffPost’s Black Voices team — who are all great! — or that we wouldn’t report any story fairly. When we clarified that we are politics reporters, the bemused looks we got seemed to say: Only culture writers write about race. What does race have to do with political coverage? When we said we were with The Huffington Post, that seemed to clear things up for people. . . .”

Craven and Tynes also wrote, “Some people stared openly at our clothes and our kinky hair. A group of college students laughed at the Howard University hoodie one of us wore. ‘That’s not Harvard,’ one kid said. (It’s not. It’s a historically black university in Washington, D.C. Thurgood Marshall went to law school there.) Another student looked one of us up and down and said, ‘What is she wearing?’ (Answer: She was wearing a black sweater, black tights and black boots. She looked nice.)

“We also saw a man in a bright red polo shirt wearing a gold pin that read ‘Goldwater for President’ — a reference to former Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.), who died in 1998. Goldwater voted against the Civil Rights Act and was endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan during his 1964 presidential bid.

“But if many CPAC attendees seemed dismissive of the thoughts, feelings and concerns of black people, they were only following the example of many speakers. During a panel on criminal justice reform, we sat and watched conservatives of all races argue that mass incarceration was not a human rights catastrophe, but rather a sign of how America’s war on crime has been a success.

“And it all came back to ‘culture’ — with the implication that if black people are locked up or dying in poverty or being killed by police at higher rates than white people, maybe it’s kind of, you know, their own fault. . . .”

U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., left, introduces presidential candidate Bernie Sanders in Dearborn, Mich., on Monday. (Credit: Regina H. Boone, Detroit Free Press)
U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., left, introduces Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders in Dearborn, Mich., on Monday. (Credit: Regina H. Boone, Detroit Free Press)

Analysts See Geographic Divide Among Blacks

“[nu lede]“Tuesday’s results in Michigan showed a significant potential problem for Hillary Clinton: her advantage among African-American voters was smaller in a state outside of the South,” Perry Bacon Jr. wrote Wednesday for NBC News.

“Exit polls in Michigan showed that the former secretary of state won about 68 percent of the black vote. That was a large margin over Bernie Sanders, but Clinton had won more than 80 percent of the black vote in states like Alabama and Georgia. About 90 percent of black voters in Tuesday’s primary in Mississippi backed her.

“And while the exit polls are just surveys and are at times inaccurate, the actual voting returns tell a similar story. Wayne County, which includes the city of Detroit, is about 40 percent black. Clinton won about 60 percent of the vote there.

“While that is a substantial margin, voters in other large, urban counties with big African-American populations have been much supportive of Clinton. . . .”

In the Detroit Free Press on Wednesday, Kathleen Gray and Todd Spangler quoted Darci McConnell, a former reporter at the Free Press and Detroit News who headed the Detroit chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists.

They wrote, “Clinton did far better with black voters, as expected, winning that bloc, 65%-31%, but that was a much smaller margin than in Southern states, and black voters made up less than one-quarter of those voting. And among the 68% of voters who were white, Sanders won handily, 57%-41%.

“Darci McConnell, a Detroit political consultant, said Clinton took the African-American vote for granted.

” ‘The first commercial I saw courting the black vote was from Bernie. The first mailer I got was a few weeks ago from Bernie, and the first mailer I got from Hillary last week was asking for money,’ she said. ‘Don’t make the mistake of assuming that folks will be there, especially when it comes to young folks.’ . . .”

Charles M. Blow, writing in the New York Times, recalled Wednesday that he had written in February, “There isn’t one black America, but two: The children of the Great Migration and the children of those who stayed behind in the South. (Black immigrants are another story.) Having spent the first half of my life in the South and the second in Great Migration destination cities, I can attest that the sensibilities are as different as night and day. . . .”

Exit poll information for Latinos, Asian Americans and Native Americans was not available.

Meanwhile, NewsOne Now announced Wednesday, “This Sunday at 8/7c, TV One and CNN will host the Ohio Democratic Presidential Town Hall helmed by NewsOne Now’s Roland Martin and CNN’s Jake Tapper at Ohio State University’s Mershon Auditorium. . . .”

5 Michigan TV Stations Plan Telethon for Flint

“People watching and reading news about Flint residents being exposed to poisoned water have donated water, have expressed their outrage on social media and have written letters to everyone from the governor to the President,” Detroit Free Press columnist Rochelle Riley wrote on Wednesday.

“But what they really wanted to know was how to help the thousands of children who might experience permanent damage from Flint River water not treated with anti-corrosives that flowed through lead pipes to home taps for more than 18 months.

“Five Michigan television stations plan to provide a way: WDIV-TV, the NBC affiliate in Detroit; WEYI-TV (Flint); WILX-TV (Lansing); WOOD-TV (Grand Rapids); and WWTV 9/10 (northern Michigan) will host ‘Flint Water Crisis: 4 Our Families,’ a telethon to raise funds for the Community Foundation of Greater Flint’s Flint Child Health and Development Fund (www.flintkids.org). . . .”

Riley also wrote, “The stations will all cut in to regular programming with updates from the telethon from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Tuesday, March 15. WDIV will cut in to nearly every show, including ‘Today,’ ‘Ellen’ and ‘Live in the D.’ The telethon will be headquartered at the Detroit TV station with a phone bank at the Art Van Furniture store at 4577 Miller Road.. . .”

Cokie Roberts Presses Trump on Racial Harassment

“Speaking to Donald Trump on Morning Joe Wednesday, NPR’s Cokie Roberts demanded to know if the GOP frontrunner was ‘proud’ of the reports of white children harassing and taunting their darker skinned peers, citing Trump’s incendiary nativist rhetoric,” Sam Reisman reported for Mediaite.

‘”Trump responded that it was a ‘nasty” question, that he was unaware of any such reports, and furthermore, that he was going to ‘make America great again.’

“Roberts challenged Trump: ‘There have been incidents of children, white children, pointing to their darker skinned classmates and saying, “You’ll be deported when Donald Trump is president.” There have been incidents of white kids at basketball games holding up signs to teams which have [Hispanic] kids on them saying, “We’re going to build a wall to keep you out.” Are you proud of that? Is that something you’ve done in American political and social discourse that you’re proud of?’

“ ‘Well, I think your question is a very nasty question,’ Trump responded. ‘And I’m not proud of it because I didn’t even hear of it. Okay? And I don’t like it at all when I hear about it.’

“Roberts remarked that the reports had appeared in many newspapers.

“Over Trump’s interruptions, Roberts pressed him. . . .”

“At Wednesday night’s Univision/CNN Democratic debate in Miami, moderator Karen Tumulty asked Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders directly whether they consider Donald Trump a racist,” Ben Mathis-Lilley reported for slate.com.  “Neither would say so. . . .”

Clinton and Sanders “clashed vividly over immigration reform, health care and Cuba . . . as the two Democrats appealed to Hispanic voters and tried to outdo each other in assailing Donald J. Trump,” Patrick Healy and Amy Chozick reported for the New York Times.

Administration Worked Against More FOIA Access

“The Obama administration has long called itself the most transparent administration in history,” Jason Leopold reported Wednesday for VICE News. “But newly released Department of Justice (DOJ) documents show that the White House has actually worked aggressively behind the scenes to scuttle congressional reforms designed to give the public better access to information possessed by the federal government.

“The documents were obtained by the Freedom of the Press Foundation, a nonprofit organization that supports journalism in the public interest, which in turn shared them exclusively with VICE News. They were obtained using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) — the same law Congress was attempting to reform. The group sued the DOJ last December after its FOIA requests went unanswered for more than a year. . . .”

Spike Lee to Make Film on Mizzou Protests

“For his next project, Spike Lee will focus on the protests that rocked the University of Missouri last fall,” Taryn Finley wrote Wednesday for HuffPost BlackVoices.

“The short film, titled ‘2 Fists Up,’ will be a part of Lee’s ‘Spike Lee’s Lil’ Joints’ series. It will include how Mizzou’s football team stood in solidarity with the campus organization Concerned Student 1950 to combat racial tensions on campus, which ultimately led to the university’s system president’s resignation. . . .”

Michaela Pereira Leaving CNN’s ‘New Day’ for HLN

“CNN is splitting up the morning family at ‘New Day,’ ” Stephen Battaglio reported Tuesday for the Los Angeles Times.

“Co-host Michaela Pereira announced Tuesday that she will leave the morning program at the end of April to become an anchor at CNN’s sister channel HLN later this year.

“Pereira will have her own three-hour daytime news show, which does not yet have a title or launch date. But CNN Executive Vice President Ken Jautz told the Los Angeles Times the format will be similar in style and tone to HLN’s daily program ‘Morning Express With Robin Meade.’ . . .”

Blacks, Hispanics Biggest Viewers of Live TV

“Young multicultural viewers are still subscribing to and watching traditional television as both broadcast and cable networks have offered shows like Black-ish, Empire and Fresh Off the Boat that reflect their images and experiences,” R. Thomas Umstead reported Wednesday for Multichannel News.

“But that hasn’t stopped them from increasing their consumption of OTT streaming services like Netflix, Amazon and Hulu, according to a report presented Wednesday (March 9) during the 16th annual Horowitz Associates Cultural Insights Forum.

“Urban content viewers — defined as multicultural viewers watching TV content in heavily populated markets — in general watch 51% of their weekly TV viewing live, while streaming represents 30% of their TV viewing, according to Horowitz’s Multicultural Matters audience report. Black viewers (58%) are the biggest consumers of live programming, ahead of Spanish-language dominant Hispanic (53%), Asian (48%) and white viewers (47%). . . .”

Journalists Barred From Access to Refugees

“The migration crisis has become the most compelling story in Europe,” Jean-Paul Marthoz reported Monday for the Committee to Protect Journalists.

“It dominates televised news with dramatic footage of migrants on rickety boats trying to reach Greek islands from the Turkish mainland, families blocked at border checkpoints in the Balkans, or expelled by the police from improvised camps in the so-called Jungle in Calais, northern France. It overwhelms papers’ political sections, op-ed pages, and forums with polemics on the confusion and division of EU policies. It floods social media with outraged or outrageous statements.

“Journalists however, increasingly find themselves banned from covering the story on the ground. Last year, Hungary’s center-right government, which erected a razor-wire fence along the country’s borders with Serbia and Croatia, set the template in hampering journalists’ work. CPJ documented last year how, on a single day in September, seven journalists covering the migrant story were beaten or arrested in separate incidents by Hungarian police.

“Hungarian police denied attacking journalists, The Associated Press reported. The press was also banned from entering refugee camps or transit centers, with the general director of Hungary’s office of immigration telling the rights group Hungarian Civil Liberties Union the ban was to protect refugees’ privacy and security. On September 3, riot police ordered journalists to leave a railway station in Bicske, where one of Hungary’s main refugee camps is, after declaring the station an ‘operation zone,’ the rights group reported.

“Access to refugee centers has been limited in other countries too. . . .”

Short Takes

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2 comments

Greg Thrasher March 10, 2016 at 8:35 pm

Enough Already of reporting by Black journalists about how racist Donald Trump is .. He is not invincible nor a demon that put fears in the hearts and souls of Black Americans.

To often the Black Media perpetuates the narrative of White Omnipotence a myth that is a staple of White Journalists on the Right and Left.

Reply
richard March 11, 2016 at 12:28 pm

Comment from The Root:

Michael Honablue

Let’s keep in mind who payed for your puff – the Democratic – Hillary supporting Huff.

I’m not impressed. I was at a Bush event at Madison Square garden almost a decade ago. It was just me and Don King but they played James Brown music. This is the story of my life. Black man at majority white, events, schools, and cooperate work places.

#couldbeworse

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