Site icon journal-isms.com

Journalists of Color Eager to Fix Media Failures

richard

Updated Feb. 2

Journalists of Color Eager to Fix Media Failures:
Maybe White Supremacy Will Be Taken Seriously
Dallas Blacks, Whites Made an ‘Accommodation’
Broadcasters to Aid ‘More Inclusive Workplace’
200 Want Anti-Racist Steps Taken in Public Media
Goya Board Muzzles Trump-Supporting CEO
Baseball Writers to Vote on Striking Racist’s Name
Linsey Davis Named ABC Sunday Night Anchor
Leon Carter Moves From ESPN to The Athletic

Short Takes

Support Journal-isms

Artist Donte Neal wrote for the Philadelphia Inquirer, “I chose to focus on this topic in light of the many people in my family and friend groups that have currently fallen on hard times.” Ten artists were asked to create a poster highlighting a priority that they thought Joe Biden and Kamala Harris should address during their first three months in office.

Maybe White Supremacy Will Be Taken Seriously

Journalists of color writing about the change of administrations and the Jan. 6 white riot at the U.S. Capitol say they hope Americans now take seriously the issue of white supremacy and that the news media will follow suit. In his inauguration speech, Joe Biden became the first president to utter the phrase at the ceremony.

Trymaine Lee (pictured) said Friday on his “Into America” podcast for MSNBC, “Today, I’m holding a microscope up to the industry I work in to better understand how the media failed to cover race under the Trump administration and what we can do to better cover this country, the good and the ugly, now that Joe Biden is president.”

In one hopeful sign, Biden became the first president to utter the phrase in his inauguration speech.

Lee’s guest for the “Reporting on Race” episode, journalist Farai Chideya, agreed with Lee. “I’ve covered white nationalists and supremacists for 25 years, and I do it because they are people, and they are political organizers. If we want to hold up a standard about what journalism is, we have to cover everyone.

“And so I have been appalled by the spotty coverage of Black people, Latinos, immigrants, indigenous people, but I’ve also been appalled by the lack of coverage of poor white Americans, wealthy white Americans in terms of deconstructing structural power.

“I mean, Donald Trump, if people had investigated his finances 15 years ago, we never would have been here. And also of white nationalists and supremacists. So a lotta people were left out of the deconstruction of power, which is supposed to be part of the premise of journalism.”

Covering white nationalism doesn’t necessarily mean the economic angle, which some consider a tired trope. “I think Adam Serwer’s piece The Respectables [aka “The Capitol Rioters Weren’t ‘Low Class’”] was just brilliant, talking about how people with private planes, people with badges, people who are former and active duty military were all involved on January 6th,” Chideya said.

Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote Jan. 19 for The Atlantic, “It was popular, at the time of Donald Trump’s ascension, to stand on the thinnest of reeds in order to avoid stating the obvious. It was said that the Trump presidency was the fruit of ‘economic anxiety,’ of trigger warnings and the push for trans rights. We were told that it was wrong to call Trump a white supremacist, because he had merely ‘drawn upon their themes.’

“One hopes that after four years of brown children in cages; of attempts to invalidate the will of Black voters in Philadelphia, Atlanta, and Detroit; of hearing Trump tell congresswomen of color to go back where they came from; of claims that Joe Biden would turn Minnesota into ‘a refugee camp’; of his constant invocations of ‘the Chinese virus,’ we can now safely conclude that Trump believes in a world where white people are — or should be — on top.

“It is still deeply challenging for so many people to accept the reality of what has happened — that a country has been captured by the worst of its history, while millions of Americans cheered this on.”

To be sure, white nationalism isn’t the only topic that journalists of color feel was downplayed during the Trump years.

“We’ve only just begun to deal with all the damage done by the Trump presidency, but this was part of it: already underrepresented people and communities increasingly neglected while we were held hostage by an air-sucking aspiring autocrat,” Helen Ubiñas (pictured) wrote Jan. 23 for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

“So many times, while trying to balance the stories that needed to be amplified in our own backyard with the daily national disasters that couldn’t be ignored, I was struck by the unfairness.

“Imagine if we had put even a portion of the collective energy and effort into our communities.”

The reaction? “Got the typical hate mail from folks who said this proved elite liberal media didn’t care about anything (including ‘real news’) but taking Trump down,” Ubiñas messaged Journal-isms Sunday, “but also a LOT of feedback from people in the community who def felt like they and their stories have been sidelined — especially when it comes to gun violence in Philly.

“That’s long been our epidemic, still is and it has never (as I’ve written and said) gotten the kind of collective (national/local) outrage or attention that it needs. With the virus and Trump and everything that’s come since, it seems to fall even deeper between the cracks. Though I tried and continue to try hard to keep that from happening.

At least one Ubiñas column resulted from the call-out: “This Philadelphia filmmaker produced a love letter to her brother, shot and killed in June.”

Artist Derek Jones wrote, “The government and the people in charge mess with our lives on a daily basis, the least they could do is make sure we’re healthy enough to keep taking a beating haha. Keep the fight somewhat fair, you know?

Also in the Inquirer, writer and curator Conrad Benner presented thoughts from the creative community: “10 policies Biden must pass in his first 100 days, as drawn by Philly artists.” Priorities ranged from health care to student loan debt.

The change of administrations prompted others to reflect on their role as journalists.

“I think the Trump presidency really revealed that journalism is a core part of our society and a critically important part of our democracy,” Yamiche Alcindor (pictured), White House correspondent for the “PBS NewsHour,” told Ian W. Karbal for Columbia Journalism Review. “If we don’t embrace journalism in a way that’s fearless, and in a way that is blunt, and in a way that pushes this country to really look at itself fully, then we’re not doing it right.”

Karbal wrote on Inauguration Day, “She hopes that covering the Biden administration will provide the opportunity to focus less on the president’s behavior and more on policy. ‘We were all kind of drinking out of a firehose, trying to process all of the different things that were happening,’ Alcindor says of the past four years. The challenge, she says, is to address ‘the different aspects of our society that we just haven’t spent time delving into, because we were instead focused on sort of reality TV, and rhetoric, and rallies.’ ”

On slate.com, Aymann Ismail asked national political reporter Astead W. Herndon (pictured below) of The New York Times, “Did you feel any special significance to your work as a person-of-color journalist, or did you feel like maybe you had a special responsibility at all during the Trump era?“

Herndon replied, “I feel that weight and responsibility, but it’s not because of Donald Trump. It’s that our communities deserve truthful and accurate reporting. And that is what I feel a responsibility toward. I don’t consider being a person of color journalist as being oppositional to Trump. I think of being a Black journalist as being pro-truth, pro-accountability and succeeding the tradition of Black journalists who have pushed the industry on what that looks like.

“Also, racism isn’t true. It’s false. And so as a journalist, it’s worth it to me to expose it as false, not as spite toward any one political actor. Trump certainly has changed the landscape, but my commitment to reporting does not change in a Biden era, because it’s not like a more norm-abiding president has any monopoly on facts. It obviously changes how we’re going to work, but my commitment to journalism will ground me much more than any type of resistance.”

Ismail confessed, “I guess I feel a little out of place at Slate because I didn’t go to journalism school. I didn’t go to an Ivy League college, and I sometimes feel like an imposter, or an affirmative action hire. Like they needed a Muslim guy, and I got lucky. Do you ever feel that way at the New York Times?

Herndon said, “I think that is a reflection on the institutions that have taken too long to change. But whether I would be here without Trump or not, I’m here. And you’re here. And so let’s do the work for the communities who deserve accurate reporting. I don’t think that we can rid ourselves of other people’s perception about us, because that’s how under-representation functions. That’s how power replicates itself. It requires minimizing the work of people of color and Black journalists and the value that they add to these organizations.”

Only 3,000 copies of Jim Schutze’s 1986 landmark book on the history of the Dallas civil rights movement, or lack thereof, were offered 35 years ago, Dave Lieber wrote. “Local leaders tried to kill the book. Now, it’s out of print, but you can read it on Twitter. And it’s being republished” (Credit: Dave Lieber)

Dallas Blacks, Whites Made an ‘Accommodation’

“A reader, upset about a piece I wrote about racism, snarled at me that if I ever wanted to understand race relations in Dallas, I must read Jim Schutze’s 1986 book, The Accommodation,” Dave Lieber (pictured, below) wrote Jan. 21 in his Dallas Morning News “Watchdog Nation” column.

“Here are eight stunning facts I learned from and about the book.

“1. What is ‘the accommodation’? The point of the book is that Black and white residents made an accommodation with each other [in] the early 1950s. Even with extensive police patrols, whites were bombing homes owned by Black residents in white neighborhoods — and getting away with it. In return for the bombings to stop, Black residents were allowed by white leadership to move into a newly created Black neighborhood, Hamilton Park.

“Because of this deal, the civil rights movement was not nearly as aggressive as it was in other American cities, setting the cause of Black rights in Dallas back decades. . . .

“5. What makes the book special? Schutze wrote the book while writing four columns a week for the old Dallas Times Herald. He spent nights in the library and found lost stories that Dallas officialdom tried to bury. How whole Black neighborhoods were razed to benefit whites. How Black residents were denied the right to buy homes in most of the city and earn equity. How the white power structure only recognized certain conservative Black residents as city leaders. And how the purpose of the police was to protect whites from Black residents.

“The book shows how Black people were not allowed to try on clothing in stores because then whites wouldn’t buy the offerings. A white person could try on a hat, for instance, but a Black person had their head measured instead.

“When out-of-town civil rights leaders visited Dallas, they were shocked by the passivity and lack of courage by Black residents to fight for rights as was happening in other cities. Dallas was far behind.

“There was no unity among the Black community because, as the Rev. Peter Johnson says in the book, ‘the Black community has never given the power structure reason to respect it.’ No, because the accommodation blocked that. . . .”

Broadcasters to Aid ‘More Inclusive Workplace’

The National Association of Broadcasters, “the premier advocacy association for America’s broadcasters,” has created a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Advisory Committee made up of senior-level broadcasters who are women and people of color.

“NAB is committed to ensuring diverse voices are represented in radio and television broadcasting and that every employee has the opportunity to excel in their career,” Michelle Duke (pictured), president of the NAB Leadership Foundation and NAB’s chief diversity officer, said in a statement Thursday.

“This new committee will help NAB continue moving diversity and equity forward, and provide guidance for the broadcast community in creating a more inclusive workplace.”

Inaugural members are Sandy Breland, SVP, local media, Gray Television; Trila Bumstead, owner, Ohana Media Group; Caroline Chambers, senior director, diversity, Graham Media Group; Alysia Long, VP, associate general counsel, regulatory, Cox Media Group; Estevan Gonzales, general manager/owner, KSWV Radio.

Also, Corey Hanson, general manager, WALA-TV, Mobile, Ala., Meredith Local Media Group; Michele Laven (chair) (pictured), chief diversity and human resources officer, iHeartMedia; DuJuan McCoy, owner, president and CEO, Circle City Broadcasting; Heidi Raphael, chief communications officer, Beasley Media Group; Oscar Rodriguez, president, Texas Association of Broadcasters; Sharon Tinsley, president, Alabama Association of Broadcasters; Grady Tripp, chief diversity officer, Tegna; and Joel Vilmenay, general manager, WDSU New Orleans, Hearst Television.

200 Want Anti-Racist Steps Taken in Public Media

 More than 200 people in public media have come together to “identify the primary obstacles to anti-racist public media and create a vision for transformation,” veteran public radio journalist Celeste Headlee (pictured) wrote Jan. 18 for medium.com.

“Our vision for public media is the implementation of anti-racist procedures and policies, radical transparency, equity and not equality, and no more decisions based solely on instinct.

“It’s time for a new kind of journalism: anti-racist journalism. We hope to tear down public radio in order to build it back up. We don’t critique our industry because we hate it, but because we love it and hope it can live up to a higher standard of inclusivity that serves our diverse communities.”

Steve Swenson, president and CEO of Nashville Public Radio; Charles Fox, general manager of
WCSU-FM at Central State University, and Goli Sheikholeslami, president and CEO of New York Public Radio, are among those who have signed on as supporters, according to the Public Media Anti-Racist Partnership, writing Jan. 18 in Current.

The document proposes steps to take in the categories of “Amends,” “Hiring, Promotions, and Pay Structures,” “Training,” “Transforming Coverage” and “Accountability.”

Foods became a symbol of identity for Latinos and Latinas. Goya aimed to profit from Hispanics’ deep bonds with food and culture, according to “Latino USA.”

Goya Board Muzzles Trump-Supporting CEO

“Goya’s board of directors had enough of CEO Robert Unanue’s public comments in support of former President Donald Trump and his unfounded claims of voter fraud. On Friday, it voted to muzzle him,” Maria Santana and Chris Isidore wrote Tuesday for CNN.

“The board of the privately held Latino food company voted to censure Unanue (pictured), following his most recent controversial remarks that questioned the legitimacy of the November election, according to a person familiar with the board’s actions, who spoke to CNN on the condition that their name not be used.

“Unanue will no longer be allowed to speak to the media without the board’s permission, the source said. The decision was first reported by the New York Post Monday evening. . . . ‘ “

Baseball Writers to Vote on Striking Racist’s Name

“At some point in February, the Baseball Writers’ Association of America is expected to announce the voting results on a proposal to remove J.G. Taylor Spink’s (pictured in 1942) name from the organization’s most prestigious member award, which has been given to writers ‘for meritorious contributions to baseball writing’ since 1962,” Ryan Fagan wrote for the Sporting News.

“The winners are part of the annual Induction Weekend at the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., and have a special place in the museum. Spink, publisher of The Sporting News from 1914 to 1962, was the award’s first recipient, shortly after his death.

“Sporting News fully supports the proposal to remove Spink’s name. I have worked at Sporting News since 2005 and been a BBWAA member since 2006, and I will vote to remove the name; so will SN’s two other BBWAA members: Jason Foster (member since 2016) and Joe Rivera (2018), Fagan wrote.

“Spink was the publisher of the largest, most powerful baseball publication in the country for nearly half a century, and he used that position to strongly advocate against the integration of the sport. In the decades before Jackie Robinson’s debut, Spink largely ignored the Negro Leagues and its players and used his publication to sustain negative — and untrue — stereotypes of not just Negro League ballplayers, but also Black Americans in general. . . .”

Linsey Davis Named ABC Sunday Night Anchor

ABC News Monday named Linsey Davis (pictured) and Whit Johnson new weekend anchors for the network’s flagship evening newscast, “World News Tonight.” Johnson will anchor on Saturdays, with Davis anchoring on Sundays.

Davis said on the ABC News morning editorial call where the announcement was made, “We are certainly kicking off Black History Month with a bang. Because today I’m mindful of Carole Simpson, and the decision that Roone Arledge made back in 1988, to promote her to the anchor of weekend ’World News Tonight’ and in doing so catapulted her into the history books as the first Black woman to helm any major network national newscast. And now three decades later she has the distinction of being, as our vice president would say, ‘the first but not the last.’ ”

Davis and Johnson succeed Tom Llamas, who is leaving ABC News reportedly to join NBC News, Alex Weprin wrote for The Hollywood Reporter.

ABC News president James Goldston wrote to the staff in a memo Monday morning:

“Linsey has had an impressive rise at ABC News as a result of her unflinching interview prowess, her versatility and experience. Last year she was named anchor of ’ABC News Live’s’ first-ever streaming evening newscast in primetime, which has surged in viewership by over 200% since launch a year ago.

“Her presidential debate moderating performance was nothing short of commanding, holding candidates to account on racial inequality before social unrest swept the nation last summer. Linsey co-anchored our 2020 election coverage, including all eight nights of the Democratic and Republican National Conventions, two presidential debates, the vice presidential debate, five straight days of presidential election coverage until a winner was declared and Inauguration Day.

“Her interviews have included a wide range of newsmakers from Hillary Clinton and Mike Pence to Dr. Anthony Fauci, Camille Cosby and a powerful jailhouse conversation with Myon Burrell. She conducted the first roundtable discussion with Black female mayors from across the country during the height of protests against police brutality and anchored the documentary ‘Homegrown Hate: The War Among Us’ – a chilling look into hate-inspired violence and intimidation, and the growth of domestic terrorism. She’ll continue to anchor ‘ABC News Live Prime’ Monday through Thursday, and we’ll rotate anchors on Friday nights.”

Leon Carter Moves From ESPN to The Athletic

Adam Hansmann, president and co-founder of The Athletic, wrote:

“. . . @Leon Carter (pictured) joins The Athletic today as Editorial Director, Talent and Development and will be responsible for overseeing and implementing talent development programs, partnering with our People & Talent team on strategic initiatives, and working with editorial leadership across a broad range of projects.

“Leon joins us after ten years at ESPN where his key projects included the launch of ESPN New York, overseeing multiple ESPN local sites and spearheading the early stages of the Undefeated. He was previously an award-winning sports editor for the New York Daily News from 1999-2010 and brings more than 30 years of experience in sports journalism.

“Additionally, Leon was also the founder of the Sports Journalism Institute (SJI), a nine-week training and internship program for college students interested in sports journalism, which counts numerous The Athletic staffers among its graduates. As I mentioned in a recent all-hands, a big theme for us in 2021 is talent development and unlocking new growth opportunities for all staff. . . .”

Short Takes

Support Journal-isms

To subscribe at no cost, please send an email to journal-isms+subscribe@groups.io and say who you are.

Facebook users: “Like” “Richard Prince’s Journal-isms” on Facebook.

Follow Richard Prince on Twitter @princeeditor

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@groups.io

About Richard Prince

View previous columns (after Feb. 13, 2016).

View previous columns (before Feb. 13, 2016)

.

Exit mobile version