Newspaper Decries Government’s ‘Treachery’ Who Knew? In November, White Voters Went MAGA How the N.Y. Times Went From ‘Negro’ to ‘Black’ Aguilar Sworn In as First Latina SPJ President ‘Word in Black’ Collaboration Nets 1,200 Subscribers
Journalist Groups Offer Tips for 9/11 Anniversary Hannah-Jones Starts After-School Literacy Program Hugh Wyatt, N.Y. Daily News Pioneer, Dies at 78 Latin American Journalists, in U.S., Sound Alarm Nominate a J-Educator Who Promotes Diversity
Short Takes: José Díaz-Balart and Joshua Johnson; Roland Martin; Josh Capers; FEMA and Black families; Sierra Club resignation; Texas abortion law vs. Fugitive Slave Acts; live audio access at Supreme Court; Lonnie Wong; FCC broadcast ownership rules; Blacks and internet access; young people hosting weekly radio show; Black Film Archive; Asian, Black and Hispanic giving to social justice causes; need for funding of Asian American history documentaries; News Literacy Project; diversity among college newspaper editors; Journal-isms position open; U.N. legal training to protect Somali journalists; stepping up journalism training for Blacks in Brazil
The Nation of Islam and its newspaper, the Final Call, are promoting the Ivermectin medication intended for livestock as a remedy for COVID-19, spurning the vaccines approved by the medical community and the federal government.
The Final Call’s Aug. 30 edition reports on “a special virtual event sponsored by the Nation of Islam Online Study Group” on Aug. 27 attended by 3,000 people, the article says, describing it as a “historic seminar.
The article continued, “Before concluding the power-packed session, Minister Ava Muhammad presented several astounding videos. One was the Founding Physicians of the Frontline COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance’s video summary of what Ivermectin is, where it came from, what it does, and a web link to help prepare in advance. The Final Call publishes the website where one can learn about and obtain Ivermectin each week in this section of the newspaper.
“Another powerful demonstration of the actual impact of Ivermectin was a graph showing how the Delta variant, which first appeared in and ravaged India, underwent a steep decline to almost zero presence, after government officials began to disperse Ivermectin treatment kits to its citizens. Mexico City, Mexico experienced a similar decrease, Minister Ava Muhammad pointed out.”
Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett, right, a researcher at the National Institutes of Health who helped to develop COVID-19 vaccines in record time, welcomed President Joe Biden to the NIH’s Dale and Betty Bumpers Vaccine Research Center on Feb. 11. With them is Dr. Anthony Fauci, left, director of NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Dr. Francis Collins, HIH director, center. “The first thing you might want to say to my African American brothers and sisters is that the vaccine that you’re going to be taking was developed by an African American woman,” Fauci said in December. “And that is just a fact.” (Credit: NIH)
“Never use medications intended for animals on yourself or other people,” the FDA warned. “Animal ivermectin products are very different from those approved for humans. Use of animal ivermectin for the prevention or treatment of COVID-19 in humans is dangerous.”
The agency also said, “The FDA has not authorized or approved ivermectin for the treatment or prevention of COVID-19 in people or animals. Ivermectin has not been shown to be safe or effective for these indications.”
Although the Nation of Islam is contending that Black people cannot trust the government, the National Medical Association, an organization of African American medical professionals marking its 125th anniversary, approved of the vaccines last December.
The NMA is part of a group that includes Charles Drew University, Howard University, Meharry Medical College, the Morehouse School of Medicine, the National Black Nurses Association, the Cobb Institute and blackdoctor.org. They joined the National Urban League in December to write a “love letter” to the Black public about COVID-19.
The NMA said separately that month that its “task force reviewed the clinical trial data in search of differences in health outcomes that would place the Black community at higher risk of unfavorable outcomes from the vaccine and determined the following:
“Ten percent of people who enrolled in both the Pfizer and Moderna clinical trials were Black, equaling more than 4,400 and 3,000 people, respectively.
“Persons receiving the vaccine were > 94% less likely to develop COVID-19 infection as compared to the placebo group.
“Efficacy and safety were observed and consistent across age, gender, race, ethnicity and adults over 65 years of age.”
In January, Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, gave a shout-out to 34-year-old Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett.
“I felt like it was necessary to be seen and to not be a hidden figure so to speak,” Corbett said. “I felt that it was important to do that because the level of visibility that it would have to younger scientists and also to people of color who have often worked behind the scenes and essentially [who have] done the dirty work for these large efforts toward a vaccine.
“This person who looks like you has been working on this for several years and I also wanted it to be visible because I wanted people to understand that I stood by the work that I’d done for so long as well,” Corbett said.
The influence of the Nation is not easy to determine and is not necessarily related to the size of its membership. Minister Louis Farrakhan, its leader, can still generate headlines. Karl Evanzz, who has written books about the Nation, messaged Journal-isms, “I don’t think anyone knows the number of current members of the Nation of Islam but I think it’s fair to say that membership outside of penal institutions is likely less than 7000. It’s tough to gauge due to the high rate of attrition. . . . People join the NOI in prison the way others join gangs and other organizations, for protection. Most quit the group soon after being released.”
One might never guess that a majority of white voters cast their ballots for Trump in November.
That’s right. Were it not for the votes of people of color in the last election, Trump might still be president, at least if the popular vote prevailed.
“From the point of view of covering Trump and the modern GOP, the issue is not racial diversity in the newsroom per se, so much as racial expertise among reporters. Having people of color in a newsroom is helpful because — in addition to serving the values of justice and equality — journalists of color are more likely than white journalists to have thought deeply about and perhaps even formally studied racial dynamics.
“It’s expertise in race that’s required from any reporter if they are to accurately explain to the public country-defining patterns, including especially the GOP’s purposeful exploitation of racial demagoguery.”
The acclaimed music documentary “Summer of Soul,” a condensation of the Harlem Cultural Festival held across six days in 1969, was one of the talkers of the summer of 2021. The film also contained a bit of Black journalism history. Veteran journalist Charlayne Hunter-Gault(pictured) briefly discusses how she persuaded The New York Times to get with contemporary Black folks and use “Black” instead of “Negro,” which was falling out of favor as Black consciousness rose.
“It was an 11 page memo I wrote after filing a story from Chicago using what had become a widespread demand from vocal Blacks, and so I used it throughout the piece ‘200 Black Women “Have Dialogue“, ‘ Hunter-Gault messaged Journal-isms, “and back then you dictated over the phone and it went to 11 editors.
“By the time I flew back to NY, the paper was out and I eagerly looked for my piece, only to find that while in the paper, everywhere I had written Black was changed to Negro. I was furious and sat in the airport and clearly my anger was apparent in the 11 page memo I wrote, not least my criticism of white editors from all white suburbs who know nothing of Black people and their aspirations…or something to that effect.
“In the end, Abe Rosenthal came to my desk and said he agreed and Negro would no longer be used.”
“Aguilar, who is celebrating 40 years as a journalist, is a freelance reporter based in Dallas. . . .”
Aguilar also chaired the SPJ Diversity and Inclusion Committee.
Ivette Davila-Richards, incumbent secretary-treasurer, freelance national assignment editor at Fox News Channel and vice chair of SPJ’s Diversity and Inclusion Committee, was re-elected over two opponents.
Claire Regan, an SPJ board member who is a contributing writer to the Staten Island (N.Y.) Advance and an assistant professor of journalism at Wagner College, was chosen president-elect. Candidate profiles
‘Word in Black’ Collaboration Nets 1,200 Subscribers
Nearly three months after its launch, a collaboration of 10 Black newspapers known as Word in Black has attracted 1,200 subscribers to its newsletter, according to Nick Charles, project manager for the Fund for Black Journalism and managing director of the collaboration.
“The initiative is part of the Fund for Black Journalism, founded last year by the Local Media Association (LMA) and the same 10 newspapers to support coverage and create solutions around issues that affect Black communities.”
Charles told E&P, “There [are] over 230 Black-owned newspapers still in this country — here we have 10 of them that still put out a hard copy every week — and what most of them need is a real smooth and efficient transition to digital products.”
“In addition to LMA and the Walton Family Foundation, the Facebook Journalism Project, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Google News Initiative and the Local Media Consortium have also funded the project,” Mateos continued.
At its launch, pegged to this year’s Juneteenth, Andrew Ramsammy (pictured), chief content and collaboration officer for the Local Media Association, wrote, “Each week the newsletter will feature stories that focus on solutions to racial inequities in America. Most weeks we’ll open the newsletter with a strong opinion article from one of the 10 publishers in the collaborative.
“Broaden story angles beyond the national security lens. Be specific and descriptive when referring to surveillance, detention, criminalization, violence, discrimination, and hate crimes in the post-9/11 era targeting AMEMSA [Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim and South Asian] communities in the United States.
“Be aware that multiple communities were impacted and traumatized by 9/11 and post-9/11 policies, in the U.S. and abroad. In addition to the nearly 3,000 people who died on Sept. 11, 2001, approximately 801,000 people [PDF] have been killed directly in the violence of the subsequent wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere. Several times as many civilians have died due to the reverberating effects of these wars. The Costs of War data shows the United States conducted counterterrorism operations in 85 countries from 2018 through 2020, and is still aggressively pursuing counterterrorism activities.
“Islamophobia and anti-Muslim bigotry affect Muslims in the U.S. as well as those who are erroneously perceived as Muslim. As a point of reference, the first deadly hate crime after 9/11 was the murder of a Sikh man, Balbir Singh Sodhi, on September 15, in Mesa, Arizona.
“Rather than using euphemisms like ‘anti-Muslim sentiment,’ assess whether it is more accurate to use terms like ‘anti-Muslim bias,’ ‘Islamophobia,’ or ‘anti-Muslim bigotry.’ For more information, consult the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding’s guide on Islamophobia.
“Be careful about framing that creates a false binary between ‘the West” and ‘the Muslim World.’ There are nearly 3.5 million Muslims in the United States, and Pew has projected that by 2050, 10 percent of all Europeans will be Muslim. Include the broader context of how foreign policies and interventions tie into local events you are currently covering. . . .”
The groups also offered guidance on terminology, urged news media to diversify their sources and advised on “Reporting on Islam and Muslims.”
Joy Briscoe, Sheritta Stokes, Lori Dale, Sharina Sallis and Nikole Hannah-Jones, the leadership team of the 1619 Freedom School, in the space where they plan to host the 1619 Freedom School in Waterloo, Iowa. (Credit: Kelsey Kremer/Des Moines Register)
“Nikole Hannah-Jones said the 1619 Freedom School will hold a soft launch in October at the Dr. Walter Cunningham School for Excellence with a small number of students before opening the full program in January at the Masonic Temple in downtown Waterloo, the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier reported.
“The program will serve fourth- and fifth-grade students in the Waterloo Community Schools.”
Wyatt was 78. His wife, Linda Edkins Wyatt, said that the cause was metastasized prostate cancer.
Wyatt was of Black and Cherokee ancestry. He was born in Atlanta, but moved to New York in 1965 after three years in the Army. He worked at the Daily News from 1965 to 1993 after starting out as a copy boy. He was a contemporary there of Black journalists Larry Hall, later a columnist at the Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J., and C. Gerald Fraser, who became a reporter at The New York Times.
While few mainstream newspapers in those days had a critical mass of journalists of color, the paucity of Black journalists at the News would lead to a successful lawsuit in which four Black Daily News journalists would settle for a reported $3.1 million in 1987.
“He was named health affairs editor in 1979, and later wrote a popular weekly music column, which became syndicated,” the Southampton paper said. “Mr. Wyatt’s wife Linda said that, with a series of articles for the Daily News, Mr. Wyatt was also instrumental in New York State’s establishing an official definition of death, among his many other achievements. (He wrote the liner notes for the 1984 recording, ‘New York Scene’ by Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, which won a Grammy.)”
“That theme echoed through a panel discussion Tuesday at the National Press Club as Latin American journalists called attention to government repression of reporting in their countries.
“In the past 20 months, at least 27 journalists have been killed in Latin America, said panel moderator Dagmar Thiel, chief executive of Fundamedios, an organization that promotes free expression and human rights.
“Many more have been threatened, attacked or jailed for reporting not in line with their governments’ policies. . . .”
Flanders also wrote, “Univision correspondent Tifani Roberts said every journalist not aligned with the Nicaraguan government has been investigated and their families harassed, even having their children followed to school. Every one of them has an exit plan for when — ‘not if’ — they must leave the country for their safety. . . .
“The governments of Nicaragua, Venezuela and Cuba harass journalists with techniques from the same playbook, said Carlos Roa of the Association of Venezuelan Journalists Abroad. Thirteen of his fellow Venezuelan journalists are in prison or on probation, and one of them, Roland Carreno, is being denied urgent medical care. . . .”
Armando Chaguaceda of Cuba said the struggles in these countries should not be defined as left vs. right, but as autocracy vs. democracy. Self-censorship has become the rule. Luz Mely Reyes, co-founder of digital media franchise Efecto Cocuyo in Venezuela said some of her fellow journalists have waited for more than five years for asylum in the United States.
North American news organizations are being denied entry and COVID-19 is being used as a weapon, they said. Governments don’t want COVID written about and exercise their powers of intimidation over journalists who want to leave because of the disease.
Beginning in 1990, the Association of Opinion Journalists, now part of the News Leaders Association, annually granted a Barry Bingham Sr. Fellowship — actually an award — “in recognition of an educator’s outstanding efforts to encourage minority students in the field of journalism.”
Since 2000, the recipient has been awarded an honorarium of $1,000 to be used to “further work in progress or begin a new project.”
Past winners include James Hawkins, Florida A&M University (1990); Larry Kaggwa, Howard University (1992); Ben Holman, University of Maryland (1996); Linda Jones, Roosevelt University, Chicago (1998); Ramon Chavez, University of Colorado, Boulder (1999); Erna Smith, San Francisco State (2000); Joseph Selden, Penn State University (2001); Cheryl Smith, Paul Quinn College (2002); Rose Richard, Marquette University (2003).
Also, Leara D. Rhodes, University of Georgia (2004); Denny McAuliffe, University of Montana (2005); Pearl Stewart, Black College Wire (2006); Valerie White, Florida A&M University (2007); Phillip Dixon, Howard University (2008); Bruce DePyssler, North Carolina Central University (2009); Sree Sreenivasan, Columbia University (2010); Yvonne Latty, New York University (2011); Michelle Johnson, Boston University (2012); Vanessa Shelton, University of Iowa (2013); William Drummond, University of California at Berkeley (2014); Julian Rodriguez of the University of Texas at Arlington (2015) (video);David G. Armstrong, Georgia State University (2016) (video); Gerald Jordan, University of Arkansas (2017), Bill Celis, University of Southern California (2018); Laura Castañeda, University of Southern California (2019); and Mei-Ling Hopgood, Northwestern University (pictured) (2020).
Nominations may be emailed to Richard Prince, Opinion Journalism Committee, richardprince (at) hotmail.com. The deadline is Oct. 15. Please use that address only for NLA matters.
Josh Capers (pictured), sports editor of Mississippi’s Clarion Ledger and Hattiesburg American since November, is leaving for Bristol, Conn., to be senior editor on the NFL Nation team at ESPN.
“The Federal Emergency Management Agency said Thursday it would end a policy that prevented many Black families from securing federal relief funds after natural disasters such as Hurricane Ida, which has wreaked havoc across the nation this week,” Nick Visser reported Friday for HuffPost. “The Washington Post published a detailed accountof FEMA’s policies in July, noting that the agency regularly denied claims to Black families who live on land that is passed down informally between generations, a policy that dates to the Jim Crow era, when local laws largely restricted the rights of people of color. Until Thursday, FEMA required proof of land ownership in the form of a deed or will, but about a third of Black-owned land in the South is held via the informal system. . . .”
Michael Brune, the head of the Sierra Club, is stepping down amid the fallout of an internal report, the executive summary recommendations of which were obtained by The Intercept, Alleen Brown reported Aug. 19 for The Intercept. “Interviews with more than a dozen former and current Sierra Club staff members, as well as several volunteers, echoed the problems the report describes. Most of those interviewed were people of color, and nearly all had a story about racism or sexism from a volunteer or manager. Those who voiced concerns said they saw little action, and some saw the subjects of their complaints receive praise or even promotions. Some of the complainants said they experienced retaliation — allegations echoed in the report findings. Several ultimately quit. . . .”
Seventy-six civil society, media, disability rights and government transparency organizations are urging the Supreme Court to commit to providing live audio access to oral arguments on a permanent basis,” Melissa Wasser wrote Wednesday for the Project On Government Oversight. Among the groups are the National Association of Black Journalists, the Native American Journalists Association and other journalism organizations.
Lonnie Wong prepares to send his report on the snow survey at Phillips Station in the Sierra Nevada on Dec. 30, 2020.Wong announced his retirement last week after a 40-year career with KTXL-TV in Sacramento. (Credit: Hector Amezcua)
“There are 23 counties in the United States with a population that isat least 70% Black,” Maya Pottiger wrote Aug. 26 for Word in Black. “In those 23 majority-Black counties, an average 36% of households don’t have Internet access. Most of the counties are in Mississippi, and the others are located in Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina and Virginia.”
“Diversity, or the lack of it in mainstream public media, has been an ongoing issue, especially in broadcast radio and journalism spaces,” Han Vu-Tran of Mounds View High School in Arden Hills, Minn., a suburb of the Twin Cities, wrote Saturday on the ThreeSixty Journalism website. “However, there are groups working to change that. Listen Up! Youth Radio is an organization that presents young people from underrepresented groups with the platform and the tools to get into broadcasting. . . . Supported by the Minnesota Humanities Center, St. Paul Foundation and Youthprise, youth ages 14 to 24 have the opportunity to host a live weekly radio talk show and join the other programs Listen Up! offers. Listen Up! also works with elementary school kids. . . .”
“Students face a daily onslaught of mis- and disinformation,” the News Literacy Project says in a fund-raising pitch. “The events of the last 18 months have made it clear just how urgently students need critical thinking skills and tools to distinguish fact from fiction. . . . Over 40,000 educators rely on our free programs and resources. The News Literacy Project is the nation’s leading provider of impactful, relevant resources and programs to teach news literacy. As teachers and students face an uncertain start to the school year ahead, we are doing everything possible to support those on the front lines in the fight for facts.” The project hopes to raise $10,000 during its “Back to School” campaign.
Journal-isms is renewing its search for an assistant editor who would love to help produce this column. Position is part time, 15 to 20 hours weekly. Please see the “About” section of this website for more information.
“Somalia’s journalists face many threats in the line of duty but the biggest scare on their daily work is lack of legal protection, according to their lobby, the National Union of Somali Journalists (Nusoj),” Aggrey Mutambo wrote Friday for the East African in Kenya. “As such, the United Nations announced a pool of lawyers on hand to defend journalists in Somalia, starting this September. The programme, known as the Network of Media Lawyers, is sponsored by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco) which says it has trained the group to defend journalists and news media organisations facing unwarranted political attacks. . . .”
In Brazil, where its majority Black population has historically been relegated to second-class status, the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo has decided to exclusively select Black professionals for the first time in 33 years, Carolina de Assis reported Friday for LatAm Journalism Review. “The initiative is part of Folha’s efforts to make its newsroom more diverse, Flavia Lima, the newspaper’s current diversity editor and coordinator of this edition of the program, told LatAm Journalism Review (LJR). In addition to Folha, Nexo Jornal also launched an exclusive training program for Black people in 2021. These initiatives seek to break down some of the barriers that hinder the entry and permanence of Black journalists in Brazilian newsrooms, also leading to debates about racism and whiteness within organizations. . . .”Support Journal-isms
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
Yet this is not the way the election results have been framed in media reporting. Ian Haney Lopez (pictured), a law professor at UC Berkeley who wrote “Dog Whistle Politics” in 2013 and followed that in 2019 with “Merge Left: Fusing Race and Class, Winning Elections, and Saving America,” gave this explanation in a message to Journal-isms:
The acclaimed music documentary “Summer of Soul,” a condensation of the Harlem Cultural Festival held across six days in 1969, was one of the talkers of the summer of 2021. The film also contained a bit of Black journalism history. Veteran journalist Charlayne Hunter-Gault (pictured) briefly discusses how she persuaded The New York Times to get with contemporary Black folks and use “Black” instead of “Negro,” which was falling out of favor as Black consciousness rose.
Nearly three months after its launch, a collaboration of 10 Black newspapers known as Word in Black has attracted 1,200 subscribers to its newsletter, according to Nick Charles, project manager for the Fund for Black Journalism and managing director of the collaboration.
At its launch, pegged to this year’s Juneteenth, Andrew Ramsammy (pictured), chief content and collaboration officer for the Local Media Association, wrote, “Each week the newsletter will feature stories that focus on solutions to racial inequities in America. Most weeks we’ll open the newsletter with a strong opinion article from one of the 10 publishers in the collaborative.
The 10 newspapers announced in June 2020 that they had joined forces with Local Media Foundation to launch the Fund for Black Journalism – Race Crisis in America campaign. Charles (pictured) is a former editor in chief of AOL Black Voices and vice president for content at BET who has since freelanced and worked at digital news sites and nonprofits. He was named project manager a year ago.
Hugh Wyatt (pictured), one of the first reporters of color at the Daily News in New York and author of “Sonny Rollins: Meditating on a Riff,” a “spiritual biography” of the tenor saxophonist, his friend of more than 50 years, died Aug. 12 in Manhattan, the Southampton Press on Long Island reported Aug. 16.
“José Díaz-Balart (pictured), one of the few Latino anchors on U.S. television, is returning to MSNBC later this month to host a new show, the network announced Tuesday,” Russell Contreras reported for Axios. “The big picture: The ‘Noticias Telemundo’ anchor will take over daily the 10am ET hour on MSNBC for a show called ‘José Díaz-Balart Reports,’ beginning Sept. 27, as the network seeks to add more diverse voices.” As part of the MSNBC shakeup, Brian Steinberg reported for Variety, “MSNBC is also expected to announce that Joshua Johnson, who has been anchoring a primetime program on the weekend schedule, as well as on The Choice, will leave those duties to take on a wider role with NBC News Now, where he will launch a daily program in the fall.”
Josh Capers (pictured), sports editor of Mississippi’s Clarion Ledger and Hattiesburg American since November, is leaving for Bristol, Conn., to be senior editor on the NFL Nation team at ESPN.
