Scores of Mentally Ill Inmates of Color Died in S.C.

“After explaining that ’11 or 12 truckloads of garbage’ were taken out of the water, Trump began personally attacking Scott. ‘Such a stupid question that you asked,’ he said. ‘We’re fixing up the Reflecting Pond to the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument. And you say, “Why are you fixing anything up?” Because you can understand dirt, maybe better than I can. But I don’t allow it.’

“He then turned to his aides, stating, ‘This is one of the worst reporters. She’s with ABC fake news, and she’s a horror show. She’s saying, ‘Why would you bother fixing this up? Why would I bother taking 11 or 12 truckloads of filth out of the water in front of the Lincoln monument?’

“Trump continued, ‘hat’s what made our country great. Beauty made our country. People made our country great. A question like that is a disgrace to our country’

“ ‘How dare she ask about iran and gas prices when this nation is facing a reflecting pool emergency!!!!!’ another quipped.

“ ‘He’s not only a misogynist he’s tired and boring with his insults,’ said another. . . .”

• Steve Benen, MS NOW: ‘Horror show’: Trump still can’t restrain himself when lashing out at women in media

• Essence post, Instagram

• Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic: Trump bashes woman reporter. Again. It’s a problem

• Jordan Liles, Snopes: Did Trump call ABC News’ Rachel Scott an expletive? Here’s what video shows

• Chris Marr and Khorri Atkinson, Bloomberg Law: Trump’s Anti-DEI Efforts Struggle Under Federal Judges’ Scrutiny

• NAACP post, Instagram

• April Ryan post, Instagram

Independent journalist Estelle Ndjandjo on the lack of diversity in French newsrooms (Credit: YouTube)

France’s Black Journos Say ‘Negrophobia Matters’

“Black journalists remain underrepresented in French media and for those who do break in, the barriers don’t end there” (video), a France24 program host said Thursday.

“From elite journalism schools to newsroom hiring, many describe a system shaped by exclusion, stereotypes and unequal opportunity. So how deep does the problem go, and what needs to change? Those questions are at the heart of a roundtable here in Paris this Thursday on the experiences of Black journalists.”

The program took place as the AJAR — Association of Anti-Racist and Racialized Journalists, the Fondation de France and the Foundation for the Memory of Slavery hosted its second “Negrophobia Matters” session, with a roundtable entitled “Between Assignment and Racial Burden: The Black Experience in French Journalism” (photo below). Some 200 people were expected.

“I don’t know how many times I’ve been confused with another Black person in my own office, “independent journalist Estelle Ndjandjo said in the interview. “And I will also say that we also say that between us, we like solidarity. When someone reach to become, I don’t know, a chief editor, for example, there is this . . . glass ceiling that is really hard for us to overcome . . . And we have this, especially as Black journalists, we have this precarious, I mean a way of life. I mean, myself, I’m a stringer. Even if I worked in other media like Reuters. . . it is very hard to become staff. . . .”

“You are not the type of journalist who is put on the front,’ Ndjando continued. “I mean more it will be light-skinned people. It will be white and Korean, even if you’re here and you prove me wrong and I’m very glad of it. But it’s hard to become a journalist, a Black journalist when you’re not covering, for example African countries or [a] French-speaking area . . . We have a . . . huge rap culture in France and you will be put in this kind of box. It’s unusual to be a journalist who covers environments, covers pop culture. I mean this is what we are fighting for.”

Ndjando also talked about the ‘hood, which translates to “la banlieue” in colloquial French. “I’ve covered a lot of stories about the banlieue, but I really want to emphasize . . .  the fact that I’m proud of it because I’m from the banlieue, too. It’s just, for example, you will be only focusing on violence or police brutality in the banlieue where you will absolutely forget about the culture there. We have a huge problem of the food, the street food, especially in the banlieue. So all those things will become a second or third problem when we can have stories, when we can show how proud we are of where we come from. And this is something that is very missing in the French media, I will say.”

Njandjo concluded, “Every single media should have a racial editor to make sure that they [their products] don’t have racial biases.”

• Sandrine Cassini, Le Monde: French TV channels fail to bring minorities into the limelight (July 20, 2022)

• Journal-isms: What Blacks Worldwide Have in Common (Aug. 14, 2025)

Google’s $50M Settlement With Black Workers OK’d

“Google has settled with Black employees who alleged systemic racial disparities in hiring, pay, and advancement in a lawsuit filed in 2022,” Barbara Ortutay reported Friday for the Associated Press.

A $50 million settlement was announced in May 2025 and granted final approval this week.

“April Curley, a former Google employee, had sued the tech giant for racial discrimination, saying it engages in a ‘pattern and practice’ of unfair treatment for its Black workers. The suit claimed the company steered them into lower-level and lower-paid jobs and subjected them to a hostile work environment if they speak out. Other former Google workers also joined the suit, which later received class action status.

“ ‘This case is about accountability, plain and simple,’ said civil rights attorney Ben Crump (pictured), who represented the plaintiffs, in a statement. ‘For far too long, Black employees in the tech industry have faced barriers that limit opportunity. This settlement is a significant step toward holding one of the world’s most powerful companies accountable and making clear that discriminatory practices cannot and will not be tolerated.’ . . .

“Google said when the settlement was reached that it strongly disagrees with the allegations that it treated anyone improperly and remains ‘committed to paying, hiring, and leveling all employees consistently.’ ”

• Janice Gassam Asare, Ph.D., Forbes: The High Cost Of Anti-Blackness: Lessons From Google’s $50M Case (May 24, 2025)

Civil Rights Icon Andrew Young talked to Atlanta News First about Ted Turner’s legacy, their time together and the last time he interacted with the media mogul. “He had a civil rights act for the world,” Young said. (Credit: YouTube) 🕊️

Ted Turner Gets Kudos on Diversity, Missteps Aside

There was the time, in 1980, just before CNN was about to launch, when Ted Turner’s planned sale of Charlotte, N.C., station WRET hit a snag.

As part of a dispute with the then-current owner, an African American coalition sought more programming and employment for people of color.

Baseball legend Hank Aaron told the coalition, “This guy isn’t prejudiced.” That endorsement, Turner’s plea for forgiveness and a few other pledges won the day.

Robert Edward “Ted” Turner II was “the media mogul who cut a brash and vivid figure on the American scene of the late 20th century by dominating the cable television industry, creating the 24-hour news cycle with CNN, and extending his restless reach into professional sports, environmentalism and philanthropy,” as Jonathan Kandell described him in the New York Times.

When the “PBS News Hour” aired its obituary of Turner, who died peacefully May 6 at 87 near his home in Tallahassee, Fla., correspondent Judy Woodruff held up a photo of Turner with Bernard Shaw, the African American journalist who anchored from Baghdad as bombs dropped during the Iraq War in 1991.

“He wanted the news to be serious. He hired Bernie Shaw as one of his first anchors. He believed in diversity. He believed the newsroom should look like America. He talked about that. And he had that vision even after he lost CNN. He would talk about the news networks, plural, all of them, need to stick to the news, as he saw them drifting closer and closer to entertainment,” Woodruff, who had worked at CNN, told viewers.

Turner’s reputation on diversity didn’t end in the United States. “In this whirlwind romance, he forged strategic relationships across the continent and the entire Black World,” wrote Charles Anyiam for The Cable in Nigeria.

Among other achievements, “He supported his friend, Ambassador [Andrew] Young’s almost solo effort to free [former Nigerian president Oluṣẹgun] Obasanjo from the death clutches of dictator Sani Abacha’s gulag.”

In his 2008 autobiography, “Call Me Ted,” Turner talked about Jimmy Brown, a 21-year-old Black man whom Turner’s father hired to take care of his sailboat. Brown, “for the next fifty years . . . would be one of the most important men in my life.”

In fact, Turner wrote, “Because of my love for him, and my father’s color blindness, I grew up without a shred of prejudice.”

Still, father-and-son authors Robert Goldberg and Gerald Jay Goldberg wrote of some missteps in their 1995 biography, “Citizen Turner: The Wild Rise of an American Tycoon.”

“Ted graduated in 1956 with good enough grades to gain entrance to Brown University. But he was no model student. A former classmate, William Kennedy, who went on to become a Brown University official, was quoted in ‘Citizen Turner’ as describing young Ted as ‘a bigot, as maybe all of us were in a sense at the time,’ ” Kandell wrote for the Times.

“Mr. Turner, he said, drank excessively, sang Nazi songs outside a Jewish fraternity house and put up Ku Klux Klan signs on the dormitory doors of Black students. He was finally tossed out of Brown after being caught in bed with a woman in his dorm room . . .

“Mr. Turner further tarnished his image by uttering ethnic and racial slurs in public forums. In 1985, The Atlanta Constitution reported that Mr. Turner had said that the MX mobile missile program and the unemployment rate could be tackled together by hiring jobless African Americans to carry missiles on their backs from one silo to another.

“In his defense, Mr. Turner’s associates pointed out that he had placed Black employees, like Bill Lucas,” Major League Baseball’s first Black general manager, “and the Hall of Famer Hank Aaron, to senior posts in the Atlanta Braves organization and had appointed Jews like Reese Schonfeld to top spots at CNN. . . .

“He also became a major philanthropist, creating foundations devoted to protecting the environment, supporting the United Nations and reducing the threat of nuclear, chemical and biological warfare.”

For journalists, CNN, the urgency it brought to the news environment and the news standards the network followed were Turner’s major achievements. Turner agreed. He wrote, “The creation of CNN is the business achievement of which I am most proud, and CNN’s coverage of Operation Desert Storm was our network’s proudest moment.

“By being there — live — and in person, we gripped viewers around the world. Bernard Shaw, John Holliman, Peter Arnett and our crew showed incredible bravery and did a fantastic job. Here in the United States our ratings skyrocketed and there were nights when our viewership surpassed the broadcast networks’. Just over ten years after launching and being ridiculed as ‘Chicken Noodle News,’ CNN had established itself as the most capable, trusted news outlet in the world.”

Steven Holmes (pictured) joined CNN in 2008, years after Turner’s 1996 sale of Turner Broadcasting System, which included CNN, to Time Warner. Holmes wrote on social media “as a member of CNN’s Office of Standards and Practices for 11 years.”

Turner’s “legacy is in danger of dying, just as its birth father is passing,” Holmes wrote. “The sale of Warner Bros. Discovery, the parent company of CNN, to Paramount Skydance – a merger supported, if not engineered by the Trump Administration and significantly financed by the sovereign funds of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar – places that legacy in jeopardy.

“This merger gives control over CNN to David Ellison, CEO of Skydance who, along with his father Larry Ellison, are key allies and financial backers of President Trump. I along with many others fear this will lead to CNN being hamstrung in Its coverage of the Administration.

“We cannot let this happen. We need to use every peaceful tool available – calling out the network if it alters its coverage to please Trump; protesting obviously biased reporting; boycotting the network if necessary – to make sure Ted Turner’s legacy remains alive.”

JSK Fellowship Program Accepts 13 for 2026-27

The John S. Knight Journalism Fellowships program at Stanford University has awarded 13 fellowships for the 2026-27 academic year, Dawn Garcia, the program announced Thursday.

“To strengthen journalism’s independence, bolster its essential role in building informed, democratic communities and to keep journalists safe, we need multidisciplinary approaches. I’m excited by the mix of journalism innovators, leaders and those from support organizations we’ve selected to learn together in a stimulating environment and be a catalyst for change,” Garcia said.

The new class includes eight U.S. and five international fellows.

Top row, left to right, in photo:

• Andrés Cediel, Berkeley, Calif., independent journalist and documentary filmmaker

• Emily Chebet, Nairobi, Kenya; senior reporter/video editor, Citizen TV, Royal Media Services

• Florian Danner, Vienna, Austria, co-anchor, PULS 4, ProSiebenSat.1

• Jesse Hardman, senior program adviser and founder, Listening Post Collective, Washington, D.C.

• Katherine Jacobsen, U.S., Canada and Caribbean program coordinator, Committee to Protect Journalists, Washington, D.C.

• Kuek Ser Kuang Keng, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; senior editor, rainforest investigations, Pulitzer Center

• Byrhonda Lyons, Sacramento, Calif., investigative reporter, CalMatters

Second row, from left:

• Valentina Lares Martiz, editor-in-chief, Armando.info, Caracas, Venezuela (in exile)

• Alyona Nevmerzhytska, Kyiv, Ukraine, CEO, hromadske

• Natalia Algarín Sánchez, Atlanta, senior project curator and strategist

• Sage Van Wing, executive editor of talk and podcasts, Oregon Public Broadcasting, Portland, Ore.

• Aiola Virella, editor-in-chief, Metro Puerto Rico, San Juan, P.R.

• Ben Werdmuller, senior director of technology, ProPublica, New York

Eileen Kerlin Walsh and Christine Hernandez hold hands after undergoing a kidney transplant in April. (Chicago Sun-Times/provided)

Sun-Times Story Prompts Reader to Donate Kidney

“A year ago, Christine Hernandez and Eileen Kerlin Walsh were total strangers. Now, Hernandez is hoping to one day visit Kerlin Walsh’s family in Ireland,” Elvia Malagón wrote Friday for the Chicago Sun-Times.

“Hernandez, 51, had spent the past eight years doing everything she could to find a kidney donor — from passing out business cards with her story to showcasing her search on billboards along highways. She had been among more than 3,700 people in Illinois who were waiting for a kidney transplant.

“Kerlin Walsh read about Hernandez’s journey last fall in the Chicago Sun-Times. She was struck by the idea that Hernandez was searching for a miracle, and that Hernandez still held out hope despite the many setbacks she experienced. . . .

“Hernandez, now living with a new kidney thanks to a transplant in April, sees a connection with Kerlin Walsh akin to a ‘lifelong sisterhood.’ People typically nickname their donated organ, and Hernandez decided to call her kidney ‘Miracle.’ ” . . .

Adams to Host ‘Marketplace Morning Report’

“American Public Media has named Kimberly Adams (pictured) host of Marketplace Morning Report,” effective June 8, Tyler Falk reported Thursday for Current.

“In April, APM announced that David Brancaccio would move into a new role as special correspondent after 13 years hosting the program. . . . Adams is Marketplace’s senior Washington correspondent and host and senior editor of the podcast Make Me Smart. She also hosted APM’s Call to Mind program.”

“In all my days as a journalist and leader — and there have been a few — I’ve never been as excited as I am today to introduce Kimberly Adams as the new host of the Marketplace Morning Report,” Neal Scarbrough, VP and GM of “Marketplace,” wrote on LinkedIn.

“Kimberly has worked diligently to build her star power as a reporter, host and all-star colleague. And now she’ll bring a new face and a new voice to more than 700 stations every morning.”

Adams said in a press release, “David is leaving behind an amazing team that I’m thrilled to join in helping folks start their mornings with a better understanding of how the global economy affects their personal lives.”

Short Takes

• “We hope to convert our content on cleveland.com into short videos for YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok. We want to reach audiences there,” Chris Quinn, editor and vice president of content for cleveland.com / The Plain Dealer, wrote readers April 25 in a “letter from the editor. “We hope to convert our content on cleveland.com into short videos for YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok. We want to reach audiences there. Many people today don’t visit news sites. They consume short videos chosen by algorithms. We believe they care about our topics but don’t see us there. AI gives us the chance be creative in converting our content into short-form videos that might appeal to new audiences. . . . The only certainty is that what we produce will be quality journalism, with journalists at the controls. . . .”

The Baltimore Sun has been raising questions about the military record of Wes Moore (pictured), the nation’s only Black governor, who is seeking re-election. A relationship with his military mentor, “and the assignment that followed, raise questions about favoritism, military judgment and the way Moore’s Afghanistan deployment later became part of his public biography,” Drew Sullins reported Sunday. “None of those questions erase the fact that Moore served in Afghanistan. He did. But the records reviewed by Spotlight suggest the story of how he got there is more complicated than the misleading public narrative has indicated.”

Marvin Joseph (pictured), a staff photographer for The Washington Post for 29 years and seven months, begins this coming week as visual operations manager for Education Week. “I will always be a photographer, but in this next chapter, good ole Marv moves into management,” Joseph messaged Journal-isms. Managing editor Sean Cavanagh said, “We’re thrilled to have him on board!”
The Post eliminated all staff photographer positions in February layoffs.

Scenes from the International Journalism Festival in Perugia, Italy.  (Credit: Maynard Institute for Journalism Education)

• “Black Beyond Borders: A Global Town Hall on Journalism, Identity, and Resistance,” brought together journalists, media leaders, scholars and others from across countries and cultures to ask a set of questions that felt both immediate and enduring: What does it mean to be a Black journalist in this moment?” Martin G. Reynolds, co-director of the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, wrote Friday. The town hall was convened by URL Media and the Maynard Institute during the International Journalism Festival in Perugia, Italy, April 15-18. “We are now exploring what it might look like to take Black Beyond Borders to other countries and communities, not as a one-time gathering, but as an evolving network of journalists in conversation across borders. So if this speaks to you, reach out. Let’s have a conversation,” Reynolds concluded.

• Blavity Media Group (BMG) is shutting down its 21Ninety and Home & Texture brands as the digital media company struggles to drive traffic to its media sites, according to an internal memo I reviewed,” Phil Lewis reported Saturday for his “What I’m Reading” newsletter. “The memo blamed the decline in traffic on search engines like Google, which are now devouring online news publishers’ search traffic due to new AI tools, and on social media platforms that “throttle external links to keep users on their apps.”

More than 1,000 people attended the grand opening of  the Center for Black Excellence and Culture in Madison, Wis. The event became a reunion of local leaders and community members. (Credit: Ruthie Hauge/Capital Times)

• “A who’s-who of Madison’s Black leadership, along with elected officials, philanthropists, journalists and dignitaries, packed the new Center for Black Excellence and Culture on Wednesday for the grand opening of the three-story, 37,000-square-foot building on Madison’s South Side, the culmination of years of community listening sessions, a $32 million debt-free capital campaign, and a vision that founder Rev. Dr. Alex Gee has carried since childhood,” Robert Chappell reported Thursday for madison365.com. Gee has said he is open to incorporating journalism into its programming. Capital Times photos

• Black by God, a West Virgina-based Pivot Fund grantee, recently lost a $350,000 federal grant tied to its agriculture reporting, the Fund reported. The cuts were part of a broader USDA funding pullback, with officials citing opposition to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives. But BBG hasn’t scaled back. They’ve mobilized. The outlet launched a $100,000 community campaign on May 2 anchored by a 24-hour live podcast-a-thon on a houseboat — bringing community voices, storytelling, and fundraising together in real time. The effort has already raised over $13,000 and continues to build momentum.”

Marking the 30th anniversary of his hiring at the Plain Dealer in Cleveland, Chris Quinn, now editor and vice president of content cleveland.com / The Plain Dealer, reflected Saturday on  “people whose lessons kept me afloat” at the news operation, One was Debra Adams Simmons, now editor-in-chief of special projects at WGBH in Boston. Simmons “taught me the most valuable lesson of all: leaders must be humans first. A big story had occurred in Cleveland, and a reporter on our staff had kept secret that he had personally experienced part of it. His knowledge would have helped us advance the story, but he wouldn’t talk about it, angering many of us. Debra called me in and explained that he had been traumatized and was barely coping. Pressing him would cause harm. The people have to come first, she said, even if it means giving up a good story. I’ve walked away from a few stories since then. Our newsroom is better for what Debra taught me.”

“Four years after the Israeli military’s killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh (pictured), the reported investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) into her murder appears to have stalled,” Committee to Protect Journalists said Thursday. “It remains unclear whether any eyewitnesses in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories have been formally interviewed, and the FBI — the agency responsible for investigating crimes against U.S. citizens anywhere in the world — has not issued any public update or provided a timeline for completing its investigation. . . .”

• “Indigenous journalists across Asia — home to two-thirds of world’s Indigenous population— remain largely invisible in mainstream media, lack resources, and face critical risks for their work, according to a new report,” downtoearth.org reported Wednesday. “The state of Indigenous journalists in Asia: Examining the challenges, representation, and resilience of Indigenous journalists in the Asian nations of Cambodia, Bangladesh, India, Malaysia, Nepal, Philippines and Thailand” was prepared by the Knowledge for Development Foundation (K4D), a Thailand-registered non-profit.

Two Haitian journalists have died violently since May 1. (Illustration: El Nuevo Diario)

• “Two Haitian sports journalists have died violently in separate incidents over the past four days, under circumstances yet to be clarified by authorities, amidst the worsening security crisis that has gripped the country for years,” the EFE news service reported Wednesday. “Journalist Jean Brunet Bontemps and photojournalist Jean-Marc Stevenson Ysemai passed away last Friday [May 1] in Port-au-Prince, and on Monday [May 4] in the city of Les Cayes (south), respectively. Brunet Bontemps, who worked for years as a sports commentator for Radio Energie, died in a hospital after being shot multiple times on the porch of his home, not far from the Sylvio Cator football stadium in downtown Port-au-Prince. […] Meanwhile, sports photojournalist Stevenson Ysemai was found dead in the locality of Ravine du Sud, in Les Cayes — in the southern part of the country—two days after his disappearance, which occurred on the afternoon of May 1 in that city.” . . .

• “In Tshopo, a northeastern Congolese province blanketed in rainforest, rumors rippled through villages late last year claiming a mysterious illness had caused men’s genitals to atrophy,” Jessica Donati, Fiston Mahamba and Rachael Kennedy reported Thursday for Reuters.  Angry mobs attacked and killed four health workers conducting vaccination research  “The violence has since spread to other parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo. In all, at least 17 killings related to the atrophy rumor have been reported. . . . An examination of over a dozen video testimonials by the news agency, one of them viewed hundreds of thousands of times, found that churches helped spread the rumors in Tshopo. Overseas accounts and local news media also played a role. . . . Further complicating efforts to tackle false information, aid cuts by the United States and other nations over the past year have left [the World Health Organization-led Africa Infodemic Response Alliance] low on funds, Director Elodie Ho told Reuters in an interview.”

• “In 2022, La Nación, Costa Rica’s leading newspaper, broke several stories documenting a major sexual harassment investigation involving a presidential candidate, Rodrigo Chaves, who worked at the World Bank at the time. Mr. Chaves was eventually elected as the country’s leader even though an internal investigation by the bank, where he held a senior position, led to his demotion,” Emiliano Rodríguez Mega reported Monday for The New York Times. “As president, he has cozied up to Trump officials. . . . On Saturday, the U.S. State Department barred most of La Nación’s executives from traveling to the United States, the newspaper said in a statement. La Nación said the Trump administration had revoked the U.S. visas of five of its seven board members without an official explanation. . . . The visa decision appeared to be part of a larger strategy by the White House to punish its critics and reward its allies, analysts said. . . .”

• “Eight journalists disappeared or were murdered in Mexico in 2025, the UK-based journalist advocacy group Article 19 said in a report published on Wednesday, which named Mexico as the country in Latin America with the highest ‌rates of censorship and judicial harassment against the press,” Lizbeth Diaz reported Wednesday for Reuters.