Posted July 12, 2002
Jay Harris Out of Running for Dean's Job
Jay T. Harris has removed his name from contention in the contest to become dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, New York Daily News columnist Paul Colford reports.
Harris, who as publisher of the San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News was one of the highest-ranking African Americans in the newspaper business, has told friends and colleagues that he wouldn't move east for family reasons, Colford wrote.
Though Harris was among those approached by a search committee and was considered likely to make its final cut, the panel ended up recommending James Fallows, a former editor of U.S. News & World Report, and former New York Times reporter Alex Jones, who heads the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard.
Miffed, Neal Left for P.R., but Realized He's a Journalist
"The industry needs to take notice that some of the finest journalists of color, and some of the most promising young journalists are leaving for other professions," says Terry M. Neal, new chief political correspondent of washingtonpost.com."While some of this inevitably has to do with money, much of it also has to do with the sense of alienation they feel in their own newsrooms. Too often their bosses ignore them, try to steer them into undesirable beats, scold them in harsher tones than they would others for mistakes or shortcomings, or make them believe they are lucky to be here, and that sort of thing," Neal told Journal-isms.
Neal left the Washington Post after the 2000 election campaign after being the only African American in the mainstream media assigned to the George W. Bush campaign. He said at the time he knew of none covering Democrat Al Gore. But when Bush won the election, the White House job went to other reporters. Neal split.
In "A Rising Star Goes for Big Bucks," the Washingtonian magazine wrote then that "In the sweepstakes for plum assignments after the election, the Post has lost a promising African-American writer and picked two relative newcomers to cover the White House." It said that "Neal was making about $90,000 after six years at the paper; he'll be getting near $150,000 in flakdom."
Neal's departure highlighted the newspaper industry's biggest diversity-related issue: "Last year, editors hired nearly 600 minority journalists into their first full-time newsroom job," the American Society of Newspaper Editors said in 2001. "But at year's end, 698 minority journalists had left." Neal was one of them.
"I decided to come back to journalism because I decided that I missed it," said the 1989 graduate of the University of Missouri-Columbia Journalism School. "Sometimes what you do also becomes, to some extent who you are, and I realized that what I am is a journalist. PR is a fine, honorable profession, but for me, it was kind of slow. Frankly, I found it a little boring. I missed the rough and tumble of journalism--particularly political reporting."
As for the roadblocks in the business, he said, "for every dimwit you meet who'll try to hold you down, there's someone else who'll bend over backward to help you make the best of your career."
Neal's work for washingtonpost.com is to include columns, video and audio reports of the 2002 elections, Capitol Hill and the White House.
Hispanic Journalists Protest "Coloring the News" Award
The National Association of Hispanic Journalists has joined the protest of the National Press Club's award to William McGowan's "Coloring the News" book, telling the Press Club board that, "if you insist on honoring this book, then we challenge you to sponsor a public debate this fall between McGowan and a representative of NAHJ or UNITY.
"In the interest of fairness, we want the public to see the book you honor subjected to a level of scrutiny higher than that which was employed by your misguided judges," wrote NAHJ President Juan Gonzalez.
The Press Club last week declared McGowan's book the winner in its press criticism book category, even though it was the only entry. The Press Club's Board of Governors is deciding whether to reconsider the award in response to a request from the Media Monitoring Committee of the National Association of Black Journalists.
NAHJ agreed with NABJ that the book, subtitled "How Crusading for Diversity Has Corrupted American Journalism," is unworthy of the award.
"Anyone can point to examples of bad journalism," Gonzalez wrote. "But to blame such examples on the 'crusade for diversity' shows a profound lack of understanding of what that crusade is all about, and a hostile attitude toward journalists of color. By honoring McGowan, the National Press Club embraces that hostility and lack of understanding." Full text of the letter at the end of this column.
Maine Paper Apologizes for Column of "Bigotry"
"Hatred and bigotry are not welcome" on the Opinion page of the Kennebec (Maine) Journal," executive editor David B. Offer wrote readers on Wednesday.
"We receive our share of letters and columns that fall into that category; our policy is not to print them. But one slipped through the cracks on Tuesday."
The offending column "equated race with crime and welfare – among the oldest and most objectionable stereotypes. It urged people not to shop at businesses that hired Somali immigrants. It suggested that Maine is not as good a place to live and work as it was before the Somalis came here. With no evidence at all, the column tried to link the Somali immigrants to terrorism.
"That is not how important issues involving race, crime and immigration should be discussed," wrote Offer.
The paper is owned by the Blethen family, which also owns the Seattle Times.
Why Sun-Times Upset Korean-Americans
Chicago Sun-Times columnist Mark Brown protested last week that he wasn't responsible for the headline over his column poking fun at dog-eating, "Nation of dog-eaters turns us off to World Cup."
But Michael Miner, writing in the Chicago Reader, says Brown misses the point. "Korean-Americans who reacted to Mark Brown's column -- or to its headline -- weren't angry because it isn't true that Koreans eat dog. They felt they'd been reduced to a caricature and ridiculed for it," Miner writes.
"Which is why Brown's dog column should be remembered as an instance when a columnist chose to kid around a little instead of seizing a golden opportunity to read several books on his subject, survey immigrant groups and anthropologists, and use his space to peel away the layers of cultural confusion that divide one civilization from another -- the way newspaper columnists usually do."
L.A. Station Wouldn't Let Anchor Say Goodbye
KCBS-TV in Los Angeles has made it official: It has hired popular anchor Laura Diaz away from KABC-TV, where she has spent 19 years. KABC wouldn't let Diaz back on the air to say goodbye to viewers.
Diaz told the Los Angeles Times that her last "Eyewitness News" appearance was on Friday, with management keeping her off the air Monday even though she was prepared to work. "I would have liked to say goodbye," she said. "I have nothing but respect for all the people at KABC. It was a wonderful place to work. They made me a nice offer, but Viacom-CBS offered me the opportunity of a lifetime." KABC officials couldn't be reached for comment.
In addition to becoming the main anchor at KCBS, Diaz said she will make several appearances as a West Coast correspondent for CBS' prime-time newsmagazine "48 Hours" and will also be a news reader for the network's morning news. Diaz might also appear at times on sister station KCAL.
L.A. Times Promotes Simon K.C. Li to AME
The Los Angeles Times has promoted Simon K.C. Li, the newspaper's foreign editor since 1995, to assistant managing editor, effective in August.
Li will be responsible for a variety of paper-wide projects, including reporter and editor recruitment, and serve as an adviser to Managing Editor Dean Baquet, the newspaper said.
Replacing Li as foreign editor is London Bureau Chief Marjorie Miller.
2nd Offer Made for Chicago Defender Parent Company
The race to revive Sengstacke Enterprises Inc., the financially ailing owner of the Chicago Defender and three other African American newspapers, kicked into higher gear this week as a second bidder for the company made a formal offer, the Chicago Tribune reports.
Target Market News, a Chicago-based firm that does market research on black consumers, submitted a cash offer Tuesday for 51 percent of the family-owned business.
Ethnic Newspapers on Rise in New York City
The number of newspapers and magazines published in New York City has grown to 270 publications targeting an increasingly diverse population, according to a survey released Wednesday.
The survey by the Independent Press Association-New York said that more than 60 ethnic groups publish newspapers or magazines in 42 languages. Nearly half use a language other than English and 14% use more than one language, the Associated Press reports.
The survey found dailies serving blacks, Greeks, Israelis, Italians, Russians, and Serbs. Six dailies are published for New Yorkers of Chinese descent, five for Koreans, four for Hispanics, and three for Poles.
ABC Radio Taking Larry Elder National
Larry Elder, a black conservative-libertarian who has hosted afternoon drive on KABC-AM, ABC Radio's talk station in Los Angeles since 1994, is going national. Beginning Aug. 12, Elder's show will be syndicated through ABC Radio Networks, broadcasting live from 6 to 9 p.m. ET, reports Media Week.
David Horowitz, the liberal-turned-conservative who has crusaded against reparations for slavery in ads on college newspapers, says he counts Elder as a friend. Elder is often billed as the "Sage from South Central."
Text of NAHJ Letter to National Press Club
July 10, 2002Jonathan Salant
AP
2021 K St., NW
Washington, D.C. 20006
Dear Mr. Salant:
The board of directors of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists is dismayed with your organization's decision to award a coveted prize to William McGowan's book Coloring the News. This insulting book is a poorly argued indictment of the need to ensure diversity in America's newsrooms, in the pages of its newspapers and magazines, and in the images on the nightly news.
While McGowan's book may have been the only entry in the category of media criticism, you still had a choice in deciding whether to honor it or not. That you chose to do so is disturbing. You have given his specious argument a stamp of credibility that it does not deserve.
McGowan's thesis, that the crusade for diversity has caused a decline in the quality of American journalism, is not presented in anything approaching a fair manner. It fails as journalism. It fails as scholarship. McGowan falsely presents examples of bad or incomplete journalism as the direct outgrowth of the demand for the full and fair coverage of non-white citizens and communities. His logical leaps are unsupported by the facts he presents.
McGowan even accuses young journalists, "particularly members of minorities," of harboring a "scorn for objectivity," resulting in a newsgathering environment in which "facts lose their currency." What is his evidence for this outrageous insult? He presents none.
Anyone can point to examples of bad journalism. But to blame such examples on the "crusade for diversity" shows a profound lack of understanding of what that crusade is all about, and a hostile attitude toward journalists of color. By honoring McGowan, the National Press Club embraces that hostility and lack of understanding.
The National Association of Hispanic Journalists demands that news organizations cover issues affecting Latinos in the fullest and fairest manner possible. We do not ask news organizations to hold back on coverage of immigration, bilingual education or any other topic. We merely ask for thorough, complete coverage of these issues.
Thoroughness is something that is lacking in McGowan's book. To cite just one example, on page 15 McGowan refers to a 1996 APME study which found that 40 percent of whites believed that lower standards were employed to promote journalists of color. He fails to note other relevant findings of that study, including the fact that 77 percent of whites agreed that newsroom staffs should reflect society in terms of racial/ethnic makeup and that 86 percent thought that diversity strengthens news coverage and credibility.
Opinion polls are not facts: if our white colleagues believe we are held to a lower standard of performance, they are sadly mistaken. In fact, the opinion is insulting, as it presumes non-white journalists as a whole are less qualified, less committed to good journalism, and less likely to uphold the highest standards of our profession, than white journalists. If non-white reporters are held to a lower standard than white reporters, why is it that America's newsrooms still do not reflect the diversity of America? Why is it that 45 percent of all daily newspapers across the country still do not employ a single person of color in their newsrooms? These facts undermine McGowan's argument.
McGowan routinely tries to lump together the demand for full and fair coverage with bad decisions, fear of offending politically powerful audiences, and "political correctness." The fact that the same journalistic flaws can be found in an examination of coverage of politics, business, and other non-racial issues, is completely ignored. Yes, bad journalism does exist. The crusade for diversity is not to blame for it, anymore than a business editor's demand for strong business reporting is to blame for laudatory articles about Enron prior to 2001. This is a fundamental flaw in McGowan's argument.
And you're rewarding him for it?
We join our colleagues at the National Association of Black Journalists in criticizing the quality of this book, and in criticizing your ill-advised decision to uphold it as one of the year's best efforts.
If you insist on honoring this book, then we challenge you to sponsor a public debate this fall between McGowan and a representative of NAHJ or UNITY. In the interest of fairness, we want the public to see the book you honor subjected to a level of scrutiny higher than that which was employed by your misguided judges.
Sincerely,
Juan Gonzalez
President
National Association of Hispanic Journalists
Send tips and comments to Richard Prince.
Posted July 10, 2002
Press Club Board Discussing "Coloring the News" Again
The board of governors of the National Press Club is taking up a request from a National Association of Black Journalists committee to re-examine its award to William McGowan's book,"Coloring the News: How Crusading for Diversity Has Corrupted American Journalism."
The Press Club declared McGowan's book the winner in its press criticism book category, even though it was the only entry. The NABJ Media Monitoring Committee argued that the book is shoddy journalism unworthy of the award.
Associated Press reporter Jonathan D. Salant, who chairs the Press Club board, told his colleagues that "because the objections have come from such a reputable organization, I am asking the Board of Governors to decide whether to reconsider our action. . . . Groups such as NABJ who raise objections to a decision deserve a fair hearing by the board. Even if we decide not to act, they at least know we have considered their arguments." Board members were to let Salant know their thoughts by Thursday. Full disclosure: This columnist chairs the NABJ Media Monitoring Committee.
Ted Williams, Integrationist
Ted Williams' record on race relations wasn't a highlight of the tributes that ran after the legendary outfielder died Friday at age 83. But Boston Globe columnist Alex Beam reports that New York sportswriter Howard Bryant will soon publish a book that deals with Williams' role in the long-delayed 1959 integration of the Red Sox, the last team in major league baseball to include black players.
"Shut Out: A Story of Race and Baseball in Boston" runs through horror stories from the old days, such as the Sox' memorable, off-day 1945 tryout of Jackie Robinson, who was passed over and who hated owner Tom Yawkey ("one of the most bigoted guys in baseball" - Robinson) for the rest of his life.
Elijah "Pumpsie" Green was the first African American to take the field for the Sox. "If Pumpsie Green was unsure of what to expect from his teammates, Ted Williams provided the answer," Bryant writes. "The great, aging star chose Green to warm up with him before every game. It was the symbolic gesture of a true leader, for even if anyone did harbor a problem with Green's arrival, no one would cross the mighty Williams."
Green's career fizzled, but Bryant caught up with him in California, after Williams had used his 1966 Hall of Fame induction ceremony to bemoan the absence of Negro League players in the Hall. ''After hearing of Williams's speech, Green remembers smiling to himself,'' Bryant writes. ''Green remembers Williams as one of the few players that first year that made him feel like both a ballplayer and a man.''
Gephardt Aide's Job: Hispanic Journalists
House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt, D-Mo., has focused intensely on the Latino vote lately, studying Spanish in Mexico, appearing almost weekly on Spanish-language television and hiring a full-time aide to reach out to Hispanic journalists, reports Juliet Eilperin in the Washington Post. The aide is Fabiola Rodriguez, director of media outreach.
Gephardt issues a weekly column in Spanish, holds roundtables with Spanish-language reporters and editorial boards and, like the White House, now has a Spanish-language Web site, Eilperin writes in a story about the battle for the Latino vote.
Patty Talahongva Leads Native American Journalists
Patty Talahongva of Tempe, Ariz., an independent multimedia journalist who contributes to the national radio talk show "Native America Calling" and serves on the board of the Radio and Television News Directors Association, is the new president of the Native American Journalists Association.
Talahongva, a Hopi who was NAJA's vice president, was elected by the board members June 22 during NAJA's convention in San Diego. She replaces Mary Annette Pember, Red Cliff Band of Wisconsin Ojibwe, a freelance photographer from Cincinnati who was elected vice president, reports the Associated Press.
Andre Morriseau, Ojibwe, a freelance broadcaster from Toronto, was elected secretary. Lori Edmo-Suppah, Shoshone-Bannock, editor of the Sho-Ban News of Fort Hall, Idaho, was re-elected as the group's treasurer.
L.A.'s Popular Laura Diaz Switches Stations
KCBS-TV in Los Angeles has hired popular Laura Diaz away from KABC-TV, where she has spent 19 years, the last five as anchor of its 5 p.m. and 11 p.m. newscasts, reports Electronic Media. Don Corsini, the general manager of KCBS-TV amd KCAL-TV, said Diaz would become "the lead female anchor at Channel 2."
Corsini said the hope is that Diaz, a first-generation Mexican-American born to field laborers in Santa Paula, Calif., who was reared in northern Los Angeles County and is very active in the Latino community, will bring her following with her. KABC-TV had said that when Diaz began anchoring its 5 p.m. and 11 p.m. newscasts in 1997, she became the first Hispanic in the city to hold such a position.
Sports Columnist Bryan Burwell Heads to St. Louis
Bryan Burwell, who has written columns for USA Today and the Detroit News and has worked at the New York Daily News and New York Newsday, is joining the St. Louis Post-Dispatch as a sports columnist in early August.
"Burwell has an excellent track record of writing strong, opinionated, insightful columns." said Larry Starks, assistant managing editor for sports at the Post-Dispatch. Burwell is also a correspondent for HBO's "Inside the NFL."
Web Site Seeks to Link Jobs, Journalists of Color
When reporter Eric Wee left the Washington Post in March, where he had worked since 1993, "I could see that there needed to be one place where media companies could go easily to recruit journalists of color." The result is Wee's new Web site, www.journalismnext.com, a free job board and discussion board specifically for journalists of color.
"For the employers (especially smaller papers) and job seekers of color who can't afford to go to job fairs, this is a good alternative. Hopefully it'll help the overall effort to make newsrooms more diverse," Wee told Journal-isms.
"Job seekers can post their resumes and can send them to employers using the site. Job seekers can also put their resumes up anonymously . . . They can also set things up so they are notified when certain jobs are posted that meet their requirements.
"Finally there's a discussion board on the site to better connect all journalists of color," he wrote to the National Association of Black Journalists listserve.
Journalists Honored for Americas Coverage
Journalists from the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Washington Post, Dallas Morning News and Miami Herald were among the U.S. winners of the Inter-American Press Association's annual awards. Its grand prize for press freedom went to Mexican journalist Jesús Blancornelas, of the weekly magazine Zeta in Tijuana, for courageous coverage of the most notorious Mexican drug cartels.
The U.S. winners were:
-Peter Andrew Bosch, of the Miami Herald, photography award for his portfolio of images showing prisoners left to die in their cells in Haiti.
-Tim Collie, Michele Salcedo and Vanessa Bauza of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, feature writing award for a story on the alarming spread of AIDS in the Caribbean.
-Lucy Hood, Sharon Hughes, Edmund Tijerina and Edward Ornelas of the San Antonio Express-News, the Newspapers in Education award, for their collaboration with a Texas public high school during a full school year to document how dropout rates are underreported to make schools appear more successful.
-Timothy O'Leary, Dallas Morning News, editorial writing award for his "clear and singular voice among American editorial writers on all hemispheric topics."
-Scott Wilson of The Washington Post, the news coverage award for a series about Colombian paramilitaries.
Winners are to receive $2,000 at the IAPA's 58th general assembly in Lima, Peru, in October.
Honorable mentions went to Javier Erik Olvera of the Fresno Bee, who wrote a 10-page special section in which he described his life as a farmworker for 5 1/2 months; John Otis of the Houston Chronicle, for a story on Colombia's Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the oldest guerrilla army in Latin America; and Peter Fritsch of the Wall Street Journal, for work on the story of a Mexican actress framed in the death of a TV personality.
Williams Sisters Score With Viewers
NBC's coverage of the Wimbledon Championships women's final Saturday between sisters Venus and Serena Williams produced a 4.6 overnight rating/14 share, a 31 percent increase over last year's telecast, reports Broadcasting and Cable.
This year's rating tied the contest in 1999, Steffi Graf vs. Lindsay Davenport.
Both matches were the highest-rated since the 1995 final (Graf vs. Aranxta Sanchez Vicario), which generated a 3.5 rating/18 share.
Univision Claims Ratings Record
Univision Communications Inc. said its coverage of the World Cup Final June 30 (7 a.m to 9 a.m. EST) set a new record for highest share delivered by any single Spanish-language program, with 66 percent of U.S. Hispanic TV-viewing homes tuning in, says Broadcasting and Cable.
The network also said its stations in Los Angeles, Miami, Houston, Chicago, Dallas, San Antonio and Phoenix delivered more viewers than ABC (the English-language rights holder) in those markets.
More Hispanic viewers tuned to the World Cup final than this year's National Basketball Association Finals, last year's World Series or most of the recent Olympic Games telecasts, Univision said.
Nate Tillman, One of Florida's First Black Columnists
Nathaniel Tillman, a former columnist for the Gainesville (Fla.) Sun and one of Florida's first black columnists, died at 75 last Thursday from complications from prostate cancer, the Sun reports.
Tillman was hired at the Sun in 1974 as a copy editor and columnist and was credited with helping break down racial barriers. He wrote a weekly column of soft-edged commentary on social issues and reports on friends and local events. His journalism career began in Louisville, Ky., at the Defender, a black newspaper where he worked as a reporter and editor. He later worked for the Louisville Courier-Journal and Times.
"In his column, he always had a good, common-sense slant on life's situations," said Margaret Warrington, who served as Tillman's editor for much of his 14 years at the newspaper. "When he was growing up, he of course couldn't use the public library. His greatest pleasure when he returned to Gainesville was to go to the library. And to me that was heartbreaking."
Journalists of Color Are "Bolsheviks"
Of all the reviews of William McGowan's "Coloring the News," few quite approached the hysteria of one that moved Monday on the UPI financial wire, by John Bloom:
A passage follows:
I don't know when or why it ended -- McGowan doesn't go into it -- but the era of the journalist as a
cynical loner who doesn't join any organizations is obviously over. McGowan attends a convention called UNITY '99 at which the Black, Latino, Asian-American and Native American Journalists Associations all came together for a job fair and seminars on news coverage. (What? No Islamic Journalists Association? No Catholic Journalists to handle spin control on abusive priests?) I'd heard of these organizations, but had no idea they thought of themselves as insider "watchdogs" that are supposed to police the newsrooms of America in support of a concept called "diversity." (Remember
the subtitle of the book is "How Crusading for Diversity Has Corrupted American Journalism.")
Their received mythology involves seeing all big media organizations as historically racist, white-dominated oppressors and exclusionists, and their various agendas involve destroying that bias. This is why I called them Bolsheviks. It's an almost classic political science case study -- using historical victimization to justify taking any measures necessary, including polite lies, in the present. They also have a Soviet-style tendency to rewrite history in such a way that the original bogeyman – white middle class America -- remains strong, vicious and worthy of ceaseless warfare.
If you're wondering why the managing editors don't just weed these people out and say, "You can join the Black Journalists Association, but don't expect to be assigned to any black issues if you do," it's because the managing editors are either members themselves or supporters of the same organizations. In a way this is more frightening than the idea that a lot of young reporters are carried away by various enthusiasms. (Kara Briggs, president of the Native American Journalists Association, says without apology, "I was born into a tribe, not a newspaper.") In other words, Lou Grant has left the building.
Send tips and comments to Richard Prince.
Posted July 8, 2002
Renee Poussaint, Camille Cosby in Oral History Project
The New York Times and Washington Post featured stories over the weekend on the efforts of Camille Cosby, philanthropist and wife of Bill Cosby, and Renee Poussaint, former ABC News correspondent and onetime anchor at Washington's WJLA-TV, to produce a videotaped oral history archive of African Americans in their 70s and 80s.
The interviews are to be made available through a digital database accessible through the project's Web Site, with the hope that it will ultimately reach a broader audience through television and CD-ROM, the Times' Lena Williams reported. The goal is to complete 60 interviews a year for five years, aspiring to do for African Americans what Steven Spielberg's Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation has done for Holocaust survivors. That project has preserved the testimony of more than 50,000 people.
The first collection includes Judge Constance Baker Motley, former New York mayor David Dinkins, photographer Gordon Parks, artist Elizabeth Catlett, businessman Percy Sutton and former U.S. senator Edward Brooke. Cosby chose Poussaint to help her because she admired her documentary on the eminent historian John Hope Franklin and Nobel Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Post's Jacqueline Trescott wrote.
The Black World Today reports on the reception launching the project.
Les Payne Says Don't Take Douglass' Name in Vain
Black journalists hold few historical figures in higher regard than Frederick Douglass, the great human-rights advocate of the 19th century who published the abolitionist newspapers The North Star and Frederick Douglass' Paper and whose name ennobles the National Association of Black Journalists' highest award.
So when Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas quoted Douglass in a concurring opinion as the court upheld school vouchers, a reference noted approvingly in editorials in the Las Vegas Review-Journal and Deseret News in Salt Lake City, Newsday columnist Les Payne saw red.
Payne, himself an early president of NABJ, calls Thomas everything but a child of God, including "the most celebrated 'Uncle Tom' in the land" and one whose idols run closer to Justice Roger B. Taney, who stated in the Dred Scott case that blacks "have no rights that whites are bound to respect." Not to mention, Payne says, that the justice misread Douglass.
Speaking of Calling *&@!! Names . . .
First Amendment advocates and conservative parents groups, generally antagonists in the debate over raunchy broadcasts, have long agreed that the Federal Communications Commission's efforts at policing indecency and profanity are inconsistent and confusing.
Now, reports Broadcasting & Cable, the FCC appears to have created more confusion in dismissing an indecency complaint filed against WGR-AM in Buffalo, N.Y.
And in an editorial, the publication says, "the FCC once again has demonstrated how inconsistent, and thus indefensible, its indecency-enforcement policy is. Indecency calls are in the eye of the beholder and change with the political winds. These winds appeared to be blowing from Wonderland."
National Press Club's Conflicting Signals
Last week, the National Press Club named William McGowan's factually challenged "Coloring the News: How Crusading for Diversity Has Corrupted American Journalism" winner of its book award for press criticism, though it was the only entry in the category.
But the Press Club president, John Aubuchon, who does work for Maryland Public Television, promised a commitment to diversity during his Jan. 19 inaugural address, which mentioned the McGowan book and rejected its argument. He said:
" . . . This will be the year the National Press Club reaches out. We will reach out to our community, to the people of our region. We will reach out, too, to the broader journalism community, nationally and international. We will be forming partnerships with other leaders in journalism. We will accept our responsibility to be a voice for diversity. Already I have joined with the leadership of UNITY: Journalists of Color and the National Association of Black Journalists to undertake jointly a pilot co-sponsored project. We also will work earnestly for greater diversity within the National Press Club.
"Let me take a moment to talk about diversity. A veteran journalist, William McGowan, argues in a new book that journalism has become gripped by --- his words --- a "disturbing conformity … a race- and gender-conscious pro-diversity agenda that has distorted the news…" I reject that. We who report, write and edit have never done that perfectly. And the views which color our perceptions of events and issues always have been shaped by our times. But we have not always reflected the broader society. Events, views and issues of importance to minority communities have been ignored or worse. The heart of the push for diversity in newsrooms has been the realization that only by bringing journalists of color fully into our editorial process will we --- can we --- change the content of our newspapers and broadcasts to reflect accurately the faces of our communities. That was and remains a valid and valuable principle. I join Mr. McGowan in rejecting any orthodoxy or political-philosophical litmus test for continued newsroom employment. But I oppose the all-too-eager effort to overturn the underpinnings of what is, at heart, better journalism."
Send tips and comments to Richard Prince.
to top of page