February 1 Class Discussion

Part of understanding diversity is realizing that we must look outside our own experiences.  In more than one class discussion, student remarks have included disbelief that anyone in our society still perpetuates particular stereotypes--examples have included Dakotan protests of Native American activities at Mount Rushmore, and Tuesday's references to assumptions about Hispanic behavior.  Though we may consider ourselves enlightened, though we personally may not have experienced nor even witnessed predjudicial words, deeds or attitudes, our lack of understanding does not mean that such things no longer exist.  Entertainment sources can and do influence the perceptions of individuals about groups of people--ethnic, racial, political, religious, gender and other societal subsets are often portrayed in ways that are more harmful than entertaining. 

In the clips that we watched in class on Tuesday, women were portrayed as sex objects, Hispanics were portrayed as unintelligent drunks and men (setting aside Will Ferrell) were portrayed as being in charge.  The entertainment industry tends to take the easy and fast route--and shortcuts often equal stereotypes.  I couldn't think of a positive portrayal of Hispanics in popular culture; maybe George Lopez?  I did find an interesting article from the Harvard Education Review about The Chicano/Hispanic Image in American Film

by Frank Javier Garcia Berumen.  In the Berumen's conclusion, he states, "Undoubtedly, those who watch [television and movies with stereotypical depictions] will internalize the stereotypes they constantly see that reflect, and are reflective of, the cultural and political biases that shaped and continue to shape the Chicano and Hispanic image in American film."  We become what we consume.

1/20/11 Homework

Instead of two long articles, I found three shorter ones about the same folks.  These are reported by Newsweek in coverage of the visit of the Chinese President to the American White House. 

http://www.newsweek.com/blogs/the-gaggle/2011/01/20/an-all-american-white-house-state-dinner.html 
by Daniel Stone

http://www.newsweek.com/blogs/the-gaggle/2011/01/19/the-top-secret-state-dinner.html 
by Daniel Stone

http://www.newsweek.com/2011/01/19/china-s-failed-charm-offensive.html 
by Isaac Stone Fish

The first two selections are blogs, and though the expectation may be for less objectivity in these, the subjectiveness is not as prominent as you might expect.  Most opinion in each of these pieces is brought by quoting others either directly or indirectly.  (For example:  "...there were questions all week from reporters about why Hu would be feted as a friend of America when his government has been at odds with America’s core values, like freedoms for religion, speech, and the press.")  The overall result is still a bit more flexed than news reporting would be.  Which brings to mind the question, how do the diversity guidelines apply to different types of journalism?  Is flexibility for different presentations permissable? 

The next article, about an advertisement for Americans created by the Chinese government in correlation with President Hu Jintao's appearance, comes across with the same blog feel as the first two articles, even though it is not a blog entry.  Not much in the way of crossing diversity guideline boundaries, except for the implication that Chinese and Americans are different and we cannot understand each other (culturally). 

January 18 Homework - Part 2

Historical press accounts of Martin Luther King, Jr. :

King has been on the cover of  Time magazine  five times:

• Feb 18, 1957 - THE SOUTH: Attack on the Conscience
  

  "The man whose word they seek is not a judge, or a lawyer, or a political strategist or a flaming orator. He is a scholarly, 28-year-old Negro Baptist minister, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who in little more than a year has risen from nowhere to become one of the nation's remarkable leaders of men."
  "Says Baptist Minister William Finlator of Raleigh, N.C.: 'King has been working on the guilt conscience of the South. If he can bring us to contrition, that is our hope.'"
  "Personally humble, articulate, and of high educational attainment, Martin Luther King Jr. is, in fact, what many a Negro—and, were it not for his color, many a white—would like to be.'"
  [Of his aversion to violence] "Cowardice? If so, it would come as a surprise to Montgomery, where Martin Luther King has unflinchingly faced the possibility of violent death for months."
  '"I was ready to resent all the white race," he [King] says. "As I got to see more of white people, my resentment was softened, and a spirit of cooperation took its place...'"
• Jan 03, 1964 - America's Gandhi: Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
  "All this was the Negro revolution. Birmingham was its main battleground, and Martin Luther King Jr., the leader of the Negroes in Birmingham, became to millions, black and white, in South and North, the symbol of that revolution—and the Man of the Year.
  

  King is in many ways the unlikely leader of an unlikely organization—the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, a loose alliance of 100 or so church-oriented groups. King has neither the quiet brilliance nor the sharp administrative capabilities of the N.A.A.C.P.'s Roy Wilkins. He has none of the sophistication of the National Urban League's Whitney Young Jr., lacks Young's experience in dealing with high echelons of the U.S. business community. He has neither the inventiveness of CORE's James Farmer nor the raw militancy of SNICK's John Lewis nor the bristling wit of Author James Baldwin. He did not make his mark in the entertainment field, where talented Negroes have long been prominent, or in the sciences and professions where Negroes have, almost unnoticed, been coming into their own (see color pages). He earns no more money than some plumbers ($10,000 a year), and possesses little in the way of material things.
  He presents an unimposing figure: he is 5 ft. 7 in., weighs a heavy-chested 173 Ibs., dresses with funereal conservatism (five of six suits are black, as are most of his neckties). He has very little sense of humor. He never heard of Y. A. Tittle or George Shearing, but he can, discourse by the hour about Thoreau, Hegel, Kant and Gandhi."\
• Mar 19, 1965 - Nation: The Central Points  (The struggle for voting rights in Selma, Alabama.)Discussion mainly of the events in Selma, rather than an in-depth story on King, though he is mentioned and quoted frequently. 
• [Incidentally, WV's Congressman Ken Hechler was the only sitting member of Congress who participated in the Selma March with King.  Click the link above to read the article he wrote about it at the time, and the article he wrote 40 years later looking back.] 
• Oct 25, 1989 (collage with photo of MLK shooting) - Icons: The Greatest Images of Photojournalism 
• Jan 09, 2006 ("The Secret Agony of Martin Luther King, Jr.  An exclusive book excerpt tells the inside story of his troubled final days.")  -  "I Have Seen The Promised Land" 
  Introduction:  "The triumphs of the Montgomery bus boycott and the March on Washington with its stirring "I Have a Dream" speech, the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts and the winning of the Nobel Peace Prize were all behind Martin Luther King Jr. when he began the last and perhaps loneliest year of his life in January 1968. Now black-power militants and even some of his closest advisers were rejecting King's philosophy of nonviolence. Many white supporters of the civil rights movement had redirected their enthusiasm--and their dollars--to opposing the war in Vietnam. Other whites chastised King for speaking out against the war. Constant travel to rally support for his Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), along with his frequent affairs on the road, strained King's marriage. Premonitions of death stalked him. Meanwhile, the FBI stepped up its harassment with wiretaps and dirty tricks. Determined to revitalize his mission and himself, King hoped he could achieve both by leading a multiracial crusade against poverty. He called it the Poor People's Campaign, and although his staff had deep reservations about the idea, he spent what would be his last months planning a new march on Washington. The turbulence of King's final days comes vividly to life in Time's exclusive excerpts from At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years 1965-68, the final volume of Pulitzer prizewinner Taylor Branch's three-part history of the civil rights movement and its most charismatic leader. In this portrait of King as a man under siege, his passion and his rhetoric reach new levels of grace."
  
  
  James Earl Ray, King's assassin, was on the Jun 20, 1977 cover of Time, following his escape with several other inmates from a maximum security prision. (They were soon recaptured, and he died in prison.) 

January 18 Homework - Part 1

For Option A, I chose to look at coverage from a Fox News television station in Memphis, TN, where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in April 1968.  http://www.myfoxmemphis.com/.  Most stories had both video and text coverage for each local article.

The web page for this television news station has a permanent link in their top navigation bar to their own separate site dedicated to Dr. King:  MLK in Memphis - View from the Mountaintop. The last update listed on the site is 1/20/09.

Of the sixteen stories listed or linked on their site with reference to the MLK holiday, over half were local stories, though this includes some duplication or overlap of content.  Two were national stories, and four were from Atlanta.  One of the stories from Georgia  connected the recent shootings in Arizona with continued need for carrying out King's vision of non-violence. 

Three of those local stories were about athletes who received the National Civil Rights Museum Sports Legacy Award, which was presented in Memphis on Monday, and one was about a sports team kicking off "the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. birthday weekend with a Day of Service" in which the Grizzlies gave away food and clothing to needy families. 

Three local stories listed events in the Memphis area celebrating the holiday.  One of these stated that there were "plenty things going on around Memphis Monday in celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s legacy,"  yet only three events were listed:  National Civil Rights Museum MLK Celebration, Martin Luther King, Jr. Unity Walk and "a special birthday celebration" at Children's Museum of Memphis.  A second article listed a gospel concert honoring King and benefitting St. Jude.   The last event-related article expounded on the National Civil Rights Museum event , pointing out that over 10 thousand attendees were expected on Monday--at a facility that averages 800 guests on all the other days of the year. 

Another story was a nearly five minute video interview of  local Rev. Dwight Montgomery, president of the local Southern Christian Leadership Conference, "reflect[ing] on Dr. King's message of non-violence."  (Both the interviewer and interviewee are black men.  Was that a purposeful choice?) 

The most compelling of the Memphis articles was Haslam Spends Day of Service with MIFA, a story about Tennessee's new Governor's first day in office. Both the video and text were short, but the images of multi-ethnic citizens and civic leaders gathered in the same room singing and serving together were a visual gauge of how far this city has come.   The following paragraph was the crux of the article for me: 
"91-year old Ola Mae Crews..., a life-long resident of Memphis, was here for Dr. King's movement. That was a time when she could have never dreamed that a man of color would ever lead this city. But on this day, just such a man was standing in her kitchen."

January 13 Homework

Articles about diverse groups....

Mexican Man Implicated in $15M Drug Conspiracy - The Herald Dispatch, 1/12/11
Is it okay to call out the ethnicity of the Mexican man in the headline, when others are covered in the story, and some, but not all, of the others under indictment were not listed by where they were from?

Paper names ex-Klansman in civil rights murder
- CNN online, 1/12/11
This article provides balanced coverage of a decades-old racially motivated crime.

Gay miner sues Massey subsidiary, alleging widespread harassment - Charleston (WV) Gazette, 12/26/10
Coverage appears unbiased against the homosexual man who is suing; need to check the list of what words are preferred/allowed in the Stylebook.

Boone Co. family stars in documentary - The Parthenon, 7/29/10
For an article about a documentary rife with negative sterotypes, the author did a good job maintaining an unbiased presentation.


Victim, father talk about Marshall University rape - Charleston (WV) Gazette, 12/31/10

January 11 Homework

1. Define diversity.
Diversity is the kalidescope of uniqueness that defines us as individuals and draws us into communities. Celebrating diversity respects differences while recognizing commonalities of the human condition.

2. In addition to choosing the right words, journalists should consider omission and avoiding stereotypes when writing.