Brooklyn Ron

Black Journalists Criticize Their Group's Ties to News Corp. Hours Later, News Corp. Announces New 'Diversity Council'

It all began without any sense of impending controversy.

The president of the New York Association of Black Journalists, Gary Anthony Ramsay, sent a notice out on the organization's listserv, saying NYABJ would be hosting an event sponsored by the News Corp.

The June 24 event would honor "several journalists and supporters who have crossed significant landmarks in their careers as they continue to break barriers," the announcement said.

Then an energetic exchange erupted online after black journalist Eric Tait strongly objected to the relationship with News Corp., arguing News Corp. (which owns The New York Post and a ton of other media) "is not who this organization should be partnering with for anything."

Last night I noticed the back and forth and offered my thoughts -- which I've expressed previously on this blog -- especially about The New York Post and its cartoon showing a police officer shooting a chimpanzee, a chimpanzee that was generally viewed as representing President Barack Obama. [See image accompanying this post.]

My comment didn't show up for many hours on the NYABJ listserv, but I eventually saw it today, and soon thereafter I saw (posted by NYABJ) an AP piece about News Corp.'s new "external diversity council."

Read my listserv comment by clicking here.

Also read, if you like, a few previous BrooklynRon posts on News Corp. They are listed below:

1. "NY Post Editor Col Allan, Widely Viewed as Racist, Likely to be Fired, Media Critic Says
2. ""Oh, the Suspense. Will Murdoch Fire Post Editor Allan and Columnist Delonas?"
3. "Nick Perry Says Post Cartoonist and Editor Should Be Fired. Columnist Mike Daly Says Paper Must Apologize"

(By the way, today's New York Post lists Col Allan as editor-in-chief.)

Read the original NYABJ announcment about the event with News Corp. here.

Read the piece about News Corp.'s new "diversity council" here.

This is all very healthy. Thank you, NYABJ.

(Rupert Murdoch Poll Shows) As Economy Sinks, Faith in Obama is Strong

Well, to the extent that Murdoch has anything to do with big undertakings of his papers, this one puts him squarely in the Obama camp.

Latest Wall Street Journal/NBC poll shows that those surveyed are pleased with what their new president is doing, beating ex President Bush by a long, long shot.

(See it here.)

Recall (you of short, Net memories) that said Murdoch has been besieged of late with calls for him to fire his editor in chief at the New York Post, as well as the cartoonist there who did a cartoon seeming to equate Obama with a chimp shot to death by police.

Critics have said that Murdoch is in something of a quandary, having affection for the editor, Col Allan, and wanting to show a progressive side by cozying up to Obama.

(Read previous BrooklynRon posts, notably this one.)

Rupert Murdoch Takes Hard Line Against NAACP, but Media Critic Suggests Murdoch Will Back Down and Fire Post Editor Col Allan

State NAACP head Hazel Dukes [photo] said on New York 1 this evening that New York Post owner Rupert Murdoch was refusing to fire editor Col Allan over an allegedly racist cartoon in the newspaper.

The cartoon, created by artiste Sean Delonas and vetted by editor-in-chief  Allan, has generated fairly wide disgust in the city and beyond.

It shows police officers who filled a chimpanzee with bullets, standing there as one of the officers suggests, Now someone else is going to have to write next stimulus bill.

Generally held view is the Post is saying this: that President Barack Obama is a chimp. Now that's pretty backland stuff, even for the sometimes raunchy Post.  At worst, some say, is the possible suggestion that Obama should be shot.

It's hard to think of a time when a local newspaper has been subjected to such orchestrated, passionate attacks over something in its editorial pages.

Hazel Dukes, with national NAACP officials and the Rev. Al Sharpton and a bevy of elected officials siding with her, says the critics are taking their case to the FCC, arguing that Murdoch is being allowed too much power as the owner of so many newspapers and television stations, not to mention MySpace.

For someone who was till recently trying to warm up to Barack Obama, Murdoch is in a bad spot.

He and his buddy, fellow Aussie Col Allan, are being made to look like holdouts from the pre-Civil Rights era.

At this point, even the defenders of the cartoon in question say it was, at best, dumb and insensitive.

Stay tuned folks. Media critic Michael Wolf, who knows Murdoch and the Post as well as anyone, thinks Allan is a crass, racially retarded hack who is headed toward the back door, the outhouse.

NY Post Editor Col Allan, Widely Viewed as Racist, Likely to be Fired, Media Critic Says

Attention grows, the discussion widens, all around the wild cartoon that (in the minds of many) says that Barack Obama is a chimpanzee who needs to be shot.

Col Allan [photo], your number may be up.

Allan, you see, is the New York Post editor-in-chief who signed off on that cartoon, which was actually penned by Sean Delonas, who in the past has offended Latinos, Blacks and gays.

All of this attention to the Post cartoon is not good for owner Rupert Murdoch, Fourth Estate power-broker, who has been trying to burnish his image, trying to appear the open-minded lover of truth and decency where there was once a raunchy sensationalist who, yes, tolerated a bit of race-baiting on his front pages.

It was clearly Murdoch who was behind the Post's endorsement last year of Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton. One suspects that editor Col Allan spewed more than a few unprintable scatological comments about that endorsement, in his pre-dawn drinking rounds with the boys.

Murdoch brought Allan over to the Big Apple in 2000 from their home country Australia. At the time Murdoch did not much care that Allan might rile some feathers. Along with his cartoonist Delonas, rile some feathers he did.

But Allan probably went too far this time, says Murdoch biographer Michael Wolf.

Wolf says that Allan is a crass, boozing, known racist who is likely to be given the pink slip.

Is there a clock nearby for the countdown?

(Wolf's book on Murdoch is "The Man Who Owns the News." Wolf's blog can be read by clicking here.)

(Anyone who hasn't seen or doesn't remember the Post Cartoon, can click here.)

Oh, the Suspense. Will Murdoch Fire Post Editor Allan and Columnist Delonas?

On the yes side there is the following argument: That New York Post owner Rupert Murdoch is a power lover who wants to be in with Barack Obama.

Not that Obama himself has been complaining about the cartoon in question here -- the one from a few days ago in which, some say, Post cartoonist Sean Delonas seemed to gleefully compare Obama to a chimpanzee that'd been shot by cops.

But the cartoon is an object of derision and contempt by 99 percent of those in Obama's base, as well as many decent folks of Republican persuasion who think it's wrong to make light of killing politicians.

Not to mention allegations that the cartoonist crossed a racial line in comparing the dead chimp to Obama.

One suspects that Murdoch might be embarrassed or -- at least, in polite company -- pretending to be embarrassed. (If you need to see it again, click here for the cartoon.)

On the other hand -- on the no, he won't fire them side -- is the following: That Col Allan, the Post editor in chief who has defended the cartoon, is a mean and powerful journalist who has been with Murdoch for many years, here and in Australia.

Allan has fired staff at the Post with a confident coldness that surprised even hardened local journalists (including one black female editor who was dying of cancer).

Surviving incidents like this one, Allan turned a deaf ear (and another part of his body) to Blacks, Latinos, gays and others who have complained about the paper's crass insensitivity when it comes to them and their issues.

Allan has proudly called himself a "Giuliani conservative," which many in the city might interpret as code words effectively saying, as Giuliani himself said (effectively), "I don't give a damn what those Blacks and Latinos think."

But here's the bottom line: That the newspaper business is a bottom line business, not as much about truth telling or being fair or being objective, as about selling newspapers.

And Col Allan himself said in a New York magazine interview about the possibility of his being fired someday:

“I’ll get fired not because Rupert doesn’t like the stories I put in the paper. I’ll get fired because we don’t sell newspapers. And that judgment is made not by Rupert, but by the market, and by the audience." (read whole article.)

As the NAACP now calls for Allan and Delonas to be fired -- or face a national boycott -- that day of Allan and/or Delonas' forced farewell may be approaching.

The NY Post Apologizes -- Sort of

The New York Post is apologizing to some, and bashing others.

But the controversy over the cartoon by Sean Delonas -- which some say compares President Barack Obama to a chimpanzee and suggests his assassination -- seems likely to generate ongoing anger and controversy.

And the Rev. Al Sharpton, for one, doesn't seem so appeased by the apology.

Here's the "apology:"

Wednesday's Page Six cartoon - caricaturing Monday's police shooting of a chimpanzee in Connecticut - has created considerable controversy.

It shows two police officers standing over the chimp's body: "They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill," one officer says.

It was meant to mock an ineptly written federal stimulus bill.

Period.

But it has been taken as something else - as a depiction of President Obama, as a thinly veiled expression of racism.

This most certainly was not its intent; to those who were offended by the image, we apologize.

However, there are some in the media and in public life who have had differences with The Post in the past - and they see the incident as an opportunity for payback.

To them, no apology is due.

Sometimes a cartoon is just a cartoon - even as the opportunists seek to make it something else.

Creator of Cartoon That (Some Say) Suggests Obama Be Killed is Author of (We Kid You Not) a Children's Book!

Sean Delonas earns a living spewing hate dressed up in cartoons.

Given that his creations appear in The New York Post, there's a certain logic there.

For no other publication has a reputation for being -- so regularly -- disrespectful of the city's darker people.

What's really strange in this latest Post dust-up is to learn the following: that Sean Delonas recently authored, with his school-age son, a book for children titled "Scuttle's

Big Wish."

The Allentown Morning Call described the book as "a cautionary, but playful, King Midas-based tale about a mouse whose touch turns everything he loves to cheese." And it points out that Delonas did the book as a way of drawing closer to his son, who was living with his mother, and apart from dad Sean, in New Jersey.

From where, therefore, comes this evil nature that would, by the interpretation of some, suggest that the assassination of Obama would be a good thing.

Not to mention the incredible, Ku Klux Klan-like comparison of Obama with a chimpanzee.

We noted last year how strange it was that the Post actually endorsed Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton. Strange, we said, given the Post's history of aggressively and gleefully opposing progressive figures with dark complexions.

Perhaps, we thought, it might be the oh so ambitious hand of Post owner Rupert Murdoch, who saw early on that Obama had winning stuff and wanted to be among the insiders.

Oh, Rupert Murdoch, now is the time to speak and show some decency.

By the way, remember when Delonas (eight years ago) did the disgusting caricature that so angered the Black and Latino community, the one showing Freddy Ferrer kissing the huge backside of the Rev. Al Sharpton?

Here it is:

 

Scoop Journalism's Sound and Fury, Beating up on Paterson and Letting Bruno Slide

There's been much bluff and bluster in the press of late about Gov. David Paterson, so much of it that the uninitiated might expect an indictment to be forthcoming.

But an indictment for what? the naive New Yorker might fairly ask.

Might the crime be using one's public office to enrich himself, pocketing loads of loot from lobbyists?

But wait. That was the crime said to have been committed by former state senator Joe Bruno, wasn't it?

Well, you can be excused for not knowing much about Bruno and his allegedly ill gotten riches.

There's good reason it might have largely escaped you.

The papers and air waves have been over-loaded, you see, with breaking developments about the Paterson dust-up, in which the governor allegedly lied about whether he knew underlings were speaking ill of Caroline Kennedy.

That's the underlying crime, mind you -- that his staffers were spreading gossip about why Kennedy pulled her name out of contention for appointment as U.S. Senator, replacing Hillary Clinton.

Let's not waste many words saying the whispered reasons were, well, reasonable -- that Kennedy was concerned about her suffering Uncle Ted, that she was having marital problems, that she maybe felt Paterson was going to appoint someone else.

And now the press is outraged, just outraged, that Paterson's people would have the gall to say such things, and that Paterson would deny knowing they were saying it.

Of course, there's a bit of hypocrisy here. Some of the very papers that have been beating lately on Paterson were themselves guilty of serious Kennedy abuse, pounding her, in fact, with much greater effect than Paterson's peons ever had.

The press, including very notably The New York Times, continually characterized Kennedy as inarticulate and unprepared, making much of her "you knows" and her testiness with the press -- maybe the most unforgivable crime here of all.

Indeed, it was clear to some, even a couple of weeks back, that Kennedy was not going to clear the biggest hurdle of all, that of the media.

And now here they are, once again, the credentialed scribes, birds on a wire, flying off like winged gang members after some fancied, tasty morsel.

Coming to mind is the one of the funniest books in the English language, "Scoop," by Evelyn Waugh, who went after correspondents and their anxious quirkiness much as they go after their sometimes  feckless prey.

Albany, believe me, could use such a satirist now.

Psst. Dear 'Post Racial' America: Al Sharpton Isn't Leaving

There he was, earlier this month in the run-up to tomorrow's long-awaited inauguration of its first African-American president.

Yes, that was the Rev. Al Shaprton being welcomed and embraced (in Philadelphia on Jan. 8) by George W. Bush, who thanked Sharpton for his support of Bush's controversial No Child Left Behind education policy.

There's talk all over the country, and the world, about a new post-racial America that is putting its racial obsessions and injustices behind it.

There's some validity in the assessment, given the literal and figurative transformation scheduled to occur tomorrow, Inauguration Day.

But how has this transformation transformed Rev. Al Shaprton?

Well, the change has not been as obvious with Sharpton as it's been, for example, with the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

Jackson (who had issues with Barack Obama along the road and once said -- sotto vocce but recorded -- that he wanted to cut Obama's private parts off) leaves us with the enduring image of him weeping as Obama was elected President.

But with Sharpton, one gets the impression he's on the sidelines, not quite really appreciating what Obama means to the majority of Americans.

Sharpton's hesitancy about Obama was revealed during the 2004 Democratic National Convention when he referred, in his speech, to the then up-and-coming Illinois senator as "Obama Baracka."

Sharpton is not known for slips of the tongue and many believed he was revealing a distaste for Obama as inauthentic and, well, a challenge to Sharpton's primacy on the race issue.

Race and the uses of it have always been Sharpton's raison d'etre and his means of survival. 

In many ways, it's truly amazing that he's reached such heights, given his an extraordinary background that included being an FBI informant, even then laboring around the question of race.

His work with the federal agency -- to try to find black revolutionaries in the early 1980s -- is well documented, as are his flirtations over the years with Republican politicians seeking to keep Democratic challengers at bay.

And so, who knows what Rev. Sharpton is thinking or planning now -- if planning even means more than the next moment.

One thing the world should remember always about Rev. Sharpton: That he has displayed an extraordinarily courageous instinct over the years, on the issue of racial killings of blacks in New York City.

The police killing of African immigrant Amadou Diallo in 1999, one of the most horrid and cold-blooded cases in the annals of police abuse, rose as high as it did on the public agenda, thanks to the energies and passion of Sharpton.

This was true more recently in the (somewhat) similar killing of Sean Bell.

Al Shaprton will live on after Inauguration Day, as talk of a new, post-racial America continues.

But few, likely, will apply the term to Sharpton, whose whole being has rested on the reality of race.

NY Post Endorses McCain, Showing Likely Racial Spit in City

The New York Post barely waited a minute before casting its lot with, and ballot for, Republican candidate John McCain.

This confirmed speculation that the conservative paper's endorsement of Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton, earlier this year, was a show.

More than anything else it was a vote against Hillary Clinton, interesting but not the proof of new progressive politics that some naively thought it might be.

(By the way, see BrooklynRon's post regarding the Post's endorsement of Obama over Clinton in January. Click here.)

The Post endorsement today, coming as quickly as it did after last week's Republican National Convention, would seem to indicate that some New Yorkers (let's be blunt and say conservative white New Yorkers) will openly turn against Obama, despite a New York history of association with the Democrats.

Prominent among those white New Yorkers may be Jewish voters who prefer a hard line with respect to the Middle East, as Joe Lieberman did and does.

We await the surveys and polls that will confirm this suspicion or show it to be wrong.

Here's the Post editorial.