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‘Everything Was Wrong’ in Coverage of Native Child Custody Case
Can you guess where the headline writers’ sympathies lie? “Girl yanked from foster home for being 1/64th Indian” (USA Today from Newser) “Girl, 6, removed from foster family of four years under law about her 1.5% Choctaw heritage (VIDEO)” (Daily News, New York) ” ‘Devastated’ Foster Parents of Part Native American Girl Taken From Home…
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Media Blasts Ted Cruz’s Suggestion to Monitor Muslim Neighborhoods Following the Brussels Attacks
“Media, experts, and civil rights groups are all criticizing Ted Cruz’s call to ‘patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods’ in the wake of terror attacks in Brussels, Belgium, seemingly inspired by ISIS,” Nick Fernandez wrote Wednesday for Media Matters for America. “The plan has been called ‘counterproductive and unconstitutional’ and ‘the exact opposite of what we…
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Cuban President Insinuates That Cuba Has No Political Prisoners
“In a stunning diplomatic display, U.S. President Barack Obama and Cuban President tussled in the Cuban capital Monday over human rights, democracy and the U.S. trade embargo as an American leader visited for the first time in decades,” Josh Lederman reported Monday for the Associated Press. “Castro, who rarely takes questions from the media, fielded…
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Ad Agency CEO Out After Claims of Rape and Talk of ‘Apes’
The chief executive of J. Walter Thompson, one of the biggest and oldest advertising agencies in the world, resigned Thursday after one of his executives accused him of making racist and sexist comments. “The allegations that Gustavo Martinez often mocked women and minorities left many wondering if Mad Men’s portrayal of leering, intolerant ad executives…
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News Outlets Agree That Obama’s Pick for Supreme Court Justice Should Be Considered Accordingly
President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the U.S. Supreme Court, announced Wednesday, appears to meet with the overwhelming approval of the nation’s editorial pages, according to an informal survey. The opinion writers are validating Obama’s statement that the majority of the public is opposed to the declaration by Senate Republicans that they will refuse…
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If Media Were More Diverse, They Would Call Out Trump’s Racism and Xenophobia More Readily
They used different words, but when asked about coverage of the increasingly volatile presidential campaign, the presidents of the national associations of black and Hispanic journalists agreed: Not enough journalists of color have been in decision-making positions. “With 30 percent of the population being African American or Hispanic and our current president being black, the…
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Ugliness Among Trump Fans Spreads to Journalists
A reporter for the website Breitbart News filed a police report Friday alleging that she had been dragged down by the arm as she was asking Donald Trump a question at a campaign event at the Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter, Fla. It was the latest in a growing series of incidents of violence…
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2 Black Reporters Describe Their Experiences at Major Conservative Conference
It was Thursday, March 3, the second day of the 2016 Conservative Political Action Conference outside Washington, D.C., and Julia Craven, politics reporter at the Huffington Post, and Tyler Tynes, a politics fellow there, were gathering material for what would become a piece the Huffington Post headlined, “What Happened When 2 Black Reporters Attended The…
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Media Call Out Republican Maya Angelou Haters in Congress
“Maya Angelou died two years ago but still she lives, a mighty spirit against the small minds of negativity,” began an editorial in the Winston-Salem (N.C.) Journal on Sunday. “She lives through her written words, including her signature poem that smacks back hard against some Washington small minds who tried to belittle her last week.…
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The Movement for Black Lives Has Literally Forged a New Media Landscape
The advent of social media has meant that the Black Lives Matter movement and other protesters have generally been “able to circulate their own narratives without relying on mainstream news outlets,” making more critical the need for mainstream media to staff their newsrooms with journalists whom protesters can trust if the news outlets want the…

