Culture

Lack of Indictment in Garner Case Faulted Across Spectrum “The media can’t breathe,” David Uberti wrote Thursday for Columbia Journalism Review. “That was the reaction of many journalists to news yesterday that New York City Police Officer Daniel Pantaleo wouldn’t be indicted for killing Eric Garner — and it echoed the black Staten Island man’s…

Writer Raises Questions That Get at the “Why” An appearance in an Al Jazeera report on media coverage of the developments in Ferguson, Mo., after the grand jury’s decision not to indict Officer Darren Wilson convinced this columnist that “the media” in such situations has increasingly become defined as television coverage, with radio, the print…

Prosecutor, Protesters Single Out Cable News, Social Media From stone-throwers literally and figuratively to public officials and anguished citizens, the crisis in Ferguson, Mo., this week brought out the media haters. “The President, in a speech addressing the grand jury’s decision not to indict Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson in the killing of Michael Brown,…

D.C. Journalists Say National Reporters Missed the Nuance Near the end of the autobiography he wrote this year with novelist Omar Tyree, four-time Washington mayor Marion S. Barry Jr., recalled his time as a ward representative on the D.C. City Council. “Everyone above the line at The Washington Post, including most of the key editors,…

Rise in Viewership Approaches 50% on Spanish Channels “Many local television stations across the country carried President Obama’s primetime immigration address live Thursday even as major networks said they would stick with regular programming,” Jesse Byrnes reported for the Hill, the Capitol Hill newspaper. “Reports on social media showed that Obama’s speech aired live on…

CNN Host Sorry for Question; Beloved Dad Becomes Pariah “CNN anchor Don Lemon took to the airwaves Wednesday afternoon to respond to the massive uproar over his Tuesday evening question to an alleged Bill Cosby rape victim,” Andrew Kirell reported for Mediaite. The response took place on a day when “NBC — the network that…

Journalists Unimpeded by Ferguson State of Emergency Journalists covering events in Ferguson, Mo., should not interpret the state of emergency declared Monday by Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon (D) as a sign that their rights to gather news will be infringed, Gilbert Bailon, editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, told Journal-isms. Nixon’s order “gives him a 30-day window to…

Black Columnists Offer Tips for Success in Changing Field Members of the William Monroe Trotter Group of African American columnists, meeting on the campus of Jackson State University in Jackson, Miss., were asked to impart advice to mass communications students on Tuesday. What they said sprang from decades of experience and was practical, heartfelt and…

Marie Nelson Named VP of News, Public Affairs Marie Nelson, a broadcast executive who was founding executive producer of NPR’s “Tell Me More,” worked at ABC-TV’s “Nightline” and oversaw projects at Black Entertainment Television, was named vice president, news and public affairs Friday at PBS, the network of “PBS NewsHour,” Ken Burns documentaries and the investigative…

GOP Base Still a Shrinking Portion of Electorate “Democrats got hammered in Tuesday’s election. The conventional wisdom is that this was a referendum on President Obama and a repudiation of his policies,” William H. Frye, a demographer and senior fellow with the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution, wrote Wednesday for salon.com. “Yet, to…