“Where is Everybody? And How Loud Do I Have to Yell?”
I was particularly struck by this NYTimes piece this week, which speaks to my concern about our collective failure to tell the developing story (see News=Too Late to Do Anything, below.) Interesting that Europe seems to be responding quicker and bigger than US. cj 08.04.11
Off Media Radar, Famine Garners Few Donations
By STEPHANIE STROM
Published: August 1, 2011
For better or worse, relief organizations often chalk up their biggest fund raising successes during major humanitarian crises like the famine in east Africa.
The Center on Philanthropy estimates that American nonprofit aid groups received $1.9 billion in cash and in-kind gifts after the Asian tsunami of 2004, and $1.4 billion during the year after the earthquake that decimated Haiti in January 2010.
But aid groups say that raising money to address the famine has been more like that for the flooding in Pakistan last year, when dollars trickled into nonprofit coffers slowly and never came close to reaching the amounts donated to address other disasters.
“It’s even slower for us than Pakistan was,” said Jeremy Barnicle, a spokesman for Mercy Corps, a relief and development group based in Portland, Ore. “The slow onset emergencies are always hard because they lack the immediacy of an act of nature, but they are just as devastating.”
Relief organizations say the discrepancies underscore the pivotal role the media plays in spurring fund raising after disasters. The famine in Africa has had to compete with the wrangling over the debt ceiling, the mobile phone hacking scandals in Britain, the killings in Norway and, in Africa itself, the birth of a new country, the Republic of South Sudan.
“I’m asking myself where is everybody and how loud do I have to yell and from what mountaintop,” said Caryl Stern, chief executive of the United States Fund for Unicef, a fund raising arm for the organization. “The overwhelming problem is that the American public is not seeing and feeling the urgency of this crisis.”
The fund began raising money to provide care and food to the children affected by the famine last month and has so far collected $5.1 million — out of $300 million that Unicef estimates it will need over the next six months to address and prevent starvation in Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti.
Aid groups said they did see an uptick in donations late last week, after the United Nations formally declared a famine in the horn of Africa. “That got it out into the media finally, but until then it was difficult,” said Andrew Blejwas, a spokesman for Oxfam America.
Globally, Oxfam is seeking to raise more than $70 million. It has raised about $36 million so far, mostly in Europe, where donors have been more responsive.
“Our British affiliate has been outraising us significantly for the first time ever — but now, all of Europe is on vacation,” said Mr. Barnicle of Mercy Corps.
Mercy Corps’s American unit has raised $700,000 so far to support its work at a camp in northeast Kenya that is serving refugees fleeing the famine in Somalia, though it also won a $1.5 million contract from the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Mr. Barnicle said Mercy had prepared to invest in advertising to spur fund raising, but that the early response was so tepid, it was concerned it would be a waste of money. “We started online and saw only a very limited response,” he said.
From mediabistro.com/Fishbowl NY
Thanks to Jerry Barnash for this piece in FishbowlNY that ran on August 3rd.
Carol Jenkins was a top-notch broadcast journalist for several decades in New York. She is most remembered for her nearly quarter-century at WNBC as an anchor and reporter.
Since leaving the business a decade ago, Jenkins wrote a book and started formulating a second one.
“I thought I was going to have this grand producing career,” Jenkins admits. “My timing wasn’t [good]. I started trying to do documentaries just as reality television [took off].”
But her pet project was being a founding president of the Women’s Media Center.
Always an advocate for more women in newsrooms, Jenkins had the perfect forum for her cause.
“When we started there were no [female] anchors,” Jenkins says. “We didn’t have Katie Couric, Diane Sawyer. Candy Crowley, [or] Rachel Maddow. We waged a quite a persistent campaign, both online and meeting with big executives at all the networks.”
When it comes to women, Jenkins is happy with the industry today.
“Absolutely we’re moving in the right direction, but you have these high-profile exceptions –almost,” Jenkins says.
The media fervor surrounding Couric’s move to the CBS Evening News from NBC’s Today Show lingers with Jenkins. She recalls an exchange with a reporter.
“The first question out of the reporter’s mouth—‘What did you think about her legs?’”
“I said, ‘I beg your pardon.’”
The reporter persisted, “Don’t you think she was showing too much leg?”
“We were still focused then on the wrong kinds of things,” Jenkins tells FishbowlNY.
But, Jenkins does see drastic changes for the better.
“Diane Sawyer made a seamless entry behind the anchor desk [at ABC],” Jenkins says.
Crowley with CNN’s State of the Union and ABC’s This Week with Christiane Amanpour are Sunday political shows that traditionally were hosted by men.
“We really went through a seismic upheaval when women were put in those positions,” Jenkins admits.
While the New York based-Women’s Media Center, founded in 2004, isn’t done promoting women in television news, Jenkins says the next major focus is finding people of color.
“There’s been a huge loss of representation in newsrooms and people of color,” Jenkins says. “There’s a lot of work still left to be done.”
Jenkins says the TV news “Ol’ Boys Network” instilled decades earlier is hard to shake.
“This news was once something,” Jenkins admits. “That something really was white male representation. It really didn’t include, for years and years and years, any women or any people of color.
“I think it’s taken a gigantic effort to adjust to that transition,” Jenkins says.
However, Jenkins cautions that any positives should be taken with a grain of salt.
“The higher you go, the thinner the air gets for women and people of color,” Jenkins says. “I think the figure that we used when we started the Women’s Media Center is essentially the same–3 percent of women hold those top positions.”
She says women are just beginning to puncture the glass ceiling, but “it’s still a rarity.”
Jenkins’ ultimate goal is seeing a woman of color get a high-profile gig. She would have been delighted if Couric’s replacement at CBS (instead of longtime correspondent Scott Pelley) were a black female.
“That would be sensational, That would be fabulous,” Jenkins says. “I think Soledad O’Brien could do it.”
Part of the reason for a lack of black anchors in top notch positions, Jenkins intimates, is because the “benches are so weak.”
She says the networks are to blame for not building their talent pool with African-Americans.
“I would be the last one to say, just because someone is a person of color or a woman, that they should [be promoted] without the experience,” Jenkins says.
The Emmy Award winning anchor/reporter certainly had the experience, and gladly wears the badge “trailblazer” proudly.
“There were people ahead of me, like Norma Quarles [former NBC News reporter] who was already at the network…I can’t quite claim first generation,” Jenkins says. “But that next generation, and the fact that I managed to have a long career of 30 years was trailblazing in that regard.”
When Jenkins stepped away from the TV news business (including her own daytime show on WNYW/Channel 5), her “to-do list” was complete.
“I had done everything that I could do,” Jenkins says. “There really wasn’t anything left on the horizon. Once, in fact, I had gone to South Africa to cover Nelson Mandela’s release [in 1990], every other story after that was boring.”
Boring is usually not a word to describe local news. Jenkins also has strong opinions about the overall coverage.
“After I’ve watched a heavy dose of local news, with a certain kind of story, I feel ill,” Jenkins admits.
Therefore, Jenkins, associated with many years of political reporting, finds most of her news via the Internet.
The WNBC veteran recently visited her old 30 Rock digs and saw the political reporter-emeritus—Gabe Pressman.
“[He] was still sitting at his desk working away,” Jenkins says. “He is a true, dedicated newsman.”
Another of Jenkins’ longtime colleagues is the legendary anchor team Chuck Scarborough and Sue Simmons.
“I say to Sue, ‘Haven’t you guys made enough money yet?’ Jenkins laughs. “I think the answer is probably no.”
Jenkins, as many have been forced to do thanks to the economy, reinvented herself online. She has embraced social media.
“I started blogging, I have a blog now,” Jenkins jokes. “I think I was the last person not blogging.”
She regularly blogs at her carol jenkins: media site.
Jenkins is also active on Facebook.
“It doesn’t come naturally, so it’s this uphill climb,” Jenkins says.
As documented, the uphill climb is what women and blacks face getting face time. Even though Jenkins doesn’t have as much daily involvement, her passion remains the Women’s Media Center.
“That’s the legacy, if we’re able to put ourselves out of business, where one day the Women’s Media Center would not be necessary,” Jenkins says.
News=Too Late to Do Anything
How does one effectively explain why we should care–and do something about–the starving and sick and the poor? Even though most of us in our minds feel that we would do the right thing if options were presented to us, we have become fatigued by the incomprehensible: famine, earthquake, tsunami, consuming disease, unemployment of nearly 10 per cent of our population, nearly 30 percent of African Americans
I thought about this last night as I was explaining–to a 12 year old–an upcoming medical outreach I’ll be doing in rural Uganda. As part of my AMREF work (African Medical & Research Foundation) I’m part of a team following our board member, Dr. Rodney Davis of Vanderbilt University, as he performs surgeries–including fistula surgery– with local African doctors at Kagando Mission Hospital in the southwestern part of the country.
We were having this conversation in a French bistro in Manhattan–Madison and her parents are visiting New 
York–and as we talked, the waitstaff replenished our water and bread with almost every sip and bite. The very fact of having any water and any bread is considered an extreme luxury by much of the developing world–and I daresay for an increasing population of the hungry right here at home.
And yet, we seem to be constantly surprised by this. We are shocked by the thousands of starving, near-dead (and dead, carried by the survivors) women, children and men streaming from Somalia into Kenya, escaping the worst famine in 50 years.
Part of our ignorance is the media’s fault. We too often define “news” as what happens when it’s too late to do anything about it. Eleven million people (when you include Ethiopia and those in Kenya) do not starve nearly to death overnight. They do not walk/run/crawl for hundreds of miles on a moment’s notice.
Our media did not do a good enough job of making sure we knew what was going on there…and we as citizens didn’t do enough with the scraps of information that got as far as us. Humanitarian organizations have been pleading for coverage and help for years. Perhaps for the mainstream media, it just wasn’t late enough yet.
President Obama, in meeting with the heads of Guinea, Cote d’Ivoire, Niger and Benin in Washington yesterday
seem to confirm that inattention, by more than the media:
“…we discussed how we can partner together to avert the looming humanitarian crisis in eastern Africa. I think it hasn’t gotten as much attention here in the United States as it deserves.”
And when it comes to healthcare, there remains, as it has for decades, a crisis. The New York Times yesterday (7.30) had a front page story on maternal deaths in Arua, Uganda. The photograph of a sub-par delivery room, really, should come as no surprise. For me, the crux of the story was this:
“At regional hospitals like the one in Arua, more than half the positions for doctors are vacant, part of a broader shortage that includes midwives and other health workers.”
Earlier this year I participated in a conference in Bangkok, sponsored by WHO and The Global Health Workforce Alliance. We looked at the healthcare shortage in the developing world: we’re at least 4 million workers short. Now there’s a story that needs to be on the front pages. Before it’s too late.
(Note: AMREF is supplying medical care in the refugee camps in Kenya during this crisis, as well as training health care workers in 30 African countries. www.amrefusa.org)
Going to the Movies–at the White House
If not for an invitation from Michelle Obama (you know, her people emailed my people) I might have missed seeing The Help. But a request for my presence in the White House screening room was too enticing–not to mention singular– to turn down.
And so yesterday I found myself seated next to Marian Wright Edelman of The Children’s Defense Fund, amidst a group of other afternoon film buffs and stars Emma Stone and Octavia Spencer, acting as if we had nothing else in the world to do at 3:30 in the afternoon on a Wednesday.
It’s a 40+ seat theater– red fabric walls and red plush chairs, popcorn and soda pop, and all. The First 
Lady, completely gracious and welcoming, introduced the film and its two stars before heading back into meetings. She explained that she and the girls and her mother watched the film last week–and she believes it to be instructive in the progress made in racial matters. Certainly the fact that we were at that moment staring at the first-Black -First-Lady in her private screening room at The White House was a counterpoint to the segregated, pre-Civil Rights setting of The Help.
I may be among the one or two people on the planet, given the book’s success on bestseller lists since it arrived in 2009, who has not read The Help. Something about 512 pages of so-called black dialect written by a non-black person about domestic workers in Jackson, Mississippi always stopped me cold.
This is not to disparage Kathryn Stockett’s intentions–to highlight the good deeds of the maids, the 
sinister streak of the women who used them, and the love between white children and their Black caretakers. And no one can argue that readers everywhere love this story and I always wonder if it is nostalgia for a time when people knew their place.
I know something of that story: the grandmother who was most influential in raising me spent a long successful career as a cook, working for one of the richest families in Birmingham, Alabama. She was one of the last majordomo’s of that era, during a time when the wealthy did not regularly see their children. The children in this household would ask my grandmother, on occasion, “Edna, are we seeing the white folks tonight?” They thought they were Black, of course.
In the film version of The Help we have the brilliant, really one of our finest actors, Viola Davis (Oscar nom for Doubt, Tony’s for Fences and King Hedley II ) and versatile Octavia Spencer, who has a chance to snare a Best Supporting nomination for this film. Their performances carry this project (and the dialogue/dialect), but I kept wishing for better roles for them. Black actresses this talented deserve better parts. Is anyone in Hollywood going to step up?
We get to see Sissy Spacek, Allison Janney, Mary Steenburgen and Cecily Tyson, the good ole Southern gals…and new actresses Emma Stone and Bryce Dallas Howard . Without question, it is a woman’s film–the men hardly issue a peep throughout.
But at 2 hours, 15 minutes, it’s overlong and moves a little bit like molasses, if you know what I mean. It opens “everywhere” on Aug 12th.
FYI, the White House popcorn is pretty good. Michelle, throwing caution to the wind, said we could eat anything we wanted, even drink our soda pop–after all, we were at the movies!
In Somalia, Punishment for the Women
The conversation on Twitter: do you think the Somalia famine will stay visible in the media–or fade? Answer: sadly, fade.
It is the worst famine in a generation, say people whose unpleasant duty it is to do the counting of the starving and the dead. Nearly 4 million in Somalia alone–11 million if you include neighboring Ethiopia and Kenya, victims of unprecedented drought and civil war.
And now, it seems, the rebels who have prevented food from reaching these millions of vulnerable in the southern region have made their most calculating move yet: kidnapping the one woman in the Somali government, Asha Osman Aqiil.
Traveling into Mogadishu for her first cabinet meeting as Women and Family Affairs Minister, Asha Aqiil, 32, was “snatched by a gang” according to clan elder Ahmed Sheikh Mohamud. Her husband was killed three years ago by suspected Islamic gunmen.
Women’s activist Sahra Maalin called it “collective punishment against Somali women and all those who believe in equality.” Under terrorist Shebab rule, linked to al-Quaeda, women are not allowed to hold public office.
The kidnapping has sent a chill through the humanitarian community–the UN said it would be flying 
supplies into Mogadishu “within days”…but foreign hostages are known desirables for the terrorists.
Meanwhile, refugees continue to walk unimaginable distances to camps outside the Somali borders, 130 miles and more, looking for food and shelter.
Why this kidnapping, now?
According to John Campbell, a senior fellow for Africa policy studies at the Council on Foreign Relations,
“The Shebab is trying to show how powerless the government in Mogadishu is, and the fact that it’s a woman minister, perhaps, shows an attempt to make the Western press.”
Yes, Shebab has our attention now–but what about the starving?
(Thanks to ABC News for its Africa coverage.)
The Maid and the Media
As promised, Nafussatou Diallo is talking. She’s launched a full-scale media offensive.
The Sofitel housekeeper who alleges she was assaulted by Dominique Strauss-Kahn has opened Round 2 of the “he said-she said” sensationalized case. At the end of Round 1, improbably she became the villain, accused of lying by the prosecutor and being a prostitute, by Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post. While most other media outlets did not behave that badly, as always the mob mentality led to some pretty outrageous reporting.
In one sense, Diallo had no choice but to come forward, and subject herself to now being described thusly:
“Nafi” Diallo is not glamorous. Her light-brown skin is pitted with what look like faint acne scars, and her dark 
hair is hennaed, straightened, and worn flat to her head, but she has a womanly, statuesque figure.
The interview with Newsweek, photograph and all, hit the internet last night. In the ABC interview with Robin Roberts this morning she says she wants Strauss-Kahn to go to jail.
DSK Accuser Speaks | Video – ABC News
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abcnews.go.com/…/manhattan-ny-doninique-strauss-kahn-dsk-accuser-ro…12 hours ago
Dominique Strauss Kahn’s accuser speaks to Robin Roberts. Exclus |
Nafi Diallo and her lawyers–and the all too willing media– are doing the hard work for the beleaguered and befuddled Prosecutor Cyrus Vance –who seemed to cave in the face of inconsistencies in her story–to the point of dropping the case.
I think these interviews, called by DSK’s lawyers a “circus, ” will once again focus on what police say was, in total, 9 minutes of an indisputable sexual encounter: after all, evidence was found on the floor.
Almost incredibly, Newsweek mentions an “implausible” report out of France in Le Point that DSK admitted to his wife that he’d had sex with 3 women in NYC–something of a “last glass” toast before pursuing the Presidency of France. Really…
The Newsweek reporters come to no conclusion in their story…granted, it has its challenging aspects. This is the most they could say about what they heard from this 32 year old Guinean woman, about her encounter with one of the most powerful men in the world:
It’s possible that Diallo is a woman who has lived for the last few years on the margins of quasi-illegal immigrant society in the Bronx, associating with petty con artists and dubious types trying to get a foothold in this country. But that does not preclude her having been the victim of a predatory and powerful man. Nor does it mean she will rule out an attempt to make some money from the situation.
Given the climate of suspicion that developed around her, Diallo’s last three encounters with authorities, on June 8, 20, and 28, were difficult sessions, as prosecutors grilled her like a defendant.
Nafussatou Diallo is in the main ring, on the offensive now. Oddly enough, when you read her life story, this may not be the biggest fight of her life.
Rev. Al Sharpton, TV Pundit
MSNBC, by all accounts, is about to name The Reverend Al Sharpton as host of its 6PM weekday slot. In the last several weeks of subbing, the Rev has managed to generate interest–and ratings. Last week, we read, he beat CNN and CNBC. That’s all the info we need to know that the contract is being written up even as we contemplate.
His arrival into the land of cable conversation will perhaps finally put to rest the notion of what these shows are: they are not news programs; they are liberal pundit showcases, and as long as we understand that, we can say he certainly fits the bill.
Media analyst, commentator Richard Prince, who writes for the Maynard Journalism Institute site reported last week that some Black journalists are upset the spot wasn’t given to one of us. Wrote Prince:
When rumors surfaced this week that Sharpton was under consideration for the MSNBC job, one NABJ member told colleagues without challenge, “This would still be just another non-journalist media ‘celebrity’ receiving a TV show based upon their name recognition, not their years of experience, training, ability and talent.”
Certainly we have a problem in the absence of anchors of color everywhere, especially in prime time. Talks are reportedly going on with CNN, which has a real problem with diversity. CNN made a real blunder of its recent attempt–hiring Black comic D.L. Hughley for an evening spot that was embarrassing in its Black deprecating humor. Certainly they need our help in identifying great talent.
Yesterday at the Harlem Book Fair (check out BookTV on CSPAN2) I interviewed economist and President of Bennett College Dr. Julianne Malveaux–who has had exceptional success as an on-air pundit. She said we need to applaud the Rev’s new program: she has no doubt that he will –and can with freedom–present the case of African Americans.
The task is not so much to worry about the Sharpton appointment–he is handling himself well in the spot. It’s to look now at all the other hours of cable and broadcast television between the hours of 5-11P, and demand, as has the NAACP, that something be done about the inclusion of people of color.
Mourning, Celebrating the Book
I am guilty. As an early adopter of the Kindle, I feel personally responsible for the wild melee I saw at the Madison Square Garden Borders Books yesterday: crowds with arms full of books, devouring what’s left of another relic–the bookstore chain. I mourned when I heard that Borders was closing its doors. The signs on the windows advertised big sales, “Everything Must Go!” A very helpful staffer said they think it will take until September to empty the warehouses.
One could see the problem: even at closing-the-doors sales prices, I could do better online. Still, out of respect for the dearly departing, I bought a copy of journalist Ellis Cose’s new book, The End of Anger–$19 instead of $24.99. I reminded myself to tell one of my dearest friends, the economics writer Jeff Madrick, that his new excellent book about our economic downfall, The Age of Greed is on prominent display–perhaps he’d like to pick up a few discounted copies? Perhaps I should buy them all? Sadness all around.
Borders was slow on the e-reader front. Based, I’m sure, on prospects of the Nook, media/technology investor John Malone has offered a handsome sum for Barnes&Noble, the remaining chain. Malone saved Sirius/XM radio–hopefully he can save B&N.
By coincidence, I will be surrounded by, immersed in books and writers today at the 13th annual 
Harlem Book Fair. Max Rodriguez, publisher of QBR, the black review of books, has always provided a celebratory, informative gathering honoring black writers and their output. It’s a place for readers. A place for books. Before the recession, a crowd of book buyers as large as 50,000 massed on 135th Street and Lenox Avenue, spilling out of the Schomburg Library.
I’m counting on The Harlem Book Fair to restore my faith in the book’s future.
