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New York Times Promotes Diversity With 3 Prominent Editorial Additions

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The New York Times promotes diversity and its own credibility by promoting three employees to senior-level editorial positions, including a woman to position of executive editor, a person of color to managing editor, and an openly gay man to Sunday opinion columnist.

This past week The New York Times’ announcement of the promotion of Jill Abramson as its first woman executive editor in the 160-year history of the “paper of record” was celebrated not only by women at the Times, but was given noteworthy mentions, as well as substantial editorial space from around the journalistic world by The Los Angeles Times, New York Magazine and the eminent Poynter Institute, which asked in a leading post what Abramson’s appointment could mean to women in the newspaper business at large.

Abramson did not miss a beat in adding more history to the moment by announcing the promotion of Dean Baquet from Washington bureau chief to managing editor, the first African-American to ascend to that position. Baquet, considered a “reporter’s editor,” earned that respect with real chops in 2006 when, as the managing editor of the Los Angeles Times, he was fired for  refusing to carry out orders from publisher David Hiller to sack a considerable number of reporters in the newsroom that would have significantly, according to Baquet, diminish the paper’s great tradition of investigative reporting.

Just nine days earlier, Andrew Rosenthal, the Times opinion page editor, announced that openly gay Frank Bruni, a staff writer, former food critic at the Grey Lady, and author of two books, would  join the eminently regarded opinion-editorial page as an anchor feature writer for the Sunday edition and also write for the Thursday page.

“Mr. Bruni had been the Rome bureau chief from July 2002 until March 2004, a post he took after working as a reporter in the Washington D.C. bureau from December 1998 until May 2002,” Bruni’s bio at the Times states. “While in Washington, he was among the journalists assigned to Capitol Hill and Congress until August 1999, when he was assigned full-time to cover the presidential campaign of Gov. George W. Bush. He then covered the White House for the first eight months of the Bush administration, and subsequently spent seven months as the Washington-based staff writer for The New York Times Sunday Magazine.”

The opinion page has seen considerable change in the past several months with the December 2010 departure of its former editor David Shipley to Bloomberg, along with the March departures of liberal icons Frank Rich and Bob Herbert.

I developed great respect for Jill Abramson in 1994 when she and the intrepid Jane Mayer (now a New Yorker writer) authored Strange Justice, the Selling of Clarence Thomas that revealed copious amounts of documented and politically damaging information about Thomas and his serious dalliance in pornograpy that was never revealed during his epic Senate confirmation hearings in 1991.  And I came to love Abramson in 2009, the managing editor known as a tough newswoman and hard-bitten investigative reporter, when she revealed a softer side as author of the Puppy Diaries, a weekly article  for one year about the life of Scout, her  family’s new puppy (it included an interactive feature that solicited Times’ readers to post their dog’s photo, which I promptly did of my adolescent Bailey, just 8-months-old).

All in all, I think these Times’ hires reflect a world that respectfully places women, blacks and gays at the helm of one of the most eminently regarded newspapers in the world.  This is a “breakout moment”  that so many of us have worked toward creating, achieving and is now beginning to take hold at the beginning of the 21st century.  It is a moment to be celebrated.

Images – New York Times building (top), New York Times newsroom 1942 (bottom).

 

Tanya L. Domi is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, who teaches about human rights in Eurasia and is a Harriman Institute affiliated faculty member. Prior to teaching at Columbia, Domi worked internationally for more than a decade on issues related to democratic transitional development, including political and media development, human rights, gender issues, sex trafficking, and media freedom.

Read Tanya Domi’s most-​recent previous article at The New Civil Rights Movement, “DADT: Memorial Day Marks 70 Years of Discrimination Against Gay Service Members.“

 

 

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News

Trump Campaign Furious Walz Using Trump’s Own ‘Reckless, Dangerous Rhetoric’ Against Him

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October 14, 2024

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The Trump campaign lashed out at Minnesota Governor Tim Walz on Monday after the Democratic vice presidential nominee quoted the Republican presidential candidate who repeatedly over the weekend has been saying he would like to use the U.S. military against American citizens.

As NCRM reported, the Republican presidential nominee said he thinks the U.S. Armed Forces should be used against Americans who oppose him, called his critics “the enemy from within,” and declared they are more dangerous than America’s greatest foreign adversaries, including Russia, China, and North Korea.

“I always say we have the outside enemy, so you can say China, you can say Russia, you can say, Kim Jung-Un,” Trump told supporters at an Aurora, Colorado rally on Friday. But, he added: “It’s the enemy from within, all the scum that we have to deal with that hate our country. That’s a bigger enemy than China and Russia,” he said as the audience cheered.

READ MORE: MAGA Furious After Kamala Harris Agrees to Fox News Interview

Then, on Sunday, Trump told Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo of his desire to use armed forces against Americans on Election Day.

“I think the bigger problem are the people from within, we have some very bad people, we have some sick people, radical left lunatics. And I think they’re the — and it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary by the military.”

Trump War Room, the official social media account of the Trump campaign, posted video of Walz on Monday speaking with supporters.

“Donald Trump over the weekend was talking about using the U.S. Army against people who disagree with him,” Walz had said. “Just so you’re clear about that, that’s you. That’s what he’s talking about. This is not some mythical thing out there. He called it the ‘enemy within.'”

The Trump War Room social media account wrote: “Tim Walz peddles a disgusting lie that President Trump will use the U.S. Army against his political opponents: ‘That’s you, that’s what he’s talking about.’ This is reckless, dangerous rhetoric,” the campaign stated. “Tim should be ASHAMED of himself.”

READ MORE: ‘Is He OK?’: Trump’s Dark of Night Rage Posting Backfires

See the videos below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Fascist to the Core’: Trump’s Top General Slams Ex-President as ‘Most Dangerous Person’

 

 

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News

MAGA Furious After Kamala Harris Agrees to Fox News Interview

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18 hours ago

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October 14, 2024

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The right wing freakout is in full force after Fox News announced Vice President Kamala Harris will sit down for an interview with then network’s chief political anchor Bret Baier on Wednesday in the critical battleground state of Pennsylvania.

It will be the Democratic presidential nominee’s first official Fox News interview, after entering the race in July, less than three months ago.

“While Trump became the first major presidential nominee to back out of the traditional pre-election ’60 Minutes’ interview, Kamala Harris has agreed to sit down with Fox News for an interview this week,” noted Zeteo News’ Justin Baragona.

“Harris has upped her media appearances recently, having sat down with Stephen Colbert, 60 Minutes‘ Bill Whitaker and Howard Stern, among other personalities,” Deadline reports. “But she’s also been urged by some supporters to make an appearance on Fox News, populated by voices on the right, even though Baier is on the network’s news side. With an average of 2.3 million viewers, Special Report has ranked among the most watched cable news programs.”

READ MORE: ‘Is He OK?’: Trump’s Dark of Night Rage Posting Backfires

Trump recently did pull out of a previously agreed-to interview with CBS News’ “60 Minutes,” and has refused to do any more debates with Harris after losing the first one on ABC News. Before that debate Trump had suggested a condition of him participating in the ABC debate would be Harris had to agree to two others, which she did. Next week she will appear in a CNN town hall, which originally was to be a debate until Trump pulled out.

“As of today, it has been **one month** since Trump’s been interviewed by a mainstream media outlet,” noted Harris campaign spokesperson Ian Sams, “as he has backed out of 60 Minutes and refuses to debate again.”

“Meanwhile Harris is willing to even go on Fox,” he added.

During the 2024 campaign Trump has done virtually no interviews with mainstream media outlets, avoiding The New York Times, ABC News, CBS News, CNN, and MSNBC. He did sit down with NBC News’s “Meet the Press” for Kristen Welker’s first interview as the show’s new moderator last year in September.

READ MORE: ‘Fascist to the Core’: Trump’s Top General Slams Ex-President as ‘Most Dangerous Person’

The Nation’s John Nichols commented that Trump is “running scared.”

Trump supporters “swarmed all over Fox’s Bret Baier today like he was a Capitol Police Officer on J6 after he posted on Twitter that he will be interviewing Kamala Harris this Wednesday,” MeidasTouch News reports. “Baier received 2,200 comments on his tweet announcing the interview in just the first hour after he posted it.”

“Most of the MAGA comments to Baier follow a consistent theme – that they lost all faith in Baier after his tough interview embarrassed Trump last year, and that they expect him to go into this interview with guns blazing to win back their favor. They also mentioned some of the previous Harris interview conspiracies – that her earrings were airpods where she was getting the answers, that she was given the questions ahead of time, that Baier and Fox called the 2020 election too early for Biden, etc.,” MeidasTouch editor-in-chief Ron Filipkowski reported.

Journalist Mike Rothschild, who has written books on right wing conspiracy theories, observed: “This is smart from the VP. She has nothing to lose by appearing on the news arm of Fox News (as opposed to the screeching infotainment arm) and if she breaks through to a fraction of their viewership, it’s worth it. It’s almost like the Harris campaign knows what it’s doing.”

The news Harris will appear on Fox News comes on the heels of one of that outlet’s former top hosts, Geraldo Rivera, denouncing Donald Trump and endorsing the Vice President’s run for President.

READ MORE: Elon Musk’s X Engaged in a ‘Pattern of Election Interference’ to Help Trump: Reports

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OPINION

‘Is He OK?’: Trump’s Dark of Night Rage Posting Backfires

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21 hours ago

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October 14, 2024

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After a weekend of speeches dehumanizing immigrants and threatening to use the U.S. military on Americans who oppose him, Donald Trump in a 1 AM dead of night post lashed out at his Democratic presidential opponent in what some are saying was projection.

“I believe it is very important that Kamala Harris pass a test on Cognitive Stamina and Agility,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform at 1:12 AM. “Her actions have led many to believe that there could be something very wrong with her. Even 60 Minutes and CBS, in order to protect Lyin’ Kamala, illegally and unscrupulously replaced an answer she had given, which was totally ‘bonkers,’ with another answer that had nothing to do with the question asked. Also, she is slow and lethargic in answering even the easiest of questions. We just went through almost four years of that, we shouldn’t have to do it again!”

Late Monday morning Trump posted the same message on the social media site X. He also recently called Vice President Harris “retarded,” according to The New York Times.

“So, let me get this straight,” noted Zeteo News media columnist Justin Baragona. “The 78-year-old GOP presidential nominee, who has been showing serious signs of age-related decline, refuses to release his medical records — but he is now demanding his much younger opponent take a cognitive test?”

READ MORE: ‘Fascist to the Core’: Trump’s Top General Slams Ex-President as ‘Most Dangerous Person’

SiriusXM host Michelangelo Signorile observed, “Trump is furious that Harris is saying Trump’s ‘staff’ won’t let him do 60 Minutes or release his medical records.”

“Claiming Harris is ‘slow and lethargic’ is a heavy lift even for this pathological liar and his MAGA mob.”

The Harris campaign mocked Trump in response.

“Trump posts at 1:12am that VP Harris must take a cognitive test,” wrote campaign spokesperson Ian Sams. “As he refuses to release his medical records, sit with 60 Minutes, or debate her again— instead retreating solely to rambling rallies where he’s increasingly making no sense.”

“Is he okay?”

READ MORE: Elon Musk’s X Engaged in a ‘Pattern of Election Interference’ to Help Trump: Reports

Republican Voters Against Trump, a project of the Republican Accountability PAC declared, “It’s always projection with Trump.”

Before Trump’s post on Saturday, MSNBC’s Ayman Mohyeldin told viewers: “For Trump and his party, the strategy in this final stretch to the election is about one thing and one thing only: projection.”

“Everything Trump and his party accuse Democrats of doing ultimately ends up being a cynical projection of themselves, from defending democracy to free speech, reproductive rights, and free and fair elections.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

READ MORE: Trump Campaign an ‘Influence Operation’ Says Former State Dept. Official — Experts Agree

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