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Believe it or Not - Fewer Californians Trust the News Media

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 07:00:00 GMT

A recent poll has found fewer Americans trust the mainstream news media. The Sacred Heart University poll found less than 20 percent of those surveyed believe all, or most, of what they read or hear on the news, indicating Californians are putting less trust in the news media. The survey also found as many as 87 percent of Americans think the media tries to to influence public opinion and policies.

Karlos Gauna Schmieder, with the Center for Media Justice, says his group is working to change that. The California-based organization was established five years ago to increase media accountability.

"We think we can rebuild trust between communities and a broken media system by being a bridge between under-represented communities and media outlets that are supposed to serve those communities."

Schmieder says there are things media outlets can do to improve their own believability.

"The news media can be a better reflection of what's happening in local communities and actually inspire folks to be a part of making their communities a better place in which to live, work and raise a family."

The report suggests the availability of alternative viewpoints and news sources provided through the Internet are contributing to the increased skepticism.

On Saturday, the Center for Media Justice will honor four California individuals and organizations who have been at the forefront of positive news stories by helping their communities.

More information is available online, at www.centerformediajustice.org. The study is also online, at sacredheart.edu.

Lori Abbott/Chris Thomas, Public News Service - CA

Blacks' suit accuses Antioch of discrimination

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 07:00:00 GMT

(07-16) 17:48 PDT ANTIOCH -- A group of African American, low-income tenants accused the city of Antioch in a lawsuit Wednesday of trying to drive them out of federally subsidized housing by creating a police squad to target blacks for arrests, harassment and pressure on their landlords to evict them.

As more black families have been drawn to affordable housing in the Contra Costa County community, "the city has reacted with alarm and hostility to the newcomers, choosing to scapegoat them as the cause of economic downturn," lawyers for five renters declared in papers filed in federal court in San Francisco.

At a news conference, tenants said police had entered and searched their homes without warrants or any evidence of crimes, had warned their landlords that they could be held responsible for tenants' misconduct, and had asked the county housing authority to eliminate the Section 8 subsidies that kept their rents affordable.

One plaintiff's landlord, Riaz Patras, said at the news conference that an Antioch police officer advised him last year not to rent to African Americans.

The suit alleges that the police Community Action Team, established in July 2006 to patrol high-crime neighborhoods, has violated state and federal laws and constitutional guarantees against racial discrimination and illegal searches. Antioch officials vehemently denied the allegations.

"Any objective review of our city's policing efforts will reveal that these efforts are focused exclusively on criminal and/or dangerous behavior," the city said in a statement.

The suit, an expansion of a case filed by four of the plaintiffs last month, seeks class-action status on behalf of about 800 African Americans with Section 8 housing subsidies in Antioch. It seeks damages for the individual plaintiffs and court orders against unfounded searches and harassment.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs said city leaders have reacted fearfully to the near-doubling of Antioch's African American population in the last five years. Black people now make up about 15 percent of the city's 101,000 residents.

The suit quoted City Council members as saying at meetings in 2006 and 2007 that they were determined to keep Antioch from becoming as violent as Richmond and blamed problems on an influx of Section 8 renters, most of whom are black. Plaintiffs' lawyer Brad Seligman said Police Chief James Hyde has encouraged residents at neighborhood meetings to file complaints against Section 8 residents.

Two-thirds of the Community Action Team investigations focus on African Americans, the plaintiffs' lawyers said, and black households are the targets of 70 percent of police complaints to the Housing Authority - which, the lawyers said, finds a majority of such complaints unfounded.

Police "invaded my home and terrorized my family," plaintiff Karen Coleman said at the news conference. "They told me my Section 8 benefits were going to be terminated."

The lawsuit alleged that four officers came to Coleman's door in June 2007, saying they were looking for her husband, a parolee, and entered over her objections. They searched the home, took pictures, handcuffed her when she tried to call 911 and threatened to handcuff her 12-year-old son, the suit said.

Officers visited twice more in the following month, went to her husband's workplace three times, wrote to her landlord and contacted the Housing Authority in an unsuccessful attempt to evict her, the suit said.

The city did not respond to specific allegations in the suit but said the Community Action Team was engaged in crime-fighting, not discrimination.

"The team brings neighborhoods and police into partnership to resolve issues involving violent crime, narcotics activity, dangerous or substandard structures and sanitation issues," the city's statement said. "Antioch residents of every background have credited the Community Action Team with helping to restore the safety and security of their neighborhoods' parks, streets and homes."

E-mail Bob Egelko at begelko@sfchronicle.com.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/07/17/BAL911QAQL.DTL

This article appeared on page B - 3 of the San Francisco Chronicle

24% of state high-schoolers likely to drop out

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 07:00:00 GMT

Nearly 1 in 4 California students will drop out during high school, state educators said Wednesday, basing their prediction on what they said is the most accurate information about student attendance they've ever collected.

Using a new student-tracking system, state educators found that 127,292 high school students in ninth through 12th grade quit school during the 2006-07 school year. That means 24 percent of incoming freshmen won't stay in school long enough to graduate, researchers said, assuming that pace remains steady.

"The dropout rate is a crisis," state schools chief Jack O'Connell said as he released the new data, which show tens of thousands of African American and Latino students abandoning school at far higher rates than other ethnic groups. "Schools will now be held publicly accountable for finding out what happened to students."

The new dropout rate is far higher than the 13 percent educators had earlier estimated using less-sophisticated counting methods they had relied on for years.

"I was quite shocked at how many students are falling through the cracks," said O'Connell. "The dropout crisis is a statewide crisis."

Using its new "Statewide Student Identifier System," the state Education Department has given every student a unique and anonymous identification number. With that, schools can track the whereabouts of missing students for the first time and learn whether students are truly absent without leave or whether they are somewhere legitimate.

Did they leave the state? Join a homeschool? Die? The new system recognizes 29 kinds of student invisibility, 10 of which are counted as dropouts, including "expelled."

One stunning fact learned from the new system was that 53,600 students who said they were transferring to a new school last year never actually showed up.

Another is that the state now knows for the first time that there were 4,609 dropouts who completed all graduation requirements but one: the mandatory exit exam.

"Today, we have the tools for the first time to report the rates with a much greater degree of accuracy than in the past," O'Connell said.

The superintendent said that having a more accurate picture of the fate of the missing students will help the state target its anti-dropout expenditures more wisely.

Many African American and Latino students could use that help.

Earlier estimates suggested that 10,000 black students would quit. But the expected number is nearly twice as high: 19,440.

For Latinos, the estimate was 37,716 dropouts. The actual number is estimated at 69,035.

These figures translate into astronomical dropout predictions over the next four years: 42 percent for black students and 30 percent for Latinos.

"It's high time we started telling the truth about these numbers," said Russlynn Ali, executive director for Education Trust West, an Oakland group working to raise achievement for students of color. "Federal and state accountability systems don't ask us to do much about changing these numbers. We need to set ambitious targets for all students to increase graduation rates."

California's dropouts cost the state $50 billion per year, said incoming state Senate leader Darrell Steinberg, a Sacramento Democrat who quoted studies showing that over their lifetimes those who quit are more likely to be unemployed, turn to crime, need state-funded medical care, get welfare and pay no taxes.

Fixing the problem "is our most important economic strategy in California," he said.

Bay Area dropout rates vary widely by school district, but three have rates far higher than the 24 percent state average: Oakland Unified (37 percent), West Contra Costa Unified (40 percent), and Vallejo City Unified (42 percent).

"Clearly, a 42-percent dropout rate is unacceptable for an educational institution," said Vallejo schools spokesman Jason Hodge.

In San Francisco, 1,052 high school students quit last year. Based on that, researchers believe that 21 percent of entering freshmen will quit before earning a diploma.

Superintendent Carlos Garcia pointed to numerous existing programs intended to reduce dropouts, but several appeared scant: The district has but 15 "outreach consultants" and seven "attendance liaisons" who make home visits, and just one "stay-in-school coordinator" for high-needs students.

However, the district has a "transition program" to help students who are changing schools and programs. State Superintendent O'Connell said the data show that students in transition are most at risk for dropping out.

The new statewide report shows that 351,035 students in the class of 2007 earned a diploma, or 68 percent.

But what happened to everyone else? That's always been the "million-dollar question," said Russ Rumberger, a professor at UC Santa Barbara who has tracked dropouts as director of the privately funded California Dropout Research Project.

Rumberger said he is pleased that the new student ID system gives educators a better spyglass than ever on the whereabouts of missing students.

Not all are dropouts. About 8 percent are "completers" who neither dropped out nor earned a diploma.

Included in that 8 percent are 770 students who died. Nearly 5,000 graduated - but because they were disabled and used modifications to help them pass the exit exam or were exempted from taking it, they earned a certificate of completion rather than a diploma. Nearly 62,000 students moved out of state. And many others entered a medical facility or took a high school equivalency test.

Projected number of S.F. dropouts

A new student ID system let school officials see for the first time how many students in the 2006-07 school year quit school without enrolling anywhere else or having another legitimate reason for not showing up. Based on those numbers, state education officials calculated what percent of incoming freshmen would drop out before completing high school. Here are figures for San Francisco high schools (alternative schools are excluded because enrollment is transient by design):

School	Enrollment	% dropouts
Leadership High	331	46%
International Studies Academy	421	30
Mission High	864	25
John O'Connell Alternative High	819	23
Balboa High	1,098	23
Thurgood Marshall High	642	19
Raoul Wallenberg Traditional H	647	19
Galileo High	2,224	18
Phillip and Sala Burton Academy	1,338	17
Abraham Lincoln High	2,343	15
June Jordan School for Equity	371	13
George Washington High	2,306	13
School of the Arts	806	11
Gateway High	453	4
Lowell High	2,671	1

Bay Area school districts

Based on actual dropout figures for 2006-2007, state education officials calculated the percent of incoming freshmen expected to drop out before completing high school. Here are the dropout rates for selected Bay Area school districts:

County	District	% dropouts
Solano	Vallejo City Unified	42.1%
Contra Costa	West Contra Costa Unified	40
Alameda	Oakland Unified	37
Contra Costa	Mt. Diablo Unified	22
San Francisco	San Francisco Unified	21
Alameda	Hayward Unified	19
Santa Clara	San Jose Unified	13
San Mateo	Jefferson HSD	12
Marin	Novato Unified	9

Source: California Department of Education

E-mail Nanette Asimov at nasimov@sfchronicle.com.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/07/17/MNS211PQQE.DTL

This article appeared on page A - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

California high school dropout rate far higher than expected

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 07:00:00 GMT

(07-16) 16:23 PDT SACRAMENTO -- California's first true count of high school dropouts shows that one in four kids quit school last year - 127,292 - which is far more than state educators estimated before they began using a new student-tracking system.

The statewide 24-percent dropout rate also shows African American and Latino students leaving school at much higher rates than other ethnic groups, according to data released today by state schools chief Jack O'Connell.

The dropout rate is well above the 13 percent (67,107 students) that educators had earlier estimated using a less sophisticated counting method relied on for years.

"I was quite shocked at how many students are falling through the cracks," said O'Connell. "This is a crisis."

<< Database: Look up dropout rates for Bay Area schools >>

The state Education Department says it can now calculate dropouts far more accurately using its new "Statewide Student Identifier System" in which every student is given a unique, anonymous ID number. With that, schools can track the whereabouts of missing students for the first time, and learn whether students are truly AWOL, or whether they are somewhere legitimate.

Did they leave the state? Join a homeschool? Die? The new system recognizes 29 kinds of student invisibility, 10 of which are logged as dropouts, including "expelled."

One stunning fact they learned was that 53,600 students who claimed they were transferring to a new school never actually showed up.

Another is that the state now knows for the first time that there were 4,609 dropouts who completed all graduation requirement but one: the exit exam, which became mandatory two years ago.

"Today, we have the tools for the first time to report the rates with a much greater degree of accuracy than in the past," O'Connell said.

The new report shows that 42 percent of black students and 30 percent of Latinos quit high school last year- far more than the state average, and far more than state officials had thought.

They had estimated that 10,000 black students quit - but the real number was nearly twice as high: 19,440.

For Latinos, the estimate was that 37,716 had quit. The real number was a shocking 69,035.

Here are the dropout rates for other ethnic groups:

-- Native Americans: 31% (1,440 students).

-- Latinos: 30% (69,035 students).

-- Pacific Islanders were next: 28 % (964 students).

-- Whites: 15 % (26,165 students).

-- Filipinos: 12 percent (1,687 students).

-- Asian Americans: 10 % (4,462 students).

-- Others: 31 % (4,099 students.)

E-mail Nanette Asimov at nasimov@sfchronicle.com

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/07/17/BAS311QATI.DTL

Grassroots Groups Join the Push for Internet for Everyone

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 07:00:00 GMT

FLORENCE, Mass. -- InternetforEveryone.org is pleased to announce that 17 leading "digital inclusion" groups have joined the initiative to connect all Americans to affordable, high-speed Internet.

Working on the front lines of the fight to bridge the digital divide, these grassroots groups include: Appalshop, The Center for Media Justice, The Center for Rural Strategies, The Esperanza Peace and Justice Center, Main Street Project, Manhattan Neighborhood Network, Media Alliance, Media Mobilizing Project, Native Public Media, New Mexico Media Literacy Project, People's Production House, Reclaim the Media, Texas Media Empowerment Project, The Media Justice Fund, The Praxis Project, The United Church of Christ, Office of Communication, Inc., and Twin Cities Media Alliance. They join more than 75 other consumer groups, technology industry leaders, educators and labor unions that have joined the initiative.

"That the Internet has worked wonders for only half of the people in this country tells us that it is in desperate need of repair," said Joshua Breitbart, policy director of New York's People's Production House. "We are all harmed when groups of people are excluded, and we all benefit when more people participate. This broad, unifying campaign is an important step toward transforming the Internet so it works for everyone."

Currently, half of the country still does not subscribe to high-speed Internet. And it's those less fortunate who are being left behind.

"Everybody knows the Internet is the medium of the future, but what good is a digital future if it leaves so many people in the United States behind? The Center for Media Justice joined InternetforEveryone.org to work with our allies and ensure that communications policy creates a fair, fast, and affordable Internet that can be accessed by everyone -- including the nation's poorest and most disenfranchised," said the group's director, Malkia A. Cyril.

The digital divide is also geographic. Nearly 10 million rural households are in areas not served by any broadband provider.

"Internet access is a crucial issue for all communities. But for rural communities -- which are often overlooked and under-resourced -- it's essential," Main Street Project Program Director Amalia Anderson said. "We joined the InternetforEveryone.org initiative so that we could work with our allies across the country and in rural communities to ensure that the Internet is affordable, accessible and meets the needs of all people -- giving residents of all ages, cultures, economic and immigration status the opportunity to more fully participate in all aspects of community life."

Members of InternetforEveryone.org will work together to hold public forums across the country to spark a national dialogue between all of the stakeholders who use the Internet. These forums will build broad support for a national broadband policy that restores America's place as a world technology leader.

"InternetforEveryone.org was formed in the belief that a high-speed Internet connection is essential both to participation in our 21st-century democracy and to success in today's economy," said Timothy Karr, campaign director of Free Press, the organizer of InternetforEveryone.org. "For those communities now beyond the reach of the Internet, getting connected is one way to help leapfrog economic and social disparities and to gain a powerful foothold in contemporary society."

For more information about the initiative, visit http://www.InternetforEveryone.org
For more information about The Center for Media Justice, visit http://centerformediajustice.org/
For more information about Main Street Project, visit http://www.mainstreetproject.org/
For more information about People's Production House, visit http://peoplesproductionhouse.org/

Hyphen's Momo Chang Wins Center for Media Justice Award

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 07:00:00 GMT

Hyphen's own Momo Chang, editor of the Lazy Susan section, is getting the Ida B. Wells Journalist for Justice Award for work covering the Asian American community for the Oakland Tribune.

Momo has been a Hyphen volunteer since 2005 and recently left the Tribune. The Ida B. Wells award, given by the Center for Media Justice, is a testament to her skill and commitment to the community, traits she's brought to Hyphen as well.

Here's what the Center for Media Justice said about Momo in giving her the award:

Momo has been a tireless researcher, reporter and writer -- elegantly covering multiple sides of critical stories like the police investigation of the Alameda homicide and the trials and successes of Asian immigrants and refugees in the Bay.

The award is named for Wells, civil-rights activist and journalist who defended democracy and justice when segregation, lynching and disenfranchisement were the conditions of the day. The award goes to a journalist who has provided excellent coverage and representation of racial, economic, youth, and media justice issues.

Momo and other honorees will get their awards at a celebration on July 19 at the Oasis Restaurant and Bar in Oakland.

Congratulations, Momo!

Invincible in Two Worlds

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 07:00:00 GMT

http://www.eastbayexpress.com/music/invincible Crush Media

Invincible.

Show Details
Invincible performs Saturday, July 19, at Club Oasis (135 12th St., Oakland), to celebrate the five-year anniversary of the Center for Media Justice. 3 p.m., $10-$50. MySpace.com/invincilana

Invincible.

Detroit rapper Invincible (née Ilana Weaver) had her chance to get on ten years ago, but she purposely passed it up. The Israeli-born émigrée came up right alongside a certain white rapper who subsequently attained international fame — making every other white rapper from Detroit seem like a potential cash cow. Invincible said multiple labels were on her jock by the time she turned sixteen, in 1997. "Many people were trying to sign me because they saw me as a female version of him," the emcee recalled. She said that one day she got a call from someone representing the indie label Web, which had produced Eminem's 1996 album Infinite, a few years before he signed to Aftermath. "They offered me a million dollars over the phone," she said.

Naturally, the emcee was skeptical of anyone who equated her with Eminem, since their lyrical content was so different. Moreover, she was skeptical of anyone who wouldn't allow her to control her own publishing, or own the rights to her masters. "Actually the most hilarious thing was when I moved back to Michigan, XXL had wrote a five-page article calling me 'every A&R's worst nightmare,'" the emcee said. (She disliked the article, but apparently liked the epithet enough to include it in her bio.) "So I started getting a reputation for turning down deals. More labels started trying to sign me at that point."

Invincible had always been a rabble-rouser. Born in Israel — or Palestine, as she puts it, but inside Israel's 1948 border — she moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1988 and learned English by listening to hip-hop records. Besides Cat in the Hat and ESL classes, Invincible said her first interaction with the language was "writing down other people's rhymes, and looking up the words." Within two years, she'd started composing her own lyrics in English. By age ten, she'd stopped speaking Hebrew altogether. Her first album purchase, appropriately enough, was Paris' provocative 1992 joint, Sleeping with the Enemy. In fact, the title was prophetic.

The neighborhoods surrounding Detroit, where Invincible hung out as a teenager, were heavily populated by Arab Americans. As she got older and started making ties in the Arab community, the young artist began questioning — or in her words "unlearning" — the Zionist narrative she'd grown up with in Israel. Naturally, her parents were aghast. "Most of my family in Israel refuses to speak to me," the artist said, adding that she's since managed to open up dialogue with her parents, but her extended family skews more conservative. "Recently my mom took a trip back home and her sister kicked her out of the house for protesting the Wall. At least my parents will stay engaged in the conversation — the rest of the family pretty much cut me off for my views."

By age fifteen, Invincible was rocking open mics in the Detroit area, many of them hosted by the famed D12 rapper Proof (who helped jump-start Eminem's career but was shot dead in 2006, before ever getting his due). She battled other emcees occasionally but quickly got bored of it, wanting instead to write her lyrics — often laboring over them for months, even years, to get the phrasing exactly right. After deciding not to go the major label route, she hooked up with the all-female hip-hop crew the Anomalies — whose members include emcees Helixx, Big Tara, and Pri the Honeydark, along with DJ Kuttin Kandy — and resettled in New York for three years. From that point on, the emcee carved out a path that would relegate her to the indie world, but also allow her to sustain total creative control over her music. Her canniness around industry bigwigs is probably the reason she has real staying power.

Upon returning to Detroit, Invincible found an apartment in the mostly-Latino southwest section of the city. She also got back into community organizing, including with the US Palestine Youth Solidarity Network. Her political views — about gentrification in Detroit, about artistic integrity in hip-hop, and, most compellingly, about ending Israel's occupation of the West Bank — had always been the linchpin of her music, but she got better at researching and articulating them. Her language has a real writerly quality, such that the verses sound like a well-crafted poem. Her writing process usually begins with listening to a beat, scatting flow patterns, and coming up with a cadence that sometimes inspires a visual concept for the song. The idea that animates one of her most powerful tracks, "Locusts," sparked because the beat — DJ House Shoes' thinly orchestrated mix of kick, snare, and flute, with weird, apocalyptic buzz in the background — sounds, in her words, "like locusts swarming at you."

"Locusts," which inspired a music video/documentary with commentary from housing activists and teenagers about changes in the neighborhood, is an incisive critique of the current efforts to beautify downtown Detroit. In her rap, Invincible swaps metaphors for gentrification and large-scale colonization: Locusts and buzzards circle and hover above the/Abandoned houses, shattered window with the crooked shutter/Across the street constructing cookie-cutter condominiums/Sign of Woodward is the Prime Meridian. The condo development she's referencing is a dramatic redevelopment of Detroit's metro area. Woodward Street is the main artery that splits Detroit into an east and west side, running all the way from the downtown to the tony northern suburbs — hence the "Prime Meridian" analogy (its proper analogue in the East Bay would be Broadway).

Depending on your viewpoint, Invincible is either the most ethical or the most politically strident emcee to emerge in recent years. Rather than sign to a major she ultimately formed her own fair-trade hip-hop label, Emergence Music, through which she recently dropped the solo album Shapeshifters. She's allegedly turned down more million-dollar deals, snubbed the glossies, and laughed in the face of A&R scouts — but probably saved herself the anguish of being a flash in the pan. Looking back, she doesn't regret the decision. "For me it was like the more I stuck to my guns, the more doors opened up," said the emcee. "Opportunities were created by me refusing wack opportunities."

Spanish-language TV journalists paid less

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 07:00:00 GMT

(07-13) 17:20 PDT -- As their contract negotiations intensified this week, the newsroom employees at San Francisco's leading Spanish-language news station - KDTV Channel 14 - should have been in a strong bargaining position. Not only is the newsroom full of coveted bilingual journalists, but for the past two ratings periods KDTV has beaten most of its Bay Area English-language competitors in various ratings contests.

But when it comes to Spanish-language television news, high ratings don't translate into high salaries. Many KDTV reporters and producers, like their counterparts at Spanish-language stations across the country, earn roughly one-fourth less in base pay than their competitors at English-language stations, even if the 6 p.m. newscast they're producing is attracting more viewers in the coveted 25-54 demographic than every Bay Area station except KGO-TV.

Their plight is echoed across the country. While the foreign-born Hispanic population in the United States grew 25 percent between 2000 and 2006 to 17.6 million, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, analysts say the advertising world has been slow to adapt to the demographic changes in Spanish-language media - and the effects have trickled down through the media food chain.

So while the Spanish-language news audience may be growing, many advertisers don't perceive Hispanics to be the "right audience," according to bilingual television advertising expert Roxane Garzon.

"There's still a perception in the marketing world that most of the Spanish-speaking audience is poor and uneducated," said Garzon, who is broadcast media director for Casanova Pendrill, which buys time on Spanish-language TV for corporate clients such as Kohl's, L'Oreal and General Mills. While Spanish-speaking households may have lower incomes, she said they tend to be brand loyal, regardless of price.

Still, advertising rates for Spanish-language programming are one-third to one-half of what they are for English-language programming, she said.

While major market TV journalists aren't holding up will-report-for-food signs, base pay for many Spanish-language TV journalists (about $70,000) can be around one-fourth less than their English-language counterparts in town. Photographers and news writers at KDTV are paid roughly a third less at top union scale than some of their English-language counterparts in the Bay Area, according to figures supplied by union officials familiar with the disparity.

In general, salaries vary wildly among top TV reporters, many of whom have contracts that run into the low six figures. But there is little doubt about the pay differential at the base salary scale level, according to analysts and union officials.

Others see another cultural perception behind the pay difference that has little to do with the price of advertising detergent or toothpaste.

"Why are brown people who speak two languages paid less?" said Carrie Biggs-Adams, a union organizer for the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians. She has helped negotiate contracts at Spanish-language stations across the country. "In any other profession, there is a premium placed on being bilingual. But for some reason, not here."

"It demonstrates a larger problem across the culture of Latino people earning less," said Mari Castaneda, associate professor of communication at University of Massachusetts-Amherst and an expert on Latino media.

Said a spokesperson for Univision, the Spanish-language network that produces local newscasts in 14 cities: "It is Univision's policy not to comment during labor negotiations."

The newsroom staff at KDTV and their colleagues around the country are at the end of a media/advertising money trail that analysts say hasn't recognized the full consumer power of the Spanish-speaking market. And for some of the journalists at Spanish-language stations, there aren't a lot of other career options in their chosen field.

Because of increased media consolidation over the years and shrinking budgets, news organizations have been shutting foreign bureaus and cutting back on overseas coverage. Since Univision dominates the Spanish-language TV news market, there is a limited number of domestic employers.

"The way a top anchor at an English-language station gets more money is to threaten to go to the station across the street," said Doug Darfield, Nielsen Media Research director of multicultural measurement. "But that possibility doesn't exist for the most part in the Spanish-language market."

"And if you have an accent, you can't work at an English station," said one former employee of a Univision station in California. She asked not to be identified for fear of being blacklisted by other stations.

Jessica Aguirre, an anchor at KNTV in the Bay Area, worked at a Univision station in Miami before moving to the CBS station in the same market. But her crossover is still uncommon.

"I think it is possible to make the transition - I did it myself," the U.S.-born Aguirre said. "But I do think it is much easier for Latino journalists who were raised in the U.S. and for whom English is their first language, or as in my case, a person who is completely bilingual."

Many Spanish-speaking journalists are torn between their desire to serve their audience and a dissatisfaction with their pay and benefits, said Federico Subervi, who heads Texas State University's Center for the Study of Latino Media and Markets.

In a 2004 survey for the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, Subervi found that 78 percent of Hispanic journalists said they were motivated to be in the business by their desire to inform and educate the Latino community. But 42 percent said they were unsatisfied or very unsatisfied with their salary.

However, many Spanish-language journalists won't have a lot of leverage with their pay needs until advertisers better understand the market. Univision only accepts Spanish-language advertising, and analysts said many companies don't want to devote additional money to create Spanish-language ad campaigns.

Slowly, advertisers are starting to change. Advertising spending in Spanish-language media increased 3 percent over the previous year to $5.78 billion in 2007, according to a Nielsen Monitor-Plus study released this week.

The question remains how much of that will trickle down to the employees of local news stations.

E-mail Joe Garofoli at jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/07/14/MNA911NSIR.DTL

This article appeared on page A - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Non-Aligned Countries Endorse Venezuelan Proposal for Alternative World Media

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 07:00:00 GMT

Mérida, July 5, 2008 (venezuelanalysis.com)-- At the 7th Conference of Information Ministers of the Movement of Non-Aligned Countries held in Venezuela’s Margarita Island last week, more than 80 country delegations endorsed Venezuela’s proposal to create an alternative worldwide media network.

The Margarita Declaration signed Friday lays out a working agenda for constructing a “new international communicational order” that is meant to “balance information and democratize the presence of the countries of the South in worldwide communication,” said the Venezuelan Minister of Communication and Information, Andrés Izarra, in his closing speech Friday.

“We now have a new tool,” explained Izarra. “The communicational task of our peoples today is to recuperate the words, the images of our existence which have been sequestered and used against us by the masters of the world.”

One proposal on the agenda is to start a Non-Aligned News Network (NNN) to cover news from the 118 mostly Global South countries in the movement. According to Izarra, this new network could be based on the model of Caracas-based Telesur.

Telesur is a television channel created in 2006 with the financial backing of the governments of Argentina, Bolivia, Cuba, Nicaragua, Ecuador, and Venezuela. It aims to rival other international news agencies while promoting consciousness of Latin American identity and history and give voice to the social changes going on in the region.

Other proposals included a radio of the South and strengthened southern information networks, which would “serve as an information bank, providing common access to these countries in order to pluralize the flow of information,” Izarra explained.

Many delegates credited a speech by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez on Thursday for propelling these ideas into the action plan of the Margarita Declaration.

“We are in a search for the democracy of information since there is a media tyranny in the world,” Chávez asserted Thursday. “Hopefully we can structure a grand social television of the world that has its offices, studios, cameras, and satellites dispersed around the Caribbean, Asia, and Africa,” he described.

“We have to do it now, in order to communicate among our peoples in our languages, it is vital so that our governments get to know each other,” Chávez encouraged.

Last year, the Chávez administration did not renew the broadcasting license of one of Venezuela’s largest corporate networks, RCTV, and instead granted the concession to Venezuelan Social Television (TVES), which currently broadcasts 229 programs by independent producers emphasizing educational and cultural content.

Chávez’s proposal was backed on Thursday by the Foreign Relations Minister of Cuba, Felipe Pérez Roque, who said the current media climate is such that the South is “silenced” and “bombarded continually” with “history from the perspective of the powerful.”

Considering this, “the current situation cannot be resolved with palliative measures, we must go to its base,” said the minister, explaining that “this unjust international order to which we are to be submitted is a product of the abyss that exists between the North and the South in terms of access, production, and flow of information.”

Venezuela’s first-ever Minister of Women’s Issues, María León, was also welcomed to the conference to share Venezuela’s current women’s rights policies with countries such as Namibia, Belarus, Dominica, Gambia, and Cambodia, which had expressed interest in learning more.

“Many have shown interest in finding out about what is occurring with women in Venezuela. There are very important advances that we can share. The importance that the media now gives to women, and we can see that of the 5 public powers, four are led by women,” León told the press.

According to the Venezuelan Ambassador to the United Nations, Jorge Valero, the movement is “in a period of revitalization of this organization since the developed countries and the spokespeople of neo-liberalism had proclaimed the death of the non-aligned countries.”

President Chávez presented another South-focused proposal at the conference Thursday when he called on OPEC countries to help the poorest 50 countries on Earth pay for oil as prices continue to soar above $144 per barrel.

“OPEC, or some of its members, should take the responsibility to supply these countries through special mechanisms, subsidies, donations, agreements. It is not going to make us any richer or poorer,” said Chávez.

Venezuela’s most recent tax on oil profits to generate funds for social programs was passed by the National Assembly last April. Also, last month Chávez offered to use profits from oil sold for more than $100 per barrel to combat food shortages worldwide if other countries also agreed to participate.

Chávez predicted that oil prices would continue to rise, but not because OPEP countries want them to. “It is not our fault,” Chávez said. “Withdraw the troops from Iraq and you will see how immediately the price of oil will fall several dollars; stop the threats against Iran and Venezuela and you will see the price descend.”

The “exaggerated consumption” of oil by rich nations is another factor in the high prices, Chávez said, pointing out that the 50 poorest countries consume a total of 700,000 barrels of oil per day, while the United States consumes 21 million barrels per day.

Source URL: http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/
Printed: July 7th 2008
License: Published under a Creative Commons license (by-nc-nd). See creativecommons.org for more information.

More female persuasion

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 07:00:00 GMT

Women's reignited interest in bringing their views into the public debate has spotlighted the lack of female voices heard on the op-ed pages of the nation's newspapers. Reyhan Harmanci's cover article in the Tuesday Datebook section cites studies that found women authored less than 20 percent of the op-ed (the industry term for the page "opposite the editorial page") pieces published in the national newspapers - the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times. As The Chronicle's Open Forum editor for many years, I can tell you unequivocally that women are infrequently published because they infrequently submit op-ed pieces. This is also true of our Letters to the Editor.

How to get more diverse voices - those of women, those of people of color, those of youth - onto our pages and into the public conversation is a staple of newsroom discussions and industry seminars. Explanations for the dearth of submissions are many - women are too busy, women work collaboratively and don't always individually seek the public spotlight, women don't want to offend by imposing their views on others, women are concerned about attracting unwanted attention a public statement might bring - and any and none of them may be true. Maybe women just haven't been sold on the idea that op-ed pieces have the power to move legislatures, prompt an invitation to speak before Congress or move communities to make change.

And they do, because that is who reads newspaper opinion pages: community leaders, members of Congress, county supervisors, corporate leaders and community activists, that is, people engaged in making their community a better place. The op-ed and letters pages are place to weigh in, share your view, voice your ideas and contribute solutions. Community-building is the traditional role for women - check the membership of the school site council or your church's board of deacons - so chiming in now and again in an op-ed piece should be natural. We know you have plenty to say, but maybe need encouragement to say it.

The op-ed format is simple - remember the classic five-paragraph essay you learned to write in school? The first paragraph should set forth your idea, the second should introduce why it is important. Paragraphs three and four should support your thesis with facts, and the last paragraph should sum up your points and offer a line of action - write your legislator, volunteer for the beach cleanup, revise your thinking.

The challenge - as in all writing - is to engage the reader. Write what you care about. And write as if you were talking with your neighbor across your kitchen table. Here's an example from the June 2 Open Forum by Luisa Morenilla about Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's plan for mandatory health insurance: "This mandate sounded strangely familiar ... and then I remembered a conversation with my mother.

'If you got into a serious accident that landed you in the hospital today, it would bankrupt us,' she said. 'Not buying health insurance is the most selfish thing you could possibly do.'

My mother, of course, was right."

What does The Chronicle look for when selecting op-eds? First, I take the role of the presenting diverse viewpoints very seriously. The Chronicle's editorial views trend toward the left. Thus, to offer a diversity of views on our pages, I am always on the lookout for op-ed pieces that offer a view from the right.

Second, I look for pieces that offering fresh thinking on events of the day. Please, no more pieces about why you hate No Child Left Behind - we've heard that. The op-ed should make it clear why we are talking about this topic today : it recently was in the news , Congress is about to vote on the matter, there is a related event happening today or tomorrow , the reader would understand this policy discussion if they knew this, this issue is a problem because elected leaders don't see it.

Third, is the voice is clear and the writing lively? That is why I routinely reject op-eds signed by more than two people: We all know what kind of animal is designed by committee - an ungainly and unattractive one.

Fourth, support your views. Your credibility - and The Chronicle's - is at stake. The power of your argument derives from the strength of your facts.

Finally, don't whine. Offer solutions and be positive. Bring the reader into your circle. That is a good op-ed, and employs a skill at which women tend to excel. Use your female persuasion for community good.

Lois Kazakoff is The Chronicle's deputy editorial page editor. E-mail her at forum@sfchronicle.com.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/07/02/EDN611I6J2.DTL

This article appeared on page B - 8 of the San Francisco Chronicle