Star Tribune from Minneapolis, Minnesota • Page 19

Star TribuneWednesdayAugust 181993 Commentary Blacks era -'rV7i 'i -v is in local media don't ost fair share of top jo Radio, TV and papers all offenders Kenneth Branagh, center, in "Henry Should legislation preclude families from seeing Shakespeare? Keeping TV violence in check is job for parents, not Uncle Sam were too narrow and lowbrow for people of color. Go figure. Anyway, Gottlieb then suggested I call Jim Ashbery, the station program manager. "Maybe Jim would be interested in doing something," he said. Well, six weeks later and I have yet to hear from Jim Ashbery.

Maybe he plans on returning my call in the next life, but apparently not in this one. Now I do not want to give the impression that print media such as the Star Tribune are shining examples of racial diversity. None of the people on the paper's masthead, if they have a tan, was born with it The same is true of the Twin Cities' "other newspaper," the St Paul Pioneer Press. Yet both papers have taken some long overdue steps such as running my column toward presenting previously unheard voices on their pages. Of course, they can do much more, such as move more people of color into senior management positions.

Why is all this so important? For one thing, journalists, just like everyone else, bring to their work perspectives colored by their own individual life experiences. As a result no one approaches or writes a story in exactly the same way. Any news organization that ignores this simple fact of life and hires only certain kinds of people to report the events of our lives will end up with less-than-complete coverage. Where do we go from here? Perhaps people of color should let advertisers know that we are willing to support with our dollars those news organizations that give us a real voice in this community. In particular, I hope Twin Cities' broadcast media hon-chos get the message that they have so far ignored: Ignoring us is not good for their economic health.

Another tactic guaranteed to get their attention is for us "have-nots" to participate in the Federal Communications Commission license renewal process. Broadcasters do not own the airwaves the public does. Fortunately, the laissez-faire Reagan-Bush crowd at the FCC is being replaced by folks who understand this and take their oversight duties seriously. Therefore, stations like WCCO, if they do not change the complexion of their on-air people, will likely have some very serious explaining to do come license renewal time. Someday, my son should be able to turn on a radio or television in Minnesota knowing that he will see and hear people who look like him and he will not have to get up at the crack of dawn Sunday to do so.

My parents taught me to hate violence; the job of teaching Katie that violence is evil is ours. Washington's latest assault on the entertainment business is reminiscent of the "healers" in the Middle Ages who prescribed leeches for serious illnesses. Not only did the removal of "sick blood" fail to cure the disease; the treatment however well-intentioned, seriously weakened the patient. Similarly, politicians who beat up on entertainment, whatever their motives, are making easy headlines but weakening the business and doing nothing to help parents or children. To be sure, all adults, at one time or another, detest a portion of the popular entertainment to which their children are exposed.

Undoubtedly, some parents support the attacks on Hollywood. But are the members of the public who watch supposedly offensive entertainment all morally inferior to those who don't? Is there no room for a clash of cultural images in a moral society? Are politicians and pundits and social scientists really better equipped to guide entertainment than the free marketplace? A belief in a free marketplace of entertainment does not preclude criticism. We have decided that Katie is too young to see "Jurassic Park," and we now feel we made a mistake by allowing her to see the video of "The Wizard of Oz." The witch was too scary. It's helpful to read reviews, to ask friends for advice and to impose a moral context for evaluating entertainment Criticism is not only constitutionally protected, it is righteous. But there is a difference between criticism that advocates one aesthetic over another and blacklisting that prohibits controversial ideas and images from being exposed at all.

Contrary to the platitudes of modern-day blacklist-ers, moral decisions are made in a more complex way than decisions about what kind of toothpaste to buy. Unfortunately, many kids grow up with little parental supervision," and, perhaps, the politicians have some hope that curtailing violence on TV will make these "latchkey children" better citizens when they, 1 grow up. The reality is that unsu- pervised kids are unlikely to stay home and watch bland TV if they' can visit their friends and see the gory stuff. Even if they stayed home, everything we know about leaving kids to grow up by themselves tells us that absence of guid- ance is infinitely more damaging than anything on TV. Rather than pass gun-control legis-.

lation and help American families, Congress seems to be saying "let them eat sitcoms." Entertainment is not supposed to "solve" problems; it is supposed to allow people to escape from them or think about them. There is no evidence that repressing art or en-' tertainment improves the moral character of people. So, no thanks, senators and repre- sentatives, I do not want daughter growing up in a blander America in which artists are punished for exploring the dark side of life. Picasso, Alfred Hitchcock, Bruce Springsteen, William Faulkner, Martin Scorsese and the Greek tragedians are among the artists who could not have searched for truth under the bureaucratic eye ofs Congress. Unfortunately, there is, pain and ugliness in the world.

We will not raise moral children by pressuring for a culture that ignores real life. it A few weeks ago, my family and I were in Michigan for my sister's wed-" ding. After we checked into our hotel, Joseph, the 6-year-old, turned on the television and shrieked. I thought maybe he got a glimpse of one of channels that parents ask the front desk to block out. Instead, he blurted out.

"Dad, look at all the black people." Sure enough, on the Detroit news there was not one, but two African-American anchors. We certainly knew we were not home in Minnesota, where people of color on the airwaves are about as common as socialists in Edina. Don't believe me? Consider the following facts: None of Minnesota's network-affiliated TV stations has a prime-time news anchor of color. WCCO, the state's most popular talk radio station, does not have any African-American talk show hosts. KSTP, the second biggest, only has one, does not pay him and plops him on the air Sunday mornings from 9 to 10.

The few programs on local television hosted by people of color, such as KARE-TV's "Full Circle," air at even more godawful times like Sunday mornings at 7. However, the most glaring example' is the recent departure of KARE-TV reporter Asha Blake, who was one of the rising stars in the local media heavens. This past spring, Blake, who hails from the East Indies, filled in on KARE's morning news anchor desk and did a superb job. In fact, during the all-important February sweeps-month, KARE's ratings jumped markedly. Blake's numbers, her seven-plus years working in this market and her smooth anchoring style should have made her a shoo-in to keep the anchor spot.

Instead, the station passed her over for Kim Insley, a feature (a.k.a. "fluff) reporter whose primary claims to fame are blond hair and blue eyes. Her first weeks on the air were laughable. In one broadcast she pronounced the same name three different ways. Yet today, Insley sits in the anchor's seat and the passed-over Blake has left for Detroit.

Did the better person prevail? That depends on whether hair color and skin tone are part of how one defines "better" in TV broadcasting. In a recent Twin Cities Reader article, KARE assistant news director Tom Lindner claimed that "what makes a good anchor is subjective, an unde- Castro's fantasy amid reality By Howard Weinberg Cox News Service Miami, Fla. In Cuba today, power outages are so frequent and enduring that factories have had to close down. Food is spoiling in warm refrigerators. Outages of from 12 to 16 hours a day are confirmed.

The entire economy is breaking down, the defections increasing rapidly. Yet. on a visit to Colombia, Fidel Castro mounts a pulpit and pro claims capitalism to be "a failed ide ology which otters no future whatso ever to humanity." I would like to be sitting with a Cuban family, their rooms baking in heat, their food shelves bare, their 35-year-old auto crumbling out in the street, while they read what Castro had to say about capitalism. It is interestina to note that while the Cuban experiment with communism has evidently failed, there remains a worldwide fascination about the island and the obdurate man who controls it. At Paris' Orly Airport, agents for a cosmetic company greet travelers en tering the duty-free section with cir culars promoting their product and ottering a chance to win a tree trip to Cuba.

interested in a vacation can read1 the brochure put out by Regent Holidays a London which says of the island: "Cuba Clinton Collins Jr. finable mean? What does that If broadcasters apparently cannot define what it is they are looking for, how do they know it when they have found it? The truth of the matter is, they really do not know what makes a "good anchor" other than relying on shallow, often racially tinged gut feelings. KARE's passover on Blake in favor of Insley is especially suspect in light of KARE news director Janet Mason's claim in the same Twin Cities Reader article that its on-air staff "mirror the community." Whose community is it targeting? The entire community in all its living color or merely those folks with surnames like Anderson, Carlson, Peterson and whose idea of soul food is lutefisk? What if local TV stations want to do the right thing but fear viewers will not accept an ebony or tan hue in the anchor's seat? Should they fall on their rating swords because it's the politically correct thing to do? I do not think they have to worry that viewers will revolt First, I think they underestimate Minnesotans' ability to accept different hues of folks shimmering on their television screens. For example, KARE-TV needs to remember who anchors the highly rated "Today" show that follows Nordic goddess Insley: brown-haired Katie Couric and the very African-American Bryant Gumbei. Do "good Minnesotans" change the channel in disgust? No, they stay tuned.

Well, if Minnesotans will watch a national news program featuring an anchor of color, why do local news directors hem and haw about doing so in the Twin Cities? Can you think of any reason other than the word? Now the radio folks have not done much better. About two months ago, I spoke with Rand Gottlieb, WCCO station manager, about its dismal record hiring radio personalities of color. First he mumbled something about the "lowbrow" nature of the station's broadcasting, which I took to mean that Gottlieb either thought people of color were too "highbrow" for his listeners or that his listeners the very name fires the imagination with images of fat cigars, dark rum and revolution. Nowadays Cuba has mellowed to become not only an island offering all you would expect from a tropical holiday destination but also a unique blend of socialism and Caribbean temperament" There are two Cubas: the one Cubans live in and the other where the tourists are shepherded. Much as in the Soviet Union before the Soviet was removed from it tourists eat sleep and play while the natives despair.

A constant stream of visitors comes to Cuba from Europe, from Canada and from Central and South America. For a Briton, the air fare is pretty much the same from London to Havana as it is from London to Miami. In contrast to the brochure by Regent Holidays, another company based in London South American Experi MIGRANT, I CAN By Danny Goldberg Los Angeles, Calif. Sen. Paul Simon, and several of his cohorts in Congress think they can help my wife and me raise our daughter Katie.

He was in Hollywood recently to lecture TV producers about violence on television. Meanwhile, Democratic Rep. Edward Markey of Massachusetts has proposed a bill that would require all newly manufactured TV sets to include a chip that would allow parents to block out "violent" programming. Among the issues left unclear is how violence is to be defined. Will the chip be programmed to shut out the evening news, with its real-life murders or body-contact sports? Will the definition include slapstick comedy like that of the Three Stooges, or Westerns from the '50s, like "Have Gun, Will Will it preclude families from seeing a PBS showing of Kenneth Branagh's version of Shakespeare's "Henry with dead bodies strewn everywhere? Is there truly a single "family" standard of violence incorporating the values of Jews, Catholics, atheists, Muslims, Baptists and Quakers, rural and urban, rich and poor, college-educated and illiterate? Who will set the standards? Now, I admit my wife and I are not very happy when Katie, who just turned 3, runs around the house pretending to shoot us or our cat But I can't see how Congress can help us.

Katie doesn't even watch regular TV just videos we control. Her exposure to guns comes from friends at preschool. Guns are part of American culture and have been since long before TV and movies were invented. When I grew up in the 50s, network TV aired many Westerns in which people got shot and died. Cuban economy is an admission in itself that Castro's tenure as a messi-ah who would rescue Cuba from its centuries of dependence upon others is fraudulent Yet the man who executed so many during his 34-year dictatorship, who established a network of cruel prisons for anyone who dissented, who has not established a freedom of choice at the ballot box, and who has reaffirmed himself as recently as this month as a devout Marxist, is greeted as a hero in Bolivia and is treated with kid gloves by the president of Colombia, where Castro issued his "failed ideology" proclamation.

There obviously is something about the man that commands attention but for the life of me, I cannot understand why so much of the world still sees this ruthless man as an innocent romantic beinf tormented by U.S. must clarify reason before acting in Bosnia 1 I Danny Goldberg, who is senior vice president of Atlantic Records and chair of the ACLU Foundation of Southern California, wrote this for the Los Angeles Times. Although individual soldiers might be motivated by racist hatred, the goal of the combatants in the former Yugoslavia is to drive the enemy from the land, not to capture and kill every man, woman and child. This is certainly no apology for Serbi-. rf i an, Muslim or Croatian war crimes; those atrocities merit the horror, disgust and outrage of the world.

Never theless, the war in Yugoslavia is about the control of territory, not i genocide. How has this misperception distorted the American debate on intervention, in Bosnia? The word genocide evokes a powerful emotional response from many Americans. But if the admin-istration wants American soldiers to fight and die in a distant civil war, it should explain, very clearly, why. If we are told that the fighting threat-, )0 ens U.S. security, we must refuse to be deceived.

If we are told that it is -the duty of the United States to en-, 7a force peace and order everywhere, we, should insist that our efforts begin at home. If we are told that must die because the Serbs are committing genocide, we must demand evidence. And if we are told that America must take a stand against war crimes in' general, we must ask why we act in Serbia and not in the Caucasus, not in Southeast Asia and not in Africa. Daryl G. Press is a doctoral student in the Defense and Arms Control Studies Program at the Massachusetts In-stitute of Technology.

He wrote article for the Los Angeles 0(. HI Clinton Collins Jr. is a local prosecutor, writer and frequent legal affairs commentator for KTCA-TV's "Alma nac. ences Ltd. is more realistic.

It warns prospective travelers of power shortages in Cuba. But it also attributes those shortages and other problems to the U.S. trade embargo and Moscow's withdrawal of support The embargo has been the excuse of Castro and his followers for decades of inertia in the Cuban economy, despite the fact that the Soviets were pumping in plenty of cash to brace the regime. Then, when the Soviet Union went politically and financially bankrupt Castro added that to his list of excuses for a failed Cuba. It is interesting to note that Castro entered Havana in 1959 on a wave of autonomy, devoted his early years to ridding Cuba of its dependence on U.S.

capital, and then mortgaged his country to another superpower. That the loss of sustenance from either the Unitejl States or the Soviet Union is given as reason for the collapse of the By Daryl G. Press Worcester, Mass. Each day, the United States moves closer to military participation in the bloody civil war in the Balkans. Proponents of U.S.

intervention sometimes claim that the national security of the United States is threatened and occasionally assert that the United States has a duty to enforce global peace. The real argument however, is about genocide. The United States, it is said, has a duty to prevent genocide. This strikes a resonant chord in the American conscience. It is, nevertheless, based on a fallacy.

There is no evidence that genocide is occurring in the former Yugoslavia. Genocide has a very specific meaning: the systematic annihilation of a racial, political or cultural group. A war crime, on the other hand, can be any violation of the Geneva Convention. Make no mistake about it Horrific war crimes are being committed every day in the former Yugoslavia. Nevertheless, war crimes and genocide are two different things.

Proponents of U.S. intervention in the Balkans often allude to the Holocaust. Conquering territory was only one of Germany's objectives; another was the systematic annihilation of groups that the Germans hated. In the former Yugoslavia, we see a very different though still terrible, pattern. Terror is used as a weapon to send entire communities fleeing from their land.

Women are raped en masse, villages are burned to the ground and prisoners are tortured..