Demographic Changes Trump Midterms

Apology for Lack of White Men in Catcalling Video

"Hollaback, which disseminated last week's video on catcalling in New York City, apologized Tuesday for the suspicious lack of white men shown in the video,"Evan McMurry reported Wednesday for Mediaite.

"Racial, gender, and class politics is a core part of our work," Hollabeck director Emily May wrote on the organization's website. "While we did not create this video, we did allow our name to be used at the end of it. We agree wholeheartedly that the video should have done a better job of representing our understanding of street harassment and we take full responsibility for that. I'm deeply sorry."

"The video showed an actress walking the streets of New York and experiencing sustained catcalls and harassment, including being followed by one man for over five minutes. The video racked up 32 million views, but came under quick scrutiny for featuring mostly men of color. . . ."

• Kat Chow, NPR "Code Switch": Video Calls Out Catcallers, But Cuts Out White Men
  
  
• Tony Norman, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Catcalls video shows males' ugly side
  
  
• Leonard Pitts Jr., Miami Herald: 'Catcalling' insulting, and certainly no compliment

Short Takes

• "An upcoming film by director Stanley Nelsonwill explore the history and impact of the Black Panthers, released to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the controversial civil rights group's founding,"Teta Alim reported Tuesday for Current.org. "Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution will be released in February 2016 as the first installment of Nelson's America Revisited, a three-part series about pivotal moments in African-American history. The original Black Panther Party formed in 1966 to monitor police brutality against the black community. . . ."
  
  
• Broadcaster Ed Gordon, center in photo at right, taped a pilot for "New View," an hourlong political talk show on Friday at Howard University's WHUT-TV in Washington. "New View" is slated to debut as a monthly in hopes of becoming a syndicated weekly offering to other PBS stations, according to General Manager Jefferi K. Lee. Author Sophia Angeli Nelson, left; pollster Cornell Belcher; Rashad Robinson, executive director of ColorofChange.org; Brittney Cooper, who teaches women's and gender studies and Africana studies at Rutgers University; and this columnist, right, participated. The pilot aired on Sunday. (video).
  
  
• "More sad news from the startups-covering-local-crime world. Yesterday, it was Philadelphia's GunCrisis.org that said it would stop daily reporting because of a lack of funding,"Joshua Benton reported for NiemanLab. "Today, it's an even more noted outfit: Homicide Watch D.C. will close at the end of the year, according to a release from cofounder (and friend of the Lab) Laura Amico and a post on the site. . . ."
  
  
• "Sports Illustrated— a pretty solid source when it comes to sports— has picked out the 100 best Twitter accounts to follow,"Chris O'Shea wrote Wednesday for Fishbowl NY. O'Shea wrote that Fishbowl, like Sports Illustrated, enjoyed the accounts of "J.A. Adande (ESPN); Jemele Hill (ESPN); Michael Lee (WaPo); Rachel Nichols (CNN, Turner); Dan Rafael (ESPN); Adam Schefter (ESPN); Adrian Wojnarowksi (Yahoo)."
  
  
• "NBCUniversal is tying its Spanish-language cable channel closer to the parent brand," medialifemagazine.com reported on Tuesday. "The company said Tuesday it will relaunch mun2 as NBC Universo on Feb. 1, 2015, a day before it covers the Spanish- language broadcast of the Super Bowl. . . ."
  
  
• In Turkey, "Some 1,863 journalists have been fired in the 12 years of Justice and Development Party (AKP) rule, main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) Deputy Chair Veli Agbaba said, while releasing a new party report on the issue," the Hurriyet Daily News reported on Wednesday. "The report, titled 'Journalists Whose Pens Are Broken,' has been printed as a book, and includes 42 media workers telling the story of their dismissals, Agbaba told reporters on Oct. 27, adding that 20 of these individuals did not even want to be named, fearing the consequences. . . ."
  
  
• "A journalist in Sierra Leone has been imprisoned after criticizing President Ernest Bai Koroma's handling of the Ebola outbreak, according to news reports and local journalists. David Tam Baryoh was arrested on Monday," the Committee to Protect Journalists reported on Tuesday.
  
  
• "Freedom of information has made important progress in Brazil during the past 12 years under President Lula da Silva and (since 2011) his successor Dilma Rousseff, who was reelected on 26 October, winning a fourth consecutive term for the Workers' Party (PT), but much remains to be done," Reporters Without Borders reported on Wednesday. The press freedom group said the two major challenges facing the government regarding freedom of information were "journalists' safety and a skewed media landscape."
  
  
• "A Burmese freelance journalist killed in army custody may have been beaten before he died, reports say," the BBC reported on Wednesday. "Aung Naing's body was exhumed and has been sent for post mortem examination. He was shot dead in army custody on 4 October after being arrested reporting on clashes at the Thai border. . . "
  
  
• The Committee to Protect Journalists said Oct. 30 that it condemned a raid by Argentine police on the offices of La Brújula 24, a radio station and news website, in which the outlet's journalistic materials were confiscated. 
  
  

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