Praise for Obama, and Then a Dead Mic

Japanese Native Tells Story of Navajo Code Talkers

"Kenji Kawano is perhaps best known for his photographs of the Navajo code talkers recruited by the Marines to communicate military orders in their own language in World War II, baffling the Japanese,"Monica Almeida reported Thursday for the New York Times "Lens" blog.

"Around 400 young men, who had never been away from the reservation, served in some of the bloodiest battles in the South Pacific and are credited with helping win the battle of Iwo Jima.

"As a Japanese native, and thus a 'former enemy,' Mr. Kawano might have seemed an unlikely candidate to tell the code talkers' story. But his background is what helped him bond with the Navajo veterans who had remained silent for so many years. Soon after he had settled into the Navajo Nation in 1974 to work on a project, he was struggling to learn the language. . . ."

Short Takes

• "A new Horowitz Research study highlights the very important role that multicultural users are playing in driving over-the-top (OTT) and streaming video usage, with Hispanics, Asians and blacks being much more likely to be heavy OTT users than whites,"George Winslow reported Friday for Broadcasting and Cable. Horowitz found that 51 percent of Hispanics, 46 percent of Asian Americans and 45 percent of blacks were spending more than 20 percent of their total TV viewing time watching content on over-the-top services.
  
  
• "Lawmakers in Washington are calling for an apology and 'restitution' for thousands of U.S. World War II veterans who were exposed to mustard gas as part of experiments meant to test gas masks,body suits and even the theory that dark-skinned men were more resistant to chemical weapons," Al Jazeera America reported on Wednesday. "The calls follow reports this week by National Public Radio (NPR) that revealed the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) never made good on promises to locate some 4,000 veterans who were subjected to the experiments and compensate those who suffered permanent injuries. . . ."
  
  
• Patty Talahongva, multimedia journalist, Phoenix-based community developer and a past president of the Native American Journalists Association, was featured Saturday on NPR's "Morning Edition.""From 1891 until 1990, just shy of a century, Phoenix Indian School boarded students from Navajo, Apache and other tribes across the Southwest,"Christopher Livesay reported. "Patty Talahongva is a Hopi who went to Phoenix Indian until 1979. By then, attendance was voluntary. That wasn't the case for generations of students before her. . . ."[Added June 27]


• From a White House advisory for Monday: "The First Lady will deliver remarks at MORE Magazine's first-ever MORE Impact Awards Luncheon at the Newseum. In her remarks, Mrs. [Michelle] Obama will speak about the Let Girls Learn initiative and the importance of expanding access to education for adolescent girls around the world. The event will celebrate four exceptional women, chosen by MORE editors, who have made a significant impact in the areas of women's and girls' rights, health, veterans and military families, and education, both domestically and internationally. Peace Corps Director Carrie Hessler-Radelet will also deliver remarks. This event coincides with the release of MORE Magazine's July/August issue, which was guest-edited by the First Lady." The event is to be live streamed.


• "It's a classic cautionary tale for journalism in the digital age and the era of social media,"Rem Rieder wrote Wednesday for USA Today. "A Pulitzer-winning New York Times reporter goes for the fake while doing a piece on Dylann Roof, accused of murdering nine people in a Charleston, S.C., church. She's taken in by a 16-year-old in England who has decided to dupe the news media. . . ." Rieder also wrote, "The passage in question appeared in a story by Frances Robles that was posted on nytimes.com on Saturday. The anatomy of how the hoax was perpetrated was outlined in an article on fusion.net. . . ."


• "The Washington Informer lost one of its own on June 18, when senior editor Denise Wall Barnes died following a long illness," the Informer said in an editorial on Wednesday. "Barnes, 58, spent much of her adult life in the news business, including the Washington Star, NPR and the Washington Times. She is remembered as a meticulous, dogged, old-school editor who demanded that her reporters go the extra mile, ask one more question and check, double-check and check facts one more time – right up until the time that the paper went to press. . . ." Publisher Denise Rolark Barnes wrote that people sometimes confused the two. "We even predicted the confusion folks would have when either of us died," the publisher told Journal-isms in an email. Denise Rolark Barnes was elected chairman of the National Newspaper Publishers Association at its recent meeting in Detroit.
  
  
• "An Al-Jazeera cameraman was killed today while covering clashes between regime forces and rebels in the southern Syrian province of Daraa, the pan-Arab broadcaster reported," according to a report Friday from the Committee to Protect Journalists. "Mohammed al-Asfar is the second Al-Jazeera journalist to be killed in the province since December. . . ."
  
  
• The Committee to Protect Journalists said it "condemns the excessive damages imposed on Monday by a Moroccan court on a news website convicted of defamation and call on authorities to reverse the conviction on appeal. The Casablanca court convicted the privately owned news website Goud on civil defamation charges in connection with an article it republished on its website that accused the king's private secretary, Mounir el-Majidi, of corruption and mismanagement of funds, according to news reports. El-Majidi denied the allegations. . . ."
  
  
• "The Wall Street Journal is shuttering its India site,"Chris O'Shea reported Friday for FishbowlNY. "According to MediaNama, wsj.com/india will shut down next Tuesday, but the blog India Realtime will continue to publish. . . ."
  
  
• "The attorney for a Zimbabwe journalist says his client was convicted of publishing a newspaper in a southern town without government permission and sentenced to eight months in prison," the Associated Press reported Friday. "Several newspapers and radio stations have already been closed under Zimbabwe's harsh media laws and dozens of journalists have been arrested over the past 15 years. . . ."
  
  

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