Category: Politics, Policy & Protest.

CBS News Senior Producer Chloe Arensberg and Political Director Caitlin Conant talked about combating the fake news narrative during a Women’s Leadership Program panel.

To present the news objectively, it is all about how you frame the story, Caitlin Conant and Chloe Arensberg of CBS News told a group of first-year students Thursday night at a Women’s Leadership Program event.

Remaining objective is an ongoing conversation in the newsroom, and as producers, Ms. Conant said, they work behind the scenes and make decisions every day to deliver the news to their audience as fairly as they can. For them, it is not about interviewing a Democrat after every Republican in every political story, but rather ensuring that the news anchors ask the right questions in a fair and balanced way.

“What questions do you ask, are you holding them accountable, are you making sure that you’re at least acknowledging their point of view,” Ms. Conant said.

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GW Today.

Nicaraguan-born writer and activist Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodriguez gave an unapologetic keynote address for the Latinx Heritage Celebration.

Prisca Dorcas, founder of online activism platform Latina Rebels, has not always been a “woke brown girl.”

During her keynote address for the 2018 Latinx Heritage Celebration on Monday night, Ms. Dorcas told the George Washington University students in Dorothy Betts Marvin Theatre that her journey involved unlearning much of the self-hatred she grew up with. She became radicalized after experiencing racism as a graduate student in Nashville, Tenn., a culture shock from her upbringing in Miami where she was surrounded by Latinx people like her.

She read some of her written pieces that dealt with her learning from these experiences, many of which were published in the Huffington Post Latino Voices, including a piece she wrote to herself called Reminders.

“Some days whiteness will make you forget that you are beautiful, and you’re capable of anything, because of the barrio that you come from and the clothes that you wear,” she read.

“Some days whiteness will make you forget that you are smart and that you deserve to be in these institutions, because you might stutter when you have to speak English in front of a room of people whose English is their first language.”

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GW Today

Panelists described covering the Trump administration as chaotic and tough.

April Ryan, a White House correspondent for American Urban Radio Networks and a political analyst for CNN, told an audience at George Washington University that she knows she has sometimes become part of the story of the Trump administration.

There was the time that the president asked Ms. Ryan from the podium during a press briefing to set up a meeting for him with the Congressional Black Caucus. And there have been social media battles between former White House aide Omarosa Manigault and Ms. Ryan and another social media rift between Ms. Ryan and a Trump appointee to the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

But Ms. Ryan, a George Washington University Terker Distinguished Fellow in the School of Media and Public Affairs (SMPA), said she has not sought to become part of the story of the Trump White House.

“There have been attacks, there’s been retaliation for questions, but it’s not about me,” Ms. Ryan said. “Unfortunately, I have been in the news, but it’s not about me, it’s about the story, and when you look at it as the story and not yourself, you can move on, you can keep going back every day.”

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GW Today

CLEVELAND–Lloyd Fraser, 35, is not normally a protester, but the Cleveland resident came out Thursdy in the more than 90-degree weather to make a statement against Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump using the Republican National Convention (RNC) as a backdrop, because he said that he thinks people need to do more than vote.

“[We’re] just standing against Trump, standing against hate and fear and all that he represents,” Fraser said as he and other demonstrators walked to promote their cause.  “I think it will change the perspective of some people to know that there are so many people out here who believe so strongly about it.”

Fraser was one of the more than 200 protesters participating in a march on Hope Memorial Bridge in downtown Cleveland during the RNC. Organized by Stand Together Against Trump (STAT), the anti-Donald Trump group of Cleveland and other Midwest area doctors and young professionals.

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Chicago Defender

CLEVELAND – Republican Donald Trump and his supporters have said things about Muslims that even his own party members have condemned.  They should be banned from the country, they said.  They can never be president, they said.  There should be a national directory for them, they added.

At the 2016 Republican National Convention, a leading Arab American organization decided it was a time to fight back, and it did — with a comedy show.

Yes, as banners and signs condemned their religion in photos and words, the Arab American Institute put on a comedy show.

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Chicago Defender

WASHINGTON — House Democrats came to Howard University to dramatize how, they say, Republican-initiated federal funding policies are disproportionately hurting black and Hispanic college students, black and Hispanic families and the educational opportunities for all public school students.

The policy, called sequestration, was enacted in 2011 by the Republican controlled House of Representatives as a plan to force Congressional to reduce the country’s federal budget deficit.

Under the plan, when Congress cannot agree on the budget, as the nation saw in 2013’s fiscal year, mandatory, across-the-board spending cuts are made under sequestration that Democrats say have unfairly and unwisely cut certain programs.

“There are no Democrats who support sequestration,” Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland’s 5^th District said. “Sequestration is a complicated word that starts with ‘S’ which stands for stupid. It is an irrational policy.”

The act lowers defense and non-defense spending by about $900 billion over 10 years.  Sequester-level funding was avoided during the 2014 and 2015 fiscal years, but it is expected to return this year unless Congress takes action.

“In short, [sequestration is] a disinvestment in America,” Hoyer said.

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HU News Service.

The Afro American.

LARGO, Md. — After watching the first Democratic presidential debate, the consensus among members of the Prince George’s County Young Democrats and the Maryland Democratic Party Tuesday night was that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders dominated the night’s discussion, and even though former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley was able to make a few good points, he and former Sens. Jim Webb and Lincoln Chaffee were significantly overshadowed.

The tables were crowded at the watch party for the debate at a Famous Dave’s BBQ restaurant in Largo, Md. Many people proudly wore “I’m with Donna” stickers on their shirts to show support for Prince George’s County Congresswoman Donna Edward’s run for Senate. The room was abuzz with anticipation.

Prince George’s County is one of two of the nation’s richest African-American counties.

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HU News Service.

The Afro American.