OURstory: Harry McAlpin (White House History-Maker)

President Barack Obama created history when he held is first White House press conference as our first African American president. I wonder if he will be aware of the history created on February 8, 1944 when Harry McAlpin was the first African American journalist admitted to a White House press conference. [SOURCE]

He was working for the National Negro Press Association and the Atlanta Daily World. On that day, McAlpin was waiting to go into the Oval Office, where they had press conferences at that time, when a white reporter from the New Orleans Times-Picayune spoke to him. The reporter who was head of the White House Press Correspondents Association said, "Harry, we're not happy that you're here, but we can't stop you from going to these press conferences. However, if you don't go to these press conferences, we will come out afterward and we will tell you everything that happened. You will have the exact same notes we do. You will find it possible to write the same stories that we do. And, if you don't go, we will let you join the White House Press Correspondents Association."

McAlpin went into the press conference and at the end of it he made a point of going by President Franklin Roosevelt's desk. Roosevelt shook McAlpin's hand and said, "Harry, I'm glad to have you here."

In 1947, the Negro Newspaper Publishers association and some individual news correspondents were accredited to the Congressional Press Galleries and the State Department. The early journalists accredited were James L. Hicks, Percival L. Prattis and Louis Lautier.

I hope the Black reporters around the nation are aware of this historical factoid as they attend future White House press conferences

Related articles

• OURstory: Dr. Bernard Harris
• OURstory: 15th Amendment
• OURstory: Morgan State University
• OURstory: Rosa Parks (1913-2005)

Wordless Wednesday: Hey Barack ... Are You Ready for Some Football?

Seeking Applicants for White House Internship Program

President Obama is doing some heavy lifting for our nation.   It seems that he needs some additional help in the White House!   The application period for the Spring 2012 White House Internship Program is now open. Applicants have until September 11, 2011 to apply for a Spring 2012 White House Internship. Please read instructions below for additional explanations.

  

The following are important questions to ask yourself before and after submitting your internship application.  The link to apply can be found at the bottom of this page, but please read all instructions before starting your application.

  

Am I eligible to apply for a White House Internship?

All White House Internship Program participants must be:

• United States citizens
• At least 18 years of age on or before the first day of the internship
• Currently enrolled in an undergraduate or graduate program at a college, community college or university OR graduated in the past two years from undergraduate or graduate program at a college, community college or university

OR

• A veteran of the United States Armed Forces who possesses a high school diploma or its equivalent and has served on active duty at any time over the past two years

Am I available for the Spring 2012 internship program?

All White House Interns are expected to intern full-time for the entire term of the program:

• The spring internship term runs from January 17, 2012 - May 4, 2012
• Please visit our FAQ page for questions regarding quarter systems
• The White House internship program is an unpaid program
• The White House internship program is a full-time program
• Interns will be expected to work from approximately 9 a.m. - 6 p.m., Monday-Friday
• Hours may vary by office
• Please visit our FAQ page for questions regarding the definition of "full-time"
  

Do I have all my application materials?
A completed packet includes:

• Two Essays: Each answer should be between 300-500 words in length
• Current Resume: Your resume should not exceed one page
• Three Letters of Recommendation

How do I submit my application correctly?
All application materials must be submitted online.

• The application for the Spring 2012 White House Internship will be posted from May 9, 2011 - September 11, 2011. All Spring 2012 White House Internship application materials MUST be submitted ON or BEFORE 11:59 p.m. EDT September 11, 2011.
• When an applicant enters a recommender's email address into the application, the recommender will be sent an email with instructions on how to submit a recommendation for the applicant.
• When a letter of recommendation has been successfully submitted, both the applicant and the recommender will receive an email confirmation with the name of the recommender who has submitted a letter on the applicant's behalf.

Please click here to fill out and submit your application to the Spring 2012 White House Internship Program.

Black Bloggers Get Played by White House

One of my AfroSpear colleagues is Bruce Dixon. I'm re-posting one of his recent Black Agenda Radio commentaries.

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When the White House wanted to get its latest message out to Black communities, it didn't call a press conference. Its spokespeople didn't turn to BET or Black radio. They called in Black bloggers, most of them not even remotely political, and few if any working journalists. What the White House hoped to accomplish was crystal clear --- to use them the manner corrupt and lazy reporters are used, to seduce them with the illusion of “privileged access” in return for the ability to plant anonymous stories and gossip as “news” items.

“Real journalists would have laughed those anonymous spokesperson and “off the record” requirements right out of the room. Ethical journalists only grant anonymity to sources like whistle blowers with well-founded fears of retaliation.”

In the words of I.F. Stone, one of the 20th century's great investigative journalists, “Governments lie. All governments lie.” Stone's words are as true now as they were when he uttered them more than half a century ago.

When the White House invited black bloggers in for a Columbus Day meeting, they were told they could print anything they heard in the first half of the meeting, but that they could attribute none of it to any White House spokesperson by name, while the second half of their meeting would be completely “off the record.” Fortunately, or perhaps by design, none of the invited bloggers were actually journalists. They hailed mostly from celebrity gossip sites like ConcreteLoop, and Young, Black and Fabulous, from BET, Essence magazine, from BlackSingles.Com.

Real journalists would have laughed those anonymous spokesperson and “off the record” requirements right out of the room. Ethical journalists only grant anonymity to sources like whistle blowers with well-founded fears of retaliation, not to police to mayors or to prosecutors, not to military or civilian government officials. The only reason for representatives of these powerful institutions to speak to reporters, or bloggers “off the record” is to lie to them with the expectation that they will pass untraceable falsehoods on to the public as news, or in the case of Young, Black and Fabulous, celebrity gossip.

Sure enough, cell phone video of the president dropping in to briefly address the bloggers hit the internet the very next day, prompting the Atlantic's token Black commentator Ta Nehisi Coates to grouse about colored folks who didn't understand what “off the record” meant, as if being the covert mouthpieces of the powerful were something they really should strive to be.

“Black Agenda Report was not invited to the White House briefing, and that's perfectly OK with us.“

One of the invitees was a friend and colleague of ours, Ms. Leutisha Stills, now at Jack and Jill Politics. Observing that the White House hadn't called Black bloggers in since the 2008 presidential campaign, she opined that the bloggers were being, as she put it, “pimped.” We think Ms. Stills was correct, but for the wrong reasons. To be “pimped” is to be manipulated for some underhanded and shameful purpose. Whether bloggers, or journalists are shamefully used once every couple years, or three times every week is a difference only in the frequency of the act, not in the roles of the players or of the played.

Thus when Keli Goff, a Huffington Post and theLoop21.com blogger, called the White House briefing “a good first date,” she was publicly signaling her willingness to be used any way, any time by the powerful. There's a word for people who play that role, and that word is not “journalist.”

In his long career, the great investigative reporter I.F. Stone broke scores of original stories about war, peace and corruption. He never asked for, and he never got the privileged and “off the record” access to the powerful, which Ta Nehisi Coates imagines Black reporters should aspire to, the private interviews with mayors, admirals and presidents, who would have been much too afraid of his direct and probing questions anyway. Stone got his stories the old fashioned way, with diligent research.

Black Agenda Report was not invited to the White House briefing, and that's perfectly OK with us. We understand that reporters and bloggers too, who subsist on privileged access to the powerful in return for passing their anonymous tidbits to the public as news, that such people are being pimped. Which makes them.... well.... you know....

For Black Agenda Radio, I'm Bruce Dixon. Find us on the web every Wednesday at www.blackagendareport.com.

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Bruce makes some great points in his commentary. There are just two points that I'd like to make.

1. First, the White House wanted to get their message out to a wide audience in the Black community. As we know from the Villager's Black Blog Rankings that I maintained for a couple of years ... gossip blogs have remarkably large audiences. That factoid seems to be the most important metric in the equation for the White House peeps.
2. Second, bloggers are (for the most part) not journalists. We don't have journalistic training ... we don't have the budgets that many journalists have to travel ... we are simply bloggers. As such, to hold bloggers (for the most part) to the same standards as journalists isn't realistic.

On the whole, I think that it is a good thing that Black bloggers are being included in more of the political discussions. Perhaps more of us need to get some journalistic training or learn what the standards are for things like "off-the-record" discussions. But, until then, I think that the African American online community needs to continue to seek out and accept these opportunities when they are available to us.

What say u?

625 People Lost Their Health Insurance Every Hour in 2009

625 -- that's the number of people who lost their health insurance every hour in 2009.

A statistic like that tells a frightening story -- losing insurance can happen to anyone. How many more Americans have to lose their health insurance and how many more businesses have to drop coverage before we fix our broken health care system?

We've been debating what to do about our broken health care system for decades -- not just this past year. Every idea has been put on the table. Every argument has been made. Everything there is to say about health reform has been said. It's time to decide how to reform our health care system to give American families and businesses the security and stability they deserve.

As the President has said, "In the United States of America, no one should have to worry that they'll go without insurance -- not for one year, not for one month, not for one day."
The millions of Americans who lost their insurance last year can't wait any longer. The time is now for health insurance reform.

Let's get it done!

8 - Health Care Reform

We are at a point in the healthcare reform debate where a vote needs to be taken by congress. Let's have a vote and live with the results. Here are some reasons that the issue needs to be dealt with now:

8 -- that's the number of people every minute who are denied coverage, charged a higher rate or otherwise discriminated against because of a pre-existing condition.

8 is also the number of lobbyists hired by special interests to influence health reform for every member of Congress in 2009.

The facts speak for themselves -- the status quo isn't working, and special interests are doing everything in their power to maintain that status quo.

Being denied coverage because of a pre-existing condition is something we all know is wrong. And for those 8 people every minute who can't find health coverage or face discrimination because of a pre-existing condition, reform can't wait.

It appears that the White House is putting on a full-court press to get a healthcare bill passed. Where do you stand on this issue?

World Champion Los Angeles Lakers Visit Obama's White House ... sans Brian Winters

I was born and raised in Los Angeles. As such, I've been a Lakers fan for over 50 years ... way before it was popular!

The Lakers that I grew up with were always getting beat by the Boston Celtics or the New York Knicks. I remember when the Lakers from yesteryear like Mel Counts, Happy Hairston, Gail Goodrich, Jerry West and Elgin Baylor. Do you remember any of the Lakers from back in the day?


My favorite Lakers player back then was a guy named Brian Winters. I thought the Lakers made a mistake in 1975 when they acquired Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and reserve center Walt Wesley from the Milwaukee Bucks for center Elmore Smith, guard Brian Winters, and rookie "blue chippers" Dave Meyers and Junior Bridgeman.

Anyhow, I say all that to say ... it brought a smile to my face when I saw that President Obama was hanging with the Lakers today in the White House:





I do think that it is somewhat sad that Chicago Bulls' fans, like Obama, can't pay homage to the Lakers without bringing up Michael Jordan and other long-past days of glory...

Carlos Allen is the Black Man Who Crashed Through White House Security (video)

I imagine that it will be quite awhile before President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama host a state dinner at their crib again. The one they held in November 2008 turned out to be a security nightmare.

It turns out that Carlos Allen, who runs an event business called Hush Galleria in the nation's capital, is the third person not on the guest list who managed to enter the event.




You can see in this video how Mr. Allen entered the event separately from the uninvited couple, Tareq and Michaele Salahi, who captured headlines for penetrating security at the Nov. 24 event to honor Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his wife.

“The subject traveled from a local hotel, where the official Indian delegation was staying, and arrived at the dinner with the group, which was under the responsibility of the Department of State,” the agency said in a statement. “This individual went through all required security measures along with the rest of the official delegation at the hotel, and boarded a bus/van with the delegation guests en route to the White House.”

Apparently this uninvited guest didn't get as far as the reality television wannabes. He was not on the dinner guest list, however, it appears that he didn't get to meet the president or first lady.

I just hope that this guy who breached White House security doesn't turn out to be a relative of the Christmas bomber or a recent visitor to Yemen.

What are your thoughts on this new information?

President's Weekly Address: 'Efficiency and Innovation'

With the process of going through the budget line by line in full swing, the President uses his Weekly Address to give some examples, big and small, of how the Administration is working to cut costs and eliminate waste.

The President also announces two new key appointments, Jeffrey Zients as Chief Performance Officer and Aneesh Chopra as Chief Technology Officer, who will be invaluable in streamlining the way government functions through efficiency and innovation.



What do you think of this week's message?

More Racism from Republican Leaders -- This Time it is 'Watermelons on the White House Lawn'

Why do Republican politicians insist on insulting our nation's president with racist rants and images under the guise of ignorance or humor. Did you see where southern California Mayor Dean Grose sent out an e-mail this past weekend depicting the White House lawn planted with watermelons, under the title "No Easter egg hunt this year."

Mayor Grose was outed by a local businesswoman, Keyanus Price, who said,

"I have had plenty of my share of chicken and watermelon and all those kinds of jokes. I honestly don't even understand where he was coming from, sending this to me. As a Black person receiving something like this from the city-freakin'-mayor - come on."

Grose was re-elected to the Los Alamitos City Council in 2006 with the backing of Congressman Ed Royce, Senator Tom Harman and then County Supervisor Jim Silva. The “Orange County Republican Leadership Voter Guide” claimed that Grose was part of the “Orange County Republican Team” and announced that Grose was endorsed by the Orange County Republican Party. Los Alamitos is a 2 1/4-square-mile Orange County city of around 12,000 people. The mayor is elected by fellow members of the five-seat City Council.

Grose responded that he didn't mean to offend her. He said he was unaware of the racial stereotype that Black people like watermelons.

"Bottom line is, we laugh at things and I didn't see this in the same light that she did. I'm sorry. It wasn't sent to offend her personally - or anyone - from the standpoint of the African American race."

I hope that Grose is removed as mayor of his town for being a fool ... and for lying to us as if we were fools. Does any villager think that Grose didn't know that watermelons are part of a racist stereotype that Black people have endured for many years? Didn't he learn anything from similiar situation last year at the California State Fair?

I wonder if Michael Steele, the new RNC Chair, will have anything to say on this about this racist rant from one of his GOP leaders?

Obama 2.0 * WhiteHouse.gov is More Interactive

The Obama administration relaunched the White House Website adding a blog and several new features to make it more interactive.

Macon Phillips, director of new media for the White House, posted the first entry for the new blog at http://www.whitehouse.gov/. Villagers may now sign up for an RSS feed, e-mail updates, and can provide feedback to the White House by filling out a form on their updated Web site.

The White House also plans to post non-emergency legislation online for five days so the public can review and comment before the president signs it into law. Phillips stated the site is intended to deepen the administration's engagement with the American people, and it will play a major role in delivering on President Obama's promise of transparency in government.

Have you checked it out yet?

(Th)ink by Keith Knight: 'W Reaches Out to Sasha'

(Th)ink is an editorial cartoon written and drawn by cartoonist Keith Knight (the K Chronicles).