Boon
05-02-2008, 05:47 PM
JWhit gettting the publicity he craves.
http://www.kansascity.com/sports/story/601764.html
Playboy headline misleads readers
By JASON WHITLOCK
The Kansas City Star
Chris Napolitano, editorial director of Playboy magazine, is committed to stirring a racial controversy in the next issue of Hugh Hefner’s favorite publication.
Napolitano, No. 2 behind Hef at the magazine, intends to use a 5,000-word column I wrote challenging the wisdom of America’s drug war, world-leading incarceration rate and brutal prison system as an excuse to fan racial flames and distract readers from the real issues raised in the piece.
It’s all eerily similar to the Golfweek-noose cover of a few months ago, except Napolitano’s scheme is more calculated and deliberate.
He’s going to do this over my objections and the strong disapproval of his executive editor, Lee Froehlich, the man who worked with me crafting the piece. Napolitano is going to do this being fully aware that he is being completely unfair to the sources who took genuine risks working with me on the story. He’s been told that his framing of the story will prevent the majority of people from digesting the substance of what was written.
He doesn’t care. He has a sexy headline he wants to promote and magazines to sell.
So on May 9, this headline will greet Playboy readers on the cover: “Jason Whitlock, The Black KKK.” On the inside of the magazine over my column, the headline will read: “The Black KKK.” A subheadline will state: “Hip Hop is killing Black America, and it’s time to do something about it.”
The story isn’t about the Black KKK. The words do not appear in the 5,000-word column. None of the sources quoted in the story or spoken to on background ever heard those words come out of my mouth, and they never spoke them to me. The story isn’t about hip-hop killing Black America.
The story is about the astronomical financial and cultural price we all — black, white, brown and yellow — are paying for locking up 2.3 million of our citizens. The piece focuses on California’s penal system, the state’s too-powerful prison guard union, Jim Brown’s anti-gang-violence organization and Mexican-black hostility.
The column is a desperate plea for America to change course from its lock-’em-up-and-throw-away-the-key criminal justice system. The approach doesn’t create safety. It breeds corruption and gang culture. And it is currently crippling state and federal budgets. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger recently proposed a $7 billion budget for his state’s prison health care. You have millions of Americans going without health care, and California needs to spend $7 billion caring for prisoners.
The column screams that the foundation of our democracy is under attack from within, and Napolitano incredibly and irresponsibly wants to sabotage the message with a headline — “The Black KKK” — chosen to provoke, distract and distort.
Not only that, Playboy plans to mount a significant media campaign promoting its out-of-context headlines. On April 23 Jessica Sigelbaum, a representative of the magazine’s public-relations staff, e-mailed me the letter Playboy intended to send to television networks encouraging them to interview me.
Among the many crimes of the original pitch letter was its deliberate attempt to single out Barack Obama for special criticism: “With thug life destroying black America and prisons taking on an increasing number of inmates, Whitlock questions presidential candidate Barack Obama’s political ability to address this issue. Whitlock says it is a sensitive subject for Senator Obama to address without seeming too nonwhite.”
http://www.kansascity.com/sports/story/601764.html
Playboy headline misleads readers
By JASON WHITLOCK
The Kansas City Star
Chris Napolitano, editorial director of Playboy magazine, is committed to stirring a racial controversy in the next issue of Hugh Hefner’s favorite publication.
Napolitano, No. 2 behind Hef at the magazine, intends to use a 5,000-word column I wrote challenging the wisdom of America’s drug war, world-leading incarceration rate and brutal prison system as an excuse to fan racial flames and distract readers from the real issues raised in the piece.
It’s all eerily similar to the Golfweek-noose cover of a few months ago, except Napolitano’s scheme is more calculated and deliberate.
He’s going to do this over my objections and the strong disapproval of his executive editor, Lee Froehlich, the man who worked with me crafting the piece. Napolitano is going to do this being fully aware that he is being completely unfair to the sources who took genuine risks working with me on the story. He’s been told that his framing of the story will prevent the majority of people from digesting the substance of what was written.
He doesn’t care. He has a sexy headline he wants to promote and magazines to sell.
So on May 9, this headline will greet Playboy readers on the cover: “Jason Whitlock, The Black KKK.” On the inside of the magazine over my column, the headline will read: “The Black KKK.” A subheadline will state: “Hip Hop is killing Black America, and it’s time to do something about it.”
The story isn’t about the Black KKK. The words do not appear in the 5,000-word column. None of the sources quoted in the story or spoken to on background ever heard those words come out of my mouth, and they never spoke them to me. The story isn’t about hip-hop killing Black America.
The story is about the astronomical financial and cultural price we all — black, white, brown and yellow — are paying for locking up 2.3 million of our citizens. The piece focuses on California’s penal system, the state’s too-powerful prison guard union, Jim Brown’s anti-gang-violence organization and Mexican-black hostility.
The column is a desperate plea for America to change course from its lock-’em-up-and-throw-away-the-key criminal justice system. The approach doesn’t create safety. It breeds corruption and gang culture. And it is currently crippling state and federal budgets. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger recently proposed a $7 billion budget for his state’s prison health care. You have millions of Americans going without health care, and California needs to spend $7 billion caring for prisoners.
The column screams that the foundation of our democracy is under attack from within, and Napolitano incredibly and irresponsibly wants to sabotage the message with a headline — “The Black KKK” — chosen to provoke, distract and distort.
Not only that, Playboy plans to mount a significant media campaign promoting its out-of-context headlines. On April 23 Jessica Sigelbaum, a representative of the magazine’s public-relations staff, e-mailed me the letter Playboy intended to send to television networks encouraging them to interview me.
Among the many crimes of the original pitch letter was its deliberate attempt to single out Barack Obama for special criticism: “With thug life destroying black America and prisons taking on an increasing number of inmates, Whitlock questions presidential candidate Barack Obama’s political ability to address this issue. Whitlock says it is a sensitive subject for Senator Obama to address without seeming too nonwhite.”