Within the Veil: Black Journalists, White Media

Chapter Four: Slaying the Dragon

F O U R Slaying the Dragon On April 15, 1987, in a verdict that rocked the news industry, a six-member federal jury determined that the New York Daily News discriminated against four African American journalists who, because of their race, were given less important assignments, lower salaries, and fewer promotions than their white counterparts. The jury, comprised of four whites, one Asian, and one African American, said discrimination had been proved in 12 of 23 incidents cited in a lawsuit that took seven years to wind its way through the legal system before landing in Manhattan’s Federal District Court. For the first time in history, racial attitudes in the American newsroom were put on trial, and no one was spared intense public scrutiny as charges of racism, sexual harassment, ethical breaches, and incompetence were hurled across the aisle. During a nine-week trial, the plaintiffs described a newsroom where racial epithets were freely dispensed and where African Americans were shut out of coveted posts such as the state capital, the national desk, and top editing jobs. They also claimed that the news retaliated against them after they filed their complaint. In response, the defense portrayed journalists David Hardy, a fortyfour -year-old reporter; Causewell Vaughan, a forty-four-year-old copy editor; Steven Duncan, a sixty-three-year-old assistant news editor; and Joan Shepard, a forty-five-year-old cultural editor, as mediocre malcontents who did not deserve to be promoted. The bitterly contested trial took on David-versus-Goliath proportions, and pitted the four plaintiffs and their scrappy lawyers against the mighty Tribune Company, the nation ’s largest general circulation newspaper, and its blue-chip law firm. As an indication of the high stakes involved, the News’s witness list of forty people read like a Who’s Who in journalism. Included were| 97 | legendary Washington Post editor Benjamin Bradlee; Thomas Winship, the former editor of the Boston Globe and a major proponent of news diversity ; and a host of editors, reporters, and columnists from other elite news organizations, including the New York Times and Newsday. While the Daily News alone was on trial, editors from around the country evidently saw the case as a test of their news organizations’ own racial policies, which they were eager to defend. “I felt like a young David going against Goliath with a sling shot,” recalled Steve Duncan, one of the plaintiffs.1 Indeed, the parallels were striking. Danny Alterman, a rumpled, self-described radical of New York’s Alterman & Boop, P.C., had cut his teeth defending the Black Panthers and the Attica inmates following the prison uprising. His associates were Pia Gallegos of Alterman & Boop, and Susan S. Singer of Newark, New Jersey’s Brown & Brown, P.C., whose principal was Raymond Brown, a charismatic and nationally renowned black criminal lawyer. At the eleventh hour, Brown handed the case off to his associates. Led by Alterman, the plaintiffs’ team squared off against lead attorney Thomas C. Morrison of Patterson, Belknap, Webb and Tyler, whose principal partner was Harold “Ace” Tyler Jr., a well-connected former federal judge and deputy attorney general who had taken an active interest in the case. With 139 lawyers and a revenue of nearly $40 million in 1987, the firm’s prominent clients included Nelson and Laurence Rockefeller.2 “They had unlimited resources,” said Alterman of the firm that occupied two floors in a Rockefeller Center office building while Alterman and his associates toiled in a cramped office in lower Manhattan or across the bridge in Newark. “They had assistants who did all the work. We had none,” Alterman complained.3 He noted how a bevy of assistants carrying boxes and books trailed behind members of the legal team. Given the overwhelming odds, the plaintiffs, who for many black journalists became folk heroes following their victory, received little support in the heat of battle. At every turn, they were turned away—in part, they believed , because of the Tribune Company’s long tentacles. “We sought help from the NAACP, the Urban League. Nobody helped us,” Duncan recalled.4 Causewell Vaughan, another plaintiff, recalls seeking the support of black elected officials, some of whom said they feared taking a public position against the News, whose endorsements they sought for their elections. Even the Amsterdam News, the city’s leading black newsSlaying the Dragon| 98 | paper, paid little attention to the trial...