[ Tuesday, December 11, 2001 ]

the untouchable

First, white Democrats abandoned Sharpton. Now, is even the leftist Village Voice backing away from Reverend Al?

-------
BY ALBERT LEE

The Rev. Al Sharpton is at the center of yet another media storm.

The controversial black activist, most recently credited for the white flight of voters to Mark Green during the racially divisive New York Democratic mayoral primary, has become such a source of tension in The Village Voice's newsroom that it has led to the resignation of one of the paper's firebrand investigative reporters.

Peter Noel quit the paper in a huff last week because, he claims, the alternative weekly wants to stop covering Sharpton and is tired of serving as his platform.

"After the mayoral election, Don Forst [the Voice's editor-in-chief] asked me to lay off covering Al Sharpton. I was stunned," Noel told mediabistro.com. "Sharpton dominated [my coverage of the mayoral race] pretty much, and they didn't want to give him that voice anymore."

Noel, the only black news reporter at the paper, says the Voice wants to shift its focus in how it covers the African-American community. Forst wanted him to focus only on hip-hop stories, such as his coverage of the Sean "Puffy" Combs trial earlier this year. "I said, 'That's the last straw.'"

The rift is clearly a difficult one. Noel, who broke the story of Abner Louima's infamous (and false) claim that policemen said "It's Giuliani time" before brutalizing him, has covered race, crime, and black politics for the Voice for ten years. When he left the paper in 1995 for two years, it was Forst who persuaded Noel to come back. "I love him dearly. We have a father-son relationship. All of a sudden, his politics and my politics started crashing. This year was the most difficult time I had with him.

"The New York Post [in a Page Six item] said that I left because of [ideological differences over] Mark Green," he continues, referring to the Voice's political endorsement of Green. "That wasn't true. That wasn't the issue. I argued strenuously against Mark Green, and [Forst] allowed me to do a piece in which I actually went off on Mark Green, calling him a phony white liberal."

Forst denies the Voice has had a problem with Noel's coverage of Sharpton, or that Sharpton was the reason for Noel's departure. "That's quite incorrect. He left because we had an argument over a story I wanted done in a particular way." According to Forst, Noel grew angry because he demanded attribution for some of the quoted but unnamed sources in Noel's last story for the paper, a piece on hip hop mogul Russell Simmons' cozying up to New York gubernatorial candidate Andrew Cuomo, which appears in the December 5-11 edition.

As to the dearth of black reporters in the Voice newsroom, Forst says, "There are plans to hire talented people — white, black, or striped. The black community will be covered by this paper, as it always has been."

Noel, for his part, says he is currently working on several magazine articles and will continue cohosting "The Week in Review," a black-issues talk show, on New York's Kiss FM 98.7.

Sharpton could not be immediately reached for comment.

Albert Lee is the editor of mediabistro.com. Email him at albert@mediabistro.com. Disclosure: He once interned at The Village Voice, and has written for its dance page.