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.
