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When the 4:30 Movie on WABC-Channel 7 (New York) had programs like this, homework didn't get done in my house all week.

"I came in, it was accidental. I wasn't aiming to be a news reporter or an anchor. But I became an anchorwoman. I started at the very top. Then I went back to being a secretary and then a news trainee."

One more pioneering journalist whose contributions should not be overlooked during Women's History Month, is Melba Tolliver, the first Black woman to anchor a regularly-scheduled news program on a major television network (in this case, New York's WABC-TV). Born in 1938 Rome, Georgia and raised in Akron, Ohio, Melba originally pursued a career as a nurse but pivoted to a secretarial job at ABC news in 1966. A year later the timing of a strike by the American Federation of Television and Radio, presented an opportunity for Melba to be able to occasionally fill in for anchor Marlene Sanders --who was herself the the first woman to anchor an evening news broadcast for a major network (also ABC).

A Black woman's face being a rarity on network television news at the time, Melba quickly proved her capability and competence in the role and projected an air of competent trustworthiness, even as she was completing her degree in journalism at SUNY Empire State College. In very short order she became a full-time anchor for WABC, a position she would hold for the next ten years --one of her earliest assignments was to cover the funeral of Robert Kennedy, Sr. Not insulated from racial stereotyping, Melba famously ran afoul of television standards in 1971 when she insisted on wearing her hair in a natural afro --disdaining the then-accepted practice of wearing a wig or a scarf-- when covering the White House wedding of Presidential daughter Tricia Nixon. In 1976 she took a job with competing WNBC, at one point becoming one half of television's first all-women co-anchor news team with Pia Lindstrom and Carol Jenkins. She later joined News 12 Long Island but was fired from that role in 1994, at a time when the realities of cable news were forcing the more traditional networks to rethink their entire models.

Walter Einenkel at Daily Kos:

Donald Trump is doubling down on his bizarre attack that Kamala Harris “doesn’t like Jewish people”—despite her being married to noted Jewish person Doug Emhoff. 

During an appearance on New York’s WABC radio, Trump targeted Harris for supposedly being anti-Jewish and anti-Israel.  “She dislikes Jewish people and Israel even more than Biden did,” the former president said.  It was the second time in less than a week that Trump used this line in an apparent effort to gain support from Jewish voters.  “[Harris] is totally against the Jewish people,” he said during a campaign rally in Charlotte, North Carolina, last week.  On Tuesday, Trump also used the radio appearance to take issue with Harris’ meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu during the Israeli prime minister’s visit last week. "When she stood up with him, she wanted to get out of there so fast you could see the disdain,” Trump said. “No. 1, she doesn't like Israel. No. 2, she doesn't like Jewish people. You know it, I know it, everybody knows it, and nobody wants to say it.”  “They have let Jewish people down since Obama at levels that nobody could believe possible,” Trump said.

Appearing on WABC’s Sid and Friends In The Morning radio show Tuesday, serial antisemite Donald Trump pushed the dangerous lie that VP Kamala Harris “doesn’t like Jewish people” despite the fact that her husband Douglas Emhoff is a Jew.

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MMFA: On WABC's Sid and Friends In The Morning, Donald Trump agreed with host who called Doug Emhoff “a crappy Jew” and “a horrible Jew”

From the 07.30.2024 edition of WABC's Sid and Friends In The Morning: