There was a big discussion on The View yesterday about an article in the Sunday New York times that seemed to have a glaring factual error by stating that only seven black actors had won Academy Awards. The article was worded confusingly and wasn’t technically inaccurate in that they referred to an earlier paragraph about 2002, when Denzel Washington and Halle Berry took home Oscars, to say that only seven black actors had won prior to that. Then they named checked all the African American Oscar winners since, which didn’t include View panel member Whoopi Goldberg, who won her Oscar in 1990 for Best Supporting Actress, for Ghost. Whoopi said that it hurt her “terribly” not to be mentioned and she called the piece “sloppy journalism.” She even whipped out her Oscar to prove her point.
Whoopi Goldberg blasted the New York Times today for not mentioning her in a Sunday article about black Oscar winners.
“I am embarrassed to tell you it hurt me terribly,” Goldberg said Monday on “The View.” “When you win an Academy Award, that’s part of what you’ve done, your legacy. I will always be Academy Award-winner Whoopi Goldberg.”
Goldberg said she was “dismissed and erased” by the Times’ top film critics and described the piece as “sloppy journalism.” And to settle any doubts whether she’s an Academy Award-winner, Goldberg pulled out her Oscar for the 1990 film “Ghost.”
It’s true that the Times didn’t mention Goldberg. And clearly she was offended by the omission. But did the Times make a factual error?
The Times films critics described how Denzel Washington and Halle Berry won Oscars in 2002, before noting in the following paragraph that the Academy “had given statuettes to a total of seven black actors in the previous 73 years.”
It would be incorrect to claim that only seven black actors have ever won the award, which is apparently how Barbara Walters read the piece. But the Times is correct that only seven won the award before 2002.
Either way, Elisabeth Hasselbeck is siding with her co-host and said Monday that she canceled her subscription.
A Times spokeswoman declined to respond to criticism on “The View.”
[From News.Yahoo.com via Gossip Rocks]
I agree with what Whoopi had to say about how it was a full 70 years between when Hattie McDaniel won (update: which is technically incorrect, it was 51 years, but she corrected herself later in the show) for Gone with The Wind and her win in 1990, and how that was significant. Out of the 13 black Oscar winners, only Whoopi, Louis Gossett Jr. (Best Supporting Actor, Officer and a Gentlemen, 1982), and Cuba Gooding Jr. (Best Supporting Actor, Jerry Maguire, 1996) weren’t mentioned. That’s just three people and they easily could have been incorporated into the article. In a story about how minorities get shafted by Hollywood and the Academy, the Times kind of proved their point.
Also I have to mention this story from 2008 where Whoopi Goldberg was upset when she was left out of a clips reel including Oscar hosts over the years. She hosted the Oscars four times, starting in 1994 and last in 2002. The Academy has a short memory and admitted that leaving her out was an oversight.
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