Category: Media Watch

Good call by Hillsborough Circuit Judge Wayne Timmerman in barring public access to graphic police photos of Debra Lafave. Let’s hear it for common sense and good taste.

Three points:

First, the letter of the law permits genital photos for identification purposes, whether the accused is drop-dead comely like Lafave or androgynously weird like Michael Jackson. Whether stirrup shots were necessary, is another matter. Lecherous is not a synonym for legal.

Second, the prosecution has made it clear that it has no plans to present the photos as evidence during Lafave’s trial on lewd-and-lascivious-battery charges.

Third, there is Florida public records law, there is the people’s right to know and there is the media’s penchant for pandering. Two local TV stations, WTSP-Channel 10 and WFTS-Channel 28, did not distinguish themselves by filing written, albeit routine, requests to see the photos before Judge Timmerman made his ruling. The matter is now moot, but the principle isn’t. What was it about pictures tantamount to gynecological close-ups that were so compelling?

Here we go again. St. Petersburg, which is quite the happening place and the downtown model for what Tampa would like to be, still has an identity crisis.

Over the Devil Rays.

Seems that the national media persist in occasionally confusing Tampa Bay with Tampa, thus short shrifting St. Petersburg as the actual site of Tropicana Field. Miffed to the max was St. Pete City Councilman Bill Foster, who drafted a resolution requesting the Rays to formally put St. Petersburg in their name. As if.

It’s the Rays’ call legally until the team’s contract with the city runs out in 20 years. But they’re not about to abandon their regional identification, even if the national media don’t know the difference between Tampa Bay and Green Bay.

In the mean time, the Rays’ host city still gets 81 St. Petersburg datelines a year, which go across the country – and sometimes farther. And should the Rays get competitive and attract network TV coverage, those waterfront-vista shots will render all this poor-me pique irrelevant.

But the day the team agrees to call itself the St. Petersburg Devil Rays will be the day we read of the Foxboro Patriots.

In the scheme of things, it probably won’t warrant more than a footnote in the chronology of saturation news coverage and cable news fixations. But let’s hear it for Bob Costas refusing to pinch hit for CNN’s Larry King last week. The subjects were Natalee Holloway still unfound in Aruba and more postmortems on the vile, monstrous acts of Dennis Rader, the BTK serial killer.

Enough is enough and someone of import — and maybe some impact — had to say it.

What goes without saying, however, is that such subject matter is ratings driven. Which means plenty of people want to watch.

“Take him out!”

Hugo Chavez? No, Pat Robertson. Please. Feet (after removal from mouth) first.

Robertson, who doesn’t stop at character assassination when it comes to Venezuela’s elected socialist president, doesn’t speak for the United States and hopefully not for any Christians. He’s simply an evangelical fool who owns his own network and hosts the most-watched religious television show in the country.

But because his pulpit is equal parts politics and religion – and he’s a former presidential candidate – what he says, no matter how outrageous and stupid, gets noticed.

And exploited. America’s enemies, for example, have already exhumed unflattering U.S. involvements in Cuban and Chilean politics. Imagine how this has played on Al Jazeera. And imagine how this has played in Venezuela, which provides 13 per cent of U.S. oil needs.

Armed with his evangelically perverse chauvinism, Robertson’s a national security time bomb. A weak apology didn’t mitigate the injurious impact.

Take him out.

Metaphorically, that is.

Two lives of note ended last week, only one, however, were most people aware of.

When Peter Jennings, 67, died, it felt almost like a death in the family. I’m part of the Huntley-Brinkley, Howard K. Smith, Walter Cronkite generation, and I still appreciate a familiar, professionally reassuring, nightly network anchor presence.

To me, Tom Brokaw was better on the “Today Show,” and Dan Rather belonged on “60 Minutes.” But Peter Jennings, the suave, long-time anchor of ABC’s “World News Tonight,” was the quintessential pro. He was a self-taught student of world events who never stopped learning or listening.

Even as America would periodically turn inward and network news operations looked to cut costs, Jennings always made the case for the big, international picture – and requisite staffing. In the worst of times, he was at his unflappable best.

By definition, the “news” will be the unexpected, which is often the unpleasant. Jennings made the best of it.

That other life was that of a friend and former colleague, Ron Faig, 55. Until his retirement a few years ago, Ron was the broadcast specialist in USF’s Office of Media Relations. He was technologically savvy and knew everybody on campus. He was very good at what he did. He was also a pretty good jazz guitarist and a devoted father to his daughter Sarah.

But that’s like saying Abe Lincoln was a lawyer. It still doesn’t tell you nearly enough.

More than half a century ago, Ron just missed the onset of the polio vaccine-era. As a result, he spent his last 53 years in a wheelchair. He was always taken aback by photos that showed him in his first two years. He never remembered walking.

Ron’s body was frail, his braces were heavy and there was nothing routine about any part of his daily regimen.

Except this: He made everybody he came into contact with better for having met him. Few leave a more impressive legacy.

He was dealt a cruel hand. Many – or most – of us might have adopted a “Why me?” attitude throughout life that would have been self-limiting. It wasn’t Ron’s way. If he would never play the victim card, who could?

He also was hilariously politically incorrect and loved defying stereotypes. He also appreciated the therapy of a good pun.

I’ll not forget the first time I met Ron. He came rolling out of his cramped office of monitors, speakers, microphones, cameras, wires and wobbly cassette stacks. “I am,” he said by way of introduction and grasping his wheels, “the real USF spokesman.”

In so many ways, he was.

By now you’ve all heard of the captivating film phenomenon, “March of the Penguins.” It’s a documentary about flightless birds in Antarctica that has turned into a commercial hit. So successful, in fact, that when it opened (in limited distribution) in late June in Los Angeles and New York, it grossed $36,000 a screen – more than twice the per-screen average for “War of the Worlds.” On Aug. 5, distribution expanded from 700 theaters to 1,300. There’s even unseasonably early Oscar buzz.

Locally, it has another week and half to go in its exclusive, 3-week engagement at the historic, single-screen, 1,446-seat Tampa Theatre. In its opening weekend “Penguins” did more than 4,000 admissions (in eight screenings), and that was without benefit of a Sunday matinee – pre-empted by the summer classic movie series. The first-weekend average, according to Tampa Theatre president and CEO John Bell, is typically between 1,000 and 1,500 admissions.

“We had seen how well it was playing nationally, so we are not surprised,” says Bell. “We were expecting this kind of business. We’ll be adding viewings.”

The last time Tampa Theatre did this kind of business was five years ago when the Internet-hyped “Blair Witch Project” brought in big numbers. This time it’s a lot more satisfying to explain the large crowds.

Narrated by Morgan Freeman, “March of the Penguins” is a totally engaging, even poetic, chronicle of a unique cycle of life played out in the brutally harsh, yet starkly aesthetic environment that is the ice-floe ambiance of the South Pole. The contrast is underscored by the indefatigable Emperor Penguins’ long, arduous survival treks in incongruous, lockstep Charlie Chaplin gaits – periodically interspersed with belly-flopping slides.

You’ll smile; you’ll laugh. You’ll “ooh;” you’ll “aah.” You’ll wince; you’ll mourn. You’ll feel empathy you didn’t think you could conjure for penguins.

It’s birth, death, intimacy, struggle and commitment — as you’ve never imagined it.

You couldn’t have.

Channel-surfing yielded up “The Daily Show” with Jon Stewart the other day. His guest was former network newsman and conservative author Bernard Goldberg, who was promoting his new book “100 People Who Are Screwing Up America.” For the record, the list ranges from Paris Hilton’s parents and Jerry Springer to Eminem and Howard Stern. I like Goldberg.

Timing is everything, I thought.

Stewart, however, treated Goldberg with disdain and flippantly dismissed his “coarsening of the culture” thesis. Washington was the problem, sniffed Stewart, not Hollywood — as if the proposition were either/or.

But, on balance, I rationalized, still better than having landed on BET videos.

The following morning I picked up one of my daily newspapers – the St. Petersburg Times — and digested a quick cultural update. It included ponderings on gratuitously violent, sexually explicit video games, questions about the venue for the “Anger Management” hip-hop concert and commentary on Sen. John McCain’s cameo in the racy, R-rated “Wedding Crashers.”

And then I saw a movie review of “The Devil’s Rejects” by Times’ film critic Steve Persall. It could have been Exhibit A for what Goldberg had been trying to talk about while being interrupted and pre-empted by Stewart. The rating was R: for “pervasive, sadistic violence, harsh profanity, nudity, sexual situations.” Grade: “A-“.

One can only wonder what criterion shortfall kept “The Devil’s Rejects” from an unconditional “A”. Lackluster impalings? Bland hurlage? Discreet sex?

Here’s the review’s lead paragraph: “Hands down (or chopped off), the best horror movie in decades is Rob Zombie’s “The Devil’s Rejects,” a ruthlessly violent, viciously entertaining blood feast. Not since “Leatherface” first swung his chain saw has anyone spewed such a delirious obscenity against human nature onto the screen. If there’s such a thing as a vile classic, this is it.”

To re-iterate: “A-“.

Granted, I haven’t seen the film, nor do I plan to – even with the “vile classic” allure and the tease of “delirious obscenity.” I was burned a couple of years ago by the “Blair Witch” hoax and film critics’ confusion of amateur production with cinema verite. Neither am I swayed by Ebert & Roeper’s irrational “Two thumbs up” exuberance for “The Devil’s Rejects.” I just assume those two thumbs were up their celluloid keisters.

If not being personally privy to cultural flotsam undermines my credibility, I’ll live with it.

But I think this sort of fawning, establishment praise – not just acceptance – is a function of the cultural coarsening that Goldberg almost spoke out against on “The Daily Show.”Timing is everything.

And these are the times we’re living through.

Suppose someone of no — or negative — consequence threw a self-serving photo-op, media availability and no one showed? The (refreshing) result: The uncovered, non-news event would remain non news – not unlike the cat that did not get stuck in the tree, the train that did not derail, the Democrat who did not get nominated for the U.S. Supreme Court and the apology and refund check that did not get proffered by Rafael Vinoly.

That’s the sort of scenario that should have played out recently in St. Petersburg, where career irritant Dwight “Chimurenga” Waller is running for city council. Again.

Only this time the strident president of the Uhuru Movement chose Mayor Rick Baker’s house as a cheap-shot backdrop for his what-else-is-new? announcement. And in stimulus-response, ambulance-chasing fashion, the press – and precious few others — was there. More gratuitous light for a minor media moth.

It’s Waller’s contention that Baker hasn’t done much for Midtown, a historically impoverished section. It’s Waller’s strategy to hector everybody – but Midtowners – about Midtown. As if investors shouldn’t concern themselves with drugs, street crime and a victimization mindset. As if Baker, despite Midtown’s entrenched problems, hadn’t been working on cleaning up parks and expediting some impressive commercial development there.

Waller is a race-baiting, one-trick pony who hasn’t made himself or his movement part of any solution. They are a case for adding by subtracting.

Out of deference to Baker (and his family’s privacy), respect for a reasonable definition of what is “news” and defiance for political correctness, the media should have forsaken its lemming instinct and been a no-show to a non-event.

One final thought on the Kenny Rogers issue. Conflict between the media and pro athletes is not the only prominent example of discord in the sports-entertainment arena. There’s also that ongoing, intramural contretemps between print media and its electronic counterpart.

The former have notebooks, and their words are the next day’s newspaper stories and columns. The latter have lights, mikes, cameras, cables, a show-biz ethic and an often pressing need for in-your-face immediacy.

Priorities and deadlines are not the same. It’s hardly a seamless overlap.

The recent Rogers piece in this column – and its subsequent web site posting – prompted the following response, among others. It’s from a friend and former colleague, Ed Christine, sports editor of the Scranton (PA) Times and a one-time beat writer with the New York Mets, reporter for USA Today and U.S. Marine.

“I can’t count the number of times I wanted to punch out a camera man,” wrote Christine in an e-mail. “Don’t want to count the number of times I threatened TV and radio people – not that print guys are above being intrusive and obnoxious.

“The problem with the Rogers incident is a lack of spontaneity,” he added. “From what has been shown, it appears as though that was his game plan from the time he left the clubhouse.”

It’s no secret that WFLA, Channel 8 has been squeezing sports the past couple of years. The post-Chris Thomas era has not been a particularly distinguished one.

Friday night’s segment at 6 p.m. with Dave Reynolds was exhibit A for skewed priorities.

The station wanted to plug its pre-season deal with the Buccaneers in which Channel 8 will make all four games available in high-definition television. They will be available only on Bright House Networks Channel 608 and over-the-air on channel 7.

OK, self-promotion is part of the business. But WFLA had general manager Eric Land in studio for some self congratulation and a further explanation of the obvious.

As a result of the high-def shill, Reynolds had even less time to devote to what he’s supposed to do – inform and accommodate the viewers. So something had to go – and it sure wasn’t going to be NASCAR. He never got around to Lance Armstrong and his farewell ride into history at the Tour de France.

But we got nearly a full minute of Eric Land – and a working definition of how not to best serve your viewers.