Category: Media Watch

Once again we are reminded that we are truly a global village. This time the validation was provided by an aerial photo of damage done by the recent earthquake in Indonesia.

The Associated Press wire photo showed collapsed buildings on the main street of Gunungsitoli, a city on the Indonesian island of Nias. Bordering the main street were largely-intact homes that looked like stalls in a Third World flea market.

The lean-to construction, however, was more than sufficient to support a satellite dish. In fact, roughly half of the 50 or so tiny abodes that were visible in the photo were sporting dishes.

Global village, indeed – including the main drag of Gunungsitoli, Indonesia.

It isn’t too often that anything that happens in the Moon Lake part of Pasco County, including murder among the low lives, makes headlines in the Tampa Tribune.

Yesterday, March 28th, was the exception, however, in a front page Metro, above-the-fold story about an ex-con killed by two women with criminal pasts. The victim was drugged and strangled – and then redundantly bludgeoned and burned.

They apparently were boyfriend and girlfriend — and girlfriend.

Bingo.

How often is the Trib presented with the opportunity to work “Menage A Trois” into a headline? And having been so presented, why bury it?

But hey, it was a better read than “What do you say to a naked handyman?”

Ok, it’s nothing new that America as a society is overly enamored – make that obscenely obsessed — with celebrity.

It’s why BTK continued to kill. It’s why parents permitted sleepovers at Michael Jackson’s. It’s why we elect a lot of our leaders. It’s why normal-looking people queue up for autographs of anybody with a public persona – whether famous or infamous.

And yet I was still taken aback when I went on line this morning. There was the AOL.News headline: “Scott Arrives on Death Row.”

Yes, we have to live with high-profile trials as media staples, and we can’t avoid the morphing of murderers with the right look or lineage into celebrities. But how is it that we are on a first-name basis with Peterson, a conniving, sinister slug who was convicted of murdering his wife and unborn son? How did we get THAT familiar with a murderer whose crime was described by the judge as “cruel, uncaring, heartless and callous”?

O.J. was bad enough, but that’s because he had a killer career before being tried for murder. But Gacey wasn’t “John.” Berkowitz wasn’t “Dave.” Speck wasn’t “Rick.” And McVeigh wasn’t “Tim.”

But “Scott” relocates to San Quentin?

Spare us – at least the contemptuous familiarity.

Hostage-takings in Iraq typically end one of two ways: the hostage is murdered or released. The former typically involves a gruesome videotape, the latter a seven-figure ransom – after a videoed plea.

Now, there’s a tragic variation on that brutal, endgame theme.

A ransomed hostage, Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena, was wounded after her release – by U.S. soldiers. It happened at night at an ad hoc checkpoint along the main road to the Baghdad Airport, a thoroughfare infamously known for suicidal car-bombers. That’s why it was checkpointed in the first place; it’s arguably the most lethal stretch of highway in the country.

And the enemy, it should be noted, is not averse to using ambulances or Allied-marked vehicles in their suicide missions. That’s why there’s a stop-or-be-shot order on the mean streets of Iraq. Nothing can be assumed – except that life is everywhere imperiled – and no place more than the treacherous road to the Baghdad Airport.

Worst yet, an Italian intelligence officer who had negotiated Sgrena’s ransomed release, was killed in the hail of fire from those guarding the checkpoint.

But even worse, the tragic accident – in a venue where split-second decisions, including miscommunications, can literally mean life or death – has been called intentional by Sgrena. Even after the trauma of the incident had subsided and her pain meds had worn off, Sgrena still maintained that the Americans were sending a message with the fusillade: This is what happens when you disregard our no-ransom-for-hostages policy.

That’s beyond wrong. And it should be beyond Sgrena’s own anti-war agenda. It’s an obscene cheap shot to say that U.S. soldiers – in premeditated fashion – fired on her vehicle knowing that she was in it.

Friendly-fire misunderstandings are nothing new in war; in fact, they have been tragically frequent in the confusing cauldron that is Iraq under insurgent siege. Human beings under the ultimate duress making instantaneous, life-and-death decisions based on less than perfect intelligence is a formula for an awful result. Normally, it’s not this high a profile incident.

There’s a reason, however regrettable, that such accidents sometimes happen. But there’s no excuse to fire off a cheap shot because it fits one’s political agenda.

The best movies I’ve seen recently are: “The Sea Within,” “Sideways,” “The Graduate” and “Broadcast News.” The true test of a movie worthy of its acclaim is staying power — on a small screen with commercials across at least one generation.

While Jamie Foxx was the sure-shot winner for best actor in “Ray,” it still surprises that Leonardo DeCaprio made the cut for “Aviator.” He’s yet to play a convincing adult, even a weird one.

The biggest controversy, of course, was over Clint Eastwood’s “Million Dollar Baby,” and whether it was a manipulative paean to euthanasia. Frankly, I just saw blindsiding by a lethal plot twist. What did bother me, however, was the uncomfortable incongruity of rooting for a classic, sympathetic, rags-to-riches underdog engaged in the thoroughly disgusting sport of female boxing.

Nothing in the media is as necessarily ghoulish as a “death watch.” From the Shah to the Pope to Terri Schiavo. Some preparations are more over the top than others.

In prepping for the inevitable demise of Pope John Paul II, ABC News has strategically positioned robotic (remote-controlled) cameras around the Vatican for instant live shots. And in a gambit to insulate itself from “rooftop envy,” ABC has been renting out hotel rooms near the Vatican for years.

Say what you will about the Tampa Bay Buccaneers – from super to stupor – their public relations remains consistent. It still stinks.

From the organization that extorted a stadium, recoiled at the prospect of paying for some Super Bowl-celebration expenses, put up a stink about extra security costs at the RayJay and kissed off John Lynch like some journeyman stumblebum, we bring you yet another update.

The Bucs waited until late Friday of Super Bowl weekend to make a ticket price hike announcement. And just to make sure that the news stayed low profile, the Bucs’ PR flacks once again treated return calls to the media as another avoidable imposition.

Proving again that the National Football League is a market-economy anomaly and the Bucs’ organization haughty at its humblest, the Bucs raised their ticket prices ($2-5 per) in the aftermath of their worst season (5-11) in a decade.

That’s what you do when you have 108,000 fans on a waiting list to buy season tickets. That’s what you do because you can.

That’s how you do it because you are the Bucs.

And this just in.

A Dunedin fan called the Bucs to say he would like to give up the two club seats he has held for two years and maybe try purchasing general seating. The knee-jerk response he got wasn’t exactly an exercise in empathy and had nothing to do with possible re-sales. It had everything to do with the fine print in his 10-year contract. Did he want to run the risk of being sued by the team?

The hard-line, vintage Bucs’ approach is apparently a pre-emptive move against any fans – possibly disgruntled by the Bucs’ two-year spiral into an NFL abyss – deciding that the on-field product was no longer worth sitting through on club seats.

Anyway, the Dunedin fan runs the risk of being sued by the Bucs. If he doesn’t ante up, he’ll be in default, and the Bucs can declare the entire unpaid balance due – including money owed for the next eight years.

No, the Bucs don’t do anything illegal. They’re too astute to do that.

But they don’t do anything to ingratiate themselves with their fans or interact professionally with the media. They’re too arrogant to do that.

In its nearly 40 years on the American scene, the Super Bowl has become a societal constant. And arguably there’s a place – and a need – for that in a culture that too often venerates fashionable change.

For example, each Super Bowl we can expect – with total assurance – the following:

Across America it will be treated as a de facto holiday.

The Roman-numeraled event will be seen as the quintessential VIP event – the permanent successor to heavyweight championship fights. One need only observe the actual attendees, a largely glitterati group that is, on average, clueless about what they’re watching. But not about being watched.

There will always be controversy. From microphones too close to “F-Note”-dropping players during introductions to half-time “wardrobe malfunctions” to appropriateness of commercials.

And there will be too many media covering too little “news” for too long. As a result, much copy will be aimed at the home town and what’s wrong with it. Which means if you’re not New Orleans, which is where all the free-loading, sycophantic sports scribes want to be, be prepared for incoming harpoons.

To wit: “Putting a Super Bowl in Jacksonville makes about as much sense as having the Olympics in Havana or the World’s Fair in Tikrit,” sniffed Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy. How did he miss the World Cup in Kabul?

And then there’s the “two-fer” putdown, exemplified by the comparison comments of Washington Post columnist and ESPN commentator Tony Kornheiser. “Jacksonville makes Tampa look like Paris,” observed Kornheiser, who needs to get out of the District of Columbia more often.

And so it goes.

But here’s the good news. After The Game and its interminable run-up, all the fault-finding, dyspeptic, expense account-abusing, lard-ass, carping critics do leave town.

And better yet. No city gets consecutive Super Bowls. They won’t be back for a while.

Granted, there’s no going back to the days of 15 minutes of local, loss-leader TV news. And nobody’s rebottling the genie of consultant-inspired window dressing and cosmetics — from set designs, catchy slogans and anchor demographics to tantalizing teases, “happy talk” chemistry and whether your weather person looks better in suspenders. It is what it is.

But isn’t it a new low that local affiliates have stooped to “covering” their networks’ cheesy reality shows as if they were, well, news? They all do it. It’s beyond the requisite, tacky promotions we’ve grown inured to over the years.

The most recent example is WFTS, ABC-28, which ran a “Desperate Housewives Look-Alike Contest.” And it didn’t stint on the video and air time – although the latter is, of course, severely limited by weather, sports, anchor blather and commercials.

But that’s show biz.

Yes, that question to Attorney General Charlie Crist – the one inquiring of his sexual orientation – was as ungracious and unnecessary as most non-journalists would deem it. Had Crist himself made homosexuality an issue – say, he had used gay-baiting the way Mel Martinez did against Bill McCollum in the Republican senate primary – then he would be fair game. Of course he would.

But he hasn’t, and it isn’t. Being single isn’t cause for being singled out.

Whatever the whispers, it’s never been an issue for Crist, because it’s never been relevant. It still isn’t. It’s not the people’s “right to know.” Regardless of the times we’re mired in, it’s nobody else’s business. That includes self-important sirens of surly who think getting something entered in the public dialogue justifies any mean-spirited, irrelevant, classless ambush of an office-holder.