Category: Media Watch

Plaudits to Bill Maxwell for telling it as it needs to be told. The St. Petersburg Times columnist zeroed in on the most pertinent question that needed to be asked in the immediate aftermath of the car crash that killed three black juveniles in St. Petersburg. What were two 14 year olds and a 15 year old doing out at 5 a.m. Monday morning?

Of course it’s a rhetorical question; they were stealing cars. Moreover, all three had criminal records.

Maxwell assigned blame where it belonged. In the home and in a black community that is too tolerant of dysfunctional behaviors and too easily intimidated by teenagers with attitudes.

“I am angry that we black people continue to defend the indefensible,” said Maxwell. “At least two of the parents of the children are questioning police procedure.” Reports, as Maxwell pointed out, indicate police followed proper chase procedures, and their actions didn’t have anything to do with the fatal crash.

One other thing that surely makes Maxwell even angrier. Not enough people in the black community are as angry as he is.

One more thing. The driver was a ninth grader at Northeast High School. Yesterday, his classmates spent time drawing memorials.

Better they had spent the time drawing conclusions. Such as: Nothing good can happen to a 14 year old at 5 a.m. And nothing good can come of an attitude that says I want what’s yours. In fact, it’s a deadly combination.

“She is a nice person in over her head, with little in the way of vision or accomplishment.”

That’s what the St. Petersburg Times said of incumbent Mary Alvarez last week in its Tampa City Council opinion piece. And Alvarez is the one the Times is RECOMMENDING for District 6.

That’s how much it helps to have Joe Redner as an opponent.

The annual celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. day has turned into a free-for-all forum in the name of civil rights. A racial revisionist’s field day.

Anybody who’s anybody, especially among black celebrities, has carte blanc to interpret Dr. King’s legacy to fit their own agendas. From slavery reparations and boycott-extortion scenarios to more head coaches in the National Football League.

Not surprisingly, this includes filmmaker Spike Lee. Somewhat surprisingly, it entails passing judgment on other directors. As in allowing “Barbershop” dialogue that Lee deemed racially insensitive and inappropriate. As in a cynical reference by a black “Barbershop” character to King’s well-documented promiscuity (as well as a belittling comment about Rosa Parks’ bus ride into history).

Were it not in an MLK context, such cinematic criticism would likely be considered heavy-handed, unenlightened censorship. In fact, a story line that depicted blacks as individuals — not part of a lock-step, group-think, stereotyped brotherhood — might be considered praiseworthy.

“To me, some things aren’t funny,” said Lee. “If our young children grow up thinking this, and that’s all they know about (King and Parks), then we’re in trouble.”

Three points.

*If anybody’s children grow up thinking a certain way because “that’s all they know” from a movie, then that’s one sorry-assed commentary on who’s bringing them up.

*What Lee thinks is not funny is not relevant. He also takes the NBA seriously.

*Lee would be the first one to cry artistic license and freedom were the tables turned. Do you think he ever considered changing the ending of “Do The Right Thing” because the conclusive message was wrong?

Although I’m a news junkie, I do draw some lines. One such was underscored with the arrival of complementary copies of the New York Post this week. It’s hyped as “Florida Same Day,” (excluding Orlando). Features include “Tampa Bay Racing Selections.”

Sorry, Rupert. Being privy — even for free — to “New York’s #1 newspaper for Sports, Business, Gossip and Entertainment” isn’t inducement enough. I prefer not to jumpstart my mornings with graphic accounts of beheadings and grave robbings.

So, the Weekly Planet gets a makeover. It has jettisoned its news staff and will concentrate on “more real, meaty stories about culture, broadly defined.” Those are the words, whatever they mean, of Neil Skene, senior vice president, group publisher. Out with the political muckraking and gadfly style and in with: “culture, broadly defined.”

So what’s next? An overhaul in advertising approach? Out with the escort ads, lingerie modeling, 900-number calls and kinky personals?

To replace full-time staffers with free-lancers is an obvious, even understandable, cost-cutting measure. But did it have to lobotomize itself in the process? Apparently going to staple binding wasn’t enough.

We all know by now that incoming U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist was instrumental in giving critical care at the scene of a fatal car crash on Alligator Alley in South Florida.

The (page-1 story and accompanying) headline in the Metro section of Friday’s Tampa Tribune (“Family That Frist Aided After Crash Lives In Tampa”) further informed us of the hometown of the crash victims.

The (page-5 story and accompanying) headline in the City & State section of that day’s St. Petersburg Times attempted to do the same thing. However, “Family treated on highway by senator from Tampa” doesn’t quite say that. Bill Nelson isn’t from Tampa, is he?

Maybe it was the holidays and a skeleton staff stretched thin. Maybe it was interns playing grown-up editors. Something was obviously misplaced besides modifiers.

Can we all at least agree on this? Public access television works well in the abstract. Local voices and all that. Maybe even Pinellas County would nod assent.

But in practice, the programming is often awful. Almost always boring. Fringe preachers and assorted oddballs predominate. A tasteless minority of shows has been just shy of obscenity. Much of what airs is mostly a waste of time and money — $355,000 worth. Occasionally — and inevitably — there’s political grandstanding and censorship.

But even more wasteful is throwing good money after bad, which has been happening as Hillsborough County tenuously fights a lawsuit filed by Speak Up Tampa Bay to restore public funding of the county’s public access channel. For the county, it’s now an eminently loseable, First Amendment test case. Mediation and a leverage-lite appeal in federal district court merely delay a settlement.

During the recent county commission campaign, I broached the public abscess issue with then-candidate Kathy Castor. Her answer made sense. Would that it would also help make policy.

“I don’t want to spend money (now exceeding $140,000) on attorney fees,” said Castor. “Money is better spent recruiting better programs.” She went on to cite various not-for-profits, which could, well, profit from heightened visibility in the community. So could the community.

It should come down to this: Neither heavy-handed censorship nor appallingly vulgar and dimwitted programming should be Hobson’s choice alternatives. If reasonable, intelligent, mature, proactive, community-caring individuals would step up, then Speak Up wouldn’t have to accommodate morons. Imagine requests from the Museum of Science and Industry, Lowry Park Zoo, the Florida Aquarium, The Spring, Metropolitan Ministries, Tampa General Hospital and White Chocolate. Who doesn’t make the cut?

Two points regarding Tampa’s bid for the 2004 Republican convention:

Make no mistake, Thursday’s news that Boston had won the Democratic convention was significant for Tampa.

Not determinative or decisive, mind you, but very important. Had New York outbid Boston, Tampa’s chances for the 2004 GOP convention — with all of its media exposure and 9-figure economic impact — certainly would have improved — a lot. No way that New York, 9/11 notwithstanding, hosts both the Democratic and Republican conventions. New Orleans, for what it’s worth, is a consensus third.

Needless to say, New York state is odds-on to once again keep its electoral votes solidly in the Democratic column. Florida, a king-making swing state, is odds-on to, say, tilt Republican. The 2000 race remains a graphic reminder that Florida is not only critical, but combustible and maybe closely called again.

As a result, given Tampa’s facilities, affordability, security management, favorable impression made on the GOP site selection committee, proximity to beaches and Disney World, some unabashed payback for 2000 and electoral insurance for ’04, Tampa’s shot is a very viable one. That Jeb Bush has family in high places hardly hurts.

Had New York outbid Boston for the Democratic convention, Tampa’s chances would have been better than good.

Thus, the Boston D-party’s impact on Tampa.

So how was it that the Tampa Tribune buried that story on page 11? It was a bare bones Associated Press account that carried the pedestrian head: “Boston Set To Have ’04 Convention.” It included a couple of pro forma quotes from Boston Mayor Thomas Menino and Democratic Party Chairman Terry McAuliffe. That was it.

The St. Petersburg Times saw the regional implications as meriting page one, above-the-fold status. It carried the head: “Tampa’s Convention Bid Gets Tougher.”

Two points: First, either someone at the Trib was comatose — not just asleep — on the news-judgment job or the Trib allowed itself — again — to get beat on a story with a lot of local import. Either way, it’s unconscionable. Even if the following day’s lead editorial was almost fulsome in its chamber of commerce praise of Tampa as the perfect GOP choice.

Second, the Times deemed the convention piece worthy of placement above the latest details on the war on terror. Arguably, the Dems-to-Boston story wasn’t that important, but it certainly didn’t deserve a page 11 burial.

The Times , of course, sees a Tampa GOP convention that also impacts, well, the Times . It paid a lot — in dollars and ethical potshots — to put its name on the erstwhile Ice Palace. It can recoup some of that $33-million investment — and marketing rationale — if George W. Bush is renominated in the St. Pete Times Forum. The nation — and a lot of vested interests around the world — will watch his coronation at the ultimate forum for the St. Pete Times . Whether the Times can recoup its Poynter Palace ethics hit, however, will remain problematic.

Should the GOP convene here — in the very state that delivered the presidency to the Republicans in 2000 — many interests, from civic to political to economic, will benefit. Some more than others.

Bill McBride is probably not going to be the next governor. What he definitely is not is ready for prime time.

Fair political game is what you don’t know or what you’ve done or not done or would or wouldn’t do. Modern campaigns, however, increasingly put a premium on media skills. How you look and how you say whatever it is you say is very important. It’s not fair, but it’s politics, which, if it were fair, wouldn’t be politics.

McBride’s affable personality and one-on-one people skills are a matter of record — as well as manifestly evident. They don’t, however, translate effectively onto the political stage. What you see of an intelligent, successful businessman who’s concerned about his state is less than the sum of the parts.

The debate forum, even for such a savvy attorney as McBride, just hasn’t been kind to him. And that’s unfortunate, because debates always hold out more potential for the challenger, especially one relatively unknown. Debates mean marquee sharing and instant, elevated status vis a vis the incumbent, who is now reduced to co-candidate.

Jeb Bush, however, is telegenic, smooth, rhetorically fast on his feet and wonkish in his command of statistics. Bill McBride isn’t.

Those saucery eyes and frisky digits. That Leesburg drawl and goofy grin. In contrast to the late Lawton Chiles, McBride comes across almost rube-like — not wizened and folksy.

Jeb Bush can look like an arrogant know-it-all — and he is — but it’s not at the expense of looking gubernatorial, a quality that helps when running for governor. McBride can look like a bumpkin in the big city — and he isn’t — but it’s at the expense of looking gubernatorial.

The Bush-McBride results could conceivably be the domino that begins the downfall of a president. As a result, it has been the most scrutinized race in the country — from C-SPAN to the networks to the weekly news magazines to the high priests at the New York Times and the Washington Post.

The unflattering critiques now abound. No criticism of McBride, however, skewered him more than that of Robert L. Pollock, the veteran Wall Street Journal editorial page writer. Pollock, who was in town recently, compared McBride to Adm. James Stockdale, Ross Perot’s 1992 running mate. Stockdale, an aging, American hero and former prisoner of war, looked ill at ease and befuddled in the vice presidential debate with Al Gore and Dan Quayle. Stockdale — of “Who am I? Why am I here?” fame — became the object of ridicule — mitigated only by pity.

McBride, a war hero himself, is no Jim Stockdale. But that one had to hurt.

For those who still lobby for “Doonesbury” to be anchored on the editorial page, take a look at “The Boondocks” this week. Target this first.

The strip skewers Gov. Jeb Bush in a scathing satire on the incarceration-treatment debate always raging on drug policy. Bush’s law-and-order approach is fair game.

So, fair enough, even if the Sunday comics — right above Arlo and Janis, Hi and Lois and Garfield — still doesn’t seem the most appropriate forum for mordant social commentary.

Less than fair, however, is bringing the governor’s addict daughter, Noelle, into the equation. Cheap shot.

But that’s life in the public arena. That’s also politics. But that’s not the comics.