Belief.Net
June 16, 2001
BOB GARFIELD: Last year 16 million viewers tuned in to ABC to watch Peter Jennings reporting The Search for Jesus. Jennings and his network have long claimed that audiences like that emphasize the importance of religion in its reporting and specials, but in ABC's latest round of money-saving moves, network television's only dedicated religion reporter, Peggy Wehmeyer, didn't make the cut. Filling the void or trying to at least is Beliefnet.com, a web site that bills itself as a multimedia company for religion and spirituality. Joining us now is Charles Haynes, a senior scholar at the Freedom Forum's First Amendment Center in Roslyn [sp?], Virginia. Charles, welcome to OTM!
CHARLES HAYNES: Thanks! Thanks for having me.
BOB GARFIELD: So ABC has let go Peggy Wehmeyer. Is this more evidence that we have a godless media?
CHARLES HAYNES: [LAUGHS] Well I think it's a bad message at a bad, at a bad time! Just when we thought things were getting better in terms of religion coverage, it sends the message that religion is expendable.
BOB GARFIELD:In fact ABC has kind of used Peggy as a poster child for their commitment to religion coverage. They've been the only network in the last number of years to have a full time religion correspondent.
CHARLES HAYNES: Well we've all been using her as a poster person. I mean we've, we've pointed to her and said look -- things are getting better. A network now has a full time religion reporter. So now we don't have anyone to point to. It is disturbing.
BOB GARFIELD:Apart from the coverage of the religion right in politics in the United States and maybe ethnic and religious rivalries in the Balkans and in Africa and elsewhere, the whole coverage of religion in mainstream media seems to be quite ghetto-ized. Do you think that's true as well?
CHARLES HAYNES: Oh, I think so. I think it's treated as something people used to believe a long, long time ago but is not really imp-- that important today unless there's a conflict, but religious events in and of themselves are developments that affect the lives of millions of people -- that doesn't seem to be newsworthy.
BOB GARFIELD: If you were the sultan-- how would things change?
CHARLES HAYNES:Well I think that journalism schools ought to consider requiring that journalists have some background in religious studies! I mean we are the most religiously diverse nation in the entire world; we -- among developed nations --we're the most religious people, and yet our journalists by and large come out into the field and are unprepared to deal with all of that!
BOB GARFIELD: You're not suggesting that reporters-- [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
CHARLES HAYNES: I think [...?...]--
BOB GARFIELD: -- themselves have to be-- spiritual or--believers but that they have to understand-- [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
CHARLES HAYNES: Oh, no.
BOB GARFIELD: -- the society that they're reporting in and on.
CHARLES HAYNES:These are not religious arguments for taking religion seriously; that's not-- appropriate for journalism, and I'm not making those arguments. These are really civic arguments --that is to say if we - if we're going to be fair in our press, in our media, we've got to really let the voices be heard! We've got to be attentive to who lives in the country and what they care about!
BOB GARFIELD:You would never send a reporter to cover Washington, for example, without him understanding how Congress works - the separation of powers and you know how a bill becomes law; and yet the same people aren't conversant at all in all manner of religious questions.
CHARLES HAYNES: Yes, and this is really a dangerous thing, because m-- many Americans I, I think have given up on, on seeing themselves in the media and understanding themselves in the media, so we have kind of-- divided nation. We have a, a-- well, Peter Berger, the sociologist says that you know Sweden is the least religious country in the world perhaps and India the most religious, and America's an interesting combination of the two. It's a nation of Indians ruled by Swedes!
BOB GARFIELD:So what's the root of all this? Is it that the questions of religion are so loaded and so complicated that we, we're just afraid in the media to cover them?
CHARLES HAYNES: i think there's a - there is a, a fear because-- out of really a lack of understanding. I mean we, we've gone through a period in the United States where we really have had a tough time figuring out the proper role of religion in public life, and I think that the-- path of least resistance has been to ignore it -- to say well the solution is just to, to - that's a private matter; let's keep it out. And I really wonder how the United States is going to make it as a nation, how we're going to live with all of these differences if we don't understand one another! If we don't know anything about one another! And I should think on that basis alone the press should take religion seriously by reporting accurately and fairly the various perspectives, the religious perspectives in others of the American people!
BOB GARFIELD: Excellent point. Is it going to happen?
CHARLES HAYNES:Well, this, this latest symbolic move by ABC has sort of made me less optimistic about what's going to happen. I, I hope the partnership with Beliefnet turns out to prove me wrong -- that ABC will do more coverage. I hope so.
BOB GARFIELD: Charles Haynes, thanks for joining us!
CHARLES HAYNES: Thank you for having me.
BOB GARFIELD: Charles Haynes is a senior scholar at the Freedom Forum's First Amendment Center in Roslyn, Virginia. Bush Goes to Europe
June 16, 2001
BOB GARFIELD: From WNYC in New York this is NPR's On the Media. I'm Bob Garfield.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And I'm Brooke Gladstone. President Bush went on a grand tour of Europe this week -- the first of his presidency -- and if you had read the advance word from the Old World you would have guessed the streets would not be strewn with rose petals. Here's a clip from the president's stop in Sweden reported by the BBC this week. [CLIP OF PEOPLE SHOUTING EPITHETS]
MAN: They call Gothamburg "the friendly city." That's not how it looks just now. Early this afternoon the police clashed with around 200 protesters who'd thrown bottles and stones. The demonstrators were forced to retreat to a nearby park. And this is why they're here: the man they call "the Toxic Texan" who withdrew American participation in the Kyoto Accord on climate change.
BOB GARFIELD:Even the president's itinerary was fodder for critics. He skipped the big players --notably Germany and France for less influential nations like Spain and Slovenia. He seemed to favor crowned heads over duly elected leaders, and he only managed to squeeze in Russian President Alexander Putin for a couple of hours at the end of his trip. Then there were the contentious issues of the Kyoto Accords the U.S. has failed to sign, the unpopular missile defense system the president advocates and the execution of Timothy McVeigh.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:So all in all, the European news media was not favorably inclined toward George W. Bush when he embarked upon his trip. Martin Walker is the chief international correspondent of UPI International. We called him in Sweden and asked what the European press was expecting to see.
MARTIN WALKER: Well they were expecting a slightly reformed alcoholic totally ignorant of affairs outside his native Texas, obsessed with capital punishment and determined to ram down the throats of the world an American First ideology which said we will protect America from missiles and nobody else, and we will also refuse to do things like sign the Kyoto Protocol to avoid global warming. And La Republica of Italy routinely now refers to the American president as "The Executioner in Chief." The cover of Spiegel, one of the great German weeklies, shows Bush as a wild-eyed cowboy and their headline is The Ugly American. You've got in Le Figaro of France The Toxic Texan. You've had in, in Sweden that this is the man who sends us dirty air and now tries to de-stabilize Europe.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: I assume there was a big difference between the left wing and the right wing press.
MARTIN WALKER:Not so much as you'd -- I mean I was very surprised that there wasn't that much, because after all Figaro in France is a conservative newspaper. They're the ones who call him the Toxic Texan.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: I understand that the Telegraph and the Spanish paper El Pais and El Mundo took somewhat positive takes on the president.
MARTIN WALKER:Well with, with a bit of a difference. El Pais and El Mundo in Spain were both delighted that Bush was starting off his trip in Spain. The Daily Telegraph was really rather split. It's a very conservative British newspaper; some of them said that Bush was the kind of conservative Europeans really ought to appreciate, but also there was a sense that Bush was starting to play fast and loose with the traditional Anglo-American alliance and that therefore he ought to be treated with some caution, and I think that what's been interesting is that we have had a certain amount of, of suspicion of Bush from the conservative wing in Europe as well as from the traditional left wing in Europe.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Does that come from his position on the Kyoto Accords and missile defense or something else?
MARTIN WALKER:I think it comes from, from three separate things. First of all it's the Kyoto Accords because everybody in Europe does take global warming very seriously. I think on missile defense an awful lot of conservatives in Europe were simply worried that he was getting rid of a tried and tested security system and not putting anything else in its place. The third reason was this sense of vulnerability about the idea that Europeans and Americans shared common values. Well we certainly do on human rights, but when it comes to common values, the death penalty really is a major issue for conservatives and for left wingers alike in Europe.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:The Bush trip, unhappily for Bush I think, coincided exactly with the execution of Timothy McVeigh. That played a part in some of his initial coverage anyway, didn't it?
MARTIN WALKER: It played a very big part. This whole issue of capital punishment is really a very burning one in Europe because of course you can't be a member of either the European Union nor the Council of Europe if your state supports capital punishment.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Were there comparisons made between President Clinton and President Bush in the papers you read?
MARTIN WALKER:Absolutely! The comparisons were please bring back President Clinton -- all is forgiven. [LAUGHTER] That was in the Irish Times, and there was a comment also that went on in the Irish Times to say that the thing about Clinton was that he had a, a European sense of warmth and compassion.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Hm! And the Texas bonhomie and Mr. Bush's much-vaunted charm offensive fell on deaf ears?
MARTIN WALKER:Well, before he arrived it certainly didn't seem to get any response. What has been remarkable since his arrival is that the story has changed. There is no longer, I think, a consensus among European politicians that Bush is a dangerous de-stabilizer who wants to poison the planet. The consensus is now becoming well this is the guy we're going to have to live with for the next four years, perhaps the next eight years, and he's prepared to talk to us; he's saying he's not a unilateralist; he wants to listen -- he is in person quite a charming fellow, and as a result, we are prepared to work with him. After all, we don't have much choice.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And so then have the media been behind the curve about the reality in which this diplomacy played out or are they on top of it?
MARTIN WALKER:I think the media in Europe have been about, oh, 3 months behind the curve. I think the media in the U.S. have been a few weeks behind the curve. But I think that the reality is going to start catching up because we are going to have to start writing that so far, at least until the meeting with Putin, Bush has had a serious success on his European tour! He has come out onto the world stage for the first time and has been, I think, a, a pretty reasonable figure.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Martin Walker, it was a pleasure talking to you.
MARTIN WALKER: And to you.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Martin Walker is the chief international correspondent for UPI International. Media Witnesses to an Execution
June 16, 2001
BOB GARFIELD: Earlier this week the execution of Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh dominated the news with the attention divided between the bereaved in Oklahoma and elsewhere and the events in the death chamber at Terre Haute. Among the witnesses to the execution were ten members of the media. Two of those witnesses join us now. Karen Grundin of the Terre Haute Tribune Star and Byron Pitts of CBS News who obtained his seat through a lottery operated by the Bureau of Prisons. Karen, did you have any misgivings, or did you think you were going to come through it okay?
KAREN GRUNDIN: You know I actually was pretty certain that I wouldn't have a problem with that. I, I've gone out to accident scenes before and shootings and that sort of that as the police and courts reporter at the Tribune Star, so--you know from those experiences I figured I probably would be okay with watching the execution.
BOB GARFIELD: Because you've seen dead bodies.
KAREN GRUNDIN: Correct.
BOB GARFIELD: It's-- the same?
KAREN GRUNDIN:No, it, it's not the same at all when you're actually watching someone die compared to seeing someone who is already dead. Witnessing this execution you actually saw the color of Timothy McVeigh's skin change as those drugs were coursing through his body, so it, it was quite different!
BOB GARFIELD: What about the night before? Were you sleepless?
KAREN GRUNDIN:[LAUGHS] Definitely. I-- actually got to bed about 10 p.m. and knew I had to get up around 2:00. I remember looking at the clock quite a few times, and I remember looking at it at 1:55 a.m. and thinking-- you know there's no reason to wait for the, the wakeup call. I might as well just go ahead and get up.
BOB GARFIELD:Byron Pitts-- what happened to you when you saw the drugs coursing through Timothy McVeigh's body? I mean did your respiration change? Were you nervous? Upset?
BYRON PITTS: No. Not at all. You know I watched. I was so busy, like Karen and everyone else, taking as many notes as I could; trying to, you know, keep my game face on if you will. But I didn't have any inner reaction as it happened.
BOB GARFIELD: Have you had any post-execution stress symptoms?
BYRON PITTS:No. I mean it's, it's been a few days now, but this is my second execution. It's about the 5th time in life I've actually seen someone die. And it, it's always been my sense -- it seems to me that, that-- that with each death it, it almost has like its own fingerprints. I mean each experience was very different. Two were executions; one was a dear friend of mine who was stabbed to death in front of me when I was 12. The other m--my grandmother--; she was 90; I watched her die. Those other instances - I mean they, they bothered me. They stayed with me for quite a while. Those people did nothing to deserve to die at that moment. With the two executions, whether you agree or disagree with the death penalty, it seems to me that both men had some appreciation that if I commit these crimes, this could happen to me, and so they had some control over how their lives ended.
BOB GARFIELD: How about you, Karen? What it difficult before, during or after?
KAREN GRUNDIN:I, unlike Byron, I had never really watched someone die before. And so-- you know I, I'll give it a little more time, but I just don't see that I'm going to have-- any anguish over it.
BOB GARFIELD:Byron you were there because you were the lottery winner; Karen, you because you work for the Tribune Star. In the larger sense, though, why were you there? Why did the media need to be present for this?
KAREN GRUNDIN: Well, you know, I think that part of our role is to make sure that the execution is carried out as the government has said it would be--; as best as we can determine that from witnessing it, that is part of our role, and our other role is to report what we saw.
BOB GARFIELD: Byron?
BYRON PITTS:My mother raised me -- she used to always say, said Son--: the truth may hurt; the truth may be funny; it may be ugly, but the truth is always the truth. And so therefore I think there is some value as journalists in witnessing things regardless of what that might be, if given the opportunity, to hopefully when it's over report to people what it is that you saw fairly and as objective as you could.
BOB GARFIELD: Having seen what you've seen, do you think that-- televising capital punishment will alter the debate in this country? Karen?
KAREN GRUNDIN:Well, you know I'm not sure that it would. You know I think it may depend on how the execution was carried out - whether it was lethal injection or maybe some other form of execution. In my case it didn't. It may just be an individual sort of thing.
KAREN GRUNDIN: I would agree. I would think that most people would look at it and would be surprised at how clinical the whole process is and how void of emotion the moment is -- how disciplined the people who carry it out are. Again, in most cases when it goes the way it's designed to go. Ten journalists -- we all saw it. We all were there to be objective - but I think all of us on some level saw different things. So I'm not sure if witnessing an execution would do a whole lot to shift the nation's debate, though I think it might.
BOB GARFIELD:Karen your beat as criminal justice reporter at the Terre Haute Tribune Star is such that you'll be witnessing other executions. Any fear about that? Can - do you think you can witness too many? Something can happen to you?
KAREN GRUNDIN: That's a good question and I'm not sure. I mean I, I would think that maybe there would be a point where there would be too many. I'm not really sure how many more I will witness. There's a possibility I will witness Juan Raul Garza's if it goes as scheduled on Tuesday. As far as whether that'll be a problem -- you know if it goes like Mr. McVeigh's execution did, I -- I don't see that I would have a problem with that, but it's another thing I'll just have to wait and see about really.
BOB GARFIELD: Is this something you're going to get used to?
KAREN GRUNDIN:No. I, I don't think you would want to get used to witnessing an execution, to become calloused against, you know, death or you know a lethal injection -- I, I, I don't think would be a good thing at all.
BOB GARFIELD:All right. Karen Grundin, thank you very much for joining us. Karen Grundin of the Terre Haute Tribune Star and Byron Pitts of CBS News, thanks very much for being with us.
KAREN GRUNDIN: Thank you.
BYRON PITTS: Thanks. Television City
June 16, 2001
BROOKE GLADSTONE: When test marketing TV shows, networks can't simply ask will it play in Peoria, because even if it does, it may not play in New York or L.A. Wouldn't it be nice, those researchers may have thought, if there were a true cultural crossroads in this country where middle American and coastal sensibilities mingled. Guess where that is? [SONG PLAYS] VIVA LAS VEGAS! VIVA LAS VEGAS! Mike Pesca, On the Media's producer at large reports.
MIKE PESCA: The MGM Hotel and Casino has 5,000 rooms, 3600 slot machines and one actual living, breathing lion. [LION ROARS] The roar, however, is pre-recorded. Wolfgang Puck has a restaurant inside the MGM. Studio 54's Las Vegas branch is there. This is why it's remarkable that an increasingly popular pastime inside the MGM is watching television.
DAVID LETTERMAN: All right let's take a look at the-- whatever that was before the county shuts us down-- [LAUGHTER]
MIKE PESCA: The first thing you see are the words Television City spelled out in big neon letters, the default font for this town. There are a few big-screen TVs playing CBS shows. Inside a small store CBS merchandise is for sale. Young and the Restless boxer shorts retail for 24 dollars. By Vegas standards Television City is a little underwhelming. No buffet; no showgirls; no Siegfried; no Roy. Just as you're about to turn on your heel and head back towards the lip-syncing lion-- [LION ROARS] you're accosted.
MAN: Hi! We're at Television City. Would you like to see one of our new television programs?
MIKE PESCA: I'd-- well what is it? What do I have to do?
MAN: Yeah. Well what we're doing is we're testing the new fall lineup for CBS--; what you do is you watch a new television program, and you tell us what you think about it; you get a, a 10 percent discount in our gift shop here.
MIKE PESCA: Oh, really? Ten percent?
MAN: Yeah.
MIKE PESCA: You got any-- Young and the Restless stuff? Television City, it turns out, is CBS's new state of the art audience testing center. Las Vegas has become the demographically representative crossroads of America.
DAVID POLTRACK: We do a test with 250 people -- without trying we get 40 different states represented. So that's - that, that's extraordinary.
MIKE PESCA: David Poltrack is CBS Television's executive vice president of research and planning.
DAVID POLTRACK: Las Vegas is a town where the, the action's at night. People are looking for things to do during the day.
MIKE PESCA: Like watch TV. Poltrack is based in New York, but that doesn't really matter because CBS executives on both coasts can utilize live video links between their offices and Las Vegas. That way they can watch America watch CBS. Upon entering the screening room, participants are given two push buttons -- one red; one green. Then an instructional recording is played.
ANNOUNCER: This is what we'd like for you to do: when you come to a part of the program that you think is good, that you'd want to see and hear, please press the green button in your right hand and keep it pressed down as long as you continue to think that part is good. When you come to a part of the program that is poor, that you don't want to see or hear, press the red button in your left hand and keep it pressed down as long as that part continues.
MIKE PESCA: This turned the experience of watching Touched By an Angel into one of the most judgmental 45 minutes of my life.
SMALL CHILD: What's gonna happen to me?
ANGEL: Well there's an angel named Andrew...
MIKE PESCA: Good!
ANGEL: ...and he took your mommy to heaven...
MIKE PESCA: Gooood.
ANGEL: ...and he's going to come in here very soon...
MIKE PESCA: Bad!
ANGEL: ...and take you to meet your mommy.
MIKE PESCA: Baaaaad. I found the directions on button-pushing vague. What about when bad things happen to good people? Do I press good because it's entertaining or bad because I feel bad for the person? And what about a villain? If I press green for good, am I telling the people who read the results that they've miscast the role? These were no mere idle musings, because this episode of Touched By an Angel forced me to pass judgment on the greatest villain of all, Satan himself -- as played by Mandy Patinkin.
MANDY PANTINKIN AS SATAN: [SINGING] NO ONE HERE TO GUIDE YOU
MIKE PESCA: Bad--
MANDY PANTINKIN AS SATAN: NOW YOU'RE ON YOUR OWN
MIKE PESCA: Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad.... I was risking a repetitive stress injury for the opportunity to buy boxer shorts for just 21 dollars and 60 cents.
MANDY PANTINKIN AS SATAN: NO ONE IS ALONE
MIKE PESCA: It wasn't discount drawers that convinced Anita and Roseanne to participate; they're Touched By an Angel viewers who were happy to have a chance to influence the show. But they were divided as to the philosophy of good and bad button-pushing. [BIG CROWD OF PEOPLE CHEERING] Let's take that scene where the, the building explodes. I mean did you press the red button there?
WOMAN: No.
MIKE PESCA: Why not?
WOMAN: Cause I know the show-- and I-- I just figured something good was going to come of bad things.
MIKE PESCA: Did you ever press the red button?
WOMAN: No!
MIKE PESCA: Did you ever press the red button?
WOMAN: Yeah, I did.
MIKE PESCA: And well what parts did you press the red button on?
WOMAN: When the little girl was going-- died and the mother died in the bombing - all the sad stuff - I did.
MIKE PESCA: Now this is interesting -- I -- this is what I'm hearing. I think you were using the buttons - you pressed the red button not to say how I feel but what -- how it's working as a TV show. And I think you used the buttons to say this is how it makes me feel -- that's a sad thing.
WOMAN: Yeah.
MIKE PESCA: Right?
WOMAN: Right. I wanted it all to be happy.
MIKE PESCA: Whether they're happy with the program or the program makes them happy doesn't really matter to CBS. Either one will satisfy advertisers who believe that a happy, conflict-free environment moves product. And what better place to determine television's effectiveness than Las Vegas, a city whose sole purpose is separating its visitors from their money as happily as possible. For On the Media, I'm Mike Pesca.
verson
June 16, 2001
BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield. A few years ago sports columnist Michael Wilbon of the Washington Post foresaw Allen Iverson's life and career ending in ruin. Taking note of the Philadelphia 76er rookie's criminal record, his corn rows and tattoos, his disrespect for authority, his thuggish posse, and his gangsta image, Wilbon predicted Iverson would in time reap what he sowed. As recently as October, when the violent abusive lyrics from Iverson's still-unreleased rap album emerged, Wilbon declared his sportswriter vigil "The Wait for Iverson to Grow Up" to be in vain. That was then. This is now. [CLIP FROM GAME WITH CROWD CHEERING]
ANNOUNCER: Allen Iverson who has 47 points-- he heard it before the game when he was presented the MVP trophy, and he's hearing it again tonight....
BOB GARFIELD:The gutsy, blindingly fast little off guard --the one they call "The Answer" suddenly is a new man. NBC and TNT sportscasters marveled at his maturity. ABC news says he has turned his life around. David Dupree writing in USA Today declared Iverson's image "repaired." In the past month a dozen newspaper stories from around the country invoked the word "transform" and Wilbon himself marveled at Iverson's change in professional attitude --in the columnist's words -- "just like that." And here is Sports Illustrated writer Rick Reilly on CNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Have we changed in our view of Allen Iverson? Rick Reilly.
RICK REILLY: Oh, I think definitely. I mean I, I think we definitely have changed, and, and he's - he's one of the fine young, great talents in the league, and, and I happen to think a young man who's really become a good person!
BOB GARFIELD:Well! That was rapid! Nobody who covers the NBA questions whether Iverson's dedication to basketball and team play improved dramatically in this season, a season in which Iverson's MVP performance propelled Philadelphia to the playoff finals. But how does that translate to a mythic conversion from irredeemable to redeemed?
KEITH OLBERMANN: The media-- especially the sports media in this country -- is so black or white. Atomic War or Eternal Peace. You know, there's nothing in between. New York Yankee's -- All Time Greatest Team/Bunch of Bums -- Trade All of Them.
BOB GARFIELD:Sports journalist Keith Olbermann, formerly of ESPN and the Fox Sports Network, was wary of the demonized Iverson portrayal as the seed of the NBA's destruction, and he is wary of the conversion portrayal as well.
KEITH OLBERMANN: I'm not sold. I mean if there is a real, genuine transformation in the man's personality, more power to him, and I hope the-- the other sports commentators have simply been more discerning than I have.
BOB GARFIELD:For the record Michael Wilbon of the Washington Post isn't sold on the notion that there's been a radical swing in the conventional wisdom about the answer.
MICHAEL WILBON: I completely reject out of hand the notion that-- the world has gone soft on Allen Iverson. I, I, I read too much and see too much to the contrary.
BOB GARFIELD: The proof, however, will be in the pudding. Who knows? Maybe even Jello Pudding!
RICHARD SANDOMIR:Now he is more marketable than he was-- 2, 3 months ago or certainly 3 or 4 years ago; the experts seem to think that his appeal is still targeted towards the youth-- the youth market - maybe the extreme sports market.
BOB GARFIELD:Richard Sandomir is the sports media reporter of the New York Times. He wrote during the finals how Iverson's rehabilitation has increased his marketability for advertising endorsements. While he's still not a clean cut Michael Jordan type, Sandomir says, on court heroics have allowed him to shed the pariah tag that kept mainstream marketers far, far away.
RICHARD SANDOMIR: Winning helps. Not getting arrested helps. Looking like someone who has become the consummate team player and will play with immense pain has transformed him in the eyes of the world.
BOB GARFIELD:But there is at least one more sneaker to drop. Some time this summer, Iverson's long-delayed rap album is expected to be released, including the song 40 Bars that so horrified mainstream audiences 5 months ago. If, as Michael Wilbon reports, the album is filled with material as caustic as 40 Bars, the media conventional wisdom can change yet again! Keith Olbermann.
KEITH OLBERMANN: When the album is released and there is -there's not a significant change in that 40 Bars-- I just suggest once again that you can be in a position where you are the hero and then the villain and then the hero and then the villain....
BOB GARFIELD: Neither of which extremes, of course, will ever be entirely true, no matter what the pack journalism tells us.
CHRIS MATTHEWS:F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote that there is no second acts [sic] in American lives; Allen Iverson's proved him wrong. The 6 foot guard for the Philadelphia 7--76ers had been the poster boy for everything that's wrong with the hip hop generation; now he's a winner, and Iverson who's been playing in pain for weeks has become the hero.
BOB GARFIELD:This week at least. Let's ask again a little later, because after all, they say there are no foolish questions, but there are sometimes foolish answers. Critic
June 16, 2001
BROOKE GLADSTONE: This month two eager beaver PR reps for Sony Pictures were suspended when they were caught fabricating movie blurbs for TV ads. The Sony marketeers created "David Manning" of the Ridgefield Press, a Connecticut weekly that actually does exist. Then they quoted him saying nice things about Sony movies including The Animal and A Knight's Tale. Sony was shocked, shocked and sorry, but the company may soon be even sorrier. Two disappointed moviegoers in California are suing Sony for false advertising, and the La Jolla-based law firm of Blumenthal and Markham are hoping to make it into a class action suit. Attorney David Markham is on the line from La Jolla. Mr. Markham, is your client blaming Sony because he bought a ticket to A Knight's Tale?
DAVID MARKHAM: The positive review of the film was one of the things, according to Rezec, that caused him to go and buy a ticket and see the film!
BROOKE GLADSTONE: So does he think Sony owes him 12 bucks?
DAVID MARKHAM:He at this point thinks that Sony owes the amount of money which Sony derived from selling this movie as a result of running the false ad -- in other words how much in ticket sales would Sony have made without the false review versus how much would they have made with the false review.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Which is probably impossible to determine.
DAVID MARKHAM:It is, and so California law solves the problem another way. The law says that you engage in what's called deterrence so that, you know, the next week a person selling a car or a person selling a pair of shoes doesn't make a statement about it which is false, so we don't have really a damage claim, but there is a disgorgement claim.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: So the message here is Sony should pay for lying.
DAVID MARKHAM:Yeah, the message is that Sony should not profit for engaging in false advertising --making up lies -- statements -- false critics. They shouldn't profit by it, and that's what the statute says!
BROOKE GLADSTONE: How much money are you looking at?
DAVID MARKHAM: We don't really know, but you're looking at most likely a percentage of what their ticket sales were.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Right. But are you talking a hundred thousand - half a million - a million - two million?
DAVID MARKHAM:We don't - I, I'm sure you're well north of a million dollars, and it really depends on what you see when you look at the revenues with regard to each of the respective movies.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:You know out here in New York we have--something called Nathan's Hot Dogs, and they say they're the best hot dogs in the world. And I've had them, and they just aren't. Should I sue them?
DAVID MARKHAM: There is somewhat a difference between the expression of an opinion and a statement of fact!
BROOKE GLADSTONE: The fictional David Manning said that the Knight's Tale was "a winner."
DAVID MARKHAM: Sure. But did Nathan's say Julia Child has sampled our hot dogs and she thinks they're the best hot dogs in the world -- and if Julia Child did not do so-- then Nathan's is exposed for false advertising!
BROOKE GLADSTONE: So if Sony had come out and said our film is a winner, you'd have no case.
DAVID MARKHAM:Well-- you would have an expression of an opinion rather than a statement of fact. If you state for example a critic has reviewed my movie positively or given an endorsement when no critic exists, you're in the realm of fact rather than in the realm of opinion.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:This is a case of somebody who read a review, spent 12 dollars - they probably should have known better - but don't you think you're going to get laughed out of court?
DAVID MARKHAM: No! What do we do with the law if we tell people well listen, you know, it's okay - you can lie - you can hype or product in any way you want to - fine! Go ahead and do it, because the product you sell is worth less than 15 dollars, so why do you need to comply with the law on false advertising that governs every other business in the state? In other words where do you draw the line?
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Dave Markham, thank you very much!
DAVID MARKHAM: Oh, sure!
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Dave Markham is an attorney with Blumenthal and Markham which is now attempting to bring to trial a case against Sony for false advertising. Glastonbury
June 16, 2001
BOB GARFIELD: In 1970, farmer Michael Eavis opened up the slatted wooden gates to his land in the southwest of England for a weekend of free music and communing with nature. Over the following 30 years this small hippie gathering morphed into a massive annual event attracting hundreds of thousands of people who wanted to listen to the latest chart-topping bands or mainly roll around in the mud and share the experience of overused porta-johns.
But as the world has become ever more technologically advanced, so too has the Glastonbury Festival. This year pixels will replace the mud and a search engine will take the place of a hilltop view.
George MacKay is the author of Glastonbury: A Very English Fair. Welcome to the show!
GEORGE MacKAY: Hi. Thanks for having me on.
BOB GARFIELD:Before we get to the latest development in the life of this festival, can you please explain the place that the Glastonbury Festival holds in the collective consciousness of the Brits?
GEORGE MacKAY: Glastonbury has something special about it because even though it's -- it has indeed --it morphed into this huge mega-mass event, you know, with hundreds of thousands of people --it claims that it still has an ethos of alternative values and culture and green issues about it.
BOB GARFIELD:Ethos of alternative values although there are gigantic masts for the cellular phones and--chain food outlets pitching their tents next to the green-dreadlocked men selling veggie patties.
GEORGE MacKAY: Yeah, it's set in this beautiful, absolutely beautiful valley - a stunning place - which as legend has it is indeed the Vale of Avalon --Avalon being the secret island where King Arthur was buried to rise up in a future day to kind of re-invent the English. You know there's a sort of spiritual dimension to Glastonbury, and then as well as that you've got 200,000 people -- all their motor cars -their pollution - their mobile phones and etc, etc.
I think those contradictions, rather than -you know it's almost too easy to say that they've undercut the original ethos and that's all been lost in a sort of sponsored corporate world. I think the contradictions of Glastonbury have energized it really and have kept it interesting and kept it a bit alternative even while all these other things are going on around it.
BOB GARFIELD:Okay, but this year however the festival has evolved in the past, there's a - a genuine technological sea change because there will be no Glastonbury Festival on Farmer Eavis's land this year. What is replacing it?
GEORGE MacKAY: Instead of everyone congregating as pilgrims at Glastonbury this year in those special green fields, we have instead a virtual Glastonbury. You have to log on to the Net and you will get some sense of the spirituality, so the web site claims, from the Web itself.
BOB GARFIELD:Putting aside for a moment the very genuine difference in the experience of recorded music versus live music, if Glastonbury is about the experience - about the community - how in the world is any of that conveyed over a computer?
GEORGE MacKAY: It isn't! Glastonbury is a mass event; it's about the crowd. It almost doesn't matter who the headliners are each year. In fact lots of people I spoke to - well I, I don't - I didn't really see any bands. You know people were saying oh, who's on? Are they? Oh, I don't think I'll bother that. I like up here in the stone circle or I like it here in the teepee circle and so it's almost like the crowd becomes its own entertainment, and you simply don't get that in the solitary - the sole experience of, of logging on to the Web and looking at your computer screen.
BOB GARFIELD: And that seems so clear. Why in the world are they going through with this exercise?
GEORGE MacKAY:I think Glastonbury is at a moment of crisis. Michael Eavis, the farmer who has organized it since the earliest days in 1970 - you know -he's getting on a bit, and he's quite keen, I think, to pass the event on - the organization of it - to his daughter, Emily. But if that doesn't happen, where does that festival go? And so I think they're trying to kind of do a bridge, really, this year and then build it up again for next year, because if they don't, there's a sense that it may begin to fade away.
BOB GARFIELD:Well if this is just a bookmark, if they're just holding a place for the festival to resume at some later date, do you think that can ever happen or do you think the life cycle of Glastonbury has played out and that it, it's just in its final stages.
GEORGE MacKAY: Sometimes indeed yeah. The life cycle is finished, and it may be that Glastonbury has got bigger and bigger, and then it was a mega-event, almost too large an event last year, and that maybe that says it's time to stop, you know, and where Glastonbury lives is, is in our memories and in the folk culture and in the-- the sort of traditions of alternative culture which are continually being re-written and re-explored by cultural studies, academics like myself.
BOB GARFIELD: Very well. George MacKay, thank you very much!
GEORGE MacKAY: Thank you.
BOB GARFIELD: George MacKay is a professor of cultural studies at the University of Central Lancashire. [SONG PLAYS] YOU KNOW I'M A DREAMER BUT MY HEART'S OF GOLD I HAD TO RUN AWAY... Motley Crue
June 16, 2001
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Rock stars. They light up the night sky like the gods of yore only to be snuffed out in a whirlwind of drugs, debauchery and tortured metaphors like this one. At least that's the formula for the popular VH1 program Behind the Music. The show is so popular, the storytelling formula so iron-clad, the tales so familiar that to think of the story of a popular musician is to think of Behind the Music. But what about when it doesn't work? Joining me now is New York Times pop music writer Neil Strauss who along with the members of the heavy metal band Motley Crue wrote a weighty collective biography of the band called Dirt. Neil Strauss, welcome to the show!
NEIL STRAUSS: Thanks.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Now I think one notable thing about the book is that it veers away from the tried and true Behind the Music formula. That's generally a three-act play.
NEIL STRAUSS: Right, the - you know, the rise, the fall, the redemption, you know and all - you know and the, the tearful apology - I was wrong - at the end.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And how many acts does your back, The Dirt have?
NEIL STRAUSS:[LAUGHS] It's probably got about 30 acts per Motley Crue member. I mean it's real life. Sometimes people don't always learn from their mistakes.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: So for some of them at least, no redemption at all.
NEIL STRAUSS:Right. Or, or a little redemption -- some parts are redeemed; some parts aren't redeemed. You know I think whether it's you or me or Motley Crue you learn from a-- some mistakes but then you go ahead and you make new ones.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Some of these people don't seem to learn a damn thing.
NEIL STRAUSS:Yeah, exactly. I mean you're amazed that these guys are still alive, and even while I was working on it, they're still getting arrested; they're still-- [LAUGHS] you know - causing all kinds of mayhem --
WOMAN: problems, what, what have you.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: What do you think of Behind the Music's treatment of most rock groups?
NEIL STRAUSS: Well you - I think I mean it's the prob--problem that anyone has whether you're a band or, or a TV producer, you, you, you do something that works and then you decide, hey, that's our formula. So that's why the Motley Crue episode which was one of the early ones works so well, and after a while you almost feel like people are going on Behind the Music so they're wr-- scripting their three-act before they're going on - it's - so the, so the later ones are less effective.
And you see them almost trying to move away from their formula now like Behind the Music of the '80s are a concept now.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: But the Behind the Music they did on Motley Crue, they were redeemed at the end, weren't they.
NEIL STRAUSS: [LAUGHS] Yeah, exactly.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Are you saying VH1 lied to us?!
NEIL STRAUSS:[LAUGHS] Yes. I think - thi--this is what I sort of -- am starting to learn a little bit -which is this - that it's okay to talk about all the drugs and decadence you've done, as long as you pretend like you're not doing them any more. I mean having spent some time with some of the musicians who appear on other episodes of Behind the Music, you know I know that they're hi--high on camera talking about how they've cleaned up.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: What do the musicians think of that form?
NEIL STRAUSS:I guess it's a little self-exploitation for publicity -- I mean I think they'd all be glad - you know - they'd all be glad to be on it as long as you're redeemed at the end, it's all okay.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: But they don't buy it - they don't believe it.
NEIL STRAUSS:No, they, they, they believe it. Like when they see it, they believe it. You know the media has a way of making something seem true and I'm not saying that, that, that it's a lie but it's definitely-- you know I'm sure you shape it to fit a - you know you shape it to fit a format.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: So let's go back to The Dirt -- what kind of structure were you going for there?
NEIL STRAUSS:[LAUGHS] The structure of The Dirt was-- if you read it, you're not going to s-- you're not going to think about it or care about it, but As I lay Dying by William Faulkner, that was my inspiration because you know it's a book about a family traveling to bury their mother, and each different chapter is told from a different family member's point of view, and you know some are lovable, some are crazy, some are-- retarded [LAUGHS] - and I'm not going to - I'm not saying that about the band of course.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Of course.
NEIL STRAUSS:[LAUGHS] But-- you get the different pieces of the story -- some of them contradict - some of 'em don't make sense - but between it you get a-- whole in three dimensions, and, and that's what I was trying for, and in As I Lay Dying along the way different neighbors might comment from the - an outside perspective on the, on the passing of this-- Motley party and you know so I had different strangers comment on Motley in that way. I told them when I was starting it - I, I said like this, this is my idea for it - are, are you, are you down with doing it in this structure.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And did they say rad?
NEIL STRAUSS:[LAUGHS] They said, rad, dude. [LAUGHTER] It's not like I always take a band and then apply a-- literary construct to it, but with Marilyn Manson The Inferno was the model, [LAUGHTER] and the idea was he was kind of trying to show his-- fall from innocence to this-- twisted, dark persona of Marilyn Manson. So we plotted the falls along the lines of the different circle in The Inferno, and that was something he actively participated in.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: So
BROOKE GLADSTONE: So Dante for Marilyn Manson-- [LAUGHTER] and Faulkner for Motley Crue--
NEIL STRAUSS: [LAUGHS] Exactly.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: -- I guess that leaves Jane Austen for Michael Jackson.
NEIL STRAUSS: [LAUGHS] Yeah, exactly.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Thank you very much!
NEIL STRAUSS: Sure.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Neil Strauss is author of The Dirt: Motley Crue. HBO: TV’s Darkside
June 16, 2001
BROOKE GLADSTONE: TV that makes you feel good is not what you'll find on the new HBO series Six Feet Under.
WOMAN: How's it going with you?
MAN: Oh-- it's great. Great, you know, my father's dead; my mom's a whore; my brother wants to kill me, and my sister's smoking crack.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:The mobsters on the Sopranos, the inmates of Oz and even the whiney sirens of Sex and the City make HBO quite the rogues gallery. Joining me now is Tad Friend, staff writer of the New Yorker who's written an article about the cable TV channel. Tad, why are the shows on HBO so dark?
TAD FRIEND: Oddly enough, they are actually physically dark. The -- if you look at the screen, there'll be fewer pixels or lumens or whatever it is on the screen, and a, a lot of net--network producers have told me that when they make a show they often film it darker than they want it to be, because they know that when it goes through the network feed it's going to - they're gonna wash it with light to make it seem more cheerful and more happy, more upbeat. As far as the thematic darkness, I - one of the people I spoke with for my article is Scott Sassa who's the head of NBC, and he pointed out that HBO is for people who feel under-served by network television. That was his phrase. Right now the networks, because they are designed to get advertisers, are doing a lot of shows that are very cheerful and upbeat and optimistic, so HBO really, you know, in a way-- they keep a constant eye to what the networks are doing and say if the networks are doing what we're doing, we're doing something wrong.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:In your article, the creator of Six Feet Under, Alan Ball, who also wrote American Beauty, told you that he was so excited to work on a show for HBO because he wouldn't have to worry about commercials! But it isn't just halting a story every 15 minutes that he resented about commercial TV! There was a whole host of things!
TAD FRIEND: Yes. He created a show for ABC the year before called Oh, Grow Up which was a very bad sit-com; actually it was amazingly bad, given that he did such wonderful work on American Beauty, and the reason it was bad, he says, and I, I would have to agree with him, is that the network basically told him no conflict, no subtext. Everything should be explained very clearly to the viewer--; no one should fight. And he pointed out to me, he said you know drama is conflict and subtext. If you take those two things out, you have network television.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Where network TV is concerned, what they want to do is deliver eyeballs to advertisers; what they want to do on cable -- or at least HBO--
TAD FRIEND: Right.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: -- is deliver subscribers into the system. So how does that change the kind of programming that you're pitching at them?
TAD FRIEND: Well, the, the networks don't make any money if they have 50 million people watching a show and there are no advertisers who want to advertise on that show. Advertisers, to be grossly simplistic, want their people who are looking at their advertisements to be in a cheerful, happy, pleasant, mildly tranquilized mood. HBO already has people who have paid for this service. Its job is to keep them paying for it at the end of every month. It means you can have very different kind of programming. Jeff Bewkus, the head of the network, told me that last year when they put on a show called The Corner, which was a mini-series about crack addicts mostly in Baltimore, it was a very dark, very bleak show and he was saying we'd rather put that on and maybe get much smaller ratings than we would with something that would attract 35 percent of our audience, as long as we get good critical reception and we reach people who are not being reached by other kinds of shows on HBO.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:You say that HBO made more money than any other network -- in fact, and I really find this hard to believe -- you say that HBO made more money than the other networks combined!
TAD FRIEND: Two of the network heads I spoke to - Lessman was at CBS and Scott Sassa at NBC both frankly said boy, do I envy HBO. It's a much better business to be in. They -- the networks are just, you know, their audience share has been dropping for the last 25 years, and right now the networks' business is a terrible business to be in. There's sort of no end in sight.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:You said that an HBO employee said it was important if the Shales's got excited - you know, the Tom Shales -- the, the TV critics. Here's what Tom Shales said in his Washington Post review about Six Feet Under. He said Six Feet Under establishes from the start that it will be unflinching and brazen and, as it happens, scorchingly brilliant. So then if the networks pander to the mass audience, isn't HBO similarly pandering to the people they call "cultural interpreters?"
TAD FRIEND: In a way I think the, the critics are in the same way that the networks test shows with focus groups, which is you know average Americans sitting in a mall somewhere toggling switches back and forth; HBO tests its shows with critics. I would take issue with the word "pandering" because pand-- the implication of "pandering" is that you're serving something up that you believe is beneath the mark that you could actually hit.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Fair enough.
TAD FRIEND:And, and I think-- HBO is certainly aiming to please critics, and their theory is that that has a snowball effect where if the critics like it, then people read the newspapers and it - the, the show becomes a kind of --gradually a cultural phenomenon the way Sop--the Sopranos has.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:HBO can show whatever they want to show, and what they want to show is autopsies in Six Feet Under or beating strippers to death in The Sopranos or homosexual rape in Oz. Now they would say they're just going where the stories take them, but if they didn't have those very graphic and shocking scenes, would they be able to say it's not TV -- it's HBO?
TAD FRIEND: They-- never quite come out and say this but they certainly like to get headlines and have people be titillated and shocked. Tom Fontana, the creator of Oz, told me that he was always being told by the HBO people to --not to be afraid to be reviled.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:But HBO hires people like David Chase of the Sopranos, Alan Ball of Six Feet Under, Tom Fontana of Oz -- to produce those programs that may be reflective of reality. Would HBO ever pick up Aaron Sorkin, the creator of West Wing and say come on down?
TAD FRIEND: Well, i-- the West Wing is a bit of a, a bugaboo at HBO. They talk about it a lot, privately, because they're basically pissed off that it won the Emmy last year and they, they can't believe it and they think it's--sugary and false and, and-- and network TV at its finest which they feel is anathema to what they're doing. I spoke to Aaron Sorkin about that very issue. I said well you know, what would your show be like if it were on HBO? And he said it would be a better show. He said, you know, the, the President Bartlett could swear; we wouldn't have hired someone as handsome as Rob Lowe. We'd have a much more realistic White House lawyer -- and then he paused and he said --but I don't tend to write like that. And there is a self-selecting system. It's not that everyone wants to work at HBO and only the best people get chosen. Everyone who writes for HBO has written for the networks before. They don't take people from the movies; they take people from the networks who are fed up with that and want to do something a little different.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Tad Friend -- thank you very much!
TAD FRIEND: You're welcome!
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Tad Friend's article: The Next Big Bet appeared in the May 14th issue of the New Yorker.
CBS Reacts
June 16, 2001
BOB GARFIELD: Under ratings pressure from HBO, the networks react. [ORGAN MUSIC]
ANNOUNCER: Coming to CBS this fall, Touched By a Clergyman.
CLERGYMAN: Johnny, how would you like to come back to the rectory and see the brass rubbings I made in Canterbury?
YOUNG BOY: Rectory?!?
ANNOUNCER: Touched By a Clergyman. Coming this fall to CBS, where the Gospel is not always Good News. [ORGAN MUSIC FADES] [THEME MUSIC UP AND UNDER] 58:00
BOB GARFIELD: That's it for this week's show. On the Media was produced by Janeen Price and Katya Rogers; engineered by Irene Trudelle and edited-- by Brooke. We had help from Sean Landis and Kathleen Horan.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Mike Pesca is our producer at large, Arun Rath our senior producer and Dean Cappello our executive producer. Bassist/composer Ben Allison wrote our theme. This is On the Media from National Public Radio. I'm Brooke Gladstone.
BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield.
June 16, 2001
BOB GARFIELD: Last year 16 million viewers tuned in to ABC to watch Peter Jennings reporting The Search for Jesus. Jennings and his network have long claimed that audiences like that emphasize the importance of religion in its reporting and specials, but in ABC's latest round of money-saving moves, network television's only dedicated religion reporter, Peggy Wehmeyer, didn't make the cut. Filling the void or trying to at least is Beliefnet.com, a web site that bills itself as a multimedia company for religion and spirituality. Joining us now is Charles Haynes, a senior scholar at the Freedom Forum's First Amendment Center in Roslyn [sp?], Virginia. Charles, welcome to OTM!
CHARLES HAYNES: Thanks! Thanks for having me.
BOB GARFIELD: So ABC has let go Peggy Wehmeyer. Is this more evidence that we have a godless media?
CHARLES HAYNES: [LAUGHS] Well I think it's a bad message at a bad, at a bad time! Just when we thought things were getting better in terms of religion coverage, it sends the message that religion is expendable.
BOB GARFIELD:In fact ABC has kind of used Peggy as a poster child for their commitment to religion coverage. They've been the only network in the last number of years to have a full time religion correspondent.
CHARLES HAYNES: Well we've all been using her as a poster person. I mean we've, we've pointed to her and said look -- things are getting better. A network now has a full time religion reporter. So now we don't have anyone to point to. It is disturbing.
BOB GARFIELD:Apart from the coverage of the religion right in politics in the United States and maybe ethnic and religious rivalries in the Balkans and in Africa and elsewhere, the whole coverage of religion in mainstream media seems to be quite ghetto-ized. Do you think that's true as well?
CHARLES HAYNES: Oh, I think so. I think it's treated as something people used to believe a long, long time ago but is not really imp-- that important today unless there's a conflict, but religious events in and of themselves are developments that affect the lives of millions of people -- that doesn't seem to be newsworthy.
BOB GARFIELD: If you were the sultan-- how would things change?
CHARLES HAYNES:Well I think that journalism schools ought to consider requiring that journalists have some background in religious studies! I mean we are the most religiously diverse nation in the entire world; we -- among developed nations --we're the most religious people, and yet our journalists by and large come out into the field and are unprepared to deal with all of that!
BOB GARFIELD: You're not suggesting that reporters-- [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
CHARLES HAYNES: I think [...?...]--
BOB GARFIELD: -- themselves have to be-- spiritual or--believers but that they have to understand-- [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
CHARLES HAYNES: Oh, no.
BOB GARFIELD: -- the society that they're reporting in and on.
CHARLES HAYNES:These are not religious arguments for taking religion seriously; that's not-- appropriate for journalism, and I'm not making those arguments. These are really civic arguments --that is to say if we - if we're going to be fair in our press, in our media, we've got to really let the voices be heard! We've got to be attentive to who lives in the country and what they care about!
BOB GARFIELD:You would never send a reporter to cover Washington, for example, without him understanding how Congress works - the separation of powers and you know how a bill becomes law; and yet the same people aren't conversant at all in all manner of religious questions.
CHARLES HAYNES: Yes, and this is really a dangerous thing, because m-- many Americans I, I think have given up on, on seeing themselves in the media and understanding themselves in the media, so we have kind of-- divided nation. We have a, a-- well, Peter Berger, the sociologist says that you know Sweden is the least religious country in the world perhaps and India the most religious, and America's an interesting combination of the two. It's a nation of Indians ruled by Swedes!
BOB GARFIELD:So what's the root of all this? Is it that the questions of religion are so loaded and so complicated that we, we're just afraid in the media to cover them?
CHARLES HAYNES: i think there's a - there is a, a fear because-- out of really a lack of understanding. I mean we, we've gone through a period in the United States where we really have had a tough time figuring out the proper role of religion in public life, and I think that the-- path of least resistance has been to ignore it -- to say well the solution is just to, to - that's a private matter; let's keep it out. And I really wonder how the United States is going to make it as a nation, how we're going to live with all of these differences if we don't understand one another! If we don't know anything about one another! And I should think on that basis alone the press should take religion seriously by reporting accurately and fairly the various perspectives, the religious perspectives in others of the American people!
BOB GARFIELD: Excellent point. Is it going to happen?
CHARLES HAYNES:Well, this, this latest symbolic move by ABC has sort of made me less optimistic about what's going to happen. I, I hope the partnership with Beliefnet turns out to prove me wrong -- that ABC will do more coverage. I hope so.
BOB GARFIELD: Charles Haynes, thanks for joining us!
CHARLES HAYNES: Thank you for having me.
BOB GARFIELD: Charles Haynes is a senior scholar at the Freedom Forum's First Amendment Center in Roslyn, Virginia. Bush Goes to Europe
June 16, 2001
BOB GARFIELD: From WNYC in New York this is NPR's On the Media. I'm Bob Garfield.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And I'm Brooke Gladstone. President Bush went on a grand tour of Europe this week -- the first of his presidency -- and if you had read the advance word from the Old World you would have guessed the streets would not be strewn with rose petals. Here's a clip from the president's stop in Sweden reported by the BBC this week. [CLIP OF PEOPLE SHOUTING EPITHETS]
MAN: They call Gothamburg "the friendly city." That's not how it looks just now. Early this afternoon the police clashed with around 200 protesters who'd thrown bottles and stones. The demonstrators were forced to retreat to a nearby park. And this is why they're here: the man they call "the Toxic Texan" who withdrew American participation in the Kyoto Accord on climate change.
BOB GARFIELD:Even the president's itinerary was fodder for critics. He skipped the big players --notably Germany and France for less influential nations like Spain and Slovenia. He seemed to favor crowned heads over duly elected leaders, and he only managed to squeeze in Russian President Alexander Putin for a couple of hours at the end of his trip. Then there were the contentious issues of the Kyoto Accords the U.S. has failed to sign, the unpopular missile defense system the president advocates and the execution of Timothy McVeigh.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:So all in all, the European news media was not favorably inclined toward George W. Bush when he embarked upon his trip. Martin Walker is the chief international correspondent of UPI International. We called him in Sweden and asked what the European press was expecting to see.
MARTIN WALKER: Well they were expecting a slightly reformed alcoholic totally ignorant of affairs outside his native Texas, obsessed with capital punishment and determined to ram down the throats of the world an American First ideology which said we will protect America from missiles and nobody else, and we will also refuse to do things like sign the Kyoto Protocol to avoid global warming. And La Republica of Italy routinely now refers to the American president as "The Executioner in Chief." The cover of Spiegel, one of the great German weeklies, shows Bush as a wild-eyed cowboy and their headline is The Ugly American. You've got in Le Figaro of France The Toxic Texan. You've had in, in Sweden that this is the man who sends us dirty air and now tries to de-stabilize Europe.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: I assume there was a big difference between the left wing and the right wing press.
MARTIN WALKER:Not so much as you'd -- I mean I was very surprised that there wasn't that much, because after all Figaro in France is a conservative newspaper. They're the ones who call him the Toxic Texan.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: I understand that the Telegraph and the Spanish paper El Pais and El Mundo took somewhat positive takes on the president.
MARTIN WALKER:Well with, with a bit of a difference. El Pais and El Mundo in Spain were both delighted that Bush was starting off his trip in Spain. The Daily Telegraph was really rather split. It's a very conservative British newspaper; some of them said that Bush was the kind of conservative Europeans really ought to appreciate, but also there was a sense that Bush was starting to play fast and loose with the traditional Anglo-American alliance and that therefore he ought to be treated with some caution, and I think that what's been interesting is that we have had a certain amount of, of suspicion of Bush from the conservative wing in Europe as well as from the traditional left wing in Europe.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Does that come from his position on the Kyoto Accords and missile defense or something else?
MARTIN WALKER:I think it comes from, from three separate things. First of all it's the Kyoto Accords because everybody in Europe does take global warming very seriously. I think on missile defense an awful lot of conservatives in Europe were simply worried that he was getting rid of a tried and tested security system and not putting anything else in its place. The third reason was this sense of vulnerability about the idea that Europeans and Americans shared common values. Well we certainly do on human rights, but when it comes to common values, the death penalty really is a major issue for conservatives and for left wingers alike in Europe.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:The Bush trip, unhappily for Bush I think, coincided exactly with the execution of Timothy McVeigh. That played a part in some of his initial coverage anyway, didn't it?
MARTIN WALKER: It played a very big part. This whole issue of capital punishment is really a very burning one in Europe because of course you can't be a member of either the European Union nor the Council of Europe if your state supports capital punishment.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Were there comparisons made between President Clinton and President Bush in the papers you read?
MARTIN WALKER:Absolutely! The comparisons were please bring back President Clinton -- all is forgiven. [LAUGHTER] That was in the Irish Times, and there was a comment also that went on in the Irish Times to say that the thing about Clinton was that he had a, a European sense of warmth and compassion.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Hm! And the Texas bonhomie and Mr. Bush's much-vaunted charm offensive fell on deaf ears?
MARTIN WALKER:Well, before he arrived it certainly didn't seem to get any response. What has been remarkable since his arrival is that the story has changed. There is no longer, I think, a consensus among European politicians that Bush is a dangerous de-stabilizer who wants to poison the planet. The consensus is now becoming well this is the guy we're going to have to live with for the next four years, perhaps the next eight years, and he's prepared to talk to us; he's saying he's not a unilateralist; he wants to listen -- he is in person quite a charming fellow, and as a result, we are prepared to work with him. After all, we don't have much choice.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And so then have the media been behind the curve about the reality in which this diplomacy played out or are they on top of it?
MARTIN WALKER:I think the media in Europe have been about, oh, 3 months behind the curve. I think the media in the U.S. have been a few weeks behind the curve. But I think that the reality is going to start catching up because we are going to have to start writing that so far, at least until the meeting with Putin, Bush has had a serious success on his European tour! He has come out onto the world stage for the first time and has been, I think, a, a pretty reasonable figure.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Martin Walker, it was a pleasure talking to you.
MARTIN WALKER: And to you.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Martin Walker is the chief international correspondent for UPI International. Media Witnesses to an Execution
June 16, 2001
BOB GARFIELD: Earlier this week the execution of Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh dominated the news with the attention divided between the bereaved in Oklahoma and elsewhere and the events in the death chamber at Terre Haute. Among the witnesses to the execution were ten members of the media. Two of those witnesses join us now. Karen Grundin of the Terre Haute Tribune Star and Byron Pitts of CBS News who obtained his seat through a lottery operated by the Bureau of Prisons. Karen, did you have any misgivings, or did you think you were going to come through it okay?
KAREN GRUNDIN: You know I actually was pretty certain that I wouldn't have a problem with that. I, I've gone out to accident scenes before and shootings and that sort of that as the police and courts reporter at the Tribune Star, so--you know from those experiences I figured I probably would be okay with watching the execution.
BOB GARFIELD: Because you've seen dead bodies.
KAREN GRUNDIN: Correct.
BOB GARFIELD: It's-- the same?
KAREN GRUNDIN:No, it, it's not the same at all when you're actually watching someone die compared to seeing someone who is already dead. Witnessing this execution you actually saw the color of Timothy McVeigh's skin change as those drugs were coursing through his body, so it, it was quite different!
BOB GARFIELD: What about the night before? Were you sleepless?
KAREN GRUNDIN:[LAUGHS] Definitely. I-- actually got to bed about 10 p.m. and knew I had to get up around 2:00. I remember looking at the clock quite a few times, and I remember looking at it at 1:55 a.m. and thinking-- you know there's no reason to wait for the, the wakeup call. I might as well just go ahead and get up.
BOB GARFIELD:Byron Pitts-- what happened to you when you saw the drugs coursing through Timothy McVeigh's body? I mean did your respiration change? Were you nervous? Upset?
BYRON PITTS: No. Not at all. You know I watched. I was so busy, like Karen and everyone else, taking as many notes as I could; trying to, you know, keep my game face on if you will. But I didn't have any inner reaction as it happened.
BOB GARFIELD: Have you had any post-execution stress symptoms?
BYRON PITTS:No. I mean it's, it's been a few days now, but this is my second execution. It's about the 5th time in life I've actually seen someone die. And it, it's always been my sense -- it seems to me that, that-- that with each death it, it almost has like its own fingerprints. I mean each experience was very different. Two were executions; one was a dear friend of mine who was stabbed to death in front of me when I was 12. The other m--my grandmother--; she was 90; I watched her die. Those other instances - I mean they, they bothered me. They stayed with me for quite a while. Those people did nothing to deserve to die at that moment. With the two executions, whether you agree or disagree with the death penalty, it seems to me that both men had some appreciation that if I commit these crimes, this could happen to me, and so they had some control over how their lives ended.
BOB GARFIELD: How about you, Karen? What it difficult before, during or after?
KAREN GRUNDIN:I, unlike Byron, I had never really watched someone die before. And so-- you know I, I'll give it a little more time, but I just don't see that I'm going to have-- any anguish over it.
BOB GARFIELD:Byron you were there because you were the lottery winner; Karen, you because you work for the Tribune Star. In the larger sense, though, why were you there? Why did the media need to be present for this?
KAREN GRUNDIN: Well, you know, I think that part of our role is to make sure that the execution is carried out as the government has said it would be--; as best as we can determine that from witnessing it, that is part of our role, and our other role is to report what we saw.
BOB GARFIELD: Byron?
BYRON PITTS:My mother raised me -- she used to always say, said Son--: the truth may hurt; the truth may be funny; it may be ugly, but the truth is always the truth. And so therefore I think there is some value as journalists in witnessing things regardless of what that might be, if given the opportunity, to hopefully when it's over report to people what it is that you saw fairly and as objective as you could.
BOB GARFIELD: Having seen what you've seen, do you think that-- televising capital punishment will alter the debate in this country? Karen?
KAREN GRUNDIN:Well, you know I'm not sure that it would. You know I think it may depend on how the execution was carried out - whether it was lethal injection or maybe some other form of execution. In my case it didn't. It may just be an individual sort of thing.
KAREN GRUNDIN: I would agree. I would think that most people would look at it and would be surprised at how clinical the whole process is and how void of emotion the moment is -- how disciplined the people who carry it out are. Again, in most cases when it goes the way it's designed to go. Ten journalists -- we all saw it. We all were there to be objective - but I think all of us on some level saw different things. So I'm not sure if witnessing an execution would do a whole lot to shift the nation's debate, though I think it might.
BOB GARFIELD:Karen your beat as criminal justice reporter at the Terre Haute Tribune Star is such that you'll be witnessing other executions. Any fear about that? Can - do you think you can witness too many? Something can happen to you?
KAREN GRUNDIN: That's a good question and I'm not sure. I mean I, I would think that maybe there would be a point where there would be too many. I'm not really sure how many more I will witness. There's a possibility I will witness Juan Raul Garza's if it goes as scheduled on Tuesday. As far as whether that'll be a problem -- you know if it goes like Mr. McVeigh's execution did, I -- I don't see that I would have a problem with that, but it's another thing I'll just have to wait and see about really.
BOB GARFIELD: Is this something you're going to get used to?
KAREN GRUNDIN:No. I, I don't think you would want to get used to witnessing an execution, to become calloused against, you know, death or you know a lethal injection -- I, I, I don't think would be a good thing at all.
BOB GARFIELD:All right. Karen Grundin, thank you very much for joining us. Karen Grundin of the Terre Haute Tribune Star and Byron Pitts of CBS News, thanks very much for being with us.
KAREN GRUNDIN: Thank you.
BYRON PITTS: Thanks. Television City
June 16, 2001
BROOKE GLADSTONE: When test marketing TV shows, networks can't simply ask will it play in Peoria, because even if it does, it may not play in New York or L.A. Wouldn't it be nice, those researchers may have thought, if there were a true cultural crossroads in this country where middle American and coastal sensibilities mingled. Guess where that is? [SONG PLAYS] VIVA LAS VEGAS! VIVA LAS VEGAS! Mike Pesca, On the Media's producer at large reports.
MIKE PESCA: The MGM Hotel and Casino has 5,000 rooms, 3600 slot machines and one actual living, breathing lion. [LION ROARS] The roar, however, is pre-recorded. Wolfgang Puck has a restaurant inside the MGM. Studio 54's Las Vegas branch is there. This is why it's remarkable that an increasingly popular pastime inside the MGM is watching television.
DAVID LETTERMAN: All right let's take a look at the-- whatever that was before the county shuts us down-- [LAUGHTER]
MIKE PESCA: The first thing you see are the words Television City spelled out in big neon letters, the default font for this town. There are a few big-screen TVs playing CBS shows. Inside a small store CBS merchandise is for sale. Young and the Restless boxer shorts retail for 24 dollars. By Vegas standards Television City is a little underwhelming. No buffet; no showgirls; no Siegfried; no Roy. Just as you're about to turn on your heel and head back towards the lip-syncing lion-- [LION ROARS] you're accosted.
MAN: Hi! We're at Television City. Would you like to see one of our new television programs?
MIKE PESCA: I'd-- well what is it? What do I have to do?
MAN: Yeah. Well what we're doing is we're testing the new fall lineup for CBS--; what you do is you watch a new television program, and you tell us what you think about it; you get a, a 10 percent discount in our gift shop here.
MIKE PESCA: Oh, really? Ten percent?
MAN: Yeah.
MIKE PESCA: You got any-- Young and the Restless stuff? Television City, it turns out, is CBS's new state of the art audience testing center. Las Vegas has become the demographically representative crossroads of America.
DAVID POLTRACK: We do a test with 250 people -- without trying we get 40 different states represented. So that's - that, that's extraordinary.
MIKE PESCA: David Poltrack is CBS Television's executive vice president of research and planning.
DAVID POLTRACK: Las Vegas is a town where the, the action's at night. People are looking for things to do during the day.
MIKE PESCA: Like watch TV. Poltrack is based in New York, but that doesn't really matter because CBS executives on both coasts can utilize live video links between their offices and Las Vegas. That way they can watch America watch CBS. Upon entering the screening room, participants are given two push buttons -- one red; one green. Then an instructional recording is played.
ANNOUNCER: This is what we'd like for you to do: when you come to a part of the program that you think is good, that you'd want to see and hear, please press the green button in your right hand and keep it pressed down as long as you continue to think that part is good. When you come to a part of the program that is poor, that you don't want to see or hear, press the red button in your left hand and keep it pressed down as long as that part continues.
MIKE PESCA: This turned the experience of watching Touched By an Angel into one of the most judgmental 45 minutes of my life.
SMALL CHILD: What's gonna happen to me?
ANGEL: Well there's an angel named Andrew...
MIKE PESCA: Good!
ANGEL: ...and he took your mommy to heaven...
MIKE PESCA: Gooood.
ANGEL: ...and he's going to come in here very soon...
MIKE PESCA: Bad!
ANGEL: ...and take you to meet your mommy.
MIKE PESCA: Baaaaad. I found the directions on button-pushing vague. What about when bad things happen to good people? Do I press good because it's entertaining or bad because I feel bad for the person? And what about a villain? If I press green for good, am I telling the people who read the results that they've miscast the role? These were no mere idle musings, because this episode of Touched By an Angel forced me to pass judgment on the greatest villain of all, Satan himself -- as played by Mandy Patinkin.
MANDY PANTINKIN AS SATAN: [SINGING] NO ONE HERE TO GUIDE YOU
MIKE PESCA: Bad--
MANDY PANTINKIN AS SATAN: NOW YOU'RE ON YOUR OWN
MIKE PESCA: Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad.... I was risking a repetitive stress injury for the opportunity to buy boxer shorts for just 21 dollars and 60 cents.
MANDY PANTINKIN AS SATAN: NO ONE IS ALONE
MIKE PESCA: It wasn't discount drawers that convinced Anita and Roseanne to participate; they're Touched By an Angel viewers who were happy to have a chance to influence the show. But they were divided as to the philosophy of good and bad button-pushing. [BIG CROWD OF PEOPLE CHEERING] Let's take that scene where the, the building explodes. I mean did you press the red button there?
WOMAN: No.
MIKE PESCA: Why not?
WOMAN: Cause I know the show-- and I-- I just figured something good was going to come of bad things.
MIKE PESCA: Did you ever press the red button?
WOMAN: No!
MIKE PESCA: Did you ever press the red button?
WOMAN: Yeah, I did.
MIKE PESCA: And well what parts did you press the red button on?
WOMAN: When the little girl was going-- died and the mother died in the bombing - all the sad stuff - I did.
MIKE PESCA: Now this is interesting -- I -- this is what I'm hearing. I think you were using the buttons - you pressed the red button not to say how I feel but what -- how it's working as a TV show. And I think you used the buttons to say this is how it makes me feel -- that's a sad thing.
WOMAN: Yeah.
MIKE PESCA: Right?
WOMAN: Right. I wanted it all to be happy.
MIKE PESCA: Whether they're happy with the program or the program makes them happy doesn't really matter to CBS. Either one will satisfy advertisers who believe that a happy, conflict-free environment moves product. And what better place to determine television's effectiveness than Las Vegas, a city whose sole purpose is separating its visitors from their money as happily as possible. For On the Media, I'm Mike Pesca.
verson
June 16, 2001
BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield. A few years ago sports columnist Michael Wilbon of the Washington Post foresaw Allen Iverson's life and career ending in ruin. Taking note of the Philadelphia 76er rookie's criminal record, his corn rows and tattoos, his disrespect for authority, his thuggish posse, and his gangsta image, Wilbon predicted Iverson would in time reap what he sowed. As recently as October, when the violent abusive lyrics from Iverson's still-unreleased rap album emerged, Wilbon declared his sportswriter vigil "The Wait for Iverson to Grow Up" to be in vain. That was then. This is now. [CLIP FROM GAME WITH CROWD CHEERING]
ANNOUNCER: Allen Iverson who has 47 points-- he heard it before the game when he was presented the MVP trophy, and he's hearing it again tonight....
BOB GARFIELD:The gutsy, blindingly fast little off guard --the one they call "The Answer" suddenly is a new man. NBC and TNT sportscasters marveled at his maturity. ABC news says he has turned his life around. David Dupree writing in USA Today declared Iverson's image "repaired." In the past month a dozen newspaper stories from around the country invoked the word "transform" and Wilbon himself marveled at Iverson's change in professional attitude --in the columnist's words -- "just like that." And here is Sports Illustrated writer Rick Reilly on CNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Have we changed in our view of Allen Iverson? Rick Reilly.
RICK REILLY: Oh, I think definitely. I mean I, I think we definitely have changed, and, and he's - he's one of the fine young, great talents in the league, and, and I happen to think a young man who's really become a good person!
BOB GARFIELD:Well! That was rapid! Nobody who covers the NBA questions whether Iverson's dedication to basketball and team play improved dramatically in this season, a season in which Iverson's MVP performance propelled Philadelphia to the playoff finals. But how does that translate to a mythic conversion from irredeemable to redeemed?
KEITH OLBERMANN: The media-- especially the sports media in this country -- is so black or white. Atomic War or Eternal Peace. You know, there's nothing in between. New York Yankee's -- All Time Greatest Team/Bunch of Bums -- Trade All of Them.
BOB GARFIELD:Sports journalist Keith Olbermann, formerly of ESPN and the Fox Sports Network, was wary of the demonized Iverson portrayal as the seed of the NBA's destruction, and he is wary of the conversion portrayal as well.
KEITH OLBERMANN: I'm not sold. I mean if there is a real, genuine transformation in the man's personality, more power to him, and I hope the-- the other sports commentators have simply been more discerning than I have.
BOB GARFIELD:For the record Michael Wilbon of the Washington Post isn't sold on the notion that there's been a radical swing in the conventional wisdom about the answer.
MICHAEL WILBON: I completely reject out of hand the notion that-- the world has gone soft on Allen Iverson. I, I, I read too much and see too much to the contrary.
BOB GARFIELD: The proof, however, will be in the pudding. Who knows? Maybe even Jello Pudding!
RICHARD SANDOMIR:Now he is more marketable than he was-- 2, 3 months ago or certainly 3 or 4 years ago; the experts seem to think that his appeal is still targeted towards the youth-- the youth market - maybe the extreme sports market.
BOB GARFIELD:Richard Sandomir is the sports media reporter of the New York Times. He wrote during the finals how Iverson's rehabilitation has increased his marketability for advertising endorsements. While he's still not a clean cut Michael Jordan type, Sandomir says, on court heroics have allowed him to shed the pariah tag that kept mainstream marketers far, far away.
RICHARD SANDOMIR: Winning helps. Not getting arrested helps. Looking like someone who has become the consummate team player and will play with immense pain has transformed him in the eyes of the world.
BOB GARFIELD:But there is at least one more sneaker to drop. Some time this summer, Iverson's long-delayed rap album is expected to be released, including the song 40 Bars that so horrified mainstream audiences 5 months ago. If, as Michael Wilbon reports, the album is filled with material as caustic as 40 Bars, the media conventional wisdom can change yet again! Keith Olbermann.
KEITH OLBERMANN: When the album is released and there is -there's not a significant change in that 40 Bars-- I just suggest once again that you can be in a position where you are the hero and then the villain and then the hero and then the villain....
BOB GARFIELD: Neither of which extremes, of course, will ever be entirely true, no matter what the pack journalism tells us.
CHRIS MATTHEWS:F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote that there is no second acts [sic] in American lives; Allen Iverson's proved him wrong. The 6 foot guard for the Philadelphia 7--76ers had been the poster boy for everything that's wrong with the hip hop generation; now he's a winner, and Iverson who's been playing in pain for weeks has become the hero.
BOB GARFIELD:This week at least. Let's ask again a little later, because after all, they say there are no foolish questions, but there are sometimes foolish answers. Critic
June 16, 2001
BROOKE GLADSTONE: This month two eager beaver PR reps for Sony Pictures were suspended when they were caught fabricating movie blurbs for TV ads. The Sony marketeers created "David Manning" of the Ridgefield Press, a Connecticut weekly that actually does exist. Then they quoted him saying nice things about Sony movies including The Animal and A Knight's Tale. Sony was shocked, shocked and sorry, but the company may soon be even sorrier. Two disappointed moviegoers in California are suing Sony for false advertising, and the La Jolla-based law firm of Blumenthal and Markham are hoping to make it into a class action suit. Attorney David Markham is on the line from La Jolla. Mr. Markham, is your client blaming Sony because he bought a ticket to A Knight's Tale?
DAVID MARKHAM: The positive review of the film was one of the things, according to Rezec, that caused him to go and buy a ticket and see the film!
BROOKE GLADSTONE: So does he think Sony owes him 12 bucks?
DAVID MARKHAM:He at this point thinks that Sony owes the amount of money which Sony derived from selling this movie as a result of running the false ad -- in other words how much in ticket sales would Sony have made without the false review versus how much would they have made with the false review.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Which is probably impossible to determine.
DAVID MARKHAM:It is, and so California law solves the problem another way. The law says that you engage in what's called deterrence so that, you know, the next week a person selling a car or a person selling a pair of shoes doesn't make a statement about it which is false, so we don't have really a damage claim, but there is a disgorgement claim.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: So the message here is Sony should pay for lying.
DAVID MARKHAM:Yeah, the message is that Sony should not profit for engaging in false advertising --making up lies -- statements -- false critics. They shouldn't profit by it, and that's what the statute says!
BROOKE GLADSTONE: How much money are you looking at?
DAVID MARKHAM: We don't really know, but you're looking at most likely a percentage of what their ticket sales were.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Right. But are you talking a hundred thousand - half a million - a million - two million?
DAVID MARKHAM:We don't - I, I'm sure you're well north of a million dollars, and it really depends on what you see when you look at the revenues with regard to each of the respective movies.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:You know out here in New York we have--something called Nathan's Hot Dogs, and they say they're the best hot dogs in the world. And I've had them, and they just aren't. Should I sue them?
DAVID MARKHAM: There is somewhat a difference between the expression of an opinion and a statement of fact!
BROOKE GLADSTONE: The fictional David Manning said that the Knight's Tale was "a winner."
DAVID MARKHAM: Sure. But did Nathan's say Julia Child has sampled our hot dogs and she thinks they're the best hot dogs in the world -- and if Julia Child did not do so-- then Nathan's is exposed for false advertising!
BROOKE GLADSTONE: So if Sony had come out and said our film is a winner, you'd have no case.
DAVID MARKHAM:Well-- you would have an expression of an opinion rather than a statement of fact. If you state for example a critic has reviewed my movie positively or given an endorsement when no critic exists, you're in the realm of fact rather than in the realm of opinion.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:This is a case of somebody who read a review, spent 12 dollars - they probably should have known better - but don't you think you're going to get laughed out of court?
DAVID MARKHAM: No! What do we do with the law if we tell people well listen, you know, it's okay - you can lie - you can hype or product in any way you want to - fine! Go ahead and do it, because the product you sell is worth less than 15 dollars, so why do you need to comply with the law on false advertising that governs every other business in the state? In other words where do you draw the line?
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Dave Markham, thank you very much!
DAVID MARKHAM: Oh, sure!
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Dave Markham is an attorney with Blumenthal and Markham which is now attempting to bring to trial a case against Sony for false advertising. Glastonbury
June 16, 2001
BOB GARFIELD: In 1970, farmer Michael Eavis opened up the slatted wooden gates to his land in the southwest of England for a weekend of free music and communing with nature. Over the following 30 years this small hippie gathering morphed into a massive annual event attracting hundreds of thousands of people who wanted to listen to the latest chart-topping bands or mainly roll around in the mud and share the experience of overused porta-johns.
But as the world has become ever more technologically advanced, so too has the Glastonbury Festival. This year pixels will replace the mud and a search engine will take the place of a hilltop view.
George MacKay is the author of Glastonbury: A Very English Fair. Welcome to the show!
GEORGE MacKAY: Hi. Thanks for having me on.
BOB GARFIELD:Before we get to the latest development in the life of this festival, can you please explain the place that the Glastonbury Festival holds in the collective consciousness of the Brits?
GEORGE MacKAY: Glastonbury has something special about it because even though it's -- it has indeed --it morphed into this huge mega-mass event, you know, with hundreds of thousands of people --it claims that it still has an ethos of alternative values and culture and green issues about it.
BOB GARFIELD:Ethos of alternative values although there are gigantic masts for the cellular phones and--chain food outlets pitching their tents next to the green-dreadlocked men selling veggie patties.
GEORGE MacKAY: Yeah, it's set in this beautiful, absolutely beautiful valley - a stunning place - which as legend has it is indeed the Vale of Avalon --Avalon being the secret island where King Arthur was buried to rise up in a future day to kind of re-invent the English. You know there's a sort of spiritual dimension to Glastonbury, and then as well as that you've got 200,000 people -- all their motor cars -their pollution - their mobile phones and etc, etc.
I think those contradictions, rather than -you know it's almost too easy to say that they've undercut the original ethos and that's all been lost in a sort of sponsored corporate world. I think the contradictions of Glastonbury have energized it really and have kept it interesting and kept it a bit alternative even while all these other things are going on around it.
BOB GARFIELD:Okay, but this year however the festival has evolved in the past, there's a - a genuine technological sea change because there will be no Glastonbury Festival on Farmer Eavis's land this year. What is replacing it?
GEORGE MacKAY: Instead of everyone congregating as pilgrims at Glastonbury this year in those special green fields, we have instead a virtual Glastonbury. You have to log on to the Net and you will get some sense of the spirituality, so the web site claims, from the Web itself.
BOB GARFIELD:Putting aside for a moment the very genuine difference in the experience of recorded music versus live music, if Glastonbury is about the experience - about the community - how in the world is any of that conveyed over a computer?
GEORGE MacKAY: It isn't! Glastonbury is a mass event; it's about the crowd. It almost doesn't matter who the headliners are each year. In fact lots of people I spoke to - well I, I don't - I didn't really see any bands. You know people were saying oh, who's on? Are they? Oh, I don't think I'll bother that. I like up here in the stone circle or I like it here in the teepee circle and so it's almost like the crowd becomes its own entertainment, and you simply don't get that in the solitary - the sole experience of, of logging on to the Web and looking at your computer screen.
BOB GARFIELD: And that seems so clear. Why in the world are they going through with this exercise?
GEORGE MacKAY:I think Glastonbury is at a moment of crisis. Michael Eavis, the farmer who has organized it since the earliest days in 1970 - you know -he's getting on a bit, and he's quite keen, I think, to pass the event on - the organization of it - to his daughter, Emily. But if that doesn't happen, where does that festival go? And so I think they're trying to kind of do a bridge, really, this year and then build it up again for next year, because if they don't, there's a sense that it may begin to fade away.
BOB GARFIELD:Well if this is just a bookmark, if they're just holding a place for the festival to resume at some later date, do you think that can ever happen or do you think the life cycle of Glastonbury has played out and that it, it's just in its final stages.
GEORGE MacKAY: Sometimes indeed yeah. The life cycle is finished, and it may be that Glastonbury has got bigger and bigger, and then it was a mega-event, almost too large an event last year, and that maybe that says it's time to stop, you know, and where Glastonbury lives is, is in our memories and in the folk culture and in the-- the sort of traditions of alternative culture which are continually being re-written and re-explored by cultural studies, academics like myself.
BOB GARFIELD: Very well. George MacKay, thank you very much!
GEORGE MacKAY: Thank you.
BOB GARFIELD: George MacKay is a professor of cultural studies at the University of Central Lancashire. [SONG PLAYS] YOU KNOW I'M A DREAMER BUT MY HEART'S OF GOLD I HAD TO RUN AWAY... Motley Crue
June 16, 2001
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Rock stars. They light up the night sky like the gods of yore only to be snuffed out in a whirlwind of drugs, debauchery and tortured metaphors like this one. At least that's the formula for the popular VH1 program Behind the Music. The show is so popular, the storytelling formula so iron-clad, the tales so familiar that to think of the story of a popular musician is to think of Behind the Music. But what about when it doesn't work? Joining me now is New York Times pop music writer Neil Strauss who along with the members of the heavy metal band Motley Crue wrote a weighty collective biography of the band called Dirt. Neil Strauss, welcome to the show!
NEIL STRAUSS: Thanks.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Now I think one notable thing about the book is that it veers away from the tried and true Behind the Music formula. That's generally a three-act play.
NEIL STRAUSS: Right, the - you know, the rise, the fall, the redemption, you know and all - you know and the, the tearful apology - I was wrong - at the end.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And how many acts does your back, The Dirt have?
NEIL STRAUSS:[LAUGHS] It's probably got about 30 acts per Motley Crue member. I mean it's real life. Sometimes people don't always learn from their mistakes.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: So for some of them at least, no redemption at all.
NEIL STRAUSS:Right. Or, or a little redemption -- some parts are redeemed; some parts aren't redeemed. You know I think whether it's you or me or Motley Crue you learn from a-- some mistakes but then you go ahead and you make new ones.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Some of these people don't seem to learn a damn thing.
NEIL STRAUSS:Yeah, exactly. I mean you're amazed that these guys are still alive, and even while I was working on it, they're still getting arrested; they're still-- [LAUGHS] you know - causing all kinds of mayhem --
WOMAN: problems, what, what have you.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: What do you think of Behind the Music's treatment of most rock groups?
NEIL STRAUSS: Well you - I think I mean it's the prob--problem that anyone has whether you're a band or, or a TV producer, you, you, you do something that works and then you decide, hey, that's our formula. So that's why the Motley Crue episode which was one of the early ones works so well, and after a while you almost feel like people are going on Behind the Music so they're wr-- scripting their three-act before they're going on - it's - so the, so the later ones are less effective.
And you see them almost trying to move away from their formula now like Behind the Music of the '80s are a concept now.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: But the Behind the Music they did on Motley Crue, they were redeemed at the end, weren't they.
NEIL STRAUSS: [LAUGHS] Yeah, exactly.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Are you saying VH1 lied to us?!
NEIL STRAUSS:[LAUGHS] Yes. I think - thi--this is what I sort of -- am starting to learn a little bit -which is this - that it's okay to talk about all the drugs and decadence you've done, as long as you pretend like you're not doing them any more. I mean having spent some time with some of the musicians who appear on other episodes of Behind the Music, you know I know that they're hi--high on camera talking about how they've cleaned up.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: What do the musicians think of that form?
NEIL STRAUSS:I guess it's a little self-exploitation for publicity -- I mean I think they'd all be glad - you know - they'd all be glad to be on it as long as you're redeemed at the end, it's all okay.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: But they don't buy it - they don't believe it.
NEIL STRAUSS:No, they, they, they believe it. Like when they see it, they believe it. You know the media has a way of making something seem true and I'm not saying that, that, that it's a lie but it's definitely-- you know I'm sure you shape it to fit a - you know you shape it to fit a format.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: So let's go back to The Dirt -- what kind of structure were you going for there?
NEIL STRAUSS:[LAUGHS] The structure of The Dirt was-- if you read it, you're not going to s-- you're not going to think about it or care about it, but As I lay Dying by William Faulkner, that was my inspiration because you know it's a book about a family traveling to bury their mother, and each different chapter is told from a different family member's point of view, and you know some are lovable, some are crazy, some are-- retarded [LAUGHS] - and I'm not going to - I'm not saying that about the band of course.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Of course.
NEIL STRAUSS:[LAUGHS] But-- you get the different pieces of the story -- some of them contradict - some of 'em don't make sense - but between it you get a-- whole in three dimensions, and, and that's what I was trying for, and in As I Lay Dying along the way different neighbors might comment from the - an outside perspective on the, on the passing of this-- Motley party and you know so I had different strangers comment on Motley in that way. I told them when I was starting it - I, I said like this, this is my idea for it - are, are you, are you down with doing it in this structure.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And did they say rad?
NEIL STRAUSS:[LAUGHS] They said, rad, dude. [LAUGHTER] It's not like I always take a band and then apply a-- literary construct to it, but with Marilyn Manson The Inferno was the model, [LAUGHTER] and the idea was he was kind of trying to show his-- fall from innocence to this-- twisted, dark persona of Marilyn Manson. So we plotted the falls along the lines of the different circle in The Inferno, and that was something he actively participated in.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: So
BROOKE GLADSTONE: So Dante for Marilyn Manson-- [LAUGHTER] and Faulkner for Motley Crue--
NEIL STRAUSS: [LAUGHS] Exactly.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: -- I guess that leaves Jane Austen for Michael Jackson.
NEIL STRAUSS: [LAUGHS] Yeah, exactly.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Thank you very much!
NEIL STRAUSS: Sure.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Neil Strauss is author of The Dirt: Motley Crue. HBO: TV’s Darkside
June 16, 2001
BROOKE GLADSTONE: TV that makes you feel good is not what you'll find on the new HBO series Six Feet Under.
WOMAN: How's it going with you?
MAN: Oh-- it's great. Great, you know, my father's dead; my mom's a whore; my brother wants to kill me, and my sister's smoking crack.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:The mobsters on the Sopranos, the inmates of Oz and even the whiney sirens of Sex and the City make HBO quite the rogues gallery. Joining me now is Tad Friend, staff writer of the New Yorker who's written an article about the cable TV channel. Tad, why are the shows on HBO so dark?
TAD FRIEND: Oddly enough, they are actually physically dark. The -- if you look at the screen, there'll be fewer pixels or lumens or whatever it is on the screen, and a, a lot of net--network producers have told me that when they make a show they often film it darker than they want it to be, because they know that when it goes through the network feed it's going to - they're gonna wash it with light to make it seem more cheerful and more happy, more upbeat. As far as the thematic darkness, I - one of the people I spoke with for my article is Scott Sassa who's the head of NBC, and he pointed out that HBO is for people who feel under-served by network television. That was his phrase. Right now the networks, because they are designed to get advertisers, are doing a lot of shows that are very cheerful and upbeat and optimistic, so HBO really, you know, in a way-- they keep a constant eye to what the networks are doing and say if the networks are doing what we're doing, we're doing something wrong.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:In your article, the creator of Six Feet Under, Alan Ball, who also wrote American Beauty, told you that he was so excited to work on a show for HBO because he wouldn't have to worry about commercials! But it isn't just halting a story every 15 minutes that he resented about commercial TV! There was a whole host of things!
TAD FRIEND: Yes. He created a show for ABC the year before called Oh, Grow Up which was a very bad sit-com; actually it was amazingly bad, given that he did such wonderful work on American Beauty, and the reason it was bad, he says, and I, I would have to agree with him, is that the network basically told him no conflict, no subtext. Everything should be explained very clearly to the viewer--; no one should fight. And he pointed out to me, he said you know drama is conflict and subtext. If you take those two things out, you have network television.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Where network TV is concerned, what they want to do is deliver eyeballs to advertisers; what they want to do on cable -- or at least HBO--
TAD FRIEND: Right.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: -- is deliver subscribers into the system. So how does that change the kind of programming that you're pitching at them?
TAD FRIEND: Well, the, the networks don't make any money if they have 50 million people watching a show and there are no advertisers who want to advertise on that show. Advertisers, to be grossly simplistic, want their people who are looking at their advertisements to be in a cheerful, happy, pleasant, mildly tranquilized mood. HBO already has people who have paid for this service. Its job is to keep them paying for it at the end of every month. It means you can have very different kind of programming. Jeff Bewkus, the head of the network, told me that last year when they put on a show called The Corner, which was a mini-series about crack addicts mostly in Baltimore, it was a very dark, very bleak show and he was saying we'd rather put that on and maybe get much smaller ratings than we would with something that would attract 35 percent of our audience, as long as we get good critical reception and we reach people who are not being reached by other kinds of shows on HBO.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:You say that HBO made more money than any other network -- in fact, and I really find this hard to believe -- you say that HBO made more money than the other networks combined!
TAD FRIEND: Two of the network heads I spoke to - Lessman was at CBS and Scott Sassa at NBC both frankly said boy, do I envy HBO. It's a much better business to be in. They -- the networks are just, you know, their audience share has been dropping for the last 25 years, and right now the networks' business is a terrible business to be in. There's sort of no end in sight.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:You said that an HBO employee said it was important if the Shales's got excited - you know, the Tom Shales -- the, the TV critics. Here's what Tom Shales said in his Washington Post review about Six Feet Under. He said Six Feet Under establishes from the start that it will be unflinching and brazen and, as it happens, scorchingly brilliant. So then if the networks pander to the mass audience, isn't HBO similarly pandering to the people they call "cultural interpreters?"
TAD FRIEND: In a way I think the, the critics are in the same way that the networks test shows with focus groups, which is you know average Americans sitting in a mall somewhere toggling switches back and forth; HBO tests its shows with critics. I would take issue with the word "pandering" because pand-- the implication of "pandering" is that you're serving something up that you believe is beneath the mark that you could actually hit.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Fair enough.
TAD FRIEND:And, and I think-- HBO is certainly aiming to please critics, and their theory is that that has a snowball effect where if the critics like it, then people read the newspapers and it - the, the show becomes a kind of --gradually a cultural phenomenon the way Sop--the Sopranos has.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:HBO can show whatever they want to show, and what they want to show is autopsies in Six Feet Under or beating strippers to death in The Sopranos or homosexual rape in Oz. Now they would say they're just going where the stories take them, but if they didn't have those very graphic and shocking scenes, would they be able to say it's not TV -- it's HBO?
TAD FRIEND: They-- never quite come out and say this but they certainly like to get headlines and have people be titillated and shocked. Tom Fontana, the creator of Oz, told me that he was always being told by the HBO people to --not to be afraid to be reviled.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:But HBO hires people like David Chase of the Sopranos, Alan Ball of Six Feet Under, Tom Fontana of Oz -- to produce those programs that may be reflective of reality. Would HBO ever pick up Aaron Sorkin, the creator of West Wing and say come on down?
TAD FRIEND: Well, i-- the West Wing is a bit of a, a bugaboo at HBO. They talk about it a lot, privately, because they're basically pissed off that it won the Emmy last year and they, they can't believe it and they think it's--sugary and false and, and-- and network TV at its finest which they feel is anathema to what they're doing. I spoke to Aaron Sorkin about that very issue. I said well you know, what would your show be like if it were on HBO? And he said it would be a better show. He said, you know, the, the President Bartlett could swear; we wouldn't have hired someone as handsome as Rob Lowe. We'd have a much more realistic White House lawyer -- and then he paused and he said --but I don't tend to write like that. And there is a self-selecting system. It's not that everyone wants to work at HBO and only the best people get chosen. Everyone who writes for HBO has written for the networks before. They don't take people from the movies; they take people from the networks who are fed up with that and want to do something a little different.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Tad Friend -- thank you very much!
TAD FRIEND: You're welcome!
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Tad Friend's article: The Next Big Bet appeared in the May 14th issue of the New Yorker.
CBS Reacts
June 16, 2001
BOB GARFIELD: Under ratings pressure from HBO, the networks react. [ORGAN MUSIC]
ANNOUNCER: Coming to CBS this fall, Touched By a Clergyman.
CLERGYMAN: Johnny, how would you like to come back to the rectory and see the brass rubbings I made in Canterbury?
YOUNG BOY: Rectory?!?
ANNOUNCER: Touched By a Clergyman. Coming this fall to CBS, where the Gospel is not always Good News. [ORGAN MUSIC FADES] [THEME MUSIC UP AND UNDER] 58:00
BOB GARFIELD: That's it for this week's show. On the Media was produced by Janeen Price and Katya Rogers; engineered by Irene Trudelle and edited-- by Brooke. We had help from Sean Landis and Kathleen Horan.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Mike Pesca is our producer at large, Arun Rath our senior producer and Dean Cappello our executive producer. Bassist/composer Ben Allison wrote our theme. This is On the Media from National Public Radio. I'm Brooke Gladstone.
BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield.
- Back to story:
- June 16, 2001
-
Conservative Bloggers Vindicated, Advice for Leakers, and More
-
An 11-year-old and his 3D printer
-
Who’s gonna pay for this stuff?
-
OTM Staff Picks, Volume 52
-
Brooke Gladstone + Cyndi Lauper
-
A Journalistic Civil War Odyssey
-
A Source for Sources
-
The Totally Legal Subpoena
-
A New Incentive for Cord Cutters
-
AdBlock Plus: The Internet's Ad Gatekeeper?
