Mainstreaming Urban Culture
May 19, 2001
BROOKE GLADSTONE: There's a kind of cultural alchemy that transforms street corner hip hop and graffiti into platinum watches and billion dollar deals. The marketers call the result urban culture. Urban I.Q., an urban media research firm, says there are 45 million consumers of urban culture, fully two thirds of Americans between the ages of 18 and 35. More than half live outside major urban centers. More than 60 percent are white. Thus the urban culture consumer, like any consumer, is not defined by who he is but by what he buys. By that measure, Viacom is a big time urban culture consumer. It paid 3 billion dollars for Black Entertainment Television.
KEITH CLINKSCALES: And the reason why BET can be s-- bought and sold for such a high number is because of the people it reaches and because of the advertising potential that the corporations believe that it has.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Keith Clinkscales is the CEO of Vanguard Media which specializes in urban media and entertainment.
KEITH CLINKSCALES: Large corporations don't pay hundreds of millions of dollars for niches.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Artists have a tendency to live on the margins, but when the sums are this large, there seems to be no choice but to follow the money into the mainstream. Crossing over has lost its stigma says Donnell Alexander, author of the soon to be published memoir, Ghetto Celebrity.
DONNELL ALEXANDER: There used to be a really huge price to pay. I remember the George Clinton song from the mid-80s -- R&B Skeletons in the Closet, about people like Lionel Ritchie who had like major, major roots in music that was sort of off in the margins. When you crossed over you ran the risk of losing your original audience. Now it's almost embraced. [SEGMENT OF SONG PLAYS] THOUGH HE'S CROSSED OVER HE IS DEFINITELY FROM ALABAMA [RIDGE ?] HE USED TO TAKE YOU THERE SONGS WE USED TO SING, THINGS WE USED TO DO, ARE [...?...] NO MORE
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Even in the 1980s name brand items would turn up in rap music, says Alexander.
DONNELL ALEXANDER:My Addidas. It's, it's a teen anthem. When I was a kid - I was like-- I wasn't even crazy about Addidas the brand name, but the juice that comes from a great song like that makes you want to go out and buy a pair of Addidas. [SEGMENT OF MY ADDIDAS PLAYS] MY ADDIDAS WALKED THROUGH COPS [AND DOORS ?] AND ROLLED ALL OVER COLISEUM FLOORS I STEP ON STAGE AT LIVE AID ALL THE PEOPLE GAVE AND THE POOR GOT PAID AND OUT THOSE SPEAKERS I DID SPEAK I WORE MY SNEAKERS [TAUGHT 'EM HOW TO SPEAK ?]
BROOKE GLADSTONE:But the fashion stayed in the neighborhood he says. The venture capitalists didn't see the potential until they heard the cash registers.
DONNELL ALEXANDER: When Run D.M.C. [sp?] came up with My Addidas, they weren't thinking that the anchor of the Sports Show would be referencing My Addidas.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Not very long ago, Alexander was hired to "urbanize" the sports cable channel ESPN.
DONNELL ALEXANDER: I was designated "hip guy."
BROOKE GLADSTONE: He was assigned to help "hip hop-ify" as it were the anchors so they wouldn't sound so square.
DONNELL ALEXANDER:Stuart Scott was the key figure in the introduction of urban culture on ESPN and that was about 1997 when he first was brought aboard from ESPN 2. He was the guy who brought in the vernacular and at first he was the only person saying it. I know Stuart Scott, and I know at first it caused a lot of waves. At first it was a problem.
STUART SCOTT: I got one, one time, someone said speak the Queen's English or carry your bleepety bleep on BET where those bleepety bleeps can understand you.
DONNELL ALEXANDER: But now it is really purely nakedly absorbed by the anchors who have no pretense of being hip on any level, and it's not just on ESPN! I see in commercials all the time - you, you know, in your face, 24/7 - these are things that used to be "hood" expressions.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:As of 2001, the style, attitudes and vernacular of urban culture are fully entrenched into the mainstream culture. Bo Kemp is executive vice president of Vanguard Media. He says urban culture hasn't been damaged in the transition. The art didn't change. The consumers did.
BO KEMP: Crossover in some respects only is an identifier that something's become very popular. Nothing more than that. And I think some people try to make more if somehow, you know, if you become popular that means you targeted, you know, whites per se in order to become part of that mainstream when in fact all you may have done is produce something that was of such quality that a huge group of people just wanted to buy it.
TALIB KWELI: I think it is going to be co-opted. It, you know, it is - it's, it's a danger of, it has been, it will be - that's the nature of where we live!
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Talib Kweli has been called hip hop's positive force. Sincere and plainspoken said a reviewer in the mainstream New York Magazine. One of the most unusual voices in hip hop. [TALIB KWELI SONG PLAYS] NOWADAYS RAP ARTISTS COMING HALF HEARTED COMMERCIAL-LIKE POP FROM UNDERGROUND LIKE BLACK MARKETS WHERE WERE YOU THE DAY HIP HOP DIED IS IT TOO EARLY TO MOURN? IS IT TOO LATE TO RISE? IS IT TOO EARLY TO MOURN? IS IT TOO LATE TO RISE?
TALIB KWELI: Hip hop music is a music that comes out of nothing - out of having no money, no resources, no instruments, no -- anything, and is more - is about more than just making art or being a rebel; it's about really surviving and living and eating. Other artists, other people sometimes have the luxury of being artists and just being in it just because they love art and not because they need it to get out of the situation they were in. And I want my music to get heard, so I market and promote myself! I made myself into a product. I do it so I could feed my family; afterward so I could feed myself. Do it so I could have a platform and so that things I say can have some weight and relevance in the community so I can effect some change.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: There is the possibility of change, but it's limited by the appetites of the market, says Ray Roker, publisher of URB Magazine.
RAY ROKER:People are watching MTV and seeing JZ or Nelly or somebody that may look like a very, you know, slick thug to them, but now they see them as an artist and as a professional. Unfortunately I think a lot of it though is still playing into people's pre-conceived notions and their prejudices because what is being produced by black culture and accepted by mainstream society? What? Rap music? Just, you know, music about diamonds and gold and girls and violence? You know that's what's accepted in the millions? But if you want to talk about political struggle or what we need to do to, to save the world around us, that stuff's boring. It doesn't get on TV. It doesn't get on the radio. And hip hop music, and I think people who really consider themselves real fans of hip hop music in the old school and everything wish that it had taken that place that it made for itself, that platform and used to really say something.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:In other words the young crosscultural consumers of urban culture embrace affronts to popular taste and popular mores but they just won't buy an assault on their complacency. So the best of hip hop becomes a victim of its own success. But who can argue with success? Not urban media Keith Clinkscales -- with visibility comes money comes real power and real influence.
KEITH CLINKSCALES: You know Hearst owns Oprah's magazine right now, but my goodness -- that O is a special thing! It's not just a letter! You know power comes in many different forces. It's not just in share certificates and what goes on on Wall Street.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Urban culture may be fueled by a rainbow coalition of cash money, but it is still a commodity based on racial difference, on the general perception that black urban style, its agility, its ineffable cachet is what everybody wants to buy. Culture critic Donnell Alexander.
DONNELL ALEXANDER: Nelson George, the critic, wrote an amazing essay called The Black Basketball Aesthetic in which he pointed out players like Jason Williams who happen to be white but play black; players like Tim Duncan who's a contemporary player and a great player, but he plays like a white guy. He won't sell that many jerseys.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: But what does playing black mean; what does playing white mean?
DONNELL ALEXANDER:It's the difference between-- Pat Boone and Little Richard, [LAUGHS] basically -- they could both do Tutti Frutti, you know, and they're two different songs.
[PAT BOONE SINGING TUTTI FRUTTI PLAYS] A BOP BOP A LOOMAH BAH LOP BOP BOP TUTTI FRUTTI ALL ROOTIE TUTTI FRUTTI ALL ROOTIE TUTTI FRUTTI ALL ROOTIE TUTTI FRUTTI ALL ROOTIE TUTTU FRUTTI ALL ROOTIE A BOP BOP A LOOMAH BAH LOP BOP BOP
[LITTLE RICHARD SINGING TUTTI FRUTTI PLAYS] GOT A GAL NAMED SUE SHE KNOW JUST WHAT TO DO I GOT A GAL NAMED SUE SHE KNOW JUST WHAT TO DO SHE BOP TO THE EAST SHE BOP TO THE WEST BUT SHE'S THE GAL THAT I LOVE BEST TUTTI FRUTTI ALL ROOTIE TUTTI FRUTTI WOOOOOOO TUTTI FRUTTI
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Maybe it's cause I'm a white kid from the suburbs but I'm gonna go out on Little Richard.
[LITTLE RICHARD SINGING TUTTI FRUTTI PLAYS] TUTTI FRUTTI ALL ROOTIE TUTTI FRUTTI ALL ROOTIE A WOP BABA LOOMAH BA LOP BOM BOM GOT A GAL NAMED DAISY SHE ALMOST DRIVES ME CRAZY [CONTINUING UNDER]
BOB GARFIELD: That's it for this week's show. On the Media was produced by Janeen Price and Katya Rogers, engineered by George Edwards and edited-- by Brooke. We had help from David Serchuk and Kathleen Horan and from member station KUOW in Seattle.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Mike Pesca is our producer at large, Arun Rath out our senior producer and Dean Cappello our executive producer. Bassist/composer Ben Allison wrote our theme. You can listen to the program and get transcripts at onthemedia.org and e-mail us at onthemedia@wnyc.org. Please tell us where you live and how to pronounce your name. This is On the Media from National Public Radio. I'm Brooke Gladstone.
BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield.
[LITTLE RICHARD SINGING TUTTI FRUTTI PLAYS] WELL-- TUTTI FRUTTI ALL ROOTIE TUTTI FRUTTI WOOOOOOOO TUTTU FRUTTI HEY ALL ROOTIE TUTTI FRUTTI ALL ROOTIE TUTTI FRUTTI ALL ROOTIE.... Scott Shuger
May 19, 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. Many news organizations have written policies for crediting other news organizations in their coverage, but there are also unwritten rules.
BOB GARFIELD: Scott Shugar writes the Today's Papers column for Slate.com and joins us once again. Nice to have you back, Scott.
SCOTT SHUGER: Hi, Bob.
BOB GARFIELD:I gather that reading the newspaper can be more revealing about the newspaper business than about the actual news. You noticed something in the Washington Post this week.
SCOTT SHUGER: Right. Earlier this week the Washington Post ran a story under the headline Field Offices Assure FBI All McVeigh Files Are In. Their news of the piece doesn't actually appear until the sixth paragraph which is not really about the files per se but is about a letter that appeared somewhere else written by Timothy McVeigh. The somewhere else was the Houston Chronicle. The Chronicle had a letter from Timothy McVeigh saying definitively there was no John Doe Number Two which of course takes a lot of the steam out of the FBI Files story and therefore is important and, and is important to readers, but it was buried in the story and the story was buried in the paper because it is a Houston Chronicle break. I mean you know if we were just going by journalism principles the headline of the story would be Timothy McVeigh Tells Houston Newspaper There Was No John Doe.
BOB GARFIELD: And that's not unique, right? There was another one the previous week.
SCOTT SHUGER:Towards the end of the week the Washington Post had a story on page 29 saying that Ted Olson who is the Bush administration's nominee to become the next Solicitor General of the United States had not been truthful when he said he had no connection to a sort of "Get Bill and Hillary" project at the magazine The American Spectator which he officially served as a lawyer. The Post had a story which they ran on page 29 interviewing another writer who then was at the American Spectator, David Brock [sp?], saying that no, Olson is not being truthful. He did not testify truthfully before the committee. That story ran on page 29 and it didn't mention that actually the story was broken by Salon, the Web magazine.
BOB GARFIELD:If a paper gets beat, whatever they're beat on is going to be relegated inside or will lose the prominent display it would have had if in this case the Washington Post had broken the story. [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
SCOTT SHUGER: Right. [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
BOB GARFIELD: What's behind that? Is, is it vanity? [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
SCOTT SHUGER: Well-- It, it is vanity. It's business. It's-- stories that we don't break, we don't cover because it makes us look like we're catching up; we're not on the forefront, so it's bad for our image, therefore bad for our, our advertising and so on and so on. But readers don't care about any of that stuff! They don't really care who broke a story. They would like to know what's important, number one; and they'd like to know as much information as possible on that important story. Notice how when you downplay a story that you didn't break, you dis-serve the reader on both counts.
BOB GARFIELD:Now there's a flip side to this phenomenon. There are times when the Washington Post and other major news organizations are only too pleased to dispense credit. What's the deal there?
SCOTT SHUGER: The Post ran a story-- also this past week under the headline Jeb Bush Denies Rumors of Affair with State Official; Florida Governor Calls Gossip an Outright Lie over the byline of Howard Kurtz [sp?] who's the newspaper's media critic. This was a story which enabled the Post to repeat the rumors that were flying around Florida and in order to avoid the charge of scandal-mongering themselves, this story mentions very high up that the story has appeared elsewhere, and interestingly enough here, this story mentions the Internet first and then it mentions several Florida newspapers by name.
BOB GARFIELD: In this case to provide ethical cover. You get to invoke these other newspapers.
SCOTT SHUGER: Right. You know, we're not reporting on the sleaze. We're reporting on the reporting on the sleaze.
BOB GARFIELD:The implication of course is that by mentioning the names that these other news organizations are so clearly beneath us -- you know we don't trade in these practices but the likes of these do, and that's why we're naming them. [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
SCOTT SHUGER: Yeah.
BOB GARFIELD: But when, when these same news organizations break major stories that the Post doesn't get till 48 hours later, then oddly those names disappear.
SCOTT SHUGER: You got it. That's, that's one of the real rules of journalism that we saw this week.
BOB GARFIELD: All right, Scott Shugar, thanks very much.
SCOTT SHUGER: Sure.
BOB GARFIELD: Scott Shugar writes the column Today's Papers on Slate.com.
Upfronts
May 19, 2001
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Spring is a time of rebirth and renewal, even in the world of television. This week the networks showcased their fall schedules at a series of network-sponsored presentations and parties called "upfronts." While TV networks preened and promoted in the hopes of luring ad buyers to purchase advertising up front, TV critics got a chance to preview the fall season. TV Guide's Max Robbins spent the past week at the upfronts. Max, welcome to On the Media.
MAX ROBBINS: It's a pleasure to be here.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: You went to all the upfronts this week. Explain what they're like. Are they very tense events?
MAX ROBBINS: Well certainly not for people [LAUGHS] like me in the audience. These are these really lavish affairs that the network throws, and they're really there to seduce the advertising community, the press and the financial community as well that they have developed all this wonderful new programming for fall that is just going to wow the American public and make us all just jump and shout with glee.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: So are you jumping with glee, Max? Is this going to be an exciting television season?
MAX ROBBINS:Well, Brooke, it's spring, and hope springs eternal. [LAUGHTER] I have to say, having feasted on oh, more shrimp and-- [LAUGHS] chicken wings than I thought existed in all of New York, I don't know, there wasn't a lot this season where you said wow - I'm going to make a point of being home at, you know, fill-in-the-time, to see that show.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: There's a fierce counter-programming attack going on. They're putting the Jason Alexander Show up against Frasier?
MAX ROBBINS:I don't know. I don't think that Kelsey Grammer has much to worry about, at least from what we've seen so far. But what's interesting about that, Brooke, is how much this season the networks are really in each other's face. I mean they've taken NYPD Blue and moved it from Tuesday night to go right up against Law and Order. NBC announces they're going to put the weakest link on there, their new hit game show on a Monday night, and then boom! -- ABC moves Millionaire against it. The last couple of seasons there's almost been like a silent gentleman's agreement if you will where the networks were really into counter-programming. Brooke, you're the president of ABC and, and you say well I'm putting on a news magazine at 10 o'clock. I'm the president of NBC. I go with a drama. Here, this is really about hey -- I smell blood in the water at my network and I'm going to steal viewers away from you.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Let's talk about ABC for a moment. They're going through some serious and infamous cutbacks right now and one thing that they announced was that they were cutting back on 20/20. It sounds like almost for a full quarter of the year, but the network honchos said this should not be seen as a sign that we're decreasing our commitment to news. Now to say something like that to me is tantamount to the pilot coming on the A.V. in the fuselage and saying there's absolutely no cause for alarm when nobody thought there was anyway.
MAX ROBBINS: Yeah. Well, I'll tell you, I think regardless of how ABC wants to spin this, the fact that they took 20/20 which for 14 years has dominated Friday night at 10 o'clock as the premiere star of ABC News, Barbara Walters, who makes more money for that network, Brooke, than - ha! - it's amazing -- that they would do this really shows the diminished value of news within the ABC network family. And I think you're going to see all sorts of things in coming months. These are not happy times for news.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:A year after the NAACP protested the lack of minorities on prime time shows, now we saw mid-season last year the addition of some black characters, some black subplots but not a lot of change in the lineup. What about this year now they've had another year to mull this over. Any change in the status quo?
MAX ROBBINS: Not really. I mean when you're looking at the major networks and what they're putting on, almost all the lead characters in the new series are white.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Has the downturn in the economy affected the mood at these events? Are you still getting as much shrimp as you ever were?
MAX ROBBINS:Well these affairs are as lavish as ever in terms of seducing, you know, young media buyers to spend tens of millions of dollars on these shows, so they're still putting their money there. I think where you're seeing less money is how much they're investing in the programming. That's why you're seeing more game shows. That's why you're seeing more reality programming. And I'll tell you this: it really seemed to me at these parties that-- maybe this is fiddling while Madison Avenue burns but it seemed that people were staying longer and, and drinking more.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Max, thanks very much for coming in.
MAX ROBBINS: Brooke, it is always my extreme pleasure. Thank you.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Max Robbins writes The Robbins Report in TV Guide.
The Brazil Trial
May 19, 2001
NATHANIEL BRAZILL: I was holding the gun in my hand. My finger was on the trigger. I was holding it with both hands, holding it kind of tightly. And that's when the gun went off.
MAN: Who pulled the trigger?
NATHANIEL BRAZILL: I did.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: The case of 14 year old Nathaniel Brazill was the latest TV trial to dominate cable news and its attendant punditry. If TV has created the global village, televised legal proceedings have created the global courtroom and network executives have assembled the television version of the Dream Team.
BOB GARFIELD:There's Geoffrey Feiger, famous for his defense of Jack Kevorkian, Marsha Clark who has coasted on the accomplishment of losing the O.J. case, and former prosecutors galore.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:We're resigned to these digital Darrows being dusted off for each trial of the century, but in the case of Brazill it's particularly unsettling. Most papers don't even print the names of minor defendants so as not to further damage the child. This child's words and image are beamed all over the world as on the Fox Newschannel.
WOMAN: Nathaniel Brazill's demeanor on the witness stand, I think I'm not alone in saying could have easily hurt him with the jury because he did have that same kind of impassive, implacable expression.
WOMAN: But for example just now during the verdict, I wouldn't call him impassive. I thought he gave a very quizzical look each time the verdict was read as to one of the charges almost like what does it mean, what does it mean - I don't understand.
WOMAN: I'm - but you know I, I was looking at him as, as you were, and at one point he sort of gave this look l-- it liked like - tsk! - you know - almost like I'm being grounded!
BOB GARFIELD:The problem is that the pundit machinery cannot gear down when it's a child who stands accused. Quite the opposite. So here comes the standard pyrotechnics, cross-examination tactics to vilify the accused as seen on CNN's Crossfire.
WOMAN: He went home, collected a gun that he himself had loaded with 5 bullets; returned to school where he murdered his English teacher, point blank range. You tell me Geoffrey that you do not believe that that young man who is very smart by all accounts did not understand what he was doing? He said there I pulled the trigger. [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
MAN: No, I absolutely-- I absolutely-- [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
WOMAN: You don't think he knew he was murdering his teacher when he pulled that trigger? [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
MAN: I ab--
BROOKE GLADSTONE: A 14 year old boy, guilty or not, fodder for infotainment, and we are the voyeurs. In fact, more than voyeurs. With trial coverage we're asked by implication to be the ladies and gentlemen of the jury. Since most of us lack the assuredness of the TV pundits, it's not always a pleasant position to be in. Dead Celebrities
May 19, 2001
BOB GARFIELD: Welcome back to On the Media. I'm Bob Garfield.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And I'm Brooke Gladstone. Here's one for you: when is death not the final act? Answer: when Madison Avenue runs the show. Bob, you explain it.
BOB GARFIELD:Okay. Lou Gehrig, baseball's great Iron Man amassed more than 5,000 total bases over 17 years before succumbing to the disease that would bear his name. Fatal illness, however, did not end his career for while dead men cannot hit, they can still pitch.
ANNOUNCER: Before you can inspire--
LOU GEHRIG: Today I consider myself--
ANNOUNCER: --before you can touch--
LOU GEHRIG: -- the luckiest man on the face of the earth.
ANNOUNCER: --you must first connect. And the company that connects more of the world is Alcatel.
BOB GARFIELD: This ad for a French telecommunications company is just the latest in a series of resurrections popularized by the confluence of advertising ambition, celebrity obsession and digital technology. In the past few years to name a couple of notable examples we have seen Fred Astaire dancing posthumously with a Dirt Devil vacuum cleaner and John Wayne flogging Coors Light from beyond.
MAN: [SHOUTING] I want to know whose beer this is right now!
JOHN WAYNE: It's my beer, sergeant!
BOB GARFIELD: Let's put aside for a moment the issue of what appeal John Wayne holds for a generation of beer drinkers who mostly hadn't been born by the time the Duke sauntered into eternity. The real question is when, say, Gilbert Gottfried and Bruce Jenner are just a phone call away -- why go grave-robbing?
BILL O'NEILL: In most cases these people have a larger than life persona that we have either grown up with or we've watched for many, many years. They are forever frozen in time.
BOB GARFIELD:Bill O'Neill is vice president for marketing and promotions for CMG, the talent agency specializing in the talent but unbreathing. It was CMG that Alcatel dealt with to license the image of Lou Gehrig who is but one iconic figure on a client roster that reads like Who's Who in Heaven.
MAN: Babe Ruth, Vince Lombardi, Jackie Robinson-- Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, some music figures of Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, Frank Zappa --Chuck's still alive, of course.
BOB GARFIELD: As agents, CMG must walk the line between protecting the images of its late clientele and exploiting them.
MAN:Well-- I'm not sure I would use the word "exploit." Market is, is the term that I would use. You know we're very respectful of our clients and their wishes. You know there's a lot of deals that have come our way that we have not done, but ultimate they're our client and, and we have a responsibility to try and generate some business for them.
BOB GARFIELD:Unless as good citizens and guardians of clients' dignity they have a greater responsibility. Gary Ruskin, executive director of the public interest group Commercial Alert believes the invocation of Lou Gehrig for Alcatel is a travesty.
GARY RUSKIN: It's one of the most touching moments in sports, and it's-- really a shame to see it used by commercial hucksters to sell tawdry trinkets.
BOB GARFIELD:To Ruskin this is yet one more example of how we are all sullied by the commercial culture where everything, every human value and now every legend seemingly are for sale. For instance, while Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney and Satchmo might have liked the idea of screen immortality, being channeled into a Diet Coke commercial probably isn't what they had in mind. [MUSIC]
LOUIS ARMSTRONG, "SATCHMO": Now we're getting warm.
MAN: [SINGING] Diet Coke!
BOB GARFIELD: Jingle courtesy of Elton John. Righteous indignation by Gary Ruskin.
GARY RUSKIN: Nothing is sacred to them! There's nothing that they won't tarnish or despoil just to make a buck. We've seen Apple Computers use Albert Einstein in their ads. Apple also used Ghandi. When you take a true hero and you drag him through the commercial muck, it tarnishes the hero just a little bit, and that's not right either.
STUART COOPERIDER: It's the same with, you know, cloning human beings and what not. You start to get into an area that, that people are just a little uncomfortable with.
BOB GARFIELD:Stuart Cooperider is a senior vice president and creative director at the advertising agency Arnold Worldwide, creator of the Lou Gehrig spot and an earlier Alcatel commercial featuring the I Have a Dream speech of Dr. Martin Luther King. That ad ignited a firestorm.
STUART COOPERIDER: You know the, the intention of this thing really wasn't to-- to cause any pain to anybody, certainly. In our own hearts and minds we really felt that we, we, we weren't desecrating him at all; that this was-- you know we were really honoring it. But-- I believe it was really when Matt Lauer decided that he needed to have, have our client on, on national television sitting down with the head of the NAACP, that's kind of when we realized that-- this thing was, was fairly large.
BOB GARFIELD:Lesson learned. Some imagery is sacrosanct. Although it's hard to predict levels of outrage. For what it's worth there was more bad press over Fred Astaire's Dirt Devil pas de deux than from Alcatel's expropriation of the defining moment of America's civil rights movement. Nonetheless the advertiser is certain to tread more lightly from here on in.
STUART COOPERIDER: Religion probably would be an area that we would, we'd want to stay away from. You know I think the Mother Teresa's and, and certainly popes and that sort of thing we would probably want to stay away from - as out of respect.
BOB GARFIELD:But you won't seen any general slowdown in celebrity resurrections because the likes of Lou Gehrig and Louis Armstrong bring with them more than their legends, more than their nostalgia value, more than their iconography. They also bring their lack of police records. Furthermore, Stuart Cooperider points out, formerly living talent is a pleasure to deal with during production. There are many deceased prime donnas but no deceased who are still prime donnas.
STUART COOPERIDER: Somebody comes in and, and screams at you because the limo was the wrong color - that happens regularly. The, the hotel room wasn't what they thought of.
BOB GARFIELD: Anyone dead ever scream at you over the color of the limo?
STUART COOPERIDER: No. [LAUGHS] Fortunately. [LAUGHS]
BOB GARFIELD:So if you happen to be an actor or a pro athlete frustrated by Madison Avenue's indifference to your endorsement potential, take heed of Alcatel's real message: before you can inspire -- before you can touch --first you must, like totally, disconnect.
Intellectual Property
May 19, 2001
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Chances are you haven't been following the intellectual property issue known as the De-CSS case through the Second Court of Appeals. Now bear with me here. The outcome could affect the way you watch movies at home and civil libertarians say that the wrong decision could seriously damage free speech. Here to take us through the intricacies of the case is NPR's cultural correspondent, Rick Karr. Rick, welcome to On the Media.
RICK KARR: It's great to be here Brooke.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: So the way that intellectual property cases are breaking out right now I guess that it roughly falls into two camps: the minimalists and the maximalists. How do you define them and how do they differ?
RICK KARR: A copyright maximalist is someone who believes in really strong copyrights; that the law should provide for penalties for people who make copies of books or music or movies without the permission of whoever owns the copyright. The copyright minimalist point of view broadly is that people have always been allowed to make some copies for really socially beneficial reasons and that copyright law should be constructed in such a way that people can continue to make those copies and not be subject to legal sanctions on account of it or subject to having to pay to do that.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: So take us through the -- this is a case that's currently very much alive -- the De-CSS case which is about DVDs.
RICK KARR:This has to do with something that's part of the technical standard for a DVD. When the consumer electronics industry and the movie industry got together to create the DVD format, they were worried that if they put movies out in a full digital form, you could just pop it into your computer and copy it onto your hard drive. I mean that's one of the things that computers are designed to do --they're designed to just copy huge amounts of data. So you could copy it on to your hard drive and then e-mail it to a friend or put it up on a web site so that somebody could take it. And they said we, we have to find a way to stop this.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And so they encrypted that information that was on the DVD.
RICK KARR:That's essentially what they did, is they encrypted it. The other thing they did though is they went to Congress in 1998 as part of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and they asked for a part of the law that says if you break through this, you are in violation of the law and we can go after you. Now you enter a bunch of people in the Linux programming community -- those pesky open-source software people -- and what the open-source software people were saying is we want to watch DVDs on Linux computers, but because Linux is open-source, the movie industry and the consumer electronics industry won't give us the key that de-crypts the DVDs. They figured it out on their own. They wrote a piece of software that allows that encryption to be stripped off a DVD solely for the purpose of watching it on a Linux computer. A magazine called 2600, subtitled The Hacker Quarterly, reported on this and posted the source software code to its web site. The movie industries went ballistic! They said you can't do this! You're violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. You're-- [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
BROOKE GLADSTONE: But they were! They were!
RICK KARR:Eric Corley [sp?], the publisher, however says I'm a journalist. I'm reporting on something that is in my bailiwick. Other mainstream news-gathering organizations published it. They weren't sued for it. His attorneys asked why is that the case? So Eric Corley's supporters say in general the law restricts free speech. But they also argue that it restricts the free use of culture and by that I don't mean whether or not you pay for the culture. I mean how freely can you use this? For example: this same encryption system allows a movie studio to put out a DVD with commercials on it -- and the encryption system will disable the fast-forward button on your DVD player if it's so instructed. So the commercials come up and you can't fast-forward past them. This rankles a lot of people in the copyright minimalist camp who say once I buy a piece of culture, whether it's a CD or DVD or a book, I should be able to do with it as I see fit. As long as I'm not trying to take your market away from you, copyright owner, I should be able to do as I see fit.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Now it strikes the casual observer like myself that anybody who breaks an encryption with the intent to copy is a pirate!
RICK KARR: Have you ever made a cassette tape for a friend of yours of a record you really like?
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Yup.
RICK KARR: Have you ever photocopied an article out of the New Yorker to give it to a friend?
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Yup.
RICK KARR: Have you ever borrowed a book from a library?
BROOKE GLADSTONE: But I've never mass-produced any of those things, and with a computer you can.
RICK KARR:The way the minimalist would respond to that is by saying the law should not assume that we're all pirates and that we're all out there to make a lot of copies of stuff and give it away and take their business away. Ha ha record industry says Napster. Ha ha movie industry says the people who wrote De-CSS. No! They want to be able to use stuff the way they say they've always been able to use stuff and they think that the law is slanted against them.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Before we finish up here, where is the De-CSS case now -- the DVD case?
RICK KARR:The Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard the arguments on May 1st. Those judges have asked attorneys for both sides to submit written answers to some specific questions that they had, and those answers are due later this month and then the judges will decide when the judges [LAUGHS] decide.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Rick Karr, thank you very much.
RICK KARR: Pleasure to be here, Brooke.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Rick Karr is a cultural correspondent for National Public Radio. Esquire Fudges Facts
May 19, 2001
BOB GARFIELD: In this month's Esquire Magazine writer Tom Junod offers a long, colorful profile of rock icon Michael Stipe. It's filled with astonishing anecdotes and utterances, some of which are utterly untrue. Readers are directed to Esquire's web site to separate the factual wheat from the fictional chaff. Joining us now to discuss this odd experiment is Esquire's editor, David Granger. David, welcome to OTM.
DAVID GRANGER: Hi. Thanks.
BOB GARFIELD: All right. Long piece in this month's issue about Michael Stipe, the lead singer of R.E.M. Only as the subhead declares, half of the story by Tom Junod is made up! Why?
DAVID GRANGER: First on the most basic level, that's what it required for Tom to be able to write it after he'd spent quite a bit of time with Michael, he decided that the story he could naturally write would be another sort of celebrity piece in which the writer kind of whines that he didn't get enough access or whines that he didn't like the person and the last thing Tom wanted to write was another process piece. And so he just started writing. As it happened, a lot of what he was writing --Mmmmm-- didn't actually happen.
BOB GARFIELD: There's a story in the story about a five hour schlep to the Hoover Dam in two limousines. [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
DAVID GRANGER: Yeah.
BOB GARFIELD: Was that true?
DAVID GRANGER: That part was not true.
BOB GARFIELD:There was this anecdote about Michael Stipe when he was 14 years old and a boy scout being lost in the woods and being so traumatized that he grew actually to heat trees. Is that one true?
DAVID GRANGER: That one is absolutely true.
BOB GARFIELD: This is not the first time that Esquire has played with the genre of celebrity profiles. A few years ago, magazine ran a Martha Sherrill [sp?] piece about the movie starlet Allegra Coleman [sp?] who made for a very colorful interview but who didn't actually exist.
DAVID GRANGER: I wasn't the editor of the magazine at that point, but I think that was a farce or a, a -you know - parody intended to make a point about celebrity, but this -- I don't even know if Tom was trying to re-define the personality profile. I, I think he truly wanted to write a compelling piece of magazine entertainment.
BOB GARFIELD:Does Esquire suspect that Michael Stipe cultivated his Michael Stipe-ness and needed to be exposed somehow as a hypocrite or a fraud?
DAVID GRANGER: That, that wasn't any part of our intention going into the story.
BOB GARFIELD: Well then why victimize him, of all people?! I mean he hasn't really danced the dance. [LAUGHTER] If he hasn't been a part of the falsity of the genre, why use him to flay the genre?
DAVID GRANGER: I'm not sure that we victimized Michael Stipe in any way. I mean we, we did reveal him through - in the parts of the piece that actually happened a--as Michael Stipe as he is, and probably elevated him in some ways in, in the fictional parts of the piece.
BOB GARFIELD: Esquire's a monthly. How often do you run a celebrity profile.
DAVID GRANGER: I would say we run one every month.
BOB GARFIELD: And at least twice now you have done pieces that in one way or another confront the falsity of the genre.
DAVID GRANGER: Right.
BOB GARFIELD:Could I possibly suggest that that might be a little hypocritical? Now you know you're sort of a serial peddler of celebrity fluff and now you're f-- all of a sudden appalled by celebrity fluff.
DAVID GRANGER: I think that is the kind of balancing act that one makes as a magazine editor. I'm reluctant to eschew entirely the celebrity profile, but every once in a while it yields a great nugget.
BOB GARFIELD: And if it doesn't yield a great nugget, why you simply invent a few.
DAVID GRANGER: Well not on a regular basis and probably never again.
BOB GARFIELD:Forgive me -- I'm about to get a little prosecutorial here, but you, you mentioned the tree story. Michael Stipe as a 14 year old lost in the woods.
DAVID GRANGER: Uh-huh.
BOB GARFIELD: You said it's true. How do we know it's true?
DAVID GRANGER: Because in addition to the story in the magazine, we did provide the service of running an annotated version of the story in which we made it absolutely clear, you know, which of the elements of the story were fiction and which were sourced.
BOB GARFIELD:But do you think as a - as a matter of journalistic principle you should be forcing the reader g-- to go on a scavenger hunt for the truth?
DAVID GRANGER: Hmmm. Yeah-- yeah! We probably should. I mean you know-- I think we did everything we could to explain that we were engaging in an experiment in magazine journalism. I think that's -- in a lot of ways that is exactly what a magazine should do if one wants to produce a lively magazine that continues to grow and change and interest people and thrill people.
BOB GARFIELD: David how did you fact-check this piece?
DAVID GRANGER:It's pretty simple. I mean you know Tom provided a, a draft of the story to us. He worked with our fact-checking department; told them, you know, what parts of the piece were factual and what - those that were fictional, and even in the fictional segments as we do with all our fiction, we checked any facts, all of the things that were asserted to be facts in the story [LAUGHTER] were--
BOB GARFIELD: Cause see the last thing you want is fact errors in your fabrications.
DAVID GRANGER: You know like I say, we fact-check our fiction as well.
BOB GARFIELD: All right, well listen thanks again for joining us.
DAVID GRANGER: Okay.
BOB GARFIELD: David Granger is the editor of Esquire Magazine. Covering Strikes
May 19, 2001
BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield. Headline news and newspaper factoids don't lend themselves to the coverage of intricate labor/management disputes. In fact, writer George Packer has found the press can't seem to get interested in job actions at all unless they involve Hollywood. His piece, titled Lights, Camera Strike appears in this Sunday New York Times Magazine. He joins me now. George Packer, welcome to On the Media.
GEORGE PACKER: Pleasure being here.
BOB GARFIELD: So you pick up the newspaper or you watch the TV news -- you see a lot about Capital Hill; you'll see quite a bit about Grant Hill; you won't see much about Joe Hill, will you?
GEORGE PACKER: Joe Hill is dead and buried, and he's had a strange second life or resurrection in a expensively tailored suit warn by the head of the NBA Players Association or the Screen Actors Guild. What's interesting to me is the last few years have seen something of a, a resurgence of organized labor in areas that we're not used to seeing workers organize, namely the service economy. But it's been very hard to get that story into the news and into the public consciousness whereas it, whenever there's a threatened baseball strike, basketball strike, screenwriters/screen actors strike it's - it's on the front page for weeks.
BOB GARFIELD:When it appeared that the screen actors and screen writers were going to simultaneously go on strike, there was something close to saturation coverage in the media. Was there anything else going on in the labor world simultaneously that you thought was at least as deserving of the media's attention?
GEORGE PACKER: Yeah. Not, not long before those threatened strikes there was an actual strike of bus drivers in Los Angeles County which mostly inconvenienced low wage workers themselves, so it too was not a particularly sexy national story.
BOB GARFIELD:I want to ask you about the situation at Harvard. Now that got some press. Did that buck the trend or was it just more evidence of the trend?
GEORGE PACKER: I think to their credit students rather than focusing on some issue as far away as Burma looked at what was going on in their own university and, and took an action and the university seems to have met them part way and the action ended. But your question is a good one and I think in a way if it hadn't been for the voices of the most privileged young people in the country backed by movie stars like Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, I don't think there's a chance that Harvard's low wage workers would have, would have gotten national attention and, and would have had - brought the university at least part way toward, toward what they wanted. So in a way it just sort of is the exception that proves the rule that in order to reach the public you need to be privileged or you need to have a story that involves people who are articulate, privileged, educated, attractive-- and preferably, you know, good on the big screen.
BOB GARFIELD:There is of course a solution to this whole problem; I think you alluded to it earlier. The arrogant colossus of the corporation is perfect Hollywood fare and if just as the film Traffic called attention to the debate between drug enforcement and drug rehabilitation, maybe only Hollywood will enable you to break through the barrier of indifference.
GEORGE PACKER: If you can't beat them, join them. Yeah. It has been a tool-- in the past of organized labor in the '30s and '40s; in movies like Norma Rae in the '70s. Yeah, maybe-- what's his name? - Antonio Banderas or the guy who just won the Oscar for Supporting Actor in Traffic should sign their names to a project that is about some janitors or some industrial launderers in Los Angeles who have to decide whether or not to vote to join a union. It'd be a great movie!
BOB GARFIELD: And of course he'll get plenty of coverage for your movie in the press.
GEORGE PACKER:Exactly. Full page ads in the Times; little spots on Entertainment Tonight, on all the local news little tie-ins. Maybe local news will have interviews with actual industrial launderers. This is how these things begin.
BOB GARFIELD: George Packer thanks for joining us.
GEORGE PACKER: Thank you.
BOB GARFIELD:George Packer's most recent book is titled Blood of the Liberals. He also wrote a piece called Lights, Camera Strike for the most recent edition of the New York Times Magazine. Ethnic Press
May 19, 2001
BROOKE GLADSTONE: New York City has long been the capital of the English language press; but in the last decade it's been the capital of the ethnic media too, and as Amy Eddings reports, their growth is now getting the attention of advertisers.
AMY EDDINGS: To illustrate how far the community and ethnic press has come, Abby Scher, director of the Independent Press Association of New York grabs a copy of its directory. She picks a country -- India. In the mid-70s there were only two newspapers serving the Indian-American community. Today--
ABBY SCHER: One, two, three-- four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. There are 9, and the Polish press has expanded; the Bangladeshi press has expanded; the Dominican press has expanded; Pakistani. It's astonishing.
AMY EDDINGS: She says the newest papers are being launched by the city's newest immigrants who are primarily from the Dominican Republic, former Soviet Union, China, South Asia and the Caribbean. Some older papers are finding new audiences and some are fading away because they're no longer relevant.
WOMAN: I noticed the ones that died tended to be the ones that were from the older generation of immigrant stream. There -- for instance in the '70s there still was an Italian language anarchist publication [PHONE RINGING] that Sacco and Vanzetti were involved in, in the '20s. It was still around in the '70s. [PHONE RINGING] But it -- that's also when it disappeared. So the older generation-- especially the more [PHONE RINGING] ideological press has gone.
AMY EDDINGS: Scher says the ethnic press of today is more diverse. There's a weekly Cricket newspaper for example, a Spanish language humor paper and publications devoted to entertainment, culture and religion. It's also more news-driven and more grounded in local issues. Many ethnic papers are run by people like Prakesh Parekh. He had been active in the Indian-American community for 20 years before he became editor of Desi Talk in 1997, and he credits his connections with the paper's success.
PRAKESH PAREKH: That's very important. I think that helps a lot because it establishes your credibility with not only the sources of news, I would say, or the people who manage the organizations or people who do the things in the community -- because they already know you very well.
AMY EDDINGS: Eighty-six percent of English language newspapers are owned by corporations, but the ethnic press is primarily independent --started by entrepreneurs who sometimes work second jobs to finance their paper. Observers say such papers help to shape a group's identity and spur political participation.
AMY EDDINGS: In Manhattan's Little India Saqib Din stands by his yellow cab and sips coffee. The avenue is lined with South Asian grocery stores and restaurants where Bangladeshi, Indian and Pakistani newspapers are displayed.
SAQIB DIN: We usually read the Pakistani newspapers, and -- because-- we get a lot of information about taxi rules or about our community, about everything. We are new in this country, and we are curious to know about the things, about everything we want to know, so we read these [SIREN] local newspapers.
AMY EDDINGS: Businesses have noticed. Newspaper executives and ad agencies say ad revenue in the ethnic press has grown tremendously in the past decade. The National Association of Hispanic Publications cites a 400 percent increase. Most of these advertisers are local businesses. Big retail chains often bypass the ethnic press in part because they don't recognize their readers as a market, and in part because many ethnic papers are free and do not have a subscriber base to audit. Saul Gitlin, vice president of Kang and Lee, an advertising agency that specializes in the Asian-American market thinks big companies will change their minds.
SAUL GITLIN: Projections had already shown that by the year 2000 just the three largest multicultural groups in the United States -- Hispanics, Asians and African-Americans -- were projected to account for 30 percent of the U.S. population, and that being up from approximately a quarter of the U.S. population in 1990. And I think once you get to a third of the entire population of the country, even skeptics have to sit up and take notice.
AMY EDDINGS: Gitlin says that's already happening as more data from the census, including that all-important marketing tool, the average household income, is released. That in turn could mean more money for papers like Gugerat Times, Filipino Express, the Russian Forward and La Voz de Queens -- which means they will be able to cover their communities even better. For On the Media, I'm Amy Eddings.
Bonus Commercial Track
May 19, 2001
BOB GARFIELD: But first, here's a commercial you might have missed.
PRESIDENT CLINTON: But I want to say one thing to the American people. I want you to listen to me. I'm going to say this again.
ANNOUNCER: Before you can inspire--
PRESIDENT CLINTON: I did not have sexual relations with that woman--
ANNOUNCER: --before you can touch--
PRESIDENT CLINTON: -- Miss Lewinsky.
ANNOUNCER: --you must first connect. And the company that connects more of the world is Alcatel, a leader in communication networks.
PRESIDENT CLINTON: I need to go back to work for the American people. Thank you. [APPLAUSE]
BOB GARFIELD: Kidding. Just kidding. This is On the Media from National Public Radio.
May 19, 2001
BROOKE GLADSTONE: There's a kind of cultural alchemy that transforms street corner hip hop and graffiti into platinum watches and billion dollar deals. The marketers call the result urban culture. Urban I.Q., an urban media research firm, says there are 45 million consumers of urban culture, fully two thirds of Americans between the ages of 18 and 35. More than half live outside major urban centers. More than 60 percent are white. Thus the urban culture consumer, like any consumer, is not defined by who he is but by what he buys. By that measure, Viacom is a big time urban culture consumer. It paid 3 billion dollars for Black Entertainment Television.
KEITH CLINKSCALES: And the reason why BET can be s-- bought and sold for such a high number is because of the people it reaches and because of the advertising potential that the corporations believe that it has.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Keith Clinkscales is the CEO of Vanguard Media which specializes in urban media and entertainment.
KEITH CLINKSCALES: Large corporations don't pay hundreds of millions of dollars for niches.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Artists have a tendency to live on the margins, but when the sums are this large, there seems to be no choice but to follow the money into the mainstream. Crossing over has lost its stigma says Donnell Alexander, author of the soon to be published memoir, Ghetto Celebrity.
DONNELL ALEXANDER: There used to be a really huge price to pay. I remember the George Clinton song from the mid-80s -- R&B Skeletons in the Closet, about people like Lionel Ritchie who had like major, major roots in music that was sort of off in the margins. When you crossed over you ran the risk of losing your original audience. Now it's almost embraced. [SEGMENT OF SONG PLAYS] THOUGH HE'S CROSSED OVER HE IS DEFINITELY FROM ALABAMA [RIDGE ?] HE USED TO TAKE YOU THERE SONGS WE USED TO SING, THINGS WE USED TO DO, ARE [...?...] NO MORE
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Even in the 1980s name brand items would turn up in rap music, says Alexander.
DONNELL ALEXANDER:My Addidas. It's, it's a teen anthem. When I was a kid - I was like-- I wasn't even crazy about Addidas the brand name, but the juice that comes from a great song like that makes you want to go out and buy a pair of Addidas. [SEGMENT OF MY ADDIDAS PLAYS] MY ADDIDAS WALKED THROUGH COPS [AND DOORS ?] AND ROLLED ALL OVER COLISEUM FLOORS I STEP ON STAGE AT LIVE AID ALL THE PEOPLE GAVE AND THE POOR GOT PAID AND OUT THOSE SPEAKERS I DID SPEAK I WORE MY SNEAKERS [TAUGHT 'EM HOW TO SPEAK ?]
BROOKE GLADSTONE:But the fashion stayed in the neighborhood he says. The venture capitalists didn't see the potential until they heard the cash registers.
DONNELL ALEXANDER: When Run D.M.C. [sp?] came up with My Addidas, they weren't thinking that the anchor of the Sports Show would be referencing My Addidas.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Not very long ago, Alexander was hired to "urbanize" the sports cable channel ESPN.
DONNELL ALEXANDER: I was designated "hip guy."
BROOKE GLADSTONE: He was assigned to help "hip hop-ify" as it were the anchors so they wouldn't sound so square.
DONNELL ALEXANDER:Stuart Scott was the key figure in the introduction of urban culture on ESPN and that was about 1997 when he first was brought aboard from ESPN 2. He was the guy who brought in the vernacular and at first he was the only person saying it. I know Stuart Scott, and I know at first it caused a lot of waves. At first it was a problem.
STUART SCOTT: I got one, one time, someone said speak the Queen's English or carry your bleepety bleep on BET where those bleepety bleeps can understand you.
DONNELL ALEXANDER: But now it is really purely nakedly absorbed by the anchors who have no pretense of being hip on any level, and it's not just on ESPN! I see in commercials all the time - you, you know, in your face, 24/7 - these are things that used to be "hood" expressions.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:As of 2001, the style, attitudes and vernacular of urban culture are fully entrenched into the mainstream culture. Bo Kemp is executive vice president of Vanguard Media. He says urban culture hasn't been damaged in the transition. The art didn't change. The consumers did.
BO KEMP: Crossover in some respects only is an identifier that something's become very popular. Nothing more than that. And I think some people try to make more if somehow, you know, if you become popular that means you targeted, you know, whites per se in order to become part of that mainstream when in fact all you may have done is produce something that was of such quality that a huge group of people just wanted to buy it.
TALIB KWELI: I think it is going to be co-opted. It, you know, it is - it's, it's a danger of, it has been, it will be - that's the nature of where we live!
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Talib Kweli has been called hip hop's positive force. Sincere and plainspoken said a reviewer in the mainstream New York Magazine. One of the most unusual voices in hip hop. [TALIB KWELI SONG PLAYS] NOWADAYS RAP ARTISTS COMING HALF HEARTED COMMERCIAL-LIKE POP FROM UNDERGROUND LIKE BLACK MARKETS WHERE WERE YOU THE DAY HIP HOP DIED IS IT TOO EARLY TO MOURN? IS IT TOO LATE TO RISE? IS IT TOO EARLY TO MOURN? IS IT TOO LATE TO RISE?
TALIB KWELI: Hip hop music is a music that comes out of nothing - out of having no money, no resources, no instruments, no -- anything, and is more - is about more than just making art or being a rebel; it's about really surviving and living and eating. Other artists, other people sometimes have the luxury of being artists and just being in it just because they love art and not because they need it to get out of the situation they were in. And I want my music to get heard, so I market and promote myself! I made myself into a product. I do it so I could feed my family; afterward so I could feed myself. Do it so I could have a platform and so that things I say can have some weight and relevance in the community so I can effect some change.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: There is the possibility of change, but it's limited by the appetites of the market, says Ray Roker, publisher of URB Magazine.
RAY ROKER:People are watching MTV and seeing JZ or Nelly or somebody that may look like a very, you know, slick thug to them, but now they see them as an artist and as a professional. Unfortunately I think a lot of it though is still playing into people's pre-conceived notions and their prejudices because what is being produced by black culture and accepted by mainstream society? What? Rap music? Just, you know, music about diamonds and gold and girls and violence? You know that's what's accepted in the millions? But if you want to talk about political struggle or what we need to do to, to save the world around us, that stuff's boring. It doesn't get on TV. It doesn't get on the radio. And hip hop music, and I think people who really consider themselves real fans of hip hop music in the old school and everything wish that it had taken that place that it made for itself, that platform and used to really say something.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:In other words the young crosscultural consumers of urban culture embrace affronts to popular taste and popular mores but they just won't buy an assault on their complacency. So the best of hip hop becomes a victim of its own success. But who can argue with success? Not urban media Keith Clinkscales -- with visibility comes money comes real power and real influence.
KEITH CLINKSCALES: You know Hearst owns Oprah's magazine right now, but my goodness -- that O is a special thing! It's not just a letter! You know power comes in many different forces. It's not just in share certificates and what goes on on Wall Street.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Urban culture may be fueled by a rainbow coalition of cash money, but it is still a commodity based on racial difference, on the general perception that black urban style, its agility, its ineffable cachet is what everybody wants to buy. Culture critic Donnell Alexander.
DONNELL ALEXANDER: Nelson George, the critic, wrote an amazing essay called The Black Basketball Aesthetic in which he pointed out players like Jason Williams who happen to be white but play black; players like Tim Duncan who's a contemporary player and a great player, but he plays like a white guy. He won't sell that many jerseys.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: But what does playing black mean; what does playing white mean?
DONNELL ALEXANDER:It's the difference between-- Pat Boone and Little Richard, [LAUGHS] basically -- they could both do Tutti Frutti, you know, and they're two different songs.
[PAT BOONE SINGING TUTTI FRUTTI PLAYS] A BOP BOP A LOOMAH BAH LOP BOP BOP TUTTI FRUTTI ALL ROOTIE TUTTI FRUTTI ALL ROOTIE TUTTI FRUTTI ALL ROOTIE TUTTI FRUTTI ALL ROOTIE TUTTU FRUTTI ALL ROOTIE A BOP BOP A LOOMAH BAH LOP BOP BOP
[LITTLE RICHARD SINGING TUTTI FRUTTI PLAYS] GOT A GAL NAMED SUE SHE KNOW JUST WHAT TO DO I GOT A GAL NAMED SUE SHE KNOW JUST WHAT TO DO SHE BOP TO THE EAST SHE BOP TO THE WEST BUT SHE'S THE GAL THAT I LOVE BEST TUTTI FRUTTI ALL ROOTIE TUTTI FRUTTI WOOOOOOO TUTTI FRUTTI
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Maybe it's cause I'm a white kid from the suburbs but I'm gonna go out on Little Richard.
[LITTLE RICHARD SINGING TUTTI FRUTTI PLAYS] TUTTI FRUTTI ALL ROOTIE TUTTI FRUTTI ALL ROOTIE A WOP BABA LOOMAH BA LOP BOM BOM GOT A GAL NAMED DAISY SHE ALMOST DRIVES ME CRAZY [CONTINUING UNDER]
BOB GARFIELD: That's it for this week's show. On the Media was produced by Janeen Price and Katya Rogers, engineered by George Edwards and edited-- by Brooke. We had help from David Serchuk and Kathleen Horan and from member station KUOW in Seattle.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Mike Pesca is our producer at large, Arun Rath out our senior producer and Dean Cappello our executive producer. Bassist/composer Ben Allison wrote our theme. You can listen to the program and get transcripts at onthemedia.org and e-mail us at onthemedia@wnyc.org. Please tell us where you live and how to pronounce your name. This is On the Media from National Public Radio. I'm Brooke Gladstone.
BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield.
[LITTLE RICHARD SINGING TUTTI FRUTTI PLAYS] WELL-- TUTTI FRUTTI ALL ROOTIE TUTTI FRUTTI WOOOOOOOO TUTTU FRUTTI HEY ALL ROOTIE TUTTI FRUTTI ALL ROOTIE TUTTI FRUTTI ALL ROOTIE.... Scott Shuger
May 19, 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. Many news organizations have written policies for crediting other news organizations in their coverage, but there are also unwritten rules.
BOB GARFIELD: Scott Shugar writes the Today's Papers column for Slate.com and joins us once again. Nice to have you back, Scott.
SCOTT SHUGER: Hi, Bob.
BOB GARFIELD:I gather that reading the newspaper can be more revealing about the newspaper business than about the actual news. You noticed something in the Washington Post this week.
SCOTT SHUGER: Right. Earlier this week the Washington Post ran a story under the headline Field Offices Assure FBI All McVeigh Files Are In. Their news of the piece doesn't actually appear until the sixth paragraph which is not really about the files per se but is about a letter that appeared somewhere else written by Timothy McVeigh. The somewhere else was the Houston Chronicle. The Chronicle had a letter from Timothy McVeigh saying definitively there was no John Doe Number Two which of course takes a lot of the steam out of the FBI Files story and therefore is important and, and is important to readers, but it was buried in the story and the story was buried in the paper because it is a Houston Chronicle break. I mean you know if we were just going by journalism principles the headline of the story would be Timothy McVeigh Tells Houston Newspaper There Was No John Doe.
BOB GARFIELD: And that's not unique, right? There was another one the previous week.
SCOTT SHUGER:Towards the end of the week the Washington Post had a story on page 29 saying that Ted Olson who is the Bush administration's nominee to become the next Solicitor General of the United States had not been truthful when he said he had no connection to a sort of "Get Bill and Hillary" project at the magazine The American Spectator which he officially served as a lawyer. The Post had a story which they ran on page 29 interviewing another writer who then was at the American Spectator, David Brock [sp?], saying that no, Olson is not being truthful. He did not testify truthfully before the committee. That story ran on page 29 and it didn't mention that actually the story was broken by Salon, the Web magazine.
BOB GARFIELD:If a paper gets beat, whatever they're beat on is going to be relegated inside or will lose the prominent display it would have had if in this case the Washington Post had broken the story. [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
SCOTT SHUGER: Right. [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
BOB GARFIELD: What's behind that? Is, is it vanity? [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
SCOTT SHUGER: Well-- It, it is vanity. It's business. It's-- stories that we don't break, we don't cover because it makes us look like we're catching up; we're not on the forefront, so it's bad for our image, therefore bad for our, our advertising and so on and so on. But readers don't care about any of that stuff! They don't really care who broke a story. They would like to know what's important, number one; and they'd like to know as much information as possible on that important story. Notice how when you downplay a story that you didn't break, you dis-serve the reader on both counts.
BOB GARFIELD:Now there's a flip side to this phenomenon. There are times when the Washington Post and other major news organizations are only too pleased to dispense credit. What's the deal there?
SCOTT SHUGER: The Post ran a story-- also this past week under the headline Jeb Bush Denies Rumors of Affair with State Official; Florida Governor Calls Gossip an Outright Lie over the byline of Howard Kurtz [sp?] who's the newspaper's media critic. This was a story which enabled the Post to repeat the rumors that were flying around Florida and in order to avoid the charge of scandal-mongering themselves, this story mentions very high up that the story has appeared elsewhere, and interestingly enough here, this story mentions the Internet first and then it mentions several Florida newspapers by name.
BOB GARFIELD: In this case to provide ethical cover. You get to invoke these other newspapers.
SCOTT SHUGER: Right. You know, we're not reporting on the sleaze. We're reporting on the reporting on the sleaze.
BOB GARFIELD:The implication of course is that by mentioning the names that these other news organizations are so clearly beneath us -- you know we don't trade in these practices but the likes of these do, and that's why we're naming them. [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
SCOTT SHUGER: Yeah.
BOB GARFIELD: But when, when these same news organizations break major stories that the Post doesn't get till 48 hours later, then oddly those names disappear.
SCOTT SHUGER: You got it. That's, that's one of the real rules of journalism that we saw this week.
BOB GARFIELD: All right, Scott Shugar, thanks very much.
SCOTT SHUGER: Sure.
BOB GARFIELD: Scott Shugar writes the column Today's Papers on Slate.com.
Upfronts
May 19, 2001
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Spring is a time of rebirth and renewal, even in the world of television. This week the networks showcased their fall schedules at a series of network-sponsored presentations and parties called "upfronts." While TV networks preened and promoted in the hopes of luring ad buyers to purchase advertising up front, TV critics got a chance to preview the fall season. TV Guide's Max Robbins spent the past week at the upfronts. Max, welcome to On the Media.
MAX ROBBINS: It's a pleasure to be here.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: You went to all the upfronts this week. Explain what they're like. Are they very tense events?
MAX ROBBINS: Well certainly not for people [LAUGHS] like me in the audience. These are these really lavish affairs that the network throws, and they're really there to seduce the advertising community, the press and the financial community as well that they have developed all this wonderful new programming for fall that is just going to wow the American public and make us all just jump and shout with glee.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: So are you jumping with glee, Max? Is this going to be an exciting television season?
MAX ROBBINS:Well, Brooke, it's spring, and hope springs eternal. [LAUGHTER] I have to say, having feasted on oh, more shrimp and-- [LAUGHS] chicken wings than I thought existed in all of New York, I don't know, there wasn't a lot this season where you said wow - I'm going to make a point of being home at, you know, fill-in-the-time, to see that show.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: There's a fierce counter-programming attack going on. They're putting the Jason Alexander Show up against Frasier?
MAX ROBBINS:I don't know. I don't think that Kelsey Grammer has much to worry about, at least from what we've seen so far. But what's interesting about that, Brooke, is how much this season the networks are really in each other's face. I mean they've taken NYPD Blue and moved it from Tuesday night to go right up against Law and Order. NBC announces they're going to put the weakest link on there, their new hit game show on a Monday night, and then boom! -- ABC moves Millionaire against it. The last couple of seasons there's almost been like a silent gentleman's agreement if you will where the networks were really into counter-programming. Brooke, you're the president of ABC and, and you say well I'm putting on a news magazine at 10 o'clock. I'm the president of NBC. I go with a drama. Here, this is really about hey -- I smell blood in the water at my network and I'm going to steal viewers away from you.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Let's talk about ABC for a moment. They're going through some serious and infamous cutbacks right now and one thing that they announced was that they were cutting back on 20/20. It sounds like almost for a full quarter of the year, but the network honchos said this should not be seen as a sign that we're decreasing our commitment to news. Now to say something like that to me is tantamount to the pilot coming on the A.V. in the fuselage and saying there's absolutely no cause for alarm when nobody thought there was anyway.
MAX ROBBINS: Yeah. Well, I'll tell you, I think regardless of how ABC wants to spin this, the fact that they took 20/20 which for 14 years has dominated Friday night at 10 o'clock as the premiere star of ABC News, Barbara Walters, who makes more money for that network, Brooke, than - ha! - it's amazing -- that they would do this really shows the diminished value of news within the ABC network family. And I think you're going to see all sorts of things in coming months. These are not happy times for news.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:A year after the NAACP protested the lack of minorities on prime time shows, now we saw mid-season last year the addition of some black characters, some black subplots but not a lot of change in the lineup. What about this year now they've had another year to mull this over. Any change in the status quo?
MAX ROBBINS: Not really. I mean when you're looking at the major networks and what they're putting on, almost all the lead characters in the new series are white.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Has the downturn in the economy affected the mood at these events? Are you still getting as much shrimp as you ever were?
MAX ROBBINS:Well these affairs are as lavish as ever in terms of seducing, you know, young media buyers to spend tens of millions of dollars on these shows, so they're still putting their money there. I think where you're seeing less money is how much they're investing in the programming. That's why you're seeing more game shows. That's why you're seeing more reality programming. And I'll tell you this: it really seemed to me at these parties that-- maybe this is fiddling while Madison Avenue burns but it seemed that people were staying longer and, and drinking more.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Max, thanks very much for coming in.
MAX ROBBINS: Brooke, it is always my extreme pleasure. Thank you.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Max Robbins writes The Robbins Report in TV Guide.
The Brazil Trial
May 19, 2001
NATHANIEL BRAZILL: I was holding the gun in my hand. My finger was on the trigger. I was holding it with both hands, holding it kind of tightly. And that's when the gun went off.
MAN: Who pulled the trigger?
NATHANIEL BRAZILL: I did.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: The case of 14 year old Nathaniel Brazill was the latest TV trial to dominate cable news and its attendant punditry. If TV has created the global village, televised legal proceedings have created the global courtroom and network executives have assembled the television version of the Dream Team.
BOB GARFIELD:There's Geoffrey Feiger, famous for his defense of Jack Kevorkian, Marsha Clark who has coasted on the accomplishment of losing the O.J. case, and former prosecutors galore.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:We're resigned to these digital Darrows being dusted off for each trial of the century, but in the case of Brazill it's particularly unsettling. Most papers don't even print the names of minor defendants so as not to further damage the child. This child's words and image are beamed all over the world as on the Fox Newschannel.
WOMAN: Nathaniel Brazill's demeanor on the witness stand, I think I'm not alone in saying could have easily hurt him with the jury because he did have that same kind of impassive, implacable expression.
WOMAN: But for example just now during the verdict, I wouldn't call him impassive. I thought he gave a very quizzical look each time the verdict was read as to one of the charges almost like what does it mean, what does it mean - I don't understand.
WOMAN: I'm - but you know I, I was looking at him as, as you were, and at one point he sort of gave this look l-- it liked like - tsk! - you know - almost like I'm being grounded!
BOB GARFIELD:The problem is that the pundit machinery cannot gear down when it's a child who stands accused. Quite the opposite. So here comes the standard pyrotechnics, cross-examination tactics to vilify the accused as seen on CNN's Crossfire.
WOMAN: He went home, collected a gun that he himself had loaded with 5 bullets; returned to school where he murdered his English teacher, point blank range. You tell me Geoffrey that you do not believe that that young man who is very smart by all accounts did not understand what he was doing? He said there I pulled the trigger. [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
MAN: No, I absolutely-- I absolutely-- [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
WOMAN: You don't think he knew he was murdering his teacher when he pulled that trigger? [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
MAN: I ab--
BROOKE GLADSTONE: A 14 year old boy, guilty or not, fodder for infotainment, and we are the voyeurs. In fact, more than voyeurs. With trial coverage we're asked by implication to be the ladies and gentlemen of the jury. Since most of us lack the assuredness of the TV pundits, it's not always a pleasant position to be in. Dead Celebrities
May 19, 2001
BOB GARFIELD: Welcome back to On the Media. I'm Bob Garfield.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And I'm Brooke Gladstone. Here's one for you: when is death not the final act? Answer: when Madison Avenue runs the show. Bob, you explain it.
BOB GARFIELD:Okay. Lou Gehrig, baseball's great Iron Man amassed more than 5,000 total bases over 17 years before succumbing to the disease that would bear his name. Fatal illness, however, did not end his career for while dead men cannot hit, they can still pitch.
ANNOUNCER: Before you can inspire--
LOU GEHRIG: Today I consider myself--
ANNOUNCER: --before you can touch--
LOU GEHRIG: -- the luckiest man on the face of the earth.
ANNOUNCER: --you must first connect. And the company that connects more of the world is Alcatel.
BOB GARFIELD: This ad for a French telecommunications company is just the latest in a series of resurrections popularized by the confluence of advertising ambition, celebrity obsession and digital technology. In the past few years to name a couple of notable examples we have seen Fred Astaire dancing posthumously with a Dirt Devil vacuum cleaner and John Wayne flogging Coors Light from beyond.
MAN: [SHOUTING] I want to know whose beer this is right now!
JOHN WAYNE: It's my beer, sergeant!
BOB GARFIELD: Let's put aside for a moment the issue of what appeal John Wayne holds for a generation of beer drinkers who mostly hadn't been born by the time the Duke sauntered into eternity. The real question is when, say, Gilbert Gottfried and Bruce Jenner are just a phone call away -- why go grave-robbing?
BILL O'NEILL: In most cases these people have a larger than life persona that we have either grown up with or we've watched for many, many years. They are forever frozen in time.
BOB GARFIELD:Bill O'Neill is vice president for marketing and promotions for CMG, the talent agency specializing in the talent but unbreathing. It was CMG that Alcatel dealt with to license the image of Lou Gehrig who is but one iconic figure on a client roster that reads like Who's Who in Heaven.
MAN: Babe Ruth, Vince Lombardi, Jackie Robinson-- Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, some music figures of Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, Frank Zappa --Chuck's still alive, of course.
BOB GARFIELD: As agents, CMG must walk the line between protecting the images of its late clientele and exploiting them.
MAN:Well-- I'm not sure I would use the word "exploit." Market is, is the term that I would use. You know we're very respectful of our clients and their wishes. You know there's a lot of deals that have come our way that we have not done, but ultimate they're our client and, and we have a responsibility to try and generate some business for them.
BOB GARFIELD:Unless as good citizens and guardians of clients' dignity they have a greater responsibility. Gary Ruskin, executive director of the public interest group Commercial Alert believes the invocation of Lou Gehrig for Alcatel is a travesty.
GARY RUSKIN: It's one of the most touching moments in sports, and it's-- really a shame to see it used by commercial hucksters to sell tawdry trinkets.
BOB GARFIELD:To Ruskin this is yet one more example of how we are all sullied by the commercial culture where everything, every human value and now every legend seemingly are for sale. For instance, while Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney and Satchmo might have liked the idea of screen immortality, being channeled into a Diet Coke commercial probably isn't what they had in mind. [MUSIC]
LOUIS ARMSTRONG, "SATCHMO": Now we're getting warm.
MAN: [SINGING] Diet Coke!
BOB GARFIELD: Jingle courtesy of Elton John. Righteous indignation by Gary Ruskin.
GARY RUSKIN: Nothing is sacred to them! There's nothing that they won't tarnish or despoil just to make a buck. We've seen Apple Computers use Albert Einstein in their ads. Apple also used Ghandi. When you take a true hero and you drag him through the commercial muck, it tarnishes the hero just a little bit, and that's not right either.
STUART COOPERIDER: It's the same with, you know, cloning human beings and what not. You start to get into an area that, that people are just a little uncomfortable with.
BOB GARFIELD:Stuart Cooperider is a senior vice president and creative director at the advertising agency Arnold Worldwide, creator of the Lou Gehrig spot and an earlier Alcatel commercial featuring the I Have a Dream speech of Dr. Martin Luther King. That ad ignited a firestorm.
STUART COOPERIDER: You know the, the intention of this thing really wasn't to-- to cause any pain to anybody, certainly. In our own hearts and minds we really felt that we, we, we weren't desecrating him at all; that this was-- you know we were really honoring it. But-- I believe it was really when Matt Lauer decided that he needed to have, have our client on, on national television sitting down with the head of the NAACP, that's kind of when we realized that-- this thing was, was fairly large.
BOB GARFIELD:Lesson learned. Some imagery is sacrosanct. Although it's hard to predict levels of outrage. For what it's worth there was more bad press over Fred Astaire's Dirt Devil pas de deux than from Alcatel's expropriation of the defining moment of America's civil rights movement. Nonetheless the advertiser is certain to tread more lightly from here on in.
STUART COOPERIDER: Religion probably would be an area that we would, we'd want to stay away from. You know I think the Mother Teresa's and, and certainly popes and that sort of thing we would probably want to stay away from - as out of respect.
BOB GARFIELD:But you won't seen any general slowdown in celebrity resurrections because the likes of Lou Gehrig and Louis Armstrong bring with them more than their legends, more than their nostalgia value, more than their iconography. They also bring their lack of police records. Furthermore, Stuart Cooperider points out, formerly living talent is a pleasure to deal with during production. There are many deceased prime donnas but no deceased who are still prime donnas.
STUART COOPERIDER: Somebody comes in and, and screams at you because the limo was the wrong color - that happens regularly. The, the hotel room wasn't what they thought of.
BOB GARFIELD: Anyone dead ever scream at you over the color of the limo?
STUART COOPERIDER: No. [LAUGHS] Fortunately. [LAUGHS]
BOB GARFIELD:So if you happen to be an actor or a pro athlete frustrated by Madison Avenue's indifference to your endorsement potential, take heed of Alcatel's real message: before you can inspire -- before you can touch --first you must, like totally, disconnect.
Intellectual Property
May 19, 2001
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Chances are you haven't been following the intellectual property issue known as the De-CSS case through the Second Court of Appeals. Now bear with me here. The outcome could affect the way you watch movies at home and civil libertarians say that the wrong decision could seriously damage free speech. Here to take us through the intricacies of the case is NPR's cultural correspondent, Rick Karr. Rick, welcome to On the Media.
RICK KARR: It's great to be here Brooke.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: So the way that intellectual property cases are breaking out right now I guess that it roughly falls into two camps: the minimalists and the maximalists. How do you define them and how do they differ?
RICK KARR: A copyright maximalist is someone who believes in really strong copyrights; that the law should provide for penalties for people who make copies of books or music or movies without the permission of whoever owns the copyright. The copyright minimalist point of view broadly is that people have always been allowed to make some copies for really socially beneficial reasons and that copyright law should be constructed in such a way that people can continue to make those copies and not be subject to legal sanctions on account of it or subject to having to pay to do that.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: So take us through the -- this is a case that's currently very much alive -- the De-CSS case which is about DVDs.
RICK KARR:This has to do with something that's part of the technical standard for a DVD. When the consumer electronics industry and the movie industry got together to create the DVD format, they were worried that if they put movies out in a full digital form, you could just pop it into your computer and copy it onto your hard drive. I mean that's one of the things that computers are designed to do --they're designed to just copy huge amounts of data. So you could copy it on to your hard drive and then e-mail it to a friend or put it up on a web site so that somebody could take it. And they said we, we have to find a way to stop this.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And so they encrypted that information that was on the DVD.
RICK KARR:That's essentially what they did, is they encrypted it. The other thing they did though is they went to Congress in 1998 as part of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and they asked for a part of the law that says if you break through this, you are in violation of the law and we can go after you. Now you enter a bunch of people in the Linux programming community -- those pesky open-source software people -- and what the open-source software people were saying is we want to watch DVDs on Linux computers, but because Linux is open-source, the movie industry and the consumer electronics industry won't give us the key that de-crypts the DVDs. They figured it out on their own. They wrote a piece of software that allows that encryption to be stripped off a DVD solely for the purpose of watching it on a Linux computer. A magazine called 2600, subtitled The Hacker Quarterly, reported on this and posted the source software code to its web site. The movie industries went ballistic! They said you can't do this! You're violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. You're-- [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
BROOKE GLADSTONE: But they were! They were!
RICK KARR:Eric Corley [sp?], the publisher, however says I'm a journalist. I'm reporting on something that is in my bailiwick. Other mainstream news-gathering organizations published it. They weren't sued for it. His attorneys asked why is that the case? So Eric Corley's supporters say in general the law restricts free speech. But they also argue that it restricts the free use of culture and by that I don't mean whether or not you pay for the culture. I mean how freely can you use this? For example: this same encryption system allows a movie studio to put out a DVD with commercials on it -- and the encryption system will disable the fast-forward button on your DVD player if it's so instructed. So the commercials come up and you can't fast-forward past them. This rankles a lot of people in the copyright minimalist camp who say once I buy a piece of culture, whether it's a CD or DVD or a book, I should be able to do with it as I see fit. As long as I'm not trying to take your market away from you, copyright owner, I should be able to do as I see fit.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Now it strikes the casual observer like myself that anybody who breaks an encryption with the intent to copy is a pirate!
RICK KARR: Have you ever made a cassette tape for a friend of yours of a record you really like?
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Yup.
RICK KARR: Have you ever photocopied an article out of the New Yorker to give it to a friend?
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Yup.
RICK KARR: Have you ever borrowed a book from a library?
BROOKE GLADSTONE: But I've never mass-produced any of those things, and with a computer you can.
RICK KARR:The way the minimalist would respond to that is by saying the law should not assume that we're all pirates and that we're all out there to make a lot of copies of stuff and give it away and take their business away. Ha ha record industry says Napster. Ha ha movie industry says the people who wrote De-CSS. No! They want to be able to use stuff the way they say they've always been able to use stuff and they think that the law is slanted against them.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Before we finish up here, where is the De-CSS case now -- the DVD case?
RICK KARR:The Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard the arguments on May 1st. Those judges have asked attorneys for both sides to submit written answers to some specific questions that they had, and those answers are due later this month and then the judges will decide when the judges [LAUGHS] decide.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Rick Karr, thank you very much.
RICK KARR: Pleasure to be here, Brooke.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Rick Karr is a cultural correspondent for National Public Radio. Esquire Fudges Facts
May 19, 2001
BOB GARFIELD: In this month's Esquire Magazine writer Tom Junod offers a long, colorful profile of rock icon Michael Stipe. It's filled with astonishing anecdotes and utterances, some of which are utterly untrue. Readers are directed to Esquire's web site to separate the factual wheat from the fictional chaff. Joining us now to discuss this odd experiment is Esquire's editor, David Granger. David, welcome to OTM.
DAVID GRANGER: Hi. Thanks.
BOB GARFIELD: All right. Long piece in this month's issue about Michael Stipe, the lead singer of R.E.M. Only as the subhead declares, half of the story by Tom Junod is made up! Why?
DAVID GRANGER: First on the most basic level, that's what it required for Tom to be able to write it after he'd spent quite a bit of time with Michael, he decided that the story he could naturally write would be another sort of celebrity piece in which the writer kind of whines that he didn't get enough access or whines that he didn't like the person and the last thing Tom wanted to write was another process piece. And so he just started writing. As it happened, a lot of what he was writing --Mmmmm-- didn't actually happen.
BOB GARFIELD: There's a story in the story about a five hour schlep to the Hoover Dam in two limousines. [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
DAVID GRANGER: Yeah.
BOB GARFIELD: Was that true?
DAVID GRANGER: That part was not true.
BOB GARFIELD:There was this anecdote about Michael Stipe when he was 14 years old and a boy scout being lost in the woods and being so traumatized that he grew actually to heat trees. Is that one true?
DAVID GRANGER: That one is absolutely true.
BOB GARFIELD: This is not the first time that Esquire has played with the genre of celebrity profiles. A few years ago, magazine ran a Martha Sherrill [sp?] piece about the movie starlet Allegra Coleman [sp?] who made for a very colorful interview but who didn't actually exist.
DAVID GRANGER: I wasn't the editor of the magazine at that point, but I think that was a farce or a, a -you know - parody intended to make a point about celebrity, but this -- I don't even know if Tom was trying to re-define the personality profile. I, I think he truly wanted to write a compelling piece of magazine entertainment.
BOB GARFIELD:Does Esquire suspect that Michael Stipe cultivated his Michael Stipe-ness and needed to be exposed somehow as a hypocrite or a fraud?
DAVID GRANGER: That, that wasn't any part of our intention going into the story.
BOB GARFIELD: Well then why victimize him, of all people?! I mean he hasn't really danced the dance. [LAUGHTER] If he hasn't been a part of the falsity of the genre, why use him to flay the genre?
DAVID GRANGER: I'm not sure that we victimized Michael Stipe in any way. I mean we, we did reveal him through - in the parts of the piece that actually happened a--as Michael Stipe as he is, and probably elevated him in some ways in, in the fictional parts of the piece.
BOB GARFIELD: Esquire's a monthly. How often do you run a celebrity profile.
DAVID GRANGER: I would say we run one every month.
BOB GARFIELD: And at least twice now you have done pieces that in one way or another confront the falsity of the genre.
DAVID GRANGER: Right.
BOB GARFIELD:Could I possibly suggest that that might be a little hypocritical? Now you know you're sort of a serial peddler of celebrity fluff and now you're f-- all of a sudden appalled by celebrity fluff.
DAVID GRANGER: I think that is the kind of balancing act that one makes as a magazine editor. I'm reluctant to eschew entirely the celebrity profile, but every once in a while it yields a great nugget.
BOB GARFIELD: And if it doesn't yield a great nugget, why you simply invent a few.
DAVID GRANGER: Well not on a regular basis and probably never again.
BOB GARFIELD:Forgive me -- I'm about to get a little prosecutorial here, but you, you mentioned the tree story. Michael Stipe as a 14 year old lost in the woods.
DAVID GRANGER: Uh-huh.
BOB GARFIELD: You said it's true. How do we know it's true?
DAVID GRANGER: Because in addition to the story in the magazine, we did provide the service of running an annotated version of the story in which we made it absolutely clear, you know, which of the elements of the story were fiction and which were sourced.
BOB GARFIELD:But do you think as a - as a matter of journalistic principle you should be forcing the reader g-- to go on a scavenger hunt for the truth?
DAVID GRANGER: Hmmm. Yeah-- yeah! We probably should. I mean you know-- I think we did everything we could to explain that we were engaging in an experiment in magazine journalism. I think that's -- in a lot of ways that is exactly what a magazine should do if one wants to produce a lively magazine that continues to grow and change and interest people and thrill people.
BOB GARFIELD: David how did you fact-check this piece?
DAVID GRANGER:It's pretty simple. I mean you know Tom provided a, a draft of the story to us. He worked with our fact-checking department; told them, you know, what parts of the piece were factual and what - those that were fictional, and even in the fictional segments as we do with all our fiction, we checked any facts, all of the things that were asserted to be facts in the story [LAUGHTER] were--
BOB GARFIELD: Cause see the last thing you want is fact errors in your fabrications.
DAVID GRANGER: You know like I say, we fact-check our fiction as well.
BOB GARFIELD: All right, well listen thanks again for joining us.
DAVID GRANGER: Okay.
BOB GARFIELD: David Granger is the editor of Esquire Magazine. Covering Strikes
May 19, 2001
BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield. Headline news and newspaper factoids don't lend themselves to the coverage of intricate labor/management disputes. In fact, writer George Packer has found the press can't seem to get interested in job actions at all unless they involve Hollywood. His piece, titled Lights, Camera Strike appears in this Sunday New York Times Magazine. He joins me now. George Packer, welcome to On the Media.
GEORGE PACKER: Pleasure being here.
BOB GARFIELD: So you pick up the newspaper or you watch the TV news -- you see a lot about Capital Hill; you'll see quite a bit about Grant Hill; you won't see much about Joe Hill, will you?
GEORGE PACKER: Joe Hill is dead and buried, and he's had a strange second life or resurrection in a expensively tailored suit warn by the head of the NBA Players Association or the Screen Actors Guild. What's interesting to me is the last few years have seen something of a, a resurgence of organized labor in areas that we're not used to seeing workers organize, namely the service economy. But it's been very hard to get that story into the news and into the public consciousness whereas it, whenever there's a threatened baseball strike, basketball strike, screenwriters/screen actors strike it's - it's on the front page for weeks.
BOB GARFIELD:When it appeared that the screen actors and screen writers were going to simultaneously go on strike, there was something close to saturation coverage in the media. Was there anything else going on in the labor world simultaneously that you thought was at least as deserving of the media's attention?
GEORGE PACKER: Yeah. Not, not long before those threatened strikes there was an actual strike of bus drivers in Los Angeles County which mostly inconvenienced low wage workers themselves, so it too was not a particularly sexy national story.
BOB GARFIELD:I want to ask you about the situation at Harvard. Now that got some press. Did that buck the trend or was it just more evidence of the trend?
GEORGE PACKER: I think to their credit students rather than focusing on some issue as far away as Burma looked at what was going on in their own university and, and took an action and the university seems to have met them part way and the action ended. But your question is a good one and I think in a way if it hadn't been for the voices of the most privileged young people in the country backed by movie stars like Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, I don't think there's a chance that Harvard's low wage workers would have, would have gotten national attention and, and would have had - brought the university at least part way toward, toward what they wanted. So in a way it just sort of is the exception that proves the rule that in order to reach the public you need to be privileged or you need to have a story that involves people who are articulate, privileged, educated, attractive-- and preferably, you know, good on the big screen.
BOB GARFIELD:There is of course a solution to this whole problem; I think you alluded to it earlier. The arrogant colossus of the corporation is perfect Hollywood fare and if just as the film Traffic called attention to the debate between drug enforcement and drug rehabilitation, maybe only Hollywood will enable you to break through the barrier of indifference.
GEORGE PACKER: If you can't beat them, join them. Yeah. It has been a tool-- in the past of organized labor in the '30s and '40s; in movies like Norma Rae in the '70s. Yeah, maybe-- what's his name? - Antonio Banderas or the guy who just won the Oscar for Supporting Actor in Traffic should sign their names to a project that is about some janitors or some industrial launderers in Los Angeles who have to decide whether or not to vote to join a union. It'd be a great movie!
BOB GARFIELD: And of course he'll get plenty of coverage for your movie in the press.
GEORGE PACKER:Exactly. Full page ads in the Times; little spots on Entertainment Tonight, on all the local news little tie-ins. Maybe local news will have interviews with actual industrial launderers. This is how these things begin.
BOB GARFIELD: George Packer thanks for joining us.
GEORGE PACKER: Thank you.
BOB GARFIELD:George Packer's most recent book is titled Blood of the Liberals. He also wrote a piece called Lights, Camera Strike for the most recent edition of the New York Times Magazine. Ethnic Press
May 19, 2001
BROOKE GLADSTONE: New York City has long been the capital of the English language press; but in the last decade it's been the capital of the ethnic media too, and as Amy Eddings reports, their growth is now getting the attention of advertisers.
AMY EDDINGS: To illustrate how far the community and ethnic press has come, Abby Scher, director of the Independent Press Association of New York grabs a copy of its directory. She picks a country -- India. In the mid-70s there were only two newspapers serving the Indian-American community. Today--
ABBY SCHER: One, two, three-- four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. There are 9, and the Polish press has expanded; the Bangladeshi press has expanded; the Dominican press has expanded; Pakistani. It's astonishing.
AMY EDDINGS: She says the newest papers are being launched by the city's newest immigrants who are primarily from the Dominican Republic, former Soviet Union, China, South Asia and the Caribbean. Some older papers are finding new audiences and some are fading away because they're no longer relevant.
WOMAN: I noticed the ones that died tended to be the ones that were from the older generation of immigrant stream. There -- for instance in the '70s there still was an Italian language anarchist publication [PHONE RINGING] that Sacco and Vanzetti were involved in, in the '20s. It was still around in the '70s. [PHONE RINGING] But it -- that's also when it disappeared. So the older generation-- especially the more [PHONE RINGING] ideological press has gone.
AMY EDDINGS: Scher says the ethnic press of today is more diverse. There's a weekly Cricket newspaper for example, a Spanish language humor paper and publications devoted to entertainment, culture and religion. It's also more news-driven and more grounded in local issues. Many ethnic papers are run by people like Prakesh Parekh. He had been active in the Indian-American community for 20 years before he became editor of Desi Talk in 1997, and he credits his connections with the paper's success.
PRAKESH PAREKH: That's very important. I think that helps a lot because it establishes your credibility with not only the sources of news, I would say, or the people who manage the organizations or people who do the things in the community -- because they already know you very well.
AMY EDDINGS: Eighty-six percent of English language newspapers are owned by corporations, but the ethnic press is primarily independent --started by entrepreneurs who sometimes work second jobs to finance their paper. Observers say such papers help to shape a group's identity and spur political participation.
AMY EDDINGS: In Manhattan's Little India Saqib Din stands by his yellow cab and sips coffee. The avenue is lined with South Asian grocery stores and restaurants where Bangladeshi, Indian and Pakistani newspapers are displayed.
SAQIB DIN: We usually read the Pakistani newspapers, and -- because-- we get a lot of information about taxi rules or about our community, about everything. We are new in this country, and we are curious to know about the things, about everything we want to know, so we read these [SIREN] local newspapers.
AMY EDDINGS: Businesses have noticed. Newspaper executives and ad agencies say ad revenue in the ethnic press has grown tremendously in the past decade. The National Association of Hispanic Publications cites a 400 percent increase. Most of these advertisers are local businesses. Big retail chains often bypass the ethnic press in part because they don't recognize their readers as a market, and in part because many ethnic papers are free and do not have a subscriber base to audit. Saul Gitlin, vice president of Kang and Lee, an advertising agency that specializes in the Asian-American market thinks big companies will change their minds.
SAUL GITLIN: Projections had already shown that by the year 2000 just the three largest multicultural groups in the United States -- Hispanics, Asians and African-Americans -- were projected to account for 30 percent of the U.S. population, and that being up from approximately a quarter of the U.S. population in 1990. And I think once you get to a third of the entire population of the country, even skeptics have to sit up and take notice.
AMY EDDINGS: Gitlin says that's already happening as more data from the census, including that all-important marketing tool, the average household income, is released. That in turn could mean more money for papers like Gugerat Times, Filipino Express, the Russian Forward and La Voz de Queens -- which means they will be able to cover their communities even better. For On the Media, I'm Amy Eddings.
Bonus Commercial Track
May 19, 2001
BOB GARFIELD: But first, here's a commercial you might have missed.
PRESIDENT CLINTON: But I want to say one thing to the American people. I want you to listen to me. I'm going to say this again.
ANNOUNCER: Before you can inspire--
PRESIDENT CLINTON: I did not have sexual relations with that woman--
ANNOUNCER: --before you can touch--
PRESIDENT CLINTON: -- Miss Lewinsky.
ANNOUNCER: --you must first connect. And the company that connects more of the world is Alcatel, a leader in communication networks.
PRESIDENT CLINTON: I need to go back to work for the American people. Thank you. [APPLAUSE]
BOB GARFIELD: Kidding. Just kidding. This is On the Media from National Public Radio.
- Back to story:
- May 19, 2001
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Conservative Bloggers Vindicated, Advice for Leakers, and More
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An 11-year-old and his 3D printer
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Who’s gonna pay for this stuff?
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A New Incentive for Cord Cutters
- Department of Justice Warrant Names Journalist as a Possible Leak Co-Conspirator
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A Journalistic Civil War Odyssey
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A Source for Sources
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Angelina Jolie's Secret Test Results
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With IRS Scandal, Conservative Bloggers Feel Vindicated
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Web Only Audio Extra - TV Cord Cutters
