Newspapers taking sides
July 5, 2002
MIKE PESCA: From WNYC in New York this is NPR's On the Media. I'm Mike Pesca in for Bob Garfield.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And I'm Brooke Gladstone. This week newspapers across the country reported that a federal judge had condemned the federal death penalty. Two weeks ago the Supreme Court prohibited executions of the mentally retarded. Writing in Slate this week Will Saletan says such stories are tailor made for editorial boards and reporters already opposed to the death penalty, but he says America's major newspapers sometimes shrink from making their case directly. Instead, he says, they prefer to chip away at the death penalty story by story.
WILL SALETAN: There's no issue on which journalists as a whole are more opposed in their general line of thinking to the public than the death penalty. The death penalty is an issue where the public by roughly 3 to 1 favors it, and journalists, according to surveys by about 8 or 9 to 1 oppose it. And so what you find is a noticeable, from the point of view of the reader, bias in the reporting and editorializing about the issue, and that's what's come across this week.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Give me an example.
WILL SALETAN:Well there was a story in the New York Times this past Sunday about Japanese executions and how cruel it is that Japan doesn't tell anybody when they're executing prisoners. A year ago there were articles in the New York Times about how cruel it was of the United States government to allow closed circuit TV viewing of the Timothy McVeigh execution, and there has been similar editorial criticism just about every time there has been an open execution in the United States where a lot of people get to see it. So-- my conclusion from seeing the same newspapers complain both ways is that they're not really particularly upset that the execution is secret or that the execution is public. What they're upset about is that the executions are happening at all.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:If you think that many of the major newspapers in this country are fundamentally opposed to the death penalty and yet they only argue on the margins rather than argue the fundamental question, why do you think that is? Why do you think they hang back from simply saying the death penalty is wrong?
WILL SALETAN: Well I'd say there are probably 3 reasons, each of which in its own way is understandable. One is that sheer variety -you know the, the editorial writer gets tired of saying over and over again stop the killing - and so he or she picks up on whatever is the, the hot story of the moment, and that's the second reason -- as an editorial writer as if you were a reporter you have an obligation to write about what's in the news, and what's in the news at any one time may be the inhumanity of the method of execution like the electric chair or it might be the retarded or it might be young people. And the third thing is politics. Editorial writers, yeah, they want to say what's on their mind but they also want to persuade the reader, and so the editorial writer asks him or herself what can I say about a particular class of people who are executed that might persuade people who favor the death penalty in general to oppose it in this case -- to favor some kind of law to narrow the scope of the death penalty?
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Why do you automatically think that that's sort of a smokescreen for writing about the death penalty in general?
WILL SALETAN:Well, when over time the same editorial page writes: we shouldn't execute the retarded, we shouldn't execute the young, we shouldn't execute the old -- when every single one of those editorials that purports to be about a particular aspect of the death penalty ends up together adding up to an overall position that nobody should be executed because everybody is covered by the exceptions -- then I feel as though there's a sense of dishonesty about the-- the process of editorializing as there is in the, in the news coverage in those -many of those same newspapers.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:But Will, you're not advocating that they don't write about excessive secrecy in Japan or the consequences of executing a minor or, or somebody with severe mental disability. You're not saying that they shouldn't write about those things, are you?
WILL SALETAN: No, I -- of course reporters should write about everything newsworthy. But they should also bear in mind the things that they may not be writing about. For example, reporters and editors being generally on the liberal side of the death penalty question, are very attentive to what a lousy life a lot of these people who end up on death row have had, and I'm not arguing that question one way or another. Everybody deserves to some extent to be humanized in news coverage. But sometimes I think we forget to humanize the victims because they're not there for us to interview, and because we're trying to stop the execution that's in front of us. We can't stop the murder that this person perpetrated.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:There were those in the 30s who identified Adolf Hitler as a danger to the world and said so very nakedly and were punished for it. Later, of course, they were regarded as extremely prescient. There are issues in this country -- the death penalty being one -- abortion being another --where opponents and advocates feel so strongly in their position as an absolute that they feel no compunction arguing nakedly on, on those terms. Do you think there's no place for proselytizing in a paper, even if you think that there's a fundamental injustice going on?
WILL SALETAN: It's an interesting question whether over time we look back and say you know -- that issue wasn't a two-sided issue. One side was clearly right and one side was clearly wrong. And a very good example of that is the civil rights movement. We might look back and say not every story had to be sort of balanced between the segregationists and the, and the desegregationists. It's very hard, though, when you live in that era to know whi--which those questions are. I think it's a good rule to try to cover stories in the most balanced way and to try to get inside the minds of people on both sides, because we have to be humble and we just don't know whether we will look back and say we were right to write the stories about the death penalty in a one-sided way or we were unfair and biased, and it was a story with two sides.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Well Will Saletan, thank you very much.
WILL SALETAN: Thank you.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: William Saletan is chief political correspondent for Slate.com. [MUSIC] Louima Cop Coverage
July 5, 2002
MIKE PESCA: A verdict is expected some time next week in the retrial of former New York City policeman Charles Schwarz who is accused of assisting in the sexual assault of Abner Louima. The appeal of Schwarz's original conviction was granted after the efforts of his lawyer, Ronald Fischetti who, along with filing his legal papers, vigorously courted the media, convincing many big players from New York and national outlets that his client was innocent. CNN legal analyst and staff writer for the New Yorker Jeffrey Toobin wrote about the Schwarz retrial a few weeks ago. The very fact that Schwarz got a retrial Toobin calls "stunning."
JEFFREY TOOBIN: To simply, what the court did was they said that Schwarz's original lawyer had a conflict of interest that was so profound that Schwarz couldn't possibly have received a fair trial. Defendants raise those kind of arguments all the time on appeal and it almost never succeeds. In fact the judges at the oral argument of this case never even asked a question on this subject, giving rise to my supposition that what the defense lawyer did really worked, which was persuade these judges that they simply had to give an innocent man another chance at vindication.
MIKE PESCA: So what was Fischetti's media strategy?
JEFFREY TOOBIN:This was basically a retail operation by Ron Fischetti -- not wholesale. He went reporter by reporter with some very established, intelligent reporters and presented them with essentially his legal brief so that individually they would write stories saying that he's innocent. But there was a second trial where Fischetti raised all the arguments and Schwarz was still convicted!
MIKE PESCA: And even after that, Ed Bradley did a long piece on 60 Minutes which concluded that Schwarz was innocent.
JEFFREY TOOBIN:Absolutely. And I have to say it was an example of a great program not at its best. Part of the appeal of 60 Minutes, and I'm a big fan, is that the stories have a real point of view. But-- the, the risk is when you get the story only from one side that you're just simply going to get it wrong! And-- you know I think there is at least a possibility that 60 Minutes got the facts of this one wrong.
MIKE PESCA:The crux of Bradley's story was that it wasn't Schwarz who held Louima down in the police bathroom -- it was another cop -- Thomas Wiese. But not all the cops involved agree with that version.
ED BRADLEY: Let me give you a, a hypothetical. If the government knew from the beginning that Wiese said he was in the bathroom that night, that Volpe also said he was in the bathroom and that Schwarz says that he wasn't -- would Schwarz be where he is now?
POLICEMAN: We wouldn't be doing this interview.
MIKE PESCA: The problem with Ed Bradley's hypothetical was that Wiese never said he was in the bathroom.
JEFFREY TOOBIN: And Volpe had testified at the second trial that Schwarz was not in the bathroom. And the jury still convicted! The jury didn't believe Volpe! To pretend that this was somehow new information was not only misleading the audience but it was also not new information to the jury that heard the case!
MIKE PESCA:So last February 60 Minutes gets the ball rolling. In March you have Nat Hentoff of the Village Voice citing the 60 Minutes story saying Charles Schwarz is innocent. In April the Daily News's Dennis Hamill says Hentoff has convinced him that Schwarz is innocent. In July the New York Times columnist Bob Herbert says that 60 Minutes and Hentoff have combined to convince him that Schwarz is innocent. You really see the snowball effect.
JEFFREY TOOBIN: And I think what's so striking about you know the - this series of newspaper columns that you point out is how much they are based on one another and not based on actual inquiry into the facts of the case! I mean Bob Herbert's column in the New York Times basically refers exclusively to the 60 Minutes story. I mean it shows the importance of getting one big high profile visible story out there which can then be cited and referred to repeatedly, even if it's far from the whole story.
MIKE PESCA:If none of them provided new information and the second jury contradicted many of the suppositions of the original 60 Minutes piece, why did it influence the judge?
JEFFREY TOOBIN: Judges [LAUGHS] read the newspaper! And if you have a steady drumbeat of people talking about someone's innocence in a wide variety of publications going from, you know, the politically right New York Post to the politically left Village Voice, the judges are going to say hey, maybe there's something going on here. And remember all of us feel very-- worried about the possibility that an innocent person may be behind bars.
MIKE PESCA:When all this is over and we evaluate the job that reporters did, can we say that the journalism was bad if Schwarz is innocent and those stories helped to free him?
JEFFREY TOOBIN: Well I don't think I could make such a harsh judgment about, you know, good journalism and bad. You know my, my-- concern about those stories is that they were really one-sided in their presentation of the facts and that there, there was a lot of evidence for Schwarz's guilt that was simply neglected or pl-- d-- played down because Ron Fischetti did such a skillful job of selling his client's innocence.
MIKE PESCA: Jeffrey, thank you very much.
JEFFREY TOOBIN: My pleasure.
MIKE PESCA: Jeffrey Toobin is a staff writer for the New Yorker and legal analyst for CNN. [MUSIC]
Freedom in 30 Seconds
July 5, 2002
MIKE PESCA: We're back with On the Media. I'm Mike Pesca.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And I'm Brooke Gladstone. Coming this week to a TV near you, commercials for freedom. [CLIP FROM COMMERCIAL PLAYS]
MAN 1: But personally I am just so sick and tired of these taxes!
MAN 2: [SOTTO VOCE] Why do you always do this?
MAN 1: You know every time you get a paycheck now most of it goes straight to the government.
MAN 2: [SOTTO VOCE] Hey, keep it down -- you want somebody to hear you?
MAN 1: I'm just saying -- I'm the one who's making the money and I have no say-so--
MAN 2: [SOTTO VOCE] I know what you're saying --just calm down! Do you want 'em to ruin your life? They can do that you know.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: The tag line reads: What if America wasn't America? Freedom. Appreciate it, cherish it, protect it. The freedom ads come to us from the Ad Council which over the past 60 years has created such advertising icons as Smokey the Bear, McGruff the Crime Dog and even Rosie the Riveter for public awareness campaigns. Phil Dusenberry [sp?] has volunteered to direct the Freedom Campaign. He is a 40 year veteran of the ad industry who can list among his credits the Michael Jackson Choice of a New Generation ads for Pepsi and the Morning in America campaign spots for President Ronald Reagan. He is on the line from Clyde Park [sp?], Montana. Welcome to the show.
PHIL DUSENBERRY: Good morning.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: So the Ad Council was initially created to help out the advertising industry after the Depression, but then after the attack on Pearl Harbor it changed into the War Advertising Council and it was hugely successful in selling war bonds. What exactly are your ads intended to sell?
PHIL DUSENBERRY: Well right after 9/11 there was this upsurge of patriotism in America and perhaps stronger than we've seen in quite some years, but over time that sense has waned a little bit because other things come into play and people let this blessing we have, which is called freedom, flip to the back of their mind. And the idea of this campaign is to, is to really re-instill a sense of what American freedom is all about.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:One of the defining features of the Ad Council's previous campaigns was that the message was very clear -- they taught us how to prevent forest fires and why we shouldn't litter and to cross at the corner. Maybe it's because the freedom ads are addressing an idea rather than an action, but some of them seem rather abstract!
PHIL DUSENBERRY: Yeah. You're absolutely right. Most advertising is designed to sell a product, a service, a brand. In this particular case, this advertising's - is asking people to feel something.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Could you talk us through the one that's called "Choice?"
PHIL DUSENBERRY:Well what we're seeing in this particular case is, is a camera going down a supermarket aisle past hundreds and hundreds of those myriad products that we look at every day-- [SOUND FROM CHOICE COMMERCIAL PLAYS UNDER] and it talks about competition just in some title form. And then it lets us know that freedom brings choice -- the freedom for you to choose whatever product you wish.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: I did think that at least in that one particular ad equating freedom with wide consumer choice seemed to be an odd choice.
PHIL DUSENBERRY:Well the fact is, if you walk down a supermarket aisle and you look at this array of products, you, you're realizing that we have this incredible choice! And you know what? Many countries don't have that choice, and that's one of the things that this campaign is hoping to communicate -- that freedom is something that isn't necessarily unique to any other country in the way that it is unique to us.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Can a 30 second spot explain to Americans what shouldn't need explaining? Shouldn't we already know what our fundamental values are?
PHIL DUSENBERRY: Well we should, but you know -- we--unfortunately take for granted so many of the things that we're blessed with in this country. Freedom is one of them. We accept it. But until something like 9/11 happens we don't think much about it.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: In one of the ads we see a boy in a library asking for a book. [CLIP FROM COMMERCIAL PLAYS]
BOY: Excuse me. I can't seem to find these anywhere.
FEMALE LIBRARIAN: Huh! [TYPING ON COMPUTER KEYPAD] These books are no longer available.
BOY: I didn't know.
FEMALE LIBRARIAN: May I have your name please?
BOY: Why?! [OMINOUS MUSIC]
MAN: Excuse me -- if you'll just come this way please--
BOY: What did I do?!
MAN: We just have a couple of questions-- [A STRUGGLE ENSUES] Easy! Easy!--
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Now Phil it was here that a certain queasiness that I felt watching this campaign seemed to crystalize and, and this is why: because I remember an interview we did a few months ago with the head of government relations for the American Library Association and she was concerned because under the Patriot Act passed right after September 11th the FBI was empowered to seize book sales and library checkout records and the book sellers and the librarians were barred from saying anything about it -- they were placed under a sort of perpetual gag order. So when I saw the ads, it struck me that it's possible that the American people are more likely to see their freedoms undermined by the actions of their own government than by some sort of Islamic fundamentalist revolution in this country!
PHIL DUSENBERRY: Well, look -- first of all our commercial and, and what you just described are purely a coincidence, and we're using just simply a drama to say you know -- what if America wasn't America -- this is what it might be like folks!
BROOKE GLADSTONE:A lot of the discussion after 9/11 and after passage of the Patriot Act is what if America isn't quite what it is right now, because it's under threat -- because people can have their library records rifled through and never know about it.
PHIL DUSENBERRY: Well, I don't know. I mean the advertising you know can only go so far and only be used in such a way as to remind people of - make them appreciate what we have. It can't really cross any line into, you know, anything that's more concrete.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Phil Dusenberry, thank you very much.
PHIL DUSENBERRY: Thank you.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Phil Dusenberry is the director of the Ad Council's new Freedom Campaign, coming this week to a TV near you. The World’s Flags Rated
July 5, 2002
MIKE PESCA: For 10 months and especially this past Thursday we've seen the stars and stripes flapping on every flagpole from Philadelphia to Fresno. It may then surprise you to know that Old Glory rates only a C plus from flag critic Josh Parsons. Parsons is a post doctoral fellow in philosophy at Saint Andrew's College in Scotland. So how does that make him an expert? It doesn't. But in addition to being a post doctoral fellow, he's a flag-loving fellow to the extent that he has awarded every flag of the world a letter grade and posted it on his very detailed web site. Josh Parsons, welcome to OTM.
JOSH PARSONS: Thanks.
MIKE PESCA: Could you go through some of the hard and fast rules you employ?
JOSH PARSONS: One of the general rules is not putting writing on flags. Some flags have the whole name of the country on the flag. I don't like maps of the country either -- for basically the same reason. The general rule is not putting representational pictures on flags. A lot of people put pictures of animals like lions and sheep and things, but I was very struck by the number of flags that have pictures of weapons on them!
MIKE PESCA: And some flags, like Sri Lanka, have pictures of animals holding a weapon.
JOSH PARSONS: That's true.
MIKE PESCA: What about stars?
JOSH PARSONS:Yes, well I like stars, but a lot of people like to put stars on flags, and some people have the attitude that if one is good, two must be better and 50 must be just right!
MIKE PESCA: So I see, yeah, you're pretty consistent. I see you give an A grade to many flags with just one star.
JOSH PARSONS: Yeah.
MIKE PESCA: North Korea, Cuba, Turkey, Israel of course has the Star of David--
JOSH PARSONS: Yep.
MIKE PESCA: -- Somalia, Vietnam and Pakistan has a crescent moon and a star. All get A's.
JOSH PARSONS:Yes. One thing I like about the flag I ranked best, the Gambia, was it represents something about the history and the geography of the country without being of course a map. [LAUGHS] It's a bit like a tricolor. It's got a-- a blue line in the middle and then above that a red part and below a green part. What it represents is the River Gambia which is what most of the Gambia is.
MIKE PESCA:So in order for you to appreciate that enough to give it your only A plus, you had to know a little bit about Gambia. But some of these flags that you've failed -- do you know enough about the countries to sufficiently give an adequate grade?
JOSH PARSONS: I did want to just grade the flags on their aesthetic merits because it would be a bit hard to go in for historical importance. I think in the case of the Gambia it's already a beautiful flag, and it's also hooked up with the geography of the country.
MIKE PESCA:Maybe this inclination, though laudable, led you to give unfair grades to countries like Swaziland because while it's true that they do have weapons, when you take into their--account their history of being entirely engulfed by South Africa, maybe you could read that defiance as brave and inspiring.
JOSH PARSONS: That's true, and-- I was initially reluctant to mark down those countries for having weapons on their flags, but I felt that I had to in all consistency.
MIKE PESCA: Did you get much international reaction, even indignation over your letter grades?
JOSH PARSONS: Oh, yes, I certainly do. I get a lot of e-mails.
MIKE PESCA: Who objects the most?
JOSH PARSONS: I'm afraid to say people from the U.S.
MIKE PESCA:[LAUGHS] Let me anticipate a letter that we're sure to get. Dear On the Media, you've ruined my July 4th weekend. In this post 9/11 world do we really need these supposedly clever jibes about the design of a flag being too busy? Our flag means a lot more than 13 stripes and 50 stars, and you and your guest would do well to remember that people have fought and died for the principle it stands for. What do you say to that letter writer?
JOSH PARSONS: People have written me letters like that, and I think that being able to laugh at the symbol of a country in a friendly way is an important way of kind of combatting the excesses of nationalism.
MIKE PESCA:I guess no one's ever thought to put a big picture of their leader on a flag. I could see Mobutu Sese Seko trying something like that. [LAUGHTER] You probably wouldn't like that, would you?
JOSH PARSONS: No, I, I definitely wouldn't like that. Actually I wonder about who designed Libya's flag. I think Qaddafi would probably be into putting pictures of himself on the flag if he could.
MIKE PESCA:Well it's interesting that you bring up Libya, because I would have failed Libya, because Libya's flag is simply a sea of green. But you gave it a B.
JOSH PARSONS: I can understand why you'd fail it. One feels that the designers of Libya's flag really weren't trying.
MIKE PESCA: I'd at least give it an incomplete.
JOSH PARSONS: Mmmmmmm. Yes. But they've certainly gone for simplicity, and they've also done something that no one else has dared to do, and I think they deserve to be rewarded for thinking of doing that when it's really something that's so obvious -- to have a flag that's just one color.
MIKE PESCA: You didn't evaluate the UN flag itself --light blue - has a map - that's points off -what do you think you'd give it?
JOSH PARSONS: It has a map on it, does it?
MIKE PESCA: Yeah, it has a map of the whole world.
JOSH PARSONS: Yeah. I don't think it would do well. Though it's kind of hard to know what the UN would put on a flag.
MIKE PESCA: Maybe they could counterintuitively put a picture of Mobutu Sese Seko!
JOSH PARSONS: Yes! That's a possibility.
MIKE PESCA: Josh, thanks very much.
JOSH PARSONS: Thank you!
MIKE PESCA:Josh Parsons is a post doctoral fellow in philosophy at the University of Saint Andrew's. Because of its complex address his web site is best found via the link provided by onthemedia.org. Hispanic Media
July 5, 2002
[BLUEGRASS VERSION OF STAR SPANGLED BANNER]
BROOKE GLADSTONE: In the last decade, much of the South has been transformed by a steep rise in the Latino population, most of whom are total newcomers to this country. Media outlets in Texas and South Florida have had many more years to figure out how to reach this emerging community, but in other places, editors and reporters are scrambling people they may not understand. From North Carolina, the state with the fastest-growing Latino population, Leda Hartman reports.
LEDA HARTMAN: Five years ago Julio Granados had a job working at a grocery store in Raleigh. Like many young Mexican immigrants, he was earning money to send back home, and like many, he was here illegally. One day Granados told his story to a reporter from the Raleigh News and Observer. Two weeks after the piece came out, the Immigration and Naturalization Service deported him.
NED GLASCOCK: It was a beautiful story. It just gave too many details.
LEDA HARTMAN: That's Ned Glascock, a News and Observer reporter who remembers the incident well.
NED GLASCOCK: It had a front page Sunday photograph of the young man, where he worked, his full name, the hours that he worked, and people called up the INS and asked them to do their job and, and they obliged.
LEDA HARTMAN: The state's Latino leaders were outraged, while the Latino working class developed a deep distrust of reporters that lasted for years. It's not a newspaper's job to protect illegal immigrants or to get them deported, but the fact that a respected mid-size daily couldn't foresee this story's impact highlights how hard it is to cover an unfamiliar community. Here's how reporter Ned Glascock handled it in Durham.
NED GLASCOCK: I kind of approached it like being a foreign correspondent.
LEDA HARTMAN: Glascock, who speaks Spanish, spent 6 months working on a groundbreaking series that depicted the immigration pipeline from a village in rural Mexico to Durham and the effect that immigration had on both places.
NED GLASCOCK: I thought, well I'm not going to Mexico for this storyline, but I'm going to go to Mexico in Durham, North Carolina. You go in with fresh eyes, you go into a new community and you kind of bring back and tell the old community what it's all about.
LEDA HARTMAN: He got beyond using the usual suspects by knocking on people's doors, gaining their trust, and waiting until he was well into the story before taking out his notebook.
NED GLASCOCK: And in fact the story that I found was one that the leadership didn't really know about. I mean know knew about except the people who were living the life.
LEDA HARTMAN: While Glascock wrote about immigrants in the News and Observer, the Durham Herald Sun wrote directly to them. The paper created a 16 page monthly tabloid in Spanish called "Nuestro Pueblo" with local news, sports, calendar listings and a community resource directory. Its editor, Mark Schultz, hopes Nuestro Pueblo will help draw future readers to the Herald Sun.
MARK SCHULTZ: It is positioning ourselves to better serve the growing Latino community so that when this community is ready to buy and English language newspaper, perhaps there'll be some loyalty there, and my hope, the hope of the company would be that they'd get the Herald Sun.
LEDA HARTMAN: For now, however, most immigrants are not ready to buy a newspaper written in English. In the lobby at "El Mandado," a big new "supermercado" in Raleigh, customers have a choice of half a dozen local Spanish language newspapers. All of them are less than 10 years old. Owner Marco Roldan says customers have been known to complain if the latest issues aren't there.
MARCO ROLDAN: Some of them are so demanding, because they wanted to have the last one. They know already, for example, "La Conexion," they know that it's coming out every week. When they see the old one there, they say, oh, what happened?
LEDA HARTMAN: The Spanish language papers are popular because they're the immigrants' best source of information where to get health care, how to enroll kids in school, the latest on immigration law. The papers are also unabashed advocates for the immigrant community, but it's not just altruism that explains their rise. When it comes to realizing the revenue potential involved in advertising to Latinos, the Spanish language media is way ahead of its mainstream counterparts. [CLIP OF SPANISH LANGUAGE RADIO PLAYS UNDER] "Que Pasa Carolina" [sp?] an aspiring Spanish language media conglomerate is a case in point. Co-owner Jose Isasi has done his share of market research, and it told him to expand his newspaper business into radio because the average Latino immigrant is a young working class man with a 5th grade education --someone who might not read much but who is a heavy radio listener. Now all Isasi needs is numbers -- a big enough audience to attract national advertisers.
JOSE ISASI: Really our long term plan is to have a serious newspaper and radio station from Atlanta to Washington, D.C. in each metropolitan area. We invested because we saw the long term view, okay, we saw that we could do it. Okay, we saw that ah -- it makes sense.
LEDA HARTMAN: It makes sense to the mainstream Winston-Salem Journal too. In fact the paper has formed an alliance with Que Pasa. The Journal prints the Que Pasa newspaper and provides occasional advice. In return, Que Pasa helps the Anglo paper advertise in the Latino community. Journal advertising director Bill Downey [sp?] says the paper would never have gained this kind of entree on its own, but he also says there are limits to the kind of editorial partnering the two companies can have.
BILL DOWNEY: We pride ourselves in the Anglo newspaper business, traditional English speaking newspaper business, as being impartial. I mean we just drum that into everybody --that's what we do. However the Hispanic media does not hold that same value. It's not that they have any less values or anything -- just different values --and they use their media in a different way, especially in this environment when, when they're the underdogs [LAUGHS] -- they're fighting for the 10 percent of the community. So to some degree I find their values admirable. However I would never advocate that we give up our values. So how do you merge those two is a fascinating question.
LEDA HARTMAN: In some communities that question of merging goes beyond the issue of journalistic ethics. In Durham where the Hispanic population jumped from 1600 to 16,000 in the last decade, Blacks and Latinos often compete for housing, jobs and other resources. One effort at easing the friction is a radio program sponsored by the Durham Human Relations Department called "Cinta Dominical" [sp?]. It airs on WNCU, the public radio station of North Carolina's Central University, one of the state's historically black universities. [CLIP FROM CINTA DOMINICAL PLAYS] The program includes local and international news, interviews and music from all over Latin America. It's primarily in Spanish, but sometimes the hosts interview English speakers and translate for them. At first some African-American listeners were upset when the program replaced a jazz show, but co-host Eduardo Perez and co-producer Gerard Farrow say over time the show has helped build connections between all three of Durham's communities -- white, African-American, and Latino.
EDUARDO PEREZ: Sometimes we receive calls from the English speakers just to know, to ask what is the name of that song?
GERARD FARROW: We are reaching out, you know, past just the Spanish-speaking community, and that's, you know, always a good thing when you can kind of bridge communities together. [MUSIC FROM CINTA DOMINICAL PLAYS]
LEDA HARTMAN: That bridge will be crucial in the future. According to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Latinos now comprise less than 4 percent of the nation's newsrooms, even though they're 12 percent of the population. The U.S. Census predicts that by 2050 Latinos will comprise one quarter of the population. Engaging with this emerging community and earning its trust will be one of the mainstream media's pressing challenges. For On the Media, I'm Leda Hartman in Durham, North Carolina.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Leda's report was produced in partnership with the Columbia Journalism Review.
MIKE PESCA: Coming up, Bob Garfield's a little bit country -- very little bit as it turns out.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: This is On the Media from NPR. Nashville Bob
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And I'm Brooke Gladstone. Some years back Bob Garfield, our vacationing co-host, had a speaking engagement in Nashville. Being an exquisitely sensitive person, he was seized by the vibrations emanating from the Grand Ol' Opry as well as visions of fortune and fame. This is what happened.
BOB GARFIELD:I was going to be in Nashville for a day and a half and my speaking gig wasn't going to tie me up for long, so I figured while I'm in town why not just write a hit country song and get it cut by a major recording star. I mean -- I am a writer. I live in a country. How hard could it be? [CLIP OF COUNTRY SONG PLAYS]
ASHLEY CLEVELAND: [SINGING] LOVELY LILY, HEAD SO FAIR HAZEL EYES, GOLDEN HAIR CLIMB THE BRANCHES OF YOUR FAMILY TREE YOUR MAMA'S ROOTS ARE IN TENNESSEE--
BOB GARFIELD: So I did what most aspiring musicians do as soon as they hit Nashville -- I found my way to the Bluebird Cafe. Open mic nights there have launched the careers of Garth Brooks, Vince Gill, Mary Chapin-Carpenter and more guitar-playing songwriters than you can shake a pick at. They duck in from the rain and sing about their pain -- (you might say if you were a professional songwriter, such as myself) -- displaying their charms for Opryland's waiting arms.
ASHLEY CLEVELAND: [SINGING] TENNESSEE-- TENNESSEE--
BOB GARFIELD: Singer/songwriter Ashley Cleveland was born and raised up just down the road a piece -- an advantage I don't have. I was born in Philadelphia and live in Washington. In other words -- I'm an outsider -- which suddenly struck me as a potential impediment to overnight fame and fortune. But just as I started fretting about possibly being too Washington for Nashville, who should I run into but former Governor Lamar Alexander who ran an entire presidential campaign bragging about being just the right amount of Nashville for Washington. Naturally, I asked him for advice.
BOB GARFIELD:My problem is I'm an inside-the-beltway kind of guy. I'm exactly what you ran against. Can I make it here in Nashville as an outsider any better than you made it in Washington that way?
LAMAR ALEXANDER: You, you've got to-- you've got to feel it. [LAUGHTER] But you can feel it from wherever you came from. [LAUGHS]
BOB GARFIELD: Even inside the beltway.
LAMAR ALEXANDER: You've got more to overcome than most people. [LAUGHTER]
BOB GARFIELD: Maybe he was looking at my blue blazer and penny loafers. But proprietor Amy Kurland told me to pay talk like that no mind. She's seen plenty of city slickers succeed and plenty of country boys with cowboy boots and big old hats squeezed by the business like a dip of snuff between your cheek and gum. All right, Miss Amy, I asked -- how do I mash that button of success? AMY KURLAND: Well something that -- creative that makes you different from the usual trite "come-into-my-arms-with-your-charms - I've got pain because - and I'm in the rain" -- you don't want to be saying that. You want to be a little more original than that. My fav--personal favorite them in country music is I'm a guy which makes me really dumb and now that my woman has pointed it out to me, I'm going to be better, and -- cause I really, really love her. That, that's a fine them in country music and one that sells all the time.
RIVERS RUTHERFORD: Honesty -- that's what it takes to write a country song. You've got to make yourself vulnerable and do it in a way in which you're telling the truth for people. Tell 'em what you really feel.
BOB GARFIELD:Meet Rivers Rutherford, an up and coming young songwriter who splits his time between Whistler's Music, [sp?] a sophisticated commercial music production house on Music Row, and MCA Music Nashville, one of the big song publishers in town. Rivers and I would write our hit song together. It turns out that hardly anyone writes alone in Nashville. They team up, swinging from partner to partner in a sort of literary square dance. This was particularly convenient for me inasmuch as I can neither sing nor play an instrument. Also in terms of the themes that pervade country music, Rivers' Memphis upbringing was sure to complement my very substantial experience with big business, government and Judaism -- or so I thought. Now Rivers is extremely talented and a very nice guy but frankly a little difficult to work with. We only had one day -- yet still he categorically rejected my first two ideas -one about falling in love with a lonesome cowgirl at a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee and the other about raising the younguns -- it had a catchy lyric-- PAPA DIDN'T RAISE YOU TO BE NO FOOL-- YOU'D BEST GET INTO A MAGNET SCHOOL. -- but Rivers didn't bite. And he was at best half-hearted in trying to put a melody to my song about those losers in the '83 Camaros who cut me off on the beltway because it's the only place on earth where they feel in control.
RIVERS RUTHERFORD: [SINGING w/GUITAR] THERE YOU RUNNING ON THERE [...?...] RUNNING BEHIND FASTER YOU RUN THE LESS THAT YOU FIND BUT I THINK A BIG [...?...]'S THE VERY WORST KIND RUNNING, RUNNING, RUNNING AWAY FROM YOU.
RIVERS RUTHERFORD: I gotta be honest with you -- I'm looking at the lyrics -- I think it's a little bit of a -you want to write a hit country song--
BOB GARFIELD: Yeah, and I'm running out of time.
RIVERS RUTHERFORD:Okay. [LAUGHS] Yeah, we are running out of time on that aren't we. This is probably not going to get you a number one song in the short amount of time you got. The best thing to do is find a simpler idea, I would say. [LAUGHS] You know what I'm saying?
BOB GARFIELD:Oh, I knew all right! He was feeling threatened by the new kid on the block, by my rare insight into human behavior, by my tenderness, by my stunning command of-- what do you call it -- you know -- words. And most of all, my capacity for plagiarizing Jackson Browne. Professional jealousy is never pretty so I just let him natter on.
RIVERS RUTHERFORD: Another slant on it would be to say basically that instead of running from these demons, what if the demon is just trying too hard or being too busy.
BOB GARFIELD: Okay, wait, wait, wait -- what about this-- everyone's so busy -- now they're running behind -- what if-- what if - you ever have a conversation with somebody you can't have because you're calling their voice mail and they're calling your voice mail--
RIVERS RUTHERFORD: Right. Phone tag. [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
BOB GARFIELD: -- and then you-- Phone tag - and you know at the end - by the end of it you're just saying tag, you're it, right?
RIVERS RUTHERFORD: Okay.
BOB GARFIELD: So what if - what if there were a relationship building in an exchange of voice mail messages and the whole song was just this exchange of voice mail messages and the hook was Tag, You're It.
BOB GARFIELD:Well come to think of it, why not a song about telephone tag with your sweetheart? It's a common experience, harvested from my own life completely consistent with my inside-the-beltway sensibilities and just as the proprietor of the Bluebird Cafe suggested, it could be about a clueless guy who treats his woman wrong until she slaps him upside the head and gets him back on the road to love.
RIVERS RUTHERFORD: [SINGING w/GUITAR] JUST CALLING TO LET YOU KNOW I GOT YOUR MESSAGE -- UM-- I GOT YOUR MESSAGE-- A WHILE AGO-- IN MY SUITCASE BY THE DOOR AND NOW-- SUITCASE IN MY HAND 6 O'CLOCK THIS MORNING I HADN'T TALKED TO YOU IN A COUPLE DAYS [...?...] CHECKING ALL MY CALLS-- 7 MESSAGES, YOURS WAS LAST OF ALL--
BOB GARFIELD: Yeah, I mean what - what if it tells a story -what story can we tell on the basis of two people who are just like-- electronic ships passing in the night? [LAUGHTER]
RIVERS RUTHERFORD: [SINGING w/GUITAR] DON'T KNOW, KNOW, KNOW DARLIN' I MISS YOU--
BOB GARFIELD: Sort of -- yeah-- I LOVE YOU-- I think you should leave the-- TAG, YOU'RE IT CALL ME WHEN YOU CAN SOMETHING, SOMETHING, SOMETHING, I'M A BUSY MAN--
RIVERS RUTHERFORD: [SINGING w/GUITAR] TAG, YOU'RE IT CALL ME WHEN YOU CAN--
BOB GARFIELD: All told it took us about 6 hours, and I don't mind telling you I was dripping with satisfaction like gravy over hot biscuits. All we had to do now was play the song for his publisher, Jody Williams, president of MCA Music Nashville. Then it would be demo'd and then shopped to likely artists -- Garth Brooks, Willie Nelson, what have you -- and my career would be launched even as I boarded the 6:05 p.m. flight back to Washington. Rivers was a little less enthused than I was in the very narrow sense that he thought upon further reflection that a song about telephone tag was pretty stupid and unlikely ever to be recorded much less hit the charts. And Williams, before he sat down to hear the thing, was none too encouraging either.
JODY WILLIAMS: The numbers are against you tremendously in this business. A thousand songs a day get written in this town. Two percent of those songs get recorded. Not 10 percent. 2 percent. Sometimes it's, it's supposed to work like this -- the best song wins. It doesn't always work like that. There are politics involved. There are people doing people favors.
BOB GARFIELD:Politics? Favors?! For this I left Washington? Whatever happened to just being an artist and succeeding on your God-given talent? Tell you what, Jody -- I don't need any political connections to make it in this town. Just listen to the song. Just listen to Tag, You're It.
RIVERS RUTHERFORD: [SINGING w/GUITAR] HELLO, I'M SORRY DARLIN/ I MISSED YOUR CALL AGAIN IF YOU'DA TRIED AT 10 TO 5 I MIGHT HAVE SQUEEZED YOU IN I REALLY WANT TO REACH YOU BUT TIME IS KIND OF TIGHT I LOVE YOU, HON BUT I GOTTA RUN, SO KISS THE KIDS GOODNIGHT TAG, YOU'RE IT CATCH ME IF YOU CAN I'D LOVE TO SAY I LOVE YOU BUT I'M SUCH A BUSY MAN I KNOW WE'LL REACH EACH OTHER IT'S JUST A QUESTION WHEN I'M CALLING YOU BUT I CAN'T GET THROUGH SO TRY ME BACK AGAIN IN REFERENCE TO YOUR VOICE MAIL AND GIRL I MISS YOU TOO YOU'RE QUITE CORRECT WE SHOULD CONNECT THE WAY WE USED TO DO I'LL TRY TO SHOW THAT I STILL KNOW WHAT LOVING REALLY MEANS LOOK FOR SOMETHING SPECIAL, HON ACROSS YOUR FAX MACHINE TAG, YOU'RE IT CATCH ME IF YOU CAN I'D LOVE TO SAY I LOVE YOU BUT I'M SUCH A BUSY MAN I KNOW WE'LL REACH EACH OTHER IT'S JUST A QUESTION WHEN I'M CALLING YOU BUT I CAN'T GET THROUGH SO TRY ME BACK AGAIN JUST TURNED MY COMPUTER ON FOUND THE E-MAIL THAT YOU SENT S.O.S. - I'M IN DISTRESS NEED ACKNOWLEDGMENT YOU SAID OUR SHIP WAS SINKING BUT THE METAPHOR AIN'T RIGHT CAUSE WE'RE NOT SHIPS JUST MICROCHIPS PASSING IN THE NIGHT TAG, THAT'S IT! [SEE ?] ME IF YOU CAN I'M HERE TO SAY I LOVE YOU AND I'M SUCH A FOOLISH MAN WE HAVEN'T TOUCHED EACH OTHER SINCE I DON'T REMEMBER WHEN HANG UP [...?...] COMING HOME [...?...] TAKE ME BACK AGAIN.
BOB GARFIELD: The president of MCA Music Nashville had just heard our song about telephone tag and for a moment he just sat there, quietly stunned.
JODY WILLIAMS: I've never heard that idea before.
BOB GARFIELD: Judging from the look in his eyes, I don't reckon he ever needed to hear it again. I was hoping for him to get a blank contract out, but instead he and Rivers went back and forth on how the song could be re-written.
JODY WILLIAMS: A guy who's just busy -- I mean have a mid-tempo song or have a ballad saying our, our lives are -- you know - this is ridiculous, you know? And start sympathizing with each other. I don't think it's-- [...?...] new hook cause Tag, You're It ain't gonna [...?...] at all.
RIVERS RUTHERFORD: Tag, You're It ain't gonna do it.
BOB GARFIELD: Ain't gonna do it?! TAG, THAT'S IT! BELIEVE ME IF YOU CAN IF I THOUGHT I WAS A SONGWRITER, I'M SUCH A FOOLISH MAN Just like that, my dreams of more than 30 hours were crushed. I guess Lamar was right after all.
ECHOES OF LAMAR ALEXANDER'S VOICE: You've got more to overcome than most people. [ECHOING LAUGHTER] You've got more to overcome than most people. [ECHOING LAUGHTER]
BOB GARFIELD: Later, as he was packing me off to the airport, Rivers spoke to me as if I were Dorothy and he were the Good Witch of the South. He could have told me that playing that song for Jody Williams would get me sent back to Washington -- but I had to find out for myself.
BOB GARFIELD: At what point did you just completely lose hope in this--?
RIVERS RUTHERFORD:I think the-- at the point when you said something about-- you know we could write a song about, about phone tag -- that's when the, the hope pretty much flew out of the window for me. [CLIP OF PATSY CLINE SINGING "CRAZY" PLAYS]
PATSY CLINE: [SINGING] CRAZY I'M CRAZY FOR FEELING SO LONELY I'M CRAZY CRAZY FOR FEELING BLUE--
BOB GARFIELD: Yeah, Patsy -- I must have been out of my mind to think I could pull this off.
PATSY CLINE: [SINGING] CRAZY FOR FEELING SO BLUE--
BOB GARFIELD: I can't get a record cut any more than Reba McIntire can do a 5-part series on health care reform. But as I sat in my airplane set, dejected, I couldn't help but notice someone familiar sitting across the aisle. It was someone who knew not only the inside of the beltway but the epicenter -- the ultimate Washingtonian -- and yet someone equally rooted in the cultures and rhythms of the rural South. I traded seats with the Secret Service Agent next to him and asked Jimmy Carter about his taste in music.
JIMMY CARTER: Do I listen to a country music station? Well in Americus, Georgia and I listen to a whole gamut of country music.
BOB GARFIELD: Is it possible do you suppose to bring a Washington sensibility to country music?
JIMMY CARTER: I'd be amazed.
BOB GARFIELD: Okay, well then I just want to play this for you -- would you just listen to this?
JIMMY CARTER: Sure.
BOB GARFIELD: Okay, thanks.
BOB GARFIELD: Whereupon the former President of the United States strapped on my headphones and listened to my song, flashing his famous toothy grin and, if I'm not mistaken, tapping his toe securely beneath the seat in front of him.
BOB GARFIELD: So what do you think?
JIMMY CARTER:I think the song is good, and the music's good. I'd like to hear it every now and then on my country radio station, and-- you know you might get in touch with -- I'm not - I think the performer's very good but-- if somebody like Willie Nelson or Tom T. Hall is one of my best buddies-- I think they would like it and they could give you some good advice.
BOB GARFIELD: With your compliments?
JIMMY CARTER: Of course, sure!
BOB GARFIELD: I'll see you at the Country Music Awards, Mr. President.
BOB GARFIELD:Upright bass, Dave Pomeroy; Robbie Turner on dobro, Tom Rody on drums, Aubrey Heaney on fiddle, [sp?] Rivers Rutherford on vocals and acoustic guitar and -- ladies and gentlemen --Mr. Willie Nelson.
WILLIE NELSON: [SINGING w/BAND & BACKUP VOCALS] HELLO, I'M SORRY DARLIN I MISSED YOUR CALL AGAIN IF YOU'DA TRIED AT 10 TO 5 MIGHT HAVE SQUEEZED YOU IN I REALLY WANT TO REACH YOU BUT TIME IS KIND OF TIGHT I LOVE YOU, HON BUT I GOTTA RUN, SO KISS THE KIDS GOODNIGHT TAG, YOU'RE IT CATCH ME IF YOU CAN I'D LOVE TO SAY I LOVE YOU BUT I'M SUCH A BUSY MAN I KNOW WE'LL REACH EACH OTHER IT'S JUST A QUESTION WHEN I'M CALLING YOU BUT I CAN'T GET THROUGH SO TRY ME BACK AGAIN IN REFERENCE TO YOUR VOICE MAIL AND GIRL I MISS YOU TOO YOU'RE QUITE CORRECT WE SHOULD CONNECT THE WAY WE USED TO DO I'LL TRY TO SHOW THAT I STILL KNOW WHAT LOVING REALLY MEANS LOOK FOR SOMETHING SPECIAL, HON ACROSS YOUR FAX MACHINE TAG, YOU'RE IT CATCH ME IF YOU CAN I'D LOVE TO SAY I LOVE YOU BUT I'M SUCH A BUSY MAN I KNOW WE'LL REACH EACH OTHER IT'S JUST A QUESTION WHEN I'M CALLING YOU BUT I CAN'T GET THROUGH SO TRY ME BACK AGAIN
WILLIE NELSON: Take it, boys! [INSTRUMENTAL]
BOB GARFIELD: I'm Bob Garfield. Goodbye, Darlin'.
MIKE PESCA: That's it for this week's show. On the Media was produced by Janeen Price and Katya Rogers with Sean Landis; engineered by Dylan Keefe and George Edwards, and edited by Brooke. We had help from Dan Bobkoff. Our web master is Amy Pearl.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Arun Rath is our senior producer and Dean Capello our executive producer. Bassist/composer Ben Allison wrote our theme. We'd like to welcome the newest member of the OTM family, WFPL of Louisville, Kentucky. This is On the Media from NPR. I'm Brooke Gladstone.
MIKE PESCA: And I'm Mike Pesca.
WILLIE NELSON: [SINGING WITH BAND & BACKUP VOCALS] TAG, THAT'S IT! LEAVE ME IF YOU CAN I'M HERE TO SAY I LOVE YOU AND I'M SUCH A FOOLISH MAN WE HAVEN'T TOUCHED EACH OTHER SINCE I DON'T REMEMBER WHEN HANG UP THE PHONE I'M COMING HOME IF YOU'LL TAKE ME BACK AGAIN. HANG UP THE PHONE I'M COMING HOME IF YOU'LL TAKE ME BACK AGAIN.
July 5, 2002
MIKE PESCA: From WNYC in New York this is NPR's On the Media. I'm Mike Pesca in for Bob Garfield.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And I'm Brooke Gladstone. This week newspapers across the country reported that a federal judge had condemned the federal death penalty. Two weeks ago the Supreme Court prohibited executions of the mentally retarded. Writing in Slate this week Will Saletan says such stories are tailor made for editorial boards and reporters already opposed to the death penalty, but he says America's major newspapers sometimes shrink from making their case directly. Instead, he says, they prefer to chip away at the death penalty story by story.
WILL SALETAN: There's no issue on which journalists as a whole are more opposed in their general line of thinking to the public than the death penalty. The death penalty is an issue where the public by roughly 3 to 1 favors it, and journalists, according to surveys by about 8 or 9 to 1 oppose it. And so what you find is a noticeable, from the point of view of the reader, bias in the reporting and editorializing about the issue, and that's what's come across this week.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Give me an example.
WILL SALETAN:Well there was a story in the New York Times this past Sunday about Japanese executions and how cruel it is that Japan doesn't tell anybody when they're executing prisoners. A year ago there were articles in the New York Times about how cruel it was of the United States government to allow closed circuit TV viewing of the Timothy McVeigh execution, and there has been similar editorial criticism just about every time there has been an open execution in the United States where a lot of people get to see it. So-- my conclusion from seeing the same newspapers complain both ways is that they're not really particularly upset that the execution is secret or that the execution is public. What they're upset about is that the executions are happening at all.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:If you think that many of the major newspapers in this country are fundamentally opposed to the death penalty and yet they only argue on the margins rather than argue the fundamental question, why do you think that is? Why do you think they hang back from simply saying the death penalty is wrong?
WILL SALETAN: Well I'd say there are probably 3 reasons, each of which in its own way is understandable. One is that sheer variety -you know the, the editorial writer gets tired of saying over and over again stop the killing - and so he or she picks up on whatever is the, the hot story of the moment, and that's the second reason -- as an editorial writer as if you were a reporter you have an obligation to write about what's in the news, and what's in the news at any one time may be the inhumanity of the method of execution like the electric chair or it might be the retarded or it might be young people. And the third thing is politics. Editorial writers, yeah, they want to say what's on their mind but they also want to persuade the reader, and so the editorial writer asks him or herself what can I say about a particular class of people who are executed that might persuade people who favor the death penalty in general to oppose it in this case -- to favor some kind of law to narrow the scope of the death penalty?
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Why do you automatically think that that's sort of a smokescreen for writing about the death penalty in general?
WILL SALETAN:Well, when over time the same editorial page writes: we shouldn't execute the retarded, we shouldn't execute the young, we shouldn't execute the old -- when every single one of those editorials that purports to be about a particular aspect of the death penalty ends up together adding up to an overall position that nobody should be executed because everybody is covered by the exceptions -- then I feel as though there's a sense of dishonesty about the-- the process of editorializing as there is in the, in the news coverage in those -many of those same newspapers.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:But Will, you're not advocating that they don't write about excessive secrecy in Japan or the consequences of executing a minor or, or somebody with severe mental disability. You're not saying that they shouldn't write about those things, are you?
WILL SALETAN: No, I -- of course reporters should write about everything newsworthy. But they should also bear in mind the things that they may not be writing about. For example, reporters and editors being generally on the liberal side of the death penalty question, are very attentive to what a lousy life a lot of these people who end up on death row have had, and I'm not arguing that question one way or another. Everybody deserves to some extent to be humanized in news coverage. But sometimes I think we forget to humanize the victims because they're not there for us to interview, and because we're trying to stop the execution that's in front of us. We can't stop the murder that this person perpetrated.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:There were those in the 30s who identified Adolf Hitler as a danger to the world and said so very nakedly and were punished for it. Later, of course, they were regarded as extremely prescient. There are issues in this country -- the death penalty being one -- abortion being another --where opponents and advocates feel so strongly in their position as an absolute that they feel no compunction arguing nakedly on, on those terms. Do you think there's no place for proselytizing in a paper, even if you think that there's a fundamental injustice going on?
WILL SALETAN: It's an interesting question whether over time we look back and say you know -- that issue wasn't a two-sided issue. One side was clearly right and one side was clearly wrong. And a very good example of that is the civil rights movement. We might look back and say not every story had to be sort of balanced between the segregationists and the, and the desegregationists. It's very hard, though, when you live in that era to know whi--which those questions are. I think it's a good rule to try to cover stories in the most balanced way and to try to get inside the minds of people on both sides, because we have to be humble and we just don't know whether we will look back and say we were right to write the stories about the death penalty in a one-sided way or we were unfair and biased, and it was a story with two sides.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Well Will Saletan, thank you very much.
WILL SALETAN: Thank you.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: William Saletan is chief political correspondent for Slate.com. [MUSIC] Louima Cop Coverage
July 5, 2002
MIKE PESCA: A verdict is expected some time next week in the retrial of former New York City policeman Charles Schwarz who is accused of assisting in the sexual assault of Abner Louima. The appeal of Schwarz's original conviction was granted after the efforts of his lawyer, Ronald Fischetti who, along with filing his legal papers, vigorously courted the media, convincing many big players from New York and national outlets that his client was innocent. CNN legal analyst and staff writer for the New Yorker Jeffrey Toobin wrote about the Schwarz retrial a few weeks ago. The very fact that Schwarz got a retrial Toobin calls "stunning."
JEFFREY TOOBIN: To simply, what the court did was they said that Schwarz's original lawyer had a conflict of interest that was so profound that Schwarz couldn't possibly have received a fair trial. Defendants raise those kind of arguments all the time on appeal and it almost never succeeds. In fact the judges at the oral argument of this case never even asked a question on this subject, giving rise to my supposition that what the defense lawyer did really worked, which was persuade these judges that they simply had to give an innocent man another chance at vindication.
MIKE PESCA: So what was Fischetti's media strategy?
JEFFREY TOOBIN:This was basically a retail operation by Ron Fischetti -- not wholesale. He went reporter by reporter with some very established, intelligent reporters and presented them with essentially his legal brief so that individually they would write stories saying that he's innocent. But there was a second trial where Fischetti raised all the arguments and Schwarz was still convicted!
MIKE PESCA: And even after that, Ed Bradley did a long piece on 60 Minutes which concluded that Schwarz was innocent.
JEFFREY TOOBIN:Absolutely. And I have to say it was an example of a great program not at its best. Part of the appeal of 60 Minutes, and I'm a big fan, is that the stories have a real point of view. But-- the, the risk is when you get the story only from one side that you're just simply going to get it wrong! And-- you know I think there is at least a possibility that 60 Minutes got the facts of this one wrong.
MIKE PESCA:The crux of Bradley's story was that it wasn't Schwarz who held Louima down in the police bathroom -- it was another cop -- Thomas Wiese. But not all the cops involved agree with that version.
ED BRADLEY: Let me give you a, a hypothetical. If the government knew from the beginning that Wiese said he was in the bathroom that night, that Volpe also said he was in the bathroom and that Schwarz says that he wasn't -- would Schwarz be where he is now?
POLICEMAN: We wouldn't be doing this interview.
MIKE PESCA: The problem with Ed Bradley's hypothetical was that Wiese never said he was in the bathroom.
JEFFREY TOOBIN: And Volpe had testified at the second trial that Schwarz was not in the bathroom. And the jury still convicted! The jury didn't believe Volpe! To pretend that this was somehow new information was not only misleading the audience but it was also not new information to the jury that heard the case!
MIKE PESCA:So last February 60 Minutes gets the ball rolling. In March you have Nat Hentoff of the Village Voice citing the 60 Minutes story saying Charles Schwarz is innocent. In April the Daily News's Dennis Hamill says Hentoff has convinced him that Schwarz is innocent. In July the New York Times columnist Bob Herbert says that 60 Minutes and Hentoff have combined to convince him that Schwarz is innocent. You really see the snowball effect.
JEFFREY TOOBIN: And I think what's so striking about you know the - this series of newspaper columns that you point out is how much they are based on one another and not based on actual inquiry into the facts of the case! I mean Bob Herbert's column in the New York Times basically refers exclusively to the 60 Minutes story. I mean it shows the importance of getting one big high profile visible story out there which can then be cited and referred to repeatedly, even if it's far from the whole story.
MIKE PESCA:If none of them provided new information and the second jury contradicted many of the suppositions of the original 60 Minutes piece, why did it influence the judge?
JEFFREY TOOBIN: Judges [LAUGHS] read the newspaper! And if you have a steady drumbeat of people talking about someone's innocence in a wide variety of publications going from, you know, the politically right New York Post to the politically left Village Voice, the judges are going to say hey, maybe there's something going on here. And remember all of us feel very-- worried about the possibility that an innocent person may be behind bars.
MIKE PESCA:When all this is over and we evaluate the job that reporters did, can we say that the journalism was bad if Schwarz is innocent and those stories helped to free him?
JEFFREY TOOBIN: Well I don't think I could make such a harsh judgment about, you know, good journalism and bad. You know my, my-- concern about those stories is that they were really one-sided in their presentation of the facts and that there, there was a lot of evidence for Schwarz's guilt that was simply neglected or pl-- d-- played down because Ron Fischetti did such a skillful job of selling his client's innocence.
MIKE PESCA: Jeffrey, thank you very much.
JEFFREY TOOBIN: My pleasure.
MIKE PESCA: Jeffrey Toobin is a staff writer for the New Yorker and legal analyst for CNN. [MUSIC]
Freedom in 30 Seconds
July 5, 2002
MIKE PESCA: We're back with On the Media. I'm Mike Pesca.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And I'm Brooke Gladstone. Coming this week to a TV near you, commercials for freedom. [CLIP FROM COMMERCIAL PLAYS]
MAN 1: But personally I am just so sick and tired of these taxes!
MAN 2: [SOTTO VOCE] Why do you always do this?
MAN 1: You know every time you get a paycheck now most of it goes straight to the government.
MAN 2: [SOTTO VOCE] Hey, keep it down -- you want somebody to hear you?
MAN 1: I'm just saying -- I'm the one who's making the money and I have no say-so--
MAN 2: [SOTTO VOCE] I know what you're saying --just calm down! Do you want 'em to ruin your life? They can do that you know.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: The tag line reads: What if America wasn't America? Freedom. Appreciate it, cherish it, protect it. The freedom ads come to us from the Ad Council which over the past 60 years has created such advertising icons as Smokey the Bear, McGruff the Crime Dog and even Rosie the Riveter for public awareness campaigns. Phil Dusenberry [sp?] has volunteered to direct the Freedom Campaign. He is a 40 year veteran of the ad industry who can list among his credits the Michael Jackson Choice of a New Generation ads for Pepsi and the Morning in America campaign spots for President Ronald Reagan. He is on the line from Clyde Park [sp?], Montana. Welcome to the show.
PHIL DUSENBERRY: Good morning.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: So the Ad Council was initially created to help out the advertising industry after the Depression, but then after the attack on Pearl Harbor it changed into the War Advertising Council and it was hugely successful in selling war bonds. What exactly are your ads intended to sell?
PHIL DUSENBERRY: Well right after 9/11 there was this upsurge of patriotism in America and perhaps stronger than we've seen in quite some years, but over time that sense has waned a little bit because other things come into play and people let this blessing we have, which is called freedom, flip to the back of their mind. And the idea of this campaign is to, is to really re-instill a sense of what American freedom is all about.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:One of the defining features of the Ad Council's previous campaigns was that the message was very clear -- they taught us how to prevent forest fires and why we shouldn't litter and to cross at the corner. Maybe it's because the freedom ads are addressing an idea rather than an action, but some of them seem rather abstract!
PHIL DUSENBERRY: Yeah. You're absolutely right. Most advertising is designed to sell a product, a service, a brand. In this particular case, this advertising's - is asking people to feel something.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Could you talk us through the one that's called "Choice?"
PHIL DUSENBERRY:Well what we're seeing in this particular case is, is a camera going down a supermarket aisle past hundreds and hundreds of those myriad products that we look at every day-- [SOUND FROM CHOICE COMMERCIAL PLAYS UNDER] and it talks about competition just in some title form. And then it lets us know that freedom brings choice -- the freedom for you to choose whatever product you wish.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: I did think that at least in that one particular ad equating freedom with wide consumer choice seemed to be an odd choice.
PHIL DUSENBERRY:Well the fact is, if you walk down a supermarket aisle and you look at this array of products, you, you're realizing that we have this incredible choice! And you know what? Many countries don't have that choice, and that's one of the things that this campaign is hoping to communicate -- that freedom is something that isn't necessarily unique to any other country in the way that it is unique to us.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Can a 30 second spot explain to Americans what shouldn't need explaining? Shouldn't we already know what our fundamental values are?
PHIL DUSENBERRY: Well we should, but you know -- we--unfortunately take for granted so many of the things that we're blessed with in this country. Freedom is one of them. We accept it. But until something like 9/11 happens we don't think much about it.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: In one of the ads we see a boy in a library asking for a book. [CLIP FROM COMMERCIAL PLAYS]
BOY: Excuse me. I can't seem to find these anywhere.
FEMALE LIBRARIAN: Huh! [TYPING ON COMPUTER KEYPAD] These books are no longer available.
BOY: I didn't know.
FEMALE LIBRARIAN: May I have your name please?
BOY: Why?! [OMINOUS MUSIC]
MAN: Excuse me -- if you'll just come this way please--
BOY: What did I do?!
MAN: We just have a couple of questions-- [A STRUGGLE ENSUES] Easy! Easy!--
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Now Phil it was here that a certain queasiness that I felt watching this campaign seemed to crystalize and, and this is why: because I remember an interview we did a few months ago with the head of government relations for the American Library Association and she was concerned because under the Patriot Act passed right after September 11th the FBI was empowered to seize book sales and library checkout records and the book sellers and the librarians were barred from saying anything about it -- they were placed under a sort of perpetual gag order. So when I saw the ads, it struck me that it's possible that the American people are more likely to see their freedoms undermined by the actions of their own government than by some sort of Islamic fundamentalist revolution in this country!
PHIL DUSENBERRY: Well, look -- first of all our commercial and, and what you just described are purely a coincidence, and we're using just simply a drama to say you know -- what if America wasn't America -- this is what it might be like folks!
BROOKE GLADSTONE:A lot of the discussion after 9/11 and after passage of the Patriot Act is what if America isn't quite what it is right now, because it's under threat -- because people can have their library records rifled through and never know about it.
PHIL DUSENBERRY: Well, I don't know. I mean the advertising you know can only go so far and only be used in such a way as to remind people of - make them appreciate what we have. It can't really cross any line into, you know, anything that's more concrete.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Phil Dusenberry, thank you very much.
PHIL DUSENBERRY: Thank you.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Phil Dusenberry is the director of the Ad Council's new Freedom Campaign, coming this week to a TV near you. The World’s Flags Rated
July 5, 2002
MIKE PESCA: For 10 months and especially this past Thursday we've seen the stars and stripes flapping on every flagpole from Philadelphia to Fresno. It may then surprise you to know that Old Glory rates only a C plus from flag critic Josh Parsons. Parsons is a post doctoral fellow in philosophy at Saint Andrew's College in Scotland. So how does that make him an expert? It doesn't. But in addition to being a post doctoral fellow, he's a flag-loving fellow to the extent that he has awarded every flag of the world a letter grade and posted it on his very detailed web site. Josh Parsons, welcome to OTM.
JOSH PARSONS: Thanks.
MIKE PESCA: Could you go through some of the hard and fast rules you employ?
JOSH PARSONS: One of the general rules is not putting writing on flags. Some flags have the whole name of the country on the flag. I don't like maps of the country either -- for basically the same reason. The general rule is not putting representational pictures on flags. A lot of people put pictures of animals like lions and sheep and things, but I was very struck by the number of flags that have pictures of weapons on them!
MIKE PESCA: And some flags, like Sri Lanka, have pictures of animals holding a weapon.
JOSH PARSONS: That's true.
MIKE PESCA: What about stars?
JOSH PARSONS:Yes, well I like stars, but a lot of people like to put stars on flags, and some people have the attitude that if one is good, two must be better and 50 must be just right!
MIKE PESCA: So I see, yeah, you're pretty consistent. I see you give an A grade to many flags with just one star.
JOSH PARSONS: Yeah.
MIKE PESCA: North Korea, Cuba, Turkey, Israel of course has the Star of David--
JOSH PARSONS: Yep.
MIKE PESCA: -- Somalia, Vietnam and Pakistan has a crescent moon and a star. All get A's.
JOSH PARSONS:Yes. One thing I like about the flag I ranked best, the Gambia, was it represents something about the history and the geography of the country without being of course a map. [LAUGHS] It's a bit like a tricolor. It's got a-- a blue line in the middle and then above that a red part and below a green part. What it represents is the River Gambia which is what most of the Gambia is.
MIKE PESCA:So in order for you to appreciate that enough to give it your only A plus, you had to know a little bit about Gambia. But some of these flags that you've failed -- do you know enough about the countries to sufficiently give an adequate grade?
JOSH PARSONS: I did want to just grade the flags on their aesthetic merits because it would be a bit hard to go in for historical importance. I think in the case of the Gambia it's already a beautiful flag, and it's also hooked up with the geography of the country.
MIKE PESCA:Maybe this inclination, though laudable, led you to give unfair grades to countries like Swaziland because while it's true that they do have weapons, when you take into their--account their history of being entirely engulfed by South Africa, maybe you could read that defiance as brave and inspiring.
JOSH PARSONS: That's true, and-- I was initially reluctant to mark down those countries for having weapons on their flags, but I felt that I had to in all consistency.
MIKE PESCA: Did you get much international reaction, even indignation over your letter grades?
JOSH PARSONS: Oh, yes, I certainly do. I get a lot of e-mails.
MIKE PESCA: Who objects the most?
JOSH PARSONS: I'm afraid to say people from the U.S.
MIKE PESCA:[LAUGHS] Let me anticipate a letter that we're sure to get. Dear On the Media, you've ruined my July 4th weekend. In this post 9/11 world do we really need these supposedly clever jibes about the design of a flag being too busy? Our flag means a lot more than 13 stripes and 50 stars, and you and your guest would do well to remember that people have fought and died for the principle it stands for. What do you say to that letter writer?
JOSH PARSONS: People have written me letters like that, and I think that being able to laugh at the symbol of a country in a friendly way is an important way of kind of combatting the excesses of nationalism.
MIKE PESCA:I guess no one's ever thought to put a big picture of their leader on a flag. I could see Mobutu Sese Seko trying something like that. [LAUGHTER] You probably wouldn't like that, would you?
JOSH PARSONS: No, I, I definitely wouldn't like that. Actually I wonder about who designed Libya's flag. I think Qaddafi would probably be into putting pictures of himself on the flag if he could.
MIKE PESCA:Well it's interesting that you bring up Libya, because I would have failed Libya, because Libya's flag is simply a sea of green. But you gave it a B.
JOSH PARSONS: I can understand why you'd fail it. One feels that the designers of Libya's flag really weren't trying.
MIKE PESCA: I'd at least give it an incomplete.
JOSH PARSONS: Mmmmmmm. Yes. But they've certainly gone for simplicity, and they've also done something that no one else has dared to do, and I think they deserve to be rewarded for thinking of doing that when it's really something that's so obvious -- to have a flag that's just one color.
MIKE PESCA: You didn't evaluate the UN flag itself --light blue - has a map - that's points off -what do you think you'd give it?
JOSH PARSONS: It has a map on it, does it?
MIKE PESCA: Yeah, it has a map of the whole world.
JOSH PARSONS: Yeah. I don't think it would do well. Though it's kind of hard to know what the UN would put on a flag.
MIKE PESCA: Maybe they could counterintuitively put a picture of Mobutu Sese Seko!
JOSH PARSONS: Yes! That's a possibility.
MIKE PESCA: Josh, thanks very much.
JOSH PARSONS: Thank you!
MIKE PESCA:Josh Parsons is a post doctoral fellow in philosophy at the University of Saint Andrew's. Because of its complex address his web site is best found via the link provided by onthemedia.org. Hispanic Media
July 5, 2002
[BLUEGRASS VERSION OF STAR SPANGLED BANNER]
BROOKE GLADSTONE: In the last decade, much of the South has been transformed by a steep rise in the Latino population, most of whom are total newcomers to this country. Media outlets in Texas and South Florida have had many more years to figure out how to reach this emerging community, but in other places, editors and reporters are scrambling people they may not understand. From North Carolina, the state with the fastest-growing Latino population, Leda Hartman reports.
LEDA HARTMAN: Five years ago Julio Granados had a job working at a grocery store in Raleigh. Like many young Mexican immigrants, he was earning money to send back home, and like many, he was here illegally. One day Granados told his story to a reporter from the Raleigh News and Observer. Two weeks after the piece came out, the Immigration and Naturalization Service deported him.
NED GLASCOCK: It was a beautiful story. It just gave too many details.
LEDA HARTMAN: That's Ned Glascock, a News and Observer reporter who remembers the incident well.
NED GLASCOCK: It had a front page Sunday photograph of the young man, where he worked, his full name, the hours that he worked, and people called up the INS and asked them to do their job and, and they obliged.
LEDA HARTMAN: The state's Latino leaders were outraged, while the Latino working class developed a deep distrust of reporters that lasted for years. It's not a newspaper's job to protect illegal immigrants or to get them deported, but the fact that a respected mid-size daily couldn't foresee this story's impact highlights how hard it is to cover an unfamiliar community. Here's how reporter Ned Glascock handled it in Durham.
NED GLASCOCK: I kind of approached it like being a foreign correspondent.
LEDA HARTMAN: Glascock, who speaks Spanish, spent 6 months working on a groundbreaking series that depicted the immigration pipeline from a village in rural Mexico to Durham and the effect that immigration had on both places.
NED GLASCOCK: I thought, well I'm not going to Mexico for this storyline, but I'm going to go to Mexico in Durham, North Carolina. You go in with fresh eyes, you go into a new community and you kind of bring back and tell the old community what it's all about.
LEDA HARTMAN: He got beyond using the usual suspects by knocking on people's doors, gaining their trust, and waiting until he was well into the story before taking out his notebook.
NED GLASCOCK: And in fact the story that I found was one that the leadership didn't really know about. I mean know knew about except the people who were living the life.
LEDA HARTMAN: While Glascock wrote about immigrants in the News and Observer, the Durham Herald Sun wrote directly to them. The paper created a 16 page monthly tabloid in Spanish called "Nuestro Pueblo" with local news, sports, calendar listings and a community resource directory. Its editor, Mark Schultz, hopes Nuestro Pueblo will help draw future readers to the Herald Sun.
MARK SCHULTZ: It is positioning ourselves to better serve the growing Latino community so that when this community is ready to buy and English language newspaper, perhaps there'll be some loyalty there, and my hope, the hope of the company would be that they'd get the Herald Sun.
LEDA HARTMAN: For now, however, most immigrants are not ready to buy a newspaper written in English. In the lobby at "El Mandado," a big new "supermercado" in Raleigh, customers have a choice of half a dozen local Spanish language newspapers. All of them are less than 10 years old. Owner Marco Roldan says customers have been known to complain if the latest issues aren't there.
MARCO ROLDAN: Some of them are so demanding, because they wanted to have the last one. They know already, for example, "La Conexion," they know that it's coming out every week. When they see the old one there, they say, oh, what happened?
LEDA HARTMAN: The Spanish language papers are popular because they're the immigrants' best source of information where to get health care, how to enroll kids in school, the latest on immigration law. The papers are also unabashed advocates for the immigrant community, but it's not just altruism that explains their rise. When it comes to realizing the revenue potential involved in advertising to Latinos, the Spanish language media is way ahead of its mainstream counterparts. [CLIP OF SPANISH LANGUAGE RADIO PLAYS UNDER] "Que Pasa Carolina" [sp?] an aspiring Spanish language media conglomerate is a case in point. Co-owner Jose Isasi has done his share of market research, and it told him to expand his newspaper business into radio because the average Latino immigrant is a young working class man with a 5th grade education --someone who might not read much but who is a heavy radio listener. Now all Isasi needs is numbers -- a big enough audience to attract national advertisers.
JOSE ISASI: Really our long term plan is to have a serious newspaper and radio station from Atlanta to Washington, D.C. in each metropolitan area. We invested because we saw the long term view, okay, we saw that we could do it. Okay, we saw that ah -- it makes sense.
LEDA HARTMAN: It makes sense to the mainstream Winston-Salem Journal too. In fact the paper has formed an alliance with Que Pasa. The Journal prints the Que Pasa newspaper and provides occasional advice. In return, Que Pasa helps the Anglo paper advertise in the Latino community. Journal advertising director Bill Downey [sp?] says the paper would never have gained this kind of entree on its own, but he also says there are limits to the kind of editorial partnering the two companies can have.
BILL DOWNEY: We pride ourselves in the Anglo newspaper business, traditional English speaking newspaper business, as being impartial. I mean we just drum that into everybody --that's what we do. However the Hispanic media does not hold that same value. It's not that they have any less values or anything -- just different values --and they use their media in a different way, especially in this environment when, when they're the underdogs [LAUGHS] -- they're fighting for the 10 percent of the community. So to some degree I find their values admirable. However I would never advocate that we give up our values. So how do you merge those two is a fascinating question.
LEDA HARTMAN: In some communities that question of merging goes beyond the issue of journalistic ethics. In Durham where the Hispanic population jumped from 1600 to 16,000 in the last decade, Blacks and Latinos often compete for housing, jobs and other resources. One effort at easing the friction is a radio program sponsored by the Durham Human Relations Department called "Cinta Dominical" [sp?]. It airs on WNCU, the public radio station of North Carolina's Central University, one of the state's historically black universities. [CLIP FROM CINTA DOMINICAL PLAYS] The program includes local and international news, interviews and music from all over Latin America. It's primarily in Spanish, but sometimes the hosts interview English speakers and translate for them. At first some African-American listeners were upset when the program replaced a jazz show, but co-host Eduardo Perez and co-producer Gerard Farrow say over time the show has helped build connections between all three of Durham's communities -- white, African-American, and Latino.
EDUARDO PEREZ: Sometimes we receive calls from the English speakers just to know, to ask what is the name of that song?
GERARD FARROW: We are reaching out, you know, past just the Spanish-speaking community, and that's, you know, always a good thing when you can kind of bridge communities together. [MUSIC FROM CINTA DOMINICAL PLAYS]
LEDA HARTMAN: That bridge will be crucial in the future. According to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Latinos now comprise less than 4 percent of the nation's newsrooms, even though they're 12 percent of the population. The U.S. Census predicts that by 2050 Latinos will comprise one quarter of the population. Engaging with this emerging community and earning its trust will be one of the mainstream media's pressing challenges. For On the Media, I'm Leda Hartman in Durham, North Carolina.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Leda's report was produced in partnership with the Columbia Journalism Review.
MIKE PESCA: Coming up, Bob Garfield's a little bit country -- very little bit as it turns out.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: This is On the Media from NPR. Nashville Bob
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And I'm Brooke Gladstone. Some years back Bob Garfield, our vacationing co-host, had a speaking engagement in Nashville. Being an exquisitely sensitive person, he was seized by the vibrations emanating from the Grand Ol' Opry as well as visions of fortune and fame. This is what happened.
BOB GARFIELD:I was going to be in Nashville for a day and a half and my speaking gig wasn't going to tie me up for long, so I figured while I'm in town why not just write a hit country song and get it cut by a major recording star. I mean -- I am a writer. I live in a country. How hard could it be? [CLIP OF COUNTRY SONG PLAYS]
ASHLEY CLEVELAND: [SINGING] LOVELY LILY, HEAD SO FAIR HAZEL EYES, GOLDEN HAIR CLIMB THE BRANCHES OF YOUR FAMILY TREE YOUR MAMA'S ROOTS ARE IN TENNESSEE--
BOB GARFIELD: So I did what most aspiring musicians do as soon as they hit Nashville -- I found my way to the Bluebird Cafe. Open mic nights there have launched the careers of Garth Brooks, Vince Gill, Mary Chapin-Carpenter and more guitar-playing songwriters than you can shake a pick at. They duck in from the rain and sing about their pain -- (you might say if you were a professional songwriter, such as myself) -- displaying their charms for Opryland's waiting arms.
ASHLEY CLEVELAND: [SINGING] TENNESSEE-- TENNESSEE--
BOB GARFIELD: Singer/songwriter Ashley Cleveland was born and raised up just down the road a piece -- an advantage I don't have. I was born in Philadelphia and live in Washington. In other words -- I'm an outsider -- which suddenly struck me as a potential impediment to overnight fame and fortune. But just as I started fretting about possibly being too Washington for Nashville, who should I run into but former Governor Lamar Alexander who ran an entire presidential campaign bragging about being just the right amount of Nashville for Washington. Naturally, I asked him for advice.
BOB GARFIELD:My problem is I'm an inside-the-beltway kind of guy. I'm exactly what you ran against. Can I make it here in Nashville as an outsider any better than you made it in Washington that way?
LAMAR ALEXANDER: You, you've got to-- you've got to feel it. [LAUGHTER] But you can feel it from wherever you came from. [LAUGHS]
BOB GARFIELD: Even inside the beltway.
LAMAR ALEXANDER: You've got more to overcome than most people. [LAUGHTER]
BOB GARFIELD: Maybe he was looking at my blue blazer and penny loafers. But proprietor Amy Kurland told me to pay talk like that no mind. She's seen plenty of city slickers succeed and plenty of country boys with cowboy boots and big old hats squeezed by the business like a dip of snuff between your cheek and gum. All right, Miss Amy, I asked -- how do I mash that button of success? AMY KURLAND: Well something that -- creative that makes you different from the usual trite "come-into-my-arms-with-your-charms - I've got pain because - and I'm in the rain" -- you don't want to be saying that. You want to be a little more original than that. My fav--personal favorite them in country music is I'm a guy which makes me really dumb and now that my woman has pointed it out to me, I'm going to be better, and -- cause I really, really love her. That, that's a fine them in country music and one that sells all the time.
RIVERS RUTHERFORD: Honesty -- that's what it takes to write a country song. You've got to make yourself vulnerable and do it in a way in which you're telling the truth for people. Tell 'em what you really feel.
BOB GARFIELD:Meet Rivers Rutherford, an up and coming young songwriter who splits his time between Whistler's Music, [sp?] a sophisticated commercial music production house on Music Row, and MCA Music Nashville, one of the big song publishers in town. Rivers and I would write our hit song together. It turns out that hardly anyone writes alone in Nashville. They team up, swinging from partner to partner in a sort of literary square dance. This was particularly convenient for me inasmuch as I can neither sing nor play an instrument. Also in terms of the themes that pervade country music, Rivers' Memphis upbringing was sure to complement my very substantial experience with big business, government and Judaism -- or so I thought. Now Rivers is extremely talented and a very nice guy but frankly a little difficult to work with. We only had one day -- yet still he categorically rejected my first two ideas -one about falling in love with a lonesome cowgirl at a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee and the other about raising the younguns -- it had a catchy lyric-- PAPA DIDN'T RAISE YOU TO BE NO FOOL-- YOU'D BEST GET INTO A MAGNET SCHOOL. -- but Rivers didn't bite. And he was at best half-hearted in trying to put a melody to my song about those losers in the '83 Camaros who cut me off on the beltway because it's the only place on earth where they feel in control.
RIVERS RUTHERFORD: [SINGING w/GUITAR] THERE YOU RUNNING ON THERE [...?...] RUNNING BEHIND FASTER YOU RUN THE LESS THAT YOU FIND BUT I THINK A BIG [...?...]'S THE VERY WORST KIND RUNNING, RUNNING, RUNNING AWAY FROM YOU.
RIVERS RUTHERFORD: I gotta be honest with you -- I'm looking at the lyrics -- I think it's a little bit of a -you want to write a hit country song--
BOB GARFIELD: Yeah, and I'm running out of time.
RIVERS RUTHERFORD:Okay. [LAUGHS] Yeah, we are running out of time on that aren't we. This is probably not going to get you a number one song in the short amount of time you got. The best thing to do is find a simpler idea, I would say. [LAUGHS] You know what I'm saying?
BOB GARFIELD:Oh, I knew all right! He was feeling threatened by the new kid on the block, by my rare insight into human behavior, by my tenderness, by my stunning command of-- what do you call it -- you know -- words. And most of all, my capacity for plagiarizing Jackson Browne. Professional jealousy is never pretty so I just let him natter on.
RIVERS RUTHERFORD: Another slant on it would be to say basically that instead of running from these demons, what if the demon is just trying too hard or being too busy.
BOB GARFIELD: Okay, wait, wait, wait -- what about this-- everyone's so busy -- now they're running behind -- what if-- what if - you ever have a conversation with somebody you can't have because you're calling their voice mail and they're calling your voice mail--
RIVERS RUTHERFORD: Right. Phone tag. [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
BOB GARFIELD: -- and then you-- Phone tag - and you know at the end - by the end of it you're just saying tag, you're it, right?
RIVERS RUTHERFORD: Okay.
BOB GARFIELD: So what if - what if there were a relationship building in an exchange of voice mail messages and the whole song was just this exchange of voice mail messages and the hook was Tag, You're It.
BOB GARFIELD:Well come to think of it, why not a song about telephone tag with your sweetheart? It's a common experience, harvested from my own life completely consistent with my inside-the-beltway sensibilities and just as the proprietor of the Bluebird Cafe suggested, it could be about a clueless guy who treats his woman wrong until she slaps him upside the head and gets him back on the road to love.
RIVERS RUTHERFORD: [SINGING w/GUITAR] JUST CALLING TO LET YOU KNOW I GOT YOUR MESSAGE -- UM-- I GOT YOUR MESSAGE-- A WHILE AGO-- IN MY SUITCASE BY THE DOOR AND NOW-- SUITCASE IN MY HAND 6 O'CLOCK THIS MORNING I HADN'T TALKED TO YOU IN A COUPLE DAYS [...?...] CHECKING ALL MY CALLS-- 7 MESSAGES, YOURS WAS LAST OF ALL--
BOB GARFIELD: Yeah, I mean what - what if it tells a story -what story can we tell on the basis of two people who are just like-- electronic ships passing in the night? [LAUGHTER]
RIVERS RUTHERFORD: [SINGING w/GUITAR] DON'T KNOW, KNOW, KNOW DARLIN' I MISS YOU--
BOB GARFIELD: Sort of -- yeah-- I LOVE YOU-- I think you should leave the-- TAG, YOU'RE IT CALL ME WHEN YOU CAN SOMETHING, SOMETHING, SOMETHING, I'M A BUSY MAN--
RIVERS RUTHERFORD: [SINGING w/GUITAR] TAG, YOU'RE IT CALL ME WHEN YOU CAN--
BOB GARFIELD: All told it took us about 6 hours, and I don't mind telling you I was dripping with satisfaction like gravy over hot biscuits. All we had to do now was play the song for his publisher, Jody Williams, president of MCA Music Nashville. Then it would be demo'd and then shopped to likely artists -- Garth Brooks, Willie Nelson, what have you -- and my career would be launched even as I boarded the 6:05 p.m. flight back to Washington. Rivers was a little less enthused than I was in the very narrow sense that he thought upon further reflection that a song about telephone tag was pretty stupid and unlikely ever to be recorded much less hit the charts. And Williams, before he sat down to hear the thing, was none too encouraging either.
JODY WILLIAMS: The numbers are against you tremendously in this business. A thousand songs a day get written in this town. Two percent of those songs get recorded. Not 10 percent. 2 percent. Sometimes it's, it's supposed to work like this -- the best song wins. It doesn't always work like that. There are politics involved. There are people doing people favors.
BOB GARFIELD:Politics? Favors?! For this I left Washington? Whatever happened to just being an artist and succeeding on your God-given talent? Tell you what, Jody -- I don't need any political connections to make it in this town. Just listen to the song. Just listen to Tag, You're It.
RIVERS RUTHERFORD: [SINGING w/GUITAR] HELLO, I'M SORRY DARLIN/ I MISSED YOUR CALL AGAIN IF YOU'DA TRIED AT 10 TO 5 I MIGHT HAVE SQUEEZED YOU IN I REALLY WANT TO REACH YOU BUT TIME IS KIND OF TIGHT I LOVE YOU, HON BUT I GOTTA RUN, SO KISS THE KIDS GOODNIGHT TAG, YOU'RE IT CATCH ME IF YOU CAN I'D LOVE TO SAY I LOVE YOU BUT I'M SUCH A BUSY MAN I KNOW WE'LL REACH EACH OTHER IT'S JUST A QUESTION WHEN I'M CALLING YOU BUT I CAN'T GET THROUGH SO TRY ME BACK AGAIN IN REFERENCE TO YOUR VOICE MAIL AND GIRL I MISS YOU TOO YOU'RE QUITE CORRECT WE SHOULD CONNECT THE WAY WE USED TO DO I'LL TRY TO SHOW THAT I STILL KNOW WHAT LOVING REALLY MEANS LOOK FOR SOMETHING SPECIAL, HON ACROSS YOUR FAX MACHINE TAG, YOU'RE IT CATCH ME IF YOU CAN I'D LOVE TO SAY I LOVE YOU BUT I'M SUCH A BUSY MAN I KNOW WE'LL REACH EACH OTHER IT'S JUST A QUESTION WHEN I'M CALLING YOU BUT I CAN'T GET THROUGH SO TRY ME BACK AGAIN JUST TURNED MY COMPUTER ON FOUND THE E-MAIL THAT YOU SENT S.O.S. - I'M IN DISTRESS NEED ACKNOWLEDGMENT YOU SAID OUR SHIP WAS SINKING BUT THE METAPHOR AIN'T RIGHT CAUSE WE'RE NOT SHIPS JUST MICROCHIPS PASSING IN THE NIGHT TAG, THAT'S IT! [SEE ?] ME IF YOU CAN I'M HERE TO SAY I LOVE YOU AND I'M SUCH A FOOLISH MAN WE HAVEN'T TOUCHED EACH OTHER SINCE I DON'T REMEMBER WHEN HANG UP [...?...] COMING HOME [...?...] TAKE ME BACK AGAIN.
BOB GARFIELD: The president of MCA Music Nashville had just heard our song about telephone tag and for a moment he just sat there, quietly stunned.
JODY WILLIAMS: I've never heard that idea before.
BOB GARFIELD: Judging from the look in his eyes, I don't reckon he ever needed to hear it again. I was hoping for him to get a blank contract out, but instead he and Rivers went back and forth on how the song could be re-written.
JODY WILLIAMS: A guy who's just busy -- I mean have a mid-tempo song or have a ballad saying our, our lives are -- you know - this is ridiculous, you know? And start sympathizing with each other. I don't think it's-- [...?...] new hook cause Tag, You're It ain't gonna [...?...] at all.
RIVERS RUTHERFORD: Tag, You're It ain't gonna do it.
BOB GARFIELD: Ain't gonna do it?! TAG, THAT'S IT! BELIEVE ME IF YOU CAN IF I THOUGHT I WAS A SONGWRITER, I'M SUCH A FOOLISH MAN Just like that, my dreams of more than 30 hours were crushed. I guess Lamar was right after all.
ECHOES OF LAMAR ALEXANDER'S VOICE: You've got more to overcome than most people. [ECHOING LAUGHTER] You've got more to overcome than most people. [ECHOING LAUGHTER]
BOB GARFIELD: Later, as he was packing me off to the airport, Rivers spoke to me as if I were Dorothy and he were the Good Witch of the South. He could have told me that playing that song for Jody Williams would get me sent back to Washington -- but I had to find out for myself.
BOB GARFIELD: At what point did you just completely lose hope in this--?
RIVERS RUTHERFORD:I think the-- at the point when you said something about-- you know we could write a song about, about phone tag -- that's when the, the hope pretty much flew out of the window for me. [CLIP OF PATSY CLINE SINGING "CRAZY" PLAYS]
PATSY CLINE: [SINGING] CRAZY I'M CRAZY FOR FEELING SO LONELY I'M CRAZY CRAZY FOR FEELING BLUE--
BOB GARFIELD: Yeah, Patsy -- I must have been out of my mind to think I could pull this off.
PATSY CLINE: [SINGING] CRAZY FOR FEELING SO BLUE--
BOB GARFIELD: I can't get a record cut any more than Reba McIntire can do a 5-part series on health care reform. But as I sat in my airplane set, dejected, I couldn't help but notice someone familiar sitting across the aisle. It was someone who knew not only the inside of the beltway but the epicenter -- the ultimate Washingtonian -- and yet someone equally rooted in the cultures and rhythms of the rural South. I traded seats with the Secret Service Agent next to him and asked Jimmy Carter about his taste in music.
JIMMY CARTER: Do I listen to a country music station? Well in Americus, Georgia and I listen to a whole gamut of country music.
BOB GARFIELD: Is it possible do you suppose to bring a Washington sensibility to country music?
JIMMY CARTER: I'd be amazed.
BOB GARFIELD: Okay, well then I just want to play this for you -- would you just listen to this?
JIMMY CARTER: Sure.
BOB GARFIELD: Okay, thanks.
BOB GARFIELD: Whereupon the former President of the United States strapped on my headphones and listened to my song, flashing his famous toothy grin and, if I'm not mistaken, tapping his toe securely beneath the seat in front of him.
BOB GARFIELD: So what do you think?
JIMMY CARTER:I think the song is good, and the music's good. I'd like to hear it every now and then on my country radio station, and-- you know you might get in touch with -- I'm not - I think the performer's very good but-- if somebody like Willie Nelson or Tom T. Hall is one of my best buddies-- I think they would like it and they could give you some good advice.
BOB GARFIELD: With your compliments?
JIMMY CARTER: Of course, sure!
BOB GARFIELD: I'll see you at the Country Music Awards, Mr. President.
BOB GARFIELD:Upright bass, Dave Pomeroy; Robbie Turner on dobro, Tom Rody on drums, Aubrey Heaney on fiddle, [sp?] Rivers Rutherford on vocals and acoustic guitar and -- ladies and gentlemen --Mr. Willie Nelson.
WILLIE NELSON: [SINGING w/BAND & BACKUP VOCALS] HELLO, I'M SORRY DARLIN I MISSED YOUR CALL AGAIN IF YOU'DA TRIED AT 10 TO 5 MIGHT HAVE SQUEEZED YOU IN I REALLY WANT TO REACH YOU BUT TIME IS KIND OF TIGHT I LOVE YOU, HON BUT I GOTTA RUN, SO KISS THE KIDS GOODNIGHT TAG, YOU'RE IT CATCH ME IF YOU CAN I'D LOVE TO SAY I LOVE YOU BUT I'M SUCH A BUSY MAN I KNOW WE'LL REACH EACH OTHER IT'S JUST A QUESTION WHEN I'M CALLING YOU BUT I CAN'T GET THROUGH SO TRY ME BACK AGAIN IN REFERENCE TO YOUR VOICE MAIL AND GIRL I MISS YOU TOO YOU'RE QUITE CORRECT WE SHOULD CONNECT THE WAY WE USED TO DO I'LL TRY TO SHOW THAT I STILL KNOW WHAT LOVING REALLY MEANS LOOK FOR SOMETHING SPECIAL, HON ACROSS YOUR FAX MACHINE TAG, YOU'RE IT CATCH ME IF YOU CAN I'D LOVE TO SAY I LOVE YOU BUT I'M SUCH A BUSY MAN I KNOW WE'LL REACH EACH OTHER IT'S JUST A QUESTION WHEN I'M CALLING YOU BUT I CAN'T GET THROUGH SO TRY ME BACK AGAIN
WILLIE NELSON: Take it, boys! [INSTRUMENTAL]
BOB GARFIELD: I'm Bob Garfield. Goodbye, Darlin'.
MIKE PESCA: That's it for this week's show. On the Media was produced by Janeen Price and Katya Rogers with Sean Landis; engineered by Dylan Keefe and George Edwards, and edited by Brooke. We had help from Dan Bobkoff. Our web master is Amy Pearl.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Arun Rath is our senior producer and Dean Capello our executive producer. Bassist/composer Ben Allison wrote our theme. We'd like to welcome the newest member of the OTM family, WFPL of Louisville, Kentucky. This is On the Media from NPR. I'm Brooke Gladstone.
MIKE PESCA: And I'm Mike Pesca.
WILLIE NELSON: [SINGING WITH BAND & BACKUP VOCALS] TAG, THAT'S IT! LEAVE ME IF YOU CAN I'M HERE TO SAY I LOVE YOU AND I'M SUCH A FOOLISH MAN WE HAVEN'T TOUCHED EACH OTHER SINCE I DON'T REMEMBER WHEN HANG UP THE PHONE I'M COMING HOME IF YOU'LL TAKE ME BACK AGAIN. HANG UP THE PHONE I'M COMING HOME IF YOU'LL TAKE ME BACK AGAIN.
- Back to story:
- July 5, 2002
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A Week of Scandals, Catholic Whistleblowers, and More
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The Mayor of Toronto Would Prefer Not to Discuss Whether He Smokes Crack
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Conservative Bloggers Vindicated, Advice for Leakers, and More
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Catholic Whistleblowers
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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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OTM Staff Picks, Volume 52
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Qapla!
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Brooke Gladstone + Cyndi Lauper
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The Three-Headed Scandal Monster
