Rummy to Staff: Stop Leaking!
July 19, 2002
BROOKE GLADSTONE: From WNYC in New York this is NPR's On the Media. I'm Brooke Gladstone.
BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield. In an internal memo released to Congress this week Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld inveighed against leaks to the press. He said they cost "the lives of Americans" and diminished, quote, "our country's chance for success" in the war on terror. Rumsfeld's memo followed reports in the New York Times written by Eric Schmitt that outlined in surprising detail plans for a future U.S. invasion of Iraq. We're joined by Scott Armstrong, founder of the National Security Archive and occasional OTM "leakologist." Scott, welcome back to the show.
SCOTT ARMSTRONG: It's good to be here, Bob.
BOB GARFIELD: All right, you've seen Secretary Rumsfeld's July 12th memo. What do you make of it?
SCOTT ARMSTRONG: July 12th - Rumsfeld is sending around to his senior staff a reminder to get your people under control -- the classified information is not to be leaked - the impact of leaks can have major consequences. It was attached to a CIA memo that was written in the middle of June which he'd seen in the middle of June. That memo dealt with Al Qaeda and the fact that Al Qaeda makes use of information it reads in the press in defeating counterterrorism and counterintelligence activities of the government. If that had been the critical point, it would have been circulated by Rumsfeld in the middle of June. It wasn't. It was in the middle of July, and it was because of that Schmitt article that occurred on July 5th. That article on the 5th bothered him, but he couldn't identify it specifically -- at least not in an unclassified memo cause it would tend to confirm that article. So by sending this out in unclassified form, he was absolutely certain this would leak and get out in the press within 4 days -- and it did.
BOB GARFIELD: Was this story from the New York Times clearly leaked by the administration?
SCOTT ARMSTRONG:The July 5th story by Eric Schmitt was part of a sequence of stories that the New York Times and other newspapers have been doing about the debate on policy over what to do in Iraq inside the administration. Schmitt had previously done a story that was a back and forth between the Pentagon and the State Department and to a lesser extent the NSC about different strategies that they had. The story played fairly significantly in May as a kind of hawks versus doves scenario on Iraq. I think that was probably incorrect, and this story was an attempt by somebody inside the government to put the emphasis back on the fact that this is really a debate between hawks and hawks -- I'm again over-simplifying - but between people who want to do something about Iraq and they have very conventional ways of doing it -- surrounding them - toppling the regime with just sheer military power as opposed to a second plan which was to do something more-- subtle that involves special forces, involved taking out air defenses, involved more air strikes.
BOB GARFIELD:By getting involved in this games of "leaksmanship" and not actually writing the straightforward story as you've described it, are the media just being used by the government and the leakers within it?
SCOTT ARMSTRONG: The media is always used. It is in fact a "medium" of communications for the government, and what we forget is that most people in the government learn most of their sensitive national security information in context from the media -- not from internal reports. Congress-- their - the majority of their information comes to them through the press! They're, they're not - there aren't very many of them that are getting sensitive, classified briefings that are e-- at the level of what they would get by reading the daily newspaper. It is a -- not a game - it's just a process.
BOB GARFIELD:When reporters write stories that are based substantially on leaks, sanctioned or otherwise, should there be some sort of disclosure or disclaimer box that says that you are witnessing Kabuki Theatre. Please understand that things are not necessarily as they appear and don't jump to all the obvious conclusions?
SCOTT ARMSTRONG: There should be a disclosure in general that's understood by readers. I don't think [LAUGHS] you can write it out -- it would take too much of the, the front page of the paper to put it all in -- if you read the Schmitt article there are clues about the nature of the source. He's gone to some effort to not reveal what agency the source is from --"that's familiar with the document" -- which would lead me to believe that it may not be the Pentagon. If you say a Pentagon source gave it to you, that gives you a lot more suspects than somewhere else. So among the press and among certain people in government there is in fact a lexicon that - where we understand - we can kind of look up and say well this probably came from so and so or this reflects this argument. The problem is the readers aren't apprised of that and unless you're reading 4 or 5 newspapers and unless you have the time when you read 4 or 5 newspapers on a topic to go back and read the previous one or two months or maybe even longer period of coverage to find out why different reporters are reporting on different things, what the nature of their sources are, it's very difficult to put a value on it. It's very much like raw intelligence.
BOB GARFIELD:If there's, you know, 5 or 600 people inside the Beltway who can read the hieroglyphs and everybody else is just taking the stories at face value, is this kind of journalism, leak-based journalism, fundamentally a disservice to readers who are not getting the messages that are imbedded in the journalism?
SCOTT ARMSTRONG: When secrecy controls so much information, leak-based journalism is at once both the only [LAUGHS] way to get the information and a disservice, because it allows manipulation; it increases the value of any one bureaucrat's information -- because they can control what they let out -- and they can let the story out in various ways. The public doesn't necessarily understand that. You're right. It's up to the press and very difficult judgments are made. There's some times where you'll get a leaker; he's got the right information; and you won't publish it. You, you think there's something wrong here. You'll find out there's an internal dispute -- the person didn't get the promotion -- and you won't publish it. It's a very delicate balance. When, in moments like the War on Terrorism when people want to use that as an excuse to get that much more secrecy, sometimes appropriately, sometimes inappropriately, it's the most dangerous period for us because we're easily spun by any information we can get at all.
BOB GARFIELD: All right. Scott Armstrong, as always, thank you very much.
SCOTT ARMSTRONG: Thank you. Appreciate it.
BOB GARFIELD:Scott Armstrong is a Washington journalist and author, co-chair of a monthly dialogue between the media and the intelligence community on unauthorized disclosures and On the Media's occasional "leakologist." [MUSIC] Reporter Detained
July 19, 2002
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Plugging leaks is becoming a priority in every part of the executive branch. Earlier the State Department attracted a lot of press when it took an unusual action to maintain secrecy. After a press conference Friday before last a National Review reporter claiming to be holding a confidential document was prevented from leaving with it by armed security guards. That reporter did eventually get out of the building, and he joins us now. Joel Mowbray, welcome to On the Media.
JOEL MOWBRAY: Well glad to be here. Thank you.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Now it's safe to say that you weren't the most loved journalist at the State Department even before this incident. Your articles have been highly critical of State Department policy, specifically with regard to visas in Saudi Arabia.
JOEL MOWBRAY: Well what I've found over the course of several months, it was very disturbing, what I learned, and that was about a program called Visa Express in Saudi Arabia which is how 3 of the September 11th hijackers got in the country, even though they had never gone to a consulate or an embassy to get a visa. They submitted their applications to a travel agent, and we just found out now that the Inspector General had released numbers to Congress showing that in the first 3 months that Visa Express was in operation -- that's only from June 1st until 9/11 -- 97 percent of Saudi nationals who were issued visas got in without an interview at all.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Okay, so let's take us back to that fateful Friday you presented Press Secretary Richard Boucher [sp?] with a question which he didn't like at all.
JOEL MOWBRAY: What happened was there had been this cable that had been sent by the U.S. ambassador in Saudi Arabia. The subject line says it all: Request for Guidance on Termination of Visa Express -- in short, he wanted to end the program. Mr. Boucher brought up the contents of the cable. He said that earlier this week the ambassador had requested more resources, and so I said well specifically he asked for more resources to end the program formerly known as Visa Express and to interview all applicants, and he succinctly said, well no. And at that point I was a little frustrated because I had read through the entire cable, and I said [LAUGHS] well I have the cable.
MAN: Well I've read the cable too and I think if you read it carefully, even though it's confidential, if you happen to have it, you'll find that he's asking for resources, he's asking for consular people to go out there and that's what we're talking to him about. I do have to point out, sir, that you've written a lot of things and said a lot of things recently.
JOEL MOWBRAY: About 10 minutes later I was trying to leave, and he and I in the midst of-- in the middle of that had acrimonious exchange -- the press briefing was still going on, but I had to leave. So I walked out into the hallway, and there was a woman standing there with 4 armed guards. And I'm thinking this is because I'm relatively new to the building -- she wanted me to meet the security guards who were armed and in uniform so that they wouldn't give me a hard time the next time I come to the building. So I'm shaking their hands like I'm at a cocktail party, and I get ready to go and I say well if you excuse me, I have to leave. And she says that's not possible.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: So were you actually detained? The State Department won't go on the air with us, but officials there reportedly-- [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
JOEL MOWBRAY: Right.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: -- aren't convinced that you were.
JOEL MOWBRAY:Initially they said I wasn't detained. And then later they admitted I was detained, but at one point the plainclothes detective as part of the Diplomatic Security Service, he comes up to me -- I was making several calls on my cell phone to my lawyers, to National Review and to others-- and he said sir, you're blowing this way out of proportion! I said well am I being detained? Part of the notice here -- when you go to Georgetown Law and watch Law and Order every week, [LAUGHTER] you know you need to ask these questions. He said no. I said okay, I'm leaving. And he immediately steps right in front of me, and he says now you're being detained.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Oops. Now Joel, do you actually think there was a plot to harass you because of your reporting or do you think that the Diplomatic Security Service was just following order to keep all classified documents from leaving the building and that no one in Security reads your articles, and it could be a right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing situation.
JOEL MOWBRAY: They clearly know who I am -- particularly those people within the executive and administrative ranks of the Diplomatic Security Service and the people who make the decisions about sending people to detain others, etc. And the way in which I was detained too, I would find questionable, having 4 armed guards on me and another 4 armed guards at the exit. I'm not a big guy! I mean that's 8 [LAUGHS] guards to keep me from leaving the State Department.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Tell me what you know about the State Department's new efforts to plug leaks and track down whistleblowers. What have your leaking sources been telling you about what they can't do any more?
JOEL MOWBRAY: In the Bureau of Consular Affairs at the least, and I think they may try to implement this department-wide at State, it used to be that unclassified cables in particular and even confidential cables, that these would be printed out, just generally - with no one's name on it - nobody knowing who is actually seeing exactly what - and they would pass it around - people would take a look at it, and that, that was a nice way to spread information so you wouldn't have to line up at the central terminals. Well now, if you are someone in the State Department, if you're an employee, you have to go to a central server to log in to read the cables. You cannot have them printed out. And as a result, the State Department now knows what documents people are reading, what they're downloading and when.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: So things are a lot less convenient at State. Do you think it really helps plugging the leaks?
JOEL MOWBRAY:In fact I think it, it does just the opposite. I've had a number of people since Friday who have contacted me with information. I'm at the [LAUGHS] point now where I, I think I need an intern or something to [LAUGHTER] track down information for me cause I have so much of it coming in!
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Well thanks a lot.
JOEL MOWBRAY: Thank you for having me. I'm really glad to be here.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Joel Mowbray is a contributing editor to National Review on line.
BOB GARFIELD: Coming up, why the Brits aren't buying digital radio and copyright beware...unless you live in China.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: This is On the Media from NPR. British Digital Radio
July 19, 2002
BROOKE GLADSTONE: We're back with On the Media. I'm Brooke Gladstone.
BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield. The British national tendency or at least so the stereotype goes, is to prefer the old to the new. The nation has steadfastly dug in its feet with regard to the Euro, and like us but unlike the rest of Europe, insists on staying with Imperial Units of Measurement -- the mile and the foamy pint. Now Britain is trying to come to grips with the latest in radio technology -- digital radio. Here in the U.S. we get it on satellite through two new services called XM and Sirius. There's also a terrestrial system in the works called IBOC. As for users, the only number we have so far comes from XM which has already amassed 136,000 subscribers. So how is Britain getting on? Our London correspondent Gareth Mitchell reports. [MUSIC]
MALE
ANNOUNCER: ...change between the Metropolitan Line and the Bakaloo [sp?] and the Jubilee Line-- [STATION CHANGE]
MAN: ...this is my friend Dave--
MAN: Hello! [STATION CHANGE]
FEMALE
ANNOUNCER: ...well General Motors makes about 1900 Corsa cars a day, and... [MUSIC CHANGE]
GARETH MITCHELL: Digital radio in all its no-distortion, high-band-width, CD-quality sound glory -- that's what you hear if you take a quick sweep through the digital services on air at present. There's BBC Radio Six music, Bloomberg, One Word, Classic FM, Abracadabra for children and plenty more.
MIKE SPENCER: There are over 60,000 units in the UK in people's homes, and, and they are listening to digital radio.
GARETH MITCHELL: Mike Spencer is marketing director for the UK's Digital Radio Development Bureau. Funded by the BBC and commercial radio -- it's the mouthpiece for the UK's digital radio industry.
MIKE SPENCER: We're hoping by the end of this year that there'll be in excess of a hundred thousand units available to consumers. We think that that'll be encouragement enough then for some of the major manufacturers to come along and say hey, we want a bit of this action. There are not enough manufacturers making product yet.
SPORTS
ANNOUNCER:Here comes Tudor, and - oh, Pacenta [sp?] fails the bat there; it was short outside the [off stamp ?]. Wasn't a very good stroke...
GARETH MITCHELL: Cricket commentary on the BBC's new digital sports radio channel, one of 6 digital radio stations to be launched by the corporation this year. The way the BBC's television and radio is run is set out by Royal Charter, and the corporation is funded by a license fee --effectively a government-enforced tax of around 150 dollars per year -- compulsory for any UK television owner. Like its existing analog radio services, the BBC's new digital stations are funded through the license fee.
LINDSAY CORNELL: We're required to provide services for everybody, because of the way that we're funded, which is by a license fee. We really have to, you know, make sure that everybody in the UK gets services that they're interested in.
GARETH MITCHELL: Lindsay Cornell, head of digital radio at the BBC--
LINDSAY CORNELL: Digital radio offers us the opportunities to meet audiences that in the past perhaps we haven't served so well.
GARETH MITCHELL: Though the BBC is bringing a host of new digital services to air, they've been a long time coming -- especially as the corporation started launching the system in the UK way back in 1995. All seemed well then, but the BBC, the other broadcasters and manufacturers, couldn't agree on the best way to get on with it. Matt Wells, media correspondent at the UK's Guardian Newspaper takes up the story.
MATT WELLS: They couldn't agree on the sort of technology that would become the standard in Britain. So there was that, and then there was the whole technological issue of getting cheap marketable sets, and then they were deciding how the licenses would be awarded and how far the BBC would get involved. All that took time, and that is now beginning to come together, which is why everyone's now getting excited about it.
GARETH MITCHELL: And along the way the government, usually all too happy to intervene in media affairs, hasn't been that vigorous in pushing the new technology, though it has done its best to smooth the way by effectively subsidizing broadcasters who choose to go digital. Back at the Digital Radio Development Bureau, Mike Spencer says that as of July 2002, the equipment is getting out there, at last.
MIKE SPENCER: There are over 60,000 units in the UK in people's homes that they are - and they are listening to digital radio, and we're hoping and, what, we're in June now -- by the end of this year that there'll be in excess of a hundred thousand units available to consumers. And we know that there is demand. We've done research and people out there definitely want it, but there are not enough manufacturers making product yet.
GARETH MITCHELL: Well to really see how the digital radio revolution is taking off or not in this country, I've ventured on to the High Street, this is fairly typical High Street in a fairly typical area of North London, so I'm going to see if I can buy a digital radio in any of the several hi-fi shops along this street. Excuse me -- do you sell digital radios?
MAN: Nope. We don't.
GARETH MITCHELL: Are people coming in asking to buy them at all?
MAN: Not really. ---
GARETH MITCHELL: Excuse me, do you sell digital radios at all?
MAN: No, we don't.
GARETH MITCHELL: Why not?
MAN: Well-- mainly there's a lack of demand, and I think probably it's because of the price.
GARETH MITCHELL: Now Totland Court Road [sp?] is the place for consumer electronics in London. If I'm not going to find a digital radio here, I'm not going to find one anywhere. Do you sell digital radios?
MAN: We, we do-- we only do it-- as a full hi-fi separate. We don't do any portable ones.
GARETH MITCHELL: So you're talking about these self-contained hi-fi units and presumably they're quite expensive.
MAN: They are indeed. They retail around the 700 pound mark.
GARETH MITCHELL: Or a thousand dollars, something like that?
MAN: Yes. And you require a good aerial before you can use that anyway. People who come for the full size, once the price is mentioned, they do get put off.
GARETH MITCHELL: I'm not surprised! I wasn't going to hang around with price tags that steep. The digital radio tuner in question was the latest unit from Sony. Also on the market is the more accessively priced Video Logic at around 300 dollars. There's also the more portable but still quite bulky Pure [sp?] which cashes in at around 200 dollars. In all, apparently there are about 27 models on the market ranging from 150 dollars to way beyond a thousand. Even though it took me nearly a morning's shopping to find just one! Those elusive sub-100 pound sets are reportedly on their way within the next 4 months. Perhaps that'll be the crucial incentive to finally get people tuning in. After nearly 10 years, let's hope that the digital radio experience will turn out to be worth the wait. For On the Media this is Gareth Mitchell in London. Record Industry Sues YOU
July 19, 2002
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Here in the USA there's a continuing struggle between the recording industry and another new communications technology -- internet file-swapping services. Legal action effectively killed Napster and many of its brethren, but other less centralized music sharing services rose out of their ashes. Looking for a new solution, the Recording Industry Association of America now begins to move against the individuals who use those systems -- those inveterate music downloaders or as the RIAA might put it, freeloaders. Joining us for an update is NPR media and culture correspondent Rick Karr. Welcome back.
RICK KARR: It's a pleasure, as always, Brooke.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Okay. So does this mean that if I find a great song and I download it and send it to my baby sister, they could come after me with a subpoena?
RICK KARR: Well, I mean in theory they've always been able to do that. The record labels have always taken the position that this on-line use is not legitimate -- that it is in violation of copyright laws and-- they've said in the past the reason they haven't gone after individual users is because they found it easier and more efficient to go after companies that were setting up ways to make it easy to trade music on line.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: But I thought they couldn't come after you if you didn't make money off of it. I mean I've been making cassettes for years!
RICK KARR:That's the difference. And this is something that on-line activists are getting increasingly upset about. In the analog world, you absolutely have the right to make a cassette. The Audio Home Recording Act passed back in the late 1980s says hey, you have the right to do whatever you want with the CDs you buy -- make copies of them; give them to friends and family; give them to people --you're right -- as long as they're not making money, it's okay. But-- what the studios in the movie industry and the record companies in the record industry say is digital is different because you can make a copy of it, and it's a perfect copy, bit for bit. Doesn't get a little noisier like a cassette does every time. So they want to treat the digital world differently. There's a law on the books called The No Electronic Theft Act that basically makes it illegal to rip a lot of-- CDs into MP3 files and share them on your computer, and in fact a few people have been prosecuted under the No Electronic Theft Act.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: The -- I think the key expression there is "a lot" -- you have to take "a lot."
RICK KARR:These have been the people that they've gone after. For instance a student at Oklahoma State University who had thousands and thousands of MP3s on his computer that he was sharing over a Napster-like system. They've gone after sort of high-profile file-sharers like that. They haven't gone after individuals sending the one MP3 along because they realize that's -- that's a PR problem for them -- what business owner wants to sue his or her [LAUGHS] own customers?
BROOKE GLADSTONE: So then who is on their wanted list now?
RICK KARR:I've asked Hillary Rosen [sp?] from the Recording Industry Association point blank several times -- will you sue individual users? And she says well, we'd prefer not to have to do it but we reserve the right to.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: But if the recording industry knows where these file-swapping sites are, why bother going after the users at all?
RICK KARR:Well if, if we go back a few months when Napster was first starting to come off line over a year ago at this point, remember that one of the innovations that had come at that point was this service called Newtella [sp?]. Now the thing about Newtella is there's no company behind it. There's no central server. There's nobody you can sue to shut the whole network down at once. It's open-source software, so as one by one the commercial file-trading services -- Napster and Music City and Kazaa [sp?] go off line, either because they've run out of money or they've been sued out of existence or they've just agreed to go off line when threatened with legal action, more and more people go on to these open-source networks where there is no center.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:I guess the new wrinkle is there are some rumblings in Congress about it that may give the recording industry a little more muscle.
RICK KARR: What the record companies want is permission, essentially, under the law, to be able to go into these systems and mess with people! --put up files that are nonsense files; put up files that are silence; put up files where you hear 30 seconds of the song and then the artist saying Hey, why don't you go out and actually buy my record? [LAUGHTER]
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Is file-sharing really hurting the industry? We've been through this before, but there are some that say that file-sharing actually improves sales.
RICK KARR: We're, we're going to go through this forever and ever, and ever [LAUGHTER] because every time somebody trots out a study saying it hurts sales, somebody else trots out a study saying it helps sales. I mean yeah, record sales are down by more than 10 percent over the past couple of years. Is that because of file-sharing? My take on it is probably not because the people who are the most passionate file-sharers are also the people who buy the most music -- are the people who are most passionate about music. Why are record sales down? Well, you know, a lot of my friends who are critics say there haven't been any really great releases over the past couple of years. The other thing is that like the movie industry on -- you know in the movie industry they talk about the tent-pole picture, right? The one picture that props everything up in the middle of the summer. The record industry has moved in that direction, so that the release of a Brittany Spears album is the tent pole that props up the entire catalog from the label. Well what if people don't like it? [LAUGHTER] If people don't like it, they're not going to buy it, and the tent collapses. The one argument that you could make, I think reasonably, on behalf of the theory that the peer to peer systems are eroding the base of the business that the major labels have is this: kids have heard more music on the peer to peer systems than they've heard on the radio or coming out of the listening kiosks at most major record stores. They're hearing music that the studios and the radio conglomerates haven't wanted them to hear in order to prop up the tent poles -- to keep the tent poles going. But now you have these kids who are, you know, they get on line and they're 16 years old and they suddenly realize, hey, there are actually a lot of good records made in the '80s or the '70s or the '90s or there's a lot of good stuff on independent labels that I can't hear because my home town doesn't have a community or college radio station. So-- at the same time that the major labels are suffering, I know people who run independent labels who say, hey, aside from the fact that the economy's down a little bit, we're doing very well, thank you very much, because some kid in, you know, Minot [sp?], [LAUGHTER] you know, has heard my record -- who never would have heard it before because they heard it on a peer to peer system.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Rick Karr, once again, thanks very much.
RICK KARR: You're quite welcome, Brooke.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Rick Karr is the media and culture correspondent for NPR News. [MUSIC]
China's Harry Potter
July 19, 2002
BROOKE GLADSTONE: There is, practically speaking, no limit to copying in China where reproducing movies, manufacturing Rolexes or even fabricating would-be works of art is the norm. Case in point -- children in our hemisphere despair that J.K. Rowling is a year behind schedule completing Harry Potter's latest adventure. But kids in China no longer have to wait because Harry Potter and Leopard Walk Up to Dragon is available at kiosks and newsstands all over Beijing. Here's a brief quote from the gripping first chapter. "Harry is wondering in his bath how long it will take to wash away the creamy cake from his face. To a grown-up, handsome young man it is disgusting to have filthy dirt on his body. Lying in a luxurious bathtub and rubbing his face with his hands, he thinks about Dudley's face which is as fat as Aunt Petunia's bottom." Later, Harry gets drenched in a hot and sour soup rain and is turned into a dwarf, and his troubles really begin. Needless to say, this latest Potter book is a fake. Joining me now from his cellphone in Beijing is The Times of London China correspondent Oliver August. Thanks for coming on.
OLIVER AUGUST: Thank you.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: First of all how popular is the Harry Potter series in China?
OLIVER AUGUST: It's extremely popular. Actually, in Chinese they call it [HARRY POTTER IN CHINESE ACCENT] which is a sort of transliteration, and the launch of the first few titles 2 years ago got enormous coverage in the local press. The original release of the book in China had to be brought forward because the publishers discovered that pirates were already selling copies of the book they hadn't even published -- they had somehow gotten hold of it.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: So what happened when the fake 5th installment -- Harry Potter and Leopard Walk Up to Dragon -- hit the streets?
OLIVER AUGUST:Oh, people snapped it up. People, I assume, wouldn't really necessarily be able to tell the difference. The book has a picture of J.K. Rowling, the English author, on the back; it claims to have been published by the same publishing house as the previous ones, and to a parent keen to make his child happy, it would have seemed a very good present. And indeed it may still be a very good present!
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Where can you buy it? I know that the police are saying they don't want it in bookstores; they don't want it anywhere.
OLIVER AUGUST:You cannot buy it in bookstores, but then a lot of books in China are not sold necessarily in book shops. You can buy it on street corners, at little newspaper stands. Maybe somebody might put out a blanket on the sidewalk and just sell a few books and newspapers there. There are plenty of places to buy them.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Do you think the police are seriously trying to ferret out the piraters?
OLIVER AUGUST:I, I think they are seriously trying to stop counterfeiting in general in China which is an enormous problem where everything from Hollywood movies to airplane parts are, are being counterfeited -- sometimes with more serious consequences than with Harry Potter as you can imagine, but-- whether there are actually policemen going around the streets of Beijing trying to look for Harry Potter, well, it would be lovely to know but I guess we never really will.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: [LAUGHS] Have you read the book? We've only read the first couple of lines in translation from news reports. Is it any good?
OLIVER AUGUST:Not being a Harry Potter aficionado myself, it seemed put together in very short time. I think the writer probably didn't give himself quite as much time and inspiration as J.K. Rowling would have taken or is indeed taking whose book has been overdue for more than a year.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:But this certainly has a certain Chinese flavor to it which the originals don't -- for instance Harry is rained on with hot and sour soup before he turns into a dwarf.
OLIVER AUGUST: That's true, [LAUGHS] yes. It has some lovely Chinese touches. I actually think that the publisher of the original probably wouldn't be too unhappy about this. A) it shows that the book really is very successful as people are starting to copy it; and secondly is, you know, if it keeps the Harry Potter buzz going, then it will probably help them in the end when they bring out the real 5th one.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Well usually copyright owners are concerned that cheap imitations will cheapen their brand.
OLIVER AUGUST:I think that that's probably more of a concern in the West than it is in China where people are fairly sophisticated when it comes to copying. [LAUGHS] These are people who will probably watch at least one pirated Hollywood movie every week, who play pirated video games and in any case, with this particular product, the hunger amongst the-- children is so great that I'm sure they'll, they'll only bother their parents even more now to buy a copy of the real thing.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Well, as in the case of all bogus name brand products, is the fake Harry Potter selling cheaper than the original Harry Potter's work?
OLIVER AUGUST: Yes, they are. The original Harry Potter in the shops is about 2 dollars 50 whereas the fake one sells for about a dollar, although on the back of the book they have very faithfully reprinted the original retail price of the, of the other book, but they do sell it for-- less than half of that.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: According to an article we read, the fake book is dedicated to someone in Edinburgh, Scotland where Rowling is from!
OLIVER AUGUST:Yes, they took great pains to make it seem like the real thing. I'm not sure if that was done out of sportsmanship or commercial interest, so-- I think they might actually have a sense of humor about it.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Oliver August, thank you very much.
OLIVER AUGUST: Well, no, thank you.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Oliver August is a correspondent for the Times of London in Beijing, and he spoke to us on his cellphone.
BOB GARFIELD: Coming up, trouble brewing in the White House press room and wild pitches in Hollywood.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: This is On the Media, from NPR. The Press and the Prez
July 19, 2002
BROOKE GLADSTONE: We're back with On the Media. I'm Brooke Gladstone.
BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield. In a recent press conference President Bush seems to be caught flat-footed by repeated questions about his role as a private sector board member with the Harken Energy Company. It was as if the advantages of being a popular war time president took a holiday, and Bush was suddenly subjected to the media's pitiless badgering. But according to Martha Kumar, professor of political science at Towson [sp?] University, the scene simply marked the natural progression from the president's and the press corps' honeymoon -- or as she terms it, "the period of alliance."
MARTHA KUMAR: That's basically an expository period in a presidency where the White House and the press have similar views of what's the story. The story's about the new president, his family, his appointees, his goals and his plans. Later on, as the critics come up, then the weather changes.
BOB GARFIELD: President Clinton. His period of alliance seemed to have lasted about 5 minutes. [LAUGHTER] There was gays in the military-- [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
MARTHA KUMAR: I think it was less than that.
BOB GARFIELD:-- Whitewater and the health care proposal, all of which put the White House under tremendous scrutiny and at odds with many, many critics in the press and outside of it.
MARTHA KUMAR: But I think that in Clinton's case the period of good will just almost never was there; that on election night Senator Dole said that he was certainly not going to give him a pass, and that he had won by a very small margin, and therefore he was not going to stay back in his criticism.
BOB GARFIELD: All right, so what happens after the period of alliance ends?
MARTHA KUMAR:After alliance you come into a period of competition. You have the White House and news organizations disagreeing on what makes up a good story.
BOB GARFIELD:Now at the moment I suppose that the White House is interested in getting more coverage on the new Department of Homeland Security --the press is very interested in corporate scandal, which has brought the White House and the press to some conflict. Predictable?
MARTHA KUMAR: Oh, it is very predictable, and one of the things that happens in summer is scandal. It really has a resonance in summer, usually in the, in the early parts of administrations, presidents are unwilling to take the advice that their staff often will give them which is to take all of the information related to the issue and simply give it to reporters.
BOB GARFIELD: All right, at some point according to your theory the competitive period gives way to a third phase.
MARTHA KUMAR:The third phase is the period of detachment, the time in a presidency when, when the president himself is going to spend a lot less time in direct dealing with reporters. They have far fewer press conferences and are going to spend less time in personal interviews with reporters. The White House communications apparatus, though, is going to still provide the daily information.
BOB GARFIELD:In the case of President Bush, even had there not been a war early in his administration, it strikes me that he was disengaged from the press pretty much from the beginning. We've seen very little of him. Did the Bush presidency begin in the detachment phase?
MARTHA KUMAR: No, it certainly is-- no I don't think it is in a detachment phase now. I mean there is always going to be an interest of the president's staff in trying to present him in situations where his vulnerability is limited. Looking at the Bush White House you can see that they have not had many press conferences; they are reluctant to put him out, and I'm sure there are a variety of reasons for doing so, but I do think the staff generally are conservative, and they don't know what kind of response he will have to particular questions.
BOB GARFIELD:Martha Kumar is a professor of political science at Towson University; she co-wrote Portraying the President: The White House and the News Media. Thank you so much.
MARTHA KUMAR: Thank you. It was a pleasure. Limiting Access
July 19, 2002
BOB GARFIELD: Joining me now is Bob Deans, White House correspondent for the Cox Newspapers and president of the White House Correspondents Association. Whether or not confrontation with the sitting administration has historical inevitability, he's faced with the day to day realities of the beat such as being a pool reporter, given access to major events as a representative for the entire print press corps only to shout questions at a smiling, waving, mute president. It's frustrating, Deans says, although somehow still important.
BOB DEANS: The value of this, Bob, to the public is that it gives the American people a chance to look the-- look at the president for themselves, make their own judgments about things like how comfortable he is, what does he project? It's the very same reason that in the world of instant communications and the internet, businessmen still get on an airplane and fly halfway around the world to meet with their partners and look at 'em in the face across a table and, and assess things.
BOB GARFIELD:All right, now -- serving that function as pool reporter recently in Canada you've covered the G-8 Summit and you were not a happy camper. I'm going to read the lead of the report that you gave to the other members of the press on the trip. No, this was not the lead of your story in the newspaper the next day, but this is what you told your colleagues. "It was only a matter of time, perhaps, but what passes for White House coverage these days has finally devolved into a Lewis Carroll absurdity in which White House correspondents can travel on a 3-day foreign trip and never once lay eyes on the president, not even if they draw a 12 hour pool assignment."
BOB DEANS: We did certainly expect to have the one lone writer representing the entire press corps able to get into the G-8 working session, and the fact that we weren't able to do that struck me as a new low. Now in fairness Ari Fleischer, the White House press spokesman, came out later that day and apologized to the press corps.
BOB GARFIELD: Just curious -- did Fleischer's apology come before or after you had filed your pool report?
BOB DEANS: It came after the pool report was filed, but I, I don't know whether it -- one precipitated the other.
BOB GARFIELD:Has stonewalling become simply the status quo in the Bush White House and, and is it any worse than, for example, the Clinton White House was?
BOB DEANS: These comparisons are tricky. I will say this: as far as pool access goes, even in the darkest days of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, we still had pool access to President Clinton. Now you could ask a question and he wouldn't answer a question about any subject. I can remember asking him once about the Pakistani nuclear program and he wouldn't answer, because he knew that if he answered that, the next question out of somebody's mouth was going to have to do with Monica Lewinsky. So he wouldn't answer those questions. But he had to in essence gauge the price he was going to pay for the public's seeing him not asking [sic]--answering legitimate questions.
BOB GARFIELD:And a piece in the National Journal, Carl Cannon [sp?], suggested that it's in the White House' interest to keep the American people informed and that if they don't keep the American people informed that it becomes a political liability for the White House. Do you think that it's, it's ever in the interest of the White House to say more as opposed to less?
BOB DEANS: One of the things that can't be overlooked is the fact that this president has a --depending on which poll -- Gallup last week, 73 percent; New York Times/CBS News this week 70 percent job approval rating. So-- one wonders what, when a senior staffer in a meeting says doggone it, we've got to be more responsive to these journalists and-- another senior staffer looks across the table and says "Well we've got 7 out of 10 Americans on our side. Tell me what we're going to get by going your route," one can only imagine the response. What I argue is that it's in their interest to explain more, not less, about why they're doing what they're doing, the why's and the wherefores behind the policies, and here's why it's important. Every time you leave unanswered questions on the table, you sow the seeds of suspicion that can ultimately erode even the most noble of national objectives. To build support for your objectives you need to explain them. And ultimately this shouldn't come down to a us-versus-them. The health of the democracy is based on an informed electorate. It's our job as journalists to provide that information. When we fail, we fail the nation. And that's something we can't afford to do.
BOB GARFIELD: Bob Deans, thank you very much.
BOB DEANS: Thank you for having me, Bob.
BOB GARFIELD: Bob Deans is the White House correspondent for the Cox Newspapers and president of the White House Correspondents Association. Here’s the Pitch....
July 19, 2002
[MUSIC] [CLIP PLAYS FROM FILM "THE PLAYER"]
MOVIE EXECUTIVE: What have you got for me?
MAN PITCHING MOVIE: Okay-- here it is! The Graduate -- Part II-.
MOVIE EXECUTIVE: Oh, good!
MAN PITCHING MOVIE: Now listen--
BROOKE GLADSTONE: This infamous scene from Robert Altman's 1992 film The Player is recreated every day in Hollywood whether in an executive office, a lunch meeting or over a double mocha decaf latte, screenwriters and producers are trying to sell their story. It is known as a pitch, and it is the lifeblood of the motion picture industry. OTM's Rex Doane has been pitching this story to us for months and we finally agreed to let him do it. [CLIP FROM THE PLAYER]
MOVIE EXECUTIVE: It's going to be funny?
MAN PITCHING MOVIE: Yeah, it'll be funny -- dark-- [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
MOVIE EXECUTIVE: With a stroke? [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
MAN PITCHING MOVIE: -- and weird and funny and with a stroke.
CAROL BAUM: So everything is a pitch; everything is a sell.
REX DOANE: Hollywood veteran Carol Baum has produced such films as The Father of the Bride, Fly Away Home and the forthcoming feature, The Good Girl. She has pitched and been pitched to more times than she cares to remember. As she tells her students at the USC Film School never, ever let a pitch run more than 10 minutes.
CAROL BAUM: If you take too long, they're going to turn on you, and you're not going to be welcomed back. They're going to remember that you wasted 45 minutes of their valuable time. [CLIP FROM THE PLAYER]
MOVIE EXECUTIVE: Don't tell me you came here to pitch me a story.
ROBBIE FOX: When I pitch the most important thing is have a great opening line.
REX DOANE: As a successful screenwriter, Robbie Fox knows the value of brevity as well. Keep it brief and open with a bang.
ROBBIE FOX: I, I will - I mean I've pitched stories and I knew within the first line that I sold it. I pitched this movie to MGM and-- and the first line of the script was: "One fine sunny day, 3 surgeons' wives went to the fat farm for the weekend." And-- I saw the executives smile, and I just knew-- [CLIP FROM THE PLAYER]
MOVIE EXECUTIVE: Go ahead.
WOMAN PITCHING MOVIE: Okay. It's a TV star and she goes on safari to Africa-- [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
SECOND WOMAN PITCHING MOVIE: Like a Donna Mills or a Joan Collins-- [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
MOVIE EXECUTIVE: You're talking about a TV star in a motion picture? A major motion picture?
WOMAN PITCHING MOVIE: No, no, no, no. [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
SECOND WOMAN PITCHING MOVIE: No, not a real TV star--
ROBBIE FOX: You have to go in feeling like the pitch you have is you're coming in with a million dollars cash, and you're saying here -- I want to give you this million dollars. I just want to give it to you! [CLIP FROM THE PLAYER]
WOMAN PITCHING MOVIE: -- yeah - Goldie - and okay - it's out of-- [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
MOVIE EXECUTIVE: Oh, I see - it's a kind of like a Gods Must Be Crazy except the Coke bottle's now a television actress.
WOMAN PITCHING MOVIE: Yeah-- [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
SECOND WOMAN PITCHING MOVIE: That's-- [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
WOMAN PITCHING MOVIE: -- it's exactly right - it's Out of Africa meets Pretty Woman.
REX DOANE: Of course pitches can occasionally be too glib. Fox relates a favorite story told to him by Martin Short.
ROBBIE FOX: Mart once told me a great [LAUGHS] story [LAUGHS] - a guy came in and pitched a story to him, and he said I'm going to say it real succinctly -- Buster Keaton -- in space. And the guy was ready to pack up his bag. He goes - that's all. And Martin said-- "I need more. That's not enough."
REX DOANE: Carol Baum also has a few helpful hints about what to avoid on your next pitch.
CAROL BAUM: In the old days I remember -- in the tortured days when people didn't know any better --would come with a guitar to the room. I would recommend against that.
REX DOANE: Comic artist Dan Clowes who co-wrote the screenplay for the film Ghost World is a relative newcomer to the Hollywood pitch scene.
DAN CLOWES: The first 4 or 5 pitch meetings I went to I couldn't believe like that they were such, such living cliches. I mean they were really exactly the way they're parodied in movies. There, there's always that, that thing of -you know - you walk in and they, they are your biggest fan. They will, they will tell you whatever you've done that they've seen of yours is the greatest thing in the world and that you're a genius-- [CLIP FROM THE PLAYER]
MOVIE EXECUTIVE: I don't know you. I don't know your work. I think that you are a very, very talented young man, and I'm never wrong about these things.
REX DOANE: Clowes has in fact referred to himself and Ghost World collaborator Terry Zwigoff as the two worst pitchmen in the history of Hollywood.
DAN CLOWES: Terry and I tend to sit there in this fixed position with, you know, sweating -- staring at our shoes -- barely able to make eye contact, you know and we were both raised to have this sort of, you know, Midwestern self-deprecating quality. I remember Terry once saying like handing the person the script and going "well, it's sure not Shakespeare." You know, and that's - that's just not a good way to start a meeting. [LAUGHS] [CLIP FROM THE PLAYER]
MOVIE EXECUTIVE: That was a hell of a pitch.
REX DOANE: In general, the Clowes/Zwigoff duo lack what might be termed "market savvy."
DAN CLOWES: We'd go in and they'd say well what are some of your favorite films, you know? And we'd say well we like, you know, Crimes and Misdemeanors and Chaplin's City Lights or, you know, something like that - you know something they've - that to them just spells box office death. [CLIP FROM THE PLAYER]
MAN PITCHING MOVIE: It's going to be in black and white.
MOVIE EXECUTIVE: What's going to be in black and white?
MAN PITCHING MOVIE: The movie -- it's in black and white.
MOVIE EXECUTIVE: The whole movie?
SECOND MOVIE EXECUTIVE: Every scene?
MAN PITCHING MOVIE: Yeah!
MOVIE EXECUTIVE: Well if you shoot it in black and white they're just going to colorize it anyway, so what's the point?
CAROL BAUM: Long ago I think you could go into a studio with just an idea and somebody would buy it.
REX DOANE: Again, Carol Baum.
CAROL BAUM: Now, you have to have ammo. You have to have a director, an actor-- somebody with clout attached to your pitch.
REX DOANE: Star commitment is only the beginning. Mention anything unsupported by demographic studies or focus groups could seriously jeopardize a pitch. Robbie Fox.
ROBBIE FOX: I've sat in rooms before, pitched ideas where right in the script it says: 43 year old guy - he does this and this and that - and they say could this be could for Adam Sandler? [CLIP FROM THE PLAYER]
MOVIE EXECUTIVE: Hey, whoa! Whoa! Time out here. Nick, how old are these people?
MAN PITCHING MOVIE: Early 40s.
MOVIE EXECUTIVE: [GASPS] Oh. Boy!
MAN PITCHING MOVIE: What's wrong?
MOVIE EXECUTIVE: Well-- [LAUGHS] that is a bad age, Nick. I mean the people who buy movie tickets fortunately or unfortunately are between the ages of--
SECOND MOVIE EXECUTIVE: 14 and 24.
MOVIE EXECUTIVE: [LAUGHS]!
MAN PITCHING MOVIE: So?
SECOND MOVIE EXECUTIVE: So if kids want to see people in their 40s, they don't go to the movies! They go home -look at their parents! [LAUGHS]
REX DOANE: But the odds can be beaten. Films do get made. Drawing upon his years of experience in the biz, Robbie Fox is willing to share privileged insight to any up and coming filmmaker looking for that big break. [HIT MOVIE MUSIC UP AND UNDER]
ROBBIE FOX: It helps to have a big hit movie in the theaters at the time of your pitch. That will your pitch seem funnier.
REX DOANE: That sounds like a good plan.
ROBBIE FOX: Yeah. I would, in fact, the next time I pitch, I'm going to make sure that I have a big hit movie in the theater at the time. [CLIP FROM THE PLAYER]
MOVIE EXECUTIVE: I want you to get out of my office and go write me a movie!
MAN PITCHING MOVIE: [LAUGHS] Okay! Great! Thanks!
MOVIE EXECUTIVE: [LAUGHS] [HIT MOVIE MUSIC SWELLS]
REX DOANE: In New York, for On the Media, I'm Rex Doane. [MUSIC FADES] Celebrity Reality Shows You’ll Never See
July 19, 2002
BOB GARFIELD: This season's TV pitches are sure to reflect the hottest trend -- celebrity reality television. After the Ozzy Osbourne reality show got huge ratings for MTV, the E-Channel announced it would be doing a show on the real life of former Playmate of the Year Anna Nicole Smith. Other celebrities mentioned as possible candidates for reality shows include Liza Minelli, Cybill Shepherd and Gene Simmons from Kiss. Brian "Kato" Kaelin, famous only for having been O.J. Simpson's house guest, has taped 3 episodes of a series titled, you guessed it, House Guest, in which he knocks on people's doors randomly and invites himself in for the weekend. You can't stop the celebrity reality trend. You can only hope that there is an entire cable channel to contain it. [MUSIC]
ANNOUNCER: Coming this fall, it's Reality TV, 24 hours of celebrities being real. CHORUS: [SINGING] TO BE REAL!3
ANNOUNCER: On Tuesdays, sidle up to the most intimate moments of Academy Award-winning actor F. Murray Abraham. "F. MURRAY ABRAHAM": No, it's not Frankie. No, not Faisal [sp?]. [LAUGHS] Do I look like a Fletcher? CHORUS: [SINGING] TO BE REAL!
ANNOUNCER:On Wednesdays you thought the Osbournes were exciting. Catch The Naylors, starring NPR's Brian Naylor. BRIAN NAYLOR: What the f[BEEP]k?! I can't live with this f[BEEP]ing - the sandwiches are a joke -they're so f[BEEP]ing small, I - this is just a total f[BEEP]ing waste. Uh-- The Senate Subcommittee on Banking and Finance met today to discuss the issue of off balance sheet accounting. CHORUS: [SINGING] TO BE REAL!
ANNOUNCER: On Thursdays it's the number 2 golfer in the world, David Duval [sp?]. #2 GOLFER DAVID DUVAL: [SHOUTING] Tiger! Tiger! It's, it's me -David? We-- met at the Sawgrass Invitational? I, I bogeyed 17? CHORUS: [SINGING] TO BE REAL! [SONG CONTINUES UNDER]
ANNOUNCER: And on Friday get to know -- to really know --Entertainment Tonight Co-Host Bob Going [sp?]. CHORUS: [SINGING] TO BE REAL! BOB GOING: Is it Farouk? Is it Fritz? Is it Franz?
ANNOUNCER: That's Reality TV -- the cable channel with real appeal. This time it's for real. CHORUS: [SINGING] IT'S GOT TO BE REAL, ETC.
BOB GARFIELD: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, George Edwards and Irene Trudel, and edited --By Brooke. We had help from Dan Bobkoff, Dave Schepard, Chris Reilly, Brian Naylor and Paul Chuffo. Our webmaster is Amy Pearl.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Mike Pesca is our producer at large; Arun Rath our senior producer; and Dean Capello our executive producer. Bassist/composer Ben Allison wrote our theme. You can listen to the program and get free transcripts at onthemedia.org and e-mail us at onthemedia@wnyc.org. This is On the Media from NPR. I'm Brooke Gladstone.
BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield. [MUSIC TAG] 58:30 [FUNDING CREDITS] ************
July 19, 2002
BROOKE GLADSTONE: From WNYC in New York this is NPR's On the Media. I'm Brooke Gladstone.
BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield. In an internal memo released to Congress this week Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld inveighed against leaks to the press. He said they cost "the lives of Americans" and diminished, quote, "our country's chance for success" in the war on terror. Rumsfeld's memo followed reports in the New York Times written by Eric Schmitt that outlined in surprising detail plans for a future U.S. invasion of Iraq. We're joined by Scott Armstrong, founder of the National Security Archive and occasional OTM "leakologist." Scott, welcome back to the show.
SCOTT ARMSTRONG: It's good to be here, Bob.
BOB GARFIELD: All right, you've seen Secretary Rumsfeld's July 12th memo. What do you make of it?
SCOTT ARMSTRONG: July 12th - Rumsfeld is sending around to his senior staff a reminder to get your people under control -- the classified information is not to be leaked - the impact of leaks can have major consequences. It was attached to a CIA memo that was written in the middle of June which he'd seen in the middle of June. That memo dealt with Al Qaeda and the fact that Al Qaeda makes use of information it reads in the press in defeating counterterrorism and counterintelligence activities of the government. If that had been the critical point, it would have been circulated by Rumsfeld in the middle of June. It wasn't. It was in the middle of July, and it was because of that Schmitt article that occurred on July 5th. That article on the 5th bothered him, but he couldn't identify it specifically -- at least not in an unclassified memo cause it would tend to confirm that article. So by sending this out in unclassified form, he was absolutely certain this would leak and get out in the press within 4 days -- and it did.
BOB GARFIELD: Was this story from the New York Times clearly leaked by the administration?
SCOTT ARMSTRONG:The July 5th story by Eric Schmitt was part of a sequence of stories that the New York Times and other newspapers have been doing about the debate on policy over what to do in Iraq inside the administration. Schmitt had previously done a story that was a back and forth between the Pentagon and the State Department and to a lesser extent the NSC about different strategies that they had. The story played fairly significantly in May as a kind of hawks versus doves scenario on Iraq. I think that was probably incorrect, and this story was an attempt by somebody inside the government to put the emphasis back on the fact that this is really a debate between hawks and hawks -- I'm again over-simplifying - but between people who want to do something about Iraq and they have very conventional ways of doing it -- surrounding them - toppling the regime with just sheer military power as opposed to a second plan which was to do something more-- subtle that involves special forces, involved taking out air defenses, involved more air strikes.
BOB GARFIELD:By getting involved in this games of "leaksmanship" and not actually writing the straightforward story as you've described it, are the media just being used by the government and the leakers within it?
SCOTT ARMSTRONG: The media is always used. It is in fact a "medium" of communications for the government, and what we forget is that most people in the government learn most of their sensitive national security information in context from the media -- not from internal reports. Congress-- their - the majority of their information comes to them through the press! They're, they're not - there aren't very many of them that are getting sensitive, classified briefings that are e-- at the level of what they would get by reading the daily newspaper. It is a -- not a game - it's just a process.
BOB GARFIELD:When reporters write stories that are based substantially on leaks, sanctioned or otherwise, should there be some sort of disclosure or disclaimer box that says that you are witnessing Kabuki Theatre. Please understand that things are not necessarily as they appear and don't jump to all the obvious conclusions?
SCOTT ARMSTRONG: There should be a disclosure in general that's understood by readers. I don't think [LAUGHS] you can write it out -- it would take too much of the, the front page of the paper to put it all in -- if you read the Schmitt article there are clues about the nature of the source. He's gone to some effort to not reveal what agency the source is from --"that's familiar with the document" -- which would lead me to believe that it may not be the Pentagon. If you say a Pentagon source gave it to you, that gives you a lot more suspects than somewhere else. So among the press and among certain people in government there is in fact a lexicon that - where we understand - we can kind of look up and say well this probably came from so and so or this reflects this argument. The problem is the readers aren't apprised of that and unless you're reading 4 or 5 newspapers and unless you have the time when you read 4 or 5 newspapers on a topic to go back and read the previous one or two months or maybe even longer period of coverage to find out why different reporters are reporting on different things, what the nature of their sources are, it's very difficult to put a value on it. It's very much like raw intelligence.
BOB GARFIELD:If there's, you know, 5 or 600 people inside the Beltway who can read the hieroglyphs and everybody else is just taking the stories at face value, is this kind of journalism, leak-based journalism, fundamentally a disservice to readers who are not getting the messages that are imbedded in the journalism?
SCOTT ARMSTRONG: When secrecy controls so much information, leak-based journalism is at once both the only [LAUGHS] way to get the information and a disservice, because it allows manipulation; it increases the value of any one bureaucrat's information -- because they can control what they let out -- and they can let the story out in various ways. The public doesn't necessarily understand that. You're right. It's up to the press and very difficult judgments are made. There's some times where you'll get a leaker; he's got the right information; and you won't publish it. You, you think there's something wrong here. You'll find out there's an internal dispute -- the person didn't get the promotion -- and you won't publish it. It's a very delicate balance. When, in moments like the War on Terrorism when people want to use that as an excuse to get that much more secrecy, sometimes appropriately, sometimes inappropriately, it's the most dangerous period for us because we're easily spun by any information we can get at all.
BOB GARFIELD: All right. Scott Armstrong, as always, thank you very much.
SCOTT ARMSTRONG: Thank you. Appreciate it.
BOB GARFIELD:Scott Armstrong is a Washington journalist and author, co-chair of a monthly dialogue between the media and the intelligence community on unauthorized disclosures and On the Media's occasional "leakologist." [MUSIC] Reporter Detained
July 19, 2002
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Plugging leaks is becoming a priority in every part of the executive branch. Earlier the State Department attracted a lot of press when it took an unusual action to maintain secrecy. After a press conference Friday before last a National Review reporter claiming to be holding a confidential document was prevented from leaving with it by armed security guards. That reporter did eventually get out of the building, and he joins us now. Joel Mowbray, welcome to On the Media.
JOEL MOWBRAY: Well glad to be here. Thank you.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Now it's safe to say that you weren't the most loved journalist at the State Department even before this incident. Your articles have been highly critical of State Department policy, specifically with regard to visas in Saudi Arabia.
JOEL MOWBRAY: Well what I've found over the course of several months, it was very disturbing, what I learned, and that was about a program called Visa Express in Saudi Arabia which is how 3 of the September 11th hijackers got in the country, even though they had never gone to a consulate or an embassy to get a visa. They submitted their applications to a travel agent, and we just found out now that the Inspector General had released numbers to Congress showing that in the first 3 months that Visa Express was in operation -- that's only from June 1st until 9/11 -- 97 percent of Saudi nationals who were issued visas got in without an interview at all.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Okay, so let's take us back to that fateful Friday you presented Press Secretary Richard Boucher [sp?] with a question which he didn't like at all.
JOEL MOWBRAY: What happened was there had been this cable that had been sent by the U.S. ambassador in Saudi Arabia. The subject line says it all: Request for Guidance on Termination of Visa Express -- in short, he wanted to end the program. Mr. Boucher brought up the contents of the cable. He said that earlier this week the ambassador had requested more resources, and so I said well specifically he asked for more resources to end the program formerly known as Visa Express and to interview all applicants, and he succinctly said, well no. And at that point I was a little frustrated because I had read through the entire cable, and I said [LAUGHS] well I have the cable.
MAN: Well I've read the cable too and I think if you read it carefully, even though it's confidential, if you happen to have it, you'll find that he's asking for resources, he's asking for consular people to go out there and that's what we're talking to him about. I do have to point out, sir, that you've written a lot of things and said a lot of things recently.
JOEL MOWBRAY: About 10 minutes later I was trying to leave, and he and I in the midst of-- in the middle of that had acrimonious exchange -- the press briefing was still going on, but I had to leave. So I walked out into the hallway, and there was a woman standing there with 4 armed guards. And I'm thinking this is because I'm relatively new to the building -- she wanted me to meet the security guards who were armed and in uniform so that they wouldn't give me a hard time the next time I come to the building. So I'm shaking their hands like I'm at a cocktail party, and I get ready to go and I say well if you excuse me, I have to leave. And she says that's not possible.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: So were you actually detained? The State Department won't go on the air with us, but officials there reportedly-- [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
JOEL MOWBRAY: Right.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: -- aren't convinced that you were.
JOEL MOWBRAY:Initially they said I wasn't detained. And then later they admitted I was detained, but at one point the plainclothes detective as part of the Diplomatic Security Service, he comes up to me -- I was making several calls on my cell phone to my lawyers, to National Review and to others-- and he said sir, you're blowing this way out of proportion! I said well am I being detained? Part of the notice here -- when you go to Georgetown Law and watch Law and Order every week, [LAUGHTER] you know you need to ask these questions. He said no. I said okay, I'm leaving. And he immediately steps right in front of me, and he says now you're being detained.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Oops. Now Joel, do you actually think there was a plot to harass you because of your reporting or do you think that the Diplomatic Security Service was just following order to keep all classified documents from leaving the building and that no one in Security reads your articles, and it could be a right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing situation.
JOEL MOWBRAY: They clearly know who I am -- particularly those people within the executive and administrative ranks of the Diplomatic Security Service and the people who make the decisions about sending people to detain others, etc. And the way in which I was detained too, I would find questionable, having 4 armed guards on me and another 4 armed guards at the exit. I'm not a big guy! I mean that's 8 [LAUGHS] guards to keep me from leaving the State Department.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Tell me what you know about the State Department's new efforts to plug leaks and track down whistleblowers. What have your leaking sources been telling you about what they can't do any more?
JOEL MOWBRAY: In the Bureau of Consular Affairs at the least, and I think they may try to implement this department-wide at State, it used to be that unclassified cables in particular and even confidential cables, that these would be printed out, just generally - with no one's name on it - nobody knowing who is actually seeing exactly what - and they would pass it around - people would take a look at it, and that, that was a nice way to spread information so you wouldn't have to line up at the central terminals. Well now, if you are someone in the State Department, if you're an employee, you have to go to a central server to log in to read the cables. You cannot have them printed out. And as a result, the State Department now knows what documents people are reading, what they're downloading and when.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: So things are a lot less convenient at State. Do you think it really helps plugging the leaks?
JOEL MOWBRAY:In fact I think it, it does just the opposite. I've had a number of people since Friday who have contacted me with information. I'm at the [LAUGHS] point now where I, I think I need an intern or something to [LAUGHTER] track down information for me cause I have so much of it coming in!
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Well thanks a lot.
JOEL MOWBRAY: Thank you for having me. I'm really glad to be here.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Joel Mowbray is a contributing editor to National Review on line.
BOB GARFIELD: Coming up, why the Brits aren't buying digital radio and copyright beware...unless you live in China.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: This is On the Media from NPR. British Digital Radio
July 19, 2002
BROOKE GLADSTONE: We're back with On the Media. I'm Brooke Gladstone.
BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield. The British national tendency or at least so the stereotype goes, is to prefer the old to the new. The nation has steadfastly dug in its feet with regard to the Euro, and like us but unlike the rest of Europe, insists on staying with Imperial Units of Measurement -- the mile and the foamy pint. Now Britain is trying to come to grips with the latest in radio technology -- digital radio. Here in the U.S. we get it on satellite through two new services called XM and Sirius. There's also a terrestrial system in the works called IBOC. As for users, the only number we have so far comes from XM which has already amassed 136,000 subscribers. So how is Britain getting on? Our London correspondent Gareth Mitchell reports. [MUSIC]
MALE
ANNOUNCER: ...change between the Metropolitan Line and the Bakaloo [sp?] and the Jubilee Line-- [STATION CHANGE]
MAN: ...this is my friend Dave--
MAN: Hello! [STATION CHANGE]
FEMALE
ANNOUNCER: ...well General Motors makes about 1900 Corsa cars a day, and... [MUSIC CHANGE]
GARETH MITCHELL: Digital radio in all its no-distortion, high-band-width, CD-quality sound glory -- that's what you hear if you take a quick sweep through the digital services on air at present. There's BBC Radio Six music, Bloomberg, One Word, Classic FM, Abracadabra for children and plenty more.
MIKE SPENCER: There are over 60,000 units in the UK in people's homes, and, and they are listening to digital radio.
GARETH MITCHELL: Mike Spencer is marketing director for the UK's Digital Radio Development Bureau. Funded by the BBC and commercial radio -- it's the mouthpiece for the UK's digital radio industry.
MIKE SPENCER: We're hoping by the end of this year that there'll be in excess of a hundred thousand units available to consumers. We think that that'll be encouragement enough then for some of the major manufacturers to come along and say hey, we want a bit of this action. There are not enough manufacturers making product yet.
SPORTS
ANNOUNCER:Here comes Tudor, and - oh, Pacenta [sp?] fails the bat there; it was short outside the [off stamp ?]. Wasn't a very good stroke...
GARETH MITCHELL: Cricket commentary on the BBC's new digital sports radio channel, one of 6 digital radio stations to be launched by the corporation this year. The way the BBC's television and radio is run is set out by Royal Charter, and the corporation is funded by a license fee --effectively a government-enforced tax of around 150 dollars per year -- compulsory for any UK television owner. Like its existing analog radio services, the BBC's new digital stations are funded through the license fee.
LINDSAY CORNELL: We're required to provide services for everybody, because of the way that we're funded, which is by a license fee. We really have to, you know, make sure that everybody in the UK gets services that they're interested in.
GARETH MITCHELL: Lindsay Cornell, head of digital radio at the BBC--
LINDSAY CORNELL: Digital radio offers us the opportunities to meet audiences that in the past perhaps we haven't served so well.
GARETH MITCHELL: Though the BBC is bringing a host of new digital services to air, they've been a long time coming -- especially as the corporation started launching the system in the UK way back in 1995. All seemed well then, but the BBC, the other broadcasters and manufacturers, couldn't agree on the best way to get on with it. Matt Wells, media correspondent at the UK's Guardian Newspaper takes up the story.
MATT WELLS: They couldn't agree on the sort of technology that would become the standard in Britain. So there was that, and then there was the whole technological issue of getting cheap marketable sets, and then they were deciding how the licenses would be awarded and how far the BBC would get involved. All that took time, and that is now beginning to come together, which is why everyone's now getting excited about it.
GARETH MITCHELL: And along the way the government, usually all too happy to intervene in media affairs, hasn't been that vigorous in pushing the new technology, though it has done its best to smooth the way by effectively subsidizing broadcasters who choose to go digital. Back at the Digital Radio Development Bureau, Mike Spencer says that as of July 2002, the equipment is getting out there, at last.
MIKE SPENCER: There are over 60,000 units in the UK in people's homes that they are - and they are listening to digital radio, and we're hoping and, what, we're in June now -- by the end of this year that there'll be in excess of a hundred thousand units available to consumers. And we know that there is demand. We've done research and people out there definitely want it, but there are not enough manufacturers making product yet.
GARETH MITCHELL: Well to really see how the digital radio revolution is taking off or not in this country, I've ventured on to the High Street, this is fairly typical High Street in a fairly typical area of North London, so I'm going to see if I can buy a digital radio in any of the several hi-fi shops along this street. Excuse me -- do you sell digital radios?
MAN: Nope. We don't.
GARETH MITCHELL: Are people coming in asking to buy them at all?
MAN: Not really. ---
GARETH MITCHELL: Excuse me, do you sell digital radios at all?
MAN: No, we don't.
GARETH MITCHELL: Why not?
MAN: Well-- mainly there's a lack of demand, and I think probably it's because of the price.
GARETH MITCHELL: Now Totland Court Road [sp?] is the place for consumer electronics in London. If I'm not going to find a digital radio here, I'm not going to find one anywhere. Do you sell digital radios?
MAN: We, we do-- we only do it-- as a full hi-fi separate. We don't do any portable ones.
GARETH MITCHELL: So you're talking about these self-contained hi-fi units and presumably they're quite expensive.
MAN: They are indeed. They retail around the 700 pound mark.
GARETH MITCHELL: Or a thousand dollars, something like that?
MAN: Yes. And you require a good aerial before you can use that anyway. People who come for the full size, once the price is mentioned, they do get put off.
GARETH MITCHELL: I'm not surprised! I wasn't going to hang around with price tags that steep. The digital radio tuner in question was the latest unit from Sony. Also on the market is the more accessively priced Video Logic at around 300 dollars. There's also the more portable but still quite bulky Pure [sp?] which cashes in at around 200 dollars. In all, apparently there are about 27 models on the market ranging from 150 dollars to way beyond a thousand. Even though it took me nearly a morning's shopping to find just one! Those elusive sub-100 pound sets are reportedly on their way within the next 4 months. Perhaps that'll be the crucial incentive to finally get people tuning in. After nearly 10 years, let's hope that the digital radio experience will turn out to be worth the wait. For On the Media this is Gareth Mitchell in London. Record Industry Sues YOU
July 19, 2002
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Here in the USA there's a continuing struggle between the recording industry and another new communications technology -- internet file-swapping services. Legal action effectively killed Napster and many of its brethren, but other less centralized music sharing services rose out of their ashes. Looking for a new solution, the Recording Industry Association of America now begins to move against the individuals who use those systems -- those inveterate music downloaders or as the RIAA might put it, freeloaders. Joining us for an update is NPR media and culture correspondent Rick Karr. Welcome back.
RICK KARR: It's a pleasure, as always, Brooke.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Okay. So does this mean that if I find a great song and I download it and send it to my baby sister, they could come after me with a subpoena?
RICK KARR: Well, I mean in theory they've always been able to do that. The record labels have always taken the position that this on-line use is not legitimate -- that it is in violation of copyright laws and-- they've said in the past the reason they haven't gone after individual users is because they found it easier and more efficient to go after companies that were setting up ways to make it easy to trade music on line.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: But I thought they couldn't come after you if you didn't make money off of it. I mean I've been making cassettes for years!
RICK KARR:That's the difference. And this is something that on-line activists are getting increasingly upset about. In the analog world, you absolutely have the right to make a cassette. The Audio Home Recording Act passed back in the late 1980s says hey, you have the right to do whatever you want with the CDs you buy -- make copies of them; give them to friends and family; give them to people --you're right -- as long as they're not making money, it's okay. But-- what the studios in the movie industry and the record companies in the record industry say is digital is different because you can make a copy of it, and it's a perfect copy, bit for bit. Doesn't get a little noisier like a cassette does every time. So they want to treat the digital world differently. There's a law on the books called The No Electronic Theft Act that basically makes it illegal to rip a lot of-- CDs into MP3 files and share them on your computer, and in fact a few people have been prosecuted under the No Electronic Theft Act.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: The -- I think the key expression there is "a lot" -- you have to take "a lot."
RICK KARR:These have been the people that they've gone after. For instance a student at Oklahoma State University who had thousands and thousands of MP3s on his computer that he was sharing over a Napster-like system. They've gone after sort of high-profile file-sharers like that. They haven't gone after individuals sending the one MP3 along because they realize that's -- that's a PR problem for them -- what business owner wants to sue his or her [LAUGHS] own customers?
BROOKE GLADSTONE: So then who is on their wanted list now?
RICK KARR:I've asked Hillary Rosen [sp?] from the Recording Industry Association point blank several times -- will you sue individual users? And she says well, we'd prefer not to have to do it but we reserve the right to.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: But if the recording industry knows where these file-swapping sites are, why bother going after the users at all?
RICK KARR:Well if, if we go back a few months when Napster was first starting to come off line over a year ago at this point, remember that one of the innovations that had come at that point was this service called Newtella [sp?]. Now the thing about Newtella is there's no company behind it. There's no central server. There's nobody you can sue to shut the whole network down at once. It's open-source software, so as one by one the commercial file-trading services -- Napster and Music City and Kazaa [sp?] go off line, either because they've run out of money or they've been sued out of existence or they've just agreed to go off line when threatened with legal action, more and more people go on to these open-source networks where there is no center.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:I guess the new wrinkle is there are some rumblings in Congress about it that may give the recording industry a little more muscle.
RICK KARR: What the record companies want is permission, essentially, under the law, to be able to go into these systems and mess with people! --put up files that are nonsense files; put up files that are silence; put up files where you hear 30 seconds of the song and then the artist saying Hey, why don't you go out and actually buy my record? [LAUGHTER]
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Is file-sharing really hurting the industry? We've been through this before, but there are some that say that file-sharing actually improves sales.
RICK KARR: We're, we're going to go through this forever and ever, and ever [LAUGHTER] because every time somebody trots out a study saying it hurts sales, somebody else trots out a study saying it helps sales. I mean yeah, record sales are down by more than 10 percent over the past couple of years. Is that because of file-sharing? My take on it is probably not because the people who are the most passionate file-sharers are also the people who buy the most music -- are the people who are most passionate about music. Why are record sales down? Well, you know, a lot of my friends who are critics say there haven't been any really great releases over the past couple of years. The other thing is that like the movie industry on -- you know in the movie industry they talk about the tent-pole picture, right? The one picture that props everything up in the middle of the summer. The record industry has moved in that direction, so that the release of a Brittany Spears album is the tent pole that props up the entire catalog from the label. Well what if people don't like it? [LAUGHTER] If people don't like it, they're not going to buy it, and the tent collapses. The one argument that you could make, I think reasonably, on behalf of the theory that the peer to peer systems are eroding the base of the business that the major labels have is this: kids have heard more music on the peer to peer systems than they've heard on the radio or coming out of the listening kiosks at most major record stores. They're hearing music that the studios and the radio conglomerates haven't wanted them to hear in order to prop up the tent poles -- to keep the tent poles going. But now you have these kids who are, you know, they get on line and they're 16 years old and they suddenly realize, hey, there are actually a lot of good records made in the '80s or the '70s or the '90s or there's a lot of good stuff on independent labels that I can't hear because my home town doesn't have a community or college radio station. So-- at the same time that the major labels are suffering, I know people who run independent labels who say, hey, aside from the fact that the economy's down a little bit, we're doing very well, thank you very much, because some kid in, you know, Minot [sp?], [LAUGHTER] you know, has heard my record -- who never would have heard it before because they heard it on a peer to peer system.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Rick Karr, once again, thanks very much.
RICK KARR: You're quite welcome, Brooke.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Rick Karr is the media and culture correspondent for NPR News. [MUSIC]
China's Harry Potter
July 19, 2002
BROOKE GLADSTONE: There is, practically speaking, no limit to copying in China where reproducing movies, manufacturing Rolexes or even fabricating would-be works of art is the norm. Case in point -- children in our hemisphere despair that J.K. Rowling is a year behind schedule completing Harry Potter's latest adventure. But kids in China no longer have to wait because Harry Potter and Leopard Walk Up to Dragon is available at kiosks and newsstands all over Beijing. Here's a brief quote from the gripping first chapter. "Harry is wondering in his bath how long it will take to wash away the creamy cake from his face. To a grown-up, handsome young man it is disgusting to have filthy dirt on his body. Lying in a luxurious bathtub and rubbing his face with his hands, he thinks about Dudley's face which is as fat as Aunt Petunia's bottom." Later, Harry gets drenched in a hot and sour soup rain and is turned into a dwarf, and his troubles really begin. Needless to say, this latest Potter book is a fake. Joining me now from his cellphone in Beijing is The Times of London China correspondent Oliver August. Thanks for coming on.
OLIVER AUGUST: Thank you.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: First of all how popular is the Harry Potter series in China?
OLIVER AUGUST: It's extremely popular. Actually, in Chinese they call it [HARRY POTTER IN CHINESE ACCENT] which is a sort of transliteration, and the launch of the first few titles 2 years ago got enormous coverage in the local press. The original release of the book in China had to be brought forward because the publishers discovered that pirates were already selling copies of the book they hadn't even published -- they had somehow gotten hold of it.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: So what happened when the fake 5th installment -- Harry Potter and Leopard Walk Up to Dragon -- hit the streets?
OLIVER AUGUST:Oh, people snapped it up. People, I assume, wouldn't really necessarily be able to tell the difference. The book has a picture of J.K. Rowling, the English author, on the back; it claims to have been published by the same publishing house as the previous ones, and to a parent keen to make his child happy, it would have seemed a very good present. And indeed it may still be a very good present!
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Where can you buy it? I know that the police are saying they don't want it in bookstores; they don't want it anywhere.
OLIVER AUGUST:You cannot buy it in bookstores, but then a lot of books in China are not sold necessarily in book shops. You can buy it on street corners, at little newspaper stands. Maybe somebody might put out a blanket on the sidewalk and just sell a few books and newspapers there. There are plenty of places to buy them.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Do you think the police are seriously trying to ferret out the piraters?
OLIVER AUGUST:I, I think they are seriously trying to stop counterfeiting in general in China which is an enormous problem where everything from Hollywood movies to airplane parts are, are being counterfeited -- sometimes with more serious consequences than with Harry Potter as you can imagine, but-- whether there are actually policemen going around the streets of Beijing trying to look for Harry Potter, well, it would be lovely to know but I guess we never really will.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: [LAUGHS] Have you read the book? We've only read the first couple of lines in translation from news reports. Is it any good?
OLIVER AUGUST:Not being a Harry Potter aficionado myself, it seemed put together in very short time. I think the writer probably didn't give himself quite as much time and inspiration as J.K. Rowling would have taken or is indeed taking whose book has been overdue for more than a year.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:But this certainly has a certain Chinese flavor to it which the originals don't -- for instance Harry is rained on with hot and sour soup before he turns into a dwarf.
OLIVER AUGUST: That's true, [LAUGHS] yes. It has some lovely Chinese touches. I actually think that the publisher of the original probably wouldn't be too unhappy about this. A) it shows that the book really is very successful as people are starting to copy it; and secondly is, you know, if it keeps the Harry Potter buzz going, then it will probably help them in the end when they bring out the real 5th one.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Well usually copyright owners are concerned that cheap imitations will cheapen their brand.
OLIVER AUGUST:I think that that's probably more of a concern in the West than it is in China where people are fairly sophisticated when it comes to copying. [LAUGHS] These are people who will probably watch at least one pirated Hollywood movie every week, who play pirated video games and in any case, with this particular product, the hunger amongst the-- children is so great that I'm sure they'll, they'll only bother their parents even more now to buy a copy of the real thing.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Well, as in the case of all bogus name brand products, is the fake Harry Potter selling cheaper than the original Harry Potter's work?
OLIVER AUGUST: Yes, they are. The original Harry Potter in the shops is about 2 dollars 50 whereas the fake one sells for about a dollar, although on the back of the book they have very faithfully reprinted the original retail price of the, of the other book, but they do sell it for-- less than half of that.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: According to an article we read, the fake book is dedicated to someone in Edinburgh, Scotland where Rowling is from!
OLIVER AUGUST:Yes, they took great pains to make it seem like the real thing. I'm not sure if that was done out of sportsmanship or commercial interest, so-- I think they might actually have a sense of humor about it.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Oliver August, thank you very much.
OLIVER AUGUST: Well, no, thank you.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Oliver August is a correspondent for the Times of London in Beijing, and he spoke to us on his cellphone.
BOB GARFIELD: Coming up, trouble brewing in the White House press room and wild pitches in Hollywood.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: This is On the Media, from NPR. The Press and the Prez
July 19, 2002
BROOKE GLADSTONE: We're back with On the Media. I'm Brooke Gladstone.
BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield. In a recent press conference President Bush seems to be caught flat-footed by repeated questions about his role as a private sector board member with the Harken Energy Company. It was as if the advantages of being a popular war time president took a holiday, and Bush was suddenly subjected to the media's pitiless badgering. But according to Martha Kumar, professor of political science at Towson [sp?] University, the scene simply marked the natural progression from the president's and the press corps' honeymoon -- or as she terms it, "the period of alliance."
MARTHA KUMAR: That's basically an expository period in a presidency where the White House and the press have similar views of what's the story. The story's about the new president, his family, his appointees, his goals and his plans. Later on, as the critics come up, then the weather changes.
BOB GARFIELD: President Clinton. His period of alliance seemed to have lasted about 5 minutes. [LAUGHTER] There was gays in the military-- [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
MARTHA KUMAR: I think it was less than that.
BOB GARFIELD:-- Whitewater and the health care proposal, all of which put the White House under tremendous scrutiny and at odds with many, many critics in the press and outside of it.
MARTHA KUMAR: But I think that in Clinton's case the period of good will just almost never was there; that on election night Senator Dole said that he was certainly not going to give him a pass, and that he had won by a very small margin, and therefore he was not going to stay back in his criticism.
BOB GARFIELD: All right, so what happens after the period of alliance ends?
MARTHA KUMAR:After alliance you come into a period of competition. You have the White House and news organizations disagreeing on what makes up a good story.
BOB GARFIELD:Now at the moment I suppose that the White House is interested in getting more coverage on the new Department of Homeland Security --the press is very interested in corporate scandal, which has brought the White House and the press to some conflict. Predictable?
MARTHA KUMAR: Oh, it is very predictable, and one of the things that happens in summer is scandal. It really has a resonance in summer, usually in the, in the early parts of administrations, presidents are unwilling to take the advice that their staff often will give them which is to take all of the information related to the issue and simply give it to reporters.
BOB GARFIELD: All right, at some point according to your theory the competitive period gives way to a third phase.
MARTHA KUMAR:The third phase is the period of detachment, the time in a presidency when, when the president himself is going to spend a lot less time in direct dealing with reporters. They have far fewer press conferences and are going to spend less time in personal interviews with reporters. The White House communications apparatus, though, is going to still provide the daily information.
BOB GARFIELD:In the case of President Bush, even had there not been a war early in his administration, it strikes me that he was disengaged from the press pretty much from the beginning. We've seen very little of him. Did the Bush presidency begin in the detachment phase?
MARTHA KUMAR: No, it certainly is-- no I don't think it is in a detachment phase now. I mean there is always going to be an interest of the president's staff in trying to present him in situations where his vulnerability is limited. Looking at the Bush White House you can see that they have not had many press conferences; they are reluctant to put him out, and I'm sure there are a variety of reasons for doing so, but I do think the staff generally are conservative, and they don't know what kind of response he will have to particular questions.
BOB GARFIELD:Martha Kumar is a professor of political science at Towson University; she co-wrote Portraying the President: The White House and the News Media. Thank you so much.
MARTHA KUMAR: Thank you. It was a pleasure. Limiting Access
July 19, 2002
BOB GARFIELD: Joining me now is Bob Deans, White House correspondent for the Cox Newspapers and president of the White House Correspondents Association. Whether or not confrontation with the sitting administration has historical inevitability, he's faced with the day to day realities of the beat such as being a pool reporter, given access to major events as a representative for the entire print press corps only to shout questions at a smiling, waving, mute president. It's frustrating, Deans says, although somehow still important.
BOB DEANS: The value of this, Bob, to the public is that it gives the American people a chance to look the-- look at the president for themselves, make their own judgments about things like how comfortable he is, what does he project? It's the very same reason that in the world of instant communications and the internet, businessmen still get on an airplane and fly halfway around the world to meet with their partners and look at 'em in the face across a table and, and assess things.
BOB GARFIELD:All right, now -- serving that function as pool reporter recently in Canada you've covered the G-8 Summit and you were not a happy camper. I'm going to read the lead of the report that you gave to the other members of the press on the trip. No, this was not the lead of your story in the newspaper the next day, but this is what you told your colleagues. "It was only a matter of time, perhaps, but what passes for White House coverage these days has finally devolved into a Lewis Carroll absurdity in which White House correspondents can travel on a 3-day foreign trip and never once lay eyes on the president, not even if they draw a 12 hour pool assignment."
BOB DEANS: We did certainly expect to have the one lone writer representing the entire press corps able to get into the G-8 working session, and the fact that we weren't able to do that struck me as a new low. Now in fairness Ari Fleischer, the White House press spokesman, came out later that day and apologized to the press corps.
BOB GARFIELD: Just curious -- did Fleischer's apology come before or after you had filed your pool report?
BOB DEANS: It came after the pool report was filed, but I, I don't know whether it -- one precipitated the other.
BOB GARFIELD:Has stonewalling become simply the status quo in the Bush White House and, and is it any worse than, for example, the Clinton White House was?
BOB DEANS: These comparisons are tricky. I will say this: as far as pool access goes, even in the darkest days of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, we still had pool access to President Clinton. Now you could ask a question and he wouldn't answer a question about any subject. I can remember asking him once about the Pakistani nuclear program and he wouldn't answer, because he knew that if he answered that, the next question out of somebody's mouth was going to have to do with Monica Lewinsky. So he wouldn't answer those questions. But he had to in essence gauge the price he was going to pay for the public's seeing him not asking [sic]--answering legitimate questions.
BOB GARFIELD:And a piece in the National Journal, Carl Cannon [sp?], suggested that it's in the White House' interest to keep the American people informed and that if they don't keep the American people informed that it becomes a political liability for the White House. Do you think that it's, it's ever in the interest of the White House to say more as opposed to less?
BOB DEANS: One of the things that can't be overlooked is the fact that this president has a --depending on which poll -- Gallup last week, 73 percent; New York Times/CBS News this week 70 percent job approval rating. So-- one wonders what, when a senior staffer in a meeting says doggone it, we've got to be more responsive to these journalists and-- another senior staffer looks across the table and says "Well we've got 7 out of 10 Americans on our side. Tell me what we're going to get by going your route," one can only imagine the response. What I argue is that it's in their interest to explain more, not less, about why they're doing what they're doing, the why's and the wherefores behind the policies, and here's why it's important. Every time you leave unanswered questions on the table, you sow the seeds of suspicion that can ultimately erode even the most noble of national objectives. To build support for your objectives you need to explain them. And ultimately this shouldn't come down to a us-versus-them. The health of the democracy is based on an informed electorate. It's our job as journalists to provide that information. When we fail, we fail the nation. And that's something we can't afford to do.
BOB GARFIELD: Bob Deans, thank you very much.
BOB DEANS: Thank you for having me, Bob.
BOB GARFIELD: Bob Deans is the White House correspondent for the Cox Newspapers and president of the White House Correspondents Association. Here’s the Pitch....
July 19, 2002
[MUSIC] [CLIP PLAYS FROM FILM "THE PLAYER"]
MOVIE EXECUTIVE: What have you got for me?
MAN PITCHING MOVIE: Okay-- here it is! The Graduate -- Part II-.
MOVIE EXECUTIVE: Oh, good!
MAN PITCHING MOVIE: Now listen--
BROOKE GLADSTONE: This infamous scene from Robert Altman's 1992 film The Player is recreated every day in Hollywood whether in an executive office, a lunch meeting or over a double mocha decaf latte, screenwriters and producers are trying to sell their story. It is known as a pitch, and it is the lifeblood of the motion picture industry. OTM's Rex Doane has been pitching this story to us for months and we finally agreed to let him do it. [CLIP FROM THE PLAYER]
MOVIE EXECUTIVE: It's going to be funny?
MAN PITCHING MOVIE: Yeah, it'll be funny -- dark-- [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
MOVIE EXECUTIVE: With a stroke? [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
MAN PITCHING MOVIE: -- and weird and funny and with a stroke.
CAROL BAUM: So everything is a pitch; everything is a sell.
REX DOANE: Hollywood veteran Carol Baum has produced such films as The Father of the Bride, Fly Away Home and the forthcoming feature, The Good Girl. She has pitched and been pitched to more times than she cares to remember. As she tells her students at the USC Film School never, ever let a pitch run more than 10 minutes.
CAROL BAUM: If you take too long, they're going to turn on you, and you're not going to be welcomed back. They're going to remember that you wasted 45 minutes of their valuable time. [CLIP FROM THE PLAYER]
MOVIE EXECUTIVE: Don't tell me you came here to pitch me a story.
ROBBIE FOX: When I pitch the most important thing is have a great opening line.
REX DOANE: As a successful screenwriter, Robbie Fox knows the value of brevity as well. Keep it brief and open with a bang.
ROBBIE FOX: I, I will - I mean I've pitched stories and I knew within the first line that I sold it. I pitched this movie to MGM and-- and the first line of the script was: "One fine sunny day, 3 surgeons' wives went to the fat farm for the weekend." And-- I saw the executives smile, and I just knew-- [CLIP FROM THE PLAYER]
MOVIE EXECUTIVE: Go ahead.
WOMAN PITCHING MOVIE: Okay. It's a TV star and she goes on safari to Africa-- [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
SECOND WOMAN PITCHING MOVIE: Like a Donna Mills or a Joan Collins-- [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
MOVIE EXECUTIVE: You're talking about a TV star in a motion picture? A major motion picture?
WOMAN PITCHING MOVIE: No, no, no, no. [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
SECOND WOMAN PITCHING MOVIE: No, not a real TV star--
ROBBIE FOX: You have to go in feeling like the pitch you have is you're coming in with a million dollars cash, and you're saying here -- I want to give you this million dollars. I just want to give it to you! [CLIP FROM THE PLAYER]
WOMAN PITCHING MOVIE: -- yeah - Goldie - and okay - it's out of-- [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
MOVIE EXECUTIVE: Oh, I see - it's a kind of like a Gods Must Be Crazy except the Coke bottle's now a television actress.
WOMAN PITCHING MOVIE: Yeah-- [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
SECOND WOMAN PITCHING MOVIE: That's-- [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
WOMAN PITCHING MOVIE: -- it's exactly right - it's Out of Africa meets Pretty Woman.
REX DOANE: Of course pitches can occasionally be too glib. Fox relates a favorite story told to him by Martin Short.
ROBBIE FOX: Mart once told me a great [LAUGHS] story [LAUGHS] - a guy came in and pitched a story to him, and he said I'm going to say it real succinctly -- Buster Keaton -- in space. And the guy was ready to pack up his bag. He goes - that's all. And Martin said-- "I need more. That's not enough."
REX DOANE: Carol Baum also has a few helpful hints about what to avoid on your next pitch.
CAROL BAUM: In the old days I remember -- in the tortured days when people didn't know any better --would come with a guitar to the room. I would recommend against that.
REX DOANE: Comic artist Dan Clowes who co-wrote the screenplay for the film Ghost World is a relative newcomer to the Hollywood pitch scene.
DAN CLOWES: The first 4 or 5 pitch meetings I went to I couldn't believe like that they were such, such living cliches. I mean they were really exactly the way they're parodied in movies. There, there's always that, that thing of -you know - you walk in and they, they are your biggest fan. They will, they will tell you whatever you've done that they've seen of yours is the greatest thing in the world and that you're a genius-- [CLIP FROM THE PLAYER]
MOVIE EXECUTIVE: I don't know you. I don't know your work. I think that you are a very, very talented young man, and I'm never wrong about these things.
REX DOANE: Clowes has in fact referred to himself and Ghost World collaborator Terry Zwigoff as the two worst pitchmen in the history of Hollywood.
DAN CLOWES: Terry and I tend to sit there in this fixed position with, you know, sweating -- staring at our shoes -- barely able to make eye contact, you know and we were both raised to have this sort of, you know, Midwestern self-deprecating quality. I remember Terry once saying like handing the person the script and going "well, it's sure not Shakespeare." You know, and that's - that's just not a good way to start a meeting. [LAUGHS] [CLIP FROM THE PLAYER]
MOVIE EXECUTIVE: That was a hell of a pitch.
REX DOANE: In general, the Clowes/Zwigoff duo lack what might be termed "market savvy."
DAN CLOWES: We'd go in and they'd say well what are some of your favorite films, you know? And we'd say well we like, you know, Crimes and Misdemeanors and Chaplin's City Lights or, you know, something like that - you know something they've - that to them just spells box office death. [CLIP FROM THE PLAYER]
MAN PITCHING MOVIE: It's going to be in black and white.
MOVIE EXECUTIVE: What's going to be in black and white?
MAN PITCHING MOVIE: The movie -- it's in black and white.
MOVIE EXECUTIVE: The whole movie?
SECOND MOVIE EXECUTIVE: Every scene?
MAN PITCHING MOVIE: Yeah!
MOVIE EXECUTIVE: Well if you shoot it in black and white they're just going to colorize it anyway, so what's the point?
CAROL BAUM: Long ago I think you could go into a studio with just an idea and somebody would buy it.
REX DOANE: Again, Carol Baum.
CAROL BAUM: Now, you have to have ammo. You have to have a director, an actor-- somebody with clout attached to your pitch.
REX DOANE: Star commitment is only the beginning. Mention anything unsupported by demographic studies or focus groups could seriously jeopardize a pitch. Robbie Fox.
ROBBIE FOX: I've sat in rooms before, pitched ideas where right in the script it says: 43 year old guy - he does this and this and that - and they say could this be could for Adam Sandler? [CLIP FROM THE PLAYER]
MOVIE EXECUTIVE: Hey, whoa! Whoa! Time out here. Nick, how old are these people?
MAN PITCHING MOVIE: Early 40s.
MOVIE EXECUTIVE: [GASPS] Oh. Boy!
MAN PITCHING MOVIE: What's wrong?
MOVIE EXECUTIVE: Well-- [LAUGHS] that is a bad age, Nick. I mean the people who buy movie tickets fortunately or unfortunately are between the ages of--
SECOND MOVIE EXECUTIVE: 14 and 24.
MOVIE EXECUTIVE: [LAUGHS]!
MAN PITCHING MOVIE: So?
SECOND MOVIE EXECUTIVE: So if kids want to see people in their 40s, they don't go to the movies! They go home -look at their parents! [LAUGHS]
REX DOANE: But the odds can be beaten. Films do get made. Drawing upon his years of experience in the biz, Robbie Fox is willing to share privileged insight to any up and coming filmmaker looking for that big break. [HIT MOVIE MUSIC UP AND UNDER]
ROBBIE FOX: It helps to have a big hit movie in the theaters at the time of your pitch. That will your pitch seem funnier.
REX DOANE: That sounds like a good plan.
ROBBIE FOX: Yeah. I would, in fact, the next time I pitch, I'm going to make sure that I have a big hit movie in the theater at the time. [CLIP FROM THE PLAYER]
MOVIE EXECUTIVE: I want you to get out of my office and go write me a movie!
MAN PITCHING MOVIE: [LAUGHS] Okay! Great! Thanks!
MOVIE EXECUTIVE: [LAUGHS] [HIT MOVIE MUSIC SWELLS]
REX DOANE: In New York, for On the Media, I'm Rex Doane. [MUSIC FADES] Celebrity Reality Shows You’ll Never See
July 19, 2002
BOB GARFIELD: This season's TV pitches are sure to reflect the hottest trend -- celebrity reality television. After the Ozzy Osbourne reality show got huge ratings for MTV, the E-Channel announced it would be doing a show on the real life of former Playmate of the Year Anna Nicole Smith. Other celebrities mentioned as possible candidates for reality shows include Liza Minelli, Cybill Shepherd and Gene Simmons from Kiss. Brian "Kato" Kaelin, famous only for having been O.J. Simpson's house guest, has taped 3 episodes of a series titled, you guessed it, House Guest, in which he knocks on people's doors randomly and invites himself in for the weekend. You can't stop the celebrity reality trend. You can only hope that there is an entire cable channel to contain it. [MUSIC]
ANNOUNCER: Coming this fall, it's Reality TV, 24 hours of celebrities being real. CHORUS: [SINGING] TO BE REAL!3
ANNOUNCER: On Tuesdays, sidle up to the most intimate moments of Academy Award-winning actor F. Murray Abraham. "F. MURRAY ABRAHAM": No, it's not Frankie. No, not Faisal [sp?]. [LAUGHS] Do I look like a Fletcher? CHORUS: [SINGING] TO BE REAL!
ANNOUNCER:On Wednesdays you thought the Osbournes were exciting. Catch The Naylors, starring NPR's Brian Naylor. BRIAN NAYLOR: What the f[BEEP]k?! I can't live with this f[BEEP]ing - the sandwiches are a joke -they're so f[BEEP]ing small, I - this is just a total f[BEEP]ing waste. Uh-- The Senate Subcommittee on Banking and Finance met today to discuss the issue of off balance sheet accounting. CHORUS: [SINGING] TO BE REAL!
ANNOUNCER: On Thursdays it's the number 2 golfer in the world, David Duval [sp?]. #2 GOLFER DAVID DUVAL: [SHOUTING] Tiger! Tiger! It's, it's me -David? We-- met at the Sawgrass Invitational? I, I bogeyed 17? CHORUS: [SINGING] TO BE REAL! [SONG CONTINUES UNDER]
ANNOUNCER: And on Friday get to know -- to really know --Entertainment Tonight Co-Host Bob Going [sp?]. CHORUS: [SINGING] TO BE REAL! BOB GOING: Is it Farouk? Is it Fritz? Is it Franz?
ANNOUNCER: That's Reality TV -- the cable channel with real appeal. This time it's for real. CHORUS: [SINGING] IT'S GOT TO BE REAL, ETC.
BOB GARFIELD: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, George Edwards and Irene Trudel, and edited --By Brooke. We had help from Dan Bobkoff, Dave Schepard, Chris Reilly, Brian Naylor and Paul Chuffo. Our webmaster is Amy Pearl.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Mike Pesca is our producer at large; Arun Rath our senior producer; and Dean Capello our executive producer. Bassist/composer Ben Allison wrote our theme. You can listen to the program and get free transcripts at onthemedia.org and e-mail us at onthemedia@wnyc.org. This is On the Media from NPR. I'm Brooke Gladstone.
BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield. [MUSIC TAG] 58:30 [FUNDING CREDITS] ************
- Back to story:
- July 19, 2002
-
A Week of Scandals, Catholic Whistleblowers, and More
-
Conservative Bloggers Vindicated, Advice for Leakers, and More
-
The Mayor of Toronto Would Prefer Not to Discuss Whether He Smokes Crack
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An 11-year-old and his 3D printer
-
Catholic Whistleblowers
-
Who’s gonna pay for this stuff?
-
OTM Staff Picks, Volume 52
-
Qapla!
-
Brooke Gladstone + Cyndi Lauper
-
The Three-Headed Scandal Monster
