Watching the Watcher

 
Media Watch

The mainstream press is supposed to watch the government and businesses for us. But who’s watching them? Lots of media watch groups do just that. We’d like to call your attention to some things these groups may have missed.

“What Were They Thinking,” the Umpteenth Sequel

Learning from someone else’s mistake must be easier said than done. How else do you explain the fact that different people keep making the same blunder over and over? We’re not all gifted comedy writers. It’s fine to poke fun at others for what they do, but if you want to get personal—go after what they look like, how they talk, what they wear, their name—you better know what you’re doing. Even professionals stumble—remember actor Ted Danson’s skit at a roast when he was dating Whoopi Goldberg? Not all material is ready for Comedy Central. Don’t make a fool of yourself at a party or in the office, especially when your company is in the public eye.

So it’s déjà vu all over again when the San Francisco Chronicle reported on a diversity-training video made by the San Francisco 49ers’ public relations director (life is full of ironies). This story only came to light after copies of the tape were sent anonymously to the newspaper and the mayor’s office in March 2005. Since we live in the age of the Internet, The Chronicle made the tape available on its Web site (as the copyright owner, the 49ers could demand that the video be removed). As it’s sometimes the case with these scandals, the reaction of the public and the media is more interesting than the story itself.

About the only thing everybody agrees on is that this 15-minute training film is tasteless. Some people responded with the predictable and lame “Can’t they take a joke” defense. Some thought this PR director had to go to extremes in order to show his audience what not to do (a “Scared Straight” approach). But if that’s the real objective, he should’ve made the main character a despicable jerk, an Archie Bunker type perhaps. Instead, this tape is all about making fun of the usual targets: minorities, gays, and women.

Some local sportscasters and sportswriters simply dismissed this film as your typical locker-room high jinks. It’s condescending to suggest that the only way to reach a bunch of adult athletes is through nudity and racist humor. The locker room isn’t some embassy; the same rules still apply. If these reporters’ children got hurt from a hazing incident, would they just shrug and say, “That’s male bonding for you”?

We also wonder if the media might have reacted differently if this in-house tape had included, say, the N-word or a swastika. This NFL story has received minimal national coverage—even though it involves an NFL employee—while the press jumped all over Rush Limbaugh’s comments on ESPN in 2003 (see below for our take on that story). Can you say double standards? A program like ABC’s “Nightline” could have seized this opportunity to explore such broad issues as the persistence of racist images (are they perpetuated on screen in “Sixteen Candles,” “Malibu’s Most Wanted,” “Alfie,” and other movies?) and how show business is rightly or wrongly blamed for its would-be imitators (one 49er made a reference to comedian Dave Chappelle’s TV show).

In the end, we’re reminded of a call to action we heard years ago: you must raise your objection whenever someone repeats an offensive joke in your presence. Anyone who’d viewed this training film back in August 2004 should have spoken out immediately. This PR guy didn’t wake up one day and decide to write, produce, and star in his 15-minute magnum opus. We suspect he’d probably told similar jokes in the past. If only someone had called him on it, we might have been spared this turkey of a sequel.

The Case of the Four Congressmen

We have not been able to figure out how the press determines what’s newsworthy vis-à-vis the four members of the U.S. Congress who put their foot in their mouth within a five-month period ended April 2003. We’re talking about Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.), Rep. Howard Coble (R-N.C.), Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.), and Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Penn.). It’s interesting how the national and local media covered Lott and Santorum but largely ignored the other two. In fact, we don’t recall any network or local TV news mentioning Coble or Moran at all (you can ask yourself whether your local press mirrored the same trend).

One could argue that Lott and Santorum make better headlines because they are high-profile politicians (we wouldn’t be able to tell you what Coble and Moran look like). However, the moral views of a conservative leader like Santorum shouldn’t be that shocking to the press (TV news went overboard; print media was more restrained). Comedian Bill Maher quipped that the senator’s opinions aren’t that far from those of certain U.S. Supreme Court justices. Indeed, two months later, Justice Antonin Scalia’s dissent in the landmark case affirming gay privacy eerily echoed Santorum’s sentiments.

One could also argue that Coble and Moran got a break because they made their comments at a time when Iraq dominated the news. In addition, Moran’s party took some action, which was sufficient to make his story go away. But despite the fact that there was no ambiguity in Coble’s comments and that they seem relevant to his position as the chair of the homeland security subcommittee, the press has surprisingly left him alone.

Since Lott, Coble, and Santorum are from the same party, you can’t explain the difference in the media’s coverage on partisanship. Some Web sites would like to take credit for Lott’s downfall—why did these same outraged e-publishers give Coble a free pass? The way we see it, the mainstream press got it wrong in two of the four cases (see table). It’s a shirty dame.

Different Press for Different Gaffe

Newsmaker	Dateline	Relative Coverage	Appropriate?
Lott	December 2002	High	Yes
Coble	February 2003	Low	Underreported
Moran	March 2003	Low	Yes
Santorum	April 2003	Medium	Overreported

Did Peter Jennings Really Say That?

While reporting in October 2003 the passing of Robert Kardashian, a peripheral figure in the O.J. Simpson trial, Peter Jennings noted on ABC’s “World News Tonight” that his home was the place Simpson went to “after murdering his wife” and friend. For those of you living under a rock, he was technically acquitted in 1995 (but later found liable in a civil trial). If Jennings had to do it over, he’d probably rewrite the script for the news that night.

Rush to Judgment

We don’t understand why the media jumped all over talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh’s comments on ESPN in September 2003. He stated that a particular quarterback, who happens to be African American, is overrated. Sports fans debate that kind of stuff all the time. He didn’t opine that all African American quarterbacks are overrated.

He also added that the media would like to see a black quarterback do well. Again, we don’t see why this is such a controversial statement. People naturally root for the underdog. There are those who would like to see African American coaches succeed in the NFL (team loyalty aside) as well as female CEOs in corporate America. Some fans would like to see the Chicago Cubs go the distance, too. Why has his critique of the media drawn so much fire? Perhaps it’s the simple fact that the media hates to be stereotyped (they’re still smarting from the liberal label).

After watching guests on NBC’s “The Today Show” and ABC’s “Nightline” discuss Limbaugh’s statement, we’re still mystified as to why some people find it so offensive. The best explanation so far is that the comments imply that this quarterback is overrated because he’s African American, an inference that seems a bit unfair.

Assuming that’s what Limbaugh meant, we suppose that’s akin to someone saying Eminem nabbed several Grammy nominations because he’s a white rapper. Or Karol Wojtyla became the Pope because the College of Cardinals was looking for a non-Italian from a predominantly Catholic European country. Or Tom Brokaw got the anchor job because he’s more photogenic than Roger Mudd. Or George Bush was accepted into prestigious schools because of his family.

Whenever meritocracy is questioned, people always point to factors like nepotism, cronyism, lobbying, politics, status, money, popularity, looks, gender, and race—the usual suspects. The thing is for some people, race has become a knee-jerk reaction—it’s all they see. Such comments are often misguided, simple-minded, patronizing, or plain wrong. We wouldn’t call them offensive or racist, however.

To anyone who feels that African American quarterbacks get special treatment, we say this: show us a black quarterback who’s overrated and we’ll show you four white quarterbacks who are overrated. Limbaugh has a history of making disparaging, if not offensive, remarks about minority groups on his radio show. So it’s no wonder few people would give him the benefit of the doubt. But we don’t charge someone with a crime based solely on past behavior. File this story under “Overreported.”

If you want to catch offensive comments on television, you don’t need to watch cable. Some late-night talk shows on network TV have a habit of making borderline racist jokes. We challenge the news divisions of TV networks to criticize their late-night colleagues.

Should Robert Novak and The Washington Post Be Held Accountable?

Whether the leaking of the identity of a CIA employee will turn out to be the Bush administration’s Watergate is not our concern (some people call it “Intimigate”). Washington leaks are nothing new. We don’t care if Washington Post columnist Robert Novak reveals his sources or not. Yes, a crime was probably committed when White House sources outed former Ambassador Joseph Wilson’s wife to Novak and, reportedly, other journalists (proving they knew she’s a covert operative would be difficult). But here’s the issue that seems to be getting lost in the gathering political storm: did Novak become an “accessory” when he wrote his July 14, 2003, column? Thanks to him, the whole world knows about Wilson’s wife.

If plagiarism is so bad—remember the recent scandal at The New York Times?—isn’t what Novak did at least as reprehensible? He now claims he’d checked with a CIA spokesman before writing his column. Even if his recollection is accurate, he should’ve been more circumspect because his sources had an agenda—and possibly a grudge against Wilson. If newspapers printed every accusation and rumor, there’d be nothing but tabloids. So what’s The Washington Post’s role in this? Shouldn’t Novak’s editor have raised a red flag?

What’s in a Name?

When Attorney General John Ashcroft made the dramatic announcement in June 2002 of the month-old arrest of a “dirty bomb” suspect, he kept referring to Jose Padilla by his Muslim name. The fact that he mentioned his Muslim name 13 times and his birth name only twice seemed to indicate a calculated move on the part of Ashcroft. Like sheep, network TV news followed suit and repeated Padilla’s adopted name—for the first 24 hours. Not surprisingly, they gave up after that.

We don’t recall the government dwelling on the Muslim name of John Walker Lindt, the so-called “American Taliban.” To be fair, the media had stumbled across Lindt independently before any official announcement. Still, what was Ashcroft thinking in Padilla’s case? Was he trying to send a message to Al Qaeda? Is this an example of portraying a suspected American terrorist as “the other”? Is the Walker/Lindt name more precious to the Justice Department than Padilla? If the press wants to refer to any converted Muslim by his adopted name only, that’s fine. But it should be done consistently. And they should never take their cue from the government.

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Labels: current events, essays, journalism, mass media, opinion

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