by Dave Zornow

On a day when the world mourns the loss of Steve Jobs and the tech industry is iWriting about the iMac-iPod-iPhone-iPad, it’s valuable to remember that the original Man-In-Black didn’t always have the Midas touch. Which makes his successes that much more remarkable.

We’ve had an an Mac in our house since April 1984 — somewhat influenced by that iconic 1984 Superbowl spot introducing the first Macintosh. So, it’s fair to say we are fans from waay back.

The 1990's vintage Mac Classic, which holds a prominent place in our basement next to the water meter.

On the day after Steve’s death, we remember the good times. But, to be honest, they weren’t always good times.

For years — maybe decades — we suffered the taunts of the IT Crowd who called the Mac “a toy.” In 1990, I remember a conversation I had with the head of the computer department at my employer about bringing in a Macintosh to help create the cutting edge presentations our clients expected — work that was not possible to do on our Wang Word processors. In no uncertain terms, I was told no. Actually, her specific words were, “Thou shalt not use the ‘M’ word here.” My employer at the time was MTV Networks.

Like I said, it wasn’t always easy being a Mac fan.

Steve made us suffer in the early years because he refused to conform to the wishes of the IT community. Or even go out of his way to sell to the US government.

Winner of the “didn’t you see that coming award,” his hand picked successor at Apple Computer, John Scully, led a successful coup which ousted Jobs from the company he co-founded. Steve Jobs is also the guy who brought us the Apple III, didn’t think there was a future in desktop publishing, championed the pre-Macintosh LISA flop and could never get his head around the idea that two buttons on a mouse might be useful.

Then there’s that whole flash thing.

This is the guy who was the first to take away our built-in dial-up modems, forced us to use 3 1/2 drives when the rest of the world was 5 1/4 and floppy and finally took away our disk drives completely. Oh, and after he left us with only a network port, he then introduced a tablet computer that had no network port at all.

It hasn’t been an easy ride. Although his computers are fashionable, it’s hard to idolize a megalomaniac whose idea of a fashion statement is wearing a black turtleneck. All of the time. For 25 years.

One of the funny things about that Superbowl commercial is that most Apple users who were born after the Macintosh spot probably wouldn’t guess that the Big Brother in that spot was IBM. The first 128K Macintosh was the David to the IBM-PC Goliath. No, kids, it wasn’t Microsoft. It’s another testament to how far Apple has come since 1984 — these days IBM doesn’t even make PCs anymore, having sold that business to Lenovo.

At last Spring’s commencement address, Ithaca College President Thomas R. Rochon noted that when the graduates were freshman the first iPhone was introduced. As they received their diplomas, consumers were waiting on the fifth version of this revolutionary product. One which paved the way for the equally successful Android phone, too. As consumers, we have received quite a tech education during the time these kids were getting their college educations. And none of this would have happened if it were not for Steve.

For years, people have been talking about slate computing. And now we have the wildly successful iPad and iPad2. Forget about the fact that its no more than an iPhone with a bigger screen. It took a lot of vision and guts to “make it so.”

Despite his failures (I can’t even remember what that Apple see-through cube computer fiasco was called), Steve Jobs transformed Apple, the IT business, the way we look at user interfaces, how we use phones, the way we buy and listen to music, and how “tech” products are marketed to consumers. But for Steve, it was never about the tech — it was always about the consumer. Which is a legacy which will live on far beyond the Cult of Steve.

Steve Jobs, for all of his faults and failures, created a phenomenon, got kicked to the curb, and then resurrected both his company and his career from the dead all while making the turleneck stylish again. Steve Jobs, RIP.

It will come as no surprise to regular readers of Mediapost that Joe Mandese is no fan of Nielsen. Mandese, the Editor-in-Chief at MediaPost, has frequently skewered the ratings company for things they have done and much of the time, Nielsen critics applaud his efforts. But researchers say Mandese crossed a line with last week’s story, “Nielsen Discloses Major TV Ratings Glitch, Could Impact Millions In TV Ad Buys” because there was no major glitch — with the possible exception of how MediaPost reported the story.

Researchers were scratching their collective heads about this story which implied that Nielsen’s new online campaign ratings initiative was connected to a relatively obscure Average Frequency calculation error in Reach And Frequency custom analyses when used with ten month old data. “A week after unveiling an aggressive plan to convince the ad industry to use its new Facebook panel as the ‘GRP’ for online advertising and media buys, Nielsen Wednesday began informing clients about a major snafu with the one that generates GRPs for the multi-billion television advertising marketplace,” Mandese wrote in MediaPost on Thursday, September 22.

But users of Nielsen data weren’t buying the connection. “Most advertisers get their post-campaign analyzes from MSA, which is a straight C3 data stream based on impressions,” said multi-platform media research consultant Rande Price.”This has nothing to do with Facebook/OCR,” added another Nielsen client.

Each of the dozen Ad Supported cable researchers polled for this story faulted MediaPost’s reporting on the issue. Most noted that this was not the first time MediaPost had played fast-and-loose with the facts while on a Nielsen-bashing crusade. “Why does Joe hate Nielsen so much?,” asked a 25 year veteran user of these data. “Joe has admitted that he’s a journalist, not a researcher…and is more concerned about the headline than the facts in the story,” commented another researcher.

“Having spent the better part of the morning running this down, it is clear that today’s coverage has blown this well out of proportion, starting with a sensational headline…that is truly irresponsible,” wrote Larry Goldstein, Chief Media & Research Officer at Media Management, Inc. in a comment on MediaPost’s website.

“MediaPost has been taking lessons from the cable news networks and Nielsen is their whipping boy,” said one basic cable researcher. “Sometimes the criticism is deserved, but this incident was minor and the MediaPost story blew it out of proportion.” Research executives worry that the fallout from bad reporting wastes time and focus, with the internal scrambling around to answer questions from panicked network executives wasting resources that should be used to address more serious issues with the ratings monopoly.  “E-mails start flying around.   Everyone wants an explanation and potential impact in the marketplace,” says a broadcast and cable researcher. “Then programming chimes in that all Nielsen data is bad – how can you trust anything they say?” Researchers say ratings-related misinformation undermines everyone’s credibility — including MediaPost’s. Expressing the sentiment heard from many of these researchers, one basic cable source said, “Nielsen is far from perfect, but the state of measurement is better now than ever before.”

The Thursday story was picked up by TVWeek’s TVBizWire and was reprinted verbatim, attributed to MediaPost.

On Friday, MediaPost printed a retraction — sort of. In a follow-up article headlined “Nielsen Plummets, Rentrak Soars On News Of Ratings Glitch, Cuban Investment,” Mandese noted that “Nielsen’s stock price plummeted” and speculated that the previous day’s story may have contributed to Nielsen’s Wall Street woes. “News that Nielsen had disclosed a major TV ratings glitch contributed to a sell-off driving its share value down 9%,” Mandese wrote in an an article which also reported that billionaire Mark Cuban had increased his stake in Nielsen’s local measurement rival, Rentrak. After quoting Deutsche Bank analyst Matt Chesler (“the glitch disclosed by Nielsen would actually have ‘minimal impact’”) Mandese admitted that the previous day’s story was in error. In the seventh paragraph of the article, Mandese wrote that the September 22 story “…incorrectly implied that that the glitch may have impacted Nielsen’s C3 ratings, which are the currency of national TV advertising buys, and the basis of most audience guarantees between networks and advertisers.”

MediaPost put the blame on Nielsen saying that no spokesperson was available on Wednesday or Thursday to comment on the snafu. But it begs the question: what was the rush? As a journalist, is it more important to be right — or to be first?

“Mediapost and other well-meaning industry journalists often misinterpret research data and put out misleading headlines,” says research consultant and agency veteran Steve Sternberg. “Nielsen’s notice on the subject was not as clear as it could have been, and someone not intimately involved in accessing Nieslen’s data could easily have come to the same conclusion.” Because it had no impact on the daily ratings currency which agencies extract from Nielsen “MIT” data, it would not have impacted the “millions in ad buys” which the headline claimed. “It had no impact on audience guarantees,” says Sternberg. “But it is still a major glitch that impacts research analysis often used in making buying decisions,” he said.

One of Mandese’s peers at a rival publication agreed with researchers’ criticisms. “I don’t think Joe really understands some of the research issues,” says one career media journalist. “He never picks up the phone to confirm details.” They added that the MediaPost style has been ‘ready, fire aim’ with an emphasis on attention-getting headlines with less effort invested in fact checking. But this journalist also faulted Nielsen for how they handled the issue, too. “They get into trouble like this all of the time, not anticipating what will happen when a client notice isn’t perfectly clear in its meaning.”

The day following the MediaPost story, Nielsen issued a statement in response on 9/22 to the MediaPost article earlier that day. “Nielsen has informed clients that as a result of changes made earlier in the year for the measurement of multiple viewing of programs in TV homes,  the reporting of Program Viewing Frequency in the NPOWER tool is overstated, affecting the NPOWER-reported Program GRP,” said Matt Anchin, Nielsen’s SVP for Global Communications. “There is no impact to C3 Commercial Data, Ratings and Projections, electronic data files used by other processors or to Reach or any other NPOWER-reported data.”

One of the quirky things about journalists — in all media — is the urge to beat the competition. It’s an odd holdover from the days when newsboys would scream “Extra Extra! Read All About It!” on the streets to generate sales and readership. Even in the 24/7-news-cycle-Internet age, this feeling persists, even though it’s very doubtful that many readers choose publications solely because they “broke” a story first. The average reader would much rather read a story that is right than first. In the rush to break a story, journalists give too little attention to the collateral damage that might be caused by getting things wrong; or in news terms, what it takes to fix what has been “broke.” Perhaps MediaPost — and many other news outlets — should heed the advice of Paul Simon: “Slow down, you move to fast. You’ve got to make this [story] last.”

The word schadenfreude, defined as deriving pleasure from the misfortunes of others,” may be unfamiliar to you unless you speak German or have seen the Broadway Musical Avenue Q. But if you are a fan of shock-jock morning radio, you are probably familiar with the concept.

The syndicated “Elvis Duran and the Morning Show” beamed from New York’s Z-100 features a regular segment called Phone Taps where a friend or relative of a listener pranks the unsuspecting ex-friend and current relative-in-exile. In a segment broadcast today on Miami’s Y-100 WHYI, a man called his fiancee at work to tell her that her new car, left running with the keys in it, had been stolen while he stopped off to grab a power shake. She freaked. Her panic was exacerbated when the morning show host, masquerading as the thief, dialed in from her boyfriend’s stolen Blackberry and asked how much she was willing to pay to get her car back.

She wasn’t happy. “Why would you do this to me?” she asked the boyfriend after the prank was revealed.

Throughout the five minute segment I kept thinking, “ok, what’s funny about this?” until I realized it wasn’t supposed to be funny. It was supposed to be schadenfreude.

Elvis Duran’s winning formula in morning drive has won him fans and ratings in 27 markets. The Phone Tap segment even spawned a short-lived four-episode reality show called Phowned on Spike TV last December.  WHTZ-FM (aka Z-100) consistently ranks in the top New York radio stations on the strength on the Elvis Duran show.

Having spent the beginning of my career working in radio, I have some appreciation for the accomplishments of Mr. Duran. Top of the ratings heap in New York with clearances in major markets is no mean feat. I also realize the golden age of radio has long since passed — it was long ago dead and buried by the time I spent five years in the business 35 years ago. (Eight months was spent as Producton Manager of America’s first disco radio station. Yes, that was a long time ago) But after hearing the stolen car/not really stolen phony phone call, I have to ask: “That’s Entertainment?”

It’s pretty clear that this Phone Tap did irreparable harm to this relationship. I’m no marriage counselor, but when your fiancee screams into the phone “why would you do this to me?” across 27 markets during morning drive, it’s likely that there are some rough times ahead for you and the missus. (although you could argue that this Phone Tap was The WTF Intervention this relationship really needed, and without it these guys were going to implode sooner or later).

What I’m not sure of is why people enjoy this. Are there really enough Germans listening to radio in morning drive to make Elvis a winner?

Don’t blame the Germans. They might get credit for creating the word. But it takes American ingenuity to turn other people’s pain into morning drive gain.

New York, June 13 — New York Times David Brooks is an accomplished journalist and an author who has no sympathy for his publishing peers.

Brooks gave the keynote address at the Advertising Research Foundation Audience Measurement 6.0 conference (ARF AMS 6.0) on Monday, quoting frequently from his recent book “The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement.” He also spoke rapidly — giving anyone in the audience who was trying to take notes hand cramps and head shakes.

Fortunately, there were other social animals who came to the rescue. Here are some of the high points of his presentation, supported by twitterin’ soci-animals in the audience.

Brooks noted three key insights derived from current social science research.

• “While the conscious mind writes the autobiography of our species, the unconscious mind does most of the work,” said Brooks.  “People named Dennis are more likely to become dentists. And people named Lawrence are more likely to become lawyers.” Brooks says it’s because we unconsciously gravitate toward things that sound familiar. Although the human brain can take in millions of pieces of information a minute, we can only handle about 40 separate items. It’s our unconscious mind that decides what to leave i and what to leave out.
• “Emotions are at the center of our thinking,” said Brooks.  “They are the foundation of reason because they tell us what to value.” Brooks posited that emotions aren’t separate from reason but that they are central to organizing the way we think.
• Riffing on the “man is not an island theme,” Brooks says that humans are social animals. “We are not primarily self contained individuals,” he says. Humans are social — not rational — and the sum of what we are emerges out of the relationships we have with others.

Brooks also described a number of traits which set us apart which help define our inner social animal.

• Mindsight: The ability to look into other peoples eyes and download what they have to offer. “Babies come with the ability to mimic people around them,” said Brooks. “Mimicry is an important social skill.” Brooks cited work from the University of Minnesota where researchers were able to predict which children were likely to graduate from high school based on their ability to have a good two way conversation with their mother when they were 18 months of age.
• Equipoise: The ability to read the biases and failures in your own mind.
• Medes: “What we might call street smarts, shows a sensitivity to the physical environment, the ability to pick out patterns in an environment.” When someone says I get the gist of something, they are displaying medes. Soldiers in Iraq can look down a street and tell you there’s an IED somewhere. They don’t know how they know — they just do.
• Brooks said creativity comes from blending two different ideas together.  Picasso combining the concept of Western art and the concept African masks is one example.
• Limerence actually isn’t an ability, but a word that describes a person’s drive and a motivation. “The conscious mind hungers for success and prestige,” said Brooks. “The unconscious mind hungers for moments of transcendence and we are lost in a challenge or a task,”says Brooks.

And what did the masses “tw-ink” of Brooks comments in the Twitterverse? Here’s a sampling:

• #DavidBrooks: “We’re in the middle of a cognitive revolution”. — J.T. Compeau
• Via David Brooks @nytimes: Tough decision? Flip coin. Then act not on coin side up, but yr emotional reaction — Neil Glassman
• 19% of Americans think they are in the top 1% of earners. David Brooks at #ARFAM6. Annnd that’s why we always need scientific measurement! — David Coletti
• david brooks emotion is the foundation of reason and unconscious mind makes most decisions — The ARF
• David Brooks – emotion is the foundation of reason. Tells us what we value — fettersac
• Fascinating speech by #DavidBrooks. “Blending” of ideas is the “core of creativity,” leads to innovation. — J.T. Compeau
• Why tax breaks for the rich so popular. RT @ddcoletti: 19% of Americans think they are in the top 1% of earners.  — josh chasin
• RT @JTCompeau: “Emergent systems” are not “clocks”, “they need to be analyzed holistically” – DavidBrooks — Neil Glassman
• Via David Brooks @nytimes: Things on which we focus seem more important than are because we’re focusing on them — Neil Glassman
• David Brooks: Kids in homes where they develop strategies for impulse control do better in school. Doesn’t auger well 4 my kid. — josh chasin
• Yes! RT @fettersac David Brooks – emotion is the foundation of reason. Tells us what we value — Alan Edgett

See also:

• Sweetspeeches.com
• David Brooks at TED 2011, Huffington Post

But this year’s graduation at Ithaca College in upstate New York wasn’t like that. The commencement remarks by college president Thomas R. Rochon used a classic movie scene from The Graduate about the life and times of a college graduate as a way to connect the students’ generation to their parents’.

The Greek philosopher Heraclitus is credited with the observation, “The only constant is change.” Rochon used Dustin Hoffman’s fictional character Benjamin Braddock as a metaphor to remind today’s graduates and their baby boomer parents just how true Heraclitus’ words ring today. “Change has become the only constant we can rely upon,” said Rochon.

If Benjamin had been a real person, he would have received his bachelor’s degree in 1967 – the year the film was released. He would now be 65 or 66 years old, about to retire. Think what he would have witnessed between the day he graduated and his retirement this year.

When Benjamin graduated, the greatest threat to American security was a country called the Soviet Union. The largest corporation in the world was General Motors, the same General Motors that recently emerged from bankruptcy. When Benjamin graduated, no one had ever been to the moon.

And, unlike many of you, we know that Benjamin actually listened to the speeches at his commencement because he had no other options unless he brought with him either a transistor radio or a battery-powered record player.

Today, the odds are pretty good that Benjamin is retiring from a job that did not exist in 1967, or that existed but is now performed in an entirely different way using technologies that were not even dreamed of when his career began.

Of course, 45 years is a long time. But consider the pace of change in just the last four years – the span of time most of you have been at Ithaca College.

When you were freshmen, there had never been an African-American president of the United States and there was no reason to think there would be one any time soon. When you started at IC, there had not yet been a global financial meltdown triggered by misplaced confidence in financial instruments that few people understood.

Rochon then ratcheted the change theme up a notch. Because things have changed since Heraclitus’ time. Change is no longer a constant. The rate of change is accelerating.

The first iPhone came out just before you began your freshman year. Today, as you graduate, you can buy a fourth generation iPhone at your local electronics store. And the blogs are full of rumors about new capabilities that will be added to the iPhone 5, surely coming soon.

It’s a great metaphor and a good analysis…except for the one little fib that Ithaca’s college president told the graduates. “You have not yet reached the generational divide at which one develops a desire to just have technology sit still for a few years so we can get comfortable with our existing gadgets before trading them in for new ones,” said Rochon. “You might never cross that generational divide. You may be the ones for whom change is so omnipresent that the only thing that would make you uncomfortable would be to find out that there will not soon be another major advance in the way we stay connected with each other.”

President Rochon, shame on you for lying to your students. Instead of this innocent fib, you  should have told them about what Joni Mitchell, a real contemporary of the fictional Benjamin Braddock, had to say about change in her 1970 song, The Circle Game.

“Tell him, ‘take your time.’ It won’t be long now — till you drag your feet to slow the circles down.”

Dave Zornow is a media research consultant, web applications developer and hyperlocal publisher in Nyack, NY.

Sources:

• Ithaca College President Thomas R. Rochon, Commencement Remarks, 5/22/2011
• WikiQuote on Heraclitus
• JoniMitchell.com, The Circle Game
• Wikipedia, The Graduate

Once serious but lately comedic actor Leslie Nielsen died last weekend at age 84. Famous for his Airplane and Naked Gun appearances, he once tried to compete with the other Nielsen — according to this 1998 April Fool’s article.

Detective Frank Drebin, we’re going to miss you.

by Dave Zornow

April 1, 1998 — Actor Leslie Nielsen threw his hat into the cable ratings business with the purchase of the bankrupt “Psychic Friends Network.” Although cable analysts questioned the move (One unnamed source wondered, “How well can these psychics see the future if they couldn’t even predict their own bankruptcy? And if they are really psychic, why do they always have to ask my name when I call?”), the actor seemed determined to buy his way into a new business now that his acting career with O.J. is over.

Nielsen has decided to relaunch and reposition Psychic Friends in the audience measurement business. The new venture will now be known as “Nielsen Medium Research.”

Actor Nielsen plans a number of initiatives to make Nielsen Medium Research an industry leader. For example, to emphasize the importance of customer service at his new company, Nielsen Medium Research will include a coupon with each ratings pocketpiece good for ten free minutes with a telephone psychic to consult on upcoming buys, career moves and what to wear on your next date. (Offer void where prohibited.)

The new Nielsen also plans to give the other Nielsen more competition on the technology front. Hoping to capitalize on innovations in advanced digital video sampling, Nielsen’s Nielsen will introduce a new household meter which will measure, store and identify the concentration of purple in each video image. “Each program has its own digital pattern, just like any two random snowflakes in a blizzard or crackerjack kernels in a box. By measuring the Purple Percentage of each video image we can identify every program in a foolproof, digitally-efficient, state-of-the-art, low cost and competitive way,” Nielsen says. The new technology, which will be dubbed the Nielsen Purple Meter, will be available next quarter. Or the one after that, for sure.

Video engineers doubt the Nielsen Purple Meter will ever get out of the lab. Initial field test lab show the Purple Meter consistently overstating viewing to certain Oprah Winfrey movies (“The Color Purple”) and Woody Allen titles (“The Purple Rose of Cairo”).

Copyright 2003, Dave Zornow. Reposted from TNG Research

At Thanksgiving celebrations all across the nation, there was a new topic of conversation to complement the annual discussion of Aunt Minnie’s bean dip casserole and whom cousin Pat is now dating. At turkey time this year, people were talking less about stuffing and more about scanning. Or at least there were in the media: a Google News search turned up 7,744 stories about “airport scanning” in the last week.

Do scanners make us safer? Or is this a marketing effort to discourage terrorists and make us only feel safer? According to Steven Levitt, a University of Chicago economics professor one of the co-authors of the book Freakonomics, worrying about terrorist attacks “is one of the biggest wastes of time, ever.”

“Until the new body scanners were in place, the system was about stopping guns, because for a very long time, guns on planes were a real problem,” says Jared Blank, who writes about the travel industry at OnlineTravelReview.com. “They were being used for skyjackings. The security system created to stop that was actually very effective.” Blank says that 9/11 changed everything when terrorists realized that you could use something other than a gun to take down a plane.

TSA’s historical MO is to be reactive rather than proactive. “That’s how we ended up with bans on toothpaste and 3 year olds getting patted down.” Blank says the full-body scanners take care of half of the problem — uncovering what people are bringing on airplanes. “Great intelligence is what takes care of the other half of the problem,” he says.

In many respects, the TSA is its own worst enemy. Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Erik Uliasz writes about the embarrassment caused when pat downs exposed a young woman’s breasts or how a 61 year old bladder cancer survivor was accidentally covered in urine during a security check. How many people can honestly say that disposing of a two once bottle of shampoo left that feeling safer – and not just part of a vague poorly executed retail conspiracy?

Thanksgiving air travel this year requires even longer than usual wait times to pass through airport security. People are complaining. There’s even a right wing rant that says the public outcry is really a reaction to heavy handed liberal government interfering in every aspect of our lives. But neither the new procedures nor posturing by political pundits answers the question: are we really safer?

Maybe scanning isn’t really about security at all. Maybe it’s about CYA.

In a recent podcast, Levitt posits that game theory predicts that soccer penalty kicks should keep the goalie guessing. Which means that every once in a while you need to kick it right at the goal keeper on the theory that they will be moving to either their left or their right and won’t stop a straight-on penalty kick. But in practice, this doesn’t happen because no one wants to be the laughing stock of the sports press if this strategy backfires.

Which begs the question about the TSA: are they doing this for security purposes? Or to make sure they can say “no security stone was left unturned” in the event of a future incident?

If the TSA was purely motivated by passenger safety and efficiency, they might act differently. Instead of scanning everyone, it would make a lot more sense to use a stratified random sample of passengers. Which is just fancy talk for profiling. You randomly pick a sample of people to stop, scan and intensively question — Israeli style — but you oversample people who are more likely to fit the ever changing terrorist profile. And you do all of this out of public view – to give everyone left in line something to think about. The innocents will feel more secure. And the potential troublemakers will be put off guard.

Despite the fact that the average person “doesn’t know stat,” those who do aren’t complete ready to adopt sampling as a way to out terrorists. “If a bomber gets through a system that is based on sampling and blows up a plane, all hell will break loose,” says Gian Fulgoni, chairman of the Internet measurement company comScore. “I wouldn’t want to be one of the people involved in the design of the screening system if this were to happen.”

Where we go from here as a much to do with the media coverage as it does with any true concern about the safety of airport scanners. Levitt says the media get part of the blame. “People are predisposed to being frightened of things.” He says the media promotes fears because people love to read these stories. Blank agrees – but bluntly asserts that scanner fears are just media hype. “We live in an age where, because of social networks or whatever, everyone assumes that they are an expert,” he says. “They are not. And so as the TSA has rolled out body scanners, people have freaked out about the radiation issue.” Are scanners safe? Blank has no doubts: “There is no radiation issue.”

As someone who studies the travel industry, Blank is OK with TSA scanning. “If anything, TSA has been guilty of random egregious acts and of incredibly poor communication,” says Blank. “This whole thing will die down eventually. Until then, we have to listen to nonsense about people avoiding the scanners.”

What Is News And What Is Not: When Local Reporters Go GaGa for “Media Events”

by Dave Zornow

Nyack, Nov 19, 2010 — A religious hurricane forecast to hit Nyack, NY last weekend changed course at the last minute, allowing a high school production of The Laramie Project to take the stage with no worries about religious fundamentalists disrupting the play.

But to end the story there would be to miss “a teachable moment” about the averted storm – and why some forecasters predicted it.

The Laramie Project is a play about community reaction to the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard, a gay University of Wyoming student in Laramie, Wyoming. The Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas has been picketing productions of the play throughout the country to spread its belief that every tragedy in the world is related to homosexuality.

For students of the media, religious fundamentalists — and students of all ages — here’s a study guide which looks at some of the myths and assumptions about the protest that didn’t happen.

1. As reported on their Website, The Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas was hell-bent on coming to  this suburban NYC community to protest a high school production of The Laramie Project and spread their message of intolerance towards homosexuals, Roman Catholics, Islam, Jews, Methodists, Mormons, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Episcopalians other Baptists and Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly.

Actually, it was never entirely clear that they were coming at all. To wit:

• On October 21, the WBC announced they planned to picket at Hamilton College in Clinton, NY but never showed up.
• Last weekend, school administrators at Richard Montgomery High School in Bethesda, MD prepared for a Westboro Baptist Church rally that never occurred.
• On Nov 13, about 120 counter protesters at Cal State Fullerton were ready for a scheduled WBC rally that never materialized.
• On Nov 10, 2009, WBC members picketed at Baylor University. Four congregants demonstrated for 20 minutes and were mostly ignored by the students.

A local parents’ group that supports theater productions made a conscious decision not to counter protest and ignore WBC members if they appeared. It was only after local media owned by AOL and Gannett publicized their presence that it because widely known. The story was also subsequently picked up by WCBS-TV.

“No event or condition is inherently news,” says Scott Bonn, author and associate professor of sociology at Drew University. “It only becomes news because someone has the power and ability to say so and, generally, that person has both a political and profit-driven agenda, not the least of which is to entice an audience and sell advertising.”

Bonn, who previously worked at MTV as a sales and marketing executive, says news making is inherently amoral and it will cover and promote anything that serves its self-interest. “The news media often become passive co-conspirators in spreading public panics such as the bird flu and the threat from Iraq that was alleged by the G.W. Bush administration,” Bonn adds.

2. 21st Century mass media lets religious fundamentalists spread their message in ways never before possible.

Mass media has a long history of spreading religious intolerance. Father Charles Coughlin used radio in the 1930’s to reach millions of radio listeners with anti-Semitic message broadcasts. Although sophisticated in their use of media, sociologists say the Westboro Baptist Church has little in common with previous, more polished hate mongers. “Coughlin, in a totally different era, was successful and credentialed,” says Gerald Marwell, a professor of sociology at New York University.

By comparison, Marwell says Fred Phelps, the leader of the WBC is neither. “Coughlin had his own broadcasts and millions of followers.“ Marwell says that with the rise of Nazi Germany in the 1930s, anti-semitism was a very important issue. Because the country is moving away from the positions advocated by the Westboro Baptist Church, Marwell adds that Phelps is a just a side-show, “Only the media pay him any attention. The best response to Phelps is laughter and dismissal.”

3. The Westboro Baptist Church is only doing this for the money.

Not true, says Baylor University’s Christopher Bader, an associate professor of sociology who has studied the Westboro Baptist Church extensively. “First, their motivations are primarily religious. They believe very strongly and unanimously in a God that is both “hands on” with the world and extremely judgmental of it,” he says. Although Bader describes the group as ambulance chasers, it’s because they are always looking for situations that will get the most attention. “It is not by accident that they engage in outrageous antics. They see themselves as God’s elect who must warn others.”

“The Phelps’ seem to be driven by a desire for attention. They will take negative attention over inattention,” says Deana Pollard-Sacks, a law professor at the Thurgood Marshall School of Law at Texas Southern University. ”The public did not seem interested in the Phelps’ anti-gay rhetoric, so the Phelps’ resorted to extreme personal attacks against fallen soldiers and their surviving family members to garner media attention for themselves.” Pollard-Sacks says that the Westboro Baptist Church has been unable to attract public support for their anti-gay agenda. “The only reason they are getting any attention is because the media are giving it to them,” she says.

Bader says Westboro’s annual travel budget, estimated to be about $200,000, comes from multiple sources. He says that many church members hold regular jobs working as nurses, working in law offices and working as computer programmers and developers. “They also make significant money from winning lawsuits,” Bader notes. “Since they defend themselves, but can charge for their time, when they win a lawsuit in jurisdictions where the ‘loser’ has to pay legal expenses, they make a lot of money.”

4. Nothing good comes out of hate.

In this rare case, that isn’t quite true. Students involved in Nyack’s production of The Laramie Project say the publicity has sparked interest from peers who previously were not interested in either the arts or in talking about tolerance. According to one participant, kids are googling the play and the WBC and are forming their own opinions.

5. If it’s in the paper, it’s news.

The 20/20 hindsight of the run up to the Iraq War shows that reporting by a NY Times reporter tipped the scales for mass media in accepting the credibility of the Bush Administrations’ WMD myth. The public generally believes that news sources are motivated to report the news; but anyone who has ever worked in a news room knows that the definition of news is truly in the eye of the beholder. Journalists, more often than not, are motivated by the fear of “getting beat” on a story regardless of whether or not a story idea meets any vague criteria for being “news.”

Objectively speaking, is it news that six people in a bus with Kansas plates come to a town without any local support and hold up attention getting signs purely to attract the attention of the local press? Shouldn’t local reporters have some a built in “Media Manipulation” alarm for these kinds of incidents? Maybe — but more often than not — they don’t.

Sources:

• Church protest planned, church group fails to appear. The Spectator (Hamilton College) 10/21/2010
• Westboro Baptist Church is no-show at announced protest at Richard Montgomery High School. Montgomery (MD) Gazette, 11/13/2010
• Westboro counter-protest a success, The Daily Titan (Cal State Fulterton) 11/15/2010.
• Controversial church largely ignored, The Lariat (Baylor University) 11/17/2009.
• Wikipedia: Westboro Baptist Church, Father Charles Coughlin

“Here’s the top story we’re following at this hour: For the first time, there’s definitive proof that Fox News, the U.S. cable network that claims to be ‘fair and balanced,’ is neither fair nor balanced. Next up this hour: Experts say temperatures will drop when winter comes. And finally: Eating regularly is key to good health. Stay tuned for more details.”

OK, maybe these aren’t great revelations. But Fox News’ coverage of Comedy Central’s “Restore Sanity/Keep Fear Alive” rally on October 30 is worthy of a second look. The story posted on their Website stands in stark contrast to the pieces published by other media outlets, both liberal and conservative.

Disputing Fox News’ “fair and balanced” slogan is a “man bites dog” kinda story. However, it’s instructive to both lovers and haters of the leading cable news operation because the 1996 launch of Fox News in 1996 is one of the most significant events in cable new history, second only to Ted Turner’s 1980 creation of CNN. So an analysis of how a leading — albeit controversial — news network frames a story can tell us a lot about their journalism. And the people who watch the network.

Here are a few “leads” written by the Wall Street Journal, Reuters, the Washington Times, the Associated Press, Fox News and the Christian Science Monitor. See if you can tell which one fits the Fox News narrative.

Source #1: “Two of America’s best-known television comedians drew tens of thousands of people to a rally on Saturday that was part variety show, part Halloween celebration and part political rally to call for common sense before Tuesday’s congressional elections. Satirists Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, hosts of late-night cable TV shows, poked fun at politicians and media for stoking partisan fervor.”

Story #2: “They came from far and near, some wielding signs and hoping to attract a little attention, others just to watch the show. But what seemed to unite the tens of thousands who converged on the National Mall on a sunny Saturday in Washington for Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert’s Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear was a genuine desire to push back against the strong rightward tilt of the 2010 midterm campaign.”

Story #3: “In an election season characterized by loud divisions between the left and the right, Saturday’s crowded Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear marked an ironic uprising by those who want to turn down the volume. Three days before midterm elections, tens of thousands of people packed the National Mall to listen to Comedy Central satirists Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, looking for a laugh and a chance to display their disenchantment with what they say is the bitter tone of the nation’s political discourse.”

Story #4: Just three days before pivotal midterm elections, comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert threw a “sanity” rally in the shadow of the Capitol that organizers insisted wasn’t about politics. But there were political undertones to Saturday’s event as the two Comedy Central hosts entertained a huge throng stretched alongside the National Mall by poking fun at the nation’s diversity and its ill-tempered politics. Stewart is popular especially with Democrats and independents, a Pew Research Center poll found. Colbert of “The Colbert Report” poses as an ultraconservative, and the stage Saturday was stacked with entertainers associated with Democratic causes or Obama’s 2008 campaign.

Story #5: In the shadow of the Capitol and the election, comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert entertained a huge throng Saturday at a “sanity” rally poking fun at the nation’s ill-tempered politics, fear-mongers and doomsayers. “We live now in hard times,” Stewart said after all the shtick. “Not end times.”

OK, pens down. Which one did you pick? Maybe it was easy — or maybe it wasn’t.

The pro-business, right leaning WSJ, owned by the same News Corp company that owns the Fox News Channel, wrote “In an election season characterized by loud divisions between the left and the right…”

The Christian Science Monitor published “They came from far and near, some wielding signs and hoping to attract a little attention, others just to watch the show.”

If you chose “Just three days before pivotal midterm elections, comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert threw a “sanity” rally in the shadow of the Capitol that organizers insisted wasn’t about politics. But there were political undertones to Saturday’s event as the two Comedy Central hosts…” you found the Fox in the cable news hen house.

Strangely, the Washington Times, a conservative counterweight to the Washington Post, used the the AP story without sending a reporter to the rally (“In the shadow of the Capitol and the election, comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert entertained a huge throng…”)  Which makes you wonder: if their reporter couldn’t afford the $5 Metrocard to get to the Washington mall, things must be REALLY tough in the newspaper business…

Finally, Reuters wrote “Two of America’s best-known television comedians drew tens of thousands of people to a rally on Saturday that was part variety show…”

(One honorable mention that didn’t make this list: “whilst” surveying foreign news reports for their take on the event, I ran across the The Guardian blog of Richard Adams. His Jon Stewart rally ‘as it happens‘ entry provided an amusing play by play of the event as it unfolded from the vantage point of an outsider looking in. It was very funny with lots of wry Brit observations about American culture.)

What makes the Fox story unfair and unbalanced? Journalists are trained to report what is “new” when reporting the news. Glen Beck’s August rally was news because a conservative political pundit gathered thousands of his followers on the Washington Mall in the same location on the same day as Martin Luther King made his “I Have A Dream” speech. If you were there and didn’t that wasn’t your story, you must have had an another agenda. That *was* the story. The day was about GB and his ability to muster his masses to the Washington Mall. It was an unprecedented event because it had never been done before by a cable TV celebrity — until Saturday.

Using the same logic, Saturday’s story was about how between 60,000 and 250,000 people gathered on the mall (Stewart put the number at “millions” as a pre-emptive strike for those who would try to compare his rally to Beck’s) to see two TV celebrities in the company of Discovery’s The Mythbusters, The Roots, The OJays, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Sam Waterson, Tony Bennett, Jeff Tweedy, Kid Rock, Sheryl Crow, Ozzy Osborne and the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens. Among many others.

If there was a political message, it was relatively weak. Telling everyone to think for themselves and stop believing everything you read on Websites, see on cable news and hear on talk radio isn’t exactly a revolutionary manifesto. It may have been a little hard to write that sentence if you worked on the copy desk at Fox, CNN or MSNBC — the three networks that dominated the mocking clips shown by Jon Stewart — but you’d have to be an idiot to have missed that point. Or, perhaps had an agenda that reinterprets the concept of fair and balanced journalism.

In the second sentence of the Fox News story, the network reported that “there were political overtones…poking fun at the nation’s diversity and ill-tempered politics.” Actually, Stewart and Colbert weren’t poking fun at the nation’s diversity, but at the tendency of the news media to characterize events by who shows up. Fox seemed to deliberately miss the point that the Comedy Central kids were poking fun at news pundits who tune the facts to fit a particular news narrative targeted to their core audience. Writing “news” which rings of truthiness but doesn’t try to capture what happened isn’t news – that’s entertainment.

Google time line for the phrase "fair and balanced." It wasn't much of an issue until FOX News was launched and George W Bush became president.

Which is OK. The “fair and balanced” phenomenon in journalism is fairly new. Biased reporting in newspapers has a much richer history that predates the concept of fair and balanced journalism.

Fox News is to the 65+ audience what MTV is to 18-34’s: a consistent stream of content which tells people in a demo niche what they want to hear. Both networks have relatively small audiences which exert an oversized influence on the American culture. Both Fox News and MTV are extremely good at what they do: aggregating a high concentration of similar people to resell to advertisers. MTV gets heat because they don’t play music videos anymore; Fox gets heat before their definition of news isn’t what many regard to be fair and balanced. It’s a marketing disconnect which occurs when a cultural icon behaves differently than “we” think they should.

Fox News may not be “news” in the tradition of Walter Cronkite and Ed Murrow. But I bet that William Randolph Hearst would be impressed.

Stewart and Colbert are right when they suggest you shouldn’t believe everything you see on TV. As long as that healthy skepticism includes Comedy Central, we should all be ok.

Dave Zornow has worked as a media research consultant and applications developer at TNG Research for 20 years. He publishes MediaNewsAndViews and the hyperlocal Website NyackNewsAndViews.

See also:

• Fox News Freaks Out Over Stewart/Colbert Rally, PoliticusUSA
• Can Fox News be ‘fair and balanced’ if News Corp. gives to Republicans?, CSMonitor.com
• Rally For Sanity: They Also Want Their Country Back, Mediate.com

One of this summer’s “hottest” new shows is a reality based sports drama featuring daily updates each morning. It raises the usual reality fare a few notches, including spontaneous fistfights, a psychopath who has been kicked off the island, illicit drug use and egos which dwarf anything that Hollywood could imagine. This production uses real world class athletes competing for big prizes. And instead of unseen producers manipulating the circumstances to imitate reality…it uses reality.

OK, it’s in France. Maybe not the reality most of us share, but it’s reality for the 198 riders in this year’s Tour de France – a three-week daily drama taking place across the pond.

Reality shows are usually weekly cliffhangers. In this version, protagonists that ride on cliffs are often eliminated on a daily basis.

There is danger aplenty on the screen with steep canyons, narrow roads, rain, cars, motorcycles, the press and cobblestones. And let’s not forget team rivalries and personal rivalries. Add to this – doping allegations, drug tests and blood samples.

While Versus awaits validation of this programming with hopefully higher ratings, it seems like this reality show should produce that desired effect.

Too much to keep track of? Here’s a short list of Top Things You Should Know About The Tour de France so far:

• Lance Armstrong – The sentimental favorite, in his final TDF race, crashes several times and is now too far back to win. According to BenepesBikeBlog on location coverage of the race, “Armstrong said he clipped pedals with another rider, his wheel rolled, and he came down hard as he was traveling about 65 kph (about 40 mph). He had bloody wounds on his arms and back.”  Lady Luck may have been in his corner on seven previous TDF wins, but not this year (Future Headline: “Lady Luck Bitch Slaps Lance in 8th TDF Win Attempt”)
• Alberto Contador – Last year’s winner and Armstrong’s nemesis is riding effortlessly, currently in 3rd place.
• Floyd Landis – The disgraced former rider has admitted to drug-taking and is trying to take Lance Armstrong down with him.
• Great Finishes – Can happen on any single stage but never on the last one in Paris. Tradition dictates no change in leadership on the final day.
• Crashes – Even after horrible crashes, some riders refuse to give up, others are not so lucky. A few notable crashes so far in the race: Christian Vande Velde (broken ribs /out), Tyler Farrar (broken wrist / in), Robert Gesink (fractured forearm / in), Adam Hansen (broken sternum / out).
• Who’s leading now – Cadel Evans of Australia.
• What’s next – Levi Leipheimer, Lance Armstrong’s teammate, is currently the highest-ranked American in 8th place, and Team RadioShack will now devote all its efforts to leading him to victory.
• Who will win – Alberto Contador is the strongest rider and has excellent support on Team Astana.

Back to our show – watch out for the bikes lying on the road ahead of you.

Source: BenepesBikeBlog, 7/11/2010
See also: Canada.com 7/29/07