Program scripts from week of March 26, 2012
My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media. TV, radio, the movies and more. I love them, and I hate them and I always have an opinion. Call this the View from the Phlipside.
On Truth and Facts
One of the big discussions these days in the world of journalism has to do with whether or not the old school rules still apply. Rules about verifying and multiple sources. Some very simple concepts that were universally accepted if admittedly not universally applied are now being called into question. Concepts like what a fact is.
The most recent focus of these kinds of questions has been the National Public Radio program “This American Life”. REcently the show ran a piece outlining alleged poor working conditions at Chinese factories that produce some of the Apple product line. The story was based largely on the word of an off Broadway performer named Mike Daisey. Turns out that not everything that Daisey presented to the producers was in fact, fact. When “This American Life” discovered that they withdrew the story. Daisey has taken something of a beating from the bastions of the press.
It may surprise you to discover that I don’t intend to join them. When Daisey presented material to the radio program that clearly didn’t meet the standards that they outlined in detail to him he screwed up. But there’s another question here.
It’s the question of Truth versus Fact. While my career has been largely in the media my training is in the theater. So I understand that Mike Daisey firmly believed and still believes that he told the Truth. The problem was he was asked for the facts. So in the end I can’t let “This American Life” completely off the hook. They KNEW he wasn’t a reporter. They KNEW he was a storyteller and performer. It’s not actually Mike Daisey’s job to verify the facts. As a performer he doesn’t care as much about the facts as he does the truth.
Now that distinction is going to set some people off. So let me give you an example. One of the great plays of the American theater is Tennessee Williams’ “The Glass Menagerie”. The story is based on Williams’ own family. It’s about as factual as Daisey’s story. But it is absolutely the truth.
Mike Daisey and “This American Life” both let their desire to tell the story cloud their judgement. They are both at fault.
And that is both the facts AND the truth.
Oprah Slipping
It’s kinda funny. Last week I talked about how in the last year Charlie Sheen had gone from rags to at least on the road back to riches. In that same basic time period it appears that one of the most successful women in the media has gone exactly the opposite direction.
When it was first announced that Oprah Winfrey was shutting down her fabulously successful and long running daytime TV show and was going to launch a cable network I was dubious. Not because I didn’t believe in the power of Oprah. If you’ve been paying any attention at all over the last couple decades you know that only a fool doubts the influence of Oprah. TV, film, magazines and book publishing have felt the power of the woman who beat Phil Donahue in his own back yard.
My problem was and is the idea that any one person actually has enough going on to make themselves the center of an entire 24 network, even on pay TV. The idea was that her extremely dedicated following would love a network that was programmed according to Oprah’s sensibilities. An audience that had proven itself ready to read what Oprah told them to read and watch the movies Oprah told them to watch would certainly flock to the Oprah Winfrey Network.
Turns out, not so much. Launched in January of last year the Network lost some 100 million dollars last year and could lose over 140 million this year. Discovery Network who bankrolled OWN is getting antsy. Oprah’s network has cut 20 per cent of the staff and axed the Rosie O’Donnell show.
In the end the real question is - why did anyone think this was a good idea in the first place? The thing about the day time TV show was that there was Oprah. It was all about Oprah and it was on one of your local TV stations. So it was easy to find. My satellite provider carries OWN so I went to look for it. Found it. At channel 189. Right between G4 (which is a video game based channel. Had to look that up) and the National Geographic channel. Not exactly the high rent neighborhood.
So the channel doesn’t give you much of Oprah other than her name and it’s a little hard to find.
And people wonder why it’s losing money hand over foot.
Social Media Madness
This was a story that I read, and I stopped and I shook my head and then I went back and read it again. And it still said the exact same thing. That some businesses during the interview process for new employees will require the candidate give them the user name and password for the candidate’s Facebook account. And they were absolutely serious.
The story leads me to two different lines of thought. Let’s take them one at a time.
This is yet another reason to think twice and sometimes three times before you post some things to any of your social media sites. I am especially concerned about some of my younger family and friends. They post all kinds of things on their Facebook pages. A lot of the activities aren’t necessarily a good idea in and of themselves. Posting pictures or descriptions of those less than wise activities is an even worse idea. You know that advertising campaign out of Nevada well what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas only when you learn to keep your big fat Facebook shut. And employers have figured out that if the job they are trying to fill has any level of “character issue” attached to it you can learn a lot about potential employees by asking to be friended by the candidate on social media. Yes you can just set up a “professional” Facebook identity but remember that you’ll need to maintain BOTH of your sites otherwise it’s just too obvious that you’re hiding something.
On the other hand this new trend is quite simply insane. For example I will often use Facebook as a quick way to communicate with my wife or with my brothers. Upon occasion those conversations will involve personal and family issues. Because those are done as direct Facebook messages they never appear on the public page. If a potential employer has access to my username and password there is no part of my online social life that would be private. And this is a POTENTIAL employer. I think there’s a very strong likelihood that this kind of request is illegal. At the very least it’s intrusive and offensive. I can only imagine that some employers think that the jobs market is so tight that they can get away with anything.
I hope they’re wrong. I know they will be if they are ever foolish enough to make such a request of me.
Call that the View From the Phlipside.
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