"The View From the Phlipside" is a media commentary program airing on WRFA-LP, Jamestown NY. It can be heard Tuesday through Friday just after 8 AM and 5 PM. The following are scripts which may not exactly match the aired version of the program. Mostly because the host may suddenly choose to add or subtract words at a moments notice. WRFA-LP is not responsible for any such silliness or the opinions expressed. You can listen to a live stream of WRFA or find a podcast of this program at wrfalp.com. Copyright 2013 by Jay Phillippi. All Rights Reserved. You like what you see? Drop me a line and we can talk.Program scripts from week of July 23 2013
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.
Quality Journalism
There are some stories that pop up quickly and then die out just as quickly. Given the production schedule for these commentaries sometimes I see something that looks interesting but it becomes a non-issue before I can get a commentary up and running.
The recent story associated with the crash of the Asiana Airlines plane in San Francisco looked to be one of those. Following the crash a Bay area TV station announced that it had the names of the four pilots of the plane in the accident. What they then read off were four racially insensitive names that any 10 year old would have recognized as a joke. Turns out the “source” for the names was a summer intern at a federal bureau that was part of the post crash investigation. It was a great launching point to talk again about the importance of quality journalism. But when the federal agency apologized and I assume dropped the intern and the television station apologized the story was running out of time. Even the actual pilots threatened to sue but then changed their minds. Pretty much story over. Yes, the TV news station should fire a few people as well for unprofessional levels of stupid but hey. I was prepared to take a pass on the story.
Until Monday.
Mrs. Phlipside and I were having dinner at a local downtown landmark restaurant when I overheard a conversation at the next table that made me want to weep and rage. And it gave new life to the story. The folks were discussing those stupid names and were insistent that “Those are the REAL names. I heard about it on the news”. The conversation went down hill from there.
THIS is why doing journalism right is so important. This is why
verifying sources is important. This is why it is more important to spend the extra minutes THINKING about what you report than being the first on the air or in print. Did no one in that newsroom read those names out loud? Do none of them have an 8 year old boy in their lives? As I review the story for this commentary I saw that the TV station didn’t even accept responsibility. They blamed the federal agency for mis-informing them.
Turns out even the shortest story in the news might be more important than we think.
Emmy Shift
Don’t know if you noticed it but the earth moved a little on it’s orbit just a little bit last week. There’s a new TV awards contender in town and you may not ever see it on your TV. At least not so far.
For the Broadway stage there are the Tony’s, for movies the Oscars, for music the Grammys and for television the Emmy. Administered by three separate organizations (The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, the NATIONAL Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and the INTERNATIONAL Academy of Television Arts and Sciences) the Grammys probably are the most diverse awards, um, program in the world. There’s the Primetime and Daytime versions plus versions for news, sports, business and finance, engineering and technology plus regional and international versions. It’s all pretty complicated.
The other art forms (theater, movies and music) have relatively compact fields of competition. At least they are less affected by the vehicle carrying the programming. In 1988 suddenly the Emmy’s were faced with the reality that cable TV programming needed to be recognized. Today cable TV dominates the awards. In 2006 the Emmys opened their arms to programming aimed at “computers, mobile phones, iPods, PDAs, and similar devices.” But it was the Daytime Emmys so no one was particularly concerned. Two years later it was programming that aired on the Internet that was given a place at the table.
Wait, aren’t these TV awards?
Well now the great change has really taken place. It’s one thing to say your shows can be considered. It’s something else to actually snag a nomination.
Enter the game changer. Netflix, which began life as a movie rental company, picked up 9 nominations for it’s smash show “House of Cards” including nods in Best Program and Best Lead Male and Female. They grabbed a few others for two other programs as well.
So what do we mean when we talk about television from this moment forward? What does this say about how we watch whatever it is we’re going to call TV from now on? As much as anything else these award nominations are an indication of the paradigm shift in TV.
And that would be an entirely new house of cards for the industry.
The latest storm on the media horizon has to do with the cover of the Rolling Stone. Not the 1973 Top 10 novelty hit song by Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show but the actual cover of Rolling Stone magazine.
The current issue shows the photo of alleged Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. The picture, which at least one report I’ve seen says is what the kids call a “selfie” or a self shot, shows a fairly normal looking young man with long curly brown hair. That shot has set plenty of people off including the folks at Wal-Mart, CVS, Rite-Aid and 7-Eleven who have announced they won’t sell this issue. Given that I don’t want corporate suits deciding what I can and can’t buy I think that’s a pretty stupid response. But as we say different topic for a different day.
So what’s all the furor about? Obviously the psychic wounds of the bombing are still quite sensitive for some and I respect that. At the same time I don’t get why the outrage has reached the level it has. Let’s look at the history.
This isn’t the first alleged mass murderer that Rolling Stone has featured on the cover. Charles Manson has that dubious honor. It’s not even that no other publication has ever done this before. An August 1966 issue of Time magazine featured Charles Whitman. For those who don’t remember that name Whitman was known as the Texas Tower sniper. He climbed the tower in the center of the University of Texas and killed or wounded 49 people that day. The picture on the cover was of smiling, All American young man with a puppy dog at his side.
The headline on the Rolling Stone cover reads “The Bomber - How a Popular, Promising Student Was Failed By His Family, Fell Into Radical Islam and Became A Monster”. That’s why this is the right photo to go with the story. Because it’s about how a seemingly normal, successful and yes, rather good looking young man, can descend so deep into the darkness. It is the disparity of the appearance and the act that make us so uncomfortable. It is exactly the kind of in-your-face approach that Rolling Stone has specialized in for decades.
I’m not saying you have to like the cover. I’m certainly not saying you should buy the issue although I may. I am saying that from a story-telling/journalism point of view I believe that there’s a very legitimate argument for that photo to be on the cover of the Rolling Stone.
Call that the View From the Phlipside
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