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A Local TV News Channel Crosses the Line Sam Smith 02.10.31, 5:00 pm

You know those news teasers they run during prime-time programming? "Coming up on ActionNews at 10 – can we expect more snow for your morning drive?" Or, "the Broncos cut a big name today – tune in to News5 after NYPD Blue to find out who's looking for a new team."

These things annoy the hell out of me, and probably have the same effect on everybody else with an IQ in the triple digits. I mean, I understand why they do it. If you can't pull viewers you go out of business, and you don't really help your ratings position if you give away the big news for free. Can you imagine this one:

"Nothing really major happened today, so you can go ahead and turn the TV off as soon as ER is over."

So the businessman in me gets it perfectly, although the journalism guy in me wants to take a stick to the ratings slaves who have turned "broadcast journalism" into one of our culture's funnier oxymorons. I tolerate it, for the same reasons I tolerate things like gravity and air.

But Tuesday night Denver's Channel 2 News (a WB affiliate) crossed a line – it might be a faint line, but there's still a line between pretending to be real journalists and accepting that you're The Jerry Springer Show.

You may have seen the story on CNN about the FedEx truck blowing up on the interstate in Missouri. Great pix – fire trucks, packages strewn all over the damned place, etc. So that night, coming out of a commercial break for something we were watching, we get one of those damned teasers. The anchor said something to this effect: "A FedEx truck explodes in Missouri. Was it a simple accident or was it foul play? Tune in....."

Here's the problem. It was a simple accident, and WB2 knew it. There was no suggestion at all, at any time, from any of the law enforcement officers and investigators on the site, of foul play (read, terrorism). It was made clear from the get-go that, despite how spectacular it all looked, that it was a simple, run-of-the-mill wreck.

The truck was cut off by another vehicle and went off the road, rupturing the fuel tank and sparking the explosion, said Sgt. Ed Ensminger of the Missouri Highway Patrol. Another official said the fuel tank ruptured when the truck's trailer struck the post of an overhead sign.... Cpl. John Parrish of the Missouri Highway Patrol said foul play does not appear to be a factor. "We're certain this was – although it may not seem so – your typical traffic crash," he said. (from CNN.com)

This was the report from the scene, shortly after the wreck, and the report never changed. So that means there was no reason for any news agency to suggest, to hint, to imply, to intimate that it was "foul play." Basic journalistic ethics.

But WB2 did it anyway, in a cynical attempt to jack the ratings by playing on our front-of-mind fears about al Qaeda loose in the Homeland. If you think violence and mayhem sells, let me tell you what, bub, terrorism is pure fucking gold. And so I'm sitting around wondering, if they'll do this, what won't they do?

"Tune in at 10 and we'll tell you whether or not there's an armed child rapist rampaging through a large Denver suburb." (There's not – and that's good to know, isn't it?)

"Has Osama bin Laden been captured? We'll give you the latest in 30 minutes." (He hasn't, and that's a perfectly valid answer to the question.)

"Coming up on News2 after the show, has yet another member of the Bush family been busted for smoking crack?" (No, but it sure could have happened, couldn't it?)

Why not? From the perspective of journalistic credibility (humor me here, okay?) these are just as legitimate as the teaser WB2 ran Tuesday night. When it comes to the integrity of a news agency – even a TV station – there are things you don't do. There's a baseline for honesty, and while you can have more or less cred above that line, everything below that line is the same. It doesn't matter how far into negative numbers your integrity rating goes.

And once it's gone, it's hard to get it back. Remember the Elian Gonzales debacle? Remember that famous photo that CNN.com ran, where it looked like the stormtrooper had an assault rifle leveled at the kid's head? Uh-huh, but if you saw the whole photo you know that the gun wasn't pointed at sweet little Elian, it was pointed at the guy holding the kid, who was hiding in a closet, and who the hell knew if the hand you couldn't see held a pistol? But the unaltered picture made a less dramatic impression than the cropped image. And you know what? I haven't forgotten, and won't for a long time, that CNN did that, and I'm not the only one. Now, every time I see a photo on CNN.com, I catch myself looking around the borders, looking for signs of manipulation. CNN pissed away some credibility that day, and now a lot of us don't quite trust them anymore.

What WB2 did is as bad, maybe worse. And from now on, I'll be flipping over to 9News after the show is over.

Tune in next blog, where I'll let you know if I went over to the WB2 News Director's house and caught him pleasuring himself while watching the Anna Nicole Smith Show.

:comments?

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Deconstructing Avril Sam Smith 02.10.26, 8:52 am

I finally decided to thoroughly investigate Avril Lavigne's CD. I had heard "Complicated" and "Sk8er Boi" (In fact, I had both tracks on network81, one of my MP3.com stations).

While I liked the tuneage – hooky, catchy – and Lavigne herself was cute as a bug, I couldn't help noticing the lingering scent of product. You know, the aroma of prefabrication and premeditation that you smell when you're around boy bands, Britney Spears, Third Eye Blind and Alanis Morrisette? That one. It's the smell that tells you a label is leading you down a blind alley. Cheez Whiz for the ears. Etc.

But Avril is most assuredly not a pop singer, she tells us, she's a rock singer. A hardcore punk. And she doesn't like pop, pop singers, and in particular seems to have a burr under her saddle where Britney is concerned. She's the anti-American Idol, I guess. And I'm down with all that.

It turns out a friend of mine bought the disc, so I borrowed it (thanks Jen). Gonna have to listen to it fairly to make an honest judgment, right?

Spun it two or three times. And as neat as it is in some ways, the verdict is in: it's Popular Music Product, top to bottom, and in some beautifully ironic ways.

Here are some things I noticed:

° Damn, the songwriting is clever. I mean, real clever. The lyrics are too clever by half, in fact, and the music is extremely well crafted. Slick, one might say, if one were cynical. Pro. If I didn't know anything about the artist I would have assumed that this stuff was put together by somebody who'd been at it for a while, maybe a hit factory graduate of some sort.

So I dig out the credits, and notice that all the songs were co-written. If I recall correctly, either Clif Magness or an entity called The Matrix was involved in every single track.

Now, I haven't yet figured out who The Matrix is for sure – I think it's maybe Jamie and Matt Quinn, although there is also a Matrix that worked with Christina Aguilera, and that sounds about right, too. Oddly, the official Avril Web site doesn't tell me these things*. But Clif Magness is a known quantity, having contributed significantly to product by groups like DeBarge, Celine Dion, Jack Wagner, Stacey Earl (early ‘90s Paula Abdul wannabe), Sheena Easton, and Tia Carrere. Hardcore punk icons, every one of them.

[*I did a bit more research and have now figured out who The Matrix is. It's a collective consisting of Lauren Christy, Scott Spock and Graham Edwards, who have also penned songs for Christina Aguilera and Ronan Keating, formerly of UK boy band sensation Boyzone.]

Hmmm, I said to myself. Yes, there are precocious teenagers out there who are pretty good songwriters – people like Johnny Lang come to mind – but the omnipresence of schmaltzmongers like Magness cause me to consider the more plausible scenario:

Schmaltzmonger: Hey, Avril, let's write a song.
AL: Cool. What if we did a song about a skater boy who got dissed by a ballet princess because her friends didn't like his baggy clothes and then he went on to be a big star? And she wound up fat and pregnant and unloved? That would be cool.
Schmaltzmonger: Excellent work, Avril. Why don't you go watch Road Rules and I'll just put the finishing touches on it?

Hard to say. I wasn't there. But if we were playing with my money I'd bet her co-writers were responsible for a solid 80% of what's on the record.

° I bet Avril has everything Alanis ever recorded. Well, maybe not everything. She probably doesn't have the dance diva stuff Alanis did prior to 1995 (and by the way, how come the All Music Guide doesn't list any of those records in her discography, I wonder). For my money, Avril would be a lot better off if she'd forget she ever heard of Morrisette, but that's just me.

° There's some remarkable irony in places. For instance, in "Nobody's Fool," we get this chorus:

If you're trying to turn me into someone else
Its easy to see I'm not down with that
I'm not nobody's fool
If you're trying to turn me into something else
I've seen enough and I'm over that
I'm not nobody's fool

Yup, raw and hardcore and authentic. You can tell because she uses bad grammar, which is a time-tested hallmark of Rebellion™. It's nothing like what her co-writers would have penned for somebody like, say, Celine Dion.

In the end, I suppose AL is probably terribly earnest about it all. I think she really believes she's a hardcore skater punk who's doing this all on her terms. And in that sense, she should never change, because if she develops a bit of self-awareness she's done for.

That's the beauty of our system, though – anything can be captured, packaged, and spun out as product. Culture Whiz. Even skater punk rebellion.

Johnny Rotten would love it. Or maybe not. Malcolm McLaren would, though....

:comments?

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Loss of Rights: Public Doesn't Get It Greg Stene 02.09.15, 6:00 pm

Thanks for sending Brian Angliss' comments on. I've been thinking about it over the day. I thank him for considering the discussion, and for writing to disagree.

But I think he may have misread my concerns. My point is that this country has never come to grips with war on its own land, and if the enemy pursues it as a matter of terror, will react in shock and terror, and likely actually ask to give up rights in exchange for security.

This is what I'm afraid society as a general whole will do. It is obvious that neither you, nor I, nor Brian would agree with that kind of response. But I am afraid our society, so overprotective (everyone, including skateboarders must wear helmets ... proposed legislation, I understand), so litigious (who can I sue for my injury?), and so isolated from each other (no sense of community to come to grips with social issues) will seek to have the government secure us, rather than do what needs to be done itself.

And the reason I mentioned the Saigon bombing, and the assassination, was to drive home how different and fear-inducing a planned terror-by-assassination process would be in contrast to a bombing. The bombing is ultimately, once we get past the first shock, impersonal. A murder and mutilation becomes personal instantly. It is that personalization of terror that I do not feel this country can deal well with ... though we do quite well with the horror of bombings, I believe.

So, while certain of us will stand well against the fear induced by the terror, I'm afraid society in general will be more than willing to trade rights for security. Hell, even a casual perusal of the polls over the last 15 years shows a steady decrease in support for that most elemental right ... the right to freedom of expression. Yeah, it's really shown up in the polls pretty consistently. Blame it on the stupid, sensationalistic news reporting we've had to endure. ("We have freedom of speech for that?" figures the public. Hell, we don't need it). Or whatever.

It seems that for many, the rights we enjoy are not really understood as fundamental to freedom. As a point of fact, freedom is built on our rights. But I'm afraid our society has created a disconnect between those two points, and believe that a reduction in rights just diminishes some rights ... but freedom will endure.

Sad commentary. But probably true.

:comments?

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9.11 and What the US is Supposed to Stand For Brian Angliss 02.09.15, 9:27 pm

You know what? The coordinated attacks on small targets doesn't scare me per se, because I know they're coming eventually. Why allow myself to be scared of something that, as far as I'm concerned, is a likelihood?

I disagree with Greg rather vehemently. As an observer, I have watched what the very attacks he's describing have done to Israel, and I've seen their response to them. They have allowed the attacks to drive them into a corner and they're rightfully criticized by the international community (except for the US) for deportations, assassinations, destruction of housing, and a host of other actions which qualify, regardless of what legalese the Israeli government tries to use, as human rights abuses.

Such actions cannot be allowed to occur here. Hell, it's the height of hypocrisy for the US to allow Israel to do it, considering our lofty Constitution, which is part of the reason a third of the planet hates us. If anything, the attacks should drive us to exercise our rights all the more. I don't worry about privacy much, probably since noone has crossed the lines that I have that delineate ok from not-ok intrusions. But I do worry a great deal about my right to free speech, to free assembly, to believe in any religion I want to.

If anything, that's the way September 11 changed me – I bought into the whole "attack on a way of life" bit, but I took it not as an attack on capitalism, on US global dominance, on democracy, or even on New York, even though it was all those things. Instead, I took it as an attack on what the United States is supposed to stand for, and what we stand for isn't a flag, or automobiles, or owning property, or capitalism even. The US stands for personal freedom, the rights of free speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of (and from) religion, a free press, freedom from unreasonable search and seizure or property, freedom to bear arms, and the rights implied by all the others (as per the 9th Amendment). Instead of responding to the call to patriotism with jingoistic flag waving and considering anyone critical of the President a traitor, I responded by truly exercising my rights, especially my rights to freedom of speech and religion, in a way that is truer to the founding principles of this nation than any thought-free flag waving could ever be.

Allowing ourselves to abridge any of these rights means the terrorists have won – they will have driven us to the point of sacrificing the founding principles of our nation upon which our entire culture is based. Restricting the freedoms and rights codified in the Constitution in the name of expedience (whoops, I meant "national security") and on the say-so of a single narrow-minded ultra-conservative executive branch would mean that we didn't deserve those rights to begin with.

The question isn't whether rights should be taken, but whether we can still call ourselves the United States of America if we allow them to be.

:comments?

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War and Civil Liberties Greg Stene (with brief intrusions by Sam Smith) 02.09.13, 3:00 pm

Our earlier conversation continues, this time with Greg doing most of the talking.

Stene: I think we really need to ask ourselves a very basic question. Are we at war?

Smith: Or even more essentially – what does that word "war" mean these days? I've been carping for some time, as you well know, about the fact that we do not presently have the mindset we need to deal with the 21st Century enemy. The enemy isn't a state we can march on, he has no geographic center, he does not fight according to the rules of civilized warfare, his willingness to commit suicide makes him nearly impossible to stop, he is willing to kill his own (there must have been hundreds of Muslims in the WTC), and so on.

You've heard the old adage about armies always preparing to fight the last war? Yup, this is it in spades.

So I guess I feel like we could answer a lot more of these questions a lot more productively if we could actually come to an understanding about a definition of the word "war." But that's where you're heading, I think, so go on.

Stene: If we are not at war, it would seem that there is no basis for reducing rights-levels. Actions, during non-war times that may harm someone are merely part of a constant background of violence and criminal activity, and do not provide grounds to reduce rights. We have learned that we can accommodate a level of violence and still survive with our rights intact.

If we are at war, however, we have two primary options, it seems.

1. The first option would be to understand that we are in the kind of war where our way of life is challenged and that we must accept the idea of national security being the final goal and criterion by which we measure actions, that we must do what we can to ensure national security within reasonable grounds (this is a part of the discussion we're having, I believe), and that this will inevitably mean a diminishment of rights.

2. The second option is that we are in the kind of war (everyday-life war) where our way of life is not meaningfully challenged, that our national security is not challenged in a meaningful manner, and that we can expect to enjoy the full board of rights which we have enjoyed in the past. This is similar to a non-war state, where we can absorb a degree of increased violence and maintain our rights.

I suggest that the second option, in times of weapons of mass destruction and death, is not a viable mindset. That in fact, though the war is not waged in this land currently (more said on that later), the potential for massive destruction here and abroad (where we do have very real national interests) is too real to ignore and we must consider ourselves at war. At real war.

I also suggest that it not need be death on a massive scale that would threaten national security, but smartly placed killings designed to set a terror mindset in place within a society.

Thus, if we accept that we are at war, the kind of war which threatens our national security, we must accept some degree of rights-diminishment to ensure security. The Supreme Court held years ago that wartime is a legitimate time to restrict some speech. War does indeed change the very base of our society, and we need to accept that. Especially when the killing happens in this country.

Two personal incidents in Vietnam might help to bring a bit of perspective to the idea of a war fought at home. This is not to tell war stories, but to offer a close perspective on the problem we may face.

I was an MP in Saigon. Not a grunt in the field. I got a chance to see war in a city, waged on a terrorist level. Those two incidents I mentioned are as follows:

1. I was about a half-block from a building when the bomb the VC planted inside blew. The building, six or eight stories high, collapsed on itself, began to burn. People got crushed to death inside. Some burned alive. Those of us involved in rescue began to take automatic weapons fire, apparently from the VC who'd set the bomb. The fire and the dying continued into the late night hours. Not the WTC, but a significant experience for the Colorado Kid.

2. I was on patrol with a civilian Vietnamese cop. We got called to a site where we were told the VC were killing people. A dark alley. I moved too fast to the inside of the alley, tripped a booby trap (a grenade that fortunately did not go off), and found a Vietnamese Army lieutenant and his wife where the VC had left them, eviscerated, and mutilated in a number of other ways.

I bring these incidents up not to relive old times, but to point out the different kind of world we really do now face. Then, the war was limited to Vietnam, my place Saigon.

Now, this war is on our land, in our cities. The hijackers did not attempt to fly the planes into a cornfield to terrorize farmers. They went for the city. And they will continue to do so.

I have to say that while the building bombing in Saigon made its impression, the small killing/mutilation of the husband and wife was the most powerful in terms of emotion. The bombing of the building and the shooting of rescuers was war. And that's how it goes. The small-killing, however, was personal, and that's something that you take home with you every night. Especially if you lived in the neighborhood, or were an associate in the army.

I have marveled at how the terrorists (I know, some might find the term under challenge, but I find it convenient, even with all its compromises and latent meanings), have not bothered to terrorize our cities with small-killings.

Consider how the Son of Sam, and Charles Manson and family set their respective cities on edge. Now consider the effect of terrorism set to the task. Six cities, four gruesome deaths per city per week, for six weeks. Each death with a signature of who was responsible.

And then it happens in a small city, a small town, a university.

Smith: This is the part that has really scared me the worst over the last year: not that al Qaeda will hit NYC or DC or LA or Philly in a spectacular 9.11 redux, but that they'll walk into a schoolyard in Peoria and gun down 20 children. Imagine a coordinated attack where terrorist gunmen simultaneously hit schools in five or six small towns across the country.

Stene: It all becomes personal. And destabilizing. And threatening to the national security because, in just one aspect of peace on the land, the government and police are shown hapless again as they have been with the anthrax mailings.

Smith: Right. And you know the scary part is that what you describe would be so easy. No airport security to beat, no large munitions to build. Just buy some guns on a street corner and drive out into Middle America.

Stene: Then do we clamor for face-recognition programs? Then do we figure that the Neighborhood Watch programs should be escalated? Then do we...

You bet. We ask to give up rights for increased security because the issue has been taken down from its lofty perch of abstract reasoning, and brought to the inside of our homes and into our beds as we try to get to sleep at night.

The point is this. Primary question. are we in a war that can threaten our national security? Yes. Then it is not a matter of whether rights are allowed to be taken, but which and how far.

Not far enough, and you could lose your life. Too far, and you lose your rights forever.

:comments?

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