A terrible "United 93" gaffe

When the public knows what the media knows, and the media knows it, then the equation will start to change.


The movie “United 93,” about passengers trying to take back one of the airliners hijacked on the morning of 9/11, was released nationally on Friday. All the reviews and talk shows described it as a highly charged event, so very personal to the survivors, and difficult for anyone to watch.

I looked at the full-page ad yesterday (Friday) morning, in The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times. And I said, “Uh-oh.”

The ad showed the image of an aircraft, taking off, its landing gear still down. At its wingtips were V-shaped vanes, that immediately identified the aircraft as an Airbus product.

The United 93 flight was not an Airbus, but a Boeing 757. What a terrible gaffe. A major movie company does its best to re-create in detail the awful events of United 93, trying to honor the heroism and deaths of those people who defied the hijackers, and then puts the wrong aircraft in the ads distributed to the national print media.

This morning, Saturday, the ad in The New York Times showed the same airplane, but with the vanes airbrushed out. So I wasn’t the only one (how could I be?) to catch the mistake. But it is still an Airbus, one of the short-range versions, in the ad. You can’t airbrush an entire aircraft out of a movie ad, and there wasn’t time, apparently, to recreate the ad with a 757.

The ads should have been pulled entirely. As it is, in tomorrow’s Times, look for the ad either to be pulled, or for more airbrushing. This morning, the aircraft in the ad has a single set (two wheels, side-by-side) of left and right landing gear. A 757 has dual sets of main landing gear.
©Michael Grant 2006

Invasion of the Word Snatchers

When the public knows what the media knows, and the media knows it, then the equation will start to change.


Four score and seven years ago, there didn’t seem to be near as much plagiarism in this country.

Call me Ishmael, but I think it’s on the rise.

The latest is the case of the Harvard sophomore, Kaayva Viswanathan, who was profiled in The New York Times just last week. Only 19, she had published her first novel, “How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life.” This week, she is in the news because numerous passages in “How Opal” bear eerie likeness to passages in two earlier novels, “Sloppy Firsts” and “Second Helpings,” by Megan McCafferty. (If you ask me, she should have lifted McCafferty’s titles as well, but that’s another story.)

How did it happen? It happened like it always happens, one little white lie at a time, on this mortal coil with its myriad valleys and vales of tears. Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.

The author said she loved “Sloppy Firsts” and “Second Helpings” and just didn’t realize how she might have internalized their words. How true, that the world might little note, nor long remember, what McCafferty said there. It very well could have been any port in a storm, when in the course of human events it became necessary to really hustle to beat a publisher’s deadline. A mind is a terrible thing to waste, except when you are a college freshman who is five chapters behind on her first novel, with term papers and midterms staring you in your pretty face, a face that could launch a thousand ships, if only the seas were calm, and the tradewinds fair.

Or it could have been money. Filthy lucre. Money is the root of all evil. She was paid $500,000 for “How Opal,” which means she wasn’t going to have to furnish off her apartment with a two-room Roebuck sale. Temptation, thy name is avarice. Greed is a heartless tyrant, when it has you by the loins, and truth a lonely hunter.

Whither honesty? To be, or not to be, that is the question. In what degree of mind does it happen, that the route to happiness is seen to be paved with the golden tiles of another’s words? Might it not be that others have traveled that route exactly, with nothing more than surcease to gain?

O wretched occurrence! Such was the fate of young Viswanathan, when forward stepped that traveler who, on stopping by a prose freshet on a snowy evening, perceived ineluctably to have encountered that very freshet on journeys prior.

Now the young author finds herself centered on the hot griddle of suspicion which, I would hope, would cleanse her thinking, even in the knowledge that in the new publishing texts, suspicion (it tortures my heart) is identified as the favored strategy to increase sales. Now and then, there’s a fool such as I.

Yet, hope springs eternal. The sun also rises, on the bad and the beautiful, from purple mountain majesty across the fruited plain, in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Yea, though we the people walk through the valley of the shadow of having no self-respect at all, Karen, my spousal unit, in the thunder that comes at dawn, looked up from reading all the news that’s fit to print and cried, “Tomorrow is another day!”
©Michael Grant 2006

The U-T wins a Pulitzer

When the public knows what the media knows, and the media knows it, then the equation will start to change.


Wow. The San Diego Union-Tribune has won the Pulitzer Prize. Wow. It’s all I can say.

It is a personal reaction. I worked for the old San Diego Union, the morning paper, for 20 years. When I first reported for work, in the summer of 1972, the Union, and her sister the Evening Tribune, were still in the “old building” downtown, at the corner of Second and Broadway. We parked on the street in those days and went down every two hours to feed the meter. The desks were crammed in so tight, you had to climb into your chair like a fighter pilot into a cockpit. We used typewriters. On the copy desk were scissors and paste pots. In the wire room, the teletypes of AP and UPI brought word in from around the world in a measured, contrapunctal rhythm I can still hear in my bones.

I am fortunate to be just old enough to have rubbed elbows with the last of the glamorous old school of journalists, the green-eyeshade, red-eyeball guys. Not old enough to have actually known a rewrite man or, the mother of all wishes, to have become one, but old enough to work with some people who did.

Those guys felt about journalism the way Texans feel about the Alamo. Hell, all of us out on the city room floor would draw swords for journalism. But the Union, in 1972, was not a very good paper. There are editors from that era who are still alive and can give you the story from inside the managers’ cloakroom. My recollections, the source of my “Wow” reaction this week, all come from the floor, or the street.

The Union didn’t command much respect, in my experience. I dreaded going to press conferences, and watching other reporters feign surprise, and inquire with an evil grin, “What’s the Union doing here?”

Ask somebody else about the politics and the policies in those days. My impression, and it is my own impression, from the reporter’s side, came to be that the Union was the morning newspaper for a bubble world, inside which mostly good news happened, nobody in the community was accountable for anything, God was a Republican, and if people wanted bad news, or news about Democrats, why, they could buy the L.A. Times.

In everyday reporting life, it worked this way. I was assigned one night to cover a speech being given by a major Marxist intellectual at UCSD, where Herbert Marcuse was on the faculty. “Give me a 12-inch story,” said the night ACE (assistant city editor) as I headed for the door. “No quotes.” The Marxist talked for more than two hours. When I stood up to leave, I was surprised my body parted easily from the chair.

Back at the office, I pounded out 12 inches, no quotes, gave it to the ACE. A minute later, he called me over. “Take out this, this, and this,” he said, checking grafs that summarized topics the speaker had touched. I rewrote to six inches, handed it back. A minute later, he called me over. “Take these out,” he said. With a limp resignation that was rapidly becoming familiar, I took the copy, went back, typed three short grafs of the barest information (he was there, he spoke, he left), and that was the story in the paper the next morning. My job that night was to prove that the Union had sent a reporter to cover the speech.

We formed a softball team and named it “The Sacred Cows.” When no one in management complained, I had an impish moment of supposition that no one in the Union front office knew what a sacred cow was.

Otto Bos, a damn good reporter, who covered City Hall, was our star pitcher. We had a lot of good players, and good reporters, at the Union in the old building, but we always knew we were outnumbered by the sacred cows. “It’ll get better in the new building,” we liked to say.

We moved into the new building in Mission Valley one autumn weekend in 1973. In one of those impossibly strange turns of events, the very first paper published in the new building was headlined by the death of publisher Jim Copley. After a time of transition, Helen Copley took the active reins of publisher.

Which brings us to Jeannette Branin, who must be mentioned by anyone passing around credit for this Union-Tribune Pulitzer. If you ask me, it started with her. Jeannette was a platinum blonde with black eyes that flashed and a gorgeous, throaty laugh that rippled out in smiles across the newsroom several times a day.

Jeannette had a heart of gold and steel. As Helen was becoming publisher, she called reporters in by groups for an informal hour of give-and-take. In her group, Jeannette stood up and, in her respectful, Kansan matter-of-fact way, head tilted slightly, said, “Mrs. Copley, do you know that your newspaper has sacred cows?”

That is not an exact quote. Someone in that group may remember it exactly. It was all over the newsroom before the end of the day. After that, things did start to get better. I know, sometimes it has been hard to tell. Of course a little local competition always helps. And now the Union-Tribune has won a Pulitzer. Wow.
©Michael Grant 2006

Chapter 5: The Media Realities

When the public knows what the media knows, and the media knows it, then the equation will start to change.


A “reality” is the way something is. A reality is there, and there is nothing you can do about it. Every day we wake up to the realities in our lives like school, work, money problems, traffic, all those things we have no choice but to deal with.

People who are in media production, people who make television programs, movies and records, and who publish newspapers and magazines, wake up every morning with their specific set of realities. These are the realities they face in making their media business a success. They have no choice but to deal with these realities.

The first media reality is balance. This is particularly true of the information media, but it also applies to entertainment media as well. Media consumers insist that their information be presented in a balanced way, that is, both sides of the story are provided. If only one side is provided, or not enough of the other side is provided, the consumers will think the media is biased and unfair in giving so much attention to just the one side.

Of course no story can be perfectly balanced, because no two consumers will see the story in exactly the same way. Here is a simple graphic that illustrates the balance in a story.

Left Center Right

If all the reactions to this story fell directly in the center, the story would be perfectly balanced. But the News Values tell us that each person reacts to a story in his or her specific, individual way, no two exactly alike. Because of this, one person will see this story as balanced, while another will see it biased to one side or the other, either by a little or by a lot.

Sociologically, a person’s views place him or her in one of two general categories. People who consider their views “liberal” are said to be to the “left,” while people with conservative views are to the “right.” A moderate liberal looking at this story might see it as biased to the right of center, but not by much. A stronger liberal might see it biased farther to the right, but not so far that it is out of balance.

Conversely, a moderate conservative will see it biased to the left of center, but not so much as to be out of balance. Of course there are extreme liberals and conservatives who will look at a story and claim it is completely out of balance, though the majority claims it is balanced, but not perfectly.

In order to be believable, the information media must present stories that the majority of consumers believe is balanced. Information media producers wake up every morning to that reality. Balance is also necessary to the success of entertainment media. A simple but good example is a football game. If one team is ahead 35-0 at the half, the consumers are going to turn it off and watch something that is more in balance. Good dramas need balance, whether it is in a love story or in the conflict between good and evil. Good sitcoms need balance, between humor and the believability of life situations. Good novels need balance, to provide tension between the two sides struggling to prevail. A good story can’t be all black, or all white.

Of course much very carefully produced media content appears every day in the media, that has no balance at all, and we look at them with interest. They are called commercials. There are commercials for products, for candidates, for ideas, and for ideologies.

The second media reality is professionalism. Whatever the presentation, media people wake up every morning knowing it must be professional. In journalism, either newspapers or broadcast, the three cardinal rules are accuracy, accuracy and accuracy. The story must be accurate, both in its content and also in its presentation. Spelling, punctuation and grammar must be correct, or the story loses credibility.

Journalists strive every day to be professional, and they do much work that is never seen. A news story is like the tip of the iceberg, the 10 percent poking up above the water, and that is what the consumer sees. But below the water, unseen, is the 90 percent of the iceberg, the work the journalist did to make sure the story was strong enough to sink a ship.

Other people in media go to those same professional lengths. All those wonderful, carefree people in sitcoms and soap operas didn’t win their positions without years of training and practice. It’s no secret how long and hard actors in movies must work to become successes. The musicians in the recording industry, and the technicians who record them, do not just sit down at pianos and mixing boards and make wonderful music. Even the most casual music is a result of careful planning, hard work and perseverance, on both sides of the microphone.

Professionalism is vital to all aspects of the production. Appearances and sets must be professional, both in information and entertainment media. Lighting and audio must be professional. Newspaper and magazine layout, book production and camera angles must all be professional. Continuity must be professional. If one part of a scene is shot at noon, all parts must be shot at noon, on the same day if possible, because the light changes. If half of a noon scene is shot at noon and the other at 9 a.m., the consumers will notice. Likewise there are famous stories of telephone poles showing up in gladiator movies.

Professionalism is even important to tabloid journalism. One television tabloid show, “Hard Copy,” showed a man and woman anchors, beautifully dressed, sitting in a newsroom, narrating the show. In fact they were sitting in front of a blank wall covered by a blue “chroma-key” screen onto which was projected video footage of a newsroom. If you watched “Hard Copy” carefully on successive nights throughout the week, you could see people making exactly the same movements through the newsroom, night after night.

The third media reality is competition. Every morning, media producers wake up to the very hard reality that there are only so many hours in a day, and so many dollars in the consumers’ pockets. And this day will be jammed full of media content, a blizzard of signals from hundreds of television channels and radio frequencies, thousands of newspapers and magazines, racks full of books and CD recordings.

All of them are competing for the consumers’ attention. Advertisers want to see which programs give them the best opportunity to reach consumers and compete for the limited dollars in the consumers’ pockets. What can a media producer do, to enhance his product’s chances of success against the relentless competition?

If the media producer tries to make his product better, to improve its quality, in order to be more competitive, then the effect on the media is good. This happens all the time. There are many examples of quality media products introduced each year.

But often, more and more often, media producers decide to make their product more interesting in ways that are not so professional. They will use the Novelty news value, and the Sex and Sensational news values, to lure curious visitors to the product. Viewers will tune in to a program just to see someone eat a huge South Pacific cockroach on television. It would be hard to argue that this is quality media programming. Producers of the XFL football league tried to create a television product that was a big, sexy macho party at which football was played.

Some of these ideas work; some don’t. “Survivor” was a success; the XFL was not. The ideas that work, encourage the media producers to keep looking for other “sexy” or “sensational” ideas that are meant to manipulate consumers as much as entertain them. All of the celebrity reality shows are based on those values.
©Michael Grant 2006

This just in: the end of resilience?

When the public knows what the media knows, and the media knows it, then the equation will start to change.


What a familiar feeling this week, for millions of Americans, to look at Tom DeLay’s face at the top of the news and be both glad and sad. Glad that we are not card-carrying members of the Republican right, forced to imagine that Tom DeLay is something other than what the news reports him to be. And sad because he was supposed to represent not only them, but us, too, in the United States Congress.

It is especially conflicting for those non-rightists in San Diego, where so recently we smirked at Duke Cunningham’s fall, but then had to look into his face, and listen to his contrition, and realize that his sorrow was no match for the sorrow of those of us he was supposed to lead.

It must be that sense of sorrow, over disgraced leaders, added to our natural cultural inclination to forgive, that makes us so resilient. That may not be such a good thing. If Americans were half as demanding as they are resilient, a lot of us would feel better about the country’s future.

The millions of us who are not card-carrying members of the Republican right are not card-carrying members of the Democratic left, either. We remember being so grateful for that when President Clinton was in trouble for getting after it with a White House intern. Was this the man the Democrats wanted to lead the nation?

It’s the same way we feel now, grateful that we are not card-carrying Republican conservatives having to read about their own party’s doubts about the leadership of a president, the Brownie and Harriet man, in whom they have invested their political, social and moral identity.

If these millions of us aren’t card-carrying Democratic liberals or Republican conservatives, then who are we?

Well, we are resilient, for one thing. In the years between his resignation and his death, we made a place in our thinking for Richard Nixon as a sort of avuncular counselor, whose opinion of national and world affairs was welcomed in the media. It is true that, at his death, many objected to his being afforded a state funeral, even if it was outdoors in California instead of the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. Many of us only watched on television because the ceremony was about the office, and its nobility, and not the man, and his transgressions. In so doing, we permitted the man back into the office, but that was okay, because we are so resilient. We forgive.

It was hard for us to believe the reports of what went on with the President of the United States who had a fling with a brunette intern. For the most amazing sentence ever written about a President of the United States, I nominate this one, from the Starr Report: “Additionally, the President inserted a cigar into Miss Lewinski’s vagina.”

The millions of us are reminded of how fun it was, to snicker at the bewilderment of the card-carrying Democratic left, who had placed all their social, political and moral investments in Bill Clinton’s hands, and how sad it was, too. Not only for them, but for all of us, because it was all of us, truly, who had such a stake in how the President would lead us. It was not just their hopes and future, but ours, too.

Today, Bill Clinton is not only welcomed in the media, he is a media star, and named to global commissions, and founder of global commissions, and we look at him, and we remember what he did, but we watch him anyway, because we are so resilient. We forgive.

It is hard to imagine a future day when a president as unaccomplished as George W. Bush has ascended to a role of merit in the national thinking, who is sought after by the media, and whom we will watch, as a result of whatever appeal to him that time might provide. It is hard to imagine our granting him a future statesman’s role.

Of course we will, because we are so resilient. Yes, it is tempting to wonder if the administration of George W. Bush has provided the last straw, both to the Republican right, and to the other millions of us. The right, this time, might start to realize that leadership takes more than politics. And the millions of others of us may wonder if resilience this time might yield to need. This may be the era in the American experiment when the experiment needs to be turned around, and the millions decide to hold accountable their presidents for where they put their cigars and locate their wars.

In that case, Americans will become more than half as demanding as we are resilient. It is a reasonable place to start. It is all our futures, not just theirs.
©Michael Grant 2006