The Media Project 1128, 2013 January 13

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From Northeast Public Radio, this is the Media Project, a weekly discussion about issues
confronting the media. He could be a dangerous show we will try to keep it straight here folks.
The Media Project is underway, the publisher, the professor, and the editor,
Ira Fesfeld of the Daily Freeman Kingston here. How good to be back.
Wonderful to see you back from visiting grandkids and so on, yes?
Yes, that's the new grandson, Dylan James Fesfeld and Los Angeles.
How about that? Dr. Shartak is here. How'd you do? My name isn't Brent Musberg.
Well, you know, old coots need to stick together. You probably thought that Brent did just fine.
I'm Rex Smith, editor of the Times Union. Happy to welcome you to the Media Project.
What do you think about Brent Musberg or drooling over a Catherine Webb Miss Alabama on a football
game? Well, you know, I'm for everybody cooling it a little bit. Now Miss Alabama, she gets herself
into a beauty contest. That's her thing and I'm not going to tell her or anybody else
of what to do. But when Brent Musberg is as holy cow, look at this and they pan to her in the audience,
she thought it was cute. But of course, he really got upgraded, including by his own
management for doing that. I don't want to substitute myself for anybody else's conscience here.
You talk about a broadcasting outlet trying to have it both ways. I mean, what is good for you?
What does he have to try? Who are the directors on the ESPN pointing their cameras at?
If not the beautiful women in the stands, the beautiful, often highly cleaved cheerleaders on
the college and pro games, they have a reason for doing that. They're playing to their audience and
they know that they want to see this stuff. And you know, Brent Musberg or what he said, frankly,
was milder than the pictures in general. What did he say again? I read. I, you know, I didn't watch
the game. I saw a clip. So I don't know if he's really the tone in which he said he did. Wow.
Since the caveman, nobody's ever done that. No, no, I'm sure. I'm sure. But I think you're
exactly right, Ira. It is having it both ways. You know, the network is going to focus on someone
because they're attractive. Then they shouldn't scold the person who makes note of that.
ESPN has done a remarkable thing in this country for the sports world because of the
variety and the breadth and scope of its coverage. But on the other hand, it has done so much damage
in that it glorifies this kind of thing. It glorifies the showboters in sports. It creates this
attitude image that is that is the damaging sports and society in general. And please, you know,
well, you know, it works. It brings in a lot of revenue. ESPN is partly owned by the company that
owns the Times Union. And so I'm all in favor of it. I didn't know that. It's just revenue.
Disney is involved with the. It's a Disney Hurst enterprise. It isn't really. And the ABC was
involved. The ABC DH was what we used to call it, right? Well, Ira fuss fell. Yes. He had the
Freeman and Rex Smith of the Times Union. I'm glad you've had your say on this subject because
you may, you know, there may be people who disagree with you and this year with what? We said
the networks are trying to have it both ways. Yeah. That seems a pretty.
I mean, critical of those people who have raised the sexist cry here. No, we may notice. How
do we not point out that that is in fact the case? You may notice how I, asiguously tried to avoid
overcute. And I, and I don't think we excuse the sexism, but I did excuse Brent Musberger for
being a victim of his own networks pictures. Yeah. Exactly. There it's duplicitous on the part of
the network. Well, you know, we get a lot of really nice letters here. I used to be allowed to read
them, but now Rex, like everything else because he's a megalomaniac, has taken over the reading of
the letters. Well, it's true because and ordinarily we don't pay attention to, you know, what you
can do. The ordinarily we ignore the anonymous letters, but here's one from this person.
Sure, because this one's about my paper. The real name of a person named Truth Teller in
Rosendale, New York. Well, see, yeah, he's a magician. He's a pen and truth teller.
Pen and truth teller. So truth teller says when Ira Fussfeld's passing himself off as Mr.
reasonable on the media project, this is the, can I say crap on this? To let that center stage in
his paper. How about you pull this out at the next time he's on and address the issue of editor's
throwing rotten red meat to the ignorant jerks and internet trolls. This pandering is undignified.
It doesn't represent an honest position and it's somebody who doesn't like a column published in
the daily freement. Although it might be the editorial cartoon, which was equally right wing
and reactionary, it was the column was by Michael Reagan, the son of the late president, and the
editorial cartoon was suggesting that David Gregory should be castigated if not arrested for
the incident with the magazine on the NRA issue and and. A castigated is the word you said? Yes,
yes, yes, castigated. And I'm glad the reader has read it and is reacting and I would suggest,
although I and I do accept and in fact endorse my comment as being Mr. reasonable and in fact,
it should be extended to the fact that we use this material because our editorial pages we try
very hard to have points of view from all sides and that certainly was a side or two sides in this case.
So I think we do, I think we were being reasonable. We were not shutting out that point of view.
What's really astonishing to me is when we publish stuff on the opinion pages, people get upset with
us and say, you're you're being biased. Well, you know, an opinion is intrinsically a bias, isn't it?
And so what are they expecting that we're going to just put out melee mouth, namby,
pamby stuff and the people that's probably even here. We do something goal congressional corner.
We give everybody their say they said, why don't you beat her up? Why don't you yell at him?
And the answer is, why don't you take her blood and who couple of minutes on the air every week?
Who's got a more right-wing perspective off the air because I don't want him on my radio station.
They say, I don't use the mind. So yeah, I think we all get that, but I think the reasonable folks of
which most people are understand that this is just a range of opinion. Well, that said, let me just go on.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and say one more thing to both of you because somebody's got to pick what goes where?
Sure. And when you do that, you are basically creating a statement. So if Michael Reagan doesn't go
in the paper, then it's different than if Michael Reagan does go in the paper. So really,
Ira, as I've said many times, you're playing the F sharp on the piano. You have to take responsibility
for who you put in that paper. Oh, absolutely. And I'm proud to. I mean, if you take a look at our
newspaper, it's similar to many. We know we have published seven days a week and on our editorial page,
we run two syndicated columns a day. So that's 14 columns a week that we attempt to spread out
from the left to the right to the middle. So we are trying. And so we yes, we do place these
columns for that very reason. And to Rex Point, the pages are labeled opinion. Do you ever choose a
column because other columns who you regularly have in the paper are on the case? Yes. In fact,
that's how this Michael Reagan column got in. We were we were at the veritable bottom of our
selection. He's he's not one of the regular calmists in our rotation, but he and a couple of
others we do have as reserves. They syndicated calmists. Many of them have great schedules because
they all seem to go off with Christmas time. And then we're running around looking to fill up the
hole in the paper. Now, no, Rex, as for you, you sir, as a very good writer and you are and you run
a terrific paper times Union. However, I noticed lately that the Berkshire Eagle, the paper that I
write for on Saturdays, has you regularly on their editorial page. They lift from the Times Union,
your columns, your weekly columns, which are often on mostly time on journals. I have the time.
I write about journalistic issues. Yeah. And they put you in the paper every week. Very nice.
Now, it is nice of them, but what's interesting to me is the fact that they Berkshire Eagle and the
Times Union just literally are next door neighbors as well, you know, it's admirers. So I'm fascinated
that they do that. Do you have any explanation for it? I can't imagine why they would publish my
column. Do they purchase it? Is it a syndicate? It goes on the Hearst newswire, which is distributed
by the New York Times News Service. So anybody who's a client of the New York Times News Service
gets my column. Yeah. If a good column editors, it will thank you. If the editors in
DC decide to put it out there. But I try to write it for our local audience. I'm not trying for
a national audience, but sometimes it can be edited to take out some of the local stuff. So it appears
like recently it's appeared in the Austin American States in the Dallas Morning.
It was the Las Vegas son that kind of stuff. I love it. I'd be glad to be here. Incidentally,
since we're throwing kudos your way, I thought that your newspaper is editorial on the foil and the
Putnam County business was excellent. What did he say? What did he say? Well, I was very
pointed in the fact that this is this is the case with the Putnam County, New York is right now
refusing to release the gun permit holders names and addresses to the journal news, which has
already gotten into the soup in many the eyes of many for publishing the list of gun holders in
Westchester and Rockland counties. But they now want to do the same for Putnam and the Putnam
County clerk is refusing to give them that information. The state senator representing that
district has been predictably verbose about this predictably verbose. Some people think he's
a little strange. He's been rather outspoken on a number of issues dating back to his prior 10
year when I was vaguely aware of him when I was publishing the Putnam County courier in one of my
hats that I wore at one point. But as Rex's editorial as newspapers editorial pointed out that
this is illegal, they have to give them these names. If you want to change the law, it changed the
law. But it was just very well written. I thought and very direct in its in its criticism of the state
senator. The point is the freedom information law is not something that is voluntary. You you must
yield the documents that are public documents. You may complain about it, but you must do so. And
in refusing to do so, the Putnam County taxpayers are going to shoulder the burden of paying the
legal costs of the journal news in obtaining those documents. And you in fact, Rex have been at
the Times Union in the forefront of foiling materials. We have and getting payments from the city
of Albany and from the state legislature when they illegally withheld documents. We have been
awarded those fees by judges and the law has as a result in fact of some of our intercession. I
think the law has been changed in strength and so that is even more likely that citizens will be
able to obtain payment so that it won't cost them to get the documents that the law requires the
government to make public. Very interesting. Not, but, but it's not about that. But I noticed
something that I don't think you guys probably saw. Maybe you did. No, we probably did. The New York Times
has now oiled from the county government in New York. The names of the revolver holders there.
Long ago. Did so. Yes, it's a case has been pending for the last two years. Wow, that's a long
time. Yeah, well, it's not well because governments that don't want to release information will
intentionally delay and put drag install and motion practice by the lawyers delays this stuff. We've
taken years sometimes to get information in our own cases and you just have to persevere. So
that's not what those laws and the case is not at all. The case is still under appeal. The judge
in the times case allowed to release the data with some redactions and the New York Police
Department appealed and so that case is still under appeal. But the times interestingly seems
that it's be saying we have no intention of publishing these names. We just want them. Now,
that's very interesting. That is not an official statement, but that is the supposedly according to
a capital, which is a website on New York State politics and government, a Times source,
quote unquote, said the paper rarely have ever published this raw data and it had no intention
of publishing the addresses of the permit holders. Now Rex, do you think that's possibly said and
by a quote source because the Times saw how much trouble the Putnam County and newspaper got into
the watch us again. You could speculate that, but I suspect that the Times's position would be the
the same as ours. I don't think that we would publish raw data of permit holders. Well,
what do you think they did it? Well, different editors have different points of view about what's
available. I would take the journal news at its word that this is a valuable public service in
their eye to make this data available so people know where the handguns are. Unfortunately,
we can't know where the long guns are. We have no idea where shotguns, rifles, automatic weapons,
or where illegal guns are. So it's incomplete data. Andrew Golo in a state of the state went out
of his way to talk about the fact even though he's coming down hard on gun owners that he had a,
I guess, a Remington rifle. Yes. Yeah. Shotgun. All I know is that if I'm kind of a little kid,
I hear a realistic journalistic purpose. And the kid wants to play next door. Well, there isn't a
day. Well, no, there's lots of days, but there are quite frequently you'll see that some kid got a
hold of a gun and hurt themselves. So if I'm a doting parent, I might want to tell my child,
don't go play over there. They got guns over there. You know, I hear that. That was the only reason
that I would have been persuaded to print that list. I'm with Rex. I would not have printed the
names and addresses, but that argument we want to know who our kids have. But in absence of that list,
wouldn't the mother or father go to the next door neighbor who's kid's house and say, by the way,
do you have any guns here? And are they secure? No. Most why not? Because most people don't go next
door and say, by the way, they have a, you know, do you have any guns here? I mean, that's very,
very, I think. Yeah. Well, it could be, but it could be done. By the way, I should point out that the
addresses and names of the gun holders were posted back in August of 2010. I mentioned this last
week by a website called Who's Packing and Why.com. And now most recently, gocker.com just published a
list of gun owners in New York City in all five burrows. So it took gocker, though, two and a half
years to get that information out of the New York police department and the addresses were redacted
by NYPD before was released. They're not allowed to do that, are they? I should not think they would
be. No, but they did. And so gocker went ahead and published the names without addresses, which is
even less valuable information because how many Joe Smiths are out there who might be mistaken for
another Joe Smith. So the value of that particular database seems limited to me. Yeah. Well, you know,
I think it's a very interesting debate. What's going on with Al Jazeera? That wasn't the topic we
were going to take up next, but that's fine. All right. I'll get you to get to read the mail anymore.
You could moderate. That's exactly what I was thinking. Al Jazeera, you know, of course, has been sold,
has bought. I'm sorry. Al Gore's Al Jazeera Al Gore, whoever,
came a current network. So now that gives Al Jazeera a foothold in which it's going to be available
in 40 million US homes. I don't know the same thing. I've been for, you know, I get down in New York
City and I turn the television on and I can see Al Jazeera news down there. I've always been
able to see that. Why is this different? Well, because New York City is on a cable system that
has access to Al Jazeera, but most of the cable systems in the US do not, but many, many of them
do have access to current TV. And now Al Jazeera is in there. I could be wrong about this, but I
believe that the Al Jazeera deal with current is a forerunner of Al Jazeera establishing a new
network called Al Jazeera America, which is different than the Al Jazeera that I believe you're seeing
and the different than the Al Jazeera that is available on the internet that I've seen from time
to time. So I think that's the distinction, but there are two interesting questions about it. One
is as soon as the deal was announced that this was happening, Time Warner pulled current TV.
What's that about? Well, current TV's ratings are apparently lower than low. Well, you got to
find it first on, you know, channel was it for whatever reason, but time Warner and other,
you know, the satellite providers will take channels off if they feel as if the channel is not well
on a typical night last year. Current TV had only 42,000 people watching it nationwide. So they
would suggest that this is the opportunity we may as well just take it off the air.
Elliott's viz is set of current TV where he has a program had a program and he said nobody's
watching, but we're having a good time. Well, some of the programs weren't bad, including
Albramins when he was on, but the production values were awful, which is one of the reasons Albramins
said he got mad, but it is very hard to find it was not getting any traction because it is a left
channel and MSNBC has already staked out that corner. So you have MSNBC in the left and Fox on
the right and current wasn't able to get a foothold, but the other question is did Time Warner take
it off the air as a anticipation of Al Jazeera coming on and they don't want to run Al Jazeera?
And what do you think that reason is that you mean there's a certain anti-Arabat? Well,
there's that or the potential that they've just strictly from a business standpoint that they
want to negotiate a better deal with Al Jazeera than they had with current. And you consider
the business transaction also the fact that Al Jazeera produces a lot of international news and
there's a very limited appetite among American TV viewers for that kind of international news.
I think there's enough that there would be a niche that could be profitable perhaps, but it's
never going to be a big seller for a cable company, right? Yeah, but I think also Al Jazeera has
been stigmatized by most people in this country believe that it is a mouthpiece for terrorism or
for the Middle East in particular because it used to air and receive and then air, there've been
lot in statements from time to time. Al Jazeera will say, and I think with justification that the
clips that we saw here were just of been lot and but in fact that they did run these tapes with
context and with, you know, comments before and after, not necessarily just giving him free
rain. And frankly, if Ben Laden hadn't sent tapes to CBS or NBC, they would have run them also.
Absolutely. You know, I haven't watched a lot of Al Jazeera, but what little I've seen and what
I've heard from people who watch it all the time is that it's a very potent and capable news
operation. Our domestic news organizations on television are pretty parochial. Very much
interested in what's going on in America and very jazzy about Miss Alabama and everything else
like that. And whereas Al Jazeera provides an alternative viewpoint that is important to be
available for American TV consumers. So I think it's a terrific thing that's going on.
And as you might suspect it did tremendous coverage of the air spring in Egypt. That's when I was
watching. That was the place to go to watch that coverage. On the other hand, you know, I don't
think we can get away from the fact that if you were to poll Americans as to who they like and who
they don't like, you know, there's not a tremendous appetite for Arab culture or for Arab politics
here in the States. So I would think that that would have to be factored in as one of the reasons
you drop a program like that because you don't want to offend anyone. But one would suggest that
that Arab culture has been so uncovered here and so lightly covered here and it's so misunderstood
here that perhaps being exposed to Al Jazeera will inform people just like any of the other
specialty channels that are based on religion or race or whatever. So I mean, the other thing
that's interesting, I don't know if you're going to bring it up, is the fact that Al Gore actually
sold this to Al Jazeera and many people on the left and the right are mad about that. They believe
Al Gore is being a two-faced having been the champion of global warming and convenient truth.
And who did he sell it to for a half a billion with a B dollars was to the Middle East and oil
interests. But you know, you have to not blame it. That's an inconvenient truth you just said.
Isn't he? I read a piece suggesting that he was worth at the time that he lost the
presidential race of about two million dollars and this represents a hundred million dollar pay day
and at this point he may well be wealthier than Mitt Romney. So you know, you can't fault the guy
for a hundred million dollar pay day. Exactly. Yeah, I mean, accept if you're fault where they got
their money from that he is now accepting. I'll never forget the time. I got up in the middle of
the night and I saw a wonderful Al Gore speech at a time when he was really being put down and he
was talking to some kids in Washington DC. He was a middle of the night and I said to our crew
over here, get that. Was this after he lost the presidential race? You know, I don't really remember,
but I said get it because it's a great it's a great thing. It's a very animated speech. I think
it was after he lost and this is the Al Gore nobody knows. So we had given out Bill Moyer's tapes
premiums and other things and I said that would be wonderful. So we call nothing. Finally we get
um Dave Castino who can get anything to call them and I get Maurice Hinchy the congressman to
intervene for us with his very good friend, you know, Al Gore. Uh-huh. And then we hear the day before
the fun drive that we had been denied. They weren't going to allow us to do this and the quote I got,
I have no idea if it's accurate or not, but the quote I got via the Gore people to David I believe
was Mr. Gord doesn't want anyone to profit from his material. And I'm saying, Lisa didn't say who
sharp he would have been really the death of the man, right? A public radio state. Oh yeah. Well,
you see what I mean. I see what you mean. I get it. Yeah. Sorry. I didn't mean to. Look at the
course. Look at how life changed and the world changed. Al Gore narrowly loses and I put
loses in question where the presidency. Yeah. He then gains about a hundred pounds. I mean,
someone who's weight challenged, I feel for him, but nevertheless he did. You should talk about
weight. Uh, he then splits up from his wife after those passionate kisses, you know, uh, and then he
buys and gets into this, well, then does the inconvenience with wins and Oscar goes into this
TV business. And now a half a billion dollars later, here we are. So that all in all because of a few
hanging chads, this could have been a lot different. Absolutely. So here's a topic that we need to, uh,
take a look at. Here's a letter that perhaps Ira, you alone will be the right person to answer
this dear media project. A newspaper doesn't just rent space to advertisers that they can do anything
they want with. Some measure of oversight is applied. How do you set acceptable limits for ad
copy and images? Uh, it differs by paper by paper, but all ads that are perhaps controversial in
nature should be sent to the ad director who likely in turn will talk about it with the publisher.
And they decide whether the ad is fit for the paper. And if we choose not to publish an ad,
we will go back to the advertiser and thank them very much for the opportunity to run their business.
But we choose not to. We, we legally are not allowed to tell them why. Oh, but, um, we do, uh, we do
review ads. I mean, obviously 99. And a half percent of the ads don't need to be reviewed because
they're routine. But if there are particularly questionable ads, they aren't fact reviewed.
And we get that here at public radio too. We don't have ads. Of course, we have what we call
underwriting, which is very different. But every once in a while somebody tries to slip something
over that breaks the rules and we'll say no. And by the way, the Supreme Court of the United
States has ruled on this and says that public radio stations have the right to make those decisions.
Really? I believe it's the St. Louis case. Mm-hmm. I have nothing comparable to add to this because I only
do, uh, editorial content, but, uh, you know, we have to make judgments about what we allow on
blogs. If we start editing blog posts from citizens, then it becomes our responsibility and we're
culpable for that. That is, it's reliable for it. But so we are basically just a publisher of the
blog content. And therefore we can either reject or publish what people post on blogs, but we can't
edit and deal with it. So that's how the current law is anyway with respect to blogs. So, which used
to be much more frequent, you know, the course back in the days when airliners crashed all the time.
You advertise more. And advertise more. Yes. You don't have that so much these days.
All right. That's all we have time for this week. Sure. We did a lot of topics. I think this is
an hour program. I'm not sure. We need because I remember last week or two weeks ago,
the theme song went forever. He played the theme song twice. Well, we had a little problem here.
I forgot to turn on the timer when we started this program. And Rex, you wanted to be the moderator
and press the stupid button. Join us next week folks on the media project.