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Liars Target Mass Audiences For Maximum Effect
Posted Jan., 2006
Liars, big and small, have been all over the news lately. But who really are the liars and do they have to have their pants on fire in order to be recognized in a crowd?
The focus of the heat for the past week or so has been James Frey, the author of A Million Little Pieces, the book he wrote about his drug addiction and treatment, in which, it turns out, Frey fudged on some fairly significant points. Oprah Winfrey, the daytime television star with enough personas to make any book a mega-seller, brought Frey's book to the attention of millions on her show.
When the first reports of the inconsistencies were made public, Oprah stood behind Frey, even making excuses for him, saying publicly that even with the fudging, Frey's work could inspire millions to get into drug treatment.
But as the heat rose from critics, Oprah's support wilted. Finally, she put Frey on the air and really turned the heat up, saying how she felt duped and embarrassed and basically humiliated him on national television. That got a lot of applause.
I said, wait a minute, how come she didn't feel duped and betrayed and embarrassed when she first found out about it, but only later, after it appeared that the storm of criticism was not going to blow over?
I'm not sure whether FrontPageFlorida.com circulates to the heady world of daytime television stars, but if it did, I would have this question for Oprah.
Excuse me, Oprah, I know you're a big star and all, adored by millions and hardly ever make a mistake and would NEVER LIE, but why the turnaround? Might it be that you first tried to stand behind your choice hoping that it would blow over and you wouldn't have to eat crow and maybe lose credibility and points with the adoring multitudes, which might just translate into lost television ratings? I mean, Oprah, if we're ALL going to be COMPLETELY HONEST, shouldn't we tell the WHOLE TRUTH? Oprah? As my Marine Corps drill instructor used to say rather loudly, I CAN'T HEAR YOU.
It reminded me of somebody who starts out helping a drowning man out of shark infested waters and then when it looks like this might be an unpopular effort, pushes him under and holds him down until the great whites finish the job.
Most folks are probably too young to remember George McGovern, who when he ran for president in 1972 chose a man named Tom Eagleton as his running mate. It took the media about one news cycle to discover that Eagleton had been treated for what he called exhaustion and had undergone electric shock therapy. There were rumors, unconfirmed but published anyway, that he'd also been drinking too much booze.
Well, this caused quite a stir. McGovern's response was that he was "one thousand per cent" behind Eagleton and he had no intention from dropping him from the ticket.
Could there be any doubt what would happen next?
A day or two later, Eagleton was gone from the ticket. It didn't matter, Nixon trounced McGovern in the presidential election anyway, but the story of what happens to you when you are supported "one thousand per cent" lives on as a testament to the sincerity, and honesty, of our politicians, and it turns out, our television idols.
If people are too young to remember the 1972 presidential race, they've probably never even heard of the "the big lie." This is a term sometimes attributed to Adolph Hitler or his propaganda chief Joseph Goebbles. What they were getting at was that "people," or more accurately the great mass known as "the public" will more easily believe a big lie than a little one.
Now of course, Hitler and his henchmen are universally reviled as monsters, but most people realize they were onto something when they identified the "big lie" as something that can work to the advantage of those who would manipulate the media and the public to their advantage.
In his new novel State of Fear, Michael Crichton takes on the mostly well-meaning but misdirected environmentalists who have predicted catastrophic results from global warming. Crichton, a medical doctor whose credits include the novels Jurassic Park, The Andromeda Strain, and Prey, makes it plain that the scientific case for the phenomenon known as global warming is simply too thin to get all excited about.
In his book. in speeches or other papers, Crichton has pointed out some pretty big ones that the public has bought into with little or no evidence. Here is a short list:
-- Eugenics. In the 1930 and 40s, a lot of very intelligent and well meaning people in the United States and elsewhere got the idea that too many people with low intelligence were reproducing and would soon outnumber those with superior intelligence. They figured, why not just engineer society to turn this trend around? Needless to say, this effort soon turned ugly and led to the sterilization of people all over America and the rest of the world. Of course the Nazis became the masters of this "science" with the execution of millions of Jews and others they considered not of the "master race." Crichton points out that after World War II, nobody in America or anywhere else could remember how vigorously they had supported the idea of Eugenics.
-- SETI. The effort of SETI (the search for extra terrestrials), is based upon wishful thinking, not scientific evidence, that intelligent life exists somewhere in the universe. Nevertheless, millions, maybe billions, is spent on the effort every year because "the public" is operating under what is basically a delusion that there is a scientific formula that makes it seem likely there is intelligent life out there somewhere. Nonsense, Crichton said, the formula is useless and merely guesswork.
-- Nucelar Winter. This idea was popular maybe ten or fifteen years ago, and many famous scientists endorsed it. The idea is that if multiple nuclear bombs were to go off, there would be so much dust and stuff in the atmosphere that it would blot out the sun for a period of time long enough to basically cause the whole earth to freeze over. Crichton says this is just as silly and unprovable as is the proposition that there simply MUST be intelligent life somewhere in the universe. It's based upon an equation that requires you to fill in numbers that are unknowable, and therefore it is unscientific and guess work to predict such a thing.
-- Second hand smoke causes cancer. Crichton says this idea, which has resulted in bans on smoking cigarettes in restaurants in virtually every state, is completely without a scientific basis. He says there is no scientific evidence that second hand smoke is harmful, yet state after state have based public policy on the belief.
It bothers me that the public is so easily led down the path by so-called experts, so ready to buy into the lies, big or small, perpetrated by con men, scam artists, some politicians, and sometimes, sadly, the media.
Unfortunately, the only solution I can think of is a better informed and more wary public, which I have an idea is just more wishful thinking.
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Media's Message Drowned By Emotional Wave In Porter Story
Posted Nov., 2005
TAMPA - People were on the edge of their seats in the hours leading up the sentencing of Jennifer Porter, who pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident in which two children died. What would be her punishment? Then in the days following her sentencing, a sentence that did not include jail time, people wanted the answer to one question: Why isn't she going to jail?
Among other things, it is the job of The Tampa Tribune and the St. Petersburg Times to offer answers to that question, keep people informed, provide a forum for reader's opinions, but above all, explain, make clear, make crystal clear, what your government (including your criminal courts) is doing.
At the outset, I will give the papers this bit of slack: Explaining why nobody's going to jail, in a case as fraught with emotions as this, why Jennifer Porter was not even accused of killing the children when she obviously struck them with her vehicle, is a lot more difficult than it might seem.
We should know by now that explaining ANYTHING when people are screaming for blood is virtually impossible. The emotional part of the brain is fully engaged and that makes it difficult for the intellectual part to see clearly the real issues. This should be obvious from observation of any discussion of abortion or the death penalty.
That's probably why neither newspaper effectively communicated the simple fact that the State of Florida decided that Jennifer Porter was not responsible for the deaths of the children, or at least that the state could not prove that she was responsible.
Once folks stop screaming for revenge long enough to let that idea sink in, the idea that even the prosecutor decided that the children were killed AS A RESULT OF A TRAGIC ACCIDENT, and further that (and here's the hard part), JENNIFER PORTER WAS NOT AT FAULT FOR THE ACCIDENT, then the conclusion that she might not have to go to jail should be much easier for most folks to swallow.
Both papers did publish that information, but in dribs and drabs, and not in big headlines, not in graphic terms, not with sufficient volume to overcome the din caused by the cries for Jennifer Porter’s scalp. It was a matter of emphasis, and under the pressure of all those emotions, it's easy to forget that one headline is worth a thousand words (at least).
Neither paper, in my opinion, got this single, most important idea across to its readers effectively. To answer the question of WHY she was not charged, the best the newspapers did were "lawyer on the street" stories, in which reporters asked a handful of local attorney's what they thought of certain things that happened, certain legal problems, questions of the day. In "Hit-run fault not easily decided," by Graham Brink and Chris Goffard of the St. Petersburg Times, one lawyer said, "This is a complicated case. And it a gray area of the law." The Tribune ran a story headlined "Timing Of Driver's Admission is 'Shrewd,'" by Rob Shaw. In this story, a lawyer said, "If there was an option of going to trial. . . .Certainly you would invoke your Fifth Amendment rights and say nothing."
I got the feeling the reporters spent about five minutes talking to these people. These were not much help.
In a story with as much day-to-day impact as this one was having on the community on a continuing basis, editors on both papers should have known early on that this treatment was not getting the job done.
So, then, what could they have done?
Before I offer an opinion, I want to say first that people who work at and manage The St. Petersburg Times and The Tampa Tribune are first rate journalists. Both newspapers, in varying degrees, are far superior to those published in most other American cities.
But, editors seldom get an objective critique of what they’re doing, and never when they’re in the middle of it.
With that qualification, I offer a few ideas.
The goal, as already stated, should have been to communicate, with sufficient volume, facts not easily understood nor accepted by people outside the criminal justice system, especially when people's ability to even hear the facts is impaired by the sheer noise of the cries for blood. There are means, however, to raise the volume of a news report. Generous space is one means, big headlines and graphics is another means; authoritative, important voices are a third.
One possibility would have been to put together a panel of experts. Included on the panel could have been Fred Karl, a retired Florida Supreme Court Justice; a defense lawyer with the name recognition of Alan Dershowitz; a prosecutor as well known as former Attorney General Janet Reno.
I would have insisted the questions, and answers, be extremely simple. Why was Jennifer Porter not charged with vehicular homicide? How much discretion does a prosecutor have in accusing someone of a crime? Why would a prosecutor decide to charge her, or not charge her? If it's an accident, why is she charged with a crime at all? Can she be held responsible for damages done in an accident in which she left the scene? If a person is not responsible for the deaths, but only leaving the scene, why is there a jail term possible for leaving the scene? If you are not responsible for damages that occur as a result of leaving the scene of an accident, why did the legislature provide jail terms for that crime? Could judges differ on whether Ms. Porter should go to jail? Why do they have sentencing guidelines if judges can just do what they want?
Except for a few lawyers, most people still don't have answers to many of those questions.
In this case, it is my opinion that neither newspaper did a great job of accomplishing its mission: which is to analyze, explain, make clear even to the six-grade level readers, the answers to the legal questions, although The St. Petersburg Times hit much closer to the mark than did The Tribune, especially in its massive five part series that ended last Sunday. But even the big series did not address most of the questions posed above. In the fifth and final part of the series, on page 14, way down into the story, in quoting Judge Lamar Battles, the judge said: “The state attorney did not charge you with causing the deaths of these children, and you are not being sentenced for that today. It is a very difficult thing, I think, for some people to grasp. But that is the truth of it….”
Amen. Too bad this simple truth could not have been made clear, sooner, and with much greater volume.
From an editorial point of view, it is my opinion that The Tribune's harsh, strident call for jail time was not backed up by sound analysis. The Times' editorials made much more sense and were more grounded in logic, although even The Times editorials were sometimes unclear about the newspaper's position. There is also the problem that readers ordinarily do not differentiate between the newspaper's editorial position and the opinions of others that are found on the news pages. For instance, the St. Petersburg Times had a rather balanced reaction story the day after the sentence, but put this headline over it: "With two dead, is sentence fair?" This headline did not appear on an editorial page, but on a news page, and accurately reflected the contents of the story over which it appeared. But I would bet more than just a few average readers mistook it for the editorial position of the newspaper on that particular day. Good intentions, bad result.
In judging the prosecutor and judge, I think the papers did not speak with enough clarity.
Neither paper said that Mark Ober took the high road when he decided not to charge Ms. Porter with the more serious crime of vehicular homicide as opposed to leaving the scene of an accident. It was much tougher for him to make that decision, and it is a decision that made him no friends. Agree with him or not, it was a decision that required a great deal of courage, and he should have been applauded for it.
Judge Battles's decision was even tougher, and also required courage not commonly found in judges that must face the public at the polls. Agree with him or not, Judge Battles should also have been applauded.
Both papers lavished praise on defense lawyer Barry Cohen, whom I have known and worked with in the past. He is indeed a fine attorney. But to suggest that the prosecutor and judge were somehow mesmerized by him, and that Porter would have gone to jail without him as her lawyer, does a disservice to the system.
I would be the first to vote for a scathing, no-hold-barred editorial when the government does something wasteful or corrupt or self-serving. In this case, the government did exactly what it should have done and got mostly grief for its efforts.
Tampa Tribune Panel Discussion Pales
Posted Nov., 2005
TAMPA - In its Sunday, November 28, 2005, editions, The Tampa Tribune published excerpts from a panel discussion among community members on the Jennifer Porter case, and a story summarizing it. My first thought when I read it was, why? Porter was sentenced more than three weeks ago and community opinion has been well documented.
Could The Tribune’s panel have been a weak response to The St. Petersburg Times’ excellent five-part series that ended November 20, 2005?
I have participated in more than one meeting at which a group of editors carefully inspect the competition’s massive, extremely well done effort and finally somebody shrugs and says, “We can’t match this.” And then somebody else says, grudgingly, “Well, true, but (expletive), let’s do SOMETHING.”
If something like that did lead to the panel discussion excerpts, the Tribune editors overlooked two problems. The first is there was nothing new. Panelists parroted what has been written a zillion times by others. Most people at this point are asking, ‘will this story ever go away?’ Second problem: If this is the best you can come up with after St. Pete’s five-part series, was it really worth it? No-brain answer: NO. You’re showing your limitations. They should have put the thing in the trash.
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