Media Nation

You just can’t keep a bad word down

For those of us in the dwarfism community, it sometimes seems that the outside world is mainly interested in two things: how people with dwarfism are depicted in popular culture and the continued debate over the word “midget,” which is regarded as offensive by nearly everyone within the community.

Here is former New York Times public editor Clark Hoyt’s 2009 column in which he acknowledges that the “M”-word is offensive and would no longer be used in the Times.

Last week the “M”-word popped up when commentator Bernard Goldberg used it on “The O’Reilly Factor” while critiquing former MSNBC talk-show host Keith Olbermann. In observing that Olbermann’s relatively low ratings in comparison to Fox News were nevertheless higher than anyone else’s at MSNBC, Goldberg compared Olbermann to “the tallest midget in the room.”

My friend Bill Bradford, who’s the senior vice president of Little People of America, called my attention to it on Facebook, and we hashed it out a bit. My inclination was to give a pass to Goldberg on the grounds of his well-documented cluelessness. But another friend, Julie Holland, quickly discovered that Goldberg knew exactly what he was saying. Last February, in defending the use of such charming terms as “Negro” and “retarded,” Goldberg told Bill O’Reilly:

If you use the word midget, the little people community are going to jump all over you. I mean not literally, but they’re going to get on you.

That sound you hear in the background is O’Reilly snickering.

On Sunday, meanwhile, the Boston Herald ran a feature on a show at the Seaport World Trade Center charmingly called “Motorcycles, Midgets and Mayhem,” starring dwarf wrestlers called the Half-Pint Brawlers.

Another LPA friend, District 1 director Barbara Spiegel, is quoted as objecting both to the spectacle and to the use of the “M”-word. The story, by Renee Nadeau Algarin, is benign enough, and I’m not suggesting the Herald should have ignored it. But it’s accompanied by an extensive slide show and a come-on to buy reprints. The comments are about as bad as you would expect.

There’s no question that the way people with dwarfism are depicted in the media is far more positive than it was a generation or two ago. Reality shows such as “Little People, Big World” and “The Little Couple” have helped normalize dwarfism in the eyes of the public.

Yet in the more benighted corners of the media, it seems that things haven’t changed much at all.

Three local projects keep an eye on Egypt

Not the first time I’ve said this, but whenever a big international story develops, you can’t go wrong checking in on three news organizations with Boston roots that specialize in foreign coverage.

The most venerable is the Christian Science Monitor, whose commitment to serious journalism extend back more than a century. Now mostly online, the Boston-based news site has correspondents on the ground in Egypt and other stations in the Middle East. Here is a telling passage by Kristen Chick, who’s been covering the protests:

Reinforced, the crowd marched onto the bridge, gathering around two troop carriers the police had been forced to leave behind, along with several of their members. A crowd surrounded the policemen angrily, but some protesters pushed them back.

“This is a peaceful protest,” they yelled. “Don’t hurt them!”

A young policeman walked past, sobbing uncontrollably on the shoulder of a protester.

“It’s OK, you are our brother, you are with us now,” said the protester.

Reporting from Israel, the Monitor’s Joshua Mitnick finds that the Israeli government is anxiously watching what is unfolding in Arab states all around them.

You can follow the Monitor’s coverage of Middle East protests here.

Also well worth following is GlobalPost, the international news agency started by New England Cable News founder Phil Balboni and former Boston Globe foreign correspondent Charles Sennott. GlobalPost reporter Jon Jensen supplements his work with a video report (above).

In an attempt to get ahead of the story, Hugh Macleod considers whether Syria’s repressive regime could be the next to tumble. His conclusion: no, because President Bashar al-Assad has taken steps to spare his people from the grinding poverty that afflicts Egyptians.

You can follow GlobalPost’s coverage of the unfolding Middle East story here.

The most unconventional of the three is Global Voices Online, begun at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center a half-dozen years ago and dedicated to rounding up and synthesizing citizen journalism of all kinds.

Before the Twitter crackdown, Global Voices’ Ivan Sigal posted a fascinating compilation of tweets, blog posts and videos, including a harrowing scene of protesters falling off a water truck. And here is a comment from something called the Angry Arab News Service, in a piece written by Global Voices’ Amira Al Hussaini, reacting to yesterday’s speech by Egyptian President (at least as of this writing) Hosni Mubarak:

Mubarak is speaking live. He is digging a bigger hole for himself. He is insulting the protesters. HE said that he has been sympathetic to the poor all his life. Is that why billionaires surround you, you dictator?

Global Voices has put together a special section called Egypt Protests 2011.

The last word (I hope) on the Googletron and me

Last week Google restored my AdSense account without explanation, though I had already learned through a back channel that an employee discovered I’d been hacked. A couple of days later I received the following e-mail from Attorney General Martha Coakley’s office:

Dear Mr. Kennedy:

Thank you for contacting the Office of Attorney General Martha Coakley. The Office is not able to handle every matter that is brought to its attention; however, we do take note of every complaint received, and watch for a pattern of complaints related to a particular company, individual, or industry.

Thank you for bringing this matter to the attention of the Attorney General’s Office.

Sincerely,

Benjamin Vitalini
Public Inquiry & Assistance Center

Here is my response:

Dear Mr. Vitalini:

Thank you for your letter of January 25 regarding my complaint about Google for cutting off my AdSense account and confiscating the money I had earned. I agree with you that my issue was a small one, but I hope you will find it useful in establishing the “pattern of complaints” that you are looking for. I would note that I gave you information about other, similar situations in my original letter.

Since I last wrote to you, Google has restored my AdSense account and returned my money. I have received no official explanation as to what happened, but have learned through a back channel that a Google employee determined my account had been hacked. Though I’m grateful, I know that the only reason my account was restored was because I am fairly well known in the blogging community. In my case, someone who reads my blog contacted a personal friend who works for Google. That is not something that is going to work for most people.

The central problem, I believe, is that Google has automated the process of detecting problems with AdSense accounts and shutting them down — and then offers no recourse to a human being. I think regulators nationwide should insist that Google offer some way for aggrieved customers to complain to a person rather than to a computer, and to receive a clear explanation as to what went wrong and why.

Sincerely,

Dan Kennedy

I hope I’m done with this. And I still plan to replace the overhead with local advertisements, which will allow me either to eliminate or play down my Google ads.

Earlier coverage.

Huskies on the beat

My Northeastern colleague Walter Robinson’s students once again lead the Boston Globe, this time with a first-rate investigative story on expensive shift-swapping abuses within the Boston Fire Department.

Way out of bounds in New Haven

The New Haven Register does not enjoy a stellar reputation. In my experience, though, it gets something of a bad rap. It’s thin but reasonably solid. There are several top-notch reporters on staff.

That said, this is a disgrace: an online poll headlined “Who’s the hottest local female television personality?”, complete with photos available for purchase. A database search reveals that it did not appear in the print edition.

The Laurel, a Connecticut media blog, rightly calls it “a new low.” (I should note that I found out about it through the Valley Independent Sentinel’s Twitter feed, and that the Valley site is part of the New Haven Independent, the Register’s main local rival.)

One online commenter wrote, “Try this poll Whos’ Going To Hell and How Hot Will It Be? These women that you chose should be insulted.”

Many of us remember when Howie Carr would engage in such degrading stunts on his radio show. The Huffington Post trolls for traffic with such fare even today. But the Register is a major metropolitan newspaper — the paper of record in Greater New Haven. The journalists there must be mortified. I suspect we have not heard the end of this.

Obama’s solid State of the Union address

In my latest for the Guardian, I argue that President Obama’s State of the Union address was aimed at the public rather than the pundits — and that early returns suggest that he succeeded by emphasizing what keeps middle-class families awake at night.

Bella English’s long ride back

Not long after my bicycle accident last Sept. 19, I heard that Boston Globe reporter Bella English had crashed on her bike the same day. I know Bella a bit. We’ve been in touch off and on over the years, and we even had lunch at India Quality in Kenmore Square once. So I reached out to her via Facebook.

It took a while for her to get back to me, and I heard from others that her injuries were much more serious than mine. Now she has told her story — about her fractured skull, her memory loss, vertigo and cognitive difficulties, and her rehab for multiple broken bones.

Best wishes to one of the Globe’s stalwarts. The good news is that Bella is on her way to a full recovery. Amazingly, she says she may hop back on her bike again. Not me.

What’s next in the cable news wars

Three quick hits on the continued fallout over Keith Olbermann’s departure from MSNBC:

1. It looks like MSNBC’s response has been to give promotions to everyone rather than consider what might work best. The network is feeding Lawrence O’Donnell to the wolf (i.e., Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly) at 8 p.m. And Ed Schultz at 10? Really? Aren’t all his viewers in bed by then?

If I were MSNBC honcho Phil Griffin, I’d move Chris Matthews to 8. Matthews is much maligned (I’ve maligned him myself), but he’s still weirdly compelling after all these years. His energy and passion are likely to hold Olbermann’s losses to a minimum. Let Schultz have the 7 o’clock hour and see what he can do with it.

I agree with Griffin’s decision to keep Rachel Maddow at 9. I realize she would do better against O’Reilly than anyone else, but she’s now the franchise, and protecting the franchise is important. If her ratings were to drop below Olbermann’s, it would demoralize the whole operation. And I’d keep O’Donnell at 10, too.

2. CNN, which has slipped behind MSNBC in the prime-time ratings, has an opportunity to take advantage of the Olbermann mess. I’ll confess I haven’t seen Piers Morgan’s new talk show yet, but the clips look very promising — a huge step up from Larry King.

I’ve always liked Anderson Cooper better than “Anderson Cooper 360.” Whatever’s wrong with the show can be fixed. And here’s what’s wrong: inconsistency (you never know whether you’re going to get a solid newscast or tabloid trash) and the two-hour length, which has led CNN to use much of the 10 o’clock hour to flog what’s coming at 11.

The solutions are fairly simple. Cut the newscast to an hour, rebroadcasting Piers Morgan at 11; and up the intelligence quotient.

CNN executives will still need to deal with the toxic-waste pit that is “Parker Spitzer” at 8. I’d move John King’s politically oriented newscast to that slot and cross my fingers.

3. Barring any unexpected bombshells, Bill Carter and Brian Stelter’s take on why Olbermann left seems pretty definitive. But though Comcast, the incoming owner of NBC Universal, appears to have its corporate hands clean, my expectation is that at some point the company will blow up MSNBC.

Maybe it will happen soon. Maybe it won’t happen until Comcast wants to curry favor with a new Republican administration in the White House. But it will happen.

Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

Kennedy hypocrisy harms the public interest

Central to the idea of censorship is that it’s an action taken by the government. But it appears that the Kennedy family may have come up with a new form of censorship: suppression of government documents by a private person.

Boston Globe reporter Bryan Bender writes that Max Kennedy, one of Robert Kennedy’s children, has barred full access to his father’s papers dating back to his time as attorney general. Historians tell Bender those documents could prove embarrassing given what they might reveal about RFK’s actions with regard to Cuba and civil rights.

For censorship aficionados, Max Kennedy’s e-mail to Bender is a classic:

There are many requests to see them, and frankly, many of those requests come from people with poorly-conceived projects. It is my responsibility, as custodian of the papers, to grant use responsibly. That does not mean that every book must be cloyingly positive; I do not think that for a moment, and I would be doing a disservice to my father if I acted that way. But I do believe that historians and journalists must do their homework, and observe the correct procedures for seeking permission to consult the papers, and explain their projects.

In other words, freedom of information is too precious to grant it to just anyone. What a repulsive example of hypocrisy.

Those papers were created at public expense and belong to us. It’s been 50 years. I’m not sure why Max Kennedy even has a say in the matter. But since he does, it’s long since time for him to put the public interest above the possibility that his father’s legacy will be tarnished.

Update: Martin Callaghan points out that Bender does not explain why the Kennedy family rather than the government gets to decide who has access and who doesn’t. The story demands follow-up, and I hope that explanation is forthcoming.

Photo via Wikimedia Commons.