While I await the team to arrive with the rail, tar and feathers to speed me on my way out of Tampa and on to Atlanta, I have two more chances to amuse or infuriate you with thunderous outrage.
Next week, I'll say a final lugubrious fare-thee-well to my most and least favorite people here. This is your last invitation to add something comical, caustic or catty to the dialogue. Write, e-mail or call soon. Time is running out.
For this column, I want to hit on the subject that has most amused and engaged me during six years at the Weekly Planet — the media.
I'll be blunt: The people who run the news organizations here, as throughout the nation, are either lacking in spines when it comes to reporting on themselves or they are so arrogant that they believe they can snooker you into believing that they are somehow more ethical, more honest and more noble than other businesses.
As a variation on that species of corporate invertebrate, there are many, especially among television and radio station owners, who in a quest for even more outrageously bloated profits, have totally dismissed viewers and readers as thinking beings. To these owners, citizens are merely "target audiences" and "demographic groups" (which mostly means white and affluent) to be maneuvered by cheap, emotionally charged "news." The goal is to produce a nation — an entire world — of slack-jawed, gullible consumers who in the best Pavlovian tradition, get their blood steamed by, say, overloads of Chandra Levy or anxiety over who will win Survivor. These people, twitching in anticipation of their next stimuli, are ripe for the marketing onslaughts of McDonald's or Toyota. Broadcasting consultants warmly commend to station managers that stimulating anger, lust and fear results in viewers being more responsive to advertising. You're not a person, but merely a button waiting to be pushed. A stupid button, at that, to these media Svengalis.
On the print front, both of our local daily newspapers have television columnists — only the St. Petersburg Times' Eric Deggans is given real latitude in covering broadcasting. Neither paper covers the media in general, despite the seismic impact the press has on every citizen, business and organization. The people who run the news outlets are saying, "Trust us. Our news is truthful, unbiased and unaffected by any business agenda of our own."
And, of course, that's a crock.
Last Sunday, to wit, The Tampa Tribune gushed in torrents about the arrival this week of the U.S. Olympic Committee's selection committee for the 2012 games. The Trib abandoned its once-ballyhooed practice of stating when it has a conflict — the paper and its sister WFLA-Ch. 8, are mainstays of the local Olympic booster group. Hunt high and low in recent Trib coverage, and you'll never find a hint that when the newspaper writes about Olympic promoters and spin doctors, it's really writing about itself.
The newspaper accepted as gospel the preposterous propaganda of Tampa's arch mountebank, Ed Turanchik. He would have us believe that 5,000 poor and mostly black citizens will be relocated into to stylish digs at no cost to the taxpayers so that a stadium and athlete housing can be built. Turanchik would further have us believe Tampa won't repeat what happened in other cities such as Atlanta — the promises made to displaced residents were quickly reneged upon. He would have us embrace him as a near-dictator — the city would be obligated to condemn property and provide a wide range of services — and ask that we swallow his claim that power won't be abused. (Have our city's leaders forgotten, as they lick Turnachik's Guccis, that the Olympics are little more than an international criminal cartel?) Also, Turanchik doesn't want citizens to be reminded that they will be financially obligated to pay his bills — potentially billions of dollars — should the games be a bust. Finally, Turanchik would have Tampa bite on the bait of vast economic benefits the games will supposedly bring — despite very clear, unambiguous proof that even with massive public cost the sports spectacles garner little benefit to communities.
The Trib intones "amens" to the Olympic chicanery — and now, apparently, the journal has abandoned its half-hearted acknowledgement of ethics by noting its participation in the Florida 2012 group.
All of that pales, believe it or not, compared to the St. Petersburg Times' assault on democracy this year. The Times, which holds itself out as a paragon to America's newspapers and loudly trumpets every time it gets an award or a kudo in the national media, omitted telling you about a mention it had this month in the venerable Columbia Journalism Review.
The CJR "Darts" and "Laurels" column delivers slaps and backpats for the media. Usually, the columns are tightly focused on the mainstream press, but the July/August issue has praise for three alternative newspapers — The Village Voice (sort of the granddaddy of our industry), the Nashville Scene (highly regarded for investigative journalism) and Weekly Planet. Not bad company for us.
We won the laurel for our media coverage. CJR cited our exposure of the "cover-ups by the local Tampa Bay media," and specifically mentioned our May report on how the St. Petersburg Times jettisoned any sense of fairness in the March St. Pete mayor's race.
As CJR noted, the Times "tilted distinctly toward Rick Baker, the winner. Missing from the coverage, according to the Planet, was a reminder of the 1990 federal case against the Baker family's aircraft-parts business. … Also missing was the history of significant business ties between Baker and his law firm and the paper (the Times) and its owner, the Poynter Institute."
The Times, it's worth mentioning, has yet to come clean on its shoddy coverage of the race. But Baker seems to be delivering what the Times paid for with its biased coverage — the latest installment being an initiative to close the Albert Whitted Airport in downtown St. Pete. Among other things, closing the airport would safeguard the nearby Poynter Institute, which owns the Times, from the noise of small aircraft.
Even more disturbing than the Times neglecting to tell readers about Baker's scummy father and two brothers and his business ties to the newspaper is the fact that all of this plays into the purloining of the U.S. presidency by George W. Bush. Baker's mentor is Adam Goodman, the guy who conceived the great St. Pete deception of voters. Goodman also was manipulating information (and perhaps much more) for Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris during the critical period when the Republicans had to 1. disenfranchise as many black voters as possible and 2. ramrod through every questionable vote that might go to Bush.
The Times has given desultory acknowledgement to the fact that Goodman shows up working for both Harris and Baker — but only in a scant three articles. And only one of those, by gutsy columnist Mary Jo Melone, connects the dots together and concludes that Goodman was the guy who did the fix for both Baker and Bush.
As if that level of news suppression weren't enough, the Times raised the bar a notch. The paper's parent Poynter Institute hosts a media reporter, Jim Romenesko, on its Web site. Romenesko, either as a result of being leaned on by the Times or in a sad act of self-censorship, refused to note the Baker-Times scandal. He even banished the stunning CJR item from his column. Romenesko reports on virtually every triviality of the media, gleefully noting faults in the press — except when it involves the Times.
In themselves, Tampa's Olympics bid and St. Pete politics are merely tiny local blips on the national radar. But as the media have consolidated under fewer and fewer owners, as the press lords seek to break down prudent ownership barriers between print and broadcast properties, and as newsroom staffs are decimated in the name of efficiency — what's happening here is repeated throughout the nation. And with only a few exceptions — a small troop of media critics, mostly at alternative papers, and a handful of watchdog organizations — no one is reporting the news about the news.
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I received a complaint worth noting from Sherry Robinson, city editor at the St. Petersburg Times. Three weeks ago, I had commended the Times for its sympathetic coverage of slain Tampa police officer Lois Marrero. I commented that the Times had on its second day of reporting on Marrero's slaying broken the ice on her being gay. Robinson called to say that the first-day coverage made Marrero's sexual orientation clear. The Times' first-day article referred to Mickie Mashburn as Marrero's "companion," and it didn't take too much intelligence to draw the obvious conclusion. I agree with Robinson, but I still hope Tampa reaches the day when references to a healthy and loving relationship — something Marrero and Mashburn were clearly proud of — aren't veiled in code words.
Editor (for a few more tick-tocks) John F. Sugg, who can't figure out how to wrap big fish in the new shrunken-page-size Tampa Tribune, can be reached at 813-248-8888, ext. 109, or at johnsugg@weeklyplanet.com.
This article appears in Aug 2-8, 2001.