Tara L. Kirby's Journal

CJR.org Exclusive Rewind 1991: Strong-arming the Press
When it comes to stifling the Hollywood press, some of the biggest
muscle belongs to Arnold Schwarzenegger. By Neal Koch.
http://cjr.org/issues/2003/5/rewind-koch.asp

Strong-arming the Hollywood Press

My criticism piece on my assigned article entitled, Strong-arming the Hollywood Press. This story originally ran in the Columbia Journalism Review in 1991. It is about a Journalist named Wendy Leigh who wrote an unauthorized biography on our now governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger. The whole time the book was in the works and being released, Leigh had a bunch of obstacles to overcome that were produced by Arnold and his people to “suppress” her book and “sabotage” its promotion. In her book she mentions a lot of serious issues about Arnold that most people would never have thought to mention about him. That is why he tried to stop it so fast. For example, she portrays Arnold as a crude womanizer and a person who expresses racism, anti-Semitism, and admiration for Hitler’s ability to lead. She brings up in her book that Arnold was raised by a man who applied for membership into the Nazi Party and raised his sons to be bullies. She talks about the fact that his success in bodybuilding had to do with the fact that he undermined his opponents psychologically and had a history of steroids use. All of these things that she put in her book triggered immense interference by Arnold and is people. For example, she received late-night calls say that she “better be careful”. His publicist called her book inaccurate. Her publisher received phone calls from Arnold’s associates offering them money for works on a different book that would be co-authored by no other than Arnold himself if they agreed to drop Leigh’s book. The publishing company had four break-ins in one month when they had never had any before. Then when Leigh was about to hit the circuit with her finished book, television show bookings and filmed appearances were “mysteriously” canceled at the last minute. She believes that Arnold’s people threatened that if they have Leigh on their show that they would never get Arnold on their show again. Why did Leigh have so many problems with her book? Was it because it was an alternative media resource that didn’t go along with Hollywood’s regulations and policy on how the media should cover their stars?

Leigh’s journalistic style of unauthorized biographies is the alternative media resource discussed in the article. She doesn’t go through Hollywood’s rules of having the person being talked about involve directly with the book. She goes out on her own and does immense research about the person. Some journalist enjoys her style of reporting and some think that it is a little gossipy. Her journalistic style and the controversy surrounding her book were mentioned in New York Magazine, the Chicago Tribune, and in Newsday. For this book however, it was mentioned that she did an immense amount of research. James Willwerth of Time was one journalist who thought her writing was a little gossipy, however, after looking at her thirty-four pages of sources, he changed his opinion.

I believe that this is not a useful source of alternative media. Do we really need to know about someone’s life through another’s eyes? I could see how some people would think that it is useful because it is another way to look at someone’s life on top of reading their own personal biography. I could see why they would not want to involve the person directly because sometimes when you involve the person they can sugarcoat information about themselves to make them look better. When you go out and do your own research, it is more likely that you will get non-sugarcoated information on that person. However, the person writing the book could be very bias and those can appear in their book. It would be better to have a happy medium between the two. Have the writer involve the person but only in a limited way. Let the writer do all the investigating they want, and involve the person being written about to fact check and add some detail to your collected information. The reliability of this source is not a hundred percent because the author could have some biases that get incorporated into their writing. Also, without the person being involved who is being talked about, a person can never know the whole truth about another’s life. It’s hard to tell if you are reading a bias biography or a truly factual one. It would be more reliable if they involved the person more.

My on the media was on The Lie Downers, it was about factckeck.org and its view on the last week of the campaigns. Factcheck.org fact-checks political ads and political speeches to hold the pols accountable for their distortions. They check the truth behind what politicians say, like the statistics that they give and the claims that they make about other politicians. I went on the website and checked out their mission statement to see what they are really all about. Their mission statement read “We are a nonpartisan, nonprofit, "consumer advocate" for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics. We monitor the factual accuracy of what is said by major U.S. political players in the form of TV ads, debates, speeches, interviews, and news releases. Our goal is to apply the best practices of both journalism and scholarship, and to increase public knowledge and understanding. The Annenberg Political Fact Check is a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. The APPC was established by publisher and philanthropist Walter Annenberg in 1994 to create a community of scholars within the University of Pennsylvania that would address public policy issues at the local, state, and federal levels. The APPC accepts NO funding from business corporations, labor unions, political parties, lobbying organizations or individuals. It is funded primarily by an endowment from the Annenberg Foundation.”
On the media’s Bob Garfield talks with factcheck.org’s Brooks Jackson who is the mastermind behind the website. Bob wanted to know if “the site had any impact on the volume of lies generated by Campaign 2004 or even the public’s awareness of them.” In their conversation, they looked at two ads that were from the campaigns of Bush and Kerry that were attacks against each other and fact-checked them. The first ad was from a pro Kerry group that questions whether the draft is going to be reinstated because of Bush’s policies in Iraq. The other ad was from the Bush side and it showed a pack of hungry wolves that represented Al Quaeda and blaming Kerry for voting for cuts in intelligence spending that would leave this country vulnerable. Brooks quotes about those ads, “if you believe the ads, the choices in the election are between being devoured by wild animals or having you loved ones conscripted and sent off to a war zone.” The two of them go on to discuss the false messages that those ads send to the public, which is what factcheck.org is meant to do. The ad that attacked Kerry, made it seem that he voted for that cut after the 9/11 attacks, but in reality, he voted for them after the 1993 attacked on the trade center. Those are the types of misleading information that the site checks and reports on the site. The ad also didn’t mention that Dick Cheney who is now vice president took the same side on the cut that Kerry did. How is the public really supposed to know the truth when there are ads out there that mislead us like that? They then go on to discuss how the website never uses the word lie. They don’t because Brook stated, “well, to me, a lie means an intentional and knowing falsehood, and since I don’t know what they know, I’m not a mind reader…Maybe they actually believe some of this stuff…” They use word or phrases like, “misleading statement”, “statements out of context”, “false”, and “not the whole story”. They use those phrases because they don’t want to be liars themselves.
I think that is good that factckeck.org is out there. They need to do it because someone needs to tell the public an unbiased truth. They report only facts, not opinions. With this entire lying going on, we need something like this out there to help lead the way. And who you chose to believe is up to you.

My on the media assignment was the article titled, Many Layers of Spin. The title had nothing to do with the article, but that is beside the point. This article was a recap of the debate on Thursday between President Bush and John Kerry. It took on the same feel as the Daily Show episode that we watched in class on Monday. They kind of put in their opinion and made some clever comments. It was not as funny as the Daily Show though.

They started by talking about how the media covered the event and how they were sending mixed messages, by “working themselves into a lather over the cataclysmic importance of the debate while huffing and puffing over the terms of engagement negotiated by the candidates that were certain to strangle the proceedings” (Brook Gladstone). They talked about how T.V. went further by lowering their expectations for the debate and for how they perform as commentators for the event. Then they moved onto the candidates and how the media focused on the candidate’s appearance. On the Media commented on how John Kerry set the stage for appearances mattering because he came to the debate with a fake and bake tan. Supposedly, Bush dyed his hair. Why would appearances matter in a Presidential Debate? I know that I don’t vote based on a person’s looks. I think that they are both unattractive. I vote based on whom I believe will be best to run this country. However, if the candidates are changing their appearance it must be a serious issue. Then they talked about Bush’s appearance and how he was blinking a lot. I can understand that mattering because that can show something about his personality. That could have shown that he was nervous. Next they talked about how Kerry’s height mattered because the T.V. cameras do what is called headroom where they try to match shots side by side. With Kerry being taller, his picture looked bigger, hence making him look bigger and more powerful than Bush. They discussed how cable T.V. had a hand in people thinking that Kerry did better than Bush by stating that quickly after the elections ended. Usually cable “tugs and twist” every situation to keep the suspense; this they did not do that. They made a comment that I did not quite understand…”Then there were the obligatory visits to the spin room—an exercise in self-conscious manipulation that reporters engage in like apes on a treadmill.” I think that is where the title came from, however I do not understand that comment. The show then moves on to newspapers, stating that they “offered more style and a little substance, including some fact-checking from the other newspapers” (Brooke Gladstone).

So basically the show covered how the different types of media covered the debates. I agreed with what most of the show had to say and I liked their different little clever comments. It really went along with what we have been talking about in class about how the media covers things and if we the public really get what we want. I think in this case, we do not get all we want from the media coverage of the debates. We heard what the media wanted to tell us; for example not everybody thinks that John Kerry won the debate. That is pretty much all I heard from the media. For the people who think that Bush won the debate, they do not get what they want from the media.

I did "Rule Change" from this Sundays "On the Media". It was about how the Bush Administration has made seriouse changes to reshape America's federal policies on health, worker safety, the environment, and energy. Most of the changes happen through the change of one word in the policy; however, that one word can make dramatic changes that affect people in the United States. Where are the front page headlines? The changes go unnoticed by the media because the changes are made through regulation rather than legislation to save the administration from publicity through a national debate.

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