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I'll be heading down to Washington this week to announce the winner of the first Drive Safe D.C. teen PSA contest at the Washington Auto Show.
My client, The National Road Safety Foundation, invited teens from metro Washington to give us their ideas for a TV public service announcement about the dangers of distracted driving. The winner will be introduced at a news conference Thursday at The Washington Auto Show, where her finished PSA will be shown for the first time. We arranged for the PSA to be shown in several theaters near our winner's hometown, and it will air later this year on Teen Kids News, syndicated on more than 150 TV stations nationwide.
The program is similar to what we've been doing in conjunction with three other major auto shows in Los Angeles (in November), Chicago (coming up next month) and Atlanta (in March). It's a way to engage young people in learning about and communicating the dangers of distracted driving, which kills upwards of 3,300 people every year and injures hundreds of thousands more.
Our winner, 16 year-old Makiya Mason, is a sophomore at Suitland (MD) High School. She told me she's very excited about this, since she hopes to go to film school after she graduates high school. This will certainly be a nice addition to her resume.
Forget The Golden Globes. Forget The Oscars.
What we've all been breathlessly awaiting (not) is the twice-delayed Fake News Awards. Many news organizations and reporters have been hoping to see their names highlighted by the king of all that's fake -- our current president.
The New York Times, which proudly won two of the awards yesterday, reported -- accurately, I'm sure -- on the honors announced via the president’s Twitter feed.
The lead of The Times’ story puts the awards into focus…
“President Trump -- who gleefully questioned President Barack Obama’s birthplace for years without evidence, long insisted on the guilt of the Central Park Five despite exonerating proof and claimed that millions of illegal ballots cost him the popular vote in 2016 – wanted to have a word with the American public about accuracy in reporting.”
Other winners were CNN, with four mentions, ABC News, The Washington Post, Time and Newsweek, each with one mention.
The article goes on to show how a few of the “fake” news stories cited were in fact errors that were quickly corrected or, in the case of a Washington Post story about the small crowd at a Trump rally referred to a photo the reporter briefly posted on his personal Twitter feed before deleting it a few minutes later.
Most of the other “fake” news stories that won honors were, in fact, not fake.
Appropriately, the majority of the public and the media are not taking the awards seriously. Instead, they've provided fodder for the late-night talk-show hosts' monologue jokes.
What’s not a joke is that the continued attacks on the press have taken a toll. A Gallup poll showed that 66 percent of Americans believed news organizations “blurred opinion and fact,” up from 42 percent in 1984. The Committee to Protect Journalists earlier this month included the president among its annual list of ‘world leaders who have gone out of their way to attack the press and undermine the norms that support freedom of the media.”
Going beyond partisan politics, two Republican senators – Jeff Flake and John McCain – denounced the president’s attacks on the media, with Flake saying on the Senate floor that the president has borrowed a term frequently that was used by Stalin describing the media as “an enemy of the people.”
I believe nothing could be farther from the truth. Our founding fathers recognized the importance of the press in informing the public and keeping our leaders transparent and honest in their work on behalf of the people.
Yes, reporters do make mistakes. Once a mistake is discovered, media do their best to quickly correct it.
And there is bias. Reporters, after all, are people with opinions. But most journalists keep their own opinions out of their news reporting and leave bias to be expressed in clearly marked editorials and op-ed pages or on news channels widely recognized as having a political slant – MSNBC and FOX.
But the hardcore news media are truthful and trying their best to get it right. If the White House doesn’t like the news media’s truth, perhaps it should work to make its truth more in line with the ultimate truth -- reality.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up, live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."
August 28, 1963 Washington, D.C.
Click here for full text of speech
Nearly 57 years ago, the newly-appointed chairman of the Federal Communications Commission gave a speech – his first as FCC chairman – to a meeting in Washington of the National Association of Broadcasters. In that talk, Newton Minnow coined a phrase that for many years was, unfortunately, a pretty fair depiction of the content on television.
“I invite each of you to sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on the air and stay there, for a day, without a book, without a magazine, without a newspaper, without a profit and loss sheet or a rating book to distract you. Keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off,” Minnow said. “I can assure you that what you will observe is a vast wasteland.”
Even back in 1961, he made in reference to “the much bemoaned good old days of the 1950s, often considered TV’s “Golden Age.” And he described TV of the time this way… “Some were wonderfully entertaining, such as "The Fabulous Fifties," "The Fred Astaire Show," and "The Bing Crosby Special"; some were dramatic and moving, such as … "Twilight Zone"; some were marvelously informative… You will see a procession of game shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, western bad men, western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence, and cartoons. And endlessly, commercials -- many screaming, cajoling, and offending. And most of all, boredom. True, you'll see a few things you will enjoy. But they will be very, very few.”
TV has come a long way, for sure. Many, myself included, believe television is currently in a new and perhaps even greater Golden Age.
The TV that Newton Minnow was talking about in 1961 consisted of three networks and, only in major markets, one or two independent stations and an educational or public TV channel. Except in the biggest markets, stations often signed off – went dark – from 1 or 2 a.m. until 6 or 7 a.m.
In terms of programming hours, viewers in most markets had access to between 500 and 600 hours of programming each week. At any given moment, when TV stations were on the air, one could choose from 3 – 5 stations. There was no cable TV, no home VCRs or DVRs, no satellite TV. The choice was to select from three to five channels or turn the TV off.
Think of TV today. Four full-time broadcast networks, plus PBS, plus anywhere from a few to several independent channels in each market. Add cable and the streaming services like Netflix and Amazon to the mix and the average viewer has literally hundreds of choices all day, every day.
Some of it still may be, as Minnow said, “wasteland.” But look at what we can now choose from – news and analysis, both impartial and politically slanted, 24/7. We can watch cartoons; every sport conceivable; game shows new and 25 years old; standup comedy; nature and science; programs in Italian, Korean, Japanese, Spanish, Russian, Chinese; Bible study and religious sermons; the Stock Market, shopping channels offering clothing, jewelry, mops, electronics and car mats; reality shows depicting housewives of countless counties and cities and people who scavenge foreclosed storage units; music ranging from Top 40 to jazz to gospel to Bollywood to Tejano. It’s all there, all the time.
The New York Times reports there were 487 scripted programs – series, mini-series, specials - that aired across all channels last year. That’s almost double the number only five years ago, and nearly three times the number 15 years ago. And from those numbers has emerged a wealth of quality program content of all kinds… programs that attract big production budgets, top writers and big-name stars who, not long ago, would never consider going from the big screen to the TV screen.
A vast wasteland? No more.
Still thinking of Loki every day.