Deggans PunditWatch '08: Talking About BET with NPR

The last time I talked to an NPR reporter about BET -- senior correspondent-turned-news analyst Juan Williams -- all my comments ended up on the cutting room floor. I think that was because I didn't agree wth the way Williams kept trying to get me to call BET's programming "pornography" -- which I thought was a bit over the top.

Fortunately, correspondent Neda Ulaby wasn't quite so strident, allowing me to express my conflicted feelings about BET in a story she developed for Morning Edition today. I think the channel airs a lot of awful programming, but they also air some interesting stuff and the reasons they air what they do isn't simple as a white-owned channel pimping black people.

One thing Ulaby only referenced slightly in her piece, for instance, is this fact: Black TV households seem attracted to the kind of programming BET's critics often criticize.

A look at cable TV ratings in black households for lasty week shows -- apart from the NBA playoffs in the first eight slots -- that TBS' House of Payne, VH1's Flavor of Love 3, BET's College Hill and VH1's Miss Rap Supreme were the top-rated cable shows in black households. None of these shows would likely get the stamp of approval from BET's critics (except Payne, which avoids criticism for its buffoonish characters through the weight of creator Tyler Perry's sterling image with black people).

It makes sense -- the first 20 spots among all cable TV households were the NBA playoffs, two Indiana jones movies, Spongebob Squarepants, WWE wrestling and MTV's The Hills. People, no matter what color, seem to enjoy watching a lot of nonsense.   

Deggans Pundit Alert: Explaining Media's Toughness on Obama and Network TV's Post Strike Blues

Howard Kurtz must be trying to turn me into a star.

That's my admittedly self-centered conclusion after noting how much the Washington Post media critic has quoted me in his latest story, a look at how the media has gotten tougher on Obama. Frankly, this is a trend I talked about way back in February, when a Saturday Night Live sketch poking fun at the media's adulation of Obama seemed to spark a raft of negative stories about the candidate.

Unfortunately, many media outlets' idea of incisive coverage includes stories about whether Obama wears a flag pin and how long he's known that Jeremiah Wright is a loose cannon. Now Howard has weighed in, concluding that Obama has "been brought down to earth by the same media organizations that fueled his meteoric rise."

Another element at work here is something I've also written about before: The news media's love for a tight Democratic primary which has fueled TV ratings, boosted the visibility of myriad reporters and given declining newspapers a reason to argue for their relevance. Big media loves this fight and wants both contenders to stay in the game as long as possible -- which means that whenever one of them pulls ahead, the other will take a few hits.

Another friend in media, reality TV expert Andy Dehnart, did me the honor of calling while he was assembling a story for MSNBC.com on why ratings for network TV shows have dropped since their return after the writers' strike.

Andy presents experts who argue that the viewership dip isn't solely caused by the strike. But as I noted a while ago, the strike allowed some viewers to find new ways to occupy their time -- and the spate of returning shows will last just a few weeks before we're back to reality TV and reruns for summer.

What's more worrisome than viewership drops is the trend of complex scripted shows migrating to cable. Increasingly, the best scripted dramas are found in the wilds of cable, where ratings demands and content restriction are lower. So what will happen to network TV's upscale, educated audience when all you can find on broadcast is Deal or No Deal and Celebrity Apprentice?

Keep your eye on this blog, and you'll read the answers before my quotes wind up in the Washington post or MSNBC.com.   

Day Three in NYC: Denis Leary and the Psychology of Race in Election Coverage

Only in New York can you go from an academic discussion of race, media and the presidential election to kickin' it with Rescue Me's Tommy Gavin.

But that's the fun I'm going to be having today, as I cap my time in Gotham by visiting Denis Leary on the set of FX's deliciously profane firefighter drama Rescue Me to talk with about that show and HBO's ambitious take on the Florida-based fight over the 2000 presidential election, Recount.

Last night, I sat on a panel at Columbia University discussing the state of the media's work covering race and the election -- we had lots of criticisms, surprise! -- moderated by Ray Suarez of PBS' NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and featuring folks from the Poynter Institute, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal (I KNOW, what was I doing there?)

I was particularly intrigued by the work of the Post's Shankar Vedantam, an academic-friendly reporter who has assembled a number of stories crunching behavioral studies to explain some of the dynamics in the current election.

One reason why he thinks reaction to the Jeremiah Wright scandal varies so starkly between black people and white people is because minorities seems to measure racial progress by comparing current conditions to an ideal future, while white people measure racial progress by comparing the present to our racial past. So when Jeremiah Wright delivers fiery sermons about institutional racism, black people immediately think of how far we have to go while white people get offended, thinking of how far we have come.

He also cited another study in which white people were presented with a scenario -- you're about to be born and you are scheduled to be born white. If your color were somehow switched to black, how much money would you want in compensation? At first, respondents said about $5,000, greatly underestimating the challenges of being black in America. Once they are told the true cost -- that black people are 447 percent more likely to be imprisoned, 521 percent more likely to be murdered and start life generally with five times less the wealth of the average white person -- they usually demand more money.

And regarding gender, he cited a study in which the same description of an executive was handed to two groups of people -- tough but fair, rewards creativity, etc. -- but the only difference is one group gets a description on a CEO named James and the other group gets a description of a CEO named Andrea. You got it - when questioned, the subjects overwhelmingly named Andrea as less likable and James as the boss they would prefer to work for, even though there was no difference in the descriptions except for the names.

His work suggests there are split-second, unconscious reactions to race and gender issues that are affecting how we react to these candidates. Exposing and discussing those tendencies -- and what they mean for real-life candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton -- is some of the most interesting work around on the campaign trail.

Wonder how Denis is going to react to some of this? 

Ira Glass and This American Life Change the Life of a Tampa Man, Just By Reporting on Him

Talking to Ira Glass feels like starring in your own personal version of This American Life.

His thin, slightly nerdy voice echoes the rhythms of his quirky, wondrous public radio feature show, even over the telephone line from New York City. And our meeting likely wouldn't have happened if it hadn't been for Mike Phillips.

Mike is an amazing guy in South Tampa who loves Dr. Who, quotes Seattle rockers Death Cab for Cutie and can only move his left thumb and his face. In today's Floridian, I tell the story of how Mike, who struggles with a neurological disorder which took away his ability to operate many of the muscles in his body, climbed out a depression and began to find a new independence in life after trading emails with Glass, who was interested in profiling him. (at left, Mike poses with his girlfriend, St. Petersburg Times reporter Sara Rosenbaum)

For a while, Mike's story was a contender for This American Life Live, an event tonight in which Glass presents some stories from the TV version of his show, answers questions and shows outtakes in a presentation beamed to theaters across the country, including three in Tampa and Sarasota. But the story proved too long for Glass' live program, though it will be featured on the first episode of This American Life's second season on premium cable channel Showtime.

It's a powerful, penetrating story, featuring picturesque cinematography and movie star Johnny Depp appearing as Mike's voice (because he breathes through a respirator attached to his neck, Mike doesn't talk much, anymore). And Glass made time in a busy pre-Live show schedule to talk a bit about how his story on the 27-year-old became an example of a media version of the fabled Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle: the very act of observing something can change it forever.

When did you realize Mike's story could be material for This American Life?

The point at which I thought it was a story was really early. We were emailing about something which isn’t a big part of the story on television – which is how often he has these near death experiences where his breathing gear will stop. Sometimes he’s alone, and sometimes he’s surrounded by people who don’t notice that it’s happened. The way he wrote about what those moments were like was utterly without melodrama. It was just a very easy to relate to reporting of 'Here’s everything that goes through my head when I realize I may die in a minute.' It was kind of amazing. My favorite thing – it happens to him so much, he has a lot to say about it – he thought about the moment when Switch dies in the Matrix movie. And she says 'Not like this.' That’s what he thought. I totally can imagine what it’s like. He just seemed like somebody who was having a number of extraordinary experiences but could relate them in a way anybody could relate to."

Mike seems determined not to be portrayed in the typical way disable people are shown in media.

"We knew he wouldn’t be a caricature of a disabled person – the courageous person who triumphs over adversity. We really tried to structure it so that would not be available to the viewer. When I met Mike in person, the very first thing he did, was that he played me a song a church had written about what an inspiring figure he was. He was very respectful about the people who wrote the song, but it was clear that it wasn’t capturing his experience. It’s not his job to be inspirational.”

How did you get Johnny Depp to serve as Mike's voice on the story?

In a real moment in the story, when I asked Mike 'Who would you like to read your narration?' He said Johnny Depp or Ed Norton. I said well, Ed Norton's based in New York City, you see him on subway with his kid. He seems like a human being who a person could reach. We contacted his agent, said here’s the thing. He was out of the country shooting something and could not make it happen. They expressed regrets and we left it at that...About three weeks before we finished the episode, the president of (Showtime), Bob Greenblatt, asked if we had approached Johnny Depp. He had been in contact with Johnny Depp – for him, Johnny Depp was somebody he could get on the phone. So basically, I emailed his agent at UTA, and he agent passed it onto his sister – his sister is his business manager. What I’m told I his sister forwarded it to Johnny and he said yes. I think I got a reply that day and Johnny was in. I basically pasted in the email some of the things that Mike had written to me. And I said, 'Here’s who this is, and we’re not interested in doing a corny kind of story.' Apparently, he (may) have a recording studio in his home, he just did it on his own.”

Have you ever had a source talk about your show changing their life in the way Mike does?

“I think the way in which we changed his life is the way that anybody’s life might be changed by suddenly having the national press show up. And that seems fine. If somebody was a peace activist and we convinced them to join the marines I would be worried. When we do these stories, I assume I’m seeing some glossy version of someone's life. I’m company. I’m seeing as much as I can see when I’m company. I don’t think there exists some deeper, final truth. In these kinds of situations, I’m looking for something that is true. I’m not Seymour Hersh investigating Abu Ghraib. As long as what we’re showing actually is true, its okay if we don’t get to the bottom core of everyone’s feeling.”

At the Daily Show With Aasif Mandvi; A Tampa Guy at the Tip of a Cultural Phenomenon

Now, I can die happy: I have walked onto the set of the Daily Show.

Of course, Jon Stewart and his cast of faux-journalists weren't exactly there. Those guys were elsewhere in the shows sprawling, 44,000 square-foot office/studio space, kicking around ideas (for those of you who saw Stewart live in Tampa last year, wearing two t-shirt and khaki pants, he seemed to be wearing the exact same ensemble today!)

I visited Daily's digs along west 52nd st. earlier today, to hang out a bit with the show's Tampa-raised, British-born Mideast Correspondent Aasif Mandvi. also known as "that guy who fired Spider Man" in the superhero movie's sequel, Mandvi is a thoughtful actor who is relishing a regular job satirizing the nation's agita on race, culture, religion and politics at a time when all these subjects are on society's front burner.

I'm going to save the quotes for later, when I work our conversation into a full-on feature for the print newspaper. But we spent nearly two hours together, talking about everything from Hollywood's inability to deal well with race issues to the culture shock he experienced as a teen when his family moved from a working class neighborhood in Britain to 1980s-era Tampa.

Along the way, I got a tour of Daily's sprawling loft of an office, with the kind of casual air usually reserved for college dorm lounges. I traded a few quips with correspondent Jason Jones -- I talked so long with Mandvi, he accused me of writing a book on him -- and got a glimpse of John Hodgman (PC Guy from the Apple commercials), who appears in a bit tonight.

Unfortunately, I came a day late to see Aasif's latest gag, in which he "reported" from inside the graphics of the bloody new video game Grand Theft Auto IV, satirizing the nation's thirst for pixilated blood and Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia's lawyerly claim that torture isn't necessarily considered punishment (as in "cruel and unusual")

I've got to cut this post short, because I'm checking out the show taping at 6 p.m.; even though Aasif doesn't appear in the program tonight, I'm hoping to soak up some color and maybe meet ace researcher Adam Chodikoff, who was the subject of much buzz in the office today over a cool feature in the Washington Post on his work digging up the show's striking video clips. 

Cable TV's Election Coverage: The More They Talk, The Less We Learn

I have a simple theory about cable news, developed after months spent consuming its endless coverage of this endless presidential election: the more attention they pay to a subject, the less viewers actually learn.

I tested my notion recently by tackling a marathon assignment: spending a day watching the shows cobbled together by each cable news channel to capitalize on the nation's electoral interest -- Fox’s America’s Election HQ, MSNBC’s Race to the White House and CNN’s Election Center.

What I found: news programs chewing over morsels of information like grazing cows, taking a sliver of reported fact and massaging it with bursts of analysis and supposition until viewers had a tough time separating actual fact from assumption and opinion.

I call it the high “noise to signal ratio” of cable news; the way punditry and strategy often overwhelms the meat of reportage. Unsurprisingly, the show with the highest noise to signal ratio on this day was found at Fox News.

America’s Election HQ is a chummy, vibrating hour packed with flashy graphics, made-to-order partisan conflicts, Fox’s trademark general friendliness to conservatives and two gleaming, youthful hosts in anchors Bill Hemmer and Megyn Kelly.

The day I watched, Hemmer led the show with “breaking news”: former Clinton aide Dick Morris heard from an unnamed source that Bill Clinton had recommended to Columbia’s president in 2007 that he would only get a trade agreement with the U.S. by convincing Democrats to support it. According to Morris, 10 days later, Columbia hired the consulting firm led by Mark Penn, the recently-resigned chief strategist of Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

“Are you reporting that Bill Clinton got Mark Penn the gig?” Hemmer asked urgently.
“Yes,” said Morris, before thinking better of his allegation. “I don’t -- I can’t prove it. I wasn’t there.” So what exactly was he reporting? That Clinton told Columbia’s president last year that Democrats control Congress thanks to their success in 2006’s midterm elections? That’s breaking political news?

Another urgent panel discussion centered on acampaign worker assembling a crowd to stand behind Michelle Obama at a Pittsburgh rally, who yelled for “more white people.”

Fox’s high velocity election program was a clear contrast to MSNBC’s Race to the White House, a vehicle for rising NBC News star David Gregory that seems tailor made for Hardball-weaned political junkies.

What irked me most here was the continuing presence of pundit Pat Buchanan, who has written at least one book implying America’s success lies in its identity as a white Christian nation. Why MSNBC and NBC News continue to allow this guy to denounce people like Jeremiah Wright as bigots with no mention of his own tangled history remains a mystery to me.

Indeed, it wasn’t until I turned on CNN’s Election Center that I felt the media noise subside a bit. On a day when there wasn’t much real campaign news, Brown’s CNN show focused more on the news of the day, spending the first 15 minutes or so dissecting the protests in San Francisco and the likelihood that any president could implement a quick troop withdrawal from Iraq.

At a time when Americans are still struggling to make a historic electoral choice, don't we deserve election coverage which cuts  through the noise instead of adding to it?

The Journey of Flavor Flav: From Public Enemy to Public Buffoon

(As Flavor Flav makes his sitcom debut tonight, I cooked up a column for Floridian lamenting the slide of a brother who once stood for something. Here's the column reposted on the blog)

We were never supposed to see something like this.

When Flavor Flav burst on the scene with seminal rap group Public Enemy, he was never the main attraction. Flav brought the noise as the ultimate "hype man," a comic foil to help ease the brutally Afro-centric, often militant messages of rap's first successful group to base its image on a political stance.

While lead M.C. Chuck D. urged fans to Bring the Noise or Fight the Power, Flav provided a break from the seriousness, highlighting the slow response of emergency crews in America's ghettos with 911 Is a Joke before warning listeners on the followup album that you Can't Truss It, especially when left-wing politicians in Little Rock feed you a line.

In his prime, William Drayton was the best rap sidekick in the game. Mouth packed with gold caps and a gigantic clock wrapped around his neck, Flav helped turn the hype man into a hallowed institution in hip-hop while contributing to some of the most legendary rap hits in history.

So how did this image of excess and hedonism, originally presented as a counterweight to the austere black nationalist vibe of Public Enemy's core message, become the group's most visible surviving legacy?

Here's how: In the last few years, reality TV shows have transformed the sidekick clown into the star.

The odyssey started with Flav's debut as a housemate in the series that crammed dysfunctional celebrities in a house, The Surreal Life. It progressed to his goof of a "romance" with Brigitte Nielsen in Strange Love (she reportedly was engaged to someone else during the production) and VH1's ghetto-style version of The Bachelor, Flavor of Love. (That's three No. 1 cable series, if you're counting.)

Flavor of Love in particular has proven a ratings bonanza. The show's first-season finale drew the most viewers in VH1's then-21 years, and its second-season debut drew the channel's biggest premiere audience ever. Small wonder VH1 okayed two spinoffs and a third season.

Now 49, Flav is set to star in a half-hour sitcom, Under One Roof, debuting tonight on low-rated MyNetworkTV. He plays an ex-convict living with his straitlaced brother, and the series is so good, MyNetworkTV didn't send me a review copy (a publicist for the show insists that happened because they are editing the show down to the last minute).

A cynic might assume that fans — black and white — are giddily consuming the buffoonish black-hustler stereotype Flavor Flav offers with little regard to the social consequences.

In the process, the man who once rhymed about black folks being "Divided and sold/For liquor and the gold/Smacked in the back/For the other man to mack" is now lording over women who insult each other over their herpes bumps and one who even relieved herself on the floor. (The punch line: She wasn't eliminated from Flavor of Love for that. Really.)

By now, it's a cliche to complain about how Flav's worn playa shtick has become a license to print money for reality TV producers. It's just the latest in a long line of contradictions from an artist who can boast of skills as a classically trained pianist and arrests for carrying an unlicensed gun and crack cocaine.

Without seeing an episode, it's a safe bet that Under One Roof continues that legacy, mining stereotypes about black folks minus the godly messages you get in a Tyler Perry script.

This Public Enemy fan is left to wonder about the irony: One of rap's most militantly pro-black groups has produced one of TV's biggest black buffoons. The voice of the hype man, in the end, is the loudest left from the rap band that was socially conscious before the industry had a name for it.

Looks like someone decided that fighting the power wasn't as profitable as joining it.

And we all may be the worse for his choice.

Tallahassee-Based Black-Centered TV News Channel Signs Deal With Comcast

UPDATE: The Black Television News Channel is a project fronted by former Republican Congressman J.C. Watts, aimed at creating a black-focused news channel which would look like a hybrid of Fox News Channel and CNN, according to its senior vice president Steven Pruitt.

The company is based in Tallahassee right now because it is working with Bob Brilliante, the former head of Florida's News Channel -- an effort to create a statewide TV news channel which never quite lived up to its ambitions. The project expects to move its headquarters to Washington D.C. soon and launch in time for Black History Month 2009, according to Pruitt.

Pruitt says the company is securing carriage deals like the one it announced today before hiring any personnel. But this will be the third time an independent company has tried to form a black-centered TV news network; Quincy Jones was the most visible investor in New Urban Entertainment, which fell apart when it couldn't nail carriage agrements and Stuart, Fla. lawyer Willie Gary tried spinning off a news network from his Major Broadcasting Cable Network, which also failed. Neither of the two existing  black-focused cable networks, Black Entertainment Television or TV One, offers regular newscast programming

Pruitt also said the company expects to spend more than $30-million on the venture. As well as some ethnic media is doing these days, starting a TV news channel from scratch is a tall order; it will be interesting to see how this one unfolds, if it ever does. Bear in mind, all I know about this company is what Pruitt and his press release have told me, so far. (UPDATE END)

I'll be doing some reporting later today to check up on this, but here's a press release I got today which looks interesting. Bear in mind that press releases most times don't tell the whole story.

Here it is:

Washington, DC — April 14, 2008 -- Black Television News Channel (BTNC), the nation’s only African-American news network, scheduled to launch in 2009, today announced a multi-year carriage agreement with Comcast (CMCSA, CMCSK), the country’s leading provider of cable, entertainment and communications products and services.  Under the agreement, BTNC expects that it will be added to Comcast systems in the following key African American markets: Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit, Washington, D.C., Atlanta and Baltimore.

BTNC will be a 24/7 cable news network that provides original news programming with a distinctly African-American perspective, and therefore helps fill a major gap in today’s media. BTNC is the endeavor of J.C. Watts, Jr., former U.S. congressman from Oklahoma and celebrated athlete, and broadcast and cable news veterans. 

“Our unique and vast content partnerships with African American newsmakers will provide our viewers LIVE access to the stories and people in whom our viewers have a special interest,” said Watts. “With this agreement, Comcast continues to demonstrate its commitment to working with independent programmers with diverse points of view.”

BTNC will construct the first coast-to-coast all high-definition television newsgathering infrastructure with its network operations center located in Washington, DC.

###
About BTNC

Black Television News Channel will be the nation’s only provider of 24/7 cable news programming dedicated to covering the unique perspective of African American communities.  BTNC will provide access to information and educational programming to meet the specific needs of this growing and dynamic community, which is a major consumer of subscription television services. BTNC will provide a new voice that represents African Americans in mainstream media and fosters political, economic, and social discourse.  BTNC’s programming will shed light on the unique social, economic, and political challenges facing urban communities and help close the “image gap” that exists today between the negative African American stereotypes perpetuated by mainstream media news and our enterprising black communities.

An Accusation Which Makes Me Proud: Bill O'Reilly Thinks I'm a 'Race Baiter'

The main people who don't seem to want to talk about race in America these days, are those who earn their living by keeping us apart.

Exhibit A: Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly, a guy who I've called on the carpet many times for his use of coded words and phrases to pass along stereotypical, insulting ideas. He's gleefully pointed out going after "black rappers" in a prime time special on explicit entertainment, noted how those who live a "gangsta life" were like those left to drown in post-Katrina New Orleans and insisted he wasn't going to "go on a lynching party" when Michelle Obama said some thing which upset conservatives about America.

Last night, in one of those inexplicable moments when a world-famous opinionator reaches out to swat a barely-known newspaper writer, O'Reilly called me "one of the biggest race baiters in the country," offering no proof of how I'd earned the term, beyond my status as chair of the Media Monitoring Committee for the National Association of Black Journalists.

I'm betting it's because I took note of his lynching remark in a column about Don Imus on Friday. Indeed, I have a long history of tangling with Fox News' most popular pundit, viewable in stories here, here and here.

"Millions of white Americans will no longer even think about discussing race with black people," O'Reilly offered, just before plastering my picture on his screen. "Any slip of the tongue can lead to trouble."

Of course, O'Reilly's use of coded race language is hardly accidental. A key part of his show involves invoking the specter of out-of-control black males to frighten his audience. Once a critic like me objects, he can claim it was a mistake and accuse others of overreaching or unfairness. But if the Don Imus incident teaches anything, it's that mainstream America is growing far less tolerant of such antics.

I'm not saying I'm perfect in this. We've reached a point with prejudice and stereotypes where the issues are subtle, deep-seated and difficult to discuss. But I think intent counts for a lot -- and it seems obvious to me that O'Reilly doesn't come to these debates with respect for many positions besides his own. And that's why I'm so tough on him; because he's smart enough to know exactly what he's doing.

The News Hounds web site notes that the only people O'Reilly accuses of being unfair about claims of racism are black folks (he did cite the liberal media watchdog Web site Media Matters for America, which is run by white people). His list of "race hustlers includes an ex-girlfriend of comic Bill Maher, who filed a palimony suit accusing the HBO host of using "degrading racial comments" against her. (that mention, which really has little to do with accusations of racism in politics and media, just seemed calculated to show a picture of Maher, who is white, next to his black centerfold model ex-girlfriend).   

O'Reilly and I can agree on one thing: the word racist is thrown around way too much. It feeds the notion that the only people who leverage such language are serious bigots, which isn't true. The toughest thing about confronting stereotypes sometimes is that they are seductive, entertaining and often employed by people who aren't bigots. Doesn't make them any more right.

In O'Reilly's world, the only "race hustlers" in the game seem to be black people (except Al Sharpton, with whom O'Reilly seems to have a cordial relationship). But white pundits like O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage often use race tension to score points with their audiences, exploiting their fear and frustration about race issues to score ratings points.

As I've said many times before, I judge journalists by the enemies they make. So I must be doing pretty well these days.

Here's a clip of O'Reilly's rant, courtesy of YouTube:

   

Reality TV's Latest Successor to Anna Nicole: Pamela Anderson?

Is Pamela Anderson trying to become the next Anna Nicole?

This is the thought that first crossed my mind amid news today that E! Entertainment has signed the pneumatic former Baywatch star to topline the kind of personality-based "reality" TV show that made a cultural icon -- and laughing stock -- of Anna Nicole Smith six years ago on E!.

It's a tough thing to remember in the wake of reality shows starring Gene Simmons, Kathy Griffin, Hulk Hogan, Danny Bonaduce, and Paula Abdul, but Anna Nicole was one of the first dysfunctional celebs to open her life to so-called "docu-drama" cameras back in 2002. Even as the show  couldn't help but document her tenuous hold on reality, the series didn't show the cause; after her death last year from an overdose of more than eight different prescription drugs, you had to wonder where E!'s camera were.

Here's the press release. I suppose it's too much to hope that E! might have learned a few lessons since 2002....

E! ANNOUNCES DOCU-STYLE SERIES WITH SUPERSTAR PAMELA ANDERSON

"Pamela" (Working Title) Premieres Summer 2008 on E!
Los Angeles, CA, April 7, 2008 – E! Entertainment Television will debut an observational documentary series that goes inside the life of Pamela Anderson.  A Hollywood icon and international megastar, Pam is one of the most recognizable women in the world.  With the style and intimacy of a feature documentary, audiences will be pleasantly surprised to see the many dimensions of Pam.  Produced by award-winning filmmakers World of Wonder Productions ("Inside Deep Throat," "The Eyes of Tammy Faye"), the half-hour series, "Pamela" (Working Title), will debut summer 2008 on E!

Pam is chaotic, funny and always entertaining.  Viewers will get to know the real woman behind the famous breasts and follow Pam as she tries to juggle love, career and peace of mind.  Going beyond the fame and fortune, this is Pam at her core, living her life with no regrets.  The series will focus on Pam as an individual and will not feature her kids.

"Pamela Anderson is one of the most captivating personalities in pop culture today," said Lisa Berger, Executive Vice President, Original Programming and Series Development for E! "E!'s cameras capture Pam's fabulous adventures, emotional journey and all the surprises that come along the way.  It's going to be a wild ride."

"'Pamela' will be an artistically rich and visually stunning series," said Randy Barbato, Managing Director, World of Wonder Productions.  "The series will offer an unprecedented look inside the life of one of today's most iconic superstars in the style of a uniquely shot documentary film."

Pam first gained fame as the ultimate "Baywatch" beauty and "Playboy" cover girl.  Her career quickly caught fire and she has become an international superstar model, actress and entrepreneur with a high-powered Hollywood resume and more magazine covers worldwide than any star of her generation.  Pam continues to infatuate her legion of fans around the globe.   

Executive Producers for the series are Fenton Bailey, Randy Barbato and Tom Campbell for World of Wonder Productions, Jeff Pollack for Handprint Entertainment and Pamela Anderson.  Acclaimed video and commercial director Nigel Dick is Co-Executive Producer. 

For more information about "Pamela," please go to www.eonline.com and www.pamelachannel.com.

Deggans PunditWatch 08: Another CNN Stop and an Award From Columbia University

The stars have aligned, and I'm coming back to CNN two weeks after a well-received appearance to talk about the media, Obama and Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Once again, I'll be on Howie Kurtz's media show Reliable Sources at about 10:30 a.m., this time to talk about the role of Fox News Channel in a political world which may be dominated by Democrats. I'll be appearing with Time magazine's James Poniewozik to discuss a piece he wrote about this very issue in Time magazine. My own writing about Fox has been more sporadic; here's an old piece about the channel's coverage of the then month's old war in Iraq.

I also got some good news a few weeks ago, confirmed by a press release issued recently: My work has been honored once again by Columbia University's Let's Do It Better Awards, a program aimed at improving coverage of people of color by highlighting "best practices" examples of good work.

The good folks at Columbia honored a selection of my columns over the last two years, including this, and this and this. As a result, I'll go to Columbia early next month and meet all the other honorees -- two years ago, I met CBS News legend Ed Bradley there not long before his death -- participating in a panel on race and election coverage moderated by Ray Suarez from PBS' NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.

All the print stuff will be released in a book, while the TV stuff will be released in DVD, helping other journalists figure out how to negotiate these difficult stories.

Click here to see the release:

Coincidence of Don Imus and Martin Luther King Anniversaries Bring Bitter Thoughts

I didn't realize it until I was in the final stages of researching my media story today about the one-year anniversary of Don Imus' "nappy-headed hos" comments about Rutgers University's women's basketball team. But today also marks the 40th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King's assassination in Memphis, Tenn.

And as I watch a cavalcade of TV news reports and documentaries looking at King's life and legacy, I'm struck by the way Imus' example shows both how far we have come, and how far we have to go.

As I note in my Floridian story today, Imus suffered a singular humiliation after calling the women of Rutgers University's near-championship basketball team "nappy-headed hos"; a week-long media frenzy in which pundits and reporters chewed over his comments (and his long history of making similar race-based jokes) before the uproar forced MSNBC and CBS Radio to fire the 67-year-old shock jock.

But Imus wasn't about to go quietly. Instead, he negotiated a multi-million-dollar settlement to his CBS contract, and then earned a new gig with ABC Radio and RFD-TV. One year later, he's leading a show his fans say is more energized and relevant -- getting better ratings in New York than he did before his firing and more than halfway back to rebuilding the network of radio stations which aired his show when he was fired.

(Imus fans have sent links to clips from his show today, in which he interviewed Jeese Jackson about King's death. They quite rightly point out it's the kind of racial discussion I've been calling for. Here's the clip)

So did we really learn any lessons?

The continuing battle over issues like the words of Rev. Jeremiah Wright suggests to me that our soundbite-focused media culture isn't well suited to the serious, complex debate we need to have on race in America.

Instead, we have disaffected sides playing gotcha -- trying to catch their opponents in telling gaffes rather than attempting to reach an understanding. And this dynamic has often been exacerbated by the media coverage I've seen so far of King's anniversary.

TV is often more comfortable looking back than looking forward, to be sure. So it's easier to recall the awful days before King's death, when segregation was still a reality and black folks struggled to exercise their hard-won right to vote, especially in the south.

Yet, even as we're prepared to make a biracial man a serious candidate for president, we still struggle with the kind of institutional racism (and classism) that allowed the Jena 6 controversy and Hurricane Katrina debacle to shake our faith in each other. And we still struggle with huge pockets of media -- cable TV and talk radio, specifically -- that are not nearly as diverse in staffing and subject matter as they should be.

It's an odd day for those of us who follow race in media. In Dr. King's honor, I'm going to try and focus today on how far we've come, and spend a little less time obsessing on how far we have to go.

   

New York Times Notes Pundit Diversity, But Whiffs on the Reason

   

UPDATE: An original version of this blog post said there were no women anchors working afternoon shows on the three cable TV networks. That was an error; Fox News has several female anchors working in the afternoon and the post has been corrected. 

The New York Times had an interesting story yesterday on the diversity of pundits deployed by the TV networks and cable TV channels to discuss this year's historic presidential election.

Penned by Felica Lee, it was an informative and interesting take on a trend which has helped ignite the career of folks like Roland Martin, Amy Holmes and Eugene Robinson, as TV news departments grapple with the reality of a landmark run for the presidency featuring a popular woman and biracial male. (I've even gotten a taste of this, with appearances on CNN, NPR and Fox News over the past year).

Unfortunately, I think it also brushed aside the reason why these outlets have developed such a diverse palette of experts: their field of anchors is amazingly devoid of that same diversity.

Indeed, as cable TV begins to more closely resemble talk radio as the voice of the Angry White Male, you have a list of TV news shows which closely resembles the talk radio universe -- mostly middle-aged white guys with a few women sprinkled in.

I've already noted in a previous post that, with the exception of Campbell Brown and Greta Van Susteren, white males host every program in prime time on CNN, Fox News and MSNBC. Katie Couric breaks up the testosterone among the evening news anchors, but her ratings are a distant third in a three-person race. And there seems to be little diversity among the press gaggle following the candidates, as well.

Contrast that with the morning shows on network TV and cable, where gender and ethnic diversity are tremendous. It seems apparent, that programmer have concluded that diversity only works in mornings, and they've leveraged a diverse field of reporters and pundits to mask the unrelenting lack of diversity among their highest profile name anchors.

It will be interesting to see, if we eventually inaugurate a President Clinton or Obama, whether the anchor lineups will change, as well. Or, if we welcome a President McCain, whether cable networks will still feel the need to have such a diverse slate of pundits.

Can Linda Bloodworth Embarrass HBO Into Airing 12 Miles of Bad Road?

  It's got to be one of the oddest packages I've ever received as a TV critic.

Non-descript and sent overnight, the envelope contained seven DVDs and a plea from producers Linda Bloodworth (left) and Harry Thomason, creators of the classic sitcoms Designing Women and Evening Shade.

Seems HBO had spent more than $20-million creating 12 Miles of Bad Road, a sprawling comedy poking fun at the Bush-era, Enron-style Republicans, and now the premium cable channel had decided not to air it -- basically, spending the most money it ever has to NOT air a TV series.

I have a story in today's Floridian detailing the showbiz Hara-Kiri Bloodworth and Thomason seem to be committing, embarrassing one of Hollywood's major players by sending critics copies of six completed episodes in hopes our stories can accomplish what their negotiations did not.

Charging forward like a character from one of her Southern-baked sitcoms, Bloodworth assured me that she'd go on the Home Shopping Network to sell this show, which offers inspired performances from Lily Tomlin, Mary Kay Place, Gary Cole and blue collar comic Ron White. See more about the show here.

Obviously, HBO believed in the show at one time, because it's listed here at the back of an old promo reel from 2007. Check it out -- this brief glimpse may be all you'll see of the best (or, at least, the most expensive) show HBO never aired.

Hillary Clinton Can Make Insensitive Racial Remarks, Too

I almost hate to put this up, because I really don't want to contribute to the sound bite culture that has gotten a stranglehold on our political process these days.

But I was rooting around on a different story today, and stumbled on this YouTube clip of Hillary Clinton making a joke four years ago, comparing noted east Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandi to a gas station owner. This a remark for which Senator Clinton has already apologized.

This wasn't something said by a pastor or a friend. This was a scripted joke she delivered while introducing someone at a public event. I don't think it's evidence of some closet racism on her part. But I do think it's evidence that anyone can say something racially insensitive in public, and the sensible thing to do is find out whether it reflects their consistent feelings about these issues or if they are just errors in judgement.

And its also evidence that we all should be careful about judging people too harshly on these issues.

Rev. Wright Debate on CNN But Not in Tampa

I was disappointed to hear that Rev. Jeremiah Wright was not coming to Tampa. I was hoping his appearance here might bring the debate over his words to the Tampa Bay area in a way which might help broaden the debate a bit.

I've been pretty disappointed in how media outlets have been unable to present a quality debate about some of the issues Wright's speeches have raised. Instead, we're stuck in soundbites and snarky comments, with longtime closet racists such as Pat Buchanan using the controversy as an excuse to air their awful comments in the guise of serving as elder statesmen.

I wonder how it is a guy like Buchanan can write books and columns admiringly quoting white supremacist William Pierce and the white supremacist organiztion the New Century Foundation without any rebuke from mainstream media. And yet his he is indignant that journalists haven't hammered Obama harder for his ties to Wright?

Here is a video of my vain attempt to bring some perspective to this debate on Howard Kurtz's Reliable Sources show. The video is provided by left-leaning media watchdogs Media Matters, which have also criticized CNN's Kurtz for not covering the excesses of conservative pastors more:

The Times David Adams Judges Dan Rather's Look at Cuba on HD Net Tonight

I'm turning over the blog for moment to an amazing guest blogger: The St. Pete Times' Latin america correspondent, David Adams, who has a look at a new report from former CBS anchor Dan Rather:

David writes: If you are one of the few who have access to HDNet, and are in the mood for an hour-long "in depth" look at what's going on in Cuba, you might tune in tonight at 8pm to Dan Rather Reports.

Rather was in Cuba in January to look at economic change under the new Raul Castro government. "We had access at the top levels of government," he tells me. But he didn't get the interview everyone wants with Fidel. Nor did he get to see Raul either.

Even so, it sounds as though he has put together an interesting show. He offers no exclusive revelations, and most of what he reports has been well covered in the major US newspapers, including the St Petersburg Times. Still, there's a lot you can show in one hour, and when it's on HD many viewers might find that more appealing that reading about Cuba in newspapers.

Rather says his aim is to provide the kind of nuanced look at Cuba that he says is sadly lacking in US policy towards the island. "What's lacking in Cuba debate is a recognition of the nuances and complexity of the situation," he says. "It tends to be black hats and white hats, and it's a much more complex picture there. In this country we tend to be fixated on Fidel and Raul. This is a transition period, and likely to remain that way from a long time."

Working for HDNet, Rather says, allows him to do the kind of foreign stories that the big news networks don't do any more, with the exception of CBS 60 Minutes, where Rather was a contributor.

Rather is well positioned to judge how Cuba has changed. He says he's been there more than a dozen times since the 1970s, and has interviewed Fidel maybe five times. He's also met Raul in the past. But it had been a decade since his last trip.

"When the Soviet Union dissolved Cuba was in as bad a shape as I have ever seen. They were hanging by their finger nails," he says. But things are looking a little bit better now. "Things have improved because they are getting oil and gas from Venezuela and selling nickel to the Chinese."

On this occasion he says he took his cameras to the countryside outside Havana to look at how change is coming to agriculture. This is a key area of reform proposed by Raul.

Rather's timing is good. Reuters reported yesterday that Cuba has begun decentralizing its state-dominated agriculture sector. Farmers are being told they can now make decisions about what crops to plant and where to sell them. Rather says he spoke to farmers precisely about these changes. He explains that unlike in the past they will now be able to opt to sell to private markets rather than directly to the state.

Rather will likely get hammered in some quarters for not dwelling more on Cuba's human rights situation as well as the lack of other freedoms. But that wouldn't be news either. And I don't suppose HDNet will mind it they attract some controversy.

Instead, it sounds to me like he has made a useful contribution to the better awareness of what is going on Cuba. Whether that makes for good TV we shall have to wait and find out. HDNet still has a small audience and is only available in 9 million homes. But it has been winning praise for some of its investigative and feature reporting.

Rev. Jeremiah Wright's Sermon in Context

When the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's sermons first came under fire, I didn't even want to bother arguing about them. I was raised in a black church. I knew how good preachers would use hyperbole and aggressive statements to make their point during sermons aimed at teaching bold lessons to parishioners.

But then, of all people, Bubba the Love Sponge hipped me to some postings on YouTube, where an enterprising videographer found larger clips of the most notorious sermons quoted by TV news outlets in the stories which kicked off the controversy about his speeches. And I was ashamed.

Because Rev. Wright deserved a better defender than I -- or, frankly Barack Obama -- have been during this nonsense. A look at these clips, which present much larger excerpts of Wright's speeches, shows that his seemingly damning statements came during passionate speeches about America's history of racial oppression and America's history of killing innocents while exacting military revenge against enemies.

One of Rev. Wright's most controversial comments -- the statements about "chickens coming home to roost" after 9/11 -- was his quote of a white ambassador speaking on Fox News Channel. Why didn't the TV news reporters tell us this?

It is true that Wright has also made some strident charges which aren't true. In a phrase within his GD America speech, he says the government injected black men with syphillis. Presumably, he is referring to the legendary Tuskegee Experiment, in which nearly 400 black men who already had syphillis were led to believe they were being treated for it when they were really being observed by government physicians noting the effects of the disease's advancement. (ironically, the story was broken in 1972 by Jean Heller, a former St. Pete Times reporter who was working for the Associated Press at the time)

He's also said the government has given drugs to black people, a possible reference to a widely discredited theory that the CIA helped establish the drug pipeline which first brought crack cocaine to Los Angeles, as a method of funding the Nicaraguan Contra rebels. This theory was the subject of a 1996 three-part series in the San Jose Mercury News and a book. But the newspaper backed off the story after it was published and the reporter, Gary Webb, eventually killed himself in 2004.

What is clear here, is that Wright is articulating the suspicions and cynicism of many black people about the motives of a government led mostly by white people. I think his characterizations can sometimes be simplistic and off base, but I don't think he's the raving racist some pundits have made him out to be.

Check these two excerpts of his speeches from YouTube and see if they don't make you think twice:

Deggans on CNN Sunday Talking Obama's Race Speech

Howie Kurtz must be desperate on an Easter Sunday.

How else to explain the Washington Post media critic's invitation for your truly to join him on his CNN show Reliable Sources at 10 a.m. Sunday to discuss media coverage of Barack Obama's speech on race?

I was unfortunately sidelined by the whole wisdom tooth thing when he actually gave the speech -- though watching it through a haze of Novocaine and Oxycodone was a novel experience -- and in the days since, I've been struck by a few things.

TV, of course, manages to trivialize everything. so it is no surprise that much of the TV coverage I've seen has trivialized this landmark speech. Still, much as I hate to agree with MSNBC's Joe Scarborough on anything, I do think he's right when he says this particular issue turns on anger. (Here's a great piece on that issue)

Until now, Obama has found success with many types of white voters by avoiding the Angry Black Man Syndrome. But when I think scares some white people about Obama's ties to Jeremiah Wright isn't the specifics of what he's said -- white and black preachers have said similar things about America since the days of Elmer Gantry. What scared some white voters is Obama link to a typically angry black man.

Until now, Obama has always met talk about race issues with the same kind of cool reserve William F. Buckley brought to discussions of conservative values. This is the communication mode much of America accepts best. It's the way Dick Cheney sold us all on the Iraq War; big ideas presented calmly and with an air of authority.

But Wright is all the things which scare some white voters and anger others. He's aggressive, angry, wild-eyed, full of conspiracy theories about race and loud contempt for the institutional racism which dogs our political system. If you were to bloodlessly list all of his arguments, more folks white and black would likely agree with many of his points. But it's all in the presentation, these days.

Ironically, Hillary Clinton has often suffered from Angry White Woman Syndrome in her run for the White House, disregarded and marginalized by some commentators as emasculating, shrill, shrewish or an example of the b-word because she is a powerful woman expressing opinions powerfully. Now, she's benefiting a bit from seeing that show shoved on Obama's foot.

Given that no one has suggested any of Wright's rhetoric has influenced Obama's policies or initiatives, I'm not sure what all this has to do with the job he'll do as chief executive. Instead, it says much more about our own tangled dysfunctional attitudes on race and anger than anything either Democratic candidate actually stands for.

Watching me try to fit all this commentary into a two-minute segment on CNN is bound to be entertaining. Here's an interesting clip where Chris Wallace actually takes Fox & Friends to task for its unfortunate and distorted discussion of Obama's speech on race.

   

Too Pretty To Fly Girls Squashed by Dr. Phil?

  Anybody who read my Times colleague Bill Levesque's most-excellent profile of media savvy attorney John Trevena could not be surprised to learn that the lawyer is now representing the two Oldsmar girls who earned headlines not long ago by claiming Southwest Airlines treated them badly because they were too pretty.

The girls -- Nisreen Swedberg, a 19-year-old University of South Florida student, and her best friend, Sarah Williams, 18 -- will appear in today's episode of the popular daytime talk show Dr. Phil, where they are expected to encounter some serious skepticism from the tough-talking doctor.

Today's show is focused on recent allegations from young women that they were treated poorly on Southwest flights, presumably because of their beauty (waitress Kyla Ebbert made similar charges last year and scored a pictorial in Playboy before the dust settled). But Swedberg and Williams' charges were greeted coolly by many media outlets, despite the fact that their allegtions earned them attention everywhere from the cover of TBT* to Inside Edition.

Host Phil McGraw apprently shared in the skepticism exemplified by a travel writer for MSNBC, who noted: "Ladies, it wasn't that you were 'too pretty to fly.' You were too rude. And, sadly, stereotypically clueless."

Looks like a typically juicy Phil fight-a-thon is in the works.

Here's a CNN story on their allegations....

And Southwest Airline's response:

More Deggans Punditry Than You Can Stand

One of the cool things about being a TV/Media nerd who spends most of his day glued to a TV set and computer screen: Other writers call you when they're working their stories.

So that explains why my pal Matthew Felling, most recently of CBS' now-defunct Public Eye blog, wound up calling me while pulling together a story for American Journalism Review on Morning Joe, the AM concoction MSNBC pulled together when it jettisoned Don Imus.  I'd written a long feature about Scarborough's previous program, Scarborough Country, five years ago -- even then the former Pensacola U.S. Representative resisted the way MSNBC was trying to turn him into a young Bill O'Reilly -- and I was happy to go on a bit about this, much better showcase.

The full extent of my erudition: " "Morning Joe" is not reinventing the wheel, says St. Petersburg Times media writer Eric Deggans. "The tone of the show is not a particularly groundbreaking one. It seems to be a modern-day salon." But, he adds, "It's very hard to do that well. Everybody tries to do something like that. But they've hit on a combination that works. You're hanging out with people who are knowledgeable but hip enough to be fun."

The Wall Street Journal's Washington Wire blog also decided to reference the best line out of my blog post on the whole Geraldine Ferraro mess, just after praising a column by Slate's Mickey Kaus contending that she was right. "If Obama were white, he wouldn't embody hopes of a post-racial future," Kaus wrote, leaving me wondering if that's really why so many people, black and white, are voting for Barack Obama. I think people are looking for the best person to embody a post-Bush future, personally.

I've also done some talking to National Public Radio and the Los Angeles times for longer-term pieces they're doing. It's kinda nice to be appreciated -- even if these big shot outlets don't always agree with me.