BY DAN
KENNEDY
Notes and observations on
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For information on Dan Kennedy's book, Little People: Learning to
See the World Through My Daughter's Eyes (Rodale, October 2003),
click
here.
Wednesday, December 31, 2003
"CBS News doesn't pay for
interviews." No, but CBS's entertainment division does. And that
distinction is behind a sickening
media revelation.
Sharon Waxman reports in today's
New York Times that Michael Jackson and/or his business
managers talked CBS into paying him $1 million - on top of the $5
million he had already received - for an entertainment program that
he's headlining this Friday and for his appearance on 60
Minutes this past Sunday.
As Waxman describes it, the payment
was handled just delicately enough for CBS News executives to have
deniability - although that old Nixonian phrase "plausible
deniability" is certainly not what comes to mind. Absolutely no one
is going to buy this load of garbage.
Here's the killer, admittedly
dependent on an unnamed source:
"Michael was in his room,"
the associate said. "Ed Bradley had set up. Basically Michael
wanted to see the rest of the money. Bradley kept saying, 'Don't
worry, we'll take care of it.' Michael said he wouldn't do the
interview unless they paid. It came to a stalemate. But they
didn't want to put anything in writing."
Bradley ended up walking away from
the interview then, but he did it later.
The best quote is from Orville
Schell, dean of the University of California at Berkeley's Graduate
School of Journalism, who tells
the Los Angeles Times' Tim Rutten:
[CBS] has gone
from one humiliating event to another in recent years. But it's
particularly demeaning to compromise your integrity so
fundamentally over something as worthless as Michael Jackson. I
suppose you could make a case for getting a story that laid bare
the terrorist networks operating inside Iraq by paying for it. But
to lose your reputation, as CBS now has done, to get more Michael
Jackson? That's really sad.
As Schell notes, CBS News has been
a pathetic joke for years. But 60 Minutes, while by no means
perfect, has managed to maintain its basic integrity. Not now. It's
gone.
And since there are zero
indications that there will be any firings, resignations, or
heartfelt promises not to do it again, then it's fairly safe to say
that it's gone for good.
Nomar, Mr. Nice Guy. Gordon
Edes has a fascinating inside
look in today's Boston
Globe at what went wrong with the Alex Rodriguez
trade.
But there's another angle to this,
too. Edes gives free rein to the Red Sox ownership to do damage
control with Nomar Garciaparra, who almost certainly would have been
traded if Rodriguez had come to town.
(Edes does not disclose that the
Globe's corporate owner, the New York Times Company, is part
of the Red Sox' ownership group. Since this is mainly a baseball
story, I'm agnostic on whether he should have.)
What really stands out is that Sox
principal owner John Henry really, really wants Garciaparra to know
is that the only reason he considered this deal in the first place
was that he was convinced his star shortstop didn't want to stay in
Boston.
Here are some excerpts from an
e-mail that Henry sent to Edes:
I am not sure of the exact
date, but almost immediately after this meeting, I heard from
[general manager] Theo [Epstein] that the gulf
between [Garciaparra's agent] Arn Tellem's demand and the
club's view of the right number for Nomar was so wide that he felt
we were not going to be able to re-sign our shortstop....
I had a hard time imagining
finally winning a World Series in Boston without Nomar being there
at that great moment. Nevertheless, we faced the realities such as
they were and determined to move forward.
Former Globe baseball
reporter Peter Gammons, writing for ESPN.com, has a rather
different take on the
breakdown. According to Gammons, the principal bad guy in this was
Sox president Larry Lucchino, who pissed off Rodriguez by
grandstanding against the Players Association for nixing the proposed
downward restructuring of Rodriguez's $252 million
contract.
Lucchino doesn't come off all that
well in Edes's telling, either. But the Edes version is that the man
Lucchino really infuriated was Rodriguez's current employer,
Texas Rangers owner Tom Hicks.
The Edes version leaves the Sox
with the best of both worlds: the possibility that the trade will
still take place, along with indications that if it doesn't,
Garciaparra could be signed to a new, long-term contract.
Two Dans, no waiting. Secret
Agent Cathy is upset
that I went after Dan Savage yesterday
for suggesting that Americans deserve to die because the US propped
up Saddam Hussein for many years.
posted at 9:00 AM |
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Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
