Author Archives: Jim Moore

The Media’s Excessive Vatican Coverage: Is It Too Much?

March 13th, 2013

The recently-released photo of a Reuters photographer testing his new super-zoom lens atop a roof overlooking St. Peter’s Square in hopes of capturing an image of the eventually-to-be-elected Pontiff waving from the Papal balcony was, for me  the final straw in the obsessive coverage of the goings on at the Vatican. Seriously? A lens that rivals the Hubble Space Telescope is needed to get a shot of the new Pope?

It’s not the lens, per se, that bothers me (I’d love to own one—but I’m already paying one mortgage); it’s the wall-to-wall-to-fresco-covered-ceiling media frenzy that has escaped the bounds of normalcy. Even in this day of bizarre Bieber coverage, Kate baby-bump bulletins, and the breaking news that conservative scold Elizabeth Hasselbeck is (or is not) leaving the View, the non-stop standups from every possible location in Vatican City and the surrounding hills defy logic and sleep.

C’mon, media, face it; we know enough about the process: Aging Pope calls it quits, takes off red Prada shoes, flies off in neat helicopter, door are sealed, rings are scratched, cardinals collect, conclave assembles, they vote, votes are burned, no winner yet—black smoke (sort of)—repeat, finally a winner—white smoke—out on the balcony, waves, crowd cheers.

Has The Sequester Muted The Government’s Media Mojo?

March 8th, 2013

Sequestration—the federal budget cuts agreed to by both the Congress and the White House way back in 2011—is off to a rocky start, judging from the drenching storms of skepticism raining down on the president and members of Congress from all media quarters. Just one week after the $85 billion in cuts have gone into effect, pundits and bloggers, anchors and reporters are furiously transmitting tales of the rising national boil over what is shaping up to be a quagmire of mishandled messaging and questionable choices by the administration and legislators.

Whatever media coin Mr. Obama and the Congress thought they might have stashed away (or sequestered) for such a rainy day, it is by now a depleted, if not completely overdrawn account in light of line-by-line analysis by the media of all the dire claims which at times have verged on the apoplectic and the apocalyptic.

It doesn’t make any difference what government spokespersons are selling these days; when it comes to tales of fiscal gloom and doom, the media has stopped buying. And, as the Dayton Daily News reports, the public isn’t far behind.

Russian Meteor Was “Breaking,” But Not “Apocalyptic, News”

February 15th, 2013

The early morning news shows on Friday led with the news of the 10-ton meteor flashing over eastern Russia, leaving a spectacular trail of smoke after it hit Earth’s atmosphere at 33,000 mph and disintegrated over the Siberian town of Chelyabinsk. According to the LA Times, by mid-morning U.S. East Coast time, there were reports of 1,000 or more injuries associated with the blast effects of the cosmic screamer as its shock wave pummeled communities beneath its path.

Dash cam pictures of the event captured the sight and sound of the descending space boulder, and security cameras and cellphone cameras recorded the amazingly bright flash and shock-wave effects that spread across the region for several seconds. Russians witnessing the fast-moving fireball can be heard in the background (as translated) of several of the videos wondering if they were seeing the beginning of an attack or an end-of-times moment, as the meteor plunged earthward hypersonically, leaving a trail of broken windows, blown-out office buildings and at least one collapsed roof at a zinc factory.

The Real Boobs At The Grammys? CBS’s Program Practices

February 8th, 2013

Earlier this week, CBS’s program practices department sent a memo to this year’s Grammy Awards attendees:

“Please be sure that buttocks and female breasts are adequately covered. Thong type costumes are problematic. Please avoid exposing bare fleshy under curves of the buttocks and buttock crack. Bare sides or under curvature of the breasts is also problematic. Please avoid sheer see-through clothing that could possibly expose female breast nipples.”

First of all, I want to know where else would nipples be? And second, there is no mention in the memo of…to be as delicate as possible about this…problematic male bulges. I’m just sayin’.

When the CBS memo came to light earlier this week, it was a flashback to the time between 1930 and 1968 when filmmakers had to answer to the Hollywood censorship offices if their films showed the least bit of objectionable epidermis. Scandalous skin was to be avoided at all costs if a movie expected to be released with a non-prurient seal of approval.

Media Reveal Robertson’s ‘Awful’ Side

January 21st, 2013

Scouring the Web in my usual hunt for a column topic devoid of fiscal cliffs, failed Plan Bs and foreign fiascoes, I cruised by HLN’s Robin Meade’s Morning Express just long enough to catch the subhead, “Robertson Slams ‘Awful Looking’ Women,” accompanied by a shot of the unmistakable face of the 700 Club’s leading televangelist leering over Ms. Meade’s shoulder.

Like the bar room habitué in Jim Croce’s song, Roller Derby Queen, who is captivated by the sight of “The meanest hunk o’ woman that anybody ever seen,” I was drawn to the story as surely as if I’d been promised a ringside seat to a train wreck. And I wasn’t disappointed in the least.

The nonplussed Meade was reporting on Robertson’s latest gender-bashing gaffe, a weird and rambling explanation of why he believes marriages in trouble might have something to do with the “ugly” appearance of wives whose looks are responsible for all their problems. This episode, sparked by a letter to Maxim (a veritable fount of marital advice) and reported in Christ.Culture.News from a teenage boy who wanted to know how to get his video-gaming dad to pay more attention to his mom, showcased Robertson’s sensitive side. “It may be your mom isn’t as sweet as you think she is,” octogenarian Pat said, “She may be kind of hard-nosed.”

Chris Christie Cover Pic: Bad Boy Or Mob Boss?

January 13th, 2013

Is Chris Christie being depicted as a 21st century Vito Corleone?

Time magazine’s recent cover of New Jersey governor Chris Christie sparked more than a few comments this week, ranging from the outraged in Philly.com—that Time was casting Christie as a mobster—to the incensed claim of an Italian American in NJ.com—that Christie’s portrait somehow dissed his Italian heritage (on his Sicilian mother’s side)—to the dark side, with comparisons to the infamous O.J. Simpson cover—to the groupiest—that “The Boss” cover banner was nothing more than a shout-out to Christie’s new pal, Bruce Springsteen.

The most scathing blowback from the picture seems to come from New Jerseyians of Italian descent who took umbrage at the photo’s mug shot-like quality. Gannett’s John Schoonejongen quotes Manny Alfano, the founder of the Italian-American One Voice Coalition, a group that battles stereotypes of Italian-Americans in the media, “Why didn’t they just put Al Capone’s picture up there?”

ESPN Announcer Has A Crush On QB’s Girlfriend

January 8th, 2013

Musberger’s Formula For Tweet Success:

(73-year-old leering sportscaster + 23-year-old beauty queen) X (30 million bored football fans/by a ho-hum football game) = 100,000 tweets in 12 hours.

Monday night’s BCS championship football game between Alabama and Note Dame might have gone into sports history as a blowout win for the Crimson Tide, save for one moment that upended the social media conversation about who emerged from the tournament as number one in college football. Nope, it’s not Alabama. It’s Katherine Webb, Miss Alabama 2012, and the girlfriend of Alabama quarterback, A.J. McCarron. And we have ESPN’s codgerly commentator, Brent Musberger, to thank or to blame for the sudden shift in message trends away from the action on the gridiron to what some viewers seemed discomfiting attention in the stands.

Eleven minutes into the first quarter—with Alabama leading 14-0, and Notre Dame’s future looking dimmer by the second—the sports’ network’s crowd-roving camera zoomed in on a female Tide fan in the stands. At that moment, there were two things Musberger, and his booth buddy Kirk Herbstreit could have done: 1) point out that the fan was McCarron’s girlfriend, Katherine Webb, who was seated next to McCarron’s mother, Dee Dee Bonner. It would have been okay to add that Webb was Miss Alabama 2012, and let the audience take it from there. Or, 2) Weird us out with a dribbling display of aged testosterone and geezerly gandering from a septuagenarian who should know better.

Not So Fast: Nancy Pelosi’s Photo Fakery

January 5th, 2013

So, newly-sworn-in Congresswoman, you can’t show up to be part of an historic portrait, right there on the steps of the U.S. Capitol? It’s too cold outside, you say? Your kids are straggling, you complain? You’ve got other things to do, you aver? No problem.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi will just have you photoshopped right in, along with three other of your colleagues who just couldn’t find the time to get their picture taken.

What the heck could have possibly been going through Pelosi’s mind when she made the decision to have staff “fix” the picture of the women of the 113^th Congress assembled outside the Capitol by adding in the four members who were no-shows? As a photojournalist, this is no frivolous issue to me.

Is A Justin Bieber Pic Worth Dying For?

January 3rd, 2013

On Tuesday night in Los Angeles, Chris Guerra, a 29-year-old photographer—a paparazzo intent on getting a picture of pop singer Justin Bieber—was struck and killed by an SUV driven by a 69-year-old woman.  As reported by KTLA, Guerra had been following Bieber’s white Ferrari on Interstate 405 when the sports car was pulled over by the California Highway Patrol and directed off the freeway onto Sepulveda Boulevard—a major L.A. artery. According to the CHP, Guerra parked his car across the boulevard from the Ferrari, crossed the street to take pictures of the police stop, and was hit by the SUV after he took pictures of Bieber’s car and was walking back across Sepulveda to his own car.

In an ironic twist on the fatal paparazzi-induced death of Princess Diana in Paris in 1997, this time it was the overeager photographer intent on snagging a big-money shot of an international celeb who paid the price. And for what? Absolutely nothing. There were no images of Bieber in Guerra’s camera because Bieber was not there. Someone else was driving his car, but Guerra, so focused on the reward for shooting what might have been an exclusive pic, lost sight of his own safety.

What? Me(dia) Worry About The Fiscal Cliff?

January 1st, 2013

The media need to take some measure of responsibility for the brinkmanship being played out between Obama and the Hill. It is not sufficient for news media to simply stand by and report on the possible disaster–to take a wait-and-see approach to the fiscal cliff debacle. Social media doesn’t count in this; the cacophony, stupidity and brutality of their Babel-ish voices make Twitter, Facebook, and other soapbox screamers irrelevant to serious problem solving.

But some culpability must be assigned to the working press, national and local, for standing by, cameras and microphones at the ready, to watch and tut-tut as the Congress and the White House, linked together on an anchor chain they’ve just both flung into the chasm, drag the innocents off the deck of the Ship of State.