Ya gotta keep up with the media, Karen
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washingtonpost.com
J. Lo and Co., Slapping The Suitors They Beckon
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 22, 2003; Page C01
J. Lo says she's a media victim.
The pop star who seemed to be on the cover of People and Us Weekly every time she smooched with Ben Affleck, or they quarreled, or he went to a strip club, or they made a stinkeroo of a movie, is blaming the media for the last-minute cancellation of their wedding.
The reason: "Excessive media attention." That's right, Jennifer Lopez, who seemingly lives for publicity, invites 400 people to a Santa Barbara wedding and then savages the media because word leaks out to "Entertainment Tonight" and "Access Hollywood."
Turns out she's got plenty of company. From showbiz to politics to sports, some of the very figures who are most adept at working the press, who have used the publicity machine to power their glittering careers, are quick to blame the messenger when the news turns sour.
Perhaps they're so accustomed to being able to call the shots that they take it as a personal affront when journalists don't follow the preferred script.
If any Hollywood figure is in the J. Lo category, it's Arnold Schwarzenegger. Since announcing for California governor with his pal Jay Leno, the Terminator has attracted a huge wave of media attention and a torrent of front-page stories (not to mention coveted chats with Oprah Winfrey and Howard Stern).
So what was he doing recently with Fox's Bill O'Reilly? Complaining about the Los Angeles Times and its supposed preference for Gov. Gray Davis and Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante: "Have you ever seen how many times they put Davis on the cover and Bustamante on the cover and I'm on page 12 or page 20 or something like that?"
Arnold -- shoved inside the paper? Not so, says Times Editor John Carroll, noting that Reuters had counted 64 front-page references to Davis, 61 for Schwarzenegger and 48 for Bustamante.
What's more, Carroll says Schwarzenegger called him last month to say "he'd been reading the paper closely, that it had been fair and he appreciated it." The call came a day after the Times ran a piece about his father's Nazi past inside the paper but gave Page 1 play to financier Warren Buffett joining Schwarzenegger's team.
In the presidential arena, Al Sharpton has long attracted more than his share of the limelight, considering that he's lost three New York elections and is languishing in the polls. The media, fueled by his involvement in a string of racially polarizing incidents, have turned him into perhaps the country's most visible black activist (he's been profiled twice by "60 Minutes"). But Reverend Al now says the press is slighting him.
He told the Associated Press that news executives are "automatically dismissive of anything that is not like them, which is white males." He told the New York Observer that journalists "are just showing the same bias they showed when Jesse Jackson ran for president . . . because the national media is almost completely white." The attacks, naturally, have generated more Sharpton stories.
Sammy Sosa was the subject of a long media swoon during his 1998 home-run derby with Mark McGwire. So what did the Chicago Cubs slugger do when he got into trouble in June for using a corked bat? He declared a media boycott and vowed not to talk to reporters for two weeks. No more blowing kisses.
Getting mad at the media generally doesn't work. Rather than hang their heads in shame over the non-wedding of J. Lo and Affleck, journalists reported that "the most overexposed couple on the planet" (as the Atlanta Journal-Constitution put it) had split, at least temporarily. Writes Newsday's Liz Smith: "The very reporters who are covering the story 24/7 on air now sigh heavily and ask, witheringly, 'Is anybody really interested in this?' "
Maybe next time -- if there is a next time -- the pair should just elope.
POTUS Speaks
President Bush, who is being kicked around by 10 Democratic candidates, is quietly mounting a mini-media offensive.
After granting no television interviews for six months, Bush sat down with Fox News Channel's Brit Hume for a discussion that will air at 8 tonight on the Fox broadcast network (administration officials made the request to reach a larger audience) and be repeated on the cable outlet. (See story, Page A1.) This follows an interview about the economy earlier this month with CNBC's Ron Insana, and an hour-long session last week with reporters from 12 medium-size newspapers, from the president's home-state Fort Worth Star-Telegram and San Antonio Express-News to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and Hartford Courant.
The sudden accessibility comes as Bush is dipping in the polls and on the defensive over the struggling economy and continued carnage in Iraq.
The Roosevelt Room discussion with the regional papers ranged from Bush describing how he writes a letter to every military family that loses a loved one in Iraq to telling the Seattle reporter that the city's Mariners are "a lot better than the Rangers," the Texas baseball team he once co-owned.
It was a chance "to speak to a lot of Americans who may not follow the national press," says White House communications director Dan Bartlett. He says Bush and Vice President Cheney, who turned up on "Meet the Press" eight days ago, will be doing more interviews this fall.
"We're looking for opportunities for the president to be able to provide a little context to the issues. The war on terror and the situation in Iraq doesn't boil down to sound bites," Bartlett said.
Officials say Fox was selected not to "pander" to a conservative audience, as one put it, but because the network had not previously been granted an interview during the Bush presidency. Hume, Fox's Washington managing editor, got the nod because administration insiders like his style.
Hume says he planned to take a page from Larry King and ask some softer questions, rather than elicit pre-packaged answers to news conference-style questions. "You're honor-bound to ask those questions, but you may get answers that people are not going to find very interesting," he says. In a rare sit-down with a president, "you want to get a sense of how they're doing, how they're feeling, where they are."
Still, Hume added, "I'd feel awfully badly if I walked out of there and said, 'Gee, I didn't get much on Iraq.' "
Toy Story
Ali Ahmed was excited when he came up with the scoop that the Saudi government was attacking the Barbie doll as a "Jewish" toy that is offensive to Islam. After all, the story was picked up by the Associated Press, and then by news outlets around the world.
But Ahmed, the lone Washington reporter for the private Saudi Information Agency, a tiny dissident operation that has gotten a $40,000 grant from the National Endowment for Democracy, feels ripped off. The AP story the next day gave no credit to his organization, which put online the government poster attacking "Jewish Barbie dolls with their naked clothing [and] lewd positions." Ahmed says he was "very upset" because "we want to get some recognition for our work."
Says AP spokesman Jack Stokes: "After we did the reporting, we didn't feel the need to give them credit," because it turns out the anti-Barbie policy had been in place for years.
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