The Eight Biggest Media Moments of 2012 – #5: Penn sues The Star

Last year The Star fired Steve Penn, a columnist for the metro section. Penn had worked for the newspaper for more than 30 years, which made the termination seem odd at best. However, the editors’ allegations were damning: they said Penn had been copying sentences and paragraphs from press releases, pasting them into his stories and passing them off as his own work.

News folk have always had an uneasy relationship with press releases. In an ideal world, a reporter would start with a press release from an outside source (company, government agency, charity, etc.) and – convinced of the story’s newsworthiness – use it as a springboard to go out and find her own facts and quotes. Someone lazier – or more pressed for time, if we want to give this practice a positive spin – might use quotes directly from a press release, provided of course that the source was clearly identified in the story.

Back in my days working PR, I heard stories about newspaper folk doing what Penn did. In fact, I heard about some reporters who copied entire releases, stuck their bylines on them and passed the whole thing off as their work. At least Penn didn’t go that far. Still, what he did was bad enough, a clear violation of the ethics we all learned in J-school.

If the firing had been the end of the story, it would at best have been one of the Eight Most “That’s Just Sad” Media Moments of 2011. But then Penn put the mess on this list by filing a wrongful termination suit in June. His most disturbing allegation was that he shouldn’t have been fired for plagiarism because what he did was common practice at The Star and in the newspaper industry.

Though I hate to see a big media company get away with firing someone who worked for it for decades, I hope he loses his suit (or at least wins it on grounds other than his “common practice” argument). I’d really hate to see him successfully prove that news writers everywhere are parroting corporate spin rather than going out and gathering the news. As if the newspaper industry isn’t already beset by enough trouble. The last thing it needs right now is erosion of confidence from the few readers it has left.

Oprah eats shit (at least it wasn’t green)

It could happen to anyone. You set up a girls’ school in South Africa, basing the students’ educations in part on The Secret. In order to keep things under control, you cut the kids off from their families, sharply limiting their contact with the outside world. But that’s okay, because you hire only the finest staffers South Africa has to offer.

Except oops, apparently one of the people you hired to “mother” the girls turns out to be an alleged sexual predator. The tiny autocracy you created proves ideal for this sadistic bully, allowing her to victimize the children at will. Or at least that’s the story as it stands now.

And by “you” of course I mean Oprah Winfrey.

In Oprah’s defense, when the ugly truth came out she sat down at the table with the big plate of shit in front of her and dug in like it was a HungryMan entrée. She acknowledged the problem and immediately began discussing ways to deal with it. Normally I’d be against praising someone just for showing a little basic honesty. But in 2007 it’s all too easy to imagine George W. Bush sitting at the same table. “Why do the Democrats want to play politics with this? We tried hard to set up a school like the American people wanted, and all the liberals can do is criticize.” At least Oprah managed a bit more dignity than that.

However, that doesn’t smooth over the underlying problem: Oprah’s empire reeks of the control fallacy much mused-over in the original Jurassic Park movie. The more she tries to establish absolute authority over everything around her, the more sand squeezes through her fingers. We’ve seen it with the Million Little Pieces fiasco. We’ve even seen it with the new, revamped, and now-suddenly-off-putting Rachael Ray. And now it afflicts some of the most vulnerable people on earth, sad proof that absolute power doesn’t even have to bother with corruption.

Elsewhere in the world, last week we were treated to a bizarre spectacle known only as the Environmental Media Awards. Big media drew a handful of B-list celebrities to a ceremony patting the collective corporate back for all the good work they’ve done for the environment over the past year. The only award category missing was “Most Successful Act of Pretending to Care About the Environment So People Will Watch Our Shows.” I’m sure it would have made a great, show-stopping grand prize.

And fast on the heels of this parade of cynical capitalism came NBC’s “Green Week.” I only watch two NBC shows regularly – My Name is Earl and 30 Rock – but I’m given to understand that all the network’s programs were expected to have some kind of pro-environment theme. Both shows rose to the occasion in ways well-suited to their themes and audiences.

On Earl our hero was forced by the warden to add a green theme to the “scared straight” production he put together for local school kids. And Tina Fey’s show featured a new, “green” mascot being used to sell GE products. So we all keep our too-cool-for-school reps while at the same time doing the company’s business. Welcome to the 21st century’s version of the best of both worlds.

The Green M&M vs. RockStar

I don’t mind that the CBS Evening News featured a story on the latest ultra-violent video game from RockStar. I don’t mind that what they aired could scarcely be considered news. Has RockStar really produced something scandalous? Isn’t that what they do? Is there really anybody in the country who cares anything about videogames and yet has not heard of the likes of Grand Theft Auto?

Of course companies like RockStar thrive on this kind of publicity. Games such as GTA and the new one (which I’m not going to name because I don’t intend to help them plug it) don’t look very good. Even in their ads – where presumably they have their best foot forward – the graphics look boxy, very last-gen. But hey, if you can’t make a game good enough to sell itself, why not move product by tweaking some noses and cashing in on the resulting publicity?

And the nose tweaked this time belonged to Katie Couric. At the end of the story we were all treated to her Church-Lady-esque snipping about how she couldn’t see why anybody would buy such an awful game. Because you said not to, Katie. Precisely because you and people like you say they’re bad. And for almost no other reason.

Obviously the purpose behind bemoaning the passage of the legacy of Murrow and Cronkite faded away sometime during Dan Rather’s tenure. But surely such obvious side-handed hucksterism ought to be beneath anyone who puts the word “journalist” on a business card.