Posted: 2009 December 07, Monday 10:45
By George Merlis
NBC'S ETHICS AND THE WHITE HOUSE GATE CRASHERS
Full disclosure: for seven years I was at the helm of Good Morning America and during that period nothing gave me more satisfaction than seeing the Today Show discomforted. But this comment does not flow from that ancient rivalry. On Dec. 1, the two publicity-craving Washington society wannabes who crashed the White House State Dinner for the Prime Minister of India, Michaele and Tareq Salahi, gave their only interview to date to Matt Lauer of Today. First, NBC’s announcement of their appearance used the word “crashers” in quotes, as if questioning whether or not their presence at a White House State Dinner without an invitation was, indeed, “crashing.”
Lauer omitted an inconvenient fact.
Then Lauer neglected to mention in his interview that the most notorious “reality” show aspirants since the Balloon Boy’s father, were being videotaped during their party-crashing adventure by cable channel Bravo for its “Real Housewives of Washington, DC” series. Bravo is NBC’s little brother, owned by the same corporate parent, General Electric. Lauer’s failure to mention that little bit of corporate synergy was either an ethical or journalistic lapse. Or both.
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TOO MUCH REALITY?
President Obama greets the party-crashers. Transparency note: this is a White House photo. The fact that it was not withheld is about the only positive out of this story.
One possible explanation for the Secret Service’s lapse in admitting the publicity-hungry Salahis to the White House, sans invitation, could be the presence of Bravo’s reality show lights and cameras recording their every step. Might not that coverage have added an aura of credibility on the couple? If it did, it’s a greater lapse than first imagined because the cameras should have prompted extra caution not less. Here’s why: On September 9, 2001, two days before the 9/11 atttacks, two Belgian jounalists of Moroccan descent showed up with a video camera at the headquarters of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance in Afghanistan to interview Ahmad Shah Massoud, the resistance group’s leader. The Belgians were actually Tunesian operatives sponsored either by al-Qaeda or Pakistan’s pro-Taliban intelligence service. Their video camera contained a bomb, which they set off, killing Massoud and another top Northern Alliance figure.
So rather than granting the gate-crashers the glow of celebrity acceptance, the cameras should have set off Secret Service alarm bells. This is not a new concern, by the way. About 30 years ago, I accompanied David Hartman, then host of Good Morning America, to a Manhattan hotel for an interview with Israel’s prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin. After passing through U.S. State Department security we confronted Rabin’s Israeli bodyguards. They not only passed a metal detecting wand over us, they frisked us and then proceeded to take screwdrivers to our Sony video cameras, opening them up and inspecting the interiors for weapons or explosives.
Oh, and one final question: was Bravo a co-conspirator in the party-crashing? As a TV producer, I would have wanted to see the invitation -- not just to vet that it existed, but to shoot some video of it. Since "The Real Housewives of Washington, DC" is a "reality" show, and not a news show, if I were producing it, I would want video of the hyper-excited Salahis opening the invitation and "spontaneously" reacting to the good news. Congress is looking into the lapse. It remains to be seen if they will ask questions about Bravo's role in the matter.
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TIGER AND OPRAH:
TWO BRANDS
Brand icon: Tiger Woods.
The biggest reality show currently on TV, the Tiger Woods Saga, is taking place almost entirely off-camera. The media have conferred on a handful of individuals the status of a brand; these people have grown beyond mere celebrity to become so iconic they are, like Coca-Cola and Kleenex, brands in and of themselves. Think about it: Martha Stewart, Oprah Winfrey, Madonna and Tiger Woods are enterprises powered by personality; brands, just as surely as Ivory Soap and Heinz Ketchup are brands.
On November 30, Nancy Armour, a reporter for the Associated Press, called to ask me how I thought Woods was handling his Escalade-bashing incident. At this point only one rather disreputable tabloid had made a single salacious allegation against Woods. The golfer had crashed the SUV, been to the hospital, returned home and refused to talk with the police or the media. Instead he issued the first of his series of web site comments (this was the one where there was neither domestic abuse nor extra-marital dalliances).
I told Ms. Armour I thought Woods was handling his PR badly. Woods would be wise to get out in front of the story, even if he gave only one interview to one reporter, I said. Clamming up opened the floodgates of rumor and speculation and once the current is running through, it’s impossible to close those floodgates. Evasion and/or cover-up are almost always worse than the initial problem. And they never work. The more one evades, the deeper the media dig.
There remains the very basic question of whether the media should even be digging in this ditch. Neal Pilson, the former president of CBS sports, was quoted in another AP story as saying, “At some point, he’ll play golf and he’ll move on. And at some point this will become more embarrassing to the media than to Tiger.” The media have a lot to be embarrassed about. Watching CNN and other broadcasters, I had the impression that they felt compelled to race through the news of President Obama committing an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan and the Senate health care reform debate so they could dwell at length on the really important stuff: the Tiger scandal.
Woods, meanwhile, in his favorite -- well, his only -- method of communication with the world at large, posted this on his web site: “Although I am a well-known person and have made my career as a professional athlete, I have been dismayed to realize the full extent of what tabloid scrutiny really means.” By tabloid, I assume Woods means NBC, CBS, ABC along with the National Enquirer, since those broadcasters, plus virtually every publication I have seen, extensively covered the story. (Dan Schorr, NPR’s Senior Correspondent is notoriously disinterested in sports. On Weekend Edition he said, “I not only know who Tiger Woods is, I now know more about him than I ever cared to know.”)
If your privacy is so important to you, why pose for and then release a photo like this with your wife and newborn child?
Should Woods have been dismayed by this “tabloid scrutiny?” Short answer is, yes. He did put himself out there for scrutiny. While it is true that he owes you and me and the rest of the public absolutely nothing more than the best golf game he can deliver, he owes the sponsors who have made him a very rich man a lot more. He owes them what they paid for which is unsurpassed talent wrapped in a clean, wholesome image. At the moment, the talent remains, but the image is showing lots of tarnish. Woods owes them the behavior that goes with the image they bought. If these sponsors wanted a “bad boy,” the sports, music and movie businesses offer no end of rogues they could hire. (And, might he not owe them the courtesy of using their products? The Escalade he wrecked belonged to General Motors and had been loaned to Woods when he was a spokesman for Buick. What? He wouldn’t even drive a Buick although he was urging the rest of us to buy one? What will we learn next? That he uses an electric shaver, not a Gillette Fusion, and drinks Red Bull, not Gatorade?)
Tiger touted Buicks, but drove a loaner Escalade -- until he wrecked it.
Three of Woods’ sponsors, Nike, Gatorade and Gillette, say they will stand by him. Another sponsor, AT&T, had yet to be heard from at this writing. But it remains to be seen just what “standing by” means in this instance. A company can continue to pay Woods and use him far more restrictively than in the past, trotting him out for corporate events but not running his TV commercials and magazine ads. Certainly, Nike, which sells a lot of gear to women, has got to be thinking seriously about how it can use Woods in a way that won’t alienate those customers.
And, we will never know about the deals that don’t come his way because a corporation that might have ponied up another fortune for a Tiger Woods endorsement decides not to approach him in the aftermath of the scandal.
Oprah: a brand untarnished by commercialism.
It is worthwhile to contrast the Tiger Woods brand with the Oprah Winfrey brand.
The iconic figure for both brands is an extraordinarily talented person. But what they have done with their talent speaks volumes.
Woods may well be the best golfer since 12th century Scottish shepherds began using sticks to knock stones into rabbit holes on the current site of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews. Oprah is doubtless the most successful talk show host in the far briefer history of television, an interviewer who unfailingly asks the questions most on the minds of her viewers in a manner that equally unfailingly digs beneath the superficial talking point answers and gets to the heart of the matter.
Both are extraordinarily wealthy. But Oprah got that way without endorsing products for money. If she recommends a book, it is because she read it and thinks it will enrich her viewers’ lives. The Oprah brand sells Oprah’s up-by-the-bootstraps philosophy -- not cars, drinks, wireless service, athletic equipment and the like. Oh, and when there’s a scandal -- as there was when the elite girls school she funded in South Africa experienced a sexual abuse scandal -- Oprah did not hide behind gates and post messages on a web site. She was readily available to the media, actively involved in a very public house-cleaning and bought cell phones for every student in the school with her number on speed dial so they could report directly to her any future problems.
All of which suggests a solution to Tiger Woods problem: he should go on Oprah’s show and give her a full and honest interview. If she forgives him the rest of the nation will, too. Such is the power of the Oprah brand.
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