ANTI-PRESS EZINE #09 "We're Positive About The Negative" An August E-dition (C) Copyright 1999 Anti-Press Unless indicated otherwise, all articles by Anti-Press. Articles submitted by others do not necessarily express or reflect the opinions or beliefs of Anti-Press. Anti-Press Ezine radiates from our Reality Center. We're presently entrapped in the alleged city of Plattsburgh, northeastern New York State, USA. (For your own good: STAY THE FUG AWAY!) ============================================================= HEALTHCAST: NEWS OR PSEUDO-NEWS? You're sitting there, viewing the local evening news on TV, and a reporter comes on to tell you about a medical breakthrough, a pill, surgery, treatment, etc. She's a "health reporter"-- a professional journalist supposedly giving you objective reports on the latest developments in the medical world. But instead of health reporter, maybe the term PR flack would be more appropriate. Ever notice that generally the local health reporter doesn't cover a story in person? Now and then there's a story pertaining to the health care system in your area; the health reporter might interview a doctor and then add a comment from one of your neighbors. But most of the time the health reporter is just doing a voice-over from a prepared script interspersed with statements by specialists and patients all over the country, from Tarazana, California to Blue Balls, Pennsylvania. Obviously your local TeeVee station ain't sending a news team all over the country to produce these pieces. They have a hard enough time trying to cover that two-car-and-one-tractor-hauling-a-manure wagon-pile-up on Route 9. Sitting there one evening, we realized that the "healthcast" segment wasn't locally produced, it wasn't real "news". Obviously it was produced by a public relations company representing major clients in the health business: PR disguised as journalism. Welcome to the wonderful world of VNR-- Video News Release. A public relations company will produce a slick quasi-news segment to promote a client's new product or service. Of course, there's usually more than one side to an issue, but a PR "news" release won't go into great detail if it will negatively affect the soft sell. They want you to look favorably at a recently introduced treatment or device, even though "FDA approval is pending for this medication" or "this technique isn't recommended for all patients". We paid attention when the healthcast VNRs popped up on the local TeeVee news. There is no disclaimer saying that the segment is prepared by a public relations firm and therefore might be slanted. Now why would the station run such segments, deceiving most people into thinking they are watching real news? Simple. There's not enough reporters to cover everything. Deadlines squeeze the schedule. It takes considerable time to go out, interview some people, and then edit the footage into a story with a script. VNRs offer an easy way to cover the "news". The PR company sends a polished segment to the station with a ready-to-read script. All the local "health reporter" has to do is follow the script, blending in bits of voice-overs and on-camera appearances. Now the VNR company kinda "washes their hands" of any accusations that they're exclusively disguising public relations as news by providing two versions of each report: one polished with a script for the TeeVee meat puppet to parrot and a second one of raw footage that the TV station is supposed to use as the basis of its own objective report. Guess which version gets used the most? From the VNR company's POV, it's not their fault if a TV station only uses the polished version. So how does a station's news department "get away" with this? Well, how many times do you really WATCH television instead of just viewing it? Pay attention, especially when the health reporter says you can get more info from a Web site. Unlike most viewers, we followed her suggestion. We checked the station's Web site and discovered that the slick features were created and packaged by some company in another state that tries to promote the latest info on medical discoveries. But we couldn't glean too much info going to that company's Web site to find out who financially backed them. Hhhmmm, a wealthy philanthropist? Or-- could it possibly be?-- a bunch of greedy pharmaceutical companies, businessmen doctors, and that ilk trying to influence public opinion through pseudo-news stories? Since VNRs are provided free of charge, somebody has to pay for production costs, right down to that broadcast-ready tape that is mailed or transmitted to the station. We're pretty sure we know who is footing the bill and what kind of company is spewing all this stuff. Walking, quacking... must be a duck trying to fob itself off as an eagle. The local health reporter seems to be a pleasant enough lady-- but what are her qualifications to be a "health" reporter, beyond reading a prepared PR script? Does she have some background in medicine, chemistry, any of the hard sciences? Can she define a word like prion or explain to us which one oxygenates blood, a vein or an artery? Can she even tell us what the letters "HMO" mean without referring to her notes? Did this pretty blonde even pass high school biology class? After all, if someone is a purported "science" reporter, you would hope that they could tell you how many planets in our solar system or how lightning strikes or even why the sky is blue. And take the word "reporter", meaning someone who covers all sides of an issue. There's a difference between a reporter and a script reader. Remember that the next time you're sitting there, viewing the "news" and some wonder drug is being touted to possibly cure your ailment-- with qualifiers added like "pending full FDA approval" and "not recommended for all patients". If you want to be a guinea pig, be our guest. You might discover the downside of PR disguised as news and also learn what some people mean by "social Darwinism"... THRU THE FILM GATE: The Blair Witch Project: Over the Cliff You Go! "Moreover, such population booms are so unusual that when Walt Disney needed a lemming migration for his 1958 short feature _White Wilderness_, he had to pay Eskimo children to collect enough of the animals for a mob scene. Later, when the little creatures refused to dive into the water on cue, the film crew bodily tossed them in. Thus legends are made." From a review of the book _Do Lemmings Commit Suicide?_ by Dennis Chitty. _The Sciences_, Nov./Dec. 1996; Laurance A. Marshal, reviewer. So how many of you lemmings fell for the hucksterism and the hype for _The Blair Witch Project_? Did you allow the promoters throw you over the cliff or did you go along with the crowd and leap with everyone else because you were supposed to? We first heard of this movie's hype when a high-school-age kid was buzzing on how it was a true story, that it used real footage of three student filmmakers who turned up missing in the woods during an encounter with something really weird. The students were dead, murdered, and someone was responsible. The high school kid had heard that _TBWP_ was being initially released only to a few theaters. He and a friend had been speculating the parents of the victims were threatening a lawsuit and that's what was holding back the film from a wider release. Suppressing a guffaw we diplomatically expressed our incredulity. We mentioned the name of William Castle, B-movie horror producer from the 1950s/1960s. The story goes that he would take a third-rate movie and promote it with all sorts of gimmicks, ranging from a creating a whispering campaign to putting electric buzzers under theater seats to make the audience really jump. Check out John Goodman's character in the film _Matinee_ if you want to see how a pro does it. Those who don't learn from movie history are doomed to repeat it. Anyway, we can envision two "pros" sitting around, trying to decide how to foist _TBWP_ on an unsuspecting public. "If this film was the best at the Sundance Film Festival," says one huckster, "I hate to see the worse." "Doesn't matter," says a second huckster, "The idiots who hired us snapped it up and now we have to distribute this thing. Man, did you see that herky-jerky footage? What moron wants to sit thru that?" The first huckster ponders. "Maybe we can sell it as being filmed in 'Vomitorama', a new process--" The second huckster puts up his hand. "Hey, kids are too sophisticated for that stuff nowadays. This isn't the 1950s. Cyber-space is the thing. We gotta set up a Web site and promote this as if it's a real documentary, not some low-budget, pretentious, artsy-fartsy crap that only senile beatniks and mentally-defective philosophy professors would enjoy." "OK," says huckster #1, "but let's play up that low-budget bit. You know, allowing movie-goers to excuse this thing for not being that good because it was only made for $30,000--" "Higher." "OK, we'll sell it as a $60,000 movie--" The second huckster laughs. "Hey, let's stick with $30,000. You know, our hero Hitler and the Big Lie..." Thus legends are born. When we went to see _TBWP_ we knew it wasn't real in any sense and that the money saved on production costs was poured into advertising, the Web site, rumor-mongering, drugs, whatever. We gave the film a chance because we enjoy low-budget, non-mainstream movies. It started out OK, no problems with the mockumentary format, but after a while we said to ourselves, "This thing is not more than the sum of its low-budget parts." Characterization, pacing, story, &C. were lacking. For example, at one point the three students are lost in the woods and decide to follow the stream. Since a stream usually runs downhill to a larger body of water where you're more apt to find civilization, this seems to be a reasonable decision. But suddenly the Idiots Three are going south; they forgot about the stream. So now the viewer is treated to unsteadycam footage of the Tard Triad walking through the woods, arguing and using the f-word ad nauseam, and then they discover all they have accomplished is travel in a big circle. The way this was presented, it suggested that some sort of supernatural force was keeping them lost in the woods. But instead of "going south", wouldn't it be more logical for them to follow the stream-- and then find that the stream goes around in a full circle, adding to the lurking supernatural menace? Sorry, we don't consider it a great movie when we're sitting there, watching it, while writing in our head a better screenplay. This was one of the many flaws with this overhyped, improv B-movie. After a while we couldn't keep ourselves entertained by envisioning a better movie in our head. The frenetic, flimsy filming and the babyish bickering, all punctuated by the superfluous f-word, just dulled our senses. When the screen went dark-- the students in the "documentary" were trying to save battery power and so just kept their DAT recorder on-- we started to nod off. (Naps are important, you know. Keeps us rested to enjoy real movies.) We woke up enough to catch the ending in the cellar of insipid horror. Gee, that guy we see standing in the corner-- was he wearing a dunce cap? If William Castle was behind this thing, he would've handed out dunce caps to everyone at the end of the movie. And if that had happened, discriminating movie-goers such as ourselves would enjoy the joke-- on the lemmings. TELE-VIOLATION: CUTE TWINS STILL BEING SLUTTIFIED In a previous issue we told you how a local TeeVee station was misusing promotional material from the series _Sweet Valley High_. The station was running ads using images of the wholesome twins who starred in _SVH_ to advertise a "gentleman's club" in the area. Well, we still haven't heard from the creator of the Sweet Valley characters, Francine Pascal, even though we emailed her twice. In the meantime the ads have been updated, at least with new shots of the "ladies" at the club. But the same misappropriated clips of Brittany and Cynthia Daniels, in character as the _SVH_ twins, are still being repeated, even though we thought they would be worn out by now. In the clips the twins are talking about the _SVH_ TV show, saying things like "You'll never know what will happen!" But within the context of the ad this statement takes on a questionable meaning when it cuts to shots of dancing ladies who know how to work the pole and the lap. It seems this tittie bar-- oops, we mean "gentleman's club"-- is now featuring a boxing night. One wonders what the ladies will box with. (What is the bursting point for a silicone implant?) We're shocked-- just shocked-- that the Daniels twins are being violated this way (copyrightwise, that is). Any suggestions, readers out there? Does anyone want to join our crusade to desluttify the Sweet Valley High twins? Please email us. Help us rescue those cute sisters from the boob tube gutter. IF PBS DOESN'T DO IT TO YOU, WHO WILL? Those smiling, apparently friendly people asking for you to contribute to your local public television station-- some of 'em need a good kick in the ass. Years ago, before we knew better, we worked briefly at a public television station. For those of you not familiar with public television, it is a network of non-commercial stations that offer intelligent television: opera, documentaries, investigative journalism, educational children's shows, etc. Each station is supported by state and federal monies but most revenue must be raised by abject begging targeted at local citizens and companies. A majority of the programming comes through the Public Broadcast System and each station has to pay to carry PBS shows. During a begathon, employees at the station would go on air and try to get the phones ringing with pledges of $upport. Unlike televangelists who promise God's blessing, the public TeeVee personalities promised quality programming, in contrast to the commercial networks that, according to one employee, "offer programs that will rot your brain". The on-screen personas were sometimes at variance with the off-screen personalities. Sick with themselves for begging for a paycheck, they would take out their frustration on any lackey unfortunate enough to cross their paths during a bad day. One time we asked one of the station VIPs where he had been, just a friendly inquiry, because he needed his input on a project. Since this is a family publication, let us paraphrase this VIP's professional reply to us: "Mind your copulating feces-skull business! I'm sick of your copulating feces-skull questions, you copulating feces-skull." See what we mean when we say that some of 'em need a good kick in the ass? We thereafter called that VIP The Geek. The worse one was the Big Head, Boss Number 1. He would also growl and snap at anyone on a whim. One time we couldn't answer a question from an intern at PBS HQ and so we passed along the inquiry to the Big Head. The station was getting ready for another stressful begathon and he didn't care who was calling, even if it was the Blessed Virgin Mary. He ripped into the young intern on the other end of the line, then thrust the phone back to us. We could hear the tears of that girl at PBS HQ. We apologized, even though it wasn't our fault. We used to have a colorful description of the Big Head when someone wanted a thumbnail sketch. We described him as an obese, Neo-Nazi werewolf. What was funny was when the same personalities cited above would get on the air after another enlightening and delightful special by a therapist known as "The Love Doctor". The Love Doc would talk about loving others, how to grow love, how to share love. He claimed that senility was not due to any physical ailment-- it was only caused by a lack of love. He would gush on, wiping spittle from his flapping pie-hole, repeating the themes of love and respect and love and peace and love and self-worth and love, love, love. "Isn't that great," the Big Head or the Geek would unctuously claim. "Only here at this public television station do you find such programming. After all, blah, blah, love, blah, blah, love, blah, blah, send money, blah, blah, love..." That disingenuous crap sucked most viewers into reaching for the phone and pledging their money, not thinking that the Love Doc show wasn't a regular series, it was one or two specials during the year. The viewers' money was going towards stuff they wouldn't watch at gunpoint like opera from the Met. Here were Mr. & Mrs. Rural Middle Class, helping to pay for opera on PBS so that the Rockefellers could stay home in their mansion on a rainy night, drink some bubbly, partake of some caviar, and delight in the sounds of Beverly Sills on their giant TeeVee screen while starving children in Africa ate grass. Anyway, as soon as the "Love Rap" was over, the smile would fade and Big Head or the Geek would return to their usual prick mode. So think twice before you pick up that phone during a public TeeVee begathon. Do you want to support such pricks? Do you want to pay for opera for rich pricks while African children chew grass? The fateful decision rests in your hands-- and wallet. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Submitted works must be ready for publication (edited and proofread). Word Limit: 1000 words. No sci-fi, poetry, sci-fi poetry, poetic sci-fi, etc. Do some research and read a couple of issues to find what we want. Submissions and readers' comments should be sent to Antipress1@aol.com. Anti-Press Ezine and its sporadically published issues are available at: http://www.disobey.com/text/ Copyright 1998-2000 Anti-Press Publication by Disobey. http://www.disobey.com/ TO SUBSCRIBE: majordomo@disobey.com BODY: Subscribe APE TO UNSUBSCRIBE: majordomo@disobey.com BODY: Unsubscribe APE ------------------------------------------------------------------------