The media loves ‘celebrating’ anniversaries, but there was surprisingly little coverage on the LA Riots this year.  What coverage there was talked about how South Central (now South) Los Angeles remains a tinderbox .  Worse, the Yuppies are coming. 

The Los Angeles Riots began on April 29, 1992, at around 6:45PM.  The not-guilty verdict in the trial of four LAPD officers charged with the beating of Rodney King came down around 3:15PM in Simi Valley, a northern (white) suburb of Los Angeles.  By 4:30PM, crowds were gathering at Florence and Normandie Avenues in South Central  LA.  By 6:45PM, a division of LA Police officers had ‘redeployed’,  never to return,.  The  crowd grew violent, pulling (white) truckdriver Reginald Denny out of his truck and beating him.

In the same way many can remember where they were when President Kennedy was assassinated, I remember where I was April 29: arriving at a Los Angeles Lakers playoff game against the Portland Trailblazers.  Leaving our two year old with a babysitter, we had driven south from West Hollywood down La Cienega Boulevard to the Great Western Forum.  Listening to Chick’s pre-game analysis, we probably missed radio news reports about the just-beginning troubles by minutes.  We also just missed the rioting which had spread to Inglewood between 7 and 9PM. 

The game, which took place long before the cell phone/mobile Web era, was an engrossing thriller.  Few had any idea what was going on outside.  The Lakers, staggered early that season by the HIV-related retirement of Magic Johnson, won in overtime in what would be their only playoff win that year.

Late in the game, a message flashed on the square scoreboard above center court.  ”Inglewood Police Control: Exit to the North and West only.”  The crowd had been psyched–until we stepped out into the darkness and fire.  A friend’s Honda had the windshield smashed.  Our inconspicuous 1987 Chevy Cavalier was unharmed.  All the streetlights were out.  People threw rocks as we drove through deep puddles where firemen had tried to stop the burning.  We raced north on LaBrea, looking into every car as they looked at us, wondering if the people inside were angry enough to kill. 

We made it home and sent the babysitter away.  The next day, I carried my two-year-old on my shoulders to my office at Larry Flynt Publications.  Our child care provider couldn’t make it to work from the devastated area.   A curfew was declared, schools and businesses were closed, and we went home and watched TV.  Our neighborhood was relatively safe, patrolled by the Los Angeles Sheriffs department rather than the embattled LAPD.  Still, opportunistic thieves smashed their way into a Gap store two blocks away.  Much of the rest of the city was burned or looted in what the politically correct called “the uprising.”  The California National Guard stood with their M-16s guarding streetcorners near our house.

On Monday, May 4,  1992, schools and businesses reopened. The toll: more than 50 killed, over four thousand injured, 12,000 arrested, and $1 billion in property damage.

To this day, my wife tells me I should have known better.  I can only hang my head, knowing we had driven into the inferno.  The good news: we are still together, Magic Johnson is still alive and going strong  and so is Los Angeles.

That’s what the ever-reliable New York Post’s claims. Money quote:

On Sunday night, April 15th, 12 hours before Cho Seung-Hui began his killing spree on the Virginia Tech campus, “Dateline NBC” devoted its entire show to telling the story of psychotic murderer Robert Hyde.

The morning after NBC’s show aired, Cho, described by schoolmates as an all-night TV watcher, shot and killed two people.

He then returned to his dormitory to mail a parcel to NBC. It included a note from Cho that began, “You forced me into a corner.”

Then he traveled to a different section of the Virginia Tech campus, where he shot and murdered 30 more people.

Mushnick’s piece is a variation on space aliens broadcasting directly to some lunatic’s brain–or Son of Sam claiming a black dog told him to kill.  And it’s about as logical.  How many millions of people have watched Natural Born Killers–and how many have become mass murderers?  How many have read the Post’s classic headline Headless Body Found in Topless Bar, and been inspired to commit same?

Mushnick’s twisted plotline and attempt to blame the media comes straight from the WWE Wrestling he so much enjoys, and its founder, his pal Vince McMahon.

The number of ‘active’ blogs has stalled at 15 million by Technorati’s count, according to Valleywag (tip of the hat to Andrew Sullivan.)  I don’t necessarily get that from the data.  And each day when I log into WordPress, home of this blog, there’s a few thousand more of us.  Today (April 29, 2007, 11:30AM PST) there were 911,236 blogs.  Check for yourself; looks like they’re still multiplying, if not like Tribbles.

Even though the first Spiderman 3 DVDs were fakes, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has a serious issue on its hands.  Nine out of every 10 DVDs sold in China is an illegal copy.  But MPAA spokesman Dan Glickman isn’t the most charismatic and Jack Valenti has passed on  What to do?

Put Flo and Lucky on the case!

 

Flo and Lucky are the silent spokesdogs of the MPAA, deployed throughout Asia to literally ’sniff out’ pirated movies and games.  The heroic dogs, trained to detect polycarbonate, even put a stop to a stash of child pornography.  No wonder the pirates of Malaysia have put a bounty on their heads.

You don’t have to believe a word of it.  It’s still a brilliant PR gambit by the MPAA, as people care much more about chocolate Labs than camcorder-wielding movie pirates or bloated movie moguls.

Journalists are taught that balanced reporting and multiple voices are important.  An accepted way to achieve both is with the three-source story.  Whether you blame staff cuts, star power or another explanation, such balance may be a thing of the past.  Witness the following AP story which ran in the Los Angeles Times of April 20, 2007, P. E18 and on the Web.

 Cruise assists 9/11 Workers

From the Associated Press, April 20, 2007

Tom Cruise’s latest effort isn’t for the big screen. It’s for the New York police officers, firefighters and paramedics of Sept. 11.

Cruise was to appear Thursday at a private dinner in Manhattan to raise money for the New York Rescue Workers Detoxification Project, a program he co-founded in 2002.

The program, based on principles developed by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, offers free treatment to emergency workers who suffer breathing difficulties and other health problems stemming from exposure to toxins at ground zero after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The program has treated 785 workers since its inception, said Director Jim Woodworth. Each worker is given vitamins and nutritional counseling and participates in daily exercise and sauna sessions.

“We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for Tom,” Woodworth said.

Quick quiz: how many sources do you see?  How many voices do you get? Is this a press release, or a news article?

Believe it or not, both Fox News and US Magazine took the same material and delivered a much more .  Money quote: “‘This is just hocus-pocus,’ said Dr. Bob Hoffman of the New York City Poison Control Center.”

If it’s spring, the proxy-season circus is in town.  At this time of year, public relations and IR (Investor Relations) pros prepare for their corporation’s annual shareholder meetings.  Shockingly enough, these meetings are often stage-managed to cheerlead for the CEO and avoid controversy. 

But even when IR folks try to keep things under control, often the meetings turn into bizarre theatre.  At a Ford shareholder meeting in Irvine, California, I watched noted shareholder ‘gadfly’ Evelyn Y. Davis fawn over then-CEO Bill Ford with an unsettling mix of maternal concern and lust.  Later, he personally delivered her new Jaguar.

Whether it’s Citibank or among the restive shareholders of the New York Times, Evelyn is on the case.  I’ve written about her, and she always has a lot to say: When Safeway’s general counsel implored “Miss Davis” to be quiet, “It’s Mrs. Davis,” she insisted.  I’ve had three husbands.” At Morgan Stanley, Davis threatened, “When I’m gone, my ghost will appear at the meeting.”  Replied Chairman Philip Purcell, “We look forward to your ghost.”

Purcell and Ford show the right way for CEOs to respond to gadflys like Evelyn; listen patiently, act when their suggestions are appropriate and reasonable, keep your sense of humor. 

It’s easy to snicker at the gadflies.   But often dissident stockholders have a point.  Unchallenged, bad corporate leadership can damage even the strongest company—like this software architect whose biggest innovation appears to be creating the 35-day month and 100-day quarter for booking revenue and making numbers.

When commerce and opinion collide, guess who wins? I’m not a Rosie O’Donnell fan, and I don’t think I’ve ever watched a whole View. 

But the Japanese have a saying, “The nail that stands up gets pounded down.”   The producers and advertisers would probably have been fine if Rosie confined her comments to Donald Trump and American Idol, instead of dancing on the electrified third rail of World Trade Center conspiracy theories.

When boycott petitions lament the “delightfully controversial” pre-Rosie View, and the heat gets like , ABC and the producers start looking for an exit to protect their investment.

How ironic that David Halberstam, who made his bones as a journalist in Vietnam, passed on just the day before injured soldier Jessica Lynch and the family of the late Pat Tillman testified before Congress.  The hearing, “Misleading Information from the Battlefield,” focuses on the infamous friendly fire death of Army Ranger Specialist Patrick Tillman in Afghanistan and the capture and rescue of Private Lynch in Iraq.

 It’s often said that “truth is the first casualty in war.”  Halberstam, who won the Pulitzer Prize in journalism at 30, wrote in 1965 about Vietnam, but the parallels to Iraq are inescapable. 

If Halberstam had been given one more day, he would have been watching the  testimony.

No, Joe Francis is not a sympathetic figure.  But a conviction and 35 days in jail with a convicted cop killer for a cellmate, for squabbling with a judge? 

It’s tempting to blame it all on Francis’ own hubris.  But this, the bribery charges, and  the crowing Department of Justice press release announcing the tax indictment, makes it pretty clear there’s a government bulls-eye on Joe’s back.

When first they come for the pornographers, to paraphrase Pastor Niemoller, who will they come for next?

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales got very poor reviews  for saying “I don’t ” over 70 times in his Senate testimony about why eight federal prosecuters were fired.  It was a particularly weak performance considering he practiced for a week beforehand.

My company provides media training to spokespeople.  Contrary to popular belief, we do not teach executives how to lie, spin or deflect.  Instead, we help them focus their story, create key messages and help them practice telling their story to a skeptical press.   The best ways to do this are to know your story, communicate your message with energy and passion and if faced with tough questioning deal with the issue and swim back to your story.

With some saying that over 90% of what we communicate is non-verbal, it’s critically important to radiate energy, confidence and belief in what you’re there to sell.  If you can’t tap that belief, even a week of media training isn’t going to help.