NPR ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin says that interviewer Terry Gross was unfair to Bill O’Reilly last week. O’Reilly walked out of the interview part way through, objecting to Gross’s questions. “I believe listeners were not well served by this interview. It may have illustrated the ‘cultural wars,’ [but it] only served to confirm the belief, held by some, in NPR’s liberal bias.” By the time the interview was halfway through, it felt as though Gross was indeed ‘carrying Al Franken’s water.’ … It was not about O’Reilly’s ideas or attitudes or even his book. It was about O’Reilly as media phenomenon. That’s a legitimate subject, but in this case it was unfair to O’Reilly.”
Tag: 10.21.03
Pavarotti Hospitalized In Health Scare
The Italian tenor, 68, was said to have fallen ill after a recital in Mexico and was flown to an unnamed hospital in New York.
iTunes – The End Of Illegal Downloading?
Apple’s iTunes for Windows is a big success so far. “To hear Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs tell it, the iTunes store is the beginning of the end for the file-sharing networks. ‘This has been the birth of legal downloading’.” Others, though, are not so sure…
Recording Industry On The Trail Of 204 More Music File-Traders
The recording industry has warned 204 more people that they will be prosecuted for file-sharing. “The RIAA’s second round of lawsuits started with a sternly worded letter giving the individuals 10 days to contact the RIAA to discuss a settlement and avoid being formally sued. Under copyright law, the defendants could face damages that range from $750 to $150,000 for each illegal song.”
Godden – The Making Of A Choreographer
After an “unconventional” decade experimenting with stage images, choreographer Mark Godden proved he could tell a story with his ‘Dracula.” After a long association with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, he has “developed into that rarest and most desirable of dancesmiths: one of the fabled few who can create successful, full-length story ballets that put bums in seats.”
Jennifer Atkinson, 45
“With the premature death of Jennifer Atkinson at age 45, the Boston arts community – and especially its crafts wing – lost a vibrant, vivacious leader. Atkinson had gone from being an assistant in a suburban gallery to director of a chronically troubled museum – and then transformed that institution’s very identity.”
Where That $100 Textbook Is Half The Price
Why do American textbooks often cost as little as half the price outside the US as they do at home? Publishers say prices are cheaper abroad because students in other countries can’t afford American prices. But some American students are catching on and buying their textbooks outside the US for deeply discounted prices. “To the despair of the textbook publishers who are still trying to block such sales, the reimporting of American texts from overseas has become far easier in recent years, thanks both to Internet sites that offer instant access to foreign book prices.”
Saving Paris Review
The Paris Review was always a struggling literary magazine – low subscriber base and shoestring budget. But “last week’s George Plimpton tribute, a celebrity-studded gala at Cipriani on 42nd Street, raised $500,000 for the Paris Review Foundation, bringing the foundation’s endowment to about $1 million. Now literary insiders are buzzing about how what used to be a for-profit magazine that lost money every year has turned into a bustling nonprofit with a shot at long-term profitability. Meanwhile, the search for a new editor has begun.”
A Tax To Pay Artists For Music Copying?
Harvard professor William Fisher has a proposal for a tax on digital playback devices. Music could be downloaded and copied freely and artists would be paid from the tax fees. “He predicts that his plan, debated at a recent copyright conference, eventually would boost music revenues. Since online distribution is cheaper than printing CDs, overhead should shrink. Promotion costs could drop, too, as fans spread the word themselves about talented artists. Legal costs should vanish along with copyright lawsuits.”
Film Critics Cancel Awards Over DVD Ban
The Los Angeles Film Critics Association has voted to cancel its annual movie awards this year in protest of the Motion Picture Association’s decision not to send DVDs of nominated movies to critics this year. “The ban has prompted widespread criticism in the United States movie community, including protests by many independent producers who feel that screeners are the most effective way of getting critics to see their films, which are often released commercially in only a few smaller movie theaters.”