Category: Media Watch

 “Folks, we’ll be right back with the president of the United States.” So teased Jay Leno the other night on The Tonight Show.

I know a lot of folks are going to disagree on this–among them, White House officials. And that is, context is everything when it comes to hearing directly from the president on critically important issues. It matters so much that I wish I weren’t seeing Barack Obama being interviewed by late-night comics. Some things should be beneath the dignity of the office of the president, regardless of occupant.

Put it this way: Presidential commentary on embassy closures, NSA surveillance, Russian relations and partisanship in Washington should not be coming on after a Denny’s commercial and before an appearance by soul diva Patti LaBelle.

There are plenty of forums for President Obama to reach the American people. In fact, there have never been more. But what was appropriate for candidate Obama–or candidate Clinton, candidate Kennedy or ex-President Nixon–is not appropriate for a sitting president.

One more thing. Having said that, this president is really good at this sort of thing. He’s quick, he’s humorous, he’s articulate. I look forward to his post-presidency appearances.

* “We believe it would be more constructive to postpone the summit until we have more results from our shared agenda. Russia’s disappointing decision to grant Edward Snowden temporary asylum was also a factor that we considered in assessing the current state of our bilateral relationship.”–Presidential press secretary Jay Carney on the cancelation of next month’s summit between President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

* “A slap in the face to the United States of America … giving asylum to Edward Snowden.”–Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

* “The average CEO has gotten a raise of nearly 40 percent since 2009. The average American earns less than he or she did in 1999. … It’s not just morally wrong, it’s bad economics, because when middle class families have less to spend, guess what? Businesses have fewer consumers.”–President Barack Obama.

* “U.S. corporate tax rates are higher than the tax rates of other big economies. Wrong. After deductions and tax credits, the average corporate tax rate in the U.S. is lower. According to the Congressional Research Service, the United States has an effective corporate tax rate of 27.1 percent, compared to an average of 27.7 percent in the other large economies of the world.”–Robert B. Reich, former secretary of labor in the Clinton administration.

* “The reality is that much is classified just to take the issue off the public agenda. That’s not what classification is for, but it often serves that purpose.”–Steve Aftergood, Federation of American Scientists secrecy expert.

* “We need to ensure that incarceration is used to punish, deter and rehabilitate–not merely to convict, warehouse and forget.”–U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.

* “Anyone who says that racial discrimination is not a problem in American elections must not be paying attention.”–Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

* “(Anthony) Weiner is the poster boy for a sub-species of lawmakers who are really noisemakers, maestros of the cable-ready kerfuffle, their sights set on MSNBC or Fox News or  Politico, their need for notice constant. He’s a fun house mirror of narcissism in politics … .”–Frank Bruni, New York Times.

* “She has a great ability to keep speculation around her swirling, but I think that it’s pretty clear watching her over the last couple of years, there’s not much interest in either substantive policy issues or actual governance.”–Former McCain-Palin campaign manager Steve Schmidt on whether Sarah Palin might run for the U.S. Senate in 2014.

* “Do you want a terrible economy and a low loan rate? I’ll take a recovering economy all day long.”–Sandy Garcia, vice president of the Mortgage Bankers Association of Florida, on home-loan rates edging higher.

* “The marriage between the newspaper industry and technology has never been consummated, but it could happen at The Washington Post now.”–Media analyst Ken Doctor of Outsell Inc. on the purchase of the Post by Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos.

* “They have been entirely deficient up until about six months ago. All the noise was coming from the other side. We have to ramp it up as to the benefits.”–Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., assessing the Obama administration’s approach to selling the Affordable Care Act.

* “There are a lot of people who thought he did a good job when he was governor. Everything I hear from my friends in Florida is, he’s going to be very competitive.”–Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., on Charlie Crist’s chances in a gubernatorial challenge to Rick Scott.

* “You don’t always agree with him, but you know where he stands.”–Gov. Rick Scott on New Port Richey Republican Mike Fasano, who recently resigned from the House to become Pasco County’s tax collector.

* “I believe a holistic review of Florida’s justice system is long overdue, and I also think that mass incarceration, a result of inequities and other flaws in our system, is a fundamental conservative issue that Speaker Weatherford and other Republicans can and should embrace.”–Rep. Perry Thurston of Fort Lauderdale, the Democratic leader of the Florida House of Representatives.

* “The answer remains the same: We are not for sale.”–Tampa Bay Times CEO Paul Tash.

* “Until we can build the brand awareness for the Tampa Bay area in Latin America, we are still counting heavily on local support to sustain us.”–Joseph Mohan, Copa Airlines’ vice president-commercial.

* “Access to clean, potable water should not be a privilege but a basic right for all of our citizens. I think we ought to take private franchises out of that role.”–Hillsborough County Commissioner Kevin Beckner.

* “They need to decide if this is a system of improvement or if this is a system of sledge-hammering. We are at a crossroads.”–Pinellas County school superintendent Mike Grego on the A-F school model.

* “Over the next four to five years, Hillsborough County will experience a rash of new hotel development not seen in this area for the past 15 years.”–Lou Plasencia, founder of The Plasencia Group, a hospitality real estate firm.

The plight of print media–trumped by technology and popular culture–is a familiar one. But how sobering, even to insiders, in seeing what the Boston Globe, one of America’s iconic dailies, sold for the other day. The Globe, which was purchased by the New York Times in the 1990s for $1.1 billion, was sold this month for $70 million.

So much for all those kudos that came the Globe’s way in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing. In the midst of a CNN meltdown, a talking-head frenzy and a blogging food fight, the Globe comported itself as real journalists covering real breaking news as real professionals. But it obviously didn’t really matter enough.

Interesting, of course, that the new owner is John Henry, who owns the Boston Red Sox, a different form of Boston icon, the news-making kind. But the Sox do more than play baseball. As Northeastern University journalism professor Dan Kennedy recently noted, ironically, on The Huffington Post: “The real issue is … how it manages the tricky task of reporting on a major business and civic organization that’s run by the paper’s new owner.”

What’s being called the most credible, specific and alarming terrorist threat in years made understandably big news this week. Flipping around the dials on Monday, I saw how extensive the coverage was on network television as well as the PBS News Hour: updates on all the embassies that were closing, all the Western travelers who were being warned. But if the al–Qaida alerts were in order of priority, they were apparently less newsworthy than breaking news of Major League Baseball drug suspensions and Alex Rodriguez’s appeal–and countdown to his first game back against the Chicago White Sox. A-Rod’s return and season debut was the lead story across the board. First things first.

You can’t rebottle the genie. Thus, too bad the media and Democratic partisans didn’t resist the shorthand of “Obamacare” when it was initially being utilized by Republicans. To GOPsters, “Obamacare” was a too-tempting-to-resist pejorative that would further demonize all things Obama-related. It was a rally-around appellation. Affordable Care Act, unsexy and bureaucratic, never got solid traction in popular parlance–and that’s the media’s fault. The same media that would often refer to candidate Obama as “Barack”–because its news readers were clueless about a foreign-sounding name.

* “The pain people feel when they look at their buying power must be reduced. … The government’s direction will be to save Iran’s economy … and interact constructively with the world.”–New Iranian President Hasan Rouhani.

* “You left the Egyptians. You turned your back on the Egyptians, and they won’t forget that.”–Egypt’s commanding Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sissi criticizing the U.S. response to threats of a civil war.

* “Every government has corruption, including ours. But China’s is industrial strength.”–Thomas Friedman, New York Times.

* “There’s not an action that I take that you don’t have some folks in Congress who say that I’m usurping my authority. Some of those folks think I usurp my authority by having the gall to win the presidency. And I don’t think that’s a secret.”–President Barack Obama.

* “One of the least attractive legacies of Barack Obama will be the way he empowered freshman senators to believe they were only one or two good speeches away from the presidency. Right now the show horses of the U.S. Senate are Rand Paul of Kentucky, Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida. All are preparing for a 2016 presidential bid. … The three of them have an average age of 45 and an average tenure in Washington of 1.9 years. …They’re the ones with the national names, in a party that’s got a crush on crazy.”–Gail Collins, New York Times.

* “The (Rand) Paulites, pining for the splendid isolation of the 19th century, want to leave the world alone on the assumption that it will then leave us alone.”–Charles Krauthhammer, Washington Post.

* “There is a lot of misunderstanding about what’s collected, why it’s collected and how much is being used.”–Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, chairman of the Appropriations defense subcommittee, on the need for more information about the NSA’s phone-records surveillance.

* “South Korea today has twice the population of the North and 40 times the GDP. Must we still deploy a U.S. army on the Korean DMZ?”–Patrick J. Buchanan, Creators Syndicate.

* “‘Stand your ground’ splits the country sharply along political, gender and racial lines.”–Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.

* “Demands for a special session to repeal the (‘stand your ground’) law disregard the very foundation of our representative democracy by presuming that a law passed by the majority of a constitutional body should be reversed by the objections of the few.”–Will Weatherford, R-Wesley Chapel and speaker of the Florida House of Representatives.

* “Women are great listeners. Men are just a different kind of personality type.”–Robert B. Hirschhorn, jury-selection consultant used by the defense in the George Zimmerman trial.

* “They don’t know diddly-squat. Diddly-squat!”–Oprah Winfrey’s response to what young people today know about the civil rights movement.

* “(Anthony) Weiner is the poster boy for a sub-species of lawmakers who are really noisemakers, maestros of the cable-ready kerfuffle, their sights set on MSNBC or Fox News or Politico, their need for notice constant. He’s a fun house mirror of narcissism in politics … .”–Frank Bruni, New York Times.

* “There are a lot of people who thought he did a good job when he was governor. Everything I hear from my friends in Florida is, he’s going to be very competitive.”–Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., on Charlie Crist’s chances in a gubernatorial challenge to Rick Scott.

* “They have been entirely deficient up until about six months ago. All the noise was coming from the other side. We have to ramp it up as to the benefits.”–Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., criticizing the Obama Administration’s approach to selling the Affordable Care Act.

* “I don’t think too many people question that there is a strong linkage between improved transportation and improved economic growth. It’s what that mix of transportation options is and how you pay for it–that’s when the conversation gets a little dicier, and those conversations are yet to come.”–Rick Homans, president and CEO of the Tampa Hillsborough Economic Development Corp.

* “Are we a major league community? Are we a major league region? I think people have to decide what we are.”–St. Petersburg Mayor Bill Foster.

* “It doesn’t bother me that we do it. It just needs to be done correctly.”–Hillsborough County school superintendent MaryEllen Elia on grading schools.

* “They need to decide if this is a system of improvement or if this is a system of sledge-hammering. We are at a crossroads.”–Pinellas County school superintendent Mike Grego on the A-F school model.

* “Over the next four to five years, Hillsborough County will experience a rash of new hotel development not seen in this area for the past 15 years.”–Lou Plasencia, founder of The Plasencia Group, a hospitality real estate firm.

* “Many, many months to multiple years.”–Assessment  of David R. Shedd, deputy director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, as to how long the Syrian conflict could last.

* “…Considered terminated the process begun in the conversations in Guatemala (in June with Secretary of State John Kerry) that had as their goal the regularization of our diplomatic relations.”–Venezuelan Foreign Minister Elias Jaua on where formal relations now stand with the United States.

* “They’re the most important buyers of art in the market today.”–Patricia Hambrecht, chief business development officer for Phillips auction house, referring to Qatar, the tiny Persian Gulf country with enormous wealth and cultural ambitions.

* “I’m not going to let gridlock or inaction or indifference to the plight of families get in the way of this country. So where I could act on my own, I’ll act on my own.”–President Barack Obama in his Jacksonville speech.

* “Washington is dysfunctional politically, and it is not just a momentary thing.”–Rahm Emanuel, mayor of Chicago and former chief of staff of President Obama.

* “We ought to be judged on how many laws we repeal.”–House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio.

* “I failed. Big time. When you dig yourself a hole, you can either lie in it the rest of your life or do something positive. That’s why I’m running.–Former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who resigned in disgrace over a prostitution habit, on his candidacy for New York City comptroller.

* “I don’t think there are any rude questions.”–The late Helen Thomas.

* “Sometimes I sit back and evaluate that we give too many second chances.”–Ohio State head football coach Urban Meyer.

* “We believe there should be an amendment to the ‘stand your ground’ law that simply says you cannot be the initial aggressor. You cannot start the confrontation. You cannot pick the fight, and then shoot the person, put your hands in the air and say, ‘I was standing my ground.'”–Benjamin Crump, attorney for the parents of Trayvon Martin.

* “George Zimmerman got away with murder, but you can’t get away from God. … The law couldn’t prove it.”–Zimmerman-trial Juror B-29 or “Maddy.”

* “I voted based on what I thought was the intent of the law. Obviously, if I knew then what I know about how the law was implemented, I would not have voted for that.”–Democratic gubernatorial candidate and former state Sen. Nan Rich on her 2005 vote for the “stand your ground” law.

* “Why would we want to alienate this rising star? I’m not encouraging people to look past immigration, but–no pun intended–to have a comprehensive look at his record.”–Niger Innis, chief strategist of TheTeaParty, commenting on Sen. Marco Rubio.

* “I will have $25 million in the bank by the end of the year and will use it in early 2014 to define my opponent.”–Gov. Rick Scott.

* “When people are looking at houses in an area, they do look at grades of the schools, not knowing that the whole thing is a shell game. To a teacher who teaches in an A school, it is a big deal because they get that A-plus money.”–Hillsborough School Board member Cindy Stuart.

* “We’re not going to raise taxes to pay for a stadium.”–Hillsborough County Commission Chairman Ken Hagan on how far the county would go in exploring any baseball-stadium options.

* “I can tell you our organization would be very supportive of public transportation, mass transit and light rail and very supportive of a baseball stadium downtown.”–Rick Homans, executive director of the Tampa Hillsborough Economic Development Corp.

* “It’s time we got out of thinking about transportation as only roads. I think this is a good, not terribly expensive way to do that.”–Ray Chiaramonte, executive director of the Hillsborough Metropolitan Planning Commission, commenting on a proposed high-speed ferry service.

* “We see this as the heart and soul of the community.”–SoHo Capital developer Adam Harden of the role of the Armature Works building, repurposed as an events locale, in The Heights mixed-use development north of downtown along the Hillsborough River.

* “When you meet face-to-face and shake hands, that works. When you have attorneys send letters across the channel, that’s not effective.”–Tampa Port Authority board member Patrick Allman, on the frustrating, Channelside relationship between the Authority and the Irish Bank Resolution Corp.

* “We need revenue to sustain operations.”–Michael English, Tampa Historic Streetcar board member.

* “When law enforcement is going out there for disturbance calls, they need to be the eyes and ears for code enforcement.”–Tampa City Council member Frank Reddick.

* “I may top a wee pint.”–Mayor Bob Buckhorn at the ribbon-cutting for the Paddywagon Irish pub downtown.

* “We are really tired of these wars. Women and children are suffering in many ways in many parts of the world.”–Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani schoolgirl who was shot by the Taliban, in her address to the United Nations.

* “From the beginning, America seemed determined to impose its own upbeat Hollywood ending on a movie that was only just getting started and would become much darker than imagined. The notion that what was happening in Egypt was a transformative event that would turn the country over to the secular liberals powered by Facebook and Twitter was truly an American conceit.”–Aaron David Miller, author of the forthcoming book “Can America Have Another Great President?”

* “The Germans, of course, yield to no one in their distaste for indebtedness. But they also understand the distinction between consumption and investment. By borrowing, they’ve made investments whose future benefits will far outweigh repayment costs. There’s nothing foolhardy about that.”–Robert H. Frank, economics professor at Cornell University.

* “‘I have been made stateless and hounded for my act of political expression,’ he (Edward Snowden) declared from the Moscow airport. Not true. Snowden’s ‘hounding’ stems from his deliberate decision to violate the criminal law. In the United States he was free to express any political view–certainly freer than he would be in countries like Russia, Venezuela and Ecuador.”–Ruth Marcus, Washington Post.

* “Why is it that African-American males are so disproportionately both the victims and the perpetrators of violence, more often than not against one another? In Philadelphia, where I am mayor, 75 per cent of our homicide victims are black men. About 80 per cent of the people we arrest for homicide are black men. Black men across the country are killing one another, yet that epidemic is rarely part of any national conversation.”–Michael Nutter, the African-American mayor of Philadelphia.

* “We must stand our ground to ensure our laws reduce violence.”–U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.

* “I believe ‘stand your ground’ should stay in the books.”–Fla. Gov. Rick Scott.

* “Now we’re not only the ‘yes-we-can city. We’re the watch-this city. We’re on a roll and we ain’t stopping.”–TIA CEO Joe Lopano in the aftermath of announcements that Copa Airlines will fly direct from TIA to Panama City, Panama and Edelweiss Air will expand its non-stop service to Zurich.

* “This company choosing Tampa Bay is an affirmation of all of our strengths and most importantly our potential. This moves the needle for both the image and the brand of Tampa Bay.”–Rick Homans, president of the Tampa Hillsborough Economic Development Council, on the announcement that pharmaceutical giant Bristol-Myers Squibb will locate its North American Capability Center–worth a total of 579 jobs over three years–in Hillsborough County.

* “When Hillsborough County succeeds, Tampa wins as well.”–Mayor Bob Buckhorn on the Bristol-Meyers Squibb announcement.

* “We were able to present all the pros and cons of the project to the board. And after thorough discussion and reflection on all aspects of this proposal, a very clear majority of our board is in favor of the project.”–Straz Center board chairman Martin Silbiger, announcing that the Straz has withdrawn its opposition to the apartment tower planned near the performing arts center.

* “You have to have a demonstration because if you don’t see the people, you figure everything’s all right. And it’s not. It’s not. I just don’t want to have another Trayvon here.”–St. Petersburg City Councilman Wengay Newton.

* “(The high cost) was silly, but that’s downtown St. Petersburg. It’s doing so well that that’s what we had to do. There’s no more dirt down here.”–Chuck Prather, who developed the popular boutique Birchwood hotel on Beach Drive, on paying $2 million last month for Mansion by the Bay–with plans to restore it as a Birchwood annex.

* “The Pier was closed when it was for safety and budgetary reasons. It’s all economics. And we are not and have not and will not budget for any part of the vertical structure itself to be reopened, even on a limited use.”–St. Petersburg Mayor Bill Foster.

* “Candidates recognize what we can do for them. They realize that the LGBT community gets out and votes and there’s economic impacts, too. It doesn’t behoove them to not have us on their side.”–Susan McGrath, president of the Pinellas Stonewall Democrats.

* “We’re not going to take prisoners.”–Mayor Bob Buckhorn on the city’s 30-day, code-enforcement sweep.

Last month John Fleming, the Tampa Bay Times’ respected performing arts critic, retired. He will be missed. Fleming, 66, was here for 22 years. He’s especially anticipating one particular aspect of his post-critic life. “I’m looking forward to going to performances where I don’t have to take notes in the dark,” he underscored recently.

Any print journalist who’s ever covered a beat–even with the lights on–can readily identify with those sentiments.