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Thanks due to some, no thanks to others

Thursday, November 22, 2007

No sooner am I back from the frontlines of Hollywood’s writers’ strike, than I walk into the collapse of renewed efforts to end Broadway’s strike.

And in an apparent swing of some weird trans-continental disputes pendulum, it’s the Hollywood stoppage that now offers a fresh chance for settlement – with talks scheduled to re-start on Nov 26.

 

Progress in the New York talks between theater employers and labor was stymied in part, it turns out, by division among the trade unionists.

 

The overall president of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, Tom Short, was ready to settle on some of the owners’ demands for minimum crewing levels, but he was outgunned in “no-surrender” determination by the head of Local 1, the stolid New Yorker Jim Claffey. The negotiation breakdown that ensued doesn’t bode well for any early settlement.

 

The TV and film writers’ dispute, though, also has its own odd, somewhat surprising wrinkles within the union side, which probably work to that side’s advantage - as I prefigured last week, not so much here, but rather on THE MEDIA BEAT’s new radio platform.

 

[This column now boasts, you may or may not be interested to know, an on-air version - available also in rapidly posted podcasts, heard via a click here - from Robin Hood Radio in Connecticut. My commentaries are taken up by "Morning Mix" co-host Marshall Miles; that show, driven by him alongside Mike Flint, is the daily signature kick-start for this eclectic station serving the comfortable north-west corner of the Constitution State - which attracts many upscale weekend (and sometimes longer-staying) refugees from the world’s media capital, New York City, and yet inexcusably still lacks a public radio service of its own.

 

Listeners and hopeful underwriters alike can confidently expect Robin Hood Radio (in all its forms … the current WHDD 1020 on the AM band, plus an FM service, as well as the robinhoodradio.com audio stream on the web) to soon gain a public operating license, and provide the region with a full range of National Public Radio and Public Radio International content as well as its own original quality programming.]

 

What I discussed on Robin Hood Radio was the slightly anomalous position of writers at CBS News (and in the newsrooms of four local big-city CBS stations) who are Writers’ Guild of America members, even though that union is broadly seen as the union of choice for entertainment scribes, not newshounds.

 

Once Evening News with Katie Couric hacks were to stop stroking their keyboards (in pursuit of their claim for a new contract, impassed for over two years now) I wouldn’t exactly expect the 6.30pm slot to go black. But pressure on the network could mount nonetheless. The Democrats’ presidential contenders have almost fallen over themselves to say they wouldn’t cross WGA picket lines to take part in the CBS-mounted candidates’ debate on December 10th.

 

It was Hillary Clinton (above left) who proved first to take this stand, followed quickly - within hours of course - by Barack Obama and John Edwards (who’d already demonstrated his support by last week walking the picket-line at NBC’s beautiful downtown Burbank studios) and then Bill Richardson.

 

Interestingly, the generally furthest left-leaning hopeful, Dennis Kucinich has not (so far) joined his fellows in making a stalwart pro-union statement. Perhaps he will tomorrow (Friday) in New Hampshire, when he speaks at something of a writers’ hang-out, the noted White Birch Bookstore in Conway, NH.

 

 

 

I HAPPENED DURING MY WEST-EAST FLIGHT HOME TO WATCH producer-director Michael McHugh's documentary in which I am shown saying I’m thankful to be alive, as I reflect on a close encounter with death once, a long time ago, in Northern Ireland. It prepared me for some strong Thanksgiving reading back at my desk, from which I learned new numbers to indicate how the Iraq war has reached another queasy landmark.

 

Quite apart from the body-count of just over four thousand American and Coalition military fatalities (at last now slowing, after the so-called "surge", for the first time in three years) and countless, but certainly more than 80,000 Iraqi deaths – this conflict has now cost the lives of more journalists than any previous war on record. Over 200 in fact. (Pictured above right is the funeral of Baghdad TV reporter Mahmoud Za'al earlier this year.)

 

By way of contrast, World War Two recorded 68 journalists killed, Vietnam listed 77 and the Balkans in the 1990s claimed 36.

 

"Covering Iraq," says Chris Cramer, president of CNN International, “is the single most dangerous assignment in the history of journalism."

 

Any reporter covering Iraq, be it an American, an Iraqi, or any nationality, can perhaps simply give thanks today that they’re alive - today.