ZOO JOURNALISM
Matt Taibbi
 Remember
that story about the mayhem at the Zoo a few weeks back? Imagine
if it had been different...
Imagine
that, instead of bending branches and launching lorikeets
into the air, those notorious "underprivileged youths" had
thrown a net over the whole branch, taken every lorikeet in
the exhibit, and eaten them alive on the spot, gleefully spitting
feathers into the air as they ate.
Then
imagine that those same kids then go around the zoo and eat
every single animal in the place. The slurping and smacking
then lasts for three long years; huge piles of bones accumulate
as meek zoo administration officials look on day after day
after day. By the time police finally arrive to break it up,
there are four or five kids there who each weigh fifteen thousand
pounds, if not more.
The kids
are so obese and engorged with rare species flesh that they
are visible from observation towers at Niagara Falls. They're
so big that weather systems actually move around their huge,
rippling bodies... When investigators get there, they politely
tell the kids to leave, and the matter ends there: no arrests,
no fines, nothing. When all's said and done, there's nothing
left of the zoo but tumbleweeds, and all of Delaware Park
is left submerged in massive piles of steaming human excrement.
Try playing basketball in that.
Believe
it or not, that story actually happened. It was called the
Adelphia scandal. It should have made the actual zoo story
look trivial. But you would never have known that from reading
The Buffalo News.
Lesson
#1 in how big corporate-owned media works in this country:
When a bunch of poor black kids go nuts in a zoo, or trash
a bunch of slum properties, you can expect a full nuclear
response from your local daily. But when a gang of greedy
white oligarchs pillages a multibillion-dollar company, wrecking
not selected parts of one zoo, but the whole of your local
economy... well, the response is a little different. In The
News, the difference could have been expressed in a single
pair of headlines--"Nigger Savages Attack Zoo" in the former
case, and in the latter, "Adelphia Collapses and What a Shame:
Rigas Family Heroically Braves Terrible Tragedy."
The News
jumped on the "Niggers Attack Zoo" story with both feet. In
addition to Tom Buckham's blistering May 29 news piece, "Mass
Misbehavior Leaves Zoo a Mess," the paper ran a good half-dozen
angry editorials about the incident and a like number of outraged
letters to the editor. The News never came right out and said
that the vandals were mostly all black, but the articles were
filled with transparent code words that made it pretty clear
what it was talking about. My favorite was in Buckham's piece--a
little detail about the kind of alcoholic beverages that were
being illegally consumed on the premises. He said that the
violations included:
"...extensive
littering of the grounds with beer and malt liquor containers
sneaked through the gate in violation of the zoo's ban on
alcoholic beverages..."
When
white readers in Amherst or Lackawanna see the words "Malt
Liquor" in conjunction with vandalism, they know exactly what
you're talking about. Likewise, it was obvious enough what
letter-writer Beth Kontrabecki was getting at when she wrote:
"This
is what society has come to, folks. Respect and decorum
are things of the past. Today, people can do what they want,
when they want and almost always get away with it. I suppose
we can thank our politically correct society for this uncivilized
way of life.
"The
Buffalo Zoo wanted to provide the opportunity to share
its resources and activities with those in the lower-income
bracket of Western New York. And now, due to the barbaric
acts of some, those who couldn't normally afford a day
at the zoo may never have the chance to visit it again.
"These
delinquents can't pass a Regents exam, because they're too
busy going to the zoo and attempting to steal exotic birds,
or urinating in the bushes. Who is to blame? For once, we
really can't blame the powers-that-be in City Hall or the
federal government.
"The
blame lies solely with the parents. Of course, the parents
will never own up to their poor child-raising tactics. They'll
blame it on the teachers, or in moments of desperation,
racism, sexism, agism or any other "ism" they can manipulate
as a scapegoat."
I love
it when upper-middle-class white people get angry. Worked
up to the absolute summit of their passions, they still
can never say what they mean. When they want desperately
to say "Niggers from East Buffalo," they instead have to
say, "Those in the lower-income bracket of Western New York."
No wonder they're so pissed off all the time. They have
to use a Thesaurus to get nasty... their bedroom dialogues
must sound like Dick Cavett reruns.
The News
was a little more subtle than Mme. Kontrabecki. You had to
read its editorials somewhat more closely to get the gist
of its vilification of the zoo marauders. The June 3 house
editorial, "Animal Behavior," was a classic example.
That
piece used a number of colorful terms to describe the zoo
vandals, including "miscreants," "cretins," "animals," and
"herd of free-range idiots." But although the newspaper theoretically
speaks for the entire city, The News made it very clear that
it was not describing a collective community failure here--instead
of talking about how badly our children had behaved,
it made it a point to talk about how their children
had trashed our zoo:
"[The
vandals] did more than abuse animals and zoo facilities--they
abused a privilege, to the detriment of all of us."
The News
returned to the race theme just a day after this editorial,
when it ran a front-page story on June 4 entitled, "Landlords
Blame Tenants, Demand Accountability." This story was a perfect
follow-up to the "Niggers Wreck Zoo" piece; they moved a little
East of Delaware Park for this one to make it "Niggers Wreck
Rental Properties."
Again,
as in the zoo pieces, the paper never came out and said that
it was talking mainly about black tenants and white landlords.
But it threw in enough euphemisms to make it obvious, talking
about "Buffalo's blighted neighborhoods" and repeatedly referring
to "bad tenants" who receive federal or county welfare assistance.
Of course,
the tenants responsible for the "unchecked destruction" the
paper describes (note how similar the language here is to
that of the zoo pieces) are conspicuously absent from the
actual article. The photos it ran, including one of an apartment
overflowing with garbage and empty bottles, were both of apartments
that no longer had anyone living in them.
Even
in the article's prose descriptions, the vilified residents
are missing. In one deliciously heavyhanded passage, reporter
Sandra Tan describes a bedroom of a ravaged apartment in which
"a pristine Holy Bible sat beside a table of burnt marijuana
stems." Presumably the Bible's pages should have been dog-eared
and the marijuana unsmoked; in any case, there was no tenant
there to explain the reasons for this blasphemy. As one housing
lawyer I spoke to joked: "That couldn't have been any of my
tenants. They wouldn't have left the stems."
All in
all, the paper extensively quoted four landlords in the piece,
but not a single tenant. An article about tenants, without
interviews with tenants. Even The New York Times would
have too much shame to try something like that.
All of
which would just be routinely offensive mainstream media stuff,
were it not for the opposite response in The News to the Adelphia
story. Informed that the corporate officers had looted Buffalo's
most prominent company for years on end, imperiling thousands
of jobs, a downtown renewal plan, and even the beloved Sabres,
The News never came close to calling the Rigas family "animals,"
"miscreants," "cretins," or a "herd" of anything, much less
"free-range idiots."
Instead,
the paper pulled on its hose and delivered to Buffalo the
Rigas story in the form of a cruel Shakespearean tragedy,
in which the kindly King Lear (John Rigas) was toppled from
his lofty throne by heartless fate and a few regrettable but
thoroughly understandable human frailties.
The most
infuriating of the News Adelphia stories was the June
9 story by Lou Michel and Michael Beebe, "Rigas Sons Say Family
Battered and Strong." The lead to the story said it all:
"COUDERSPORT,
Pa.--In their first public statements since the onset
of their company's financial crisis, the three sons of
Adelphia founder John J. Rigas said in separate interviews
with The Buffalo News that their family is working
closely together to survive its troubles.
"It's
obviously a very hard time for us, but the family is holding
up well," said James P. Rigas, 44, the youngest of the
three Rigas sons and Adelphia's former executive vice
president of strategic planning.
"Regardless
of what comes out of this, the family unit will be stronger
than ever," he said. "We've always had a close family, and
hard times draw you closer together."
It takes
some serious balls to try to convince readers that they should
care how the Rigas family is "holding up" after being caught
using Adelphia money to secure themselves a private golf course,
among other things.
You notice
that the paper didn't track down any tenants to ask how they
were "managing" after being thrown on the streets for dropping
lit crack pipes on their couches. "Regardless of what comes
out of this, the family unit will be stronger," the story
might have quoted the tenant as saying. "Right now, we're
living out of a shopping cart, robbing parked cars to pay
for crack, but the experience is drawing our family closer
together."
The paper's
other Adelphia stories weren't much better:
-
The May 28 sports piece, "Rigas Story Mixes Anger With Sadness,"
describes the fallen John Rigas as a cross between the Pope
and Tinkerbell, leading with a tale of the old man charming
Miroslav Satan's stick by rubbing it before a game in which
Satan scored a key goal.
-
The June 2 piece, "Adelphia Probe May Lead to Charges Against
Rigas," played up the King Lear angle in the lead. "The
idea of anyone accusing kindly, white-haired John J. Rigas
of white-collar crime," reporter Fred Williams wrote, "is
unthinkable to many."
-
The May 16 piece, "New Chief is No Stranger to Challenge"
was a start-to-finish blowjob of new Adelphia CEO Erland
Kailbourne, whom the paper described as a savior--despite
the fact that he was on the board and presumably paying
attention for all those years that the Rigases were pillaging
the company.
-
The June 7 piece, "Leaks Add Volume to Adelphia Story,"
basically blasted The Wall Street Journal for using unnamed
sources to (a) whip the hair plugs off the News staff on
the breaking-news coverage of Adelphia, and (b) smear the
reputation of the Rigas family.
-
Two other stories, the May 25 "Reporting Depth Would Take
a Big Hit if Empire Folded," and the May 18 "A Blow to Western
New York," held faithfully to the doleful "Isn't-this-a-shame"
theme of the News Adelphia coverage. Again, a striking contrast
to the "Let's-lynch 'em" tone of the zoo coverage.
There's
nothing new in any of this. When a poor person pisses on his
own floor for whatever reason, he's an animal who should be
locked in a cage. But when a rich creep with kindly white
hair steals billions of dollars and dooms thousands to unemployment,
it's just a darned shame.
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