MEDIA WATCH on Panic JH: Biased, Bananas, or Both?

A freely available Staff ink-stained wretch/Cowboy Times EDITORIAL
Originally published 8.14.06
Updated 8.20.06

JACKSON, Wyo. (CT) – Believe it or not, but the very act of publishing this investigative OP-ED parody is likely to inspire allegations of libel against The Cowboy Times by a local alternative weekly purportedly charged with, among other hyperboles, promoting and defending free speech as well as the public interest.

Am I worried? Hell no. Why? Because, I have witnesses and evidence for everything—including local law enforcement—but mainly, for now, all I need is you and your two lying eyes. However, I’m willing to take a single fibber if that’s all you’ve got.

Besides, satire is still protected speech even if the object of one’s ridicule doesn’t get it. How do I know they don’t get it? Well, for one thing, during last year’s Kiwanis Follies a local crypto-neo-con, Zionist horse whisperer whined, after a bully lampooning of a local official, “How do they get away with that? If I did that I’d get sued.”

Satire is still protected speech. At least as of today in America it is.

For those of you still confused about whom I am alluding to it is Jackson Hole’s very own mild and crazy alternative weekly; that colorful confection of tabloid tripe, half-assed opinion and high-minded features who should long be used to charges of libel by now as they are presently being sued for millions for allegedly defaming BLAH, BLAH whomever.

Personally, I think much of the lawsuit against Le Panic is baloney. Though, after witnessing what stories of mine were censored by the paper of least record, I am stunned that they ever found the ink to print it.

But this is not about that.

This is about how the pseudo-news-lite and entertainment-heavy tabloid I once scribbled for, before resigning last December after realizing the ignorant psychopath they had hired was now my boss, has systematically suppressed, skewered or ignored bona fide public interest news while exhibiting, all too often and most recently in the town’s latest hullabaloo, glaring biases, so beyond Le Panic’s normal rightward slant, one wonders if they are merely unconscious or asleep at the switch.

Did I say rightward? Yes. Sorry. I meant RIGHT-WING. (Tune in next week for more on that. In the meantime, don’t fall for the hippy wrapper). Time for an example….ready? Let’s start with “bias,” possibly even “libel”.

Recently, Demo Derby ‘06 wrapped-up, brining with it much hoopla, legal consequences, and fortunately for one young man a second crack at life and a pass from the Guf. Question: Can anyone even name the cotton-pickin’ King of the winner-takes-all round? (Scroll to end of this silly opinion if that’s why you stopped by).

Regarding the Demo Derby, and in particular the scuffle between the naked guy and rabbit-punching deputy, the local media have contextualized (framed) all the myriad facts and issues—ranging from nudity, child endangerment, appropriate or excessive force, public intoxication, potential serious, even lethal injury, and general unruliness and bad manners to boot—in unique ways.

After running racy photos of streakers in its build up and post-derby wrap up, and taking some heat for it, most notably from the mayor, then being the first to issue a post-derby post-mortem on Monday, Martin Reed of the JH News & Guide focused on ping-pong reporting. This is where a reporter races back and forth between all sides to a controversy like a chicken with their ass on fire.

Often this happens, especially when one has a large portfolio of stories on their beat, and is writing breathlessly on deadline and can’t track down every disputant and must toss something into those giant holes that one’s editor is barking to be filled before the bell goes off, winding up with copy under the headline: “Zimmer backs….BLAH, BLAH.” You get my point.

Other than sometimes leaving readers dizzy, there’s nothing ethically or journalistically wrong with this, per se, so long as one tries their best to give everyone equal time. However, the good reporter is obligated to seek out all sides for comment and get their copy out fast, which can contribute to shallow reporting lacking detail, nuance and background. Frequently, first and second day news following a big event assumes this form; often leaving readers with an episodic wooziness worthy of a FOX News produced soap opera.

By the time the weekly N & G rolled out Wednesday’s edition, Martin had produced a solid, well-rounded feature piece. One that, including photos, was balanced and appealed to the intellect by raising relevant issues and statements as gleaned from facts and sources versus those imposed subjectively by leading or rhetorical questions informed by the perceptions and judgments of the news outfit.

When one reads el Panic’s Demo Derby’06 news coverage, it becomes obvious they relied heavily on the Redneck Racing video and a handful of sources. So convinced of wrongdoing but lacking the goods, Le Panic on its blog, much like Redneck Racing on their Web site before editing it out late Monday, also invoked the word “brutality” outside a direct quote and without attribution. That’s inflammatory, biased, yellow journalism. AND it goes great with goose-liver pate and tournedos of American Enterprise Institute-issued talking points sauteed in M & J's own extra-special cherry Kool-Aid!

Speaking of photographic evidence…

I’d bet a derby jackpot the N & G has more derby shots in their quill. I mean…Christ…they assigned everyone but Ansel Adams to shoot that night and that’s only because he’s too classy to be there, not because he’s dead. And they probably received a trove of pictures from eager derby spectators claiming this shot or that shot proved all sorts of controversial things.

By contrast, the careful reader of derby coverage might have noticed that Le Panic JH has not, to date, published a single original photograph. Why? Simple.

The odds are tremendous that they did not assign a photographer to cover this year’s derby. I mean, there I was, wearing my old Panic press pass, and didn’t see a single Panic photographer, not even the very talented Andrew Wyatt in a chocolate Moo-Moo. Nobody. Nada. Though some gutless Panic fiend ratted me out to the fuzz for wearing my old Panic press pass.

Ratted me out, mind you, six days after I offered Le Panic a look at my photos, since published here and elsewhere. My offer came on the Tuesday morning following the derby, presumably hours before they went to press. A top Panictoid politely rebuffed me, which I accepted and told him I held no grudge against el Panic. I then left town for a week. Upon my return, I got a message from local law enforcement notifying me that the Panic had complained about my call to them 6 days earlier, as if!

As if somehow my call to offer relevant visual information of a public interest value to help illustrate their story was criminal. It’s almost as if el Panic saw the photos they could have had, then suddenly decided being offered them was criminal. Ladies and Gentlemen, there’s a word for that kind of logic: Bananas!

Anyways…excelsior.

So, if it is true that Le Panic forgot or blew off assigning a photographer for this year’s derby, or did not consider hiring one, after what went down last year, that is astonishing. Astonishing considering the windfall of digital capital el Panic reaped, not to mention newfound self-respect for pulling off a 1st class tabloid story via Wyatt’s crazy-naked Derby ‘05 streaker "Tasering" stop-action photo sequence.

To date, that single Panic Web page containing Wyatt’s Tasered-streaker photos has been viewed more than 75,000 times. One of those shots even made Le Panic’s cover last year, wiping to the margins, at the Panic’s sensational-obsessed publisher’s hectoring, a feature on INL and plutonium. Guess the risks and benefits of INL and plutonium was too heady for Le Panic’s taste. What’s weird is that the Panic thought so highly of last year’s Demo Derby coverage they reprinted it on Page 1 of their Web site as a promo to this year’s derby.

Can’t anyone write fresh copy over there? I guess 75,000 hits will do all sorts of quirky things to a Panic.

To put 75,000 hits in perspective: the Casper Star-Tribune’s average daily circulation is about 70,000. And I know all those Panic on-line page views weren’t due to the news copy. How? Because I wrote that crappy, over-hyped news copy. And I’d bet the average time spent looking at that page is well below 2 minutes, too short to read the article.

Le Panic? Que pasa? How did you miss your boat?

In lieu of publishing their own photographs, which I’m betting they have none, or they would have published them by now, Le Panic, that graphics-mad, brilliantly visual tabloid-sized periodical, grabbed crappy, grainy frames from a video of the Derby showing McKinney streaking then Deputy Stanyon and Officer Weber pinning him as Stanyon is about to wallop McKinney’s ribs. (Just for the record, I’ve never spoken to Deputy Stanyon. I don’t know him. Don’t have an opinion of him, and I would be hard-pressed to recognize him on the street. Ditto for Mr. McKinney, though I might, depending on what he wasn't wearing, recognize him).

Interestingly, and I encourage all to click here and view first or refresh your memory before reading on, the Panic grabbed just two frames from that video sequence then ran them on-line without captions. They published, on-line, a highly selective photographic representation of Demo Derby’06 reality without ALSO showing a frame of McKinney barreling into Stanyon and another man, later identified by PJH as Jeff Lord.

Don’t believe me? Click here and watch what the video sequence, seen in its unedited entirety, clearly shows. Then click here and compare el Panic to how the News & Guide choose to pictorially represent the same event.

This biased Panic photo layout is the narrative equivalent to writing: “McKinney ran around the rodeo pit naked and then, unprovoked, the cops jumped him and beat the livin' sh—t out of him.”

Got a burning question now? Mine: Was this biased photo illustration selection process deliberate? I doubt it and here’s why.

It fits a larger pattern of early Panic responses to covering the event. The day after, July 31th, a Panic writer, probably at his bosses’ non-stop nattering if memory provides any relevant insight, regurgitated some on-line Demo Derby news copy that was so vague, unverified, seemingly from out-of-space, or at least following a deep, narcotic-induced snooze sounding, and eventually proven to be equally inaccurate by bloggers, that Le Panic later printed an apologetic correction.

The Panic corrected their original report then erased it from cyberspace, because of its potential for libel by implying the cuffs were on McKinney as Stanyon was hitting him---WHOAH! Hello…where’d you get that whacky idea?

Maybe el Panic jumped to that hasty conclusion because Redneck Racing.com had originally framed and promoted their video with the word “brutality,” among other sensational phrases, before editing them out late Monday.

Did Le Panic, in its frenzy to put something out, even if it didn’t stick, just to assuage their N & G inferiority complex, report on events not witnessed first-hand? And, without an assigned photographer to help interpret a lightening fast, ambiguous and confusing reality become influenced by another, non-news outfit with its own agenda and then select frames reflecting that agenda?

Well, I’ll let you decide. I gotta go.

Next week, The Cowboy Times, provided certain hot-headed hacks in Le Panic’s employ (a word they’ve used to inspire staff before) have not stalked or accosted CT staff again in crowded restaurants, will expose the Panic’s bag of sneaky tricks to intimidate and harass those who dare resign and move on rather than continue to labor under their biased and bananas atmosphere.

Look for Panic to go on character attack offensive in coming days as well as their get it out last “investigative” report on how the county has been throwing your money out the window. But ultimately, who you gonna believe: A biased rag or your own lying eyes?

PS: The widely reported Demo Derby ’06 Winner was Tory Thomas from Rock Springs, Wyoming in his car #12T, a 1974 Chevy Impala. This was his third time at the Teton County Fair Demo Derby, but he said he usually races in several Derbies each year. Thomas is the District Traffic Engineer for WYDOT. His brother, Cole Thomas won the trophy for “Most Aggressive Driver.”

PSS: If I was the much maligned Deputy Stanyon, I’d hang up my "Taser," grab a pina colada, get-up with a bloodthirsty lawyer then Ben Delicious a la Maui under my Stetson fielding offers from the land-sucking bankpires.

PSSS: Congrats to Maureen of Washington, D.C., last week's $25 Winner for The CT's 1st Media Watch. Maureen responded first to our illustrated question (see below): "What's Wrong with this Picture?" correctly guessing: "Is the answer...'looks like the coppers jumped that naked boy for being naked...?'"

Artwork by Crass Mench

Photos: "Demo Derby'06 grabbed frames layout" courtsey of Planet JH
Stay with The Cowboy Times