Much of the next class will be devoted to your presentations for the Macaulay weekend. But I would like to roughly half of our next session discussing the role of the news media in setting the municipal agenda. It’s an important role, one that cannot be ignored. I also want to explore the question of New York’s special role in the hearts and minds of Americans. It’s rarely a place people are neutral about. They either love it or hate it. Ted Cruz’s repeated denunciations of “New York values” (whatever that means) is an example of the latter. So how we interact with the rest of the United States is important, including the role that the federal government should play — and usually does not — in aiding urban America.
By news media, I mean all forms: newspapers, TV, social media, websites, blogs and more. But as I’ll elaborate in class, the traditional press — i.e., newspapers — still retains a hugely important role, even as readers migrate from printed papers to online forms.
In that regard, here are a few readings — very few, really — that focus on the outsize political kingmaker role that Rupert Murdoch, owner of the New York Post, has played ever since he came here from Australia and bought that newspaper in late 1976. His influence in getting Edward Koch elected mayor in 1977 was remarkable, actually without modern precedent. That influence is definitely diminished, but it is still considerable. It’s why these readings focus as heavily as they do on Murdoch.
Here’s a 2012 look at Murdoch:
And Murdoch’s ties to former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani were explored in 2011 by a great investigative reporter, Wayne Barrett:
Under federal rules that existed in the 1980s, Murdoch had to sell The Post and some of his other newspaper holdings in order to buy some television stations. The purpose of those roles was to limit the possibility of one person monopolizing pretty much all forms of news distribution that existed at the time. Those rules were then greatly eased, giving enormous power to someone like Murdoch. In 1993, he reacquired ownership of The Post.
Here is a handy score sheet on how Murdoch tilted news coverage in favor of Ed Koch and other candidates for high office whom he favored:
http://www.nyu.edu/classes/stephens/About%20Murdoch%20page.htm
Related to how New York appears to the rest of the country, one obvious way is through films. There have been thousands of New York-themed movies over the years — from those showing us as an Oz-like glamorous place to those that make us look like a circle of hell. One interesting aspect of the changed attitudes is how hard it can be for film-makers to find locations reflecting their vision of New York as a gritty purgatory. Here’s the confessions of one location scout:
I might point out a film with Jessica Chastain that was released about a year and a half ago. It was called “A Most Violent Year,” and was set in 1981, when New York was a much rougher and more dangerous place than it is now. To show some really crummy neighborhoods, the makers of this film had to shoot it in — Detroit. Not here. That says a lot.
A couple of more things. For any of you whose final project or Macaulay project includes imposing fines or high taxes to stop certain kinds of behavior (like smoking or reckless driving) and to encourage other kinds (like healthful eating or safe driving), here’s an approach being tried out in Finland. Under it, you are fined according to your income. Usually, we expect to see the same fine for a given offense — $200, say, for speeding, applied equally to rich and poor alike. Finland is experimenting with hurting people proportionately in the pocketbook. So a rich person will be fined far more heavily than a poorer one for the same offense. Take a look:
Finally, New York has long been celebrated in songs — again, thousands of them. Many are great, some not so great. As much as I like “Empire State of Mind” (Yeah, yeah, I’m up at Brooklyn, now I’m down in Tribeca. Right next to De Niro, but I’ll be hood forever), I’d like to share one of my favorites because it is so simple and straightforward — and a bit funny. It’s called “I Happen to Like New York,” written by Cole Porter, one of the greatest song composers in this country’s history. Look him up on Wikipedia and you’ll see why I say that. The man was remarkable.
In 1930, he wrote the music for a musical called “The New Yorkers.” The show itself is hardly memorable. But the song has a continued life. Here’s a version sung by Bobby Short, one of the greatest cabaret singers of all time. He died a few years ago.
It’s only two minutes or so. Enjoy:
