Here's how the media works in the Tampa Bay area.

In February, at an annual ritual gathering of Tampa's power hitters and wannabes that opens the Florida State Fair, car dealer Jim Ferman was named Civitan "Citizen of the Year." Both daily newspapers ran pleasant stories on the award, noting Ferman's long list of memberships on civic and cultural boards.

An editorial in The Tampa Tribune fondly praised Ferman for being "devoted to church and family" and "generous." Both theTrib and the St. Petersburg Times cited one membership - chairman of the Florida Aquarium - but didn't elaborate.

That lack of elaboration is curious. And it is an example of one way news is censored by the local mainstream media: They tell a little bit of the story in order to claim, "We covered that." But the context, the news behind the news and, especially, the media's own involvement in the news is omitted or minimized.

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED AT THE FLORIDA AQUARIUM?
 
There was only one thing overlooked in the newspapers' effusive praise of Jim Ferman: The financial collapse of the aquarium (first reported in the Weekly Planet, not the dailies). That meltdown cost the Tampa taxpayers $104 million, and Ferman's major contribution to the community last year was presiding over the debacle.

The Civitans must have quaint qualifications for the "Citizen of the Year." There's a record in giving the award to polish the soiled reputations of Tampa's insider elite. In 1993, for example, the award went to George Steinbrenner, who, at the time, had been thrown out of Major League Baseball for consorting with an extortionist, and whose Tampa shipbuilding company was running up on the rocks after botching a huge Navy contract.

The "right stuff?" Qualities for children to look up to?

You would think that the newspapers - ostensibly staffed by curious, skeptical journalists - would at least hint at Ferman's most newsworthy involvement of the year when reporting the Civitan award.

Well, no, they didn't. Why? Could it be because both newspapers had a financial stake (the Times to the tune of $1 million) in the aquarium and both were co-conspirators with the so-called business and political leaders who used the city's treasury as shark bait?

Or, did both newspapers think about the huge advertising budget wielded by Ferman's car dealerships. Neither newspaper runs an authentic automobile review column. Both do run advertising-controlled "columns" that never, never, never say anything naughty about cars. And, of course, neither newspaper would ever consider initiating a hard-hitting consumer report on sleazy sales tactics by car hucksters.

The auto dealers have wielded their clout in the past to kill reporting they didn't like - with the threat to take their ads to the other newspaper. You never read about that, did you?

No, you don't anger Mother Nature and you don't piss off the mightiest of the car dealers, Jim Ferman, by pointing out the embarrassment of what happened at the aquarium. Clearly, it was either the most incredible business stupidity of the decade, or another all-too-common episode of local insiders pillaging the public coffers for their own benefit.

Ferman is a nice guy, and was an innovative chairman of the Tampa Chamber of Commerce - but that was years ago. In 1996, he was chairman of the Florida Aquarium - peculiar credentials for "Citizen of the Year."

Big questions remain to be answered about the aquarium - but don't expect enlightenment from the dailies.

To begin with: How did the financial disaster happen and how was it possible that two major metropolitan daily newspapers totally missed the impending disaster?

Sandy Freedman, mayor when the aquarium was built, blames "pressure" from business leaders. City council members, consultants who cooked bogus attendance estimates and aquarium officials all point fingers at each other. The Trib, in a Feb. 3 article, tries to deflect culpability with the tactic of accepting a tiny amount of blame but disregarding the obvious conclusion that the newspaper was horribly derelict in its duty. The Trib's bosses claim they, too, were fooled by consultants. "We should have taken a harder looked," says the slightly contrite editorial boss, Ed Roberts. You can picture him giving a big wink to his monied cronies as he makes that "admission."

Give us a break. Every indication from aquariums around the nation - not to mention common sense - foreshadowed disaster. Warning sign after warning sign was ignored. The Trib and the Times simply didn't want to take a hard look, and reporters at both papers have said efforts to get tough were rebuffed by editors.

What many suspect is that the newspaper bosses and civic leaders knew all along that the aquarium would likely fail - and decided to push ahead to further their own agendas. After all, it was only your money at stake. Don't expect to read an investigation anytime soon.

A MUSEUM OF HORRORS

On the other side of Tampa Bay, the Times has pied-pipered St. Pete into many boondoggles for its own power and marketing purposes. When the schemes fail, the newspaper absolves itself - and since American cities don't have much in the way of daily newspaper competition, there's no one to say, "It ain't so." Or, put another way, the Times should change its motto from "The policy of our paper is very simple - merely to tell the truth" to "The truth is what we say it is."

The great St. Pete fiasco of 1996-97 was the Florida International Museum. The Times had $1 million sunk in this project also - which means forget skeptical journalism. The newspaper had executives on the museum board, and only after if was clear financial ruin was imminent did the Times have an epiphany and declare that reporting the news was a higher duty than participating in the events. The paper knew how foolish it would look if the museum, with its overhyped and woefully underattended exhibits of mummies and Greek antiquities, folded.

The solution in St. Pete as in Tampa - soak the taxpayers.

As St. Pete writhed an anguish over racial violence caused by decades of neglect by the power structure - which in St. Pete equates largely with the Times -- $5.5 million was strongarmed from the taxpayers in February to prop up the museum.

The robbery was masterminded by financier John Galbraith, who had threatened the city with a "payment due" notice on $8 million he had invested in the museum if taxpayers didn't bail out the attraction.

The Times, of course, saw nothing wrong with this - after all, its reputation and investment were at stake. The newspaper on March 9 handsomely repaid Galbraith with 3,400 words of journalistic pandering (around newsrooms, coarse-mannered reporters would call the story a journalistic blowjob). The profile of St. Pete's Sugar Daddy was so flattering it would have embarrassed Galbraith's own publicist. The man described in the article was sinless, pure in motive, a saint ... no, a god. The newspaper found not a single negative detail.

Nowhere in the lengthy article, which described saving the museum in terms reminiscent of the Quest for the Holy Grail, were the Times' very involved relationships with Galbraith and the museum mentioned. Amazing.

 
ON THE ROAD TO MIAMI

Tampa Mayor Dick Greco has expressed concern to the Weekly Planet that someday his city may face the same fate that devastated Miami in 1996 - financial insolvency.

The problem really is very simple: Hillsborough County is rapidly growing. Schools, roads, sewers, water, all government services are stressed. In Tampa, the problem is compounded because the municipality has a high proportion of poor residents, and its taxpayers must fund services used by thousands of people who work in the city but live elsewhere.

Yet, we are virtually out of new tax sources. Any sane business executive could figure this equation: Rapidly rising costs, no new revenues - doom.

Despite that, the Trib led the reckless charge for the half-cent sales tax. The motivation was to build Malcolm Glazer a new stadium. The method used by the newspaper and its elitist comrades was to blackmail residents - we'll give you schools for your children if you give us plush new digs for our fun.

On the "infrastructure" part of the tax, no one really knew what to spend the money on. As the ballots were being printed, politicians were scrambling to find projects to absorb the money that would be generated. There was no attempt to let citizens prioritize the hastily prepared list of projects.

The school element enabled the tax to pass. What the television stations and daily papers haven't told you is that the tax has all but exhausted local funding sources.

With schools, the Trib recently made an inadvertent admission. In a March 15 editorial, it conceded that the small portion of the sales tax going to school construction "will not come close to meeting the district's capital needs." What the newspaper doesn't say, of course, is that the full half cent would have probably solved Hillsborough's school construction shortfall.

That would have meant no new stadium, however. And when it comes to a choice between the Bucs' stadium - where the newspaper has a chummy marketing deal with the team - and schools for your kids, the kids be damned.

The Trib's solution to the problem is more new taxes at a state level - taxes that would hit poor citizens harder than the wealthy. This from a self-styled "conservative" newspaper.

So, don't expect any incisive stories in the newspaper on the looming financial disaster in local government - because a major culprit if the city should fail will be the Trib.

RUN OVER BY A TRAIN

When Commissioner Ed "Choo-Choo" Turanchik began waffling a few months ago on whether citizens will be allowed to vote on a mass transit, the taxpayers were as good as already lashed to the tracks. It's just a matter of time before we get hit by the train.

A rail commuter system is probably much needed by this urban area - but only if citizens decide they want to fork over upwards of $500 million to build one - not to mention annual subsidies of millions of dollars to pay for operating expenses.

What's going on now is a massive public relations campaign in lieu of serious community debate. Turanchik would have you believe there are no critics of rail, and if there are some, they must be loonies and miscreants.

The RegioSprinter demonstration - essentially the county shilling for companies that want to build the system - is costing $450,000. Officials claim most of this comes from federal and state grants - in other words, other cities are paying. Of course, those other cities also get grants - and some of their money comes from Tampa's pockets. It's all tax money, guys.

It appears the idea is to make the train system a fait accompli without the messy process of debate and voting. Critics charge that rail promoters have already cut deals to use future proceeds from the half-cent sales tax for the train. Some lobbyists have quietly confirmed to the Planet that's exactly the case.

The Trib has a knee-jerk editorial policy supporting rail. Expect no discouraging words from the newspaper.

 
TO HELL WITH FAIRNESS
 

It began quietly. A religion reporter for the Trib began doing stories for WFLA-TV Channel 8. God news plays well on television around here. These reports were timed for "sweeps week," when TV audiences were measured. The newspaper, of course, promoted the television series.

The reason for this is inter-medium love affair is simple: The Trib and WFLA are owned by the same parent, Richmond, Va.-based Media General.

A few years ago, Federal Communications Commission rules would have banned such joint efforts. Cross-ownership was seen as creating an unfair advantage. In most cities, newspapers that owned broadcast outlets were forced to sell off the stations. The Media General operations here were "grandfathered" in - the common ownership was allowed, but the newspaper and TV station kept their distance, maintaining an illusion of independence.

That has changed in recent years under relaxed FCC rules that are encouraging media conglomerates and may ultimately bury any semblance of a free, competitive mainstream press. What's happening here is the slow merging of the Trib and WFLA news operations.

In West Central Florida, no other TV station - channels 10, 13, 28 and 44 - has a daily newspaper acting as a promotional vehicle. The Trib treats marketing efforts by WFLA as "news," and ignores much more legitimate endeavors by other stations. The station reciprocates -- Trib staffers were accorded the status of experts at last year's political conventions, and you certainly saw no one from the Times.

Media General doesn't have a reputation for great newspapers, but it is canny. It has applied for permission to buy a television station in Richmond, where it plans with the federal government's complicity to further its monopolistic, anti-competitive strategy. Incredibly, the company's brass probably call themselves "capitalists" and claim they support a "free press." In truth, they want the FCC to help them eliminate or, at least, cripple competition.

Don't expect to read in the Trib (much less see a companion report on WFLA) any breakthrough reporting on media monopolies or the dangers of the FCC changing the rules.

THE FAMILY

The Lykes family just won't go away, although many wish they would. The media report what can't be ignored about Tampa's wealthiest collection of unpleasant cousins - changes in executives at Lykes-controlled companies, for example. But despite plenty of signals that all is not well among those who live in the very exclusive family compound at Ballast Point, neither daily newspaper has the chutzpah to dissect the clan.

HARVEST OF SHAME, THREE DECADES LATER

Florida's farmworkers were the subject of the classic "Harvest of Shame" expose by television's Edward R. Murrow in the 1960s. Things haven't changed much. Those who pick crops - including hundreds of families in east Hillsborough County - still are poisoned by pesticides. Children still don't get an education. Workers still are cheated out of wages and still are subjected to inhumane treatment. Attempts at protesting conditions and organizing still are met with intimidation. Decent medical care still is rare. And, unlike other workers in Florida, those who work in the fields still can't force companies to recognize their unions.

Do the media care? Nah. Let's go do another story on how to get a tan for summer. Maybe there'll be another psychopath murder with lots of blood. Or some spoiled brat will run away from home and we can all fly up to New York to interview her. Now that's news!

 REMEMBER THE GODFATHER

Once upon a time, there was this nice old gentleman who lived in Tampa named Santo Trafficante. He died almost a decade ago, and many people were very sorry. Judges, cops, commissioners, council members, state attorneys, mayors - it seemed like just about everyone wanted to do favors for Tampa's Godfather. He had, after all, done many favors for them.

A few years later, there was a nasty little episode in Tampa. Just say the words "Key Bank" and watch people duck for cover. The Godfather had lots of godchildren, and many of them were still in the (dare we say the word?) Mafia. It's really the gang that couldn't shoot straight nowadays. The "made men" in this town aren't made of the same stuff as Trafficante, Gambino or Gotti. But they still turn up being pals with elected officials, bankers and well-connected lawyers. After the Key Bank affair, the Trib did a pretty nifty series on Trafficante's heirs. Then, with a change in publishers, the newspaper lost its backbone and scrapped its investigative team.

You don't read much about the mob nowadays. Nor will you ever see the media call attention to the Tampa bigshots whose daddies made the family fortune as mobsters, either with Trafficante's gang or with what is affectionately remembered as the "redneck mob." But the wise guys are still here. If we had a real state attorney, he or she might find a few of the gangsters. And if we had a decent newspaper that would do a little crusading ... nah, that's too much to wish for.

PLAY BALL

The Times signs an exclusive marketing deal with the Devil Rays (the major element of which is that you won't see the word "Tribune" anywhere in the Dome), writes about it but won't disclose the financial details. The Trib won't even tell you of its similar cozy relationship with the Bucs. The Times was the force behind building the Dome - without bothering to ask the taxpayers. The Trib would have preferred not to have an election to give away more than $300 million to the Bucs' Malcolm Glazer, but when a vote was inevitable, the newspaper wholeheartedly supported the deceit of the misnamed "Community Investment Tax." Both newspapers - not to mention the TV stations - spend far more covering sports than they do on schools, the environment, arts, etc. The Trib allows its most prominent sports writer to take money from the teams he writes about. The Times' main sports personality isn't quite as cozy with the people he covers - but it's hard to tell sometimes. Neither newspaper questions the civic wisdom or value of the pro teams.

Jocks rule the newsrooms.

The real scoop on sports in this area is the distortion, half-truths and occasional downright lies told by the mainstream media to further their own interests.

 THE FIRE NEXT TIME

Last fall, St. Petersburg erupted in racial violence. Tampa's inner city neighborhoods quietly seethe, and come close to conflagration every few years. When the two cities' images are threatened, the power structure scurries to come up with promises to "do more" - as if anything had been done in the past.

The media have orgasms covering the violence, and reporters (overwhelmingly white, as are their bosses) make brief, token appearances in blighted neighborhoods. After the flames subside, the press goes back to sleep.

The promises are never kept once the TV cameras are turned off. Time is rolling backwards in this area and the state when it comes to rights and equal opportunity.

True, some women and minorities are elected to public office, but they seldom seem to share in the real power. Their constituents certainly don't have any clout. The Florida Legislature, more than ever before, is now dominated by wealthy white men (and a few wealthy white women) whose agenda is to make people like themselves even richer. They use welfare and manufactured concerns over "morality" to demonize minorities and homosexuals - Hitler used this tactic, you'll recall.

The press has yet to catch on to one glaring truth: The people in Tallahassee and local government who scream the loudest about family values are the same ones who are ramming through an agenda that will devastate family finances and, eventually, further undermine the wholesome fabric of society. Except, of course, for the most affluent few.

Examples: White legislators will probably force Hillsborough County to cut its indigent health care program at the same time welfare reform puts more people on the streets. Some Hillsborough commissioners also want to cut property taxes that go to health care, a move aimed at pleasing the white middle class. Wealthy white county and city officials pushed the stadium sales tax, which disproportionately punishes the poor and minorities - luxury items are barely touched by the tax, while everyday goods and services are hardest hit.

More examples: Three of Tampa's best women politicians ran for Congress and lost to a competent but lackluster white male. Pinellas County has never elected a black to its school board. If a plan to make Tampa General Hospital private is adopted, control will shift to a foundation board dominated by the white, wealthy old Tampa elite - who will make life and death decisions for the indigent, the working poor, African Americans and Hispanics. Tampa officials want to pump hundreds of millions into downtown, Ybor City and the Channel District - but there isn't the slightest interest when it comes to economic development in Tampa Heights, East Tampa and College Hill. The African American Museum of Art and the Florida Classic (a football rivalry between to largely black colleges) are looking at homes elsewhere in Florida - leaders feign dismay but do little.

The media, which could be the sparkplug to create a community based on caring and opportunity, isn't interested for the most part (although, notably, the Trib has started a project to explore the "Racial Divide"). The audience the media bosses want to reach is affluent and white - "upscale" is the marketing buzzword. The rest of the community is irrelevant - but exciting to cover every few years when people without hope begin burning and throwing rocks.