The ethics of paying for and airing police shooting videos, FBI experts' deeply flawed testimony, Meryl Streep's screenwriting workshop for women over 40.
Man who took video of SC police shooting wants pay
The now infamous video has been shared around the world, showing South Carolina police officer Michael Slager fatally shot Walter Scott as he fled. Passerby Feidin Santana captured the video on his smartphone. But now, Santana is working with a management company to require TV stations airing the video must pay a fee. Stations interested in airing the footage may have to pay up to $10,000. The firm sent out cease-and-desist letters to many stations last week.
Fair use copyright laws frequently allow news networks to play footage of news stories without seeking permission from the owner the video. But Poynter’s Al Tompkins tells Take Two that these rules only apply as long as the story is news:
“The real question in these kind of cases is, ‘what is a fair use?’ How much can you use and how long can you use it?’ and so on. And that’s an answer that there is no clear resolution for, and that’s why they go to court to try to solve these things. Because there is no clear resolution on how much of a news video you can use.”
Because Michael Slager now faces murder charges, Tompkins argues that the video still constitutes news and, therefore, is still covered by fair use laws.
The New York Times notes that the decision to charge was likely made by Santana’s attorney, Todd Rutherford. Because the footage was central to many news segments, Rutherford reasoned that networks were making a profit from the video. For this, he believes that Santana deserves compensation. Tompkins notes that George Holliday, the man who captured the 1991 police beating of Rodney King on VHS sold the footage to KTLA-TV for just $500.
Martin Reynolds is senior editor of community engagement for the Oakland Tribune and a board member at the Maynard Institute. He tells Take Two that because the video is widely available on the internet, it will be difficult to get stations to pay, but he also adds,
“If you have a situation where a value can be placed on something, then it’s certainly going to put the onus on the news directors to decide, ‘wow, if others are going to start paying for this, then we’ve got to have it, because our audience is expecting us to be a primary source of news and information and we don’t have it.”
Tompkins and Reynolds agree that it will be difficult to predict if Santana’s decision to accept payment will have a long lasting effect on the way news organizations operate. Mainly because no stations have agreed to pay. Reynolds adds, “Obviously, [for] traditional news organizations, you don’t pay for stories. You say you want to cover something, you go out and cover it; you’re not expecting to hand over a check to a source for information.”
Press the play button above to hear more analysis from Al Tompkins and Martin Reynolds.
Predicting the future of American English
Predicting what America will sound like in 2050 is the topic of a new op-ed appearing on the website, The Week. Language expert James Harbeck penned the piece and shared his predictions with Take Two’s Alex Cohen.
Obviously you care about this stuff. You are a word connoisseur, but what about the rest of us? Why should we even bother caring about what Americans sound like in the year 2050?
People are always kind of fascinated about how language changes. There’s always a set of people who think that it doesn’t change, or that if it changes it’s suddenly gotten worse from the perfect unchanging state in history. Then there are other people who don’t really pay that much attention.
Why do terms change over time?
For about the same reason the clothes we wear changes. We always like new things. When you’re a teenager in particular, you wanted to assert your identity. You wanna find something that seems new and fresh and shiny and it wants to be different from that crap that your parents have. You come up with ways of saying things that seem new and interesting like, ‘Wow, that’s really sick, man ...'
So when we project to 2050, is it just gonna be that there are different colloquial expressions that we use, or are there actual other changes that we should be looking for as we look to the future?
It’s going to be fairly subtle and it won’t be very obvious to a lot of people. The grammar is unlikely to change hugely. It takes centuries to change … People will more generally accept ‘they’ as a singular word they do even now.
*Groan*
You may as well get used to it. The fact is that ‘they’ was used as a singular in the King James Bible, it was used as a singular by Shakespeare, there were just some guys in the 1800s who decided that that was wrong and they managed to convince a lot of other people that it was wrong, but nobody ever stopped doing it.
Press the play button above to hear more of James Harbeck’s predictions about the future of American English.
FBI, Justice Department: forensic evidence flawed in scores of criminal cases
The FBI says that its experts gave deeply flawed forensic testimony for more than two decades in criminal trials that could affect scores of cases.
In the agency's microscopic hair comparison unit, for example, 26 of the 28 examiners overstated matches in ways that favored prosecutors.
It's prompted the nation's largest post-conviction review.
For more, we're joined by Laurie Levenson, professor at Loyola Law School.
Meryl Streep's screenwriting lab seeks to buck mostly-male trend
The people writing movies these days tend to be young men. But one very famous actress is trying to change that.
Meryl Streep on Sunday announced financial support for a screenwriter's lab to be held this fall. Participants must be women over the age of 40.
Melissa Silverstein, an expert on women in Hollywood, talks to host Alex Cohen.
The Forecast: Loretta Lynch vote may happen, Tulsa Sheriff responds in shooting death
Every week Take Two looks ahead and talks about the big stories of the week, the things that people are talking about – and how they will play out as the week progresses.
And this week, it looks like we may be getting a vote for a new Attorney General. Loretta Lynch has been waiting for more than 20 weeks for Congress to vote on her confirmation, but many believe it'll happen soon.
And we'll get the latest on a fatal shooting in Oklahoma by a reserve deputy.
Our guests this week are
, reporter for the Washington Post and
, reporter for BuzzFeed.
Who really uses the most water in California?
With California now in year four of the drought, and with no end in sight, most in the Golden State are curious to know who is using the most water.
Getting an answer to that is no small feat, thanks in large part to the Silicon Valley. Lance Williams, who is with the Center for Investigative Reporting and wrote about this issue for the website Reveal, explains more.
Road kill 'hot spots' and the connection to CA's drought
A recent study from UC Davis found that the state's highways are littered with wildlife collision "hot spots."
According to the report - cars are the third-biggest cause of death for animals on the state's roads. There is a connection between road kill and California's lack of water.
Fraser Shilling, co-director of the UC Davis Road Ecology Center, tells more.
How a $25K lottery could impact LA's Board of Education elections
Run-off elections are coming up in Los Angeles, on the heels of abysmal voter turnout in March.
But one non-profit group has an idea it hopes can cure voter apathy in LA. The Southwest Voter Registration Project wants people to cast their ballots for the L.A. Board of Education race in District 5 -- which includes parts of Los Feliz and Echo Park and parts of Lynwood and Bell -- and is offering a shot at $25,000 to do so.
"This is a school board that influences the lives of $650,000 children," said Mario Solis, who represents the Southwest Voter Registration Project, the group behind the lottery. "So participation in our school board race, and really in our local democracy, is extremely important."
The Southwest Voter Registration Project aims to increase the Latino vote. While one of the candidates for District 5, Ref Rodriguez, is Latino, Solis does not think that this incentive will tip the scales in his favor.
"Both of these candidates in the run-off race have publicly stated that they've both done an excellent job of reaching out to Latino voters. So we are not interested in siding with one over the other. Seventy-four percent of this district are Latino voters, so if we look at that district, and we look at the general population of that district, yes, it does happen to be Latino. But everybody is equally incentivized to participate in this race."
While this is a pilot program, Solis says if it is successful, the group would do it again.
Granada Hills Charter School wins academic decathlon
Over the weekend, the top prize of the nationwide academic decathlon contest went to the Granada Hills Charter High School.
The eight-member team beat out more than 500 students from 50 states. Student Irene Lee and teacher Mathew Arnold join Take Two with more on the victory.
'Dior and I' reveals Raf Simons' stress-filled road to the runway
In April of 2012, the iconic Parisian fashion house Christian Dior made a huge announcement - a Belgian designer with no background in couture would be taking over as creative director.
When he took the helm, Raf Simons had just eight weeks to create his first haute couture collection. Simons himself knew it was no small feat.
That's the subject of a new documentary titled, "Dior and I."
The film's director Frederic Tcheng spoke with Take Two host Alex Cohen about why he wanted to give viewers a back-stage pass to Simons' stress-filled road to the runway.
Watch the Trailer:
"Dior and I" is playing in Los Angeles at the Landmark Nuart Theatre.