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Tim Tracy Sought to Show Venezuela’s Divide, Friends Say

April 27, 2013 by Leave a Comment

The government said Friday that Mr. Tracy, an American citizen, would be charged with involvement in acts of violence after the April 14 presidential election. Mr. Tracy was arrested by the intelligence police on Wednesday at the international airport near Caracas as he was about to leave the country, the government said.

Mr. Tracy was originally identified in a report released by Venezuela’s Information Ministry as Timothy Hallett. Hallett is his middle name.

Interior Minister Miguel Rodríguez said Thursday that Mr. Tracy had training as a spy and was part of a conspiracy to set off a civil war.

But those who knew Mr. Tracy in Caracas and in the United States, including in Los Angeles, where he lived, described him as an innocent — or perhaps naïve — filmmaker who had sought to portray Venezuela’s bitter political divide, not take sides in it.

Mr. Tracy spent time with both opposition student protesters and hard-core supporters of former President Hugo Chávez “to show the two sides of the story he was filming,” said Tuki Jencquel, a Venezuelan filmmaker who became friends with Mr. Tracy.

“He always seemed to be very evenhanded in his work and neutral in relation to what was happening in Venezuela,” he said. “I don’t think there’s anything subversive about that.”

In a conversation with a New York Times reporter about a week after the March 5 death of Mr. Chávez, Mr. Tracy spoke enthusiastically about the months he had spent working on his film.

And he described himself as one of the most unlikely people to do so: an American with rudimentary Spanish who started out with virtually no knowledge of Venezuela or its politics. He seemed like a man on a lark.

Mr. Tracy said that he had made friends in one of the most pro-Chávez slums in Caracas, an area known as 23 de Enero, and in particular with a man who appeared often at rallies dressed up as the revolutionary Ché Guevara. He marveled at how he had won the man’s confidence, despite the government’s anti-American stance.

But he also sounded a note of concern, saying that the ersatz Ché stopped talking to him after Mr. Chávez’s death. The government expelled two military attachés from the American Embassy on the day Mr. Chávez died, claiming that they were trying to destabilize the country. Mr. Tracy said he wondered if the man had taken the government propaganda to heart and regretted their friendship.

He said he had also filmed opponents of the government, but he seemed most enthusiastic about his ability to break through the apparent barriers and get close to Chávez loyalists.

Mr. Jencquel said that Mr. Tracy had been detained twice before for filming, once at a Chávez rally and once at the presidential palace in Caracas. On Friday, after being allowed to visit Mr. Tracy, Mr. Jencquel said his friend told him he was innocent.

Mr. Tracy, 35, identified himself on LinkedIn, a professional networking Web site, as a director and producer who had been involved in a television series that appeared on the History Channel and a movie. He attended Georgetown University.

Mr. Rodríguez, the interior minister, said that Mr. Tracy had funneled money to student protesters who the government claimed were connected to postelection violence.

But student groups said on Friday that they had not received money from Mr. Tracy, and they denied involvement in violence. “It seems to me like a big farce on the part of the government to distract attention,” said Gaby Arellano, 26, who has taken part in the protests. She said that Mr. Tracy had interviewed her about her reasons for protesting.

María Eugenia Díaz reported from Caracas, and William Neuman from Santa Cruz, Bolivia. Heather Murphy contributed reporting from New York, and Mary M. Chapman from Detroit.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/27/world/americas/tim-tracy-sought-to-show-venezuelas-divide-friends-say.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Media Business Tagged With: , ,

Media Decoder Blog: Return of Robin Roberts Brings Higher Ratings to ‘Good Morning America’

February 22, 2013 by Leave a Comment

“Good Morning America” had its best morning in the ratings in three months when Robin Roberts returned to the show on Wednesday after a medical leave of absence, according to preliminary Nielsen ratings.

About 6.1 million viewers tuned in for Ms. Roberts’ much-touted comeback, giving the show its biggest audience since the morning after the presidential election in November.

The second-place network morning show, NBC’s “Today,” had somewhere between 4.9 million and 5.0 million viewers. (ABC and NBC shared slightly different sets of Nielsen numbers with reporters.) For “G.M.A.,” the ratings on Wednesday represented a bump of about 12 percent from its recent averages. For “Today,” the ratings were about flat.

What both networks care more about is the 25- to 54-year-old demographic, because advertising rates can rise and fall depending on the “demo,” as they call it.

The two shows remained basically tied in that demographic, with “G.M.A.” reporting an advantage of just 36,000 viewers ages 25 to 54. “Today” was slightly ahead on Wednesday in a younger demographic, that of viewers ages 18 to 49. (The show’s main anchor, Matt Lauer, is on vacation this week.) The competition between “G.M.A.” and “Today” will be fierce for the next few months because the upfront advertising sales period starts in the spring.

Ms. Roberts, who is beloved by millions of “G.M.A.” viewers, left the show last August and underwent a bone marrow transplant in September to treat a rare blood disorder she contracted as a result of treatment for breast cancer in 2007.

She has described herself as eager to get back to work, and she was back on “G.M.A.” for a second day on Thursday. But concerns about her health persist, and both her doctors and her producers at ABC have said that her re-entry will take some time. To that end, she said on ABC’s “The View” on Thursday that the “G.M.A.” producer Tom Cibrowski had told her to “take tomorrow morning off.”

“It’s easing my way back in,” she said of her re-entry.

Though she won’t be on “G.M.A.” on Friday, Ms. Roberts does have an interview to tape with Michelle Obama. The interview will be televised next Tuesday.

Over the weekend Ms. Roberts will fly to Los Angeles, where she will appear on ABC’s coverage of the Academy Awards and co-host “G.M.A.” before dawn on Monday morning — a busy schedule for anyone, let alone a person still recovering from a bone marrow transplant.

Article source: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/21/return-of-robin-roberts-brings-higher-ratings-to-good-morning-america/?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Media Business Tagged With: , ,

U.S. Economy Adds 155,000 Jobs; Jobless Rate Is 7.8%

January 4, 2013 by Leave a Comment

The biggest gains were in health care, food services, construction and manufacturing, and the government sector showed modest job losses, the report said. The unemployment rate was 7.8 percent, the same as in November, whose rate was revised up from 7.7 percent.

“It’s not a home-run report by any stretch, but it’s constructive,” said John Ryding, chief economist at RDQ Economics. “It’s another month of fairly stable, solid, moderate job creation.”

Over the course of 2012, the country added 1.8 million jobs, despite continued job losses in the government sector and anxiety related to the presidential election and scheduled tax increases and spending cuts. 

Economists are unsure of what the rest of the year holds for the American job market, but most are forecasting more of the same: hiring fast enough to stay just ahead of population growth, but still too slow to make a sizable dent in the 12.2-million-person backlog of unemployed workers.

A number of encouraging trends in the economy suggest that businesses have good reason to speed up hiring, including the housing recovery, looser credit for small businesses, a rebound in China and pent-up demand for new autos. Friday’s jobs report also showed slightly faster wage growth and longer working hours in December, both of which bode well for hiring.

But Congress’s last-minute deal to raise taxes earlier this week will offset some of these sources of growth, since higher taxes trim how much money consumers have available to spend each week.

“Job creation might firm a little bit, but it’s still looking nothing like the typical recovery year we’ve had in deep recessions in the past,” Mr. Ryding said. “There’s nothing in the deal to do that and nothing in this latest jobs report to suggest that. We’re a long way short of the 300,000 job growth that we need.”

The fiscal compromise also renewed for a year the federal government’s emergency unemployment benefits program. That allows workers to continue receiving unemployment benefits for up to 73 weeks, depending on the unemployment rate in the state where they live, and acts as a stimulus to the American economy because unemployment benefits are spent almost immediately.

The extension has proved to be a tremendous relief to the 2 million workers who would have otherwise abruptly lost their benefits this week.

“We woke up on Wednesday morning and saw the news and just said, ‘thank God, thank God, thank God,’ and then went out and went food shopping because we knew we had money coming in,” said Gina Shadis, 56, of Newton, N.J.

Both she and her husband, Stephen, were laid off within the last 14 months from jobs they had held for more than a decade: she from a quality assurance manager position at an environmental testing lab, and he as foreman and senior master technician at an auto dealership. They are now each receiving $548 per week in federal jobless benefits, or about a quarter of their pay at their most recent jobs.

“It has just been such a traumatic time,” she said. “You know you wake up in the morning with shoulders tense and head aching because you didn’t sleep the night before from worrying.”

While Congress’s deal on New Year’s Day brought clarity to tax and unemployment benefits policies, lawmakers have still not settled their disputes about federal spending cuts and the debt ceiling. Economists worry that the lingering uncertainty over these issues could discourage businesses from investing in more workers or equipment.

“We may be seeing the calm before the storm right now,” said Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomic Advisors, noting that a recent survey from the National Federation of Independent Business found that alarmingly few small companies plan to hire in the coming months. “Small businesses are wringing their hands in horror at what’s going on in Washington.”

In the meantime, more than six million workers have exhausted their unemployment benefits altogether since the recession began in December 2007, according to the National Employment Law Project, a labor advocacy group.

Millions of workers are sitting on the sidelines and so are not counted in the total tally of unemployed. Some are merely waiting for the job market to improve, and others are trying to invest in skills to appeal to employers who are already hiring.  

“I have a few prospects who say they want me to work for them when I graduate,” said Jordan Douglas, a 24-year-old single mother in Pampa, Tex., who is enrolled in a special program that allows her to receive jobless benefits while attending school full time to become a registered nurse. She gets $792 in benefits every two weeks, a little less than half of what she earned in an administrative position at the nursing home that laid her off last year.

She calculates that her federal jobless benefits will run out the very last week of nursing school.

“This had to have been a sign from God that I had to do this since it all worked out so well,” she said.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/05/business/economy/us-economy-adds-155000-jobs-jobless-rate-is-7-8.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Economy News Tagged With: , ,

The Haggler: A Mr. Nader Is Calling, and He Wants a Refund

July 23, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Now, if you supported Al Gore and are still furious about Mr. Nader’s role in the 2000 presidential election, the mere mention of his name may make you boil.

Well, boil somewhere else.

This, if you need a reminder, is not a column about politics. It’s about consumer justice, and it is hard to think of anyone who has worked more tirelessly and more effectively for that cause than Ralph Nader. For the Haggler, a parvenu in the field, hearing from this guy was like a weekend fiddler’s getting a call from Mozart.

He phoned to tell a story, and it turned out to be a good one, with an interesting moral. It goes like this:

In March, Mr. Nader was scheduled to give a press conference and speech in Knoxville, Tenn. He’d bought two round-trip tickets — one for him, one for an associate — from Washington, on US Airways, for $1,380 apiece.

On the day of the event, the forecasts were for severe thunderstorms and tornadoes, and Mr. Nader decided that it was possible his flight would be canceled. So he opted to jump in his car and drive.

He made his engagements in time and incurred two $150 cancellation fees from US Airways. But he didn’t get the rest of his money back. Instead, the airline offered credits that could not be transferred and had to be used within a year. Otherwise, they would be forfeited.

Suffice it to say, this did not please Mr. Nader.

“Could any dictatorship be more efficient?” he asked the Haggler. “The airlines have been pursuing this forfeiture thing for a decade now. It’s like printing money.”

So Mr. Nader wrote to US Airways and demanded a refund. The airline said no. Mr. Nader, you will not be surprised to learn, did not like that answer, and he escalated his campaign with calls.

About now, roughly half of readers are thinking some variation of the following: “Wait a minute. When Nader bought those tickets, he agreed to a contract, which no doubt stipulated all of the particulars that he later objected to. Too late, pal. If you didn’t like the terms, you shouldn’t have purchased that ticket.”

The Haggler hears you. And he’d like to respond with yet another story.

This one takes place in 1972, when a man — let’s call him Ralph Nader, because that was his name — bought a plane ticket from Washington to Hartford for a speaking engagement.

Unfortunately, the flight was overbooked and Mr. Nader was bumped. He sued, alleging fraudulent misrepresentation because the airline had not disclosed its policy of deliberately overbooking flights. The case ultimately landed in the Supreme Court, where Mr. Nader prevailed.

The $25,000 in damages he was originally awarded were ultimately whittled to nil. But his primary goal wasn’t to get rich. It was to change a policy. After his victory, airlines began holding those impromptu auctions in which passengers are asked if they will take a later flight in exchange for a goodie — like a credit for a round-trip ticket.

IF you’ve ever nearly been bumped from a seat but got on board courtesy of an instant auction, you can thank Mr. Nader. If you have ever raised your hand and said, “I’ll take the later flight and the goodie,” you can thank Mr. Nader, too.

The point isn’t that we should all send the man a card. The point is that just because the airline has a policy that it has turned into fine print doesn’t mean that it’s fair, or that you can’t object to it. If you object loudly enough, and in the proper places, you might even change the fine print.

It is worth noting that the airline that Mr. Nader was to fly that day in 1972 was Allegheny, which later became US Airways. But if there was any institutional memory about this episode at the carrier, which is now based in Tempe, Ariz., it was not evident. In March, Mr. Nader sent a letter to its chief executive, Doug Parker, who, according to Mr. Nader, did not respond. Then Mr. Nader called Mr. Parker twice. Nothing.

“It’s like trying to reach Fort Knox,” he said. “You can’t possibly get these guys.”

Question: How is it possible that the name “Ralph Nader” did not ring the equivalent of air-raid sirens at the office of US Airways?

Mr. Nader eventually spoke to an assistant to the general counsel of the airline and mentioned three words: small claims court.

That did it. On June 6, Mr. Nader received a letter from a customer relations rep named Kristy Garden, who wrote, “After review of your file, due to the circumstances and as a one-time courtesy, I have authorized a refund of your tickets.” And he got back his $300 in cancellation fees.

The Haggler also heard from Valerie Wunder, a spokeswoman for US Airways, who said it evaluated customer requests “on a case-by-case basis and so were able to resolve Mr. Nader’s issue.”

Now we come to the moral of the story.

“Small claims court is an unknown venue to most people,” Mr. Nader says.

In recent years, small claims courts have become the favorite places for collection companies to file for default judgments on an assortment of credit card and auto loan debts. But that was not their original purpose. When they blossomed in the 1960s, they were meant to be consumer-friendly places for disputes under a certain ceiling — today, $5,000 or so is typical.

“I read a lot of consumer books, and almost all of them completely ignore small claims court,” Mr. Nader says. “Few people know how simple the forms are, how accommodating the judges are. A lot of them are even open at night.”

The Haggler hears a couple times a month from people who have just been to small claims court, and usually they are writing to chest-thump about their victories. Why mention that? Because otherwise you might think this US Airways episode proves only that the airline was smart enough to dodge the P.R. calamity that fighting Mr. Nader in court would surely have been.

Not so. To win in small claims court, or, as happened here, to triumph just by threatening to file there, you don’t have to be named Ralph Nader.

Though it couldn’t hurt.

E-mail: haggler@nytimes.com. Keep it brief and family-friendly, and go easy on the caps-lock key. Letters may be edited for clarity and length.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=9e901a8fee056d24b75c17ec9141e7fd

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