Great white sharks off L.A. beaches? Yup. Now they're on TV

White sharks at one of Los Angeles’ most popular surfing beaches? Yes.

They’ve become such a familiar site at Sunset Beach in Pacific Palisades that regulars have become almost, kind of, sort of comfortable with their presence. Sometimes the humans don't even tell lifeguards or researchers about seeing the predators.

That’s one of the revelations of “Great White Invasion,” one of several new programs debuting this week on the Discovery channel’s 24th annual “Shark Week.” The television event has been a hit for Discovery since it debuted in the 1980s, routinely attracting 20 million viewers a year. "Shark Week" topped more than 30 million viewers in 2010.

“Great White Invasion” describes how sightings of great whites have multiplied in recent years at Sunset—the surf break near where Sunset Boulevard empties on to Pacific Coast Highway—and at other beaches around the world.

The shark appearances here gained particular notoriety in 2009, when surf shop owner Randy Wright captured photos and video of the creatures jumping out of the water. The “breaching” photos--sizable sharks soaring out of the water--became a sensation on the Web.

The producers of “Great White Invasion” tried to secure some of Wright’s video, but the videographer had his own ideas for disseminating the information, though where it will be shown is not yet clear. Among the footage: shots of a shark perhaps 10 feet long jumping clear of the ocean's surface, video that a prominent shark researcher called “phenomenal."

Unable to secure Wright’s video, the “Great White Invasion” creators made due with interviews with  Sunset surfers about their shark encounters. They paired the Los Angeles segments with dramatic footage from white shark breaches in other locales, like Australia and South Africa.

Ralph Collier, the veteran researcher who founded and runs the San Fernando Valley-based Shark Research Committee, said he thinks “Great White Invasion” gives a fair account of white shark episodes locally. Collier appears in the documentary and comments on the recent proliferation of white shark sitings.

 “There has not been one surfer who was bitten or bumped or harassed at Sunset,” Collier said in an interview with the Big Picture. “There have been numerous reports of sharks coming up, usually on the starboard side of a surfer and rotating and then looking them over, before leveling out and swimming away. We are not really anything of special interest to sharks.”

The reasons for infrequent shark attacks on humans in Southern California are not entirely understood, Collier said. A teenage body-boarder was killed off Vandenberg Air Force Base, north of Santa Barbara, last fall. A veterinarian died while on a training swim off Solana Beach in the spring of 2008.

With millions of people entering the water, there have been only a handful of other fatalities in Southern California in the last half-century. Collier said there are some common sense precautions to be taken by those who enter the shark’s domain. Swimmers and surfers should avoid the ocean when marine mammals or a lot of bait fish are nearby. They should not wear flashy jewelry, swim suits or even nail polish that might attract a shark’s attention, Collier said. Though it’s not understood exactly what color range white sharks can see, better to go low-key.

“Great White Invasion" replays frequently this week, along with a host of other shark-umentaries. One other Discovery offering features "Chief Shark Officer" Andy Samberg, celebrity host for the  week's offerings. The "Saturday Night Live" comedian takes a look, and gets really scared, about sharks off the Bahamas.

ALSO:

Andy Samberg of 'Saturday Night Live' named Discovery Channel's Shark Week host

--James Rainey

Twitter: latimesrainey

Photo: White sharks star in the Discovery channel program "Great White Invasion." Surfers in Los Angeles talk about seeing the predators off Sunset Beach. There have been no attacks on humans at the popular surf spot. Credit: C & M Fallows / oceanwideimages.com

N.Y. Times sends potassium iodide to protect reporters

In journalism, editors with personnel overseas often have to make wrenching decisions about where it's safe for their people to be. The task becomes even more dicey this week in northern Japan, where the prospect of being contaminated with radiation from heavily damaged nuclear reactors has become possible.

As a precaution, the New York Times has obtained a supply of potassium iodide,  a preventative against radiation poisoning of the thyroid gland, for its bureau in Japan.

If, and when, it will be used is not known. "It is a very difficult task to try to understand the level of risk from radiation when the situation is rapidly changing and the information [is] incomplete," said Susan Chira, foreign editor for the New York Times.

Chira said via e-mail that the newspaper had an advantage in trying to assess risk because it had several reporters "who have covered previous nuclear disasters, among them Three Mile Island and Chernobyl." She said the journalists "are drawing on their accumulated wisdom" as well as medical experts to decide how to take adequate precautions.

"Most importantly, we are urging them to stay well away from the zone around the plants so as not to risk contamination at all," Chira continued in her message. "The precautions are simply in case something unexpected happens and there is exposure borne by air or some other unforeseen consequences."

Potassium iodide is a salt that fills up the thyroid gland and prevents it from taking in radioactive material that can cause cancer. Following last week's earthquake and damage to the Japanese nuclear reactors, fears about the spread of radiation have become so great that supplies of potassium iodide reportedly have been running short, even in the  United States. 

--James Rainey

Twitter: latimesrainey

Photo: The damaged Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear facility in Japan, where workers are struggling to prevent the catastrophic release of radiation in the area devastated by a tsunami. Credit: AP Photo / DigitalGlobe

 

 

 

 

Frank Luntz, Fox News and faux science take on Obama

Opinions of President Obama's State of the Union address will naturally vary. But we now should be able to reach a national consensus on one putrid post-address tradition: instant polling and focus groups.

At the end of the 62-minute address Tuesday night, Fox News aired what can only be called public opinion "show-data" -- faux science not worth the micro video-bytes it was embedded on. CNN committed a lesser, but still unnecessary offense: introducing a "flash" poll overweighted with Democrats.

Anyone who has been paying attention knows that more rigorous national surveys have found something much more equivocal: After a long swoon, the president's approval rating has begun to recover in recent weeks. A composite of surveys at Pollster.com shows 49.8% of Americans approving of Obama's performance and 45.1% disapproving.

You wouldn't have gotten a hint that the nation is that closely divided from cable TV's noise makers.

Over at CNN, senior correspondent Joe Johns appeared not long after the House chamber emptied to tell us that, per expectations, television viewers of presidential addresses tend to be from the president's own party. Of the 475 questioned by CNN in its instant survey, "the vast majority" were Democrats.

Among that self-selecting group, Johns told us, 52% had a "very positive" impression of Obama's speech and 32% a "somewhat positive" impression. Just 15% reacted negatively. Further, 61% of those it surveyed "thought positively about the President's policies" before the speech, a figure that jumped up to 77% after watching the address.

It seemed barely illuminating that a group heavily tilted toward Obama stalwarts liked him even more after they heard him speak for an hour. At least CNN gave us enough information to know their poll came from anything other than a representative sample of Americans.

The group presented by Frank Luntz, not surprisingly, had even bigger problems. I say not surprisingly because the pollster has long been closely tied to the Republican Party and rigorous partisanship. Luntz is a master of wordplay who, among other things, helped Republicans devise their attacks on the healthcare reform legislation. Don't talk about a public option, he said. Call it a "government takeover."

As the nonpartisan Politifact.com reported, Luntz wrote in a 28-page memo to reform foes: "Takeovers are like coups. They both lead to dictators and a loss of freedom."

That gives you an idea where the Fox favorite comes from. Given his inherent credibility gap, Luntz might have begun his segment with Sean Hannity on Tuesday night by explaining a little bit about the 29 people he assembled in Atlanta. 

Where did they come from? What was their party affiliation? How did they feel about Obama before the State of the Union? He did none of that.

Instead, the segment began with Hannity launching into his complaints about Obama, calling his speech  "flat," uninspiring and disingenuous -- because Obama talked about cutting spending after the federal government ran up a huge debt fighting the recession.

Being a man of precision and science, Luntz moved to make sure that statement didn't taint his impartial panel. "I don't want you to feel under pressure because of what Sean Hannity just said," he told the group.

Thus put at ease, the panel was asked for one word to sum up Obama's performance. In a nation we know to be about evenly divided in its feelings about the president, these are the first seven answers Luntz got: "optimism, platitudes," followed by "empty ... redundant ... political ... not connected with America ... hyperbole ... Obama conflicting..."

Hmm. Must be a real pocket of Obama opposition in heavily Democratic Atlanta. And that pocket just happened to find its way into the front row seats on the set where Luntz staged this little tea party.

It went on in that vein: The bulk of panelists suggesting the lack of bipartisanship was clearly, unquestionably the fault of Obama, not the Republicans. One man even rated the president's promises as about as  trustworthy as "romantic talk from Tiger Woods." (It had to be a coincidence that this fellow's two paragons of mendacity were two prominent African Americans.)

In case the anti-Obama feeding frenzy might stall, Luntz chummed the waters a little. He did it by misconstruing what the president said about the economy. While Obama stated that the "worst" of the recession had passed, Luntz asked the panel to respond to Obama's notion that "the recession is over."

Lo and behold, the vast majority of the panelists disagreed with something the president never said.

Toward the end of the segment, Luntz let viewers know that 13 of the 29 people he brought together had voted for Obama in 2008. As I recall, Obama won the last presidential election. But why start with a more closely balanced panel when you can present one that's so much more, more ... outspoken?

(Luntz told me via e-mail that the other 16 on his panel had voted for John McCain. Apparently explaining the imbalance, he added that "four invited Obama participants still didn't show." He did not immediately answer about the panelists' party affiliation or pre-speech sentiments about Obama.)

It was a bit anticlimactic when only seven of the onetime Obama supporters raised their hands when Luntz asked who was still "pretty well" behind the president.

Luntz had done his work by doing Hannity's work -- offering his faux science as proof that Obama is in  political straits. "If I were Barack Obama watching this tonight," Luntz said, "I would be a little bit nervous."

The sequels could be coming up for days on Fox. It began Wednesday morning on "Fox & Friends," where Luntz used the same panel and similar tactics to prove that Obama wasn't even the real focus for most Americans on Tuesday night.

Instead, Luntz assured us that the man who really made the winning impression was Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), who gave the official Republican response. "Barack Obama was the focus," Luntz said, "but Paul Ryan seems to be the star."

-- James Rainey

Twitter: latimesrainey

Photo: Fox News host Sean Hannity hosted Republican pollster Frank Luntz on Tuesday night. Luntz used a focus group to suggest that President Obama is in political straits. Mainstream polling suggests a more divided view of the president. Credit: KABC-AM radio

 

 

Net neutrality: The sky is falling, or not, with new FCC rules

Only the barest outlines have begun to emerge of the new rules that could govern access to the Internet. But, predictably, a lot of people are spewing gigabytes of invective about the potential harm to our most democratic medium.

Tuesday’s 3-2 FCC vote approving new regulations was designed to assure equal access—for companies and individuals—to the Worldwide Web and whatever great innovations emerge in years to come. Years of litigation and, perhaps, legislation will follow--battles that will do a lot more to settle the future of “net neutrality” than the current rush of words.

But while several writers noted an inherent sadness over the end of the Internet’s wild and woolly days of laissez faire, or predicted a menacing government takeover, it seems safe to bet that the rules won’t bust up the free information party nearly that dramatically, or haphazardly.

Interpreting the rules can be a dicey proposition, at best, since they haven’t even been formally issued by the feds. And even the general outlines we know raise as many questions as they answer.

Take the concept of “paid prioritization.” That’s the notion that media and tech companies could pay broadband providers like Comcast and Qwest a fee to get their data transmitted faster than data from other companies that don't pay a premium.

The new rules do not explicitly outlaw "paid prioritization."  But the rules don’t approve paying for better access, either. Most observers took the lack of specificity to mean that the FCC, at least in some instances, would allow companies to pay to get a faster ride through the Internet “pipe.”

Internet purists and political liberals complain that this will mean the beginning of the end of the Internet’s egalitarian ideal. They have a point.

“I am fan of net neutrality in the classic sense,” said Andrew Lih, an associate professor of journalism at the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism. “That means we all would have access to what’s called a ‘dumb pipe,’ where Google, Netflix and anything else have the right to the same access. That’s what makes the Internet great.”

What’s caused complications in recent times, however, is the massive surge in the amount of bandwidth being filled by video streaming services like Netflix. The all-created-equal ethos  is challenged when a small percentage of users (though growing rapidly every day) suck up a huge percentage of the capacity.

“In the real world, there is only so much bandwidth and there are real costs associated with building it and maintaining it,” said Lih, author of “The Wikipedia Revolution." Broadband operators want to recoup those costs and profit, by charging the companies that use an outsize share of broadband.

'Lie of the Year': dirty, rotten government takeover of healthcare

With the economy tanking and Americans hurting, political fear-mongering and fibbing reached a fever pitch in 2010. The biggest lie of the year, according to a respected fact-checking organization, was the canard that a new healthcare law amounted to "a government takeover of healthcare."

Led by pollster and political message-doctor Frank Luntz, Republicans used the term to conjure foreboding about an overreaching, socialist-style government program that would move to control the entire healthcare sector, according to PolitiFact.com.

The researchers at the website, operated by the St. Petersburg Times, noted that the reform -- which incoming members of Congress have vowed to repeal -- would leave the vast bulk of healthcare in the hands of private insurance companies, doctors and hospitals.

The law, supported by President Obama and the Democrats, sets up exchanges to help consumers buy insurance through private companies. They  specifically ruled out the "public option," insurance provided via the government.

PolitiFact chose the phrase as Lie of the Year because dozens of politicians and media pundits repeated it. Fear of government overreaching played a role in the midterm election.

PolitiFact noted that Luntz pushed the "government takeover" language in a 28-page memo that argued: "Takeovers are like coups. They both lead to dictators and a loss of freedom." Although the study didn't say so, Fox News became a particularly willing vehicle for the "government takeover" meme.

That sort of thinking helped scare many Americans about any change in their healthcare. By the time Obama signed the reform in March, a Bloomberg poll showed that 53% of respondents agreed that "the current proposal to overhaul healthcare amounts to a government takeover.”

Those who follow PolitiFact closely know that it does not merely slap down mendacity on the right. Democrats and liberals also feel the website's wrath. The site recently concluded, for example, that Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) had been flat wrong when he argued that the extension of George W. Bush-era tax cuts was "giving that $700 billion to millionaires and billionaires."

A rigorous breakdown by PolitiFact showed that, with the lower taxes extended for two years, the amount forgiven would be a lot closer to $60.7 billion. And that money would be saved, not just by millionaires and billionaires, but by many other Americans.

With the presidential election season soon to be upon us, righteous arbiters like FactCheck.org and Politifact.com, which also found the "government takeover" language to be a whopper, will become more and more valuable. Safe havens from the hyperbole machine are few and far between.

[For the record, 9 a.m.: An earlier version of this post gave wrong domain names for two websites. The correct domain names are FactCheck.org, not Factcheck.com, and Politifact.com, not Politifact.org]

--James Rainey

Twitter: latimesrainey

Photo: House Speaker-in-waiting John Boehner (R-Ohio) is among those who pushed the notion that the new Democratic-backed healthcare reform amounted to a "government takeover" of healthcare. The respected watchdog group PolitiFact.com dubbed that notion the "Lie of the Year." Credit: Alex Brandon / Associated Press

Bill Nye the Science Guy forgives USC its Twitterishness

A couple of USC seniors felt some of their fellow students demonstrated a lack of humanity last month when their guest speaker -- Bill Nye the Science Guy -- collapsed on stage.

Rather than come to Nye's assistance, the students pecked away at their Twitter accounts and Facebook pages, sending out news of the TV icon's distress, instead of doing anything to come to his aid, the two students said.

That story lighted up the Internet a few weeks ago, in what, as I wrote at the time, appeared to be another bit of proof that young narcissists spent too much time wallowing in their technology, losing their humanity in the process.

But that account soon met a stiff challenge. Others who attended the Nye speech at USC's Bovard Auditorium said the crowd was not nearly as detached as the two students originally reported. And, as I tried to show by way of some of the Internet postings on the event, the story took on a magnitude of its own due to the viral, myth-building power of the blogosphere.

Now, the "victim" of the students' purported bad behavior has come forward with his own account. And bow-tied Mr. Nye essentially says: No big deal. Nye wrote on his website that the USC students who came to his aid "were attentive, thoughtful, and gracious."

He also said he understood, as some students reported at the time, how they initially thought his collapse on stage (which he attributed to "fatigue and minor food poisoning") might have appeared to be a comedic device.

Nye offered only the mildest commentary on the propensity of some people, particularly the young, to operate in constant-communication mode. "I predict we’re in a phase," Nye wrote. "In a few years, people will learn to reduce their message sending, the same way many of us have learned not to answer the phone during dinner."

Nye also wryly observed that, given the large crowd of students who came to see him, it may have been for the best that they all didn't rush to show their concern. "I can assure you," he wrote, "that having 1,200 strangers run toward you when you’re sick is not appealing."

-- James Rainey

Photo: Bill Nye, host of television's "Bill Nye the Science Guy." Credit: J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press