Mark Fox's Weblog

The Washington Post has an article on a fascinating experiment they conducted on January 12th with the help of acclaimed classical violinist Joshua Bell. Placing Mr. Bell with his multi-million dollar Gibson ex Huberman Stradivari violin in a Washington D.C. Metro (subway) station as a busker playing for pocket change the Post’s reporter secretly taped the reactions of passer-bys. Would they recognize Bell’s musical expertise and stay and listen or would he be unnoticed?

Before the experiment, a music expert, the music director of the National Symphony Orchestra estimated that 35 to 40 people out of the 1,000 or so would pass by in an hour would recognize Bell’s quality and stay and listen. However in fact nearly nobody stopped to listen and most people later interviewed by reporters under the guise of a story on transit did not even realize there was a violinist at the station.

Not counting $20 from the sole person who recognized him, Bell made $32.17.

Before the people of Washington DC are labelled Philistines it should be noted that people in a subway station are typically are time constrained and just want to get through the station as fast as possible. A think there would have been a different reaction if Bell played in a park or city square.

With charges that the ABC docudrama “The Path to 9/11” contains “defamatory” scenes that show Clinton administration officials undertaking actions they did not do in real life such as ordering the cancellation of a mission to kill Osama bin Laden when none was in place it is useful to consider the fate of other movies that include made of scenes.

In March 2005 the publicly owned Canadian Broadcast Corporation (CBC) broadcast the two-part four-hour miniseries Prairie Giant: The Tommy Douglas Story which focused on Tommy Douglas, Premier of Saskatchewan who in the 1940s and 50s introduced many Canadian staples such as Social welfare, universal Medicare, old age pensions and mothers' allowances. Parts of the movie were critical of James Gardiner who was Premier of Saskatchewan in the late-1920s and mid-1930s. Following complains by his family the CBC hired a historian who concluded the character created for the film does not reflect the historical record. As a result the CBC agreed to not broadcast the movie again and home and educational sales.

However ABC has more to lose than the CBC, it spent $40 million on its miniseries and may be loath to pull it no matter how many fake scenes are in it.

Children's publishing company Scholastic has pulled its guide to the series stating: "After a thorough review of the original guide that we offered online to about 25,000 high school teachers, we determined that the materials did not meet our high standards for dealing with controversial issues"

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