User:Javaweb/DNA
Garten works extensively for a variety of causes, including battered women, cancer patients, AIDS awareness and animal rights. She supports them both financially as well as in person. Garten gets about an hundred new charity requests each month. Like most people in her position she has had to hire a PR person(s) to sort through her correspondence, field press questions, and respond to those requests. There are a lot of worthy requests she has to decline and those requests are filtered through that person(s). [1]. One of the charities she supported was the Make-A-Wish foundation:
The Make-A-Wish Foundation has a very strong working relationship with Ina Garten, a celebrity wish granter who has generously made herself available to grant a wish in the past. Ina is a good friend of the Foundation and we are grateful to her for her support of our mission.[Our charity] regards the planning of wishes as a private process among the parties involved.” From time to time, planning for wishes doesn't turn out as originally envisioned, despite people’s best intentions and efforts. In such cases, the Foundation is committed to working with the wish child and family to grant another wish.
Each wish we grant requires extensive support from many people, and we respect that no individual has an unlimited capacity to grant children’s wishes on demand.
We regard the planning of wishes as a private process among the parties involved.
— Make-A-Wish
Additionally, she is not a one-man-band. To fulfill a wish and reproduce what she does on TV, she needs to coordinate with the others that work behind the scenes.
A seriously ill 6-year old boy enjoyed watching Garten’s show with his Mom and asked to have her cook a meal for him. Garten's PR representative declined the request for the second time. The little boy, once he understood he did not need to know how to swim, decided to swim with the dolphins instead. According to the mom he was thrilled with his new choice. She saw Garten as snubbing the family rather than her having work commitments and being asked 1200 times a year asking for her involvement making it impossible to fulfill all the demands. The gossip site TMZ then posted their story The reaction to that event was described in CBS’s Chow website, under the title “The High-Tech Smearing of Ina Garten” as an online lynching. TMZ did not report
- how Make-A-Wish works nor
- find out that “The Make-A-Wish Foundation has a very strong working relationship with Ina Garten, a celebrity wish granter who has generously made herself available to grant a wish in the past. Ina is a good friend of the Foundation and we are grateful to her for her support of our mission.”
- report how many requests a celebrity normally gets
- that an employee filters charity and correspondence for her as well as most celebrities
- the impossibility of fulfilling all worthy requests or
- give a reasonable report of her other charity efforts
All these distortions would have made anyone look bad.
At the start of the weekend, an LA Times gossip blog entry echoed the TMZ story but warned readers there was another side to the story still to be told. Sure enough, she did respond on Monday. On March 29th, that same gossip blog issued a more balanced entry, titled “Barefoot Contessa Ina Garten was unaware of request, but will now host her young fan”. It reported that Ina Garten had finally heard of the request that her PR person had turned down. By that time, the mother had published on her blog an entry titled “PLEASE STOP THE MADNESS” (the title was in all-caps). The parents were still angry at Garten.
You need to ask yourself why this cyber-lynching was beneath Fox News, CNN, network news such as NBC, CBS, Fox, ABC. It was beneath the New York Times, Wall Street Journal --even People Magazine. It was covered by a mostly-unseen ABC property called “ABC News Now “ for 36 seconds. In my highly-populated area, Comcast doesn’t carry it in my area. Time-Warner in NYC doesn’t show it. Has any editor seen “The Buzz” before a Google search uncovered it. It is the equivalent of the minor leagues in baseball. It recycles ABC broadcasts already seen on TV and some additional 36 second hamburger-helper to fill a 24-hour news hole. Not worth a second of time even though the morning shows need to fill 3,000 hours on the 4 morning shows alone.
Here is Ms. Marikar's article from http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/barefoot-contessa-turns-make-kid/story?id=13238578
SHEILA MARIKAR (@SheilaYM) March 28, 2011 “ABC News Now” “The Buzz”
The "Barefoot Contessa" has time to star in her Food Network show, pen cookbooks, and cook at charity luncheons for her well-to-do fans. But apparently, her schedule was too packed to meet a 6-year-old boy stricken with leukemia who requested a cooking session with her through the Make-A-Wish Foundation. She turned him down, twice.
Just In this introduction, she is actually giving reasons why Garten really is so busy and twists them into reasons she should have plenty of time. Even a charity event that raised money to preserve America’s early history(including a farm dating from 1640) becomes framed as a way to hang out with richy-rich friends. She downplays her making time for a stricken kid before so she did make time to meet with a stricken child. She neglects to mention her other charitable activities. If “ABC World News” is the major leagues (New York Yankees) and the middle-of-the-night “World News Now” is the minor league , “ABC News Now” is in whatever league goes beneath that one. “ABC News Now” is not the same as “World News Now” (which is broadcast). How many editors have seen “The Buzz” on “ABC News Now” before it being brought to your attention by an editor here? How did he discover it?
In my years on the net, this is the first time I have ever seen a comment from a journalist appear after an article: Ms. Marikar, the highly-biased angle you took in this article made it hard for me to read as a fellow journalist. It's completely understandable that a celebrity chef of Garten's magnitude would not be able to grant every appearance and favor asked of her. Now—of course she's dealing with a PR crisis, but only because it was created for her by journalists like you who are looking for the next juicy celebrity scoop. “Charmingsnob”, March 28th It is a manufactured event. Why do you prefer her judgment over the rest of ABC News that did not publish the gossip? Re: Salon link you provided, they said
Hey, what do facts matter when there's an opportunity for a good old-fashioned character thrashing? Who cares, even, if it's at the expense of the alleged victim? Haven't been angry enough yet today, Internet? Take it out on Ina, let the facts and Enzo's family's feelings be damned.
I guess they agree with me.
Other blogs also see this as a cyber-lynching: http://www.etiquettehell.com/smf/index.php?PHPSESSID=4717276e164989b9a47f4f4479f6580b&topic=92605.0
Why do you prefer OK magazine over People? And OK magazine publishes lies on its front cover such as OK Rob Pattinson marries Kristen Stewart. Never saw People do that.
- ^ Rene Lynch (March 28, 2011). "Barefoot Contessa Ina Garten was unaware of request, but will now host her young fan".
- ^ "Make-A-Wish Foundation® of America Ina Garten Statement". Make-A-Wish.