Photographer and friend of David Bowie will donate money from sales of portraits to buy protective masks for hospital staff.
Mick Rock’s camera has charted the careers of the great stars of music and is responsible for some of the most famous album covers, including Lou Reed’s Transformer and Queen’s Queen II.
Now, at 72, the renowned London-born photographer is to release five of his unpublished portraits of pop culture giants David Bowie, Kate Moss, Bryan Ferry, Freddie Mercury and Syd Barrett of Pink Floyd. And 20% of the sales of the prints, which were to have hung together in London this spring in a small show of previously unseen work, will go towards the gallery’s fund to buy protective masks for NHS staff.
“The NHS have always been there for me growing up in the UK and for all members of my family,” said Rock, who lives in New York but has relatives in Britain. “If this virus is a reminder of anything, it’s how much we need the NHS. They are our lifeline. We owe them every effort we can think of to protect their own lives while they are protecting the lives of others.”
Each shot is accompanied by Rock’s recollections of how it was taken. The cost of prints, available through West Contemporary, has been reduced so more fans can afford a favourite image.
Rock’s image of Bowie, taken in New York in 2002, was achieved with the help of a fictional backstory. “The eye-patch and the binoculars stirred thoughts in us about a pilot from an imaginary second world war movie, which we were making up as we went along,” said Rock.
A shot from 1975 shows Ferry in his garden in what he describes as his “Our Man in Havana” look, tribute to the Alec Guinness film of Graham Greene’s novel, while Mercury, Rock reveals, had a key request when he visited the photographic studio in Great Newport Street in 1974. “The one caveat was that he wanted to be shot with his lips closed. He had an overbite that made his front teeth protrude somewhat. He explained to me that he had four additional wisdom teeth at the back of his mouth. He didn’t want to have them removed because it would reduce his palate, which he believed would hamper his naturally extensive vocal range,” Rock recalled.
The photographer first picked up a camera after graduating from Cambridge University because it was a welcome contrast to academic study. In the decades since, his potent images have themselves become objects of study, hanging in museums. “I have become so universally identified with that era that they say I shot the 70s,” Rock has said. “What was once rock’n’roll, and very disposable, is now art.”
Carole Baskin as seen in the new hit Netflix docuseries Tiger King. Source: Netflix
«I figured it was a good time to ask for new leads,» wrote Hillsborough County Sheriff Chad Chronister in a tweet.
Tigar King’s Carole Baskin is many things: big cat lover, catchphrase coiner, leonine print wearer, the subject of a debunked conspiracy theory featuring Britney Spears and the 2002 VMAs. She was also, as the series explores at length, a person of interest in the disappearance of ther former husband, Jack Donald «Don» Lewis, a Florida millionaire who vanished in 1996.
Baskin has vigorously denied playing any role in her former husband’s disappearance, which she reiterated today in a blog post on the website for Big Cat Rescue, referring to the filmmakers’ focus on such rumors as “unsavory lies.” Yet following the enormous success of the Netflix series, with many viewers (probably you!) obsessively Googling everything Tiger King-related, a Florida sheriff is capitalizing on the renewed interest in Lewis’s disappearance by requesting tips associated with the case.
«Since Netflix and Covid19-quarantine has made TigerKing all the rage, I figured it was a good time to ask for new leads,» Hillsborough County Sheriff Chad Chronister tweeted on March 30th.
According to a press conference held by Chronister, the department has gotten about six tips a day regarding the case, though few of them have been substantive. “There’s just no real charges or evidence leading to probable cause,” said during a Zoom conference. “That still holds true, [but] we are hoping that changes the more people watch this show.”
As those who watch the show know, Lewis and Baskin ran a wildlife sanctuary in Tampa when he disappeared in August 1997. After Baskin reported his disappearance, Lewis’s van was found at a nearby airport, and Baskin told authorities that he had planned to transport cars to Costa Rica the evening before his disappearance.
During the press conference, Chronister said that Baskin had directly declined a polygraph during the investigation, saying her attorney had instructed her not to take it because it wouldn’t exonerate her or prevent her from being charged. She has never faced any charges related to Lewis’s disappearance, and the case is still open to this day.
Tiger King focuses on the speculation over whether Baskin was behind Lewis’s disappearance, most notably voiced by members of Lewis’s family (including his first wife and daughters) and Joe Exotic, the flamboyant owner of a big cat park in Oklahoma.
Exotic has long been embroiled in a rivalry with Baskin over her claims that his zoo exploited tigers and tiger cubs by, among other things, allowing guests to pet and pose for photos with them. Joe Exotic is currently serving 22 years in prison for allegedly hiring a hitman to kill Baskin. (Exotic maintains he was set up, and has filed at $94 million lawsuit to this effect.)
Although Chronister said his office has not yet received any valuable tips related to Lewis’s disappearance, he is soliciting any new information. “I can’t even begin to describe how complicated this case is,” Chronister said. “Everyone had their own theory.”
A transparency watchdog’s lawsuit against Fox News over its handling of the Covid-19 pandemic – including repeatedly calling it a hoax during broadcasts – is as novel as the coronavirus but likely won’t get far, according to legal experts.
The Washington League for Transparency and Ethics sued Fox News on Thursday, saying the network’s consistent downplaying of the pandemic in the early stages of the outbreak in the United States encouraged people to behave in ways contrary to what was required to stem the spread.
“Defendants knowingly disseminated false, erroneous, and incomplete information, which was reasonably relied upon by the public and which had the effect of delaying and interfering with the implementation of effective mitigation and countermeasures against the virus,” the League said in the complaint. “Defendants’ actions created an ongoing uncertainty amongst some members of the public as to the dangers of the virus and the rapidity with which the virus spreads.”
WASHLITE said one of its members eventually contracted the coronavirus during epidemiological conditions the plaintiffs allege were created, in part, by the malfeasance of the network.
“The defendants have created an epidemiological hazard,” WASHLITE said in the complaint. “A subset of the population has and will continue to ignore or resist reasonable and necessary efforts to control and mitigate the virus and prevent mass death.”
Fox News dismissed the lawsuit as frivolous.
“Wrong on the facts, frivolous on the law,” said Lily Fu Claffee, general counsel for Fox News Media. “We will defend vigorously and seek sanctions as appropriate.”
Thursday’s lawsuit in Washington state is the first known one of its kind filed against the conservative media organization, although it may not be the last.
Nor does the suit have a good chance of prevailing on the merits, according to one expert. Margaret Russell, a law professor at Santa Clara University who specializes in media law, said it will be tough to get a judge to sign off on the suit’s central legal theory.
“It will not go far,” she said of the case.
The lawsuit invokes the Consumer Protection Act in its complaint, but the law is a tough fit for their claims because it’s not as though Fox News pundits are selling their speech directly or they are offering something for sale that is materially different than what they present it as.
“It will be difficult to apply the CPA to a network that has a different set of hosts with nuanced differences in their opinions,” Russell said. “Plus their product is speech and they are not selling it in a traditional sense. They’re just offering opinions.”
The lawsuit also claims Fox News intentionally inflicted emotional distress by downplaying the virulence of Covid-19.
“If the standards of intentional infliction of emotional distress were applied to news organizations and public figures, there would be no end to lawsuits,” Russell said.
Another problem is that news consumers have various avenues through which to collect their news.
“Certainly you could make an argument that there is a compelling public health problem at issue, but the classic First Amendment approach says you should combat false speech with true speech, or bad speech with good speech,” Russell said.
Nevertheless, the professor could envision future suits, perhaps were plaintiffs relied on information provided by the network and went about their daily lives only to contract the disease to the detriment of their health.
Even those claims would run up against the First Amendment principles of freedom of the press.
“On the one hand you have a compelling interest in public health, but on the other hand you have an equally compelling interest in freedom of the press,” Russell said.
Fox News has long endured criticism for its coverage of the coronavirus during the early stages of the outbreak, with Sean Hannity calling the disease a hoax, Trish Reagan, another host, claiming the outbreak was a fiction invented by Democrats to attack the president and a litany of hosts downplaying the deadly and contagious disease by comparing it favorably with the common cold or the seasonal flu.
However, Tucker Carlson, a prominent Fox News personality with a primetime slot at the network, has remained a notable exception, rigorously covering the disease’s spread while calling for an urgent response from state and federal officials. The network also sidelined Reagan after she called the virus a pretext for Democrats to re-impeach Trump.
However, Fox News itself is worried about exposure to legal liability, according to Gabriel Sherman, a Vanity Fair reporter who frequently uses contacts inside Fox News to expose the inner workings of the conservative media network.
“When I’ve been talking to Fox insiders over the last few days, there’s a real concern inside the network that their early downplaying of the coronavirus actually exposes Fox News to potential legal action by viewers who maybe were misled and actually have died from this,” Sherman said in an interview published on Sunday.
The network has altered the tone of its coverage in recent weeks, treating the pandemic as a serious threat and an evolving news story.
Fox News was also not the only news organization to initially underplay the seriousness of the threats posed by the coronavirus. The Washington Post, Vox and others ran several stories at the beginning of the global outbreak that compared Covid-19 to the seasonal flu. But those stories were written in January, well before the disease spread to the United States and wrought havoc to devastating effect in Italy, Spain and other parts of Europe.
Reporting by the New York Times indicates that for two weeks in late February and early March, when the pandemic began to take off in the United States, Fox News was more focused on providing cover for Donald Trump’s posture on the issue than the dissemination of the facts.
Fox News personalities like Hannity, Lou Dobbs, and Jesse Waters were downplaying the disease, even as executives introduced disinfectant cleaning into their office and placed hand sanitizer conspicuously around the building, according to the story.
Criticism of the network has not been restricted to the lawsuit.
On Thursday, 74 journalism professors who signed an open letter to Fox News on Thursday saying its coverage was “a danger to public health.”
“Urgently, therefore, in the name of both good journalism and public health, we call upon you to help protect the lives of all Americans — including your elderly viewers — by ensuring that the information you deliver is based on scientific facts,” the letter said.
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