April 14, 2019

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Sports April 14, 2019

Tiger Woods Wins 2019 Masters

In a surprise comeback, Tiger Woods wins his first major title in more than a decade.



MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

Today in Augusta, Ga., what seemed impossible just a few years ago became a reality. Tiger Woods, who seemed a longshot to win another golf tournament – let alone another major championship – did just that, winning his fifth Masters by one stroke. It was his 15th major title and his first in almost 11 years.

Joining us now to tell us more about it is NPR sports correspondent Tom Goldman. Tom, welcome.

TOM GOLDMAN, BYLINE: Thank you. Hi, Michel.

MARTIN: So this story is all over social media. It’s all over the world. People are tweeting about what they were doing the last time he won – my personal favorite, that Destiny’s Child was beginning their final world tour. But Tiger has won a few times before – a few. So what makes this different?

GOLDMAN: Oh, boy. Well, you know, because a couple of years ago, Tiger Woods said he could barely walk. I think that’s what makes this significant. He thought his career might be over. His back problems were debilitating. So the talk of winning – of winning a major seemed farfetched to say the least. But then he had fusion surgery – that was his fourth back surgery – and it worked.

And last year, he started his climb back. He built to a victory in the prestigious TOUR Championship in September of last year. And that proved he could win again. And today, he proved he could win a major again. It’s the first major victory since 2008 – the 2008 U.S. Open – first Masters win since 2005. And the 14 intervening years are the longest gap between victories in Masters history.

And Michel, amazingly, this rekindles the question of, can he beat Jack Nicklaus’s record of 18 major championships? Eleven years ago, when he won No. 14 – that U.S. Open in 2008 – it seemed like a matter of when and not if that would happen. But to come back now and again start this talk about Tiger catching Jack, we just never saw it coming.

MARTIN: How did he do it today? Tell me – because it was a wild tournament overall. I mean, at one point, like, there were five guys in contention, like, five people tied. You know, the whole thing was wild. So how did he do it today? How did he pull it off?

GOLDMAN: It was amazing. At first, I should say he won coming from behind, which is a first. This is his first major that he’s won without having at least a share of the lead going into the final round. And he started today’s final round two shots behind the leader, Italy’s Francesco Molinari.

Woods was kind of slow getting going, but he said afterwards that he just kept plodding – he used that word a bunch of times, plodding. And Molinari look great early on. He was sinking clutch putts. But then on hole 12, the par three in famed Amen Corner, Molinari put his tee shot in the creek in front of the green. And that changed the complexion of the tournament right there.

As Woods said later, it let a bunch of people back into the tournament. Really good players, some of the best in the world, like Brooks Koepka, who won two majors last year, world No. 2-ranked Dustin Johnson, they surged. But through it all, Woods played steady. And the last few holes, he did better than steady. He had three birdies – one under par – in his last six holes. And he won by a stroke.

MARTIN: We have about a minute left, Tom. So does this mean something for men’s golf? I know that there’s this whole question of, like, the Tiger effect and all of this. And, you know, he hasn’t been on the scene except as a – sort of a sad sidebar in recent years. Does this mean something for men’s golf overall for the sport?

GOLDMAN: I think it does. You know, Woods and his tremendous success years ago spawned a new generation of young athletic golfers with complete games. The golf out there is really good. And today, all those young golfers he spawned, he beat them in the biggest tournament when the pressure was greatest and when they were all playing really well. And so he again is on top, which I think is maybe disconcerting for the young guns who thought Woods was going to kind of fade off into the sunset. Not yet.

MARTIN: Exciting for the over-40 set overall, right? Now tell the truth, Tom. You’re going to watch it again right now, aren’t you?

GOLDMAN: I am.

MARTIN: All right. That’s NPR’s Tom Goldman. Tom, thank you.

GOLDMAN: You’re welcome.

(SOUNDBITE OF BENNY SINGS’ “PASSIONFRUIT”)

Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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Business April 14, 2019

Breaking Down The Hollywood Dispute Between Writers And Agents

NPR’s Michel Martin speaks with Kim Masters, editor-at-large for The Hollywood Reporter, about the ongoing dispute between writers and agents.



MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

And now we turn to Hollywood to check in on the dispute between writers and talent agents. After groups representing both parties failed to reach an employment agreement, the Writers Guild instructed members to cut ties with their agents. That group represents thousands of writers, and the dispute could stall production of scripted TV shows and movies. Here to tell us what this means is Kim Masters. She’s an editor at large at The Hollywood Reporter.

Kim Masters, welcome back. Thanks so much for joining us once again.

KIM MASTERS: My pleasure.

MARTIN: Can you just tell us as briefly as you can how we got to this point?

MASTERS: There has been a process called packaging that goes back more than 40 years. It’s become an institution in this industry. And packaging means – this is primarily a thing now with television writers – when an agency puts together elements of a show and sells it to a studio, the studio pays the agency a fee directly. And this has various effects that the writers are now completely fed up with. They argue that the agents who are getting paid by the studios have a conflict because their job is to represent the writer and not make deals for themselves with the studios.

And they say that this causes writers to be underpaid. Oftentimes, writers don’t even know that they’re part of a package. They say that if you’re developing a TV show, these fees that the studio is paying the agencies can cut the budget for your own TV show, diminishing your chances for success, because you can’t necessarily hire the actor you want or get the location you want.

MARTIN: I think people could see their point. For example, if you were in a real estate transaction, and if you hired somebody to represent you, to then find out that that person was actually the person selling the house, for example – you would experience that as a conflict. So what do the agents say about that? What has their position been about that?

MASTERS: Well, what the agents give up in this scenario of packaging is you normally would pay a 10 percent commission to your agent for getting you a job, and you don’t pay if the packaging fee is involved. So the agents are saying this helps lower-level writers because they can make more money. But the writers argue that this is more than offset by the potential conflicts that these agents have collecting fees from the studios.

And they point out and argue that their compensation has gone down in recent years overall. One of the writers said how he had walked through an art gallery at his agency. These agencies have all of this wealth and accoutrements and try to look very, very successful. But at this point, the writers are looking at all of those signs of success and saying, wasn’t some of that money supposed to be mine?

MARTIN: So the Writers Guild leadership wrote to members saying that they are about to enter unchartered waters. What are some of the repercussions of this that we might see? Recognizing I’m asking you to speculate here since – as by definition, it’s uncharted – what do you think might happen? What are people concerned about?

MASTERS: Well, guild members as of now are expected to fire their agents. It is pilot season, so the shows are staffing up right now. And what the writers are trying to do is figure out alternate means to communicate about what jobs are available and help people find jobs without involving agents.

MARTIN: Is there any entity or group working to resolve this?

MASTERS: Right now, we are looking at what seems like impasse. These are very divergent interests right now. The agents feel they must produce. They certainly don’t want to give up these very, very lucrative packaging fees. Sometimes they make more than the writers from TV shows created by the writers. So this is really kind of an existential struggle, and I’m not sure how I see the way out.

MARTIN: That’s Kim Masters, editor at large for The Hollywood Reporter.

Kim, thank you so much for joining us.

MASTERS: Oh, thank you for having me.

(SOUNDBITE OF THE VERVE’S “BITTER SWEET SYMPHONY”)

Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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Health April 14, 2019

How Philadelphia Mandated Vaccinations In 1991

NPR’s Sacha Pfeiffer speaks with Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, about the last time the U.S. mandated measles vaccinations.



SACHA PFEIFFER, HOST:

Mandatory measles vaccinations have been ordered for people living in parts of Brooklyn, N.Y. That’s the order of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. And it was prompted by a measles outbreak in some ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities there. Vaccination rates are low in those communities, and an anti-vaccination movement is spreading there. Requiring vaccines is a rare public health move, but there is a precedent. During a 1991 outbreak in Philadelphia, city officials mandated vaccinations for children against their parents’ will. Dr. Paul Offit treated children during that outbreak. He’s director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. And he joins us to talk about the experience.

Dr. Offit, welcome.

PAUL OFFIT: Thank you.

PFEIFFER: In New York, Mayor de Blasio has said anyone who doesn’t comply will be fined. But he hasn’t said that people will be forced to get an injection or take a pill. In Philadelphia, was anyone actually forced to be vaccinated?

OFFIT: Yes. There’s a distinction between mandatory vaccination and compulsory vaccination. What de Blasio is asking for is mandatory vaccination, which is to say, get a vaccine. If you don’t get it, then you’ll pay some sort of societal price. You may have to pay a fine or something like that. Here in Philadelphia, we had compulsory vaccination, which is to say, your child got a vaccine whether you wanted your child to get a vaccine or not. It was a court order.

PFEIFFER: And how did Philadelphia get to that point?

OFFIT: Well, we – in that several-month period in early 1991, we had 1,400 cases of measles and nine deaths. It was a major epidemic. I mean, parents were scared to death in this city. The city became a feared destination. It was a nightmare.

PFEIFFER: You were treating children who came to the hospital with measles. What condition were those kids in?

OFFIT: Well, typically, when you’re hospitalized with measles it’s because you have severe pneumonia caused by the virus or you have a bacterial superinfection that was set up by the virus when it infected your lungs or you have severe dehydration. Those were generally the reasons children came into the hospital.

PFEIFFER: So they were – they – these kids were in tough shape.

OFFIT: Yes. And this was at the point where, actually, they were compelled to come in. This epidemic centered on two fundamentalist churches – Faith Tabernacle and First Century Gospel, which were faith-healing churches. So it wasn’t just that they didn’t immunize. They also didn’t choose medical care. And so they often let their children get very sick before, frankly, they were compelled by law to bring them to the hospital.

PFEIFFER: What did their parents tell you about why they hadn’t vaccinated their children?

OFFIT: They were profoundly of the belief that Jesus would protect their children. And they said Jesus was our doctor.

PFEIFFER: And did they also believe that vaccines could cause their kids harm? Were they skeptical about them in other ways?

OFFIT: I think they were just skeptical of modern medicine, period. They saw modern medicine as an act of man. They saw Jesus as someone who could protect their child, independent of whether or not man intervened.

PFEIFFER: In Philadelphia, when those mandatory vaccines were ordered, were there any legal challenges to them?

OFFIT: Yes. The pastor of the Faith Tabernacle Church actually did challenge that because, frankly, what he was doing was perfectly legal. We had had a religious exemption to vaccinations on the book for 10 years. There was nothing he was doing that was illegal. And so he asked the American Civil Liberties Union to represent him, but the ACLU was unwilling to take the case. They said, basically, while they believe that you are at liberty to martyr yourself to your religion, you’re not at liberty to martyr your child to your religion. So they didn’t take the case.

PFEIFFER: Given the fears that many people out there have about vaccines, do you have any qualms or concerns about mandatory vaccinations?

OFFIT: No. I think that were those fears well-founded, sure, I could understand it. I mean, if vaccines cause what they fear vaccines cause, like chronic diseases like autism or diabetes or multiple sclerosis or attention deficit disorder or hyperactivity disorder, sure. But vaccines don’t cause that, so they’re making bad decisions based on bad information that’s putting their children and other children at risk. I mean, at some point, somebody has to stand up for these children.

PFEIFFER: To take us back to present day, is there anything you think was learned from the Philadelphia experience that could be applied to New York City today?

OFFIT: Only just how bad it can get. I guess I just think we invariably fail to learn from history, which is why, occasionally, we’re condemned to repeat it. I mean, do we really need to learn that measles is a potentially fatal infection? Do we need to learn that? Before there was a measles vaccine, 500 people died every year in this country, and most of them were children. Forty-eight thousand people were hospitalized. Do we really need to keep learning that lesson? You know, we eliminated measles from this country in the year 2000. And I think not only did we largely eliminate that virus, I think we eliminated the memory of that virus. People don’t remember how sick it could make you. And that’s why, I think, they can be so cavalier about these kinds of choices.

PFEIFFER: Dr. Paul Offit is director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. And he treated children during a measles outbreak in Philly in 1991. Dr. Offit, thanks for talking with us.

OFFIT: Thank you.

Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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