U.S.A.
Page 8 n THE ASIAN REPORTER
July 21, 2014
ABC’s diversity is ‘authenticity,’ executive says
AMERICAN STORIES. ABC’s fall slate includes
new shows about black, Asian-American, and Hispanic
families. “Fresh Off the Boat,” which stars Randall Park,
Constance Wu, Hudson Yang, Forrest Wheeler, and Ian
Chen, is a comedy about an immigrant family pursuing
the American Dream. (Photo courtesy of ABC)
By Lynn Elber
AP Television Writer
EVERLY HILLS, Calif. — ABC’s
fall slate includes new shows
about black, Asian-American, and
Hispanic families. But calling the
network’s choices a case study in diversity
is to miss the point, said Paul Lee, ABC
Entertainment Group president.
“It is a mission statement to reflect
America,” Lee told the summer meeting of
the Television Critics Association. “That’s
not so much diversity as authenticity
when you reflect America.”
The network has the advantage of
strong storytellers including Shonda
Rhimes, the force behind ABC’s “Grey’s
Anatomy” and “Scandal.” She’s going for a
Thursday-night trifecta with “How to Get
Away with Murder.”
The new drama stars Viola Davis as a
hard-charging law professor and criminal
defense attorney, giving the African-
American actress the kind of starring role
that television doesn’t often accord minori-
ties. Rhimes has done the same thing with
“Scandal” and star Kerry Washington.
ABC, the home of white-oriented
comedies “Modern Family” and “The
Middle,” will introduce ethnic families in
B
the sitcoms “black-ish,” “Cristela,” and
“Fresh Off the Boat.”
All of them have minority creators or
producers or both behind the camera,
which Lee said drives the shows’
authenticity.
“Black-ish,” about an African-American
family whose father worries that they’re
losing touch with their ethnicity, stars
Anthony Anderson and Tracee Ellis Ross
and includes creator Kenya Barris as well
as Laurence Fishburne and Larry
Wilmore among its executive producers.
Although the shows are about ethnically
specific families, they are “relatable” for all
viewers, Lee said. “These are American
stories, make no mistake about it,” he said.
Barris said race is not the central point
of “black-ish.”
“This show has so much less to do with
race than it does with culture and
identity,” Barris said. America today is
divided more along socio-economic lines
than racial ones, he said, and the show
intends to explore that division.
When Rhimes was asked to discuss the
lesson TV might learn from the rarity of
two shows with black female leads, she
replied, “Do I think there are any lessons?
No, I don’t. The shows speak for them-
selves.”
Whether her dramas might affect the
medium “remains to be seen. It hasn’t
happened yet,” she said.
Lee was asked why one returning show
about an ethnic family, “The Goldbergs,”
seems to avoid the Jewish experience, such
as showing a celebration of Hannukah or a
bar mitzvah.
There is no agenda at work, Lee replied,
saying such decisions were up to creator
and executive producer Adam Goldberg.
“It’s Adam’s show,” Lee said. “I’m not
going to sit there as a network and say, as
one Jew to another, ‘I want a bar mitzvah.’”
What happens to your online accounts when you die?
By Anne Flaherty
The Associated Press
ASHINGTON — You’ve probably decided who
gets the house or that family heirloom up in the
attic when you die. But what about your e-mail
account and all those photos stored online?
Grieving relatives might want access for sentimental
reasons, or to settle financial issues. But do you want your
mom reading your exchanges on an online dating profile
or a spouse going through every e-mail?
The Uniform Law Commission, whose members are
appointed by state governments to help standardize state
laws, has endorsed a plan that would give loved ones
access to — but not control of — the deceased’s digital
accounts, unless specified otherwise in a will.
To become law in a state, the legislation would have to
be adopted by the legislature. If it did, a person’s online
life could become as much a part of estate planning as
deciding what to do with physical possessions.
“This is something most people don’t think of until they
are faced with it. They have no idea what is about to be
lost,” said Karen Williams of Beaverton, Oregon, who
sued Facebook for access to her 22-year-old son Loren’s
account after he died in a 2005 motorcycle accident.
The question of what to do with one’s “digital assets” is
as big as America’s electronic footprint. A person’s online
musings, photos, and videos — such as a popular cooking
blog or a gaming avatar that has acquired a certain status
online — can be worth considerable value to an estate.
Imagine the trove of digital files for someone of historical
or popular note — say former President Bill Clinton or
musician Bob Dylan — and what those files might fetch on
an auction block.
“Our e-mail accounts are our filing cabinets these days,”
said Suzanne Brown Walsh, a Cummings & Lockwood
attorney who chaired the drafting committee on the
proposed legislation. But “if you need access to an e-mail
account, in most states you wouldn’t get it.”
But privacy activists are skeptical of the proposal.
Ginger McCall, associate director of the Electronic
Privacy Information Center in Washington, said a judge’s
approval should be needed for access, to protect the
privacy of both the owners of accounts and the people who
communicate with them.
“The digital world is a different world” from offline,
McCall said. “No one would keep 10 years of every
communication they ever had with dozens or even
hundreds of other people under their bed.”
Many people assume they can decide what happens by
sharing certain passwords with a trusted family member,
or even making those passwords part of their will. But in
W
DIVERGING PATHS. Felicia Zhang, left, and Nathan Bartholomay
of the United States compete in the pairs free skate figure skating com-
petition at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. Zhang and
Bartholomay have ended their partnership. The two had competed
together for three years. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings, File)
U.S. Olympic pairs skaters
Zhang, Bartholomay split
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) — U.S. Olympic
pairs skaters Felicia Zhang and Nathan Bartholomay
have ended their partnership.
The announcement means both American teams that
competed in Sochi have split. Two-time U.S. champions
Marissa Castelli and Simon Shnapir said in May they
were moving on.
Zhang and Bartholomay finished second behind
Castelli and Shnapir at nationals in January, then placed
12th at the Olympics. The 25-year-old Bartholomay, from
Pennsylvania, is interested in finding a new partner. The
20-year-old Zhang, from New Jersey, will attend the
University of South Florida full time.
The two had competed together for three years. The
United States has struggled in pairs recently as teams
have failed to stay together.
Castelli and Shnapir were ninth in Sochi as the U.S.
narrowly improved on its worst-ever Olympic showing in
pairs four years earlier.
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Calendar sections, on pages 10 and 12.
addition to potentially exposing passwords when a will
becomes public record, anti-hacking laws and most
companies’ “terms of service” agreements prohibit anyone
from accessing an account that isn’t theirs. That means
loved ones technically are prohibited from logging onto a
dead person’s account.
Several tech providers have come up with their own
solutions. Facebook, for example, will “memorialize”
accounts by allowing already confirmed friends to
continue to view photos and old posts. Google, which runs
Gmail, YouTube, and Picasa Web Albums, offers its own
version: If people don’t log on after a while, their accounts
can be deleted or shared with a designated person. Yahoo
users agree when signing up that their accounts expire
when they do.
But the courts aren’t convinced that a company
supplying the technology should get to decide what
happens to a person’s digital assets. In 2005, a Michigan
probate judge ordered Yahoo to hand over the e-mails of a
Marine killed in Iraq after his parents argued that their
son would have wanted to share them. Likewise, a court
eventually granted Williams, the Oregon mother, access
to her son’s Facebook account, although she says the
communications appeared to be redacted.
Enter the Uniform Law Commission. According to the
proposal, the personal representative of the deceased,
such as the executor of a will, would get access to — but not
control of — a person’s digital files so long as the deceased
didn’t prohibit it in the will. The law would trump access
rules outlined by a company’s terms of service agreement,
although the representative would still have to abide by
other rules including copyright laws.
That means, for example, a widow could read her
deceased husband’s e-mails but couldn’t send e-mails
from that account. And a person could access music or
video downloads but not copy the files if doing so violated
licensing agreements. Williams said she supports letting
people decide in their wills whether accounts should be
kept from family members.
“I could understand where some people don’t want to
share everything,” she said in a phone interview. “But to
us, losing him (our son) unexpectedly, anything he
touched became so valuable to us.” And “if we were still in
the era of keeping a shoebox full of letters, that would have
been part of the estate, and we wouldn’t have thought
anything of it.”
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