Category Archives: media news

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Explaining changes in the media climate

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In just a few weeks, I will receive an opportunity to do something I haven’t given much thought about doing … which is to tell a group of friends, associates and maybe even a stranger or two about why the media climate has changed so dramatically in the United States of America.

I will speak to the Farmersville Rotary Club, of which I have been a member for the past few years.

I told our club president this week that I have come up with a concept of the talk I intend to deliver. My task now is to organize it into a document that spells out what I have witnessed and what I have experienced.

I have told friends over the years that I was a victim of the changing media climate. Readers of this blog have read about my tale already. My daily newspaper career came crashing to a halt in August 2012. I have moved on and have rebuilt my life. I had hoped to retire gracefully from my job in Amarillo, but I was denied that opportunity when the publisher decided to hire someone else to do the job I had done there for 18 years. But, hey … that was then. As for the here and now, I am still writing for newspapers, as a freelancer who writes for a group of weeklies in Collin County. Therefore, I am not extinct!

I am not alone among journalists who have been shown the door in unceremonious fashion. Declining newspaper circulation provides plenty of testimony to what has happened to that medium.

Now I get to explain it all to my friends in Farmersville. Why write about this in my blog? I just want to share with you the opportunity I have received to put a little personal perspective on on a worldwide phenomenon.

The good news for me is that my talk will be brief. The difficulty might come in trying to condense it into a bite-sized tale that I believe will have a happy ending.

media news, national news

Change of heart on pledge

A few years ago — I cannot remember precisely when — I pledged to no longer make a resolution to begin the new year.

Why promise to do something that I didn’t expect to be able to do, or so I thought in the moment. Today I am taking back that pledge and declaring a new year resolution for 2026. I believe I can keep this one alive and functioning. I am pledging to use High Plains Blogger to make life as miserable as possible for Donald J. Trump, his administration of yes men and women and the MAGA crowd that remains loyal (for reasons that escape me) to the pretender in chief. I am acutely aware that my reach is somewhat limited. I don’t have a huge audience that reads my rants. I’ll start by asking those who do read them and who agree with my view that Trump is a threat to this country, that he is unfit for the office he occupies and he must be stopped … well, you can share those thoughts on your social media network of friends and acquaintances. Those of you who read this blog but who continue to support the dipshit in chief, you can react to my rants any way you see fit. It’s your call. I’ll be commenting throughout the year on issues that present themselves. My immediate aim is to flip the U.S. House from Republican to Democrat when the ballots are counted for the midterm election. One more word on this issue. If Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents knock on my door, I’ll have my birth certificate and passport handy to prove that I am an American patriot who has read the Constitution … and who understands the free speech liberty it grants for all citizens of this great country.
media news

Living the editorialist’s dream

I guess you can date this phenomenon back to around 9/11, the day the terrorists declared war on the United States of America and thrust us into the global war against terrorism.

It fell on the laps of people like me — who was writing editorials and columns and editing the pages on which we would publish them — to seek to provide context, perspective and leadership through the written word.

The phenomenon of the moment took place in this fashion: Hardly a day went by while I was working as a full-time opinion journalist where I didn’t have something on which to say. That’s right. The task I faced almost every morning when I reported for work was to decide what to set aside for a later publication date.

Many of those who have done what I did for a living for nearly 37 years faced the opposite … finding topics on which to comment to fill a gaping hole on the page. Not me, man! 9/11 introduced us to a whole host of terror-related and national security issues that required commentary from the newspaper. This occurred during the time when newspapers actually meant something to the comunities they served.

Writer’s block? Fuhgettaboutit!

I had a brief bout with writer’s block. It’s passed. My A-game has returned. I am grateful.

I now will continue living the dream … a life as a semi-retired blogger who gets to foist his views on the rest of the world.

media news

Cure for writer’s block?

I am suffering at this moment from a mild case of writer’s block. How do I know it? Because I am writing about it … that’s how!

I never heard this tip from the source himself. It came to me via a fellow editorial writer and editor. He’s a dear friend and he told me that Paul Greenberg, the late, great editorial writer who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1969 writing for the PIne Bluff (Ark.) Commercial, that the “best way to cure writer’s block is to read the Psalms.”

You’re thinking: How does reading Old Testament Scripture cure writer’s block? My answer? Beats the stuffing out of me. I cannot ask Paul now, sadly, because he’s gone to his great reward.

I figure it will pass. I have gotten them before. They fade away eventually. To be honest, the events of 9/11 I thought had all but cured me of writer’s block. That terrible day unleashed a torrent of responses that demanded commentary, which I was doing in September 2001 writing for the Globe-News in Amarillo, Texas.

I know the president provides grist. To be candid, Donald Trump is boring me. The commentary I hear online and on TV also bores me.

I said the other day I was returning to my bash-Trump self. I still intend to do so.

Just not today.

 

media news, national news

Right-wing response has been laughable

Our friends on the right wing of the political spectrum make my stomach turn with laughable excuses for why some of them seemingly justify Donald Trump’s hideous statement on the stabbing murders of Rob and Michele Reiner.

Some of them have speculated that the left’s response to the assassination of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk has given them justification to make crass comments out loud about the Reiners’ murder.

Let me be clear about something. Many GOP pols have criticized Trump’s response as being “callous,” “unpresidential,” “beyond the pale,” and “just plain wrong.” Some of the critics have been longtime MAGA supporters of Trump, such as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene … who’s now on Trump’s sh** list of former friends turned foe.

I just will add this. The president of the United States should always exercise restraint and good judgment when deciding to comment on matters such as the murder of celebrities whose fame spans the globe. Rob Reiner was an acclaimed filmmaker, director, actor, producer and, yes, a political provocateur. He despised Trump and said so regularly.

That was his right, as guaranteed under the free speech clause in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Believe it not, the president of the United States, by virtue of his very title, really isn’t entitled to speak as openly as Trump frequently does about his political opponents. Sure, he can do so without being prosecuted. However, custom simply means that just because he can do something that he really shouldn’t do it.

Trump crossed an important line of demarcation with that ghastly message sent out over Truth Social. One critic of this blog suggested to me that someone on POTUS’s staff likely wrote it and published it. Well, it still went out over Trump’s name and Donald Trump has seized control of its message.

It just goes to show what kind of individual this nation has elected to its most revered public office.

media news

Political mystery: How does he get away with this?

One of the great American political mysteries keeps playing out and it continues to baffle many millions of Americans.

Donald Trump in the span of about three days totally reversed himself and told yet another in an infinite string of bald-faced lies as he sought to wiggle out of his initial statement.

Rachel Scott of ABC News asked Trump if he was going to release the video of the second strike in September of a speed boat off the Venezuela coast; the strike killed two survivors of an initial missile attack on the boat. Trump said he had “no problem” releasing it and said Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth could do “whatever he wanted” regarding the issue. Three days later, Scott followed up on her first question, reminding him that he said he would release the video, to which Trump said “You said that, I didn’t say it.” Then he turned to someone at the table and muttered, “She’s with ABC fake news.”

Trump’s Republican allies in Congress continue to keep letting him get away with (a) telling outright lies and (b) heaping verbal abuse on female reporters who are simply doing their job.

When in the name of decency and decorum will the GOP caucus in both congressional chambers wake up to what their hero is doing? He is denigrating his exalted office. He hurls epithets at journalists who are practicing a craft protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution.

He recently called a female reporter “piggie” while dismissing a question she posed to him aboard Air Force One. Trump continues to harangue reporters as being “stupid,” “incompetent” and purveyors of “fake news.”

Meanwhile, the men and women whose constitutionally granted power is being usurped by Trump sit on their hands and keep their lips zipped.

They are disgracing themselves and the offices they occupy.

media news

MTG resignation outlives its importance

There once was a time — in a long-ago political universe — that the resignation of a junior member of Congress would last about a day, maybe two, on the nation’s attention cycle.

Then came social media. Smart phones, websites, the Internet changed it all. Now we have a junior member of Congress resigning after five years on the job in the House of Reps and you’d think the world had just spun off its axis.

Marjorie Taylor Greene, the one-time QAnon queen of Congress, the fomenter of lies and conspiracies and the leading lady of the MAGA movement, has announced her resignation from Congress effective Jan. 5, 2026. And we’re still talking about it! Hell, this blog is mentioning it!

She earned so much attention from the media that we’ve now assigned her an ID based on her initial. I have to admit that “MTG” does kinda roll off the tongue. This isn’t right. She has put forward virtually no constructive legislation. Yet MTG has become something of a household name.

She reminds me, to be ironic, of a political rival. Recall that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., burst onto the scene in a similar fashion. She, too, has been elevated to initial status. We call her AOC. She’s also been a fiery blowhard, talking about about the democratic socialism that drives her agenda. AOC, just like MTG, has become a media darling. I questioned at the time of her swearing in why the media were spending so much time on this one-time no-name member of the House. I’m still scratching my head over that one.

Social media do have their good qualities. Real news gets immediate attention. If it’s accurate, the news generally tends to draw quick response to questions raised.

Then again, it elevates back-bench members of Congress to immediate superstar status … e.g. MTG and AOC. For better or worse, that’s the world we have.

media news

War on Christmas is over!

You remember Bill O’Reilly, the Fox Propaganda Channel blowhard who every year about this time would commence his seasonal diatribe about how “liberal mainstream media” had declared war on Christmas.

I’ll tell you what. O’Reilly is still gone from the mainstream cable TV airwaves after having been booted off the air by Fox over allegations of sexual harassment. He’s still out there, I’m sure, fomenting the fantasy of a war on Christmas.

Allow me to declare that the war on Christmas is over. Done with. Finished. In reality, it never really existed as O’Reilly said it did. If there was any war on this holy and festive holiday, it was conducted by Madison Avenue and its intense commercialization of the holiday that commemorates Jesus’s birth while at the same time tracking Santa Claus’s circumnavigation of the planet to deliver gifts to those of us who have been nice … and not naughty.

Those who take aim at the media criticize them for suggesting it’s somehow sacreligious to say “happy holidays” during this time, not understanding that most of the world’s 8 billion inhabitants don’t celebrate Christmas the way we Christians do. I don’t hold it against them. I guess some of us believe everyone should celebrate the birth of a baby who we believe is the son of God.

So, when merchandisers wish us “happy holiday,” they do so out of respect for everyone they serve. It ain’t a declaration of war!

Bill O’Reilly got a good bit of mileage out of his war on Christmas demagoguery. He’s still out there somewhere spreading the lie. The reality, though, tells me something different. There is no war on Christmas! It never really existed!

media news

Boycott continues, no end in sight

My boycott of national broadcast and cable news is continuing and it is showing little signs of letting up.

Why am I shutting out the news media from my home? Because the talking heads tell me damn near nothing I don’t know and I am getting basically one side of the arguments that keep spring up like weeds in the spring.

I refuse to watch the Fox Propaganda Channel for reasons that are evident in the name I just hung on the Fox network. MSNBC, the left-leaning cable channel, almost never discusses issues with  pols who tilt right. When they have, and again, it’s a rare event, the discussion turns into a shouting/pissing match because the TV news host chooses to argue with his or her guest. I don’t need that spilling into my home.

About the only option left for me is public TV. The right wing has taken aim at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, yanking money from it and sending my taxpayer money somewhere else; I am presuming some mega rich dudes are getting the dough.

It’s not that I am addicted necessarily to the news. I once was considered a news junkie. When we traveled I would scarf up local newspapers to see the news of the day in a community we were visiting. I don’t do that these days. Then again, I don’t travel as much these days as I used to do.

And when I am home, I am keeping the TVs quiet in all the rooms of my home that have them. I don’t miss the white noise. Frankly, the news and commentary that comes from the TV broadcast and cable channels does me as much good as elevator music.

media news

No Kings message is spreading

It turns out the No Kings protest movement is growing some legs, as the many thousands of legs that carried protesters up and down streets of our great communities protesting the power grab underway in the Donald Trump administration.

You know what? That movement has spread to cities and towns favorable to notions that come from Trump and his MAGA cultists. KERA, the Dallas public TV station, reports that crowds gathered all over Collin County, a Dallas suburban county known as a bastion of Republican politics. Well, for at least one day, it was far from a pro-Trump reservoir of support.

Republicans labeled the No Kings rally a “hate America” event. It wasn’t. These individuals love our country as much as the Trumpkins. They are alarmed at the manner in which Trump is gathering power for the executive branch of government. They turned out Saturday to express their concern, just as it is provided in the Constitution’s First Amendment.

You would expect big crowds in pro-Democratic regions, such as Travis County, Texas, San Francisco and Los Angeles, the multi-state Great Lakes, and the Northeast region of the country. Crowds showed up to protest. We also saw Red States rally against the administration. This is a national phenomenon.

I wil not and cannot predict where this will lead. My fond hope is that the anger over Trump’s unconstitutional power grab remains white-hot and sustains enough voters to get off their duffs and repel the enablers in Congress who breathe life into this movement.