Category Archives: media news

media news

What if Obama had done any of this … ?

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Social media are so chock full of viral entries, it’s nearly impossible to keep up with them.

However, one of those viral moments caught my attention this morning. I’ll be brief, but I just have to share its contents.

A young woman poses a series of questions, such as, “What if Barack Obama had … “

Paid off a porn star, allowed his daughters to earn billions off of phony investments, started a war with Iran, launched an insurrection to prevent the transition of power after a free and fair election, tore down the East Wing, posted a picture of himself as Jesus, faked an assassination attempt, was a convicted felon, threatened to destroy an entire civilization, pardoned individuals convicted of committing crimes in that insurrection … etc., etc., etc.

A young man in this video said President Obama would be impeached, convicted of high crimes, sent to prison and then maybe executed in public.

That’s the reputation facing right-wingers as they look the other way on all the matters that dog Donald Trump.

education news, media news

AI … more frightening all the time

If only I knew more about artificial intelligence, well, then I could make a more cogent argument about why it scares the bejabbers out of me.

My knowledge of AI is limited, so I’ll go with what I know. It ain’t much.

I have watched video presentations of people saying things that I know in my heart they never could say. Yet AI providers are filling our screens and I-phones with images of them saying it. The development of artificial intelligence goes way beyond my pointed head’s ability to understand it. All I see and hear is the product they develop.

I made my living back in the day providing information about the communities I called home. From Portland, Ore., to S.E. Texas, to the Texas Panhandle, I relied on actual living, breathing human beings to tell me what they believed to be the truth about our communities and the people who gave them life. I could fact-check them quickly and determine the veracity of what they said. I then could take that verified information and report it to the world.

These days it’s a vastly different game. I can listen to a news report and wonder out loud and consciously whether I was being fed information from a human being or whether it was coming from an AI-generated creature.

I hate having to make that determination. I very well could be all wet in making these assumptions about AI. I don’t making them, as long as I am relying only on my limited knowledge of what AI is, or will become.

I keep hearing that AI has all kinds of benefits. To be candid, I know yet know what they are. Having said that, I guess I will just have to go through my life being constantly wary of what I am hearing.

Is it true or is it the product of artificially produced intelligence?

God help me …

local news, media news

Social media has its benefits

Social media has its place in modern life … such as helping long-ago friends and acquaintances get to know each other better than they did back in the day.

I am experiencing that positive social media element right now, as I am getting to know a gentleman with whom I worked back in the 1980s when we first moved to Texas. I took a job as an editorial writer for the Beaumont Enterprise, stayed there for a bit less than 11 years before moving up yonder to take a similar job with the Amarillo Globe-News.

Social media have put me in touch with a fellow I knew in Beaumont. We didn’t know each other well at the time, but I surely knew of him and he knew of me. We parted company many years ago. I believe he went to Houston before I departed for the High Plains of the Panhandle.

We hooked up recently on Facebook and for the past few days I have had the pleasure of filling him in where my life has taken me. I have informed him of the tragedy I experienced in 2023 with the passing of my bride, Kathy Anne, to glioblastoma. I have been able to tell him I am recovering nicely from the grief and have rebuilt much of my life here in North Texas, where we moved eight years ago.

I have been duped along the way by individuals who weren’t who they said they were. This reacquaintance, though, is the real thing. It has demonstrated the immense power for good that social media can bring.

media news

Democracy needs dissent

While it is true that journalism and democracy are mutually inclusive, democracy also need another vital tenet if it is to thrive … that tenet is dissent.

The fired “60 Minutes” correspondent Scott Pelley spoke eloquently the other day about the need for journalism to function without interference in a democratic society. I want to chip in with the notion that the 18th century founders of this great democratic republic all acted out of a need to dissent from the mandates of the King George III. The Declaration of Independence, let us remember, contains a long list of grievances that the founders laid at His Majesty’s feet, telling him that he could not operate in a world in which he denied his subjects the right to dissent.

Dissent is essential, therefore, for a democracy to thrive. Our nation owes its very foundation to the principle that dissent must happen. It is guaranteed in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Among the rights that grant us freedom to worship — or not worship, to speak our minds freely, a free press, it also allows us to petition the government for a “redress of grievances.”

And yet we continue to hear reckless, feckless and dangerous talk from the center of power in our government, that a free press and the right to dissent make those who believe in them “the enemy of the people.”

There can be little more unpatriotic or sinister than to label dissenters the “enemy” of our nation.

The founders knew what they were doing. Today’s MAGA morons are the traitors to what our founders created.

media news

Not a normal Sunday for me

On a normal Sunday evening in North Texas, I would be settling down for an hour of news analysis from “60 Minutes,” the heralded CBS News program that until this past week was a staple in my home for as long as I can remember.

No more, man. Not since the MAGA morons who run the network fired “60 Minutes” reporter Scott Pelley for telling the truth about what could be happening in this great country because of the whims and machinations of Donald Trump.

I’m going to have to figure out another way to spend the next hour or so. “60 Minutes” used to educate me on the story behind the story. It offered clear and unambiguous information on why these things mattered to us.

I’ve been treating myself to watching Pelley explain his view of what went down when he got word he was being canned. Trump called Pelley a “stiff” and a “low-IQ journalist” who “doesn’t care for his country.” Pelley told the interviewer he could buy the stiff description or the term Trump used to challenge the journalist’s smarts. He challenged Trump’s view that Pelley doesn’t love his country.

Pelleu said he’s “never worn the uniform, but I’ve been in combat” while covering war in Afghanistan, Iraq and Kuwait. “I’ve had people shoot at me,” he said, adding that he isn’t aware that Trump could make that assertion for himself.

He said journalists “love their country,” and declared that “democracy cannot exist without journalism.”

I am proud of Scott Pelley and I hope with all I have within me that he stays in the game of reporting our nation’s on-going story.

media news

Simple life gets even simpler

Some of you might recall that I blogged about my life becoming simpler, less complicated than before.

Well gang, I’ve discovered that a simple life can get even simpler. I don’t have much to say today about what’s going on in the world of hard news.

Yep. Simplicity is a good thing. At least it is for me.

I get to devote blog topics to, oh let’s see, about blogging. This particular avocation does require a certain devotion to the news. I follow it some, but not so much these days in newspapers, or in standard commercial broadcast media.

The foolishness at CBS News recently has driven me away from that network’s news team. Yes, I know it still has dedicated professional journalists who risk their lives each day reporting on warfare and street crime. The shitty termination of Stephan Colbert from late-night TV and Scott Pelley from “60 Minutes” is too much to swallow. Even for me.

So … the simple life beckons. I hear its siren call. I’m in all the way.

media news

Trump has ‘murdered’ ’60 Minutes’

At this very moment I am thinking of some of the titans of American broadcast journalism, men and women who sought the truth and told it to us without fear of recrimination.

You know who they are: Mike Wallace, Ed Bradley, Leslie Stahl, Bob Simon, Harry Reasoner, Morley Safer, Diane Sawyer, Dan Rather and now … Scott Pelley.

They all worked for “60 Minutes,” the premier TV news show that exposed everything — good and bad — about the government for which we pay. Pelley, a West Texas native, recently spoke aloud about the dangers of censorship and government overreach being inflicted by the Donald J. Trump administration, which seeks to control the news that’s being reported.

Pelley has lost his job at “60 Minutes,” along with reporters Cecelia Vega and Sharyn Alfonsi. This is a dark time for American journalism.

Pelley’s ouster hits me in a vaguely visceral way. I don’t know him, but I am good friends with a fellow West Texan who attended Texas Tech University with Pelley. My friend is now retired from journalism and he has told me a story or two about Pelley’s journey into the spotlight.

The First Amendment is supposed to guarantee a free and unfettered press. Congress “shall make no law” that seeks to control the media, the amendment declares. Trump has engineered the takeover of CBS News by MAGA-friendly execs. They have executed the removal of journalists they deem as threats to the POTUS. We are witnessing a disgraceful flouting of the very rights the First Amendment guarantees to maintin our representative democracy.

I just might join that movement to boycott CBS News.

local news, media news

Trump’s mind is officially a goner

You might want to write this down if you’re inclined,  but just keep it in mind as you ponder the future of Donald J. Trump’s political career.

It’s now as clear as it gets that the 45th and 47th POTUS has lost what used to pass as what was left of his mind. Why? Because the dimwit in chief wants to unilaterally pull the broadcast license of ABC News because it has the temerity to broadcast “negative news” about his administration.

Holy … moly, man!

Scott Pelley, a West Texan known as the voice of “60 Minutes,” a CBS News program, spoke recently in quoting one of our nation’s founders, James Madison. The fourth president said in 1800, Pelley recalled, that a “free press guarantees the rights of all the civil liberties we enjoy.” That is why the First Amendment to the Constitution guarantees the existence of a “free press.”

No matter their political party — be they Democratic-Federalist, Whig, Republican, Democrat — every U.S. president has accepted the role of a free press in holding our government accountable to the people they serve.

That’s every president until this one.

No president likes all the coverage they get from the free press. No matter their party affiliation, they hve griped aloud that the media are unfair. One could argue, indeed, that the media went too far in covering President Clinton’s impeachment, or that it labeled President George W. Bush a dim bulb during his time in the White House. Did any of our presidents seek openly to revoke the license of a media outlet just becausse they don’t shade the news coverage to suit their shallow-skinned egos? Nope!

Trump is an idiot disguised as a martyr for the MAGA movement he created and is now leading toward history’s trash heap.

local news, media news

Honoring my favorite Mom

You have said it. Surely you have thought it. Maybe many of you are thinking of it today.

It goes like this: Where would we be without our mothers? The one answer is obvious, in that we wouldn’t be anywhere without them.

My bride and I brought two boys into his goofy world of ours. I cannot tell you where they would be without Kathy Anne there to guide them through life’s trials I can assert, though, that they wouldn’t be the two finest men in the world. My pride in them is real, it is visceral, it is — to whatever degree one should ascribe to it — my legacy.

But none of this is about me. It is about Kathy Anne.

I lost her to glioblastoma a little more than three years ago. Her fight against this aggressive brain cancer was brief, but it was savage. I lost her six weeks after getting the diagnosis of a mass on the right side of her brain.

We were married for more than ever 51 years. She was 71 when she took her final breath.

God put her on this Earth to be a Mom. She was a natural. Her mothering instincts were virtually perfect. She always could comfort them when they hurt. She knew how to tease them without damaging their emotions. She always couched her advice into phrases that reminded our sons to trust their own instincts … and that no matter their decision, they would have their parents’ backing.

Kathy Anne taught them to be respectful to adults. She imbued in them a sense of humility. She laughed and cried with them.

And the moment she and I learned we were going to be grandparents was one for the ages. She shrieked, giggled and cried all at once.

Mother’s Day is not the same without my bride. I am continuing to build on the life she and I started. One of the key results of that life-building has been that my family and I are closer than ever.

That is how she would want it.

local news, media news, political news

Voter turnout sinks into the crapper

Hey, fellow Princeton residents, we had an election this past weekend … although hardly anyone took part.

And when I say “hardly anyone,” I mean precisely that. Election Day came and went and the entire city didn’t give a crap. What an absolute disgrace!

Check out these stats: Princeton is home to 18,923 registered voters. Of that total, only 476 residents bothered to vote. That gives us a municipal turnout of 2.52%. Roll that around for a moment.

Two point five-two fu***** percent of registered voters cast ballots in the election to find a replacement for Place 4 City Councilman Ryan Gerfers, who resigned because of health concerns. Here’s some more grist for you to gnaw on: That total dismisses the eligible residents who are registered to vote, but they haven’t even bothered to register with election officials.

The city will conduct a runoff election to determine whether Planning & Zoning Commissioner Jan Goria or Home Rule Committee Chair Jaisen Rutledge — the top two finishers in the May 3 election will succeed Gerfers.

Princeton Mayor Eugene Escobar Jr. expressed disappointment in the turnout. “I want to improve how we engage with the community and increase participation in our elections so we can actually bring the changes you are wanting,” Escobar told the Princeton Herald. I agree that the city needs to do much better.

Here’s an idea for the mayor to consider. Conduct a series of town hall meetings around our growing city. Explain to residents the importance of casting ballots in municipal election. Do we really want to cede the decision to how much we pay for services we say we want to our neighbors? We are a city on the move. We are adding new residents almost daily. It falls on City Hall to reach out to our new neighbors to tell them about our city and the process we use to keep it functioning.

City Hall, meanwhile, needs to deploy social media messaging services to tell us about the election and explain why deciding these contests keeps us involved in the process of local governance.

A turnout of 2.52% cannot be allowed to stand!