Category Archives: media news

media news

Fox settles; now … tell the truth

The Fox Propaganda Network is going to pay a lot of money to Dominion Voting Systems, thanks to a settlement announced today just as Dominion’s defamation trial was set to begin.

Dominion sued Fox for $1.6 billion. The network agreed to pony up $787.5 million, roughly half the amount Dominion had sought.

Then we’ll have a statement from Fox. Maybe soon. Fox will have to make some sort of apology to Dominion, acknowledging that it lied when it continued to broadcast phony allegations that Dominion rigged the 2020 presidential election results to elect Joe Biden.

Dominion did nothing of the sort. Fox’s on-air talking heads knew they were spreading The Big Lie. Yet they did it anyway. Therein rests the primary reason I will forever refuse to put the word “news” in Fox’s title; it does nothing but spread propaganda designed to promote a certain point of view and denigrate others who adhere to different views.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

 

media news

Great story on the fall of a media ‘giant’

The Texas Tribune has published a wonderful story about the pending demise of the Canadian Record, an award-winning weekly newspaper that has “suspended” its print editions … maybe only temporarily.

Nic Garcia wrote the piece.

Texas news desert expands after Canadian Record stops publishing | The Texas Tribune

The Record’s owner, Laurie Ezzell Brown, is trying to find a buyer. She admits to being weary of the grind and wants to spend time with her children and grandchildren.

Garcia alludes to the demise of many newspapers that serve rural communities. I would just add this mild critique, which is that he didn’t mention that the Texas Panhandle’s significant urban community — Amarillo — is suffering from the same lack of local news coverage as communities such as Canadian.

Same for Lubbock further down the highway from Amarillo. And other larger cities as well.

The era of printed newspapers is fading away … rapidly, it seems.

It saddens this old newspaper hand terribly.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

media news

Take Fox off the air?

I am beginning to lean in the direction of those who believe that the Fox network needs to be yanked off the air over its egregious sin of promoting propaganda and forsaking its license to report the news.

The Fox Propaganda Network is facing the harshest condemnation imaginable over its refusal to acknowledge what its on-air personalities expressed in private: which is that the Big Lie promoted by the 45th president of the United States was false and that Joe Biden was elected legally and fairly in 2020 as the nation’s 46th president.

Dominion Voting Systems has filed a billion-dollar lawsuit against Fox claiming the network defamed it over the Big Lie, alleging vote fraud where none existed.

A bigger issue is at stake. Should the network be allowed to remain on the air pushing its falsehoods amid mountains of evidence that its leadership knew it was doing so but were more concerned about losing viewers than in telling the truth?

The Federal Communications Commission would seem to have a monster on its hands. Will the FCC do the right thing? Is the “right thing” to pull Fox off the air?

I am beginning to think that’s the only option.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

media news

Battles waged over time

I fought many battles with readers of publications where I worked during my nearly 37 years as a full-time print journalist.

One kind of fight is what I want to highlight with this blog post.

Occasionally I would get caught between two extremists — one on the far right and the other on the far left. They would accuse me of being in cahoots with those on the “Other Side.”

It was a fight I was destined to lose every … single … time.

There was a physician in Beaumont who was an avid anti-abortionist. He thought — incorrectly, I must add — that because I was pro-choice on the issue that I was “pro-abortion.” Indeed, I have that squabble these days with some readers of this blog.

But back to my point … which is that the physician, who happened to be a pretty good writer, would submit articles for my consideration to appear on our opinion pages. I would submit them and would draw fire from pro-choice readers asking, “Why do you let that crackpot have any space on your page?” 

I would answer that his opinions are his alone and he is entitled to express them, as long as he doesn’t tell outright falsehoods. The doctor didn’t do that. Therefore, I would consider each piece on its merits and would determine whether they saw print.

I moved from Beaumont to Amarillo in January 1995 and found myself caught in the middle of a spat between two men, one of whom was a staunch Democratic Party activist, the other was an equally staunch religious leader who adhered to, um, a more conservative world view.

They both considered me to be the Spawn of Satan, for vastly different reasons. I was destined to be vilified by both of them. Get this, though: I actually was more dialed in to the lefty’s world view than the other gentleman. It’s just that my giving the righty any space in the paper was tantamount, in the lefty’s mind, to knuckling under to the other side.

I don’t really miss that kind of fight, now that I have stepped away from the daily grind. These days I am content to be a semi-retired blogger who dabbles now and then with covering community news for a group of weekly newspapers and for a public radio station.

I like it this way.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

media news

No thanks on propaganda

There once was a time when I would watch the Fox channel. Yes, it’s true. Even this so-called progressive American patriot would watch certain programs on the admittedly conservative media outlet.

I am going to declare here that I no longer watch Fox. It’s been a good while since I have dialed the network up on my TV. Why? Because I have known for a good while what has become clear now in the defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Machines against the network.

The network once billed itself as a “news” outlet. It is nothing of the sort. It is now a propaganda organization. Thus, I have declared my intention to refer to Fox as the Fox Propaganda Network.

I would no more collect my information from the Fox network than I would listen to, say, Josef Goebbels, tell me about what the Nazis were doing to “preserve racial integrity” in Europe during World War II. Or the Kremlin seeking to “explain” how it is “winning the war” against Ukraine, which it says began at the Ukrainians’ provocation.

The Fox Propaganda Channel lied to its viewers about who won the 2020 presidential election, despite its TV personalities admitting privately that Joe Biden won the election and that the guy who lost it is nuttier than a Snickers bar.

They didn’t bother to tell their viewers the truth. They were more worried about Fox’s TV ratings than they were committed to doing the right thing … which was to tell the truth.

Sickening.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

media news

‘Sightseers’ rioted? Sure thing

Tucker Carlson, one of the Fox Propaganda Network’s chief duplicitous faces, has revealed what many of us have known all along about the organization that pays his handsome salary.

It is not only unfair and unbalanced, it denies the truth even when the truth is broadcast live in real time to its faithful audience.

Carlson went on the air last night to proclaim that the 1/6 assault on the nation’s Capitol was a peaceful event, that the traitors who launched the attacked were mere “sightseers.”

Oh … my.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy granted Carlson access to the video of the assault. Carlson looked at what we all saw and has concluded that the attack on our democratic process was, um, no biggie. What a crock of sh**!

I no longer will refer to his employer as a “news” organization. It is nothing of the sort. Its talking heads recognized privately The Big Lie for what it was, yet they pitched the notion that the former POTUS had been robbed of an election.

Imagine for a moment that Walter Cronkite knew that President Kennedy had been shot to death, but then told viewers that he was alive. Imagine, also, any of the news anchors reporting on the tragedy of 9/11 telling viewers that the planes didn’t really fly into the Twin Towers or the Pentagon.

The Fox Propaganda Network has committed the most egregious sin possible in reporting on events of the 1/6 insurrection. It has broadcast blatant, bald-faced and outright falsehoods and portrayed them as fact.

The Fox propagandists have allowed conspiracy theorists to vilify a vote-counting company, Dominion, accusing the company of manipulating the returns to grant Joe Biden a victory they say belonged to the guy he defeated. Dominion has sued Fox for defamation. I am one American patriot who wants them to prevail over the liars at Fox.

So, here we are. Truth has become the enemy of a media outlet that purports to report the “news,” but which in reality has engaged in egregious propaganda.

Sickening beyond measure.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

media news

Lamenting slow demise of proud craft

As I lament the agonizing, excruciating, painful demise of a once-proud craft — print journalism — I remind myself of this frightening fact.

I worked for four newspapers during my nearly 37 years as a print journalist and two of them are long gone, while the other two are mere shadows of their former selves.

In 1976, I landed a job on the copy desk of the Oregon Journal, the evening newspaper of record in my hometown of Portland. In 1982, the Journal folded. It was gone forever.

I had moved by that time to Oregon City, to work at a suburban newspaper just south of Portland. We published five days each week. I became editor of the paper in 1979, which probably was a serious career mistake, as I wasn’t prepared to take on that task. The Enterprise-Courier folded in 1988. It, too, was relegated to the dust bin.

I had moved on to Beaumont, Texas, in the spring of 1984 to become an editorial writer for the Enterprise. I was promoted to editor of the opinion pages later that year. I stayed until January 1995, when I moved to Amarillo to become editor of the opinion pages of the Globe-News.

What happened in Beaumont and Amarillo is nothing short of heartbreaking. Both papers are still around … so to speak. Their staffs have been obliterated. The Enterprise’s parent company is trying to sell the building where the newspaper once was a thriving presence. The Globe-News’s parent company sold to another media giant and it moved the paper out of its iconic structure and has sold that property to another business.

The Enterprise and the Globe-News once were pillars of their communities. Now they are battered hulks. They once covered vast distances. The Enterprise reached into Deep East Texas and as far east as Lake Charles, La. The Globe-News once had a bureau in Clovis, N.M. and covered everything in the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles and even reached into southwest Kansas.

The Globe-News once won a Pulitzer Prize for Meritorious Public Service for its work in revealing corruption in county government.

No more.

Maybe it’s me, that I jinxed all of ’em. Just kidding.

I simply am saddened at the pending demise of what used to be communities’ major source of information about themselves and told many thousands of readers the news of the state, nation and the world.

I am left just to sigh.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

media news

Another media icon closes

Word from the Texas Panhandle hit me like a punch in the puss: the Canadian Record is shutting down after 132 years providing top-notch community journalism to arguably one of the more fascinating communities in the region.

Laurie Ezzell Brown, publisher of the newspaper and daughter of a Panhandle journalism legend, Ben Ezzell, has surrendered to the forces of change in the media.

This saddens me terribly. It is one more iconic community institution to fall victim to what we call the “Digital Age” of what passes for journalism these days.

Jon Mark Beilue, a former columnist at the Amarillo Globe-News, where I worked for nearly 18 years, wrote a touching tribute to the work that Brown did as publisher of the Record.

Here is part of what Beilue wrote on his Facebook post:

Like her father, (Brown) didn’t shy from calling it how she saw it with the best interest of her hometown at heart …

But more than anything, Laurie and a revolving small staff covered the 2,300 people of Canadian. They were the town’s conscience, the stitches in the fabric that knitted the community together. Achievements, disappointments, the memorable, the mundane, the Record was there. They were there for every school board meeting, every city council and county commissioner meeting, every time the hospital district met.

Jon Mark Beilue | Facebook

Communities once relied on their newspapers to tell them what happened next door, or down the street, or around the block.

The Canadian Record is far from the first such iconic institution to close. It won’t be the final one, either. That doesn’t make this news any easier to swallow.

Well done, Laurie Ezzell Brown.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

media news

News? What news?

So … I am sitting on the back patio in Princeton, Texas, with my sister and we’re chatting about the loss we have suffered and how our minds have been taken away from our usual “routine.”

“I realize I don’t miss the news,” Liz said. Which made me nod in agreement. We fancy ourselves as news junkies. Hey, I spent a career seeking to keep pace with breaking news. My sis has pursued other career paths, but her interest is deep as well.

I usually spend a good bit of time watching TV news channels and scouring various Internet sites for the news of the day.

However, our minds and hearts have been pulled away by grief over the passing of my bride, Kathy Anne.

But as I ponder the observation about “not missing the news,” I am struck by how little all these national and world events mean to me. Indeed, at this moment, they mean nothing at all.

The developing presidential campaign in 2024? The Ukraine War? Congress’s efforts to get organized? Debt ceiling?

Pffftt!

Honest to goodness, I truly don’t care — at this moment — about any damn bit of it!

Will it change? Yeah. Sure it will. It’s just going to take some time.

For now, I’ve got more important — and deeply personal — matters filling my noggin and my heart. And none of it has a thing to do with that thing called “the news.”

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

media news

How does MTG get away with this?

Marjorie Taylor Greene is one of the MAGA cultists who routinely blasts what she refers to as the “mainstream media.”

That is so rich it defies any rational response. Why? Because the second-term Georgia congresswoman — and reigning QAnon queen of the House — somehow manages to get the very same media to cover the nonsense that flies out of her pie hole.

The idiot Republican has pitched some notion of a “national divorce,” with conservative Americans separating from liberal Americans. Hmm. Ponder that one. She wants a civil war? Is that what this moron suggests?

The media cover her rubbish. Bloggers such as me comment on it, too. Therefore, I will assume responsibility for giving this nimrod far more coverage that in a perfect political world wouldn’t get it. But … she does receive it!

She has proclaimed her belief that the U.S. is a “Christian nation.” It isn’t! She derides President Biden for visiting Ukraine to proclaim the nation’s support for that nation’s war against Russian invaders.

Seemingly every utterance she makes become punch lines.

I would pledge at this moment to never cover another statement she makes, except for this bit of wisdom. Which is that it is better to keep your adversaries out front in plain sight, lest they be allowed to hide in the shadows where they could do even more harm.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com