Category Archives: media news

We can breathe again!

February 15, 2021 kanelis2012 3 Comments

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I cannot possibly take credit for this, for it came brilliantly from a young broadcast journalist to whom my wife and I were listening this afternoon.

Yasmin Vossoughian, an MSNBC anchor, offered an insightful analysis of what the nation and the world have just experienced in the past week: the end of Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial.

Vossoughian said, simply, that we are now able to breathe again. Donald Trump no longer is president, and for that I sense many of us are grateful for reasons that go far beyond the contemptible manner in which he conducted himself as president.

He took the air out of the proverbial room seemingly every day he was in office. Indeed, it seems like the longest four years in many of our lives … you know?

Bloggers like me were sucked into the maelstrom that Trump created. The media, too. Yes, the folks Trump labeled as the “enemy of the people” became his most visible enablers.

Now, though, we can turn our attention to other things. Issues abound. Crises are all over the place.

We’re still waging war against a killer pandemic; our economy has collapsed; we have an environment in trouble; many Americans are treated unfairly by police authorities only because of the color of their skin.

President Biden won’t suck the air out of the room the way his immediate predecessor did. That is more than OK with me.

As for the media, my hope is that reporters also will relish the opportunity to chronicle the struggles that require government’s attention. My sense, given my own experience, is that they will welcome the relief from the exhaustion from which they will need a bit of time to recover.

local news, media news

Blog about to reach new milestone

February 13, 2021 kanelis2012 2 Comments

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Once long ago I read that it is good for bloggers to write about their blog. So that’s what I’ll do with this brief post.

High Plains Blogger is about to reach a milestone of sorts. That would be 600 consecutive days of fresh posts. Why brag about that?

Well, let’s just say that I am so darn happy to be able to write about things that are near and perhaps not so dear to me. I enjoy venting. Ranting is good, too. So is handing out bouquets on occasion.

I enjoy sharing my life’s journey with you, along with tales of our adorable puppy, Toby, who we refer to as Puppy.

Yes, I also enjoy keeping up with current political trends. Brother, we have had ’em over the past few years, yes? I get worked up over things I see occurring that displease me. As we enter a new presidential era with the departure of No. 45, I look forward to offering commentary — positive and negative — on policies enacted by No. 46. I will admit that my criticism likely won’t be as visceral as it was during the previous presidential administration, but what the hell … that’s just me.

I’ll reach 600 consecutive blog-post days sometime next week. I might acknowledge it in the moment. If I forget, I’ll get to it eventually.

Meantime, I want to thank you in advance for reading this blog and sharing it with your friends and loved ones. It keeps me going.

media news

Dobbs cancellation signals a dramatic new turn

February 7, 2021 kanelis2012

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Fox News’ decision to cancel Lou Dobbs’ evening gab show didn’t raise much of a stink in our house.

We don’t watch him. I haven’t watched or listened to Dobbs since he turned sinister with his Barack Obama birther conspiracy nonsense and then became a Donald Trump suck-up while working for Rupert Murdoch’s unfair and unbalanced news organization.

But … Fox’s decision to yank Dobbs off the air might signal a dramatic new turn in the ongoing struggle to present truth and avoid lies.

Dobbs has been hit with a $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit over his repeating lies about so-called “rigged” voting machines.

As the New York Times reported: Smartmatic, a voter technology firm swept up in conspiracies spread by former President Donald J. Trump and his allies, filed its defamation suit against Rupert Murdoch’s Fox empire on Thursday, citing Mr. Dobbs and two other Fox anchors, Maria Bartiromo and Jeanine Pirro, for harming its business and reputation.

Lawsuits Take the Lead in Fight Against Disinformation (msn.com)

I am not yet sure what this means for Pirro and Bartiromo, and whether they will follow Dobbs out the back door of Fox News.

What this portends apparently is a realization from the network that truth must remain the first and last line of defense in any kind of lawsuit challenging media credibility.

Perhaps the biggest surprise might be that it took this long for someone to say “enough, already!” to the lies that keep drawing breath because of phony commentators such as Lou Dobbs, who fomented the lies about vote fraud, just as he kept yammering about former President Obama’s place of birth and his constitutional eligibility to seek and hold the office of president.

At a certain level, Lou Dobbs symbolizes the degradation of honest journalism. I used to watch him when he reported on business news while working for CNN. Then he switched networks, which by itself is fine.

Then he flew head-first off the rails, into the ditch and became a leading spokesman for the Liar in Chief during his tenure as president.

I cannot predict how this lawsuit will end up. I’ll just suggest that I foresee some kind of major settlement in the making. Smartmatic stands to make a bundle of cash.

And it should.

media news

How will they remember us?

February 6, 2021 kanelis2012

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

As I communicate occasionally with former colleagues of mine around the country I am left with a stunning realization.

It is that the communities where I worked for 37 years in daily journalism are not alone as the newspapers that once served them with pride — and occasionally with tenacity — are dying before the communities’ eyes.

There was a time when I was feeling a bit of a complex about the communities where I worked. I started my career in Oregon City, Ore.; the newspaper that served that town is now gone, closed up, the building wiped off the slab on which it sat. I gravitated to Beaumont, Texas, where I worked for nearly 11 years; the company that owns that paper is now trying to sell the building and the news staff has been reduced to virtually zero. Then I moved to Amarillo and worked there for nearly 18 years; same song, different verse than what is playing out in Beaumont, except that Amarillo’s newspaper staff has vacated the building and is now housed in a downtown bank tower suite of offices.

Did I contribute to their death or terminal illness?

Then comes the other question: How will our descendants remember us?

I have a granddaughter who’s almost 8 years old. I actually wonder what she will say if someone were to ask her, “What did your grandpa do for a living?” Could she answer the question in a way that makes sense to her and to the person who asks it? I hope her mommy and daddy will help explain it to her. I will do my best to put it in perspective when the moment presents itself.

I am proud of the career I pursued. I did enjoy some modest success over the decades. My peers honored my work on occasion with awards. It’s not about that, of course. We did our jobs with a commitment to tell the truth and, in my case as an opinion writer and editor, to offer our perspectives fairly and honestly.

This transition is playing out everywhere in the land.

I spoke this week with a friend in Roanoke, Va., a fellow opinion journalist, who told me that paper also has suffered grievously in this new age of social media, live-streaming and cable TV news/commentary. I hear the same from others in the upper Midwest. I see circulation figures from major newspapers and cringe at the calamitous decline in paid readership.

For example, my hometown newspaper, the (Portland) Oregonian, once circulated more than 400,000 copies daily; the World Almanac and Book of Facts says the paper now sells 143,000 newspapers each day.

I feel like a dinosaur … and I take small comfort in knowing that there are many of us out there who lament the pending demise of a proud craft. I hope for all it’s worth that whatever emerges to take our place will continue to tell the truth and do so with fairness.

media news

Media: an ‘enemy’ no longer

February 4, 2021 kanelis2012 1 Comment

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

You no doubt have noticed what I have noticed.

It is that the media that cover the White House have developed an immediate and highly professional relationship with the folks who run the executive branch of our federal government.

We haven’t seen or heard shouting matches between reporters and White House press aides. Nor have we seen angry tweets from President Biden complaining about how the media are acting like “the enemy of the American people.”

Have the media gone soft on the new president or on those who speak for him? No. They haven’t. Unless you consider the proper relationship between reporters and those who work for our government a symptom of softness.

I am acutely aware that the relationship between the media and the administration is still a work in progress. I don’t expect entirely smooth sailing with the Biden administration as it plows through the field of policy matters it must confront. There will be missteps, mistakes and perhaps even a misstatement or two along the way. The media will report on them all, just as they have done since the beginning of the republic.

The stark contrast will occur when the Biden administration responds to the critical reporting. Unlike what we saw during the Donald Trump administration, I do not expect to hear blanket allegations of “fake news” coming from administration officials in response to reporting.

There well could be testy exchanges between White House press aides and higher-level officials and the media. I do not expect to hear insults hurled at reporters from the press secretary or certainly from President Biden.

Joe Biden has danced around this media pea patch for nearly five decades as a U.S. senator, as vice president and as a three-time presidential candidate. Now he is the president of the United States and he understands in a way that Donald Trump never grasped that the media are there to do their job.

That job is to hold the government accountable for every decision it makes and every statement its officials utter in public.

That, I dare say, is one way you can define a nation’s greatness.

media news, national news

Vowing to hear all sides

January 30, 2021 kanelis2012 1 Comment

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

It is time for your friendly blogger to make a solemn, sincere and honest vow.

I hereby pledge to read more political commentary with which I disagree. The Age of Trump has given way to the Age of Biden. The change in political tone and tenor in Washington thrills me greatly.

However, I need to make a confession. I didn’t listen to as many arguments that favored the tone that Donald Trump set during his term as president as I should have done.

Now that Trump has holed up in his glitzy south Florida resort, I intend to examine more carefully the conservative antidote to the surprisingly progressive tone that President Biden is striking as he seeks to take control of the crises that awaited him.

I look at a number of Internet sites each day. The one that provides the widest range of views is RealClearPolitics.com, which I scan daily. The RCP site is chock full of progressive, centrist and conservative thought. They’re all reputable and I now intend to examine those views that differ from my own bias.

RealClearPolitics – Live Opinion, News, Analysis, Video and Polls

Do I expect to “come out” as a born-again conservative? Hardly. I just believe I should practice what I occasionally preach to those who take time to read my rants on High Plains Blogger. One of my occasional rant topics deals with narrow-mindedness.

As my dear mother used to say, “That guy is so narrow-minded, he can look through a keyhole with both eyes.”

I don’t intend to be “that guy.”

media news

Here’s how you brief the press

January 30, 2021 kanelis2012 3 Comments

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

If I could, I would direct this brief message to the four people who served as press secretary during Donald Trump’s term as president.

They are, in order, Sean Spicer, Sara H. Sanders, Stephanie Grisham and Kayleigh McEnany. They all fluffed the job of briefing the press on issues relating to the presidency; indeed, Grisham didn’t conduct a single briefing before she quit to join the first lady’s staff. They should take heed of the manner that the current press flack, Jen Psaki, is doing her job on behalf of President Biden.

To be sure — and to be fair — the press gathered in front of Psaki has been fairly tame in tossing questions at her. There hasn’t been the in-your-face kind of interrogation we saw so often during the Trump years. Then again, the media haven’t been lied to as baldly and blatantly as they were for the previous four years.

Do you remember Sean Spicer’s initial press briefing? Here’s a reminder: He told the country that Donald Trump delivered his inaugural speech before the largest crowd in presidential inaugural history. Except that it wasn’t the largest crowd. It was a fraction of the size of either of President Barack Obama’s inaugural audiences.

So … there you go. Right out of the chute, the White House press flack for Donald Trump lied to the public, more than likely at the behest of Donald Trump his own self.

You will not hear, I am willing to wager, President Biden label the media as the “enemy of the people.” Donald Trump played the media like a fiddle before he was elected, then demonized them when they questioned him aggressively about the lies he continued to spew.

Joe Biden’s press secretary — Jen Psaki — is restoring the value of the White House press briefings.

media news, national news

No angry tweets … sweet!

January 24, 2021 kanelis2012 1 Comment

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I want to stand with David Plouffe, one of America’s most brilliant political strategists.

He wrote this message on Twitter: Will take a while to get used to waking up on a weekend and not be bombarded with a dozens of mean, crazy and destructive tweets from the world’s most powerful person. But I like the feeling so far.

I like the feeling, too. I like not having my Twitter feed flooded with posts from an angry president of the United States. I like reading about how senior presidential administration officials are learning they are being fired, or are learning about critical policy decisions, or are having to fend off criticism from the commander in chief.

The silence is golden.

media news

Time of My Life, Part 53: Returning to reminders

January 24, 2021 kanelis2012

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Every time we come back to places we called home I am reminded of the joyful times I had going to work every day.

I also am reminded of why I am delighted to no longer facing the pressure that greets journalists who are reporting to work each day in these very trying times.

Don’t misunderstand me. I am way past the time I would have retired on my own terms. I just turned 71, which puts me fairly deeply into the “senior citizen” category of Americans. However, when I return to Amarillo, I confront memories that used to give me great joy.

I did visit downtown when we came back, but I avoided looking at a piece of property I usually visit I normally do when we come back to the Texas Panhandle. I usually drive by the now-vacant building where I toiled for 18 years as editorial page editor of a once-fine newspaper, the Amarillo Globe-News. It isn’t fine these days. In fact, it hardly covers the community, let alone the Panhandle, or eastern New Mexico, or the Oklahoma Panhandle.

However, when we come back to Amarillo, I cannot help but remember how the state of daily print journalism functioned when I reported for work at the Globe-News in January 1995.

The Globe-News published two newspapers each day. I had responsibility for the opinion pages of both editions. We sought to write fresh editorials daily for the morning and the afternoon newspapers. Our newsroom was teeming with staffers: reporters, copy editors, photographers, a librarian, a secretary, line editors.

These days? They’re almost all gone. They have vacated the building where we once reported for work. The Globe-News building is now scarred by graffiti. It sits vacant and is getting seedier every time I look at it. I couldn’t go there on my latest visit. It hurts too much to see it decaying before our eyes.

In the old days, we had tons of fun. I made many friends among the colleagues with whom I worked. I had some difficult relationships over that span of time, to be sure. But what the hey … you cannot expect perfection everywhere.

Returning to the Panhandle reminds me of how we used to serve the community. I recall fondly those grand times. I do not ever wish to return to the grind. I am enjoying a new way to celebrate the latest time of my life.

Commentary on politics, current events and life experience