Category Archives: media news

media news

Media leadership takes another hit

The new owners of two West Texas newspapers appear to be watering down their commitment to the communities the papers serve.

Now, I say this from afar. I no longer live in West Texas. I have watched all this play out from my new residence in Collin County. However, I have a keen interest in the future of one of those communities and, yes, of the other one as well.

GateHouse Media purchased the Amarillo Globe-News and the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal from Morris Communications in the fall of 2017. GateHouse made some promises about its commitment to community journalism. Morris, meanwhile, got out of the newspaper publishing business totally.

So, what has happened to the new owners’ commitment to community journalism? A friend of mine sent me a note informing me today that the Globe-News and the Avalanche-Journal now have a “regional associate editor” who’s in charge of running both papers’ opinion pages.

Follow me here: Amarillo and Lubbock are 120 miles apart at both ends of Interstate 27. The new “director of commentary” lives in Lubbock. He’s going to continue to live there, or so I gather; that means he’ll drive to Amarillo during part of the week. I suppose he’ll need to show himself in Amarillo to pretend to be a member of the community.

The days he spends away from either community, though, is going to diminish the each paper’s editorial voice. It will water down its leadership in both communities. The editorial page of the G-N and the A-J will be muffled to a significant degree. One individual cannot pretend to know all there is to know about two communities that have disparate interests, differing power structures, different sets of movers and shakers, varying concerns.

This is an absolute shame.

I long have subscribed to the belief that newspapers that pursue a cogent and lively editorial policy are an essential element to any community’s well-being. Sure, readers complain about what a newspaper thinks about an issue; they take the editor and publisher to task. Or, they might agree and applaud with whatever position the opinion page has staked out.

Opinion pages promote community discussion and debate.

The West Texas newspapers already have a “regional” publisher who lives in Lubbock and commutes to Amarillo, along with a “regional” executive editor who lives in Amarillo and commutes to Lubbock. Now they have what used to be called an editorial page who lives in Lubbock.

GateHouse Media’s so-called commitment to the communities it pledged to serve is facing a serious challenge with the way it is structuring the leadership of two once-stellar voices for their respective regions.

Man, I hope I am wrong. If I am, I’ll swallow the crow whole.

I fear I am not.

International news, media news, national news

State-run TV station? Sure thing, Mr. POTUS

Donald J. “Authoritarian Wanna-be in Chief” Trump wants the government to establish a TV network.

Yep, the protector of the U.S. Constitution has suggested the government establish a network to report news that is favorable to the president, his policies, his pronouncements and the direction of the government he was elected to lead.

Hmm. I believe the Constitution — the one that Trump swore when he took office to uphold — forbids such a thing. It’s that First Amendment clause that refers to a “free press” not being abridged.

This suggestion well might rank among the more idiotic ever to come from the 45th president of the United States. That’s really saying something, when you consider the mountain of idiocy that has poured out of his pie hole.

I’ll also remind everyone that the president once expressed a level of envy that North Korea’s TV anchors speak so glowingly about dictator/murderer Kim Jong Un. He wishes he could get that kind of love from the networks in this country, or so he said during his visit with Kim in Singapore earlier this year.

Here’s a reminder, Mr. President. Those TV anchors work for the same government that is run by Kim Jong Un. If they were to report the news accurately, you know, chronicling such things as the starvation and the abject poverty that afflicts the population, they likely would be yanked off the air, executed and their corpses would be fed to starving dogs.

I hope the president gets the picture.

However, I doubt that he does.

media news

Trump to be most insufferable ex-POTUS in history?

I have sworn off making political predictions — for the most part.

This one, though, I think will hold up. I believe that when Donald J. Trump becomes a former president of the United States that he will become the most insufferable ex-president in U.S. history.

Whether it’s on Jan. 20 2021, or Jan. 20, 2025 or — one can hope — sooner than the former date, Trump will not go out gracefully, quietly, serenely into the night. He won’t retire at Bedminster, or Mar-a-Lago and settle down to do whatever it is former presidents usually do. He won’t build houses for poor folks; he won’t likely raise money for disaster victims; he likely won’t spend a lot of time planning his presidential library (the very thought of which makes me chuckle).

I am trying to imagine a world infused with constant Twitter messages. And by “constant” I mean, well, constant. It’ll be 24/7. We’ll be inundated, buried, overwhelmed by tweets from the former president. He’ll be in the news every hour . . . daily.

Isn’t that something to which we can all look forward? Aren’t you excited? I didn’t think so. I know I’m not.

It’s a bit of a conundrum for Trump critics, such as yours truly. I don’t want him in office, but neither do I welcome the notion of being bombarded by an incessant, relentless, thoughtless barrage of idiocy from a former president’s Twitter account.

Ain’t it a bitch?

media news, national news

Remember the ‘anonymous’ op-ed in the Times?

One of the fairly unusual aspects of following the Trump administration through its daily trials, tribulations and tumult is that we quickly lose track of the previous set of troubles.

Do you remember that op-ed published in The New York Times that talked about the fear, uncertainty and chaos that permeates Donald Trump’s administration? The president was so incensed he sought to find the author of the piece and then fire him/her on the spot.

Media pundits were all over it. They sought to connect the dots and come up with their own conclusion. All anyone seemed to know with any certainty is that it came from someone within the West Wing inner circle. Indeed, the write of the essay revealed he or she was part of “resistance movement” within the administration that took it upon itself to protect the president from his more dangerous impulses.

What in the world happened to that dire concern over the identity of the writer? What happened to Donald Trump’s dedication to finding out who did it? What happened to the story?

It’s just that with this president and this administration, our attention is taxed to the hilt, stretched beyond its limits to stay focused on any single subject for more than a week — tops!

If it is next week, another crisis is sure to overtake us.

media news, national news

Yes, we damn sure are a ‘nation of immigrants’

The quote under the picture is attributed to the fellow in the picture, right-wing lawyer and radio talk show host Mark Levin, who is engaging in some of the worst hyperbole I have seen in this debate over immigration, illegal immigration and immigration reform.

For starters, we damn sure are a nation of immigrants. I don’t know the first thing about Levin’s background, but given that he appears to be an white guy, my strong hunch is that his familial forebears came from somewhere other than the backwoods of wherever he was born.

Europe, maybe? Yeah, probably?

I am the proud grandson of immigrants to came to this country in the early 20th century. I have a deep pride in my Greek heritage. I make no apologies for it.

And yet . . .  I consider myself to be an American patriot. I have gone to war for my country. So, to suggest that to be an American citizen is somehow mutually exclusive from living in a nation of immigrants is the most disgusting demagoguery imaginable.

One more point. I do not believe anyone is treating those who “cross the border illegally as the most virtuous human being on the face of the earth.”

Again, hyperbole in the extreme.

But as it is with these radio talkers, their “fan(atic)s” take their word as some sort of gospel. They glom onto their message, pass it on, giving them a life of their own.

I’ll concede that I do not listen to Mark Levin; I don’t listen to talk radio of any political stripe. It’s just that when these messages show up on social media platforms and get otherwise good folks all riled up, I am compelled to speak my own mind.

Levin is entitled to his opinion. Just remember: Opinions are like a certain body orifice . . . everybody has one.

environmental news, media news

What’s with this ‘MBS’ crap?

Hey, what gives with the TV news talking heads and their various “contributors” and their casual reference to a guy who ordered the murder and alleged dismemberment of a U.S.-based Saudi journalist?

The individual to whom I refer is Mohammad bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. The CIA says this monster issued the order to kill Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

He’s a bad dude, man!

The talking heads, though, are calling him “MBS.” MBS? I always thought we reserved that kind of reference — call it an endearment, if you wish — for public figures we held in much greater esteem.

You know who I mean. MLK Jr., JFK, RFK, LBJ, FDR. That’s all you need with these folks. No full names are necessary. We assign nicknames to others. Such as Ike, The Gipper, Give ‘Em Hell Harry, Dubya.

Mohammad bin Salman does not deserve this level of familiarity from our talking heads. I hereby call on them to knock it off.

Call the guy what he is: a cold-blooded murderer.

MBS. My keister.

media news

Trump wears me out … and I’m the retired guy!

My life as a retired individual has placed me in front of a TV watching news a good portion of most days.

I will be terribly candid here. I spend too much time watching TV news. It wears me out. Why? Because so much of it deals with drama presented by Donald J. Trump, the nation’s president.

It makes me wonder: If the news of each day wears me out, how in the world does the president continue to “function,” such as he does, under the pressure of all the missteps, mistakes, miscues and misjudgments he makes?

Jeb Bush called him the “chaos candidate” for president and said his presidency would be filled with chaos as well. Boy, howdy! The former GOP governor of Florida had that one right!

I just don’t understand where Trump stores that cache of whatever it is that keeps him going. Nor do I understand how he interprets his tenure as president as an A+ endeavor, how he defines “winning” and how in the world anything gets done within the executive branch of the U.S. government.

The president calls the cadence. That is more true with this president than many — if not all — of his predecessors.

It’s a cadence of fits and starts. It’s not a “fine-tuned machine.” It’s a clunker of a vehicle that keeps looking as if it’s falling apart piece by piece.

Yep. I am worn out by all this chaos and confusion. But … I’ll keep watching it unfold.

legal news, media news, national news

CNN/Acosta matter contains quiet back story

Psst. Let me bring you in on a secret that virtually no one is talking about.

Federal Judge Timothy Kelly’s ruling that required Donald Trump and the White House to reinstate CNN reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials speaks to the value of an independent federal judiciary.

The president ordered Acosta’s White House press pass yanked after the two men had a contentious exchange during a press conference the day after the midterm election.

CNN filed a complaint against the White House. Late this past week, Judge Kelly ruled in favor of CNN.

What makes the story interesting is that Kelly is a Donald Trump appointment. The new president nominated Kelly to the federal bench and he was confirmed by the Senate.

We’ve all talked at length about how U.S. Supreme Court justices side with the presidents who nominate them. The same occasionally is said about lower-court federal judges.

Judge Kelly took off in the opposite direction. His ruling wasn’t overly harsh, but it did go against the president who nominated him.

I mention this because it validates the value of an independent federal judiciary and the fact that these judges get lifetime appointments, leaving them free to rule independently. They are charged with interpreting the U.S. Constitution and with determining whether government actions concur or run counter to constitutional principles.

The president’s revocation of Acosta’s press credentials didn’t make the constitutional grade and Judge Kelly sided with the Constitution . . . and not the president who selected him.

That’s a good sign for the health of our federal judicial system.

media news

Mitt takes up cudgel for a ‘free press’

U.S. Sen.-elect Mitt Romney is filling me with hope that he might become a Republican who actually is willing to challenge the nation’s demonizer in chief.

The media, according to Mitt, aren’t the “enemy of the people.” Even a “biased” media, the new senator from Utah writes in an op-ed for USA Today, are essential to the nation.

I agree with him. So do all of Donald J. Trump’s predecessors. So should most of the congressional Republicans who will take office in January along with their Democratic colleagues.

Sen.-elect Romney says categorically that Trump is wrong to vilify the media. He writes: America is indebted as a democratic nation to the free press for truths it has uncovered, for truth it has disseminated, and for falsehoods it has repudiated. The press uncovered the government’s lies about the war in Vietnam; it exposed Watergate; it opened our eyes to the sexual abuse of children by priests; and, most recently, it shed a light on the sexual assault by numerous men in power. The free press dispelled the false conspiracies about the 9/11 attacks, President Obama’s birth, and Joe McCarthy’s lurking communists. The work of a free press is essential.

The president doesn’t see it that way. He says the media that report on issues he deems critical are disseminating “fake news,” which of course is the ultimate irony given his own lying about so many issues, so many individuals. He has defamed seemingly countless public figures with lies.

But I’ll leave it to Mitt Romney and perhaps a few other brave souls in public life to try to hold the president accountable for his continuing attacks on the media.

Donald Trump could not be more wrong. Mitt Romney couldn’t be more correct.

media news

CNN, Acosta score a win for the First Amendment

I am wondering now if Donald Trump’s “enemies of the people” list has just grown by one member.

U.S. District Court Judge Timothy Kelly, a Trump appointee to the federal bench, has ruled that the White House must restore CNN White House reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials.

The president ordered Acosta’s credentials yanked after he and the correspondent got into another public tussle at a press conference the day after the midterm election. It isn’t the first time Trump and Acosta have jousted.

Let me be clear on one thing. I detest the idea of a reporter becoming part of the story. That simply is not right. Acosta has this annoying way of thrusting himself onto the stage when reporting the news. For his part, though, the president reacts hideously when confronted with reporters who ask him tough questions.

The crux of the judge’s ruling seems to center on the stated reasons the White House yanked Acosta’s credentials. It changed its story, but the final version of the White House’s rationale is insufficient to merit such a drastic move, according to Judge Kelly.

This is a victory on behalf of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment, the one that guarantees “freedom of the press” from government interference. And, yes, given the political nature of judicial appointments, I find it fascinating that a Trump-nominated judge would rule against this particular president who’s made such a hash of his dispute with the media.

If only now we can get back to some form of what’s called in Congress “regular order.” That means reporters ask questions, the person who gets the questions answers them, and the reporters move on to the next question. This White House vs. The Media idiocy has to stop. How about it stopping right now?

As for the judge ruling against the president who nominated him, it validates the notion that lifetime appointments have this liberating effect on those who have the authority to rule from the federal bench.