Category Archives: media news

media news

Liar in Chief: the real enemy of the people

Of all the hypocritical utterances that have poured out of Donald J. Trump’s mouth since he became a politician, the one that continues to gall me in the extreme is his ongoing epithet that the media comprise “fake news” and are the “enemy of the people.”

The very idea that the president of the United States, one of the godfathers of the “birther” movement, would use the term “fake news” to reporters who are doing their job.

And for the president to describe the media as the “enemy of the people” is dangerous on its face, and not just to individual reporters, but to one of the bedrocks of our democratic system.

Trump and the New York Times’s publisher, A.G. Sulzberger, met recently to talk about the president’s ongoing bullying of the media. Trump tweeted out yet another irrational tirade against “fake news.”

My goodness. How in the world does this individual look at himself in the mirror?

He has lied continually. The birther movement was intended to question whether Barack Obama was born in the United States; he was, but that didn’t stop Trump from continuing the lie. Fake news? There you have it.

He lied about witnessing “thousands of Muslims cheering” the collapse of the Twin Towers on 9/11. Trump lied about Obama ordering the bugging of his campaign office in 2016. He lied about millions of illegal immigrants voting for Hillary Clinton, giving her the 3 million popular vote margin over Trump.

He lies and lies some more.

To think that this individual has the unmitigated gall, therefore, to accuse the media of promulgating “fake news.”

Just who, I must ask, is the real “enemy of the people”?

It’s someone in power who would promote the lies that we have heard repeatedly since he began seeking the nation’s highest office.

Donald Trump is the enemy of the people he was elected to lead.

media news

NY Times boss tells Trump what he needs to hear

Getting an earful of what one needs to hear often differs from what one wants to hear. A recent meeting between the president of the United States and the publisher of the New York Times offers a clear example of such a circumstance.

Donald J. Trump met with A.G. Sulzberger and got a snootful from the publisher about the president’s harmful and dangerous labeling of media as purveyors of “fake news.”

Are you listening — for once! — Mr. President.

Not surprisingly, the two men reported the meeting in dramatically different tones. Trump wrote this via Twitter: “Had a very good and interesting meeting at the White House with A.G. Sulzberger, Publisher of the New York Times,” Trump wrote. “Spent much time talking about the vast amounts of Fake News being put out by the media & how that Fake News has morphed into phrase, ‘Enemy of the People.’ Sad!”

Sulzberger’s take was different. I think I’ll go with the publisher’s account of what transpired.

He issued a statement that declared, in part: “I told him that although the phrase ‘fake news’ is untrue and harmful, I am far more concerned about his labeling journalists ‘the enemy of the people.’ I warned that this inflammatory language is contributing to a rise in threats against journalists and will lead to violence,” Sulzberger said.

“I repeatedly stressed that this is particularly true abroad, where the president’s rhetoric is being used by some regimes to justify sweeping crackdowns on journalists. I warned that it was putting lives at risk, that it was undermining the democratic ideals of our nation, and that it was eroding one of our country’s greatest exports: a commitment to free speech and a free press.

“Throughout the conversation I emphasized that if President Trump, like previous presidents, was upset with coverage of his administration he was of course free to tell the world. I made clear repeatedly that I was not asking for him to soften his attacks on The Times if he felt our coverage was unfair. Instead, I implored him to reconsider his broader attacks on journalism, which I believe are dangerous and harmful to our country,” he continued.

Donald Trump is guilty as charged of lying about the media, just as he lies about damn everything else that flies out of his mouth. And the NY Times publisher has laid it on the line, that the attacks on the media thrust reporters and editors who are merely doing their job into harm’s way.

These attacks cannot stand.

media news

White House sinks to new level of juvenile petulance

A reporter for CNN has found out she has friends.

Her colleagues are standing with her in the wake of a petulant White House decision to bar her from a press event in the Rose Garden.

What got Kaitlin Collins in trouble with the White House? She asked some tough questions. That’s it, man! She was doing her job.

Well, the White House banishment of her hasn’t gone over well. Get a load of this statement from Fox News, the favorite cable network of Donald John Trump Sr: “We stand in strong solidarity with CNN for the right to full access for our journalists as part of a free and unfettered press” Fox President Jay Wallace says in statement.

A “free and unfettered press” needs “full access” to the people in power. Yep, they do. Jay Wallace’s defense of Collins is spot on.

Donald Trump is demonstrating time and again that he possesses the thinnest skin in a president since, oh, Richard M. Nixon. That goes back more than four decades. President Nixon was known to exact revenge against media members, particularly the Washington Post, which led the journalistic investigation into that “third-rate burglary” known as Watergate.

This president, No. 45, is setting a new standard for presidential petulance.

As The Hill reported: “Wannabe tyrant Donald Trump is banning reporters he doesn’t like from official press events,” McGovern tweeted. “Journalists like [CNN reporter Kaitlan Collins] ask questions not just for their news outlet, but on behalf of all Americans.”

“Shutting them out is a slap in the face to our democracy,” he added.

Except that the president shows us damn near daily that he is ignorant of the value that a free press brings to a free society.

media news

Journalism craft in serious trouble

This is not a scoop. Many of us have known this already: Journalism as we’ve known the craft is in serious trouble.

I noticed an article in The Nation that takes note of the recent sale of the New York Daily News, a newspaper that has won the Pulitzer Prize. It has just laid off roughly half of its newsroom staff.

The Daily News, though, is merely the latest in a long and growing line of once-great media organizations feeling the pinch, feeling the burn and feeling the pressure to find a business model to operate in a changing media climate.

It makes me grateful for my own departure from the craft I enjoyed and loved for so many years, even under the painful circumstances that brought it about. I resigned in August 2012 after being “reorganized” out of the job I did there for nearly 18 years. Yes, I’ve commented already on that. The truth is that in a perverse sort of way I am glad it happened, given the misery that has been inflicted on many of my former colleagues who have remained at their post.

John Nichols’s story in The Nation can be read here.

It’s a fascinating description of what has happened to a craft that brought many of us into it back in the day. Many of us answered some kind of call to make a difference. We wanted to help shape the world, to chronicle the news in our communities.

One of the dirty little secrets about newspapers is that they used to be a highly profitable business. Yes, they were labor-intensive. Newsrooms were full of reporters who covered various beats. They had editors who sought to improve the quality of the stories they would tell. There were photographers who provided visual images to to accompany the printed word.

With all that manpower on board, newspapers often operated at incredible profit margins, often exceeding 30, maybe 40 percent.

Those margins shrank in the late 1990s and the early 2000s. Newspapers then had to reduce the overhead to maintain their amazing profitability. Believe me, I had a front-row seat as this happened, not just in Amarillo, Texas, where my career ended, but in Beaumont, Texas, where I also worked for nearly 11 years.

I went to work at the Amarillo Globe-News (which also won a Pulitzer Prize in 1960 for Meritorious Public Service) in January 1995. When I got there, the paper published two editions daily — morning and evening. It had a combined daily circulation of more than 60,000 copies; its Sunday circulation hovered close to 80,000.

Those numbers have plummeted. So has the newspaper’s revenue and so has its labor force. It now publishes a morning newspaper with a staff that is a tiny fraction of the staff it used to employ. It has no staff photographers; its copy-editing functions have been centralized; it no longer prints the paper in Amarillo.

This circumstance is not unique to Amarillo, Texas. It has happened in communities across the land.

Am I sad? Of course I am. Am I glad to be gone from that madness? Boy, howdy!

media news

Fox News: state media outfit?

What’s up with this?

Donald J. Trump reportedly became angry with staffers aboard Air Force One because they were watching CNN on the presidential jet. Why, he insists on them watching Fox News, the president’s news/commentary network of choice.

He continues to lambaste media outlets that report goings on in the manner that they should, with facts and critical analysis. His favorite network, Fox, continues to slobber all over the president’s shoes (figuratively, of course) while offering nothing but “positive” coverage of his every statement and deed.

Anything negative is deemed “fake news.” Amazing, given that the president is the godfather of “fake news,” as he promoted the lie that Barack Obama was not constitutionally qualified to run for president of the United States. It was that “birther” thing, remember?

So, are we to presume that the president is creating a form of de facto state media?

I believe the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution says the government must not interfere in any fashion with a “free press” doing its job.

media news

POTUS turns VFW speech into partisan, anti-media tirade

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Leave it to Donald John Trump Sr. to turn a speech before the Veterans of Foreign Wars into a cheap, partisan, insult-laden stump speech.

Yes, the president turned a potentially noble event into a sideshow.

The president ventured to Kansas City, Mo., stood on the podium at the VFW meeting and laid into the media, the so-called “fake news” outlets.

Why, I must ask, couldn’t he limit his remarks exclusively to paying tribute to the men and women who served this country in time of conflict? They went to war to defend American ideals.

Oh, wait! I almost forgot that the young Donald Trump avoided such service during the Vietnam War. Bone spurs, wasn’t that it?

Whatever, the president couldn’t resist going after the media, Democrats and anyone who opposes his loony policies.

He also chose to take aim at who he refers to as his “low-IQ” opponents in Congress. Classy, yes? Um, no!

To its credit, the VFW issued a statement via Twitter that reads:

Today, we were disappointed to hear some of our members boo the press during President Trump’s remarks. We rely on the media to spread the VFW message, and @CNN, @NBCNews, @ABC, @FoxNews, @CBSNews, & others on site today, were our invited guests. We were happy to have them there.

You see? The VFW showed the kind of class that its featured speaker, the president of the United States, is incapable of showing.

Disgraceful … yet again!

media news

Social media etiquette gives way to threat of war

Get a load of a tweet that came from the fingers — reportedly — of the president of the United States.

To Iranian President Rouhani: NEVER, EVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN OR YOU WILL SUFFER CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE. WE ARE NO LONGER A COUNTRY THAT WILL STAND FOR YOUR DEMENTED WORDS OF VIOLENCE & DEATH. BE CAUTIOUS!

Isn’t that amazing?

Rouhani made some kind of threat to launch the “mother of all wars” against the United States.

Donald J. Trump answered with this message via Twitter.

I’m a frequent Twitter user myself. Trust me on this: I am not an expert on social media etiquette, not that having good manners is necessarily a requirement at all times. I do know, though, that typing something in all caps denotes an anger that some could construe borders on instability. Is that the message that Donald Trump seeks to convey to the Iranian president?

Yes, he did the same thing with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. He threatened him with total destruction. He spoke of the threat of “fire and fury.” Kim and Trump did meet in Singapore. The jury is out on what was accomplished. This much appears to be certain: The world remains under threat of a nuclear North Korea, no matter what the president has said.

So, what’s the deal with this all-cap Twitter message? If the president intends to convey the message that he is so angry that he’s out of control, well, millions of Americans have harbored those thoughts already.

media news

Listen up: Your grandparents were right all along

Your grandparents — and, yes, mine too — were visionaries. They were way ahead of their time.

They warned us, “If you can’t say something nice to someone, then keep it to yourself” … or words to that effect.

They didn’t anticipate the advent of cell phones or the myriad other recording devices that have proliferated our society. But, man, they nailed it!

Just look at the Uber driver who has been caught recording passengers without their knowledge. Then you had the idiot at the Chicago Cubs baseball game who took a ball from a youngster after one of the Cubs players had tossed the ball to the little boy; yes, the ballpark incident was captured by TV, but you get the point.

This all happened over the weekend.

There have been instances of people cussing others out. Road rage incidents are recorded for posterity by motorists who watch them unfold in real time.

I’ve lamented before that the ubiquitous nature of these devices should make us all a lot more reticent when confronted with potential problems.

Everyone, or so it seems, has a camera these days. You say something unkind or crude, it gets recorded. You erupt in a spasm of anger, or possibly, violence — that, too, becomes part of the “public domain.” You mistreat someone, get ready for the “viral” distribution of that action all across the planet.

When will we ever learn? When will we heed the advice given to us years ago by men and women — Grandpa and Grandma — who were way ahead of their time?

local news, media news, national news, political news

Happy to make this guy laugh

It should surprise no one that High Plains Blogger isn’t universally loved, admired, worshiped, glorified … whatever.

It has its critics. I heard from one of them this week. He lives in Amarillo, Texas. He is a Trumpkin/Trumpster/Trump-o-file.

He doesn’t like my continual barrage that this blog keeps leveling at the president of the United States, Donald John Trump Sr.. I once told him he was free to read others’ blogs, that he wasn’t obligated to read High Plains Blogger.

He acknowledged that and said he reads High Plains Blogger for the “humor” it provides.

Great! I am happy to put smiles on readers’ faces. I don’t know if he’s grinning when he reads my spewage.

This is no surprise, either: I have no intention of relenting on my criticism of the president. It goes with the territory. It goes with this blog’s territory … and … it goes with the president’s territory, too.

Except that the 45th president of the United States doesn’t like reading criticism, not that he sees these blog posts. I doubt he does. I’m just a little ol’ blogger out here in Flyover Country, far beyond the Beltway. Then again, maybe someone on his staff clips this stuff for him.

I once pledged to write positive blog posts when the president deserves them. I have done so, although I admit the positive musings have been few compared to the negativity that comes from High Plains Blogger as it pertains to Donald Trump.

I suppose I should lay down the predicate here and now for all who read this blog. I cannot in good faith demand that you read this blog if you disagree with yours truly’s world view.

I am glad that you do. I am glad that the fellow with whom I am vaguely acquainted does, too, even if it only makes him laugh.

media news

WH press flack redefines rhetorical elusiveness

I am going to offer a tip of the hat — sort of — to Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

The White House press secretary is either (a) exceedingly quick on her feet or (b) gets a thorough briefing from other West Wing staffers on how to answer direct questions.

Sanders got a question today about Donald J. Trump’s answer when he was asked by a reporter whether he still thought Russia posed a threat to our electoral system, as it did in attacking it during the 2016 presidential election.

The president said “no.” He said Russia did not pose a threat.

Sanders got the question at the White House press briefing: Did the president really mean to say Russia was not trying to interfere in our midterm election?

She said the “no” response to the question was the president’s way of saying “no more questions” from the media.

Isn’t that clever? Slick? Cagey?

It’s also untrue.

Sanders trotted out that amazing response to chief of staff John Kelly’s visible body language while Trump — at the NATO meeting in Brussels — was scolding the Germans over their supposedly being under the “total control” of Russia. A reporter asked her about Kelly’s reaction. She said he was angry because he wanted a full breakfast, but instead got only “pastry and cheese.”

That, dear reader, is hilarious.

Except that I ain’t laughing. Neither should you. It’s deceptive. She’s lying for her boss.