Category Archives: media news

Hoping these students stay involved

March 9, 2018 kanelis2012

I am privileged to have a number of sharp, insightful friends and acquaintances on my social media networks.

One of them, a retired Amarillo physician, took note of a blog item I posted about Amarillo students who are joining a nationwide “March For Our Lives” in response to gun violence in our schools.

He wrote this: Let’s hope that this generation of young adults can sustain a movement better than the millennials have, who turned out to be just another “me” generation with no real impact. Yes, AMM, I mean you.

“AMM” stands for the Amarillo Millennial Movement.

OK, what’s the relevance here? AMM came forward in the summer and fall of 2015 to pitch in favor of the city’s multipurpose event venue. AMM wanted it built because it would help entice millennials to remain in Amarillo. The city had an election in November 2015 and the MPEV was approved. Construction on the project has begun and in April 2019, the city will welcome a new AA minor-league baseball franchise that will play in a brand new ballpark.

What happened to AMM? It vaporized. It’s nowhere to be found. Well, that’s not quite true. Its founder, a young woman who carried the water on behalf of AMM, moved to Fort Worth shortly after the November election. Ironic, don’t you think? She implored millennial residents to remain at home if the city approved the MPEV; voters said “yes” to the MPEV, but AMM’s primary spokeswoman left town.

The March For Our Lives movement has many more members getting involved. On March 24, Amarillo-area students are going to march from Ellwood Park to the Potter County Courthouse to call attention the scourge of school-related gun violence. The movement came about as a result of the Parkland, Fla., massacre that killed 17 people, most of whom were students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

I have a strongly held suspicion that March For Our Lives — given the life-and-death stakes that are involved — will be far more than a mere flash in the pan.

media news, national news, political news

Trump assumes role of ‘armchair hero’

February 26, 2018 kanelis2012

Donald J. Trump’s profoundly stupid boast today underscores perfectly a point I sought to make in an earlier blog post.

The president assumed the role of “armchair hero” in declaring — during a White House gathering with the nation’s governors — what he would have done had he been present at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., on Valentine’s Day.

He said he would have stormed into the building when the gunman opened fire, killing 17 students and educators.

Really, Mr. President? This is the kind of idiotic nonsense that drives many of us nuts.

He was speaking about former Broward County Sheriff’s Deputy Scot Peterson, who reportedly stood by — frozen — while the gunfire erupted inside the high school. He called the deputy’s conduct unacceptable. On that score, the president is correct.

However, to insert himself into a tragedy and assert how he would have acted — days after the fact — speaks to a curious form of projection from someone who one would think should know better.

There can be plenty to say about the deputy’s lack of action when it was need in the moment. We haven’t yet heard from him. I am one who hopes he is able and willing to explain why he didn’t do what he was trained to do. I don’t expect him to offer a plausible explanation, but the nation has a need to hear his version of events.

Americans do not need to hear senseless boasting from a president who was nowhere near the tragedy when it struck — and broke everyone’s heart.

media news

Yes, the White House is at ‘war’ with the media

February 22, 2018 kanelis2012

White House press secretaries have a singular mission, which is to convey the message of the president to the American public.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders is now performing that task to mixed reviews. Those who support Donald Trump’s agenda applaud her; those (of us) who don’t, well, we jeer her.

I’ll offer this jeer, therefore, to Sanders for saying that the White House is not “at war” with the media. Sure thing, Mme. Press Secretary.

Then, why does the president declare that the media are “the enemy of the American people”? Why does he keep insisting that media reports he finds objectionable come from what he refers to as “fake media”? Why does he disparage reporters individually, by name, along with their organizations?

Good grief, Sarah! The president declared war on the media long ago. The first press flack, Sean Spicer, fired the first barrage on Day One of the Trump administration when he challenged the media reporting of the size of the Trump inaugural crowd!

I am pretty certain the media believe they are in a state of “war” with the administration. Whether the White House’s “fine-tuned machine” believes it ignores what many of the rest of us realized long ago.

Sanders took part in a discussion of White House media relations with Mike McCurry, press secretary for the Clinton administration. McCurry, not surprisingly, took issue with Sanders’s assertion that there is no warfare taking place. He said the White House criticizes media reporting “every day,” which he considers to be a form of media war.

Read The Hill’s story here.

I am one of those former media guys who knows White House combat with the press when he sees it.

Thus, I believe Sarah Sanders is, um, quite wrong while she parrots the White House line on its relationship with the media.

local news, media news, national news

Parkland reveals disgraceful aspect of Internet

February 21, 2018 kanelis2012

We’ve all known how the Internet reveals evil intent as well as producing positive impact.

I present to you the Parkland, Fla., massacre and the outrage it has produced among high school students in that community as well as around the country.

It appears some right-wing trolls are spreading lies about the students, calling them “actors” hired to present anti-Donald Trump rhetoric while standing up for the FBI.

I have insufficient knowledge of the English language to express my utter disgust at these Internet trolls.

A gunman opened fire on Valentine’s Day at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. He killed 17 people: 14 students and three educators. Police arrested the gunman and he now is accused of 17 counts of premeditated murder. The shooter reportedly plans to plead guilty so that he can avoid a death sentence.

But what about the students who are rallying this week in Tallahassee, Fla., to lobby state lawmakers to take action on gun violence? Are they “actors”?

No. They are not. They are survivors of a hideous act of violence committed against them and their friends and mentors.

That didn’t prevent an aide to a Republican Florida legislator from fomenting the lie that they are “actors.” The legislator fired the aide on the spot. He’s not alone, though. Other disgraceful trolls have sought to undermine the public statements of these students by alleging that they are hired by political interests that favor stricter gun control laws.

I am reminded of what a letter writer told me once while I was editorial page editor of the Amarillo Globe-News. I rejected the letter because it contained falsehoods. When I spoke to the writer over the phone to tell him why I was rejecting his letter, he answered that he knows its contents were true “because I read it on the Internet.”

I laughed out loud.

On this matter — regarding the lies being told about these grieving students — I would laugh, except that it’s not funny.

It is an utter disgrace.

local news, media news, political news

Candidates don’t deserve free ‘ad space’

February 20, 2018 kanelis2012

I get that the Amarillo Globe-News has endorsed state Sen. Kel Seliger’s bid for re-election to the Texas Senate. That’s their call and, frankly, it was the wise decision.

Now, though, the newspaper has crossed a line it shouldn’t have crossed. One of Seliger’s Republican primary opponents, Amarillo businessman Victor Leal, has been allowed to write a letter to the editor excoriating Seliger’s voting record. The newspaper published it!

Leal’s letter makes no mention of the editorial. It doesn’t challenge the G-N editorial board rationale for its decision to back Seliger.

Read Leal’s letter here.

Instead, it challenges Seliger’s statements touting his voting record on a variety of issues.

Why does this set a slippery-slope precedent? Because political candidates should have to pay for their political advertisements. Newspapers and other media offer candidates space and air time to espouse their own real or perceived virtues, but they don’t usually give it to them for free.

I worked for a couple of newspapers that didn’t even allow people to speak on behalf of candidates during election season for that very reason. The idea was to reserve the free space for issues and discussions that steered away from political campaigns. As a former boss of mine used to say, “We aren’t going to give away political ad space with letters to the editor that endorse a candidate’s virtues.”

I moved away from that policy years later. The candidates themselves, though, did not get that space to speak for free to speak on behalf of themselves or against their foes. If they wanted the space, they had to pay for it.

We now can await Seliger’s response to Leal and quite possibly Mike Canon — the third GOP candidate in this contest — will get to boast about his own virtues.

Sheesh!

media news, national news

Yet another tragedy falls victim to politics

February 19, 2018 kanelis2012

Donald Trump’s incessant use of Twitter could enable him to use the social medium to comfort and console families suffering from unspeakable grief.

Yes, the president did offer his “thoughts and prayers” to families and other loved ones in the wake of the Parkland, Fla., school massacre on Valentine’s Day.

Then he followed up with a tweet over the weekend that reveals, in my mind, the kind of person Trump really is.

He blamed the FBI for failing to respond to tips about the alleged shooter because the agency was “too busy” investigating the Trump presidential campaign’s alleged collusion with Russian hackers who meddled in our 2016 presidential election.

There you have it. When the president is handed an opportunity to criticize law enforcement, by golly he jumps all over it — even when the criticism is juxtaposed with a nation’s grief over another spasm of gun violence.

The president has drawn criticism from politicians of both parties over this response. Will it sink in? Will he heed what members of his own party are saying? Hah! Hardly.

Does this man have any sense of decency? Any sense of shame? Any sense of compassion or empathy? I concluded long ago the answer is an unequivocal “no!”

Sickening.

media news

‘Fake news’ gets more Trump scorn

February 18, 2018 kanelis2012

I have become immune to the outrage of Donald Trump’s Twitter fetish, so I won’t gripe that the president is tweeting his outrage yet again.

However, his continuing outrage at what he keeps calling the “fake media” is outrageous in the extreme.

The president went after the media’s coverage of Robert Mueller’s indictments of 13 Russians and three Russian companies over their alleged meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

C’mon, Mr. President! They’re doing their job. The media are part of the very system to which you belong!

They have a responsibility to report on what the special counsel is doing to discover all the facts surrounding the election, the Russian interference in our electoral process and whether there was any “collusion” between the Russians and the president’s campaign.

As for Trump’s criticism of the media reporting of the indictments, I hasten to add that the media have reported quite clearly that the indictments do not suggest there was collusion. To that end, the media have treated the president fairly — which means they have passed the second test of good journalism.

The first test is accuracy. On this matter, the media have done well, too.

So, Mr. President, shut up with the “fake news” mantra.

local news, media news, national news, political news

Oh, how time flies for this blogger

February 13, 2018 kanelis2012

Nine years ago today I introduced myself to those who follow blogs.

It was Feb. 13, 2009 when I posted my first blog item. My intention was to give readers a chance to know just a little about yours truly.

The blog actually appeared on the Amarillo Globe-News’s web site at first. I transferred it to High Plains Blogger after I left the Globe-News in August 2012.

Here is what I wrote then:

https://highplainsblogger.com/2009/02/introducing-me-john-kanelis/

I intended the blog then to focus mostly on local matters, as I was writing for the local newspaper and the posts were pertinent to issues the paper was covering at the time.

It didn’t stay that way. I left the paper and then started commenting on a whole array of issues far beyond Amarillo and the Texas Panhandle.

I invited comment and community discussion then. I still do today.

My entry into the blogosphere produced a fairly paltry response. I am not too proud to acknowledge that the increase in page views has been slow, steady slog. It’s a lot greater today than it was in 2009. It’s not sufficient to satisfy me. For that matter, I am convinced that I’ll never be totally satisfied with the volume of page views and unique visitors this blog attracts.

Hey, I’m like the salesman who earns a living based on the sales he produces. It’s never enough, right?

I just felt compelled to look back briefly at the beginning of my blogging experience. I was doing it for my employer then. Now that I am no longer employed, my current blog posts are more pure. I am able to speak with greater clarity about my own world view.

It still is more fun than I deserve.

But, shoot, man! I won’t apologize for it.

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