Category Archives: media news

media news, national news, political news

At least O’Reilly apologized

Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly made a crass joke about U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters’ appearance, referring to her hair style and comparing it to a “James Brown wig.”

He thought he was being funny. He wasn’t.

The blowback was immediate and harsh, as it should have been.

O’Reilly then apologized.

His apology sounds sincere. Indeed, I’ll give him credit for refraining from one of those lame “If I offended anyone … ” non-apologies one hears from people in public life.

The incident reminds me a bit of the way a former colleague of mine used to refer to Rep. Waters. He was prone at times to ridicule her appearance as well.

To my knowledge, he’s never said he was sorry for being so crude and crass.

Hmmm. I’m tempted to write him and demand an apology. Then again, maybe he’ll see this blog and take the initiative.

As for O’Reilly, how about showing some manners?

media news, political news

Sean Hannity ‘bad for America’?

I feel the need to take issue with legendary newsman Ted Koppel, who believes a notable Fox News commentator is “bad for America.”

The target of Koppel’s epithet is Sean Hannity, the well-known conservative provocateur and gabby apologist for Donald John Trump.

Koppel scolds Hannity

Koppel told Hannity to his face — on a “CBS Sunday Morning” segment — that he is a bad influence on listeners to his radio show and viewers to his TV show. Hannity’s response was on target, in my view. It was that viewers/listeners know when they’re listening to opinion or straight news.

Given that Hannity is not a journalist by training, he spouts opinion on the air. I get that. As I’ve always said … and this is the clean-up version: Opinions are like certain body orifices; everyone has one.

Do I think he’s “bad” for the country, that he somehow poisons Americans with his right-wing dogma? Not really.

You see, we all have choices. I’ve made my own as it regards Hannity. I don’t listen to his radio show or watch him on TV. I know what he thinks. I disagree with him. I choose instead to listen to more thoughtful conservatives. A number of them come to mind.

If I want to hear an analysis from a smart conservative, I’ll look elsewhere.

Hannity? He’s simply a blowhard.

media news, medical news, national news, political news

Everyone has a limit, right, Sean Spicer?

Every man or woman — even White House press secretaries — would have their limits on the dissembling, confusion and outright lies with which he or she must contend.

Isn’t that right, Sean Spicer.

The current White House flack came to the podium today and declared that the House of Representatives would vote tonight on the American Health Care Act.

Then word came out that, nope, ain’t gonna happen — tonight! It’s been delayed. House Republicans are still trying to gather up enough  votes to send Trump/Ryancare to the Senate, where it faces an even less friendly pool of politicians.

Chaos, anyone?

It’s fair to wonder out loud about Sean Spicer, a man for whom I’m beginning to develop a certain level of sympathy. How much more of this can he take? How much longer will he be able to defend a president’s policies and the seat-of-the-pants process that produces them?

I don’t know much about Spicer, other than he served as Republican National Committee press secretary before joining the White House flackery machine.

Still, is this guy reaching his limit?

legal news, media news

So long, Judge Napolitano

Readers of this blog know that I am not likely to offer many compliments to the Fox News Channel.

I am about to break tradition and declare that Fox has done the right thing by taking a loudmouth “legal analyst” off the air for blabbing something utterly irresponsible.

Andrew Napolitano has been yanked off the air indefinitely by Fox for declaring on the air that a British intelligence agency was complicit in wiretapping Donald J. Trump’s campaign office in New York City. The agency, according to the former judge, was working at the behest of former President Obama; Napolitano, therefore, was giving credence to the scurrilous charge leveled by Trump that Obama had ordered the wiretap at Trump Tower.

FBI Director James Comey debunked Trump’s tweet today in a congressional hearing.

Fox gives judge the boot.

Meanwhile, we have this (so-called) judge keeping this lie alive by suggesting that the Brits played a role in an event that — according to Comey — did not occur.

I hope Fox boots this clown off the air for keeps, even though he most likely would end up somewhere else spouting such reckless right-wing bile.

media news

Apologize, Mr. President, just say you’re sorry

Dear Mr. President,

I have no idea whether you or your staff reads the stuff that comes from this blog, but I’ll offer this bit of advice anyway.

Say you’re sorry for defaming Barack Obama. Admit you made a mistake. Come clean with an admission that you woke up one morning, that you weren’t quite awake or alert before you blurted out that tweet in which you accused the former president of wiretapping your campaign offices at Trump Tower.

The jig’s up, Mr. President. The FBI director, the guy who many Democrats believe torpedoed Hillary Clinton’s campaign with that e-mail-related letter to Congress on the eve of the election, has just blown your wiretapping tweet to bits.

He said he has no information to confirm what you have alleged. He said the Justice Department has no information either in any of its branch offices.

I get that you don’t apologize. I’ve heard all that stuff about you — and from you, sir. I have read about how you said you’ve never sought forgiveness.

Take my word for it, Mr. President: an apology doesn’t signal weakness. On the contrary, it signals strength. It tells us that you are man enough to own up to making a mistake.

Mr. President, you need a serious reset here. These tweets of yours are damaging the country at many levels. They compromise our national security; they send bizarre messages to our allies; they make you sound like a know-nothing teenager.

In the case of the Obama wiretapping allegation — which the FBI director has shot down in flames — they expose you to accusations of slander and defamation.

C’mon, Mr. President. Just say you’re sorry. Pledge to us you’ll close your Twitter account, and then do it.

The presidency deserves to be occupied by a grownup.

So far, sir, you aren’t acting like one.

media news

How long can Spicer keep defending the indefensible?

I believe it’s a reasonable question: How much longer can Sean Spicer keep defending a president who is unable to tell the truth?

Donald J. Trump keeps trotting out whopper after whopper, putting his press secretary in a patently untenable position of having to defend what he must know is a lie.

Brent Budowsky, a contributor to The Hill, posits the notion that Spicer should quit and that he well might become one of the president’s most high-profile casualties in his ongoing war with the truth.

Here is Budowsky’s essay for The Hill.

I believe Spicer has principles. Sadly — in my view, at least — he seems to have taken some sort of secret oath to bury them while he briefs the media about the president’s torrent of untruths.

The Barack Obama wiretapping fiction is the latest example. Spicer surely knows the president doesn’t have a shred of evidence to back up his allegation that Obama wiretapped his offices at Trump Tower. Then he is forced to dance this rhetorical jig with the media about so-called “air quotes” around the word “wiretap,” meaning that Trump didn’t mean what he said.

How long can this guy Spicer, who was Republican National Committee press secretary before joining the White House staff, continue this charade?

Everyone has his or her limits. Everyone. Even White House press spokesmen.

local news, media news

Holiday recalls acts of kindness

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I think of people from my past occasionally for the oddest of reasons. Today might qualify as one of them.

St. Patrick’s Day has me in a reminiscing mood. I am recalling a young man my wife and I knew in a prior life — in Beaumont, Texas.

His name was Kevin Carmody. He was an Irish-American and a damn fine journalist. He and I worked together at the Beaumont Enterprise. I worked on the paper’s editorial page; Kevin covered environmental issues for the paper, back when daily newspapers had enough personnel to assign reporters to specific beats.

Kevin was a kind young man. He was compassionate. He had a heart as big as, well, Texas. Maybe bigger.

He demonstrated his kindness in many ways, but I want to share a particular act he extended to me.

I arrived in Beaumont in the spring of 1984 ahead of my wife and sons. They stayed behind in Oregon while my wife prepared to put our house on the market. I went ahead to start a new job.

I met Kevin right away. He knew of my separation anxiety and he invited me to join him and his many other friends for after-hours fellowship at local watering holes. I agreed.

I had arrived in Beaumont after St. Patrick’s Day 1984; my family got there that summer, just in time for our boys to start school.

I told my wife about this young man. When I introduced her to Kevin, she understood completely why he was such an endearing fellow. She took an immediate liking to him, as he did to her.

The next year we attended a St. Patrick’s Day party at the house where Kevin lived in Beaumont’s Old Town district. It was a raucous affair, with lots of laughs and plenty of good “cheer” in the form of green beer that Kevin was proud to serve his many guests.

There would be more get-togethers with Kevin. He always made sure to invite the old guy, me, and my wife to these affairs. We always enjoyed his company and I will continue to believe he enjoyed ours as well.

We didn’t know it in those early years, but Kevin was ravaged by demons. He suffered terrible depression. I would learn later he took medication to fight it. We all sought to tell Kevin how much we loved him and how much we appreciated the good work he did for the newspaper and the kindness he always extended to others.

He moved away later, to Austin. My wife and I would move from Beaumont to Amarillo in early 1995.

We would see Kevin — who had since gotten married — one more time. It was at a reunion in 1997 of Beaumont Enterprise reporters and editors in Galveston. We partied at a posh hotel on the waterfront. We had a marvelous time.

That evening I took Kevin aside and told him how much I appreciated — with all of my heart — the kindness he extended to me a dozen or so years earlier. I told him in his wife’s presence how much I appreciated his intuitiveness by inviting me to those gatherings; he understood I was a bit lonesome without my family nearby — and I reminded him of that fact as well.

We said goodbye at the end of the reunion.

I wouldn’t see Kevin again.

The phone rang one day at my office in Amarillo and a mutual friend of ours called to tell me that the demons that had ravaged and savaged Kevin caught up with him. He had taken his own life.

I won’t dwell on that, however. Today — on St. Patrick’s Day — I choose to remember a kind young man who exhibited a level of wisdom and kindness one doesn’t always find in anyone, let alone someone so young.

You were the best, my friend.

media news

Hands off PBS, NPR, Mr. President

Now he’s done it!

The president of the United States has just gored my ox. He has hit me where it hurts. He has taken aim at a government institution I revere.

Donald J. Trump is proposing elimination of public money that goes to National Public Radio and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting … a major arm of the Public Broadcasting Service; also slated for elimination is the National Endowment for the Arts.

Trump proposes zeroing out about $445 million for CPB and NPR. Wiping it out. No more public money for public broadcasting, either radio or television.

“PBS and our nearly 350 member stations, along with our viewers, continue to remind Congress of our strong support among Republican and Democratic voters, in rural and urban areas across every region of the country,” PBS president and CEO Paula Kerger said in a statement.

“We have always had support from both parties in Congress, and will again make clear what the public receives in return for federal funding for public broadcasting,” Kerger continued. “The cost of public broadcasting is small, only $1.35 per citizen per year, and the benefits are tangible: increasing school readiness for kids 2-8, support for teachers and homeschoolers, lifelong learning, public safety communications and civil discourse.”

So, with that the president wants to eliminate an element of public spending that in the grand scheme amounts to tossing a BB into the ocean, but which brings tangible benefit for millions of Americans.

I have a dog in this particular fight … more or less.

Not long after I left my job in print journalism in the late summer of 2012, I signed on as a freelance blogger for Panhandle PBS, the organization formerly known around the Panhandle as KACV-TV, based at Amarillo College. I wrote about public affairs television. My text was published on Panhandle PBS’s website.

I got great satisfaction writing the blog and I enjoyed my relationship with the public TV station immensely. It ended when the station went through some changes and decided to divert its “resources” toward more on-air production of local programming.

We bid each other adieu. However, I continue to love PBS and what it brings to the quality of life of all Americans, especially to those of us in the Texas Panhandle. Its programming features some first-rate, top-drawer, high-level production. Ken Burns’s documentary series on the Dust Bowl — and its impact on the High Plains region — will remain with me for as long as I draw breath.

I would hate with every fiber of my being seeing the government remove itself from that kind of programming.

And for what purpose? So we can buy more bombs, missiles and other weapons of war — as if we don’t have enough of it already to destroy Planet Earth a billion times over.

Am I angry over this budget proposal? You’re damn right I am!

Do not do this, Mr. President and Congress.

media news

Opinion pages heading for oblivion — maybe

I am a dinosaur. I believe in what we know to be “traditional journalism.”

It includes newspapers — although not exclusively, to be sure — with pages that contain straight news; some pages contain entertainment; they all have advertising, which businesses purchase and which gives newspapers their profitability.

They also include pages of opinion. They are editorial pages and related pages with other commentary submitted by, oh, syndicated columnists and local contributors; these pages also include letters from readers who want to express themselves on the issues of the day.

Well, it now appears that traditional newspapers are receding into our memory.

The Poynter Institute is telling us that newspapers — a little at a time — are ceasing to publish daily opinion pages. They are reverting to a “digital first” model. They need to save money, given that advertisers aren’t spending as much money on print publications these days. Newspapers need to keep pace with the change in the industry, so they’re going to this digital model.

It saddens this dinosaur.

I became a reporter in the mid-1970s aiming to chronicle events in my community and report them to people who had an interest in being informed.

My career gravitated over time to the opinion pages.

I would assume the role of editor of a small suburban daily in Oregon City, Ore. Then I would move to Beaumont, Texas, to write editorials for a larger newspaper; I eventually became editor of that page. After a period of time, I would move to Amarillo to become editor of two papers’ editorial pages.

I saw my role in opinion journalism as a complement to what those publications did on their news pages. It was to provide perspective, context and, yes, opinion about the issues on which the papers were reporting.

It was a valuable task. I was proud of my craft.

So, it saddens me terribly to read about newspapers forgoing daily print opinion pages in favor of this digital “product.”

The Poynter article discusses big changes underway at the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, which has scrapped a daily print opinion page in favor of a digital presentation, “We have decided that our highest engagement comes from enterprising, in-depth, explanatory reporting,” editor George Stanley said in a phone interview. “So we are keeping that intact.”

The editor of the paper makes no apologies for it. Nor should he, I guess, given that he still works for an employer who made this decision.

I came of age in journalism during its heyday. A couple of young reporters for the Washington Post were digging for information about what a president of the United States was doing to subvert — allegedly — the U.S. Constitution. I wanted to take part in that craft, even if I couldn’t do it at Ground Zero of what was an exciting time to practice it.

I have never lost my love of that work and what it represents. However, I sure understand that it is a new day in journalism, the craft I practiced for nearly 37 years.

Perhaps it’s time to admit that I am glad to be gone from it and that it’s a better fit for youngsters.

media news

HPPR quenches news junkies’ thirst

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I am a happy radio listener.

High Plains residents — those of us who like news, information and well-reasoned analysis of current events — are getting an additional treat on our radio dial.

It’s called 9.49 Connect. It’s an expanded news offering provided by High Plains Public Radio. When HPPR’s morning news shows go off the air — while being broadcast simultaneously on 94.9 and 105.7 FM — 94.9 Connect stays on the air with more news and commentary.

HPPR rolled out its expanded news offering this past week. In doing so, it has decided to quench the thirst for news junkies such as yours truly.

National Public Radio for too long has gotten a bad rap by those who suggest it is some sort of “liberal organ” that only squishy lefties would appreciate.

Wrong, man! Double wrong! Triple wrong!

If you’ll pardon my lifting a common mantra from the 2016 presidential election, NPR “tells it like it is.” So does its affiliate station, HPPR, which is headquartered in Garden City, Kan.

I am happy to sing the praises of a non-commercial radio station, given that public radio relies on listener support and corporate “underwriters.”

And make no mistake, its news presentation strides down the straight and narrow. It doesn’t pepper its coverage with buzz words and partisan rhetoric, which I suppose is what its critics — mainly those on the far right — wish it would do.

Only they want the news slanted in their direction.

High Plains Public Radio has just enhanced the quality of life for public radio listeners — and news junkies — across our vast region.

Thank you, HPPR.