Monthly Archives: April 2015

media news, national news

Rolling Stone did a hatchet job

The Rolling Stone retraction of a story it published alleging a gang rape at a college frat house presents a graphic lesson in Journalism 101.

Be sure you get all sides of the story before you go to press.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/04/rolling-stone-rape-columbia-report-116714.html?hp=m1#.VSSXRFJ0yt8

The magazine is paying a huge price in its loss of credibility. And it should.

It well might pay even more — as in financially — if it loses a planned lawsuit filed by some of the principals involved in the coverage of the bogus story.

The magazine reported a woman named Jackie was raped by members of a University of Virginia fraternity. However, the magazine didn’t bother to check with Jackie’s friends, or with the fraternity members, or with others who might be able to corroborate Jackie’s story.

It turned out that on the night in question, there wasn’t even a party at the frat house.

The story broke down.

The magazine issued a retraction and an apology.

And this story now has put the media under the looking glass once again.

What still astounds me is that the reporter, her editors and the “fact checkers” still are employed by the magazine. No one has lost his or her job.

I’m scratching my head over this one. I’ve seen reporters and editors fired for less than what happened at Rolling Stone. No one bothered to check the details of Jackie’s story? No one thought to ask the reporter to talk to the fraternity members? The reporter didn’t bother to do her homework?

Where I come from, they call such so-called reporting a “hatchet job.”

To retract a story is to admit that it is false, that it is bogus, that it doesn’t stand up to the basic test of good journalism. Rolling Stone has issued its retraction.

Why hasn’t it punished the people responsible for soiling the magazine’s credibility?

religious news

'Church' to protest at this funeral?

Westboro Baptist “Church” is at it again.

The target of this gang of goofballs this time is the funeral of the late Rev. Robert Schuller, founder of the Crystal Cathedral megachurch in California.

Schuller died this past week.

Seems that Westboro “church” members believed Schuller was too tolerant of gay people. So, to carry their hateful message to this latest extreme, they plan to launch a protest at Schuller’s funeral.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/westboro-baptist-church-says-it-will-protest-schuller-funeral/ar-AAayvFr

I don’t know what to say, except that these idiotic displays of intolerance go so far beyond what Jesus Christ himself taught that it utterly baffles me that Westboro can even call itself a “church.”

Schuller, in the eyes of the Topeka, Kan.-based Westboro “church” members, had the bad form to preach a sunny form of Christianity. He brought forward messages of hope, not hate. Westboro “church” officials said he should have talked more about going to hell and, perhaps, less about going to heaven.

Westboro has created a lot of notoriety picketing funerals of fallen warriors, men and women who’ve died in battle defending the right of citizens to speak out. Westboro’s agenda, such as it is, is a fervently anti-gay message. LGBT citizens are going straight to hell, says Westboro “church” doctrine.

So, here we go again.

A crackpot cult is going to launch yet another picket.

Let’s all turn our backs on them, shall we?

 

International news

Time for Walker to 'bone up'

Scott Walker says he’d toss the Iranian nuclear deal negotiated by the United States and its allies into the trash if he’s elected president of the United States next year.

To which the current president, Barack Obama, says the Republican Wisconsin governor needs to “bone up on foreign policy” to realize the foolishness of such a pledge.

Score one for the 44th president.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2015/04/07/397928604/obama-to-scott-walker-bone-up-on-foreign-policy?utm_campaign=storyshare&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&fb_ref=Default

The sole intent of the deal is to deny Iran the chance to develop a nuclear weapon. It was a painstaking negotiation. It reduces the number of centrifuges Iran can use. It allows for careful international monitoring of Iran by inspectors to ensure the Iranians are complying the with the deal. It won’t lift economic sanctions on Iran until it does comply.

So, what are the spectators in the peanut gallery — such as Gov. Walker — proposing? Do we bomb the Iranians? Do we invade? Do we just impose more sanctions and then hope they will prevent the Iranians from doing what they damn well please with respect to nuclear weapon development?

The president spoke to National Public Radio about the deal. “I am confident that any president who gets elected,” Obama told NPR host Steve Inskeep, “will be knowledgeable enough about foreign policy and knowledgeable enough about the traditions and precedents of presidential power that they won’t start calling [into] question the capacity of the executive branch of the United States to enter into agreements with other countries. If that starts being questioned, that’s going to be a problem for our friends and that’s going to embolden our enemies.”

All this tough talk and bluster from those who oppose the deal go the heart of a concern some of us out here have raised about whether the United States should be speaking with a single, clear, strong voice regarding Iran.

Yes, Congress should be heard. However, let us not undermine the executive branch’s authority to negotiate in good faith — even with our enemies.

 

national news, political news

Sen. Paul: most interesting GOP candidate

I’ll lay my bet down now that Rand Paul is going to be the most interesting and provocative Republican running for president in 2016.

I didn’t like the U.S. senator from Kentucky when he first burst onto the scene. I like him better now. It’s not that I plan to vote for him next year if he gets the GOP nomination. He does have some interesting ideas to share with Americans.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/republican-rand-paul-announces-2016-presidential-run-on-website/ar-AAaxxuJ

He’s already announced on his website that he’s going to run. He has an event planned later today in his home state to make official.

He wants to return the nation to the “principles of liberty and limited government.”

Well, damn! Isn’t that original?

Actually, though, his view of libertarianism encompasses a wide swath of issues.

He suggests favoring marijuana legalization. I’m wondering what he’s going to say down the line about assisted suicide and abortion. His foreign policy doctrine looks to be of an anti-war bent, unlike so many of the TEA party members of his party who seem all too willing to start dropping bombs and (please pardon this hideous euphemism) placing American “boots on the ground” to assist in every regional conflict on the planet.

Paul didn’t distinguish himself during the Senate Benghazi hearings when he scolded then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over the confusion that erupted in the firefight at the U.S. consulate in Libya. “If I had been president,” Paul said, he would have fired Secretary Clinton on the spot.

I thought at that moment: Oh … please.

But the man’s occasional quirkiness and interesting take on domestic and international affairs has piqued my curiosity.

With that — run, Rand, run!

 

national news, political news, State news

Hispanic, Anglo: Same thing? Umm, no

John Ellis Bush is no more Hispanic than his mother, father or his four siblings.

He’s an Anglo-American. But in 2009 he put “Hispanic” on his voter registration form.

Thus, the 2016 presidential campaign comedy of errors has begun — and John Ellis Bush, aka Jeb, isn’t even an official candidate for president.

http://www.politicususa.com/2015/04/06/jeb-bush-committed-felony-lying-florida-voter-registration-form.html

PoliticsUSA, a left-leaning website, says Jeb Bush committed a third-degree felony by registering falsely when he listed his ethnicity as Hispanic. Those folks are all up in arms over it, complaining that the media are giving Bush a pass.

What does PoliticsUSA want to happen to Bush? Toss him in jail for committing a third-degree felony six years ago?

I’m not willing to slap irons on the former Florida governor’s wrists and/or ankles.

Hey, perhaps he was thinking of his wife, Columba, who was born in Mexico. She’s Hispanic, for sure. So are the couple’s children, the most notable of whom is George P. Bush, the newly elected Texas land commissioner.

My favorite memory of George P. Bush is watching the then-teenager at the 1992 Republican National Convention in Houston extolling the virtues of his grandfather, President George H.W. Bush, who was seeking re-election. “Viva Boosh!” shouted George P. from the podium that day — bringing down the house in the Astrodome.

Jeb Bush will get past this little kerfuffle.

Just a reminder, though: John Ellis Bush, you are an Anglo. Keep it straight in the future, all right?

 

local news, media news

Blog streak looks like it's about to end

2 Comments

This blog post is going to be — and I’ll be fairly brief — about my blog.

High Plains Blogger has been on a roll of late.

It has set seven consecutive records for monthly page views and unique visitors. I’m quite proud of that streak, and I’ve been none too bashful about sharing the good news with my social media friends.

April isn’t looking so good. Just six days into the month and I’m sensing a trend that suggests my streak is going to stop at seven. That’s all right. I’ve enjoyed a good run and I’m hopeful it will resume soon.

This blogging adventure has pretty much consumed my life for the past, oh, couple of years.

I don’t have a full-time job. I’ve three part-time jobs — and I enjoy them all immensely. Two of them involve writing: One of them is for Panhandle PBS, based at Amarillo College; the other one, which I just started in early February, is for KFDA-NewsChannel 10, the CBS-TV affiliate in Amarillo. They’re both blogs. The PBS blog discusses public affairs programming; the NewsChannel 10 blog looks at on-going news stories in our region and the station is good enough to broadcast an on-air report based on the blog I’ve posted on the station’s website.

The third job is as a customer service concierge with a Toyota dealership here in Amarillo.

But writing is what I love to do. I was blessed to pursue a fulfilling career in print journalism. It was a 37-year run that ended in late August 2012. My work with public and commercial TV stations allows me to continue to working on my craft.

My first post-newspaper-career passion, though, is my own blog. I truly enjoy venting, ranting, raving, commenting, critiquing public affairs on my blog. Occasionally I veer into what my wife and I call “life experience.”

I guess the purpose here is to ask you to keep reading High Plains Blogger. If you think you want to share it with your friends, well, have at it. I’m anxious to reach more people and to have them comment on my musings.

Do not worry about hurting my feelings if you disagree with my particular political slant. Most of my neighbors and most of the people I encounter daily disagree with me. That’s the nature of living in this part of the world.

Let me know what you think.

 

national news, political news

Beware of big money, former Sen. Hart warns

Former Vice President Walter Mondale once asked famously of then-Sen. Gary Hart: Where’s the beef?

He sought to smoke out Hart’s position on the issues that were driving the 1984 Democratic Party primary presidential campaign.

These days, though, the former senator is giving us plenty to chew on as he warns of the influence of big money — as in really big money — on the upcoming 2016 campaign for president.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/04/gary-hart-hillary-clinton-2016-billion-dollar-campaign-116673.html?hp=l2_3

Hart’s target? Former Sen. and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who figures to raise as much as a billion bucks to run for president. Hart doesn’t like that kind of influence. While he expresses admiration and respect for Clinton, he sounds like he’s leaning toward a possible alternative candidate for president — say, Elizabeth Warren or Martin O’Malley.

As Politico reported: “The post-Citizens United campaign finance environment has sullied the presidential process, he said, benefiting establishment politicians who cater to financial backers. He pointed to his own experience, noting that he and his wife mortgaged their home for between $50,000 and $75,000 — an amount that made a significant difference in his first campaign in 1984.”

Ah, yes, Citizens United.

That was the infamous Supreme Court decision that ruled in 2010 that campaign contributors cannot be limited in the amount of money they give. Why, it’s a free speech issue, the court ruled. President Obama then stood in the lectern at a State of the Union speech and scolded the justices as they sat right in front of him for their decision. Although the setting was inappropriate for such a tongue-lashing, the guts of what the president said hold up today: It is that money wields too much influence in the modern political process.

Those who suggest that enabling corporations to give mountains of money to candidates is simply allowing “free speech” do not seem to grasp that some speech is heard more clearly than others. Politicians are going to listen to those who can give huge sums of money more than they’ll listen to you and me.

Is their voice more important than ours?

That’s the kind of influence Sen. Hart is warning us about.

Gary Hart has found the beef.

 

media news, political news

'Kennedy whitewash' critique was expected

I knew this critique would come from those who opposed the late U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy’s view of government and the world.

It arrived from Brent Bozell and Tim Graham, two leaders of the Media Research Center, a conservative-leaning media watchdog organization.

These gentlemen were offended at the recent opening of the Edward Kennedy Institute and the ceremony that praised the Liberal Lion’s work in the Senate.

http://nypost.com/2015/04/03/a-kennedy-whitewash/

They called the event a whitewash, glossing over the many personal foibles — and the tragedy — that stalked Kennedy for much of his life.

I get that Bozell and Graham thought that the media should have told the rest of the story about Kennedy: the womanizing, the public intoxication, the overall bad behavior and, yes, Chappaquiddick.

The event at the Edward Kennedy Institute was meant to honor the man’s public service. The bad stuff happened off the clock. He was clearly a flawed human being — as we all are.

However, it is no mere coincidence that Kennedy had many friends with whom he shared little or nothing politically. His across-the-aisle relationships became almost legendary on Capitol Hill. Kennedy’s best friend in the Senate arguably was Orrin Hatch, the Utah Republican, who counseled his friend Teddy and became something of a father confessor to the youngest member of the Kennedy “royal family.”

Did the late liberal lawmaker fight hard for his beliefs? Yes, as Bozell and Graham noted in their essay. He savaged the late Robert Bork when President Reagan nominated him for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. However, Kennedy’s ferocity against Bork has been matched in recent years by the right’s assault on, say, the president of the United States and any number of key appointees he’s sought to install in high office.

Watchdogs such as the Media Research Center do provide a valuable service to the public. They remind us that the media need to be monitored carefully, to ensure they tell the complete story. The left has its share of watchdogs, as does the right.

The unveiling of the Edward Kennedy Institute, though, was meant to honor one aspect of a senator’s public life. The private indiscretions remain part of the man’s larger legacy. I see nothing wrong with examining them both — separately.

 

media news

Retracting a story is a huge deal

During my 37 years in print journalism, I had to write some corrections to news stories or editorials I’d written.

You get a fact wrong, you write a brief explainer of the actual fact. It usually goes into a file your editor would keep. I’ve written a clarification or two in my time. That’s when you report or commenting on an issue without using the proper context. Those, too, go into a file.

No journalist likes to write those.

A retraction? That’s a very big deal. That’s when you retract an entire story. It was bogus. False. It’s a firing offense. I’ve seen reporters lose their jobs because their files contained too many corrections or clarifications.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2015/04/rolling-stone-retracts-uva-rape-on-campus-article-205020.html?hp=c4_3

Rolling Stone magazine, a usually reliable journal, has retracted a story it published alleging that the University of Virginia fraternity house was the scene of a horrible rape in 2012. The magazine drew a scathing critique from the Columbia Journalism Review about how editors allowed the story to pass through various checkpoints before being published.

The writer of the bogus story, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, reportedly didn’t contact any of the alleged assailants.She acknowledges she relied too heavily on the alleged victim’s account of what happened.

One of the more astonishing elements of this story is that Erdely and the editors who worked on her story are continuing to work for Rolling Stone. She has apologized to the readers of Rolling Stone and has vowed never to make the mistakes she made while writing the article.

Whatever.

But can readers trust her fully again? Journalists are supposed to trade on the trust they build with their readers. That trust is built on the journalist’s ability to tell the truth, completely and fully and without a hint of doubt about the veracity of the story being told.

When a nationally known publication such as Rolling Stone retracts a story, it in effect is admitting it has inflicted a grave wound on that trust.

It’s a real big deal.

 

International news

'Insurrection' is such an insidious term

The word “insurrection” has been raised in the debate over opposition to President Obama’s constitutionally mandated authority.

I looked it up to be sure it is being used in the correct context. The trusty ol’ American Heritage Dictionary says this of the term: “The act or instance of open revolt against civil authority or a constituted government.”

Scary, yes? Absolutely.

Colbert King of the Washington Post suggests and insurrection may be mounting against Obama’s authority in states that are clinging to some notion that they can ignore federal mandates.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-rising-insurrection-against-obama/2015/04/03/d00e39f6-d94f-11e4-ba28-f2a685dc7f89_story.html

The lead in his column says this: “It’s a scary thought, but here it is: If some red states were to openly defy the authority of President Obama in the exercise of his constitutional duties, would today’s Republican Congress side with him? Or would they honor the insurrection?”

King isn’t sure Republicans in Congress would stand with the president. Take a look at his column.

He cites a recent Arizona House of Representatives decision, approved on party lines, that “prohibits this state or any of its political subdivisions from using any personnel or financial resources to enforce, administer or cooperate with an executive order issued by the President of the U.S. that has not been affirmed by a vote of Congress and signed into law as prescribed by the U.S. Constitution.”

Do you get it?

It means the Arizona legislature would oppose a constitutionally valid executive order that didn’t have congressional approval.

Arizona’s elected representatives are trying to stick it in the president’s eye.

The state Senate has to approve it before it becomes law.

Suppose it does. Arizona then would claim authority to ignore any federal decision made by the White House that is supposed to affect all 50 states. Arizona is one of the 50.

Colbert wonders why this issue has gotten the silent treatment on Capitol Hill: “The word ‘insurrection’ does come to mind. Yet the resistance out West to federal authority has been received in virtual silence on Capitol Hill. It’s almost as if the GOP Congress wanted an uprising against the president.”

It’s one thing to disagree with a president, or with Congress, on policy matters. The idea, though, that some Americans are pondering the idea of open revolt — an insurrection — simply goes beyond the pale.

Something quite dark and sinister seems to be brewing out West.