Tag Archives: CBS News

It’s the temperament, man … the temperamant

February 17, 2017 kanelis2012

I’ve been trying to determine when I’ve ever seen a president of the United States treat the media in the manner being displayed by the current one.

I cannot remember a single time. Not even during President Richard Nixon’s time in the White House.

Donald Trump has shown utter contempt and disrespect for the men and women assigned to cover the White House for their various news organizations.

It manifests itself when he gets a question he dislikes. He tells reporters to “sit down, that’s enough” when they seek to elaborate on their question, to fill in a blank or two. No, the president will have none of it.

Forget for a moment that he calls them “dishonest” out loud, in public, to their face … and then expects these fellow human beings to treat him with kid gloves.

The disrespect — as I’ve witnessed it — is unlike anything I’ve ever witnessed, even from afar.

If we march back through time — starting from Barack Obama and going backward — I cannot remember a president acting the way this one does in front of the media.

There was one memorable, testy exchange in the 1970s between then-CBS News correspondent Dan Rather and President Nixon. The president was getting entangled in the Watergate scandal and Rather asked him a pointed question. Some members of the press gallery chuckled, some even clapped. Nixon asked Rather, “Are you running for something?” Rather responded, “No, Mr. President, are you?”

Presidents usually have strained relations with the media. They dislike negative coverage, as does any politician — no matter what they might say. As I’ve watched presidential/media relationships from a distance over the years, I have noticed a sometimes cool cordiality between the Big Man and the media that cover him.

What we’re getting now is open hostility and an exhibition of extremely bad manners from the guy who needs the media as least as much as they need him.

I’m trying to imagine what will occur if and/or when the crap really hits the fan at the White House. I fear the president will go berserk.

Didn’t someone mention temperament as a quality we look for in a president of the United States of America?

International news, political news

The Dossier: It’s ba-a-a-a-ck

February 11, 2017 kanelis2012 2 Comments

I am still trying to figure this one out. So, too, are federal and international law enforcement authorities.

Donald J. Trump went ballistic not long after becoming president at media outlets that reported the existence of a “dossier” that allegedly had been compiled on him. The president called out CNN in particular for being a “fake news” outlet because it reported the existence of unsubstantiated reports contained in this dossier.

Now it appears the dossier’s existence might be gaining some credibility among law enforcement spooks.

Some truth is in order. The issue centers on some information reportedly compiled by a British spy alleging that Russian authorities had some negative information regarding Trump’s business dealings in Russia.

The curiousness of all this seems to center on Trump’s dismissal of allegations that Russian government hackers were trying to influence the 2016 presidential election at the time CIA and other intelligence agencies were saying they had proof that such activity was occurring.

The arc of this ongoing story might find its way back to the president’s continued refusal to release his tax returns for public review.

I have no clue where this story will end up. It frightens me that it might produce some ghastly information regarding Trump’s business interests inside of Russia and whether they involved direct dealings with a government that might have tried to manipulate our electoral process.

Trump, of course, denies any business dealings with Russian government authorities. He asks us to believe him, to take him at his word. Sure thing, Mr. President … just like you want us to believe the baloney about “millions of illegal immigrants” voting for Hillary Clinton or the lie you perpetuated about Barack Obama being born in Kenya..

Let’s get to the whole truth.

media news, national news, political news

Moderator deserves a good word

October 5, 2016 kanelis2012

Elaine Quijano has earned a good word on this morning after the vice-presidential “debate.”

The CBS News correspondent/anchor didn’t do a great job refereeing the exchange between Democratic nominee Tim Kaine and Republican nominee Mike Pence.

As I look back on it after a good night’s sleep, my conclusion is that it wasn’t totally her fault. She sought to reel in the fellas, sought to keep them answering the questions, she sought to avoid the constant interruptions that were initiated by the amped-up Kaine.

She got caught in a buzzsaw of campaign rhetoric, throwaway lines, talking points, insults and, oh yeah, the occasional policy differences that emerged from the candidates.

I want to echo something I heard last night from the post-“debate” analysis about the best question of the evening. It dealt with candidates’ religious faith and how it informs their public policy.

Both men exhibited clear understanding of faith and explained in clear and concise language how it works for them in their public life. Bravo to them both for ending the evening on somewhat of a civil note — and bravo to Quijano for the question.

As we’ve been seeing, though, in these joint appearances, the media moderators are becoming a bit of a distraction. Dating back four years ago when CNN’s Candy Crowley corrected GOP nominee Mitt Romney’s incorrect assertion that Barack Obama didn’t call the Benghazi attack an act of terrorism, media and politicians have been waiting for future moderators to interject themselves into the political dialogue.

Quijano, unfortunately, became part of the story again last night.

From my perch out here in Flyover Country, though, I believe she delivered a creditable effort at staying above the fray. I only wish the candidates would have done a better job of focusing on the issues at hand.

national news, political news

Do as Jolly says, not as he does

May 1, 2016 kanelis2012

David Jolly says he wants members of Congress to stop spending so much time soliciting money from donors.

So, what does the Florida Republican lawmaker do? He attends a fundraiser to, um, raise money for his own campaign for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by fellow Republican Marco Rubio.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/04/david-jolly-fundraiser-60-minutes-222669

I was somewhat enthralled by Rep. Jolly when he appeared this past Sunday on “60 Minutes.” He has authored something called the STOP Act. Its aim is to prohibit incumbent House members from spending so much time “dialing for dollars.” Jolly told CBS News’ Nora O’Donnell that House members spend more time manning the phones making “cold calls” on donors than they spending doing the job to which they’ve been elected.

He talked about things such as, oh, “constituent service.” You know, dealing with constituents’ questions about Social Security payments, veterans benefits … things like that.

I told some family members just yesterday that if Jolly were running for president today I’d consider voting for him over any of the others seeking the nation’s highest job.

According to Politico: “The piece sparked an intra-party feud between Jolly and the National Republican Congressional Committee. The NRCC said Jolly vastly overstated how much time lawmakers spend raising money.”

He’s gotten only a handful of co-sponsors. The act isn’t likely to get much traction in the House, where members say they “hate” having to raise so much money.

Still, I guess they just can’t help themselves.

As for the fundraiser Jolly attended, his flack justified it by saying Jolly didn’t actually telephone anyone to invite them to the event.

There. Do you feel better about it?

International news, media news

Penn fails to make the case

January 18, 2016 kanelis2012 2 Comments

Sean Penn invented a word last night on “60 Minutes.”

He called himself an “experiental” journalist.

I’ve been working with words for, oh, damn near 40 years. I consider myself a journalist. I worked at four newspapers in two states. I enjoyed some modest success during my career.

“Experiental”? What the . . . ?

Penn is a movie actor of some renown. He recently ventured to Mexico, where he shook hands with Joaquin Guzman, aka El Chapo, the then-fugitive drug lord; he had escaped in early 2015 from a maximum security prison in Mexico. Penn interviewed this supremely evil individual for a 10,000-word article he wrote for Rolling Stone.

I watched with considerable pain in my gut as Penn sought to explain to CBS News correspondent Charlie Rose what he hoped to accomplish by writing a story about El Chapo, who was recaptured by Mexican authorities the day after the magazine article hit the streets.

I think I heard a tinge of sympathy in this guy’s voice as he tried to relay Guzman’s reasons for peddling drugs, for delivering so much misery to so many millions of people, for being responsible for the deaths of thousands of individuals with whom he has come in contact.

I also believe I detected a look of incredulity in Rose’s face as Penn offered his explanations.

And then Penn would drop that hideous, made-up adjective that he put in front of the word “journalist.”

This thought doesn’t come from me, but I’ll pass on what a friend of mine said this morning on social media.

My friend, too, is a trained journalist. He wants to know if he can now seek to become an “experiental movie actor.”

***

This just in: I’m advised that “experiental” is a real word. I stand corrected on that particular point.

media news

Of course the question was intended to offend

July 16, 2015 kanelis2012

Major Garrett, CBS News’s chief White House correspondent, and I have something in common.

We both worked for the same person, although at different times.

How’s that for name-dropping?

Garrett went to work for the Amarillo Globe-News back in the old days. The then-editor of the paper, Garet von Netzer, hired him; von Netzer later would become publisher of the paper and then he hired yours truly, although long after Garrett had moved on.

Having laid down that useless predicate, let me now say that Major Garrett asked a patently offensive question of President Obama, to which the president responded appropriately.

The question involved four Americans held captive in Iran and Garrett wondered how the president could be “content” that they’re still being held on trumped-up charges while he is “celebrating” the nuclear deal worked out with the Islamic Republic.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/obama-major-garrett-shuts-down-press-conference-120156.html?hp=b2_r1

Obama took offense at the tone of the question. He scolded Garrett, saying he “should know better” than to ask a question that contained “nonsense.”

The president said he isn’t “content” over the Americans’ continued captivity and said he and his team are “working diligently” to secure freedom for the individuals.

What irks me about the question and its aftermath is how Major Garrett insisted it wasn’t intended to ruffle the president. He didn’t apologize and he said it was not asked to call attention to himself.

May I be blunt? That’s pure baloney.

That’s how it goes among the White House press corps. It’s always about getting in a question intended to call attention to the inquiry and to the person making it. Such gamesmanship has been going on for, oh, since the beginning of these televised events dating back to the days when President Kennedy introduced them to the public and turned them into some form of entertainment.

CBS’s Dan Rather famously sought to get under President Nixon’s skin during the Watergate scandal; ABC’s Sam Donaldson did the same thing to President Reagan over the course of many years; Fox’s Ed Henry does the same thing today with President Obama.

Well, now Henry and others have company in the “gotcha” hall of fame.

Major Garrett asked an appropriate question. He just inserted a certain word — “content” — that framed it in a way that got Barack Obama’s dander up.

I would bet that was his intent all along.

media news

Williams, O'Reilly: double standard?

May 16, 2015 kanelis2012

The thought occurs to me on this rainy day on the Texas Tundra: Brian Williams is likely out of a job, while Bill O’Reilly is still going strong for doing essentially the same thing that got Williams into trouble.

How come?

Williams once was the much-admired anchor for NBC’s Nightly News broadcast. Then it came out that Williams fibbed about a story he had told over a decade that a helicopter he’d been riding in had been shot down during the Iraq War. His chopper wasn’t shot down, but he was riding in the same group of air ships that included the one hit by the rocket-propelled grenade. NBC investigated the matter and suspended Williams for six months — without pay. He has become the butt of jokes and the network is highly unlikely ever to return him to his former job.

O’Reilly, meanwhile, was revealed to have embellished his own record, talking about how he “covered” the Falklands War in 1982 while never setting foot in the war zone while Argentine troops were fighting British troops that had landed on the islands to take back Britain’s territorial possession. O’Reilly who “covered” the war for CBS News, has since become Fox News’s No. 1 commentator. He reported how he had been put in harm’s way in the Falklands. Except that he wasn’t ever exposed to hostile fire. It was revealed the potential harm came from rioters in Buenos Aires, from where O’Reilly was “covering” the war.

Fox stands by its man. O’Reilly called the reporting of his embellishment the work of “guttersnipes.”

One man gets kicked off the air. The other is still goin’ and blowin’.

O’Reilly often laments what he calls “double standards” in media reporting.

He’s right. There well might be a double standard at work here.

media news, Uncategorized

When Brokaw says it's bad … it's bad

April 16, 2015 kanelis2012

Overstatement isn’t my thing, so I say this with great care.

Tom Brokaw has become sort of today’s version of E.F. Hutton. Whenever he speaks of things relating to broadcast journalism, people tend to listen intently.

He’s been fairly quiet about the Brian Williams matter … you know, the NBC anchor who’s been suspended from his job without pay for embellishing his wartime experience in Iraq.

Brokaw, whom Williams replaced as anchor of NBC Nightly News, has weighed in. For my money, it doesn’t look good at all for Williams’s future.

Brokaw has acknowledged “this is a really, really serious case, obviously.”

Do you think?

Brokaw and Williams aren’t the best of friends. Brokaw said the two men have had a “cordial” relationship, which is more or less a diplomatic way of saying they smile when they see each other but in reality can’t stand to be around the other guy. We’ve all relationships like that, haven’t we?

It’s been reported of late that Williams might have hated succeeding Brokaw on the anchor desk because of the very high standard of excellence Brokaw set during his lengthy tenure. It reminds me a bit of the tension that existed between Walter Cronkite and his successor at CBS, Dan Rather, when Cronkite retired from the anchor job and was succeeded by Rather — who never quite measured up to Uncle Walter’s iconic stature.

Brokaw made his remarks recently in a talk at the University of Chicago. Check it out on this You Tube link. It’s at the 54-minute mark. Quite interesting, indeed.

national news

O'Reilly getting a taste of his own brew

February 25, 2015 kanelis2012

The Bill O’Reilly story isn’t going away any time soon.

It might not ever disappear. Why is that? Well, look at it as payback from other media organizations that have been on the receiving end of O’Reilly’s sanctimony over many years.

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2015/02/24/oreilly-lied-about-suicide-of-jfk-assassination/202655

The left-leaning media watchdog groups around the country are taking a serious look at the allegations of embellishment and falsification that have piled up around O’Reilly. The Falklands War story still is resonating in some circles. O’Reilly has implied that he was in serious danger while covering the 1982 Falklands War between Great Britain and Argentina. He didn’t show up on the battlefield, but was in Buenos Aires covering riots and other disturbances during the Falklands conflict.

Was he in the danger he says he was? His former CBS colleagues dispute it.

Now comes another allegation of falsehood, that he was present during the suicide of a principal in the John F. Kennedy assassination. That, too, has come under challenge.

This story will have legs for some time for one simple reason: Bill O’Reilly has made considerable hay over the years criticizing other media outlets and reporters for their own transgressions. He’s held himself and his employer, Fox News, as the twin paragons of virtue and truth-telling. The “No Spin Zone,” which he calls his Fox TV show, has every bit as much “spin” as any other TV news talk show. O’Reilly just chooses to “spin” his stories his way.

Another reality, though, is that O’Reilly isn’t getting any more of a media vetting than Brian Williams got when it was revealed that he really wasn’t shot down in Iraq in 2003 as he has suggested. Nor is he being hammered any harder than former CBS News anchor Dan Rather was when he reported erroneously about President George W. Bush’s Air National Guard duty in the 1970s.

However, O’Reilly’s penchant for sticking it to other media means this story will continue for a good while longer.

This kind of scrutiny goes with the territory. O’Reilly knows it better than most.

national news

'Kill zone' just a figure of speech?

February 23, 2015 kanelis2012

Bill O’Reilly needs to settle down.

Mother Jones has written a scathing piece alleging that the Fox News talk show star fibbed about his coverage of the Falklands War in 1982 while he was working for CBS News.

O’Reilly has lashed out — savagely — against Mother Jones and one of the co-writers of the piece, David Corn. He said Corn will end up in the “kill zone. Where he deserves to be.”

http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2015/02/oreilly-kill-zone-just-a-slang-expression-202887.html?hp=b2_l1

Corn took the “kill zone” remark badly. Mother Jones editors have demanded an apology. They won’t get one. O’Reilly called it a “figure of speech.”

Oh, that Bill. He’s such a kidder.

I’m still waiting for O’Reilly to prove he actually prowled the battlefield in the Falklands while covering the brief conflict between Great Britain and Argentina. He hasn’t done that. Instead, O’Reilly has lashed out with a barrage of pejorative terms to describe Corn, Mother Jones and — as is his modus operandi — all those on the “loony left” who have criticized his work over many years.

Let’s get to the issue at hand, Bill: Were you on the battlefield — or not?

High Plains Blogger