Tag Archives: mainstream media

media news

‘Enemy of people?’ Hardly!

Letā€™s take a brief moment ā€” shall we? ā€” to ponder the stupid utterance of a former U.S. president who declared on more than one occasion that the media and those who work for them are ā€œthe enemy of the American people.ā€

OK. Now, letā€™s juxtapose that stupidity with what weā€™re hearing from the battlefield in Ukraine.

We are hearing of casualties being inflicted among journalists who are covering that battle between Ukrainian forces and those from Russia who have invaded their country.

A Fox News Channel reporter is hospitalized after being wounded seriously in an attack that killed one of the producers from that network. Journalists from other news-gathering organizations have been wounded and killed while covering the war for their readers, viewers and listeners back home ā€¦ where ā€œhomeā€ might be.

The former president is fond of hammering the media for purportedly producing ā€œfake news,ā€ never mind that he also produces fake news simply through his own stupidity, his own lying.

Journalists who thrust themselves into harmā€™s way to cover world events ā€” regardless of the danger they pose to those who get too close to the action ā€” are heroes. Their only ā€œenemyā€ rests in the hearts and minds who deny ā€” or denigrate ā€” the value they bring to a civilized society.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Uncategorized

Defending the media

I cannot let go of the idiotic pronouncement that the “media are the enemy of the people.” I know I have commented on this already, but I want to lay one more thought on it for you … then I’ll move on — until the next time.

The idiocy came from Donald J. Trump. He keeps to this very day suggesting that the media peddle “fake news.” His cult followers have bought into it. I am actually acquainted with some of them in Texas, although my acquaintance is distant, through social media and so forth.

What I want to say once more with all the emphasis I can muster is that those who toil for media outlets do so out of their desire to tell the truth. And to make a difference. And to fulfill the unwritten — but clearly understood — tenets of good journalism: It is to be accurate and to treat all sides to an issue with fairness.

My days as a full-time print journalist are behind me now. I still am working on a freelance basis for two media outlets: a weekly newspaper in Collin County and a public radio station in Commerce, over yonder in Hunt County.

I can speak only for myself, but my story is identical to those still in the business of telling their communities’ stories. We do it out of love and respect for the communities we serve. I am one journalist who never during my whole time pursuing my craft deliberately told a falsehood in my reporting or in a commentary I wrote while I was writing for and editing opinion pages.

For those who suggest the media are peddling fake news, they insult all of us who love our craft to our core.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Uncategorized

‘Truth in journalism’ still exists

Truth in journalism,ā€ once a reporterā€™s credo, is now a relic of a bygone era.

Right there is a nugget of, um,Ā fauxĀ wisdom from someone who has swilled the ā€œfake newsā€ Kool-Aid that Donald J. Trump and his cabal of kooks keep spreading about those of us who practice ā€” or who have practiced ā€” what I consider to be among the noblest of crafts.

ā€œTruth in journalismā€ is alive and well. I am proud of the craft I pursued for nearly four decades and which I still am pursuing, albeit on a part-time freelance basis. I donā€™t comment on the issues I cover for a weekly newspaper in Collin County, Texas; I save my commentary for this blog, given that commentary and straight news reporting are different species altogether. More on that in a moment.

What was introduced into mainstream debate as a preposterous assertion by the former POTUS has become a sort of code for those who continue to buy into his lies, deception and hypocrisy. ā€œThe media are the enemy of the American people,ā€ Trump continues to bellow, even though he no longer is president and ā€” as I am hoping ā€” never will be again.

The media are no oneā€™s enemy. The media are full of dedicated professionals who do their job without prejudice or favor. They report the news and it then becomes up to the public to consume that news and make their own judgments on the accuracy and fairness of what they are consuming.

Too many of us, though, rely solely on those who donā€™t report the news, but whoĀ commentĀ on it, providing their own spin on the same information that goes into the hearts and minds of everyone.

The individual who provided that nugget I delivered at the top of this blog post seems to be one of those types. This person has ingested the Donald Trump view that the media are the enemy, not to be trusted but to be hated. That saddens me greatly, because this person is far from alone in that view.

This individual is part of a society that has thrown aside information it receives from those who report the news with accuracy and fairness; this person relies on those who present their opinion on issues that comport with their own world view.

This person does not know ā€” or has forgotten ā€” the difference between newsĀ reportingĀ and commentary.

Who, then, is the real ā€œenemy of the people,ā€ those who report the news or those who misconstrue it?

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

media news

Test of rehabilitated skill

1 Comment

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Time for an acknowledgment.

I have told more than one person since I began work as a freelance reporter for a weekly North Texas newspaper that I have gone back to my roots. I am covering city council meetings, school board meetings and writing occasional features for the Farmersville Times.

After spending most of my career — spanning nearly 37 years — writing and editing opinion commentary, I entered this gig knowing I could write news stories straight away, checking my bias at the proverbial door. Just stick to the who, what, when, where and why stuff … you know?

My reliance on that skill was put to a test today. I passed it with flying colors, but I was a bit concerned going in to cover the story.

It was a town hall meeting hosted in Rockwall, Texas, by U.S. Rep. Pat Fallon, a Sherman Republican and a self-proclaimed “strong conservative.” I was concerned he would fly off the rails so badly that I couldn’t restrain myself, that I would have to offer some sort of “commentary” in describing what I saw.

You know what? It didn’t happen. Sure, Fallon spouted his conservative mantra about foreign policy, about the 45th POTUS and how great he is. He denigrated Democrats and specifically House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

None of it bothered me. The only that drew an audible response from me (which no one heard) was when he reported that the “mainstream media” didn’t report something to the public. Oh yes. It most certainly did.

I wrote the story and turned it in to my boss.

That all said, I am proud to declare that the story doesn’t contain a hint of bias.

I am proud of myself. Just thought I’d brag a little.

media news

Time of My Life, Part 54: Technology advances

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

My 8-year-old granddaughter might not know what to call this device. You know what it is. I surely do.

I started work at my first full-time reporting job in Oregon City, Ore., in the spring of 1977. Our suburban afternoon daily newspaper still operated with these gadgets.

Indeed, my favorite moment of a day publishing our newspaper occurred around noon when every one of our staff of six reporters was pounding away on their manual typewriters. I was named editor of that little — and now defunct — newspaper a couple of years after arriving there. I used to stand aside while watching the staff work feverishly to get the copy turned in on time.

We finally advanced to desk top devices that allowed us to type our copy onto floppy disks. The newsroom got significantly quieter at deadline time.

I moved in 1984 to a much larger newspaper in Beaumont, Texas, which had a significantly more advanced computer system. I stayed there nearly 11 years while the newspaper improved its publishing system along the way.

In 1995, I gravitated to my final stop in daily print journalism, moving to Amarillo, Texas, which had a publishing system named after the corporate owners: the Morris Publishing System. It was crappy. Morris Communications ditched that system to something much more workable.

My daily print career ended in the summer of 2012.

This is my way of chronicling all the changes I endured during nearly four decades in journalism. Typewriters to floppy disks to main frame computers to PCs. Now they’re taking pictures with smart phones in the field; they’re using Twitter, Instagram and assorted other media platforms to transmit the news.

It makes my head spin. Then again, my head spun plenty of times as I made my way through a craft I loved pursuing.

Today, I feel a bit like a dinosaur. I just don’t want to become extinct.

media news

Journalism takes another step toward irrelevance

It pains me to acknowledge this, but based on what I have just learned, daily print journalism — I am talking about newspapers — has taken another big step toward a dark hole of irrelevance.

The Providence Journal, Rhode Island’s largest newspaper, has announced it no longer will publish editorials. You know, those are the opinion pieces that represent the newspaper’s view on issues of the day.

Here is part of a letter that Journal executive editor Alan Rosenberg wrote to readers:

Itā€™s a decision that we donā€™t make lightly. But itā€™s been coming for a long timeā€¦

[After the partisan newspapers of the 19th century,] most newspapers abandoned partisanship in their news pages, but kept the idea that they should speak out, in their editorials, on what they perceived as the best interests of their community and country.

But in doing so, they inadvertently undermined readersā€™ perception of a newspaperā€™s core mission: to report the news fairly. Our goal in news stories is always to learn, and reflect, the facts of a situation, then report them without bias. Reportersā€™ opinions, if they have them, have no place in our stories.

But when the newspaper itself expresses opinions on those same subjects, it causes understandable confusion. Readers wonder: Can reporters really do their work without trying to reflect the views expressed in their employersā€™ name? Can they cast a skeptical eye on a politician their paper has endorsed, or a generous eye on one it has opposed?

The answer is a definite ā€œyesā€ ā€” but my email since I became executive editor shows that many just donā€™t buy it.

The Providence Journal is owned by Gannett Corp. What we have here is a display in gutlessness. It is a shameful capitulation to the forces that are slowly but inexorably making daily newspapers irrelevant in the lives of thinking Americans.

I spent the vast bulk of my 36 years in journalism writing editorials and editing opinion pages. We once were committed to providing leadership to communities that used to look for some semblance of guidance from their newspapers. Sure, we had that argument with readers that Rosenberg mentioned about whether news coverage was influenced by newspapers’ editorial policy.

This news out of Providence, R.I., saddens me terribly. It well might get even worse for readers of the last newspaper where I worked on my professional journey, the Amarillo Globe-News. Gannett owns the Globe-News and Gannett has become a cost-cutting master in this era of declining subscribership and advertising.

I hate saying it ā€¦ but I fear the end of daily journalism in Amarillo, Texas, might be at hand.

media news

Good news offers strength

I am drawing a good deal of strength by much of what I am reading these days, yes, even in this troubling and perilous time.

We’re holed up in our house. We go out only to do essential duties. We watch a lot of TV; I am on the computer a great deal; I am reading lots of material related to the coronavirus pandemic.

I read the bad stuff. I am disheartened and dismayed by the misery and the heartache out there. It normally would send me into an emotional tailspin.

However, the media that Donald Trump loves to demonize, also is giving me reason to keep the faith. They are reporting about the heroism, the unsolicited good deeds being done, the demonstrations of caring and love, the joy of children who get to play games with their parents and their siblings.

I subscribe to three newspapers: the Dallas Morning News, the Princeton Herald and the Farmersville Times. Each of them in every issue I see offers positive news about heroism and outreach. Cable news channels do the same thing. They tell us of the amazing fortitude being exhibited by pent-up Americans who (a) wish for all they’re worth for a return to “normal life” and (b) understand that they must adhere to the rules being laid down by their government.

Broadcast TV is full of public service announcements repeating the mantra: We’re in this together.Ā Our Dallas/Fort Worth network stations give us reason to smile at the news they deliver about the deeds being done to help others.

The cynics in public life — the politicians who have determined that the media are the “enemy of the people” — simply aren’t paying attention to what the media are seeking to do. The media are allowing me to crease my face with a smile.

They are strengthening me for the ongoing battle against a killer.

I want to thank them for that.

media news

Media deserve bouquets, not brickbats

1 Comment

Donald John Trump is so very fond of bashing the media, those whose duty is to report to the public about how well — or poorly — government is functioning.

Yeah, he tosses the occasional compliment, then follows that with the usual rants about “fake news” and “low ratings” and other crap designed to denigrate the Fourth Estate.

I want to sing the media’s praises especially for the way they have been covering the coronavirus pandemic.

I’ve been trying to think back to any story that has dominated our airwaves and our printed pages the way coronavirus outbreak has done. The media, for their part, are covering this crisis about every way imaginable. They are doing so in ways I never would think of were I in a position to assign reporters to cover the story.

Trump’s anger at the media rests, in my mind, on the notion that the media aren’t swallowing the nonsense he spews — and the lies he tells — about the “fantastic” job he and his team are doing. They are seeking to fill in the spaces left open by the president and his team.

Trump says the disease is “under control.” The media go to expert sources who report that, nope, it’s untrue. The disease is far from being controlled, contained or confined.

The media’s reporting of seemingly separate stories are tied in varying ways to the coronavirus crisis.

That’s OK with me. The media are doing the job they are empowered to do. The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects them from government interference. Over the generations since the founders wrote the amendment, it has been generally accepted that the Constitution also offers a shield against politicians’ bullying and coercion.

Donald Trump’s constant criticism is blatant form of bullying that cannot be tolerated. He won’t stop the attacks, given that they play well to the ignorant wing of his political base, the know-nothings who believe Trump’s ridiculous assertions that “fake news” is actually false, when in reality it merely is news that isn’t favorable to their hero.

The media are doing a great job covering a story that needs a free press now more than ever.

media news

Time of My Life, Part 47: 9/11 changed the dynamic

Events can shape people’s lives and even influence the direction their careers take.

The terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 was a date that changed damn near everything in this country, not to mention the career I had chosen to follow.

I cannot prove this with actual, tangible evidence. It’s an anecdotal thing, to be truthful. But the 9/11 terror attack opened the floodgates for me as an opinion writer and editor.

I was working on 9/11 as editorial page editor of the Amarillo Globe-News. I got word of the attack from a colleague who stuck his head into my office to ask if I had heard about the plane that had crashed into the World Trade Center.

Well, the rest is history, right?

One element of that momentous day was the absolute flood of issues on which we could comment at the Globe-News. It never stopped after that terrible moment in our history.

There had been times in the years preceding 9/11 when I had to look for issues on which to offer editorial comment. As they say in the news business, “There are good news days and bad news days.” The good news days always gave opinion editors grist on which to comment; the bad days forced us to look for that grist.

The post-9/11 era — which lasted essentially for the duration of my career a dozen years later — often filled me with the greatest dilemma an opinion editor could face: too many topics on which to comment.Ā 

There were a lot of days when I would go to work and have to face a decision. What issue can we set aside for another day? Think about that. I seemed to never face the problem of having to look for ways to fill that space on our opinion page with editorial commentary.

It was a curious phenomenon that I cannot quite explain even to this day. It just happened. The world was changing. The nation went to war against international terrorism. That era spawned issues that demanded leadership from newspapers that at that time were still considered beacons for their communities.

I hated the circumstance that caused that phenomenon to occur. However, I was oddly grateful that it did occur and gave me a treasure trove of topics on which to comment.

Those were the days, man.

local news, media news

Is the president a ‘heartless imbecile’? Yes, but …

You know what they say about things that come after the word “but.” It’s likely to change the nature of what comes before it.

A gentleman I do not know personally, but who reads High Plains Blogger, took me to task for a recent post I wrote about Donald John Trump. This fellow believes I never give Trump any credit for anything.

Actually, I have. I mentioned my stated support of the president’s criminal justice reform ideas and the military strike he launched against Syria. I also mentioned the rare instances in which Trump has acted and sounded “presidential.”

My critic believes I consider Trump to be a “heartless imbecile,” to which I answered: Do I think he’s a “heartless imbecile”? Yep. I’m afraid so ā€¦ until he proves me wrong. It’s possible, you know.”

Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic has been nothing short of disastrous. So far, he has been a heartless imbecile, but ā€¦ here it comes, that could change if Trump would take just a few small steps toward decency.

He could stop blaming all the things that go wrong on his watch on everyone else. He should stop blaming President Barack Obama, for instance, for enacting measures that Trump says incorrectly have slowed down the national response to the pandemic. While he’s at it, he should take ownership of the decision he made to dismantle the National Security Council task force designed exclusively to deal with pandemics — like the one we’re enduring at this moment!

Trump could stop heaping praise on himself and taking credit he doesn’t deserve. He should focus instead solely on the problem at hand and deal forthrightly with those problems.

Trump could actually apologize for the “heartless” and “imbecilic” comments he made about the cruise ship he didn’t want to dock in Oakland, Calif., out of concern that the infected passengers on board would drive up his “numbers.” I know that’s a non-starter, given that Trump doesn’t apologize for anything.

The president needs to act presidential. That would do it. That would compel me to shed much — but not likely all — of my antipathy toward this guy.

Donald Trump needs to stop attacking the media. The men and women who report the news are simply doing their jobs. They do not work for the president and he needs to understand their role in keeping government accountable to the people who pay the bills. You and I are the bosses ā€¦ not Donald Trump. He works for us.

So, there you have it. The “but” has yet to materialize. It might. I am just not going to wait for it.