Tag Archives: Amarillo Globe-News

national news

'No-go zones' myth builds

Fox News got itself into some trouble recently when it reported something about European countries establishing “no-go zones” where Muslims reportedly don’t allow non-Muslims to enter.

The story turned out to be false. The media have piled on, chortling and laughing out loud at Fox for its insistence on these zones, particularly in Paris. The mayor of Paris threatened to sue Fox over its false reporting. Good luck with that, Mme. Mayor.

Fox News anchors apologized repeatedly for the mistake.

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/01/paris-mayor-to-sue-fox-over-no-go-zone-comments/384656/

But some on the right have wondered out loud why Fox is getting hammered. The Amarillo Globe-News questioned in an Opinion page comment today whether other media would have been beaten up as badly as Fox has been. The commentary suggested much of the criticism is unfair, but noted that the criticism the network has received has been justified “to an extent.”

I have a possible answer as to why the piling on has occurred.

Fox News has done a very good job of demonizing other media outlets for transgressions real and sometimes imagined. Its talking heads quite often disparage other media’s coverage of issues on the basis of a perceived bias.

Listen to some of the network’s talk shows and you get the clear and distinct impression that their side is correct and the so-called “mainstream media” is wrong.

I must add that Fox News is as mainstream as other media, given its prominence among the broadcast and cable networks that are on the air these days.

The piling on over its mistaken reporting about the no-go zones and the coverage of its repeated on-air apology for messing up is a consequence of its own making.

Payback can be harsh.

local news

Time to clean files

Even though I long ago disavowed making new year’s resolutions, partly because I hardly ever keep them, I do find one new year’s rite worth doing at the beginning of the year.

I clean my files. I mean the hard-copy files. The big stack of paper that piles up over the year, or over many years.

This weekend brought a revelation as I cleaned out one of my filing cabinets.

I tossed what I had kept for years in my files. I called them my “Praise and Damnation” folders. I copied the title of those folders from a former editor and a current friend who had kept them when he was active in daily journalism. They comprised messages from readers who either agreed with what I wrote or disagreed with me. Those who agreed were categorized as “Praise”; the others, well, you know how it goes.

My daily journalism career ended a couple of years ago, but I kept the files that previously had been stored in my office downtown, at the Amarillo Globe-News. This weekend, they went into the trash.

I felt rather cleansed, actually, in getting rid of them.

Before I tossed them, though, I perused a few submissions. I ran across an exchange from two individuals here in Amarillo. Their approaches are vastly different. They have wildly differing political views. One is a partisan Democrat, the other is an equally partisan Republican.

Here’s the crux of their disagreement, not just with each other, but with me.

The Democrat’s name is Jim. He accused me of being a right-wing mouthpiece for the Republican Party. He just couldn’t understand how I could be such a rabid, frothing-at-the-mouth ultraconservative “tea bagger.” He detested submissions from the other side. He would single out a few contributors whose work he hated with special vigor.

One of them is named Ricky, who would write occasional letters to the editor and guest columns. According to Ricky, I was a left-wing, squishy, bleeding heart liberal whose views had no legitimate standing in a community such as ours. This is the Texas Panhandle, for crying out loud, and how dare I espouse those lefty views here?

One guy called me a right-wing “nut job.” The other guy called everything just short of being a communist.

All this falls right back into what I told both of them: Their own bias frames their view of the work I did.

I actually tried to get them to talk to each other. Jim would have none of it. He had no desire to sit down over coffee to discuss his differences with Ricky. I don’t recall Ricky stating a specific objection to meeting with Jim.

But as the object of their mutual scorn, I learned to roll with it.

I’m glad to be free of the huge pile of paper — and to be liberated from the hassle of dealing with individuals who cannot see through their own bias.

 

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Another thought about 'polls'

Having just weighed in on a CNN poll touting the success of the Affordable Care Act, I cannot resist a brief comment on another so-called “poll” conducted by my local newspaper, the Amarillo Globe-News

http://amarillo.com/opinion

It asks readers on line to rate the “worst president” since 1981, the year Ronald Reagan took office. The presidents following the Gipper are George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

I’ll give you just a single guess on which president is faring the worst in this “poll.”

Yep, it’s Barack Obama. Can you imagine my fake surprise?

This isn’t a “poll,” even though the newspaper calls it such.

The reader pool comprises area residents who voted overwhelmingly against Obama in two presidential elections. He captured only about 20 percent of the vote throughout the entire Texas Panhandle in both the 2008 and 2012 elections. So, of course, if follows that he would be rated so dismally.

Besides, the “poll” is being taken while crises are erupting all over the world — Israel/Gaza, Ukraine, Nigeria, Central America. Have I missed any? Probably, but you get the idea.

What the heck. As I noted in my earlier post: If you agree with the result, you embrace it; if you disagree, you dismiss it.

I’ll dismiss this “poll” with extreme prejudice.

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Full-time work wears me out

This is another in an occasional series of blog posts commenting on impending retirement.

Epiphanies arrive at the strangest times.

Such as when one is in the middle of a part-time job and the realization hits: I no longer have the energy to work full time.

That one hit me at some point this afternoon. Thus, I figure I’ve taken another important step toward retirement.

I no longer want a full-time job. I busted my backside for 40-plus years, most of that time toiling in daily print journalism.

These days, my work consists of essentially two-part time gigs — or maybe one part-time job and another “job” that involves my favorite hobby, which is writing on politics, public policy and other current events. The actual job is at an auto dealership in Amarillo. The fun job is the blog I write for Panhandle PBS, the public TV station based at Amarillo College. (Look up “A Public View” at panhandlepbs.org and you’ll see how much fun I’m having.)

I already have chronicled — a little bit, at least — the circumstances of my departure from daily journalism. The event occurred almost two years ago. I was more than a little unhappy over the circumstance that brought it about.

The bad news is that I went into mourning for a time after I cleared out my office and drove home that day. The good news is that I got over my grief fairly quickly and have been looking forward to the future ever since.

I suppose now I ought to thank my former employer for telling me at the end of August 2012 that someone else would be doing the job I’d been doing at the Amarillo Globe-News for more than 17 years. Maybe I will do so one day. I might thank him for sparing me the chaos I understand has gripped the place as it transitions from what it was to whatever it’s going to become.

I might do that. Just not yet.

Retirement is looking better all the time, although I likely won’t ever give up the writing part of what’s left of my working life. Why would I want to stop receiving the kind of enjoyment I get from prattling on about this and that?

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Memento returns home

When you spend a career in daily journalism, you are able to collect some mementos.

I thought one of them was gone after I left my last full-time journalism job. Silly me. I got it back just the other day. I feel strangely whole again.

My career in daily journalism came to an abrupt end on Aug. 30, 2012. I resigned — unhappily — from my job and was gone. Company “restructuring” can be a bitch, you know?

What did I leave behind? It was a silly bumper sticker I’ve been packing around since my older son was a sophomore in high school. A teacher of his gave him the bumper sticker and asked him to give it to me. He wanted to stick it in my ear with the bumper-sticker slogan, “I Don’t Believe the Liberal Media.”

I’ve carried it around with great pride ever since.

How did it find its way back to my hands? The librarian at the paper where I worked for nearly 18 years called me on another matter. I e-mailed her back with an answer to her call, then asked if the bumper sticker, which was pasted on the door jamb to my former office, was still there. “Yes,” she said. I asked her if she could return it to me, which she did.

My friends and others who know my political leanings know the bumper sticker is meant to be self-deprecating. They know I’m one of those “liberal media” types. I display it with pride.

This artifact, though, once was a source of tension with some colleagues at the newspaper where I worked — or so I was led to believe.

My office at the Amarillo Globe-News had been in what we called “the old building,” next to the publisher’s office. The fellow who replaced the publisher who hired me decided to make a change: He decided to move me and my staff out of that office to another location. We eventually ended up in the newsroom, across the parking lot in the newer building.

As I moved into my new digs, I put the “I Don’t Believe the Liberal Media” sign on my window, thinking my colleagues would know that I was poking fun at myself.

Not everyone, I guess, understood the irony of the sign. One of them approached me the morning of my first full day in the newsroom and informed me that “some of us” took offense at the sign. My jaw dropped. She didn’t understand the intent of the sign, which was to poke fun at myself, not to make any serious political statement. My colleague then informed me she would take the matter up with our human resources director if I didn’t remove the sign.

I relented. The sign came down and I would resent the individual for the rest of the time she worked at the newspaper.

That’s in the increasingly distant past now.

I see bumper stickers occasionally with that “I Don’t Believe … ” message on the back of vehicles driving around town. When I do, I cannot help but smile. They’re intended to convey a serious message.

I take it as a joke. I’m just glad to have my little keepsake back home.

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Banish non-scientific ‘polls’

I detest those instant “polls” that seek — ostensibly, at least — to gauge public opinion on contemporary issues.

The Amarillo Globe-News today posted one such “poll” question on one of its opinion pages. It asks readers whether they agree with Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst’s view that the House of Representatives should impeach President Obama.

OK. Let’s see. The Texas Panhandle in two presidential elections has given the president about 20 percent of the vote. Eighty percent of the vote went for Republicans John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012. The tea party wing of the GOP — the party’s most strident voice at the moment — is entrenched firmly in this part of an extremely Republican state.

I’ll take a wild guess that when the results of this “poll” are tabulated, we’ll get roughly a 90 percent approval rating for Dewhurst’s call for a presidential impeachment.

This is just one example. The media do this kind of thing all the time. They ask for immediate responses to pressing national issues. TV networks do it. The one that just slays me comes from a liberal TV talk show host, Ed Shultz, whose MSNBC program “The Ed Show” asks viewers to send in their answers to questions relating to the topic of the evening.

A question might go something like this: Do you agree that the Republican Party is looking after the best interest of rich people while ignoring the needs of poor folks? The answers usually come back about 95 to 5 percent “yes.”

OK, I embellished that question … but not by very much.

These “polls” merely feed into people’s anger, their frustration and they serve no useful purpose other than to gin up responses on websites.

They provide not a bit of useful information.

I just wish the media would stop playing these games.