Tag Archives: mainstream media

media news

Simple life gets even simpler

Some of you might recall that I blogged about my life becoming simpler, less complicated than before.

Well gang, I’ve discovered that a simple life can get even simpler. I don’t have much to say today about what’s going on in the world of hard news.

Yep. Simplicity is a good thing. At least it is for me.

I get to devote blog topics to, oh let’s see, about blogging. This particular avocation does require a certain devotion to the news. I follow it some, but not so much these days in newspapers, or in standard commercial broadcast media.

The foolishness at CBS News recently has driven me away from that network’s news team. Yes, I know it still has dedicated professional journalists who risk their lives each day reporting on warfare and street crime. The shitty termination of Stephan Colbert from late-night TV and Scott Pelley from “60 Minutes” is too much to swallow. Even for me.

So … the simple life beckons. I hear its siren call. I’m in all the way.

media news

Trump has ‘murdered’ ’60 Minutes’

At this very moment I am thinking of some of the titans of American broadcast journalism, men and women who sought the truth and told it to us without fear of recrimination.

You know who they are: Mike Wallace, Ed Bradley, Leslie Stahl, Bob Simon, Harry Reasoner, Morley Safer, Diane Sawyer, Dan Rather and now … Scott Pelley.

They all worked for “60 Minutes,” the premier TV news show that exposed everything — good and bad — about the government for which we pay. Pelley, a West Texas native, recently spoke aloud about the dangers of censorship and government overreach being inflicted by the Donald J. Trump administration, which seeks to control the news that’s being reported.

Pelley has lost his job at “60 Minutes,” along with reporters Cecelia Vega and Sharyn Alfonsi. This is a dark time for American journalism.

Pelley’s ouster hits me in a vaguely visceral way. I don’t know him, but I am good friends with a fellow West Texan who attended Texas Tech University with Pelley. My friend is now retired from journalism and he has told me a story or two about Pelley’s journey into the spotlight.

The First Amendment is supposed to guarantee a free and unfettered press. Congress “shall make no law” that seeks to control the media, the amendment declares. Trump has engineered the takeover of CBS News by MAGA-friendly execs. They have executed the removal of journalists they deem as threats to the POTUS. We are witnessing a disgraceful flouting of the very rights the First Amendment guarantees to maintin our representative democracy.

I just might join that movement to boycott CBS News.

media news

Political mystery: How does he get away with this?

One of the great American political mysteries keeps playing out and it continues to baffle many millions of Americans.

Donald Trump in the span of about three days totally reversed himself and told yet another in an infinite string of bald-faced lies as he sought to wiggle out of his initial statement.

Rachel Scott of ABC News asked Trump if he was going to release the video of the second strike in September of a speed boat off the Venezuela coast; the strike killed two survivors of an initial missile attack on the boat. Trump said he had “no problem” releasing it and said Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth could do “whatever he wanted” regarding the issue. Three days later, Scott followed up on her first question, reminding him that he said he would release the video, to which Trump said “You said that, I didn’t say it.” Then he turned to someone at the table and muttered, “She’s with ABC fake news.”

Trump’s Republican allies in Congress continue to keep letting him get away with (a) telling outright lies and (b) heaping verbal abuse on female reporters who are simply doing their job.

When in the name of decency and decorum will the GOP caucus in both congressional chambers wake up to what their hero is doing? He is denigrating his exalted office. He hurls epithets at journalists who are practicing a craft protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution.

He recently called a female reporter “piggie” while dismissing a question she posed to him aboard Air Force One. Trump continues to harangue reporters as being “stupid,” “incompetent” and purveyors of “fake news.”

Meanwhile, the men and women whose constitutionally granted power is being usurped by Trump sit on their hands and keep their lips zipped.

They are disgracing themselves and the offices they occupy.

media news

War on Christmas is over!

You remember Bill O’Reilly, the Fox Propaganda Channel blowhard who every year about this time would commence his seasonal diatribe about how “liberal mainstream media” had declared war on Christmas.

I’ll tell you what. O’Reilly is still gone from the mainstream cable TV airwaves after having been booted off the air by Fox over allegations of sexual harassment. He’s still out there, I’m sure, fomenting the fantasy of a war on Christmas.

Allow me to declare that the war on Christmas is over. Done with. Finished. In reality, it never really existed as O’Reilly said it did. If there was any war on this holy and festive holiday, it was conducted by Madison Avenue and its intense commercialization of the holiday that commemorates Jesus’s birth while at the same time tracking Santa Claus’s circumnavigation of the planet to deliver gifts to those of us who have been nice … and not naughty.

Those who take aim at the media criticize them for suggesting it’s somehow sacreligious to say “happy holidays” during this time, not understanding that most of the world’s 8 billion inhabitants don’t celebrate Christmas the way we Christians do. I don’t hold it against them. I guess some of us believe everyone should celebrate the birth of a baby who we believe is the son of God.

So, when merchandisers wish us “happy holiday,” they do so out of respect for everyone they serve. It ain’t a declaration of war!

Bill O’Reilly got a good bit of mileage out of his war on Christmas demagoguery. He’s still out there somewhere spreading the lie. The reality, though, tells me something different. There is no war on Christmas! It never really existed!

media news

Double down on news boycott?

Time for an acknowledgment, which is that my declaration some months ago that I was commencing a boycott of political news on TV is beginning to lessen … just a bit.

However, even though I keep the TV on to listen to the political news only with one of my ears, I am consdering a doubling down on that earlier declaration. I mean, even though I am paying partial attention to the machinations of D.C., Austin and even the local news, it is tiring to hear the same thing repeatedly.

I am waiting for a grand revelation. A “Eureka!” moment when someone tells me something no one else has reported. I want an intrepid reporter to deliver the scoop for the ages on what no one else on Earth knows about Donald Trump, or any of his sycophants.

Print journalism reached its high-water mark in the 1970s when two Washington Post reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, were given license to ferret out the truth behind the Watergate scandal. They were so successful that the “gate” terminology has become a suffix for any scandal that boils up … you know, Russiagate, Hegseth-womanizergate, whatever.

The media have been sufficiently demonized by Donald Trump and his moronic MAGA minions that even tried-and-true shoe-leather reporting is now deemed suspect, of peddling “fake news.”

It’s not fake. It’s real. But the media seem reluctant to sic the reporter hounds loose to tell us the full truth. Instead, we get a mere regurgitation of what we know already.

I haven’t yet decided to fire up my news boycott. I might do it. I am going to wait a bit longer and hope someone can produce the next scoop for the ages.

media news

Trump can declare a form of victory

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Win or lose when they count the presidential election ballots on Tuesday, Donald J. Trump can declare an important victory in one of the side battles waged in this campaign.

I believe the Republican nominee has managed to bully major newspapers into forgoing a presidential endorsement in this most consequential election.

The Washington Post will be quiet on who it prefers to see elected. So will the New York Times. So will Gannett, the nation’s largest newspaper chain. Major metropolitan daily news across the land have made the same decision.

Why is that? I believe that the GOP nominee’s insistence that the media are the “enemy of the people ” has managed to sink in. Publishers and senior editors have sought to explain themselves. No explanation is necessary.

They have been cowed into fearing how readers might react were they to recommend the election of Democrats Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. This election, though, cries out for some media leadership, particularly when we have a major-party presidential nominee who is so demonstrably unfit to serve in the office he seeks.

I take no joy in recognizing what I believe is a tactical victory for Trump. I’ll just have to swallow hard.

media news

Profiles in cowardice!

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John F. Kennedy is doing somersaults in his grave at Arlington National Cemetery, given the news that has come out this week about the Washington Post.

The Post has declared that it will not issue an endorsement in this year’s presidential election. That’s right, the newspaper that once exposed the Watergate scandal to the world and which has prided itself on providing editorial page leadership on key issues and the people who make policy decisions has decided to sit this election out.

JFK, who wrote “Profiles in Courage” — and was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his work — would be a profoundly unhappy man.

The Post has just become a poster child for a profile in cowardice.

The Post isn’t alone. The New York Times is turning its back on this formerly essential duty that print journalists used to cherish. And … I am sure that there are many others out there that have been cowed by the blathering of Donald Trump and other blowhards who have persuaded millions of gullible Americans that the free press is the “enemy of the people.”

It isn’t. A free press keeps its eye on those who make policy decisions for all Americans. It serves as a watchdog on the alert for corruption. It also helps provide leadership in recommending who it believes is best suited to seize the reins of power.

No one really believes editorial endorsements determine electoral outcomes these days … if they ever have. What they do is put newspapers’ thoughts on the record and they leaven the discourse.

This election in particular cries out for leadership and for leading newspaper editorials to forgo that responsibility is an act of cowardice.

media news

Editorial endorsements … do they matter?

One of the aspects of a presidential election that I do not miss is having to go through the editorial endorsement process for the candidates who are lined up in spots along a lengthy ballot.

I went through that process seemingly every year for nearly four decades. We’d do it every even-numbered year for legislative and congressional races. We would do the same thing every four years when the time arrived for us to decide on whom to endorse for president.

I worked for editors and publishers who would shy away from the word “endorse.” They preferred to call it a “recommendation.” Yeah, I get it. Newspapers hardly ever are able to swing the tide of an audience that has its mind made up. So, I guess we did only offer our “recommendation” for readers to consider.

But we would go through the motions of considering which of the candidates were the better choice.

The 1980 presidential election presented us at our newspaper in Oregon with a dilemma. My staff and I weren’t nuts about President Carter or former California Gov. Ronald Reagan. So, I drafted an editorial recommending independent candidate John Anderson, the congressman from Illinois. I presented it to the publisher who, without even blinking, handed it back to me and said, “We’re going to back Reagan.”

The rest is history.

Newspaper editorials no longer have the clout they once enjoyed. Readers depend on newspapers’ guidance less today than ever.  They rely on myriad sources.

Then again, did we really have the impact we sought? Ohhhh … probably not.

media news

Go for it, Lawrence O’Donnell

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Lawrence O’Donnell has earned a gold star, a blue ribbon and a hearty “you go, young man” from High Plains Blogger.

The MSNBC host of “The Last Word” decided Thursday night to devote the first half of his broadcast to take down all the news networks that were on hand to ostensibly “cover” a press conference called by Donald J. Trump.

According to O’Donnell, they did nothing of the sort. They allowed Trump to lie to the public without ever fact-checking the GOP presidential nominee on the lies that flew out of his overfed pie hole.

And, yes, he included his own network in the criticism.

I watched O’Donnell’s takedown likely with a stunned look on my puss. I should not have been surprised. In 2016, when Trump was campaigning for POTUS the first time, O’Donnell emerged as the first national news anchor to call Trump’s falsehoods what they were, and what they are today: They are lies told deliberately by a politician who feels somehow protected by the media he despises.

Imagine that for just a moment.

O’Donnell said it was difficult to find a single sentence that Trump uttered during his hour-long presser that didn’t contain a lie. And yet … the reporters gathered at Trump’s estate never saw fit to challenge a single lie.

The reporters’ negligence forced O’Donnell to slam his papers on his desk out of disgust. I must add that O’Donnell wore his anger openly.

“It is 2016 all over again,” O’Donnell kept repeating.

Let us hope that the 2024 election campaign produces a vastly different outcome than what we got eight long years ago.

media news

Media are supposed to be at odds with government

As followers of this blog know, I enjoyed a modestly successful career as a print journalist, which I pursued with great joy and dedication.

Never once during my nearly 37 years on the job did I ever consider myself anyone’s “enemy.” Certainly not the readers I served while working for newspapers in Oregon and Texas.

The climate today is vastly different than the one I entered in the 1970s. I came out of college intent on changing the world, a la journalists who had done their parts toward that end. I didn’t want to change it to fit my own description of what the world should resemble.

My intent was to report on issues I saw developing and seek remedies to bring changes to flaws I recognized and identified. I don’t believe that’s a nefarious motive.

I just watched a 90-minute documentary on Dan Rather, the former TV news anchor who, in his words, always sought the truth and tried to tell it the best he could. One of the principals quoted in the Netflix piece alluded to the natural tension between government and those who report on it via the media.

The tension was natural, and it was precisely as the nation’s founders intended. Media representatives are assigned the task of rooting out wrongdoing, of reporting on what government is doing well, of telling the human stories that affect every community … and of offering commentary that provides leadership and guidance to a community that seeks it.

I want to take a moment to express my pride in the craft I still pursue and of those who are pursuing full time to this very day. They are facing some ferocious headwinds from those who seek to run our government and therefore set policy on our behalf.

Those of us who know about those forces resisting our best efforts understand fully the need for journalists to keep moving forward. Are we perfect? Do we get it right every single time?

Hell no! We are human beings! We do, though, answer to what I believe is a high calling.