Tag Archives: the media

media news

Test of rehabilitated skill

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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

POTUS vs. media: It’s not warfare

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Biden has brought back what looks to me like the traditional give-and-take between the nation’s chief executive and the men and women who report on it all to the people of this country.

It’s a classic confrontation between the president and the media.

Why is this refreshing? Why even comment on it? Because for four years prior to Biden becoming president the nation witnessed what looked at times like a mortal struggle between the president and the organizations he routinely called “fake news.”

Donald Trump poisoned the traditional relationship, turning it into a ridiculous exhibition of presidential petulance. It fed into the anger that reporters had to have felt as they were berated and ridiculed by Trump, who lied to them, then denigrated them for revealing his lies.

Donald Trump infamously labeled the media the “enemy of the people.” They aren’t. The media comprise professionals who do their level best to report on the administration’s statements and actions.

Today, we witnessed a return to how it used to be and how it likely will remain for the foreseeable future.

The reporters gathered for President Biden’s first news conference as president did not ask softie questions. They pushed him on immigration policies, on the border crisis. They wanted to know how he intended to handle our ongoing military engagement in Afghanistan. They pressed Biden on the pandemic response.

During the Trump years, reporters would ask those kinds of questions and would get snarky responses questioning their integrity, their intelligence, their honesty or even the financial condition of their employer.

Joe Biden has felt the sting of intensely negative media  reporting. It occurred in 1988 when the media report to describe his own life story. It happened again when his second presidential campaign flamed out in 2008. Even in the early months of the 2020, the media reported that Biden was nothing more than political road kill after his dismal Democratic Party primary finishes in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada.

The media report on these matters. Joe Biden knows it. He gets it. He lives with it.

Now, as President Biden, he will continue to be examined critically by the media. As he demonstrated at his presser today, the president understands the traditional role the media play. It is an essential part of the greatness imbued in our democracy and our nation.

Uncategorized

Take a bow, media

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

The national media, which a prominent — and now thoroughly disgraced — U.S. politician once labeled “the enemy of the people,” have demonstrated time and time again their value to contemporary society.

How do I know that? Because the media have been reporting in agonizing — and, yes, uplifting — detail the experiences we have been enduring during the Deep Freeze of 2021.

It’s good to take a moment to ponder how the media have reported the good as well as the bad associated with the storm that paralyzed much of the nation, most notably the damage it did in Texas.

I also want to salute the subjects of many of the stories chronicled by the media, specifically the Good Samaritans who have answered the call to help their neighbors, family members and even total strangers who have suffered from power outages, burst household plumbing and the assorted miseries that accompany all of that.

They have raised money, transported food, delivered potable water, provided shelter or just offered a word of comfort and encouragement. I know that because the media have told their stories.

It’s been difficult at times to smile during this trying experience. Yet I have managed to shed a tear or two of joy at what I have been told is happening in Texas and across the land during this severe winter event.

Oh, and then there’s this: This tragedy struck many of us while the nation and the world battle the killer pandemic and that story, too, has produced more reason to smile. Yes, people are still getting sick and still are dying, but the vaccines have arrived and are getting injected into our bodies. The infection rate, at least for the time being, appears to be spiraling downward. 

The media are telling us that story as well.

media news

Media: an ‘enemy’ no longer

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

You no doubt have noticed what I have noticed.

It is that the media that cover the White House have developed an immediate and highly professional relationship with the folks who run the executive branch of our federal government.

We haven’t seen or heard shouting matches between reporters and White House press aides. Nor have we seen angry tweets from President Biden complaining about how the media are acting like “the enemy of the American people.” 

Have the media gone soft on the new president or on those who speak for him? No. They haven’t. Unless you consider the proper relationship between reporters and those who work for our government a symptom of softness.

I am acutely aware that the relationship between the media and the administration is still a work in progress. I don’t expect entirely smooth sailing with the Biden administration as it plows through the field of policy matters it must confront. There will be missteps, mistakes and perhaps even a misstatement or two along the way. The media will report on them all, just as they have done since the beginning of the republic.

The stark contrast will occur when the Biden administration responds to the critical reporting. Unlike what we saw during the Donald Trump administration, I do not expect to hear blanket allegations of “fake news” coming from administration officials in response to reporting.

There well could be testy exchanges between White House press aides and higher-level officials and the media. I do not expect to hear insults hurled at reporters from the press secretary or certainly from President Biden.

Joe Biden has danced around this media pea patch for nearly five decades as a U.S. senator, as vice president and as a three-time presidential candidate. Now he is the president of the United States and he understands in a way that Donald Trump never grasped that the media are there to do their job.

That job is to hold the government accountable for every decision it makes and every statement its officials utter in public.

That, I dare say, is one way you can define a nation’s greatness.

business news

Media trying to torpedo economy? Of course!

Donald Trump’s ridiculous thrashing and trashing of the media provides so much grist and so much fodder for comics.

Now comes this from the president: The media are trying to torpedo the economy because it is too strong, too vibrant and provides too much fuel to power the president’s re-election bid in 2020.

This man is out of his mind. He’s nuts. He went around the bend long ago, but still … his goofiness reveals a serious delusional tendency.

Trump wrote this on Twitter: “The Fake News Media is doing everything they can to crash the economy because they think that will be bad for me and my re-election. The problem is that the economy is way too strong and we will be winning big on Trade, and everyone knows that, including China!” 

The president should know better. But he doesn’t.

POTUS shifts blame

The economy is likely to suffer because of the tariffs he keeps imposing on U.S. importers who purchase goods from China. The tariffs create a de facto tax on those products, inflating their cost, making them less affordable to U.S. consumers.

What role do the media play? Oh, let’s see. They’re reporting on it. That is what the media do! They report on policies enacted by the government, be it from the president, or from Congress. The president is seeking to attach steep tariffs on China, ostensibly to publish that government for what Trump says it has done to steal U.S. intellectual property and other transgressions.

Except that China doesn’t suffer the burden on the tariffs. U.S. consumers take it in their, um, wherever.

So, with Trump seeking to shift blame to the media reveals yet again this man’s unwillingness to accept responsibility for anything.

He is projecting his own inadequacies on the media organizations that report on them.

national news

Russia, not the media, is the ‘enemy of people’

I already have stated my regret at dismissing Mitt Romney’s assertion in 2012 that Russia was this nation’s “No. 1 geopolitical foe.” He was right; those of us who criticized him were wrong.

Moreover, I also have stated — and restated countless times — my belief that Donald Trump should accept that reality and start treating the Russian government as the “enemy” it is.

I’m going to do so yet again. It likely won’t be the final time, either.

FBI Director Christopher Wray, in a talk before the Council on Foreign Relations this past week, said the Russians are working 24/7/365 at trying to undermine our electoral system. They did it in 2016, he said, and again in 2018. They are hard at work setting the table for what he called “the big show,” which would be the 2020 presidential election.

Where is the president on all of this? He’s nowhere, man.

Instead, he is attacking the media, Democrats, special counsel Robert Mueller, climate change advocates, abortion-rights activists. Political foes are fair game.

Russian President Vladimir Putin remains somehow protected from the same level of outrage that Trump levels at his domestic opponents. Why in the world is that the case?

Perhaps that is the question that the 2020 campaign will flesh out over time.

Trump stood before the media in Helsinki and trashed his intelligence and counterterrorism experts and accepted Putin’s denial that the Russians interfered in our election. He has continued to denigrate the intelligence community and continued to go soft on Putin, who — I hasten to add — is a former Soviet spy master.

Donald Trump is unloading his barrages on the wrong targets. The media aren’t the “enemy of the people.” Nor are Democrats. The FBI comprises professional law enforcement and legal professionals dedicated to protecting this nation from its enemies.

One of those enemies happens to function inside the Kremlin. That enemy is seeking to continue the work it started upon the 2016 Republican presidential candidate’s invitation to look for Hillary Clinton’s “missing e-mails.” That candidate, of course, was Donald John Trump.

The candidate-turned-president must cease his attacks on the media and focus them instead on the real No. 1 enemy of this nation and its citizens.

national news, political news

Is POTUS launching a re-election effort based on revenge?

Is Donald J. Trump crafting a re-election strategy based on exacting revenge against those who insisted that he colluded with Russians or that he obstructed justice?

What are we to discern from the president’s response to special counsel Robert Mueller’s findings that (a) the president didn’t collude with Russians and (b) the obstruction of justice allegation remains an open question?

Trump has won a significant victory with Mueller’s conclusion that his campaign team did not conspire to collude with Russians who had invaded our electoral system in 2016. He should be grateful for Mueller’s service, dust himself off and get back to governing . . . isn’t that right?

I guess not! He is enraged at his foes. Of course he includes the media among those he intends to inflict retribution.

The media reported the special counsel’s arduous trek through the morass that lay before him. The media did their job. The so-called “fake news” constituted all the information that Trump and his team saw as negative. So . . . fu***** what? That goes with the territory. It goes with the job of becoming leader of the world’s most powerful and influential nation.

So now the president, who should be crafting a message of what he intends to do in a second term as president, appears to be spending an inordinate amount of effort looking for ways to stick it to his foes.

He’s already in full re-election campaign mode. That’s been obvious for some time. Yes, he deserves to have his message heard. I just am becoming more baffled by what the message is going to tell us.

In the immediate aftermath of the special counsel concluding his investigation into The Russia Thing, I am believing the president is much more intent on revenge than on governance.

Donald Trump, media news

Pain in the ass? Yes! Proudly!

U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham has delivered a stunning rebuke to Donald Trump’s bogus and idiotic assertion that the media are “the enemy of the people.” Thus, I hereby nominate the South Carolina Republican’s retort as “Quote of the Year.”

Graham was talking to reporters today in South Carolina when he said the following, according to The Hill:

“I think the press in America is a check and balance on power,” Graham said Monday afternoon in South Carolina. “I think sometimes you get tribal like the rest of the country. Sometimes you can be a pain in the ass, but you’re not the enemy of the people. As a matter of fact, without a free press, I wouldn’t want to live in that country.”

“But you can be a pain in the ass,” he reiterated while laughing. “But you’re supposed to be.”

The president repeated his view of the press on Sunday morning, tweeting to his 53.5 million followers that he is “providing a great service” by explaining to Americans that the “fake news” media is the enemy of the people, adding that the Fourth Estate “can cause war” without specifying what he meant.

There you have it: “Sometimes you can be a pain in the ass.”

That’s the media’s role. To put it another way, as many in the media say about the mission of their craft: Their role is to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”

Presidents and other politicians of both political parties have known all along that the media’s role isn’t to glorify politicians. It is to hold them accountable on behalf of the public they take an oath to serve.

The most notable exception, of course, happens to be the current president of the United States.

Frightening.

International news, national news

Trump keeps firing at the wrong targets

Donald Trump launched yet another Twitter tirade this weekend.

He went after Democrats, the media (including CNN in particular), President Obama and — this is extraordinary — his national security adviser and the FBI. The reason for the tirade? Russian meddling in our most recent presidential election.

Who did the president leave out of his barrage of criticism? Let me think. Oh, yes! The Russians!

Trump didn’t tweet a single word about the Russian meddling. He didn’t convey a single tiny bit of anger — let alone profound outrage — that the Russians launched an attack on our electoral system. He didn’t say anything about whether he would take measures to punish the Russians for their meddling and their attempt to sway the results in his favor.

The tweet storm came in the wake of special counsel Robert Mueller’s indictments of 13 Russians for their role in the meddling. National security adviser H.R. McMaster said the indictments provide “incontrovertible proof” that the Russians did what the intelligence experts say they did. The FBI got pounded because it is spending “too much time” on Russia and too little time following up leads such as those it got about the Parkland, Fla., shooter. CNN got trashed because it reported on the indictments. Barack Obama got pounded because the meddling occurred while he was president. Democrats in general were pounded because, as Trump has asserted, they have cooked up this “Russia thing” because they lost a presidential election they were supposed to win.

The president of the United States once again has demonstrated that he doesn’t understand his fundamental duty, which is to protect our nation against our adversaries.

What is up with this man? I’m beginning to believe he has a serious man-crush on Vladimir Putin, the Russian president/strongman/former KGB boss.

That man-crush is allowing Putin to laugh out loud inside the Kremlin walls at the president of the United States, who promised to “make America great again.” He has succeeded in making America an international punch line.

media news, national news

Free press: enemy of dictators, not the ‘people’

John McCain speaks with authority when he discusses freedom, the media, authoritarian regimes and liberty.

He lost more than five years of freedom at the hands of captors who held him in bondage during the Vietnam War.

He came home and stayed in service to his country, entering politics. He now serves in the U.S. Senate; he ran twice unsuccessfully for president of the United States. He now is held in high regard for his wartime heroism, his principled public service and his brave battle against cancer.

Comments he made earlier this year were rebroadcast today. He told “Meet the Press” moderator Chuck Todd that Donald Trump’s assaults on the media are destructive to our democratic system and they undermine one of the principles on which this country was founded.

Sen. McCain noted that the president’s bullying of the media and his habit of calling out individual journalists is counterproductive in the extreme.

He joked with Todd that he might “hate you,” but the country needs the media to be free of intimidation and it must be allowed to do its job without the kind of bullying that’s coming repeatedly from the president and his White House team.

Yet, the president insists on attacking the media. He continues to curry favor with the Fox News Channel while condemning the work being done by other media. Why? It’s obvious that Fox tilts toward the president and declines to ascribe much critical analysis of his policies. The network appears to many eyes — mine included — to be fulfilling Trump’s insatiable desire to be complimented, to be admired.

That’s not the role the media are supposed to play. The nation’s founders said a “free press” must not be controlled by the government in any fashion. They wrote it down, codifying it in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

This independence enables the media to do their job. It allows them to hold public officials at all levels accountable. If they speak untruths, the media are compelled to call them on it.

Finally, they cannot be coerced into shying away from their responsibility because politicians — even the president — like to label them as “fake news.”

John McCain is far from the only contemporary politician who understands this tenet. The problem is that the country’s most powerful politician — the president — is poisoning the political process by trying to intimidate the media, which must remain free of such pressure.

As Sen. McCain told Todd: Trump’s bullying of the media is the conduct of a dictator.