Post Election Journalism

 On Tuesday (11/8/16) we elected a new President.  It was a rough and, at times,  a very crude process.  That process produced a major and unintended consequence.   Specifically, the deteriorating state of journalism was brought out of the shadows and secrecy for all to see.

Journalism now has, at best, a thin pretense of fairness, let alone objectivity.  Journalists at all news organizations should take this time of change to review the current state of the profession and make necessary changes.

At one time journalists strived for objectivity.  Then sometime in the early 80's that standard started eroding.  As a substitute, new journalists were instructed to strive for fairness.  Now objectivity is an absolute impossible to attain but an absolute worth striving for.  Fairness, while admirable,  allows for wiggle room.  As that "wiggle" expanded it became easier to cut corners.  Then with the expansion of local and cable news outlets which was accomplished without sufficient expansion of staff, standards for quality journalism were re-defined, and not in a good way.

Attention to detail was diverted from content to cosmetics.  We are now concerned more about how Megyn Kelly looks on camera than how substantive her interviews are.  Rather than taking time to train more journalists, we hire "experts" from fields we should be covering.  This is especially true for politics.  The main problem is that these experts are not encumbered by the ethics of journalism, Donna Brazile, anyone?

Change for the better will come only when staffs are increased, salaries are increased and standards are raised and maintained.  But having said all that what ultimately has to change is education, especially in elementary school.  When would be employees graduate from high school insufficently educated in history, geography, grammar, writing, and mathematics, it's not reasonable to expect these shortcomings to be fixed in college.

Observations #2

Thoughts on the KC ROYALS:

Glad they made it to the playoffs.  Hope to get to at least one game.  If you go take money.  We went to a late September game...bought two hot dogs and a beer....tab came to $26.00.  Granted the dogs were foot longs and were barely warm.  All for $26.00.  And beer from the beer man?  Takes most of a 10 spot as the beer is $9.75.  For those of us who are mathematically challenged that would figure out to $234.00 for a case of 24 beers.

Test

Test

New Parts

Should bean interesting week.  Getting a new right knee on Wednesday morning.

WHCD

"WHCD" stands for White House Correspondents Dinner.  This is an annual event which allows members of the Washington Press Corps who cover the White House to dress up like Hollywood moguls and starlets and invite irrelevant people like Lindsay Lohan, George Clooney, and Donald Trump to a banquet and supposed comedy show.

The 2012 dinner was held this past Saturday night at the Washington Hilton.  CBS White House Correspondent Nora O'Donnell chose this gown for the event.





















Her White House reports should display such clarity.

At any rate this year's entertainment kicked off with President Obama's attempt at stand up comedy.  It was less comedy and more insulting your opponents and perceived enemies in a venue which supposedly allows the suspension of proper social behavior and commentary.

Jimmy Kimmel's comic comments, for the most part, fell flat and the audience several times indicated Kimmel's comments hit below the belt.  It's one thing to use human foibles for the purpose of adjusting personal behavior or philosophy.  It's a different approach to purposely hurt the feelings and belittle others in an attempt to make yourself  important.  Mark Twain and Will Rogers knew the right way  to use humorous commentary or satire  in the political realm.  Don Rickels could do it show business circles.  But Messrs. Obama and Kimmel come off as celebrities using  personal insults to settle differences.  Somehow the whole event was insulting to the country and diminished the Office of the President at the same time.

Continued Decline of TV Journalism

Recently, in the Wall Street Journal,  Peter Funt wrote about the lost art of the live interview.  Live interviews are handy time consumers especially for the 24 hour cable news channels.  Funt maintains the content of those interviews "is remarkably weak, due primarily to the personal agendas and sloppy efforts of the interviewers".  Funt also chastises interviewers for talking as much as the newsmaker being interviewed.  He points out two recent examples.  In the first, Lawrence O'Donnell of  MSNBC  was interviewing filmmaker Michael Moore.
Moore spoke 1,034 words while O'Donnell spoke 900, according to Funt.  In the second case Funt points to a Sean Hannity interview of Mitt Romney on FOX News.  According to Funt, Hannity asked ten questions, one of which was 172 words long and lasted 51 seconds.

In another opinion piece in the WSJ,  L. Gordon Crovitz recounts the results of a journalism class assignment at Yale University.  The students were asked to theorize how the Watergate scandal would be covered in this digital age.  The Yale professor who makes the assignment each year, Steven Brill, says "almost every student in the course writes that Watergate could now be reported without actual reporting", i.e. no talking to real live human sources.  Sources who are going to tell a reporter factual information in a confidential manner.  The students all think everything a source would tell a reporter can now be found out by a simple Google search.  Talk about your slippery slopes.

And then there's the problem of sloppy stupid writing.  One Kansas City TV station reported yesterday that a school bus disturbance was caused by one of the student's "female parent".  Now I submit a simple "mother" would have sufficed.


This morning another station's reporter told us that the witness who had just shown up told police the woman who lives in the house under investigation is her "female cousin".  I ask, could it be otherwise?

Spring

Spring starts today.  But as the Princeton English professor and American diplomat, Henry Van Dyke, said: "The first day of spring is one thing, and the first spring day is another. The difference between them is sometimes as great as a month."

That definitely is the case today as we have very cool temperatures and a steady rain.  The rain is causing the lawns to green up almost before your eyes.  So it is the first day of spring but we must wait for the first spring day.  Although, the last few days of winter around here were definitely spring like.

We humans should grasp the spirit of spring that renews nature and ask that spirit to renew our individual essence.  Spring is a beneficial season for all the plants and tree as well as the human soul.