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My Fair Lady #2

January 12, 2022 By

Last week I wrote about a new ending of the musical “My Fair Lady” in which Liza Dolittle does not stay with Henry Higgins, but demonstrates her independence and leaves to go out in the world on her own.

I ended the blog post by writing:

“It’s clear times have changed since Shaw wrote “Pygmalion” in 1913 when women’s life options were severely limited and controlled by a patriarchal society and in 1956 and 1964 when the play and movie “My Fair Lady” were produced. Liza had few choices.

Today, Liza could be, probably should be, president…of news, of sales, of America.”

As of Wednesday, January 12, add a men’s professional baseball manager to the list of jobs that Liza could have. The NY Times reported:

Rachel Balkovec, a groundbreaking baseball coach, will become the manager of a team in the Yankees’ minor league system, making her the first woman to lead an affiliated professional baseball squad.

Balkovec, 34, will manage the Tampa Tarpons, the low Class A affiliate of the Yankees, for the 2022 season, which begins in April. The Yankees hired her in November 2019 as a hitting coach in their minor leagues. She was believed to be the first woman hired as a full-time hitting instructor by a big-league team.

One thing that Rachel has in common with Liza is that both wanted to improve their language skills. Liza wanted to learn to speak proper upper-class English so she could open up a flower shop, and Rachel learned Spanish so she could communicate more effectively with Spanish-speaking players.

In a January 12, Yankee press conference Balkovec brilliantly answered questions from reporters. One question was about her learning Spanish. She said that she grew up in Nebraska and hadn’t learned Spanish as a child, but that as a hitting coach, she felt she needed to communicate better with some of the players.

Rachel said that it had been great for building relationships because the Spanish-speaking players kidded her about her Spanish and then taught her how to speak better Spanish, while she was able to teach them how to hit better.

She also said that being unable to find a full-time coaching job because she was a woman was a blessing, was good for her because it made her have to be better, more knowledgeable than men and, especially, more determined to succeed. She displayed the meaning of true grit. Angela Duckworth (Grit: The Power and Passion of Perseverance) and Mattie Ross (“True Grit”) would be proud.

All of the reporters who asked questions in the press conference congratulated Balkovec on being named manager of the Tarpons, and several said it was good for baseball and that it was about time.

And it is about time for baseball and for America that we have a woman leader. One reason is because, hopefully, like Rachel Balkovec, the woman who eventually leads America will have to be smarter, better prepared, more persistent, and a better communicator than the men who preceded her.

Filed Under: Yankees Tagged With: , ,

“My Fair Lady”

December 27, 2021 By

On Christmas Eve, my wife, Julia, and I watched “My Fair Lady” with Rex Harrison and Audrey Hepburn.  What a great musical.  

In 2018 Julia and I saw Lincoln Center’s revival of “My Fair Lady” and loved it, too. One reason I enjoyed it was because the revival changed the ending of the play and the movie.  In the original 1956 stage version of “My Fair Lady” and in the 1964 Hepburn movie, the ending was the same as the one in the 1938 Hollywood film of “Pygmalion”—a happy ending with Liza Dolittle intending to stay with Henry Higgins.


In the original George Bernard Shaw play, Liza does not stay with the insensitive Higgins, but returns to the feckless Freddie Eynsford-Hill.  In the 2018 Lincoln Center revival, in a #MeToo era, Liza leaves Higgins, and the implication is that she doesn’t return to Freddie, but goes off independently on her own—an ending I liked.

In the Axios newsletter today, story #5 reports on Brian Stelter’s CNN program,“Reliable Sources,” on which Stelter recognizes the historic field of women named to lead huge news organizations this year. Here is CNN’s Stelter’s list of Editor-In-Chiefs:

  • Danelle Belton at HuffPost
  • Sally Busbee at the Washington Post
  • Julia Chan at The 19th
  • Tracy Connor at the Daily Beast
  • Allesandra Galloni at Reuters
  • Sarah Kehaulani at Axios
  • Mary Margaret at Entertainment Weekly
  • Julie Pace at the Associated Press
  • Swati Sharma at Vox
  • Alyson Shontell at Fortune

Stelter did not include two other women named to important Editor-In-Chief positions in major news organizations this past year:

  • Maria Douglas Reeve at the Houston Chronicle
  • Katrina Handy at the Dallas Morning News

Plus, these are the women who run television news:

  • Suzanne Scott, CEO of Fox News
  • Kimberly Godwin, President of ABC News
  • Rashida Jones, President of MSNBC
  • Wendy McMahon, Co-President, CBS News

Not only are the majority of broadcast and cable television news organizations run by women but also the heads of sales of many major media companies are headed by women:

  • Jo Ann Ross, head of sales at CBS
  • Linda Yaccarino, head of sales at NBC
  • Rita Ferro, head of sales at Disney (ABC, ESPN)
  • Marianne Gambelli, head of sales at Fox
  • Marne Levine, head of sales at Facebook.

In my opinion, it’s about time the news content and monetizing the content of major news and media organizations are overseen by women. I believe it’s also about time that we had a female president. Men have screwed up politics and government so much for so long, we need a change.

It’s clear times have changed since Shaw wrote “Pygmalion” in 1913 when women’s life options were severely limited and controlled by a patriarchal society and in 1956 and 1964 when the play and movie “My Fair Lady” were produced. Liza had few choices.

Today, Liza could be, probably should be, president…of news, of sales, of America.

Filed Under: My Fairv Lady Tagged With: , , , ,

Do You Believe In Magic

November 2, 2021 By

When I read Ryan Burge’s opinion piece in the Sunday, October 31, NY Times titled “Why ‘Evangelical’ Is Becoming Another Word for ‘Republican,’” a refrain from the 1965 Lovin’ Spoonful hit, “Do You Believe in Magic” echoed over and over in my head.

Burge wrote:

…a recent report from the Pew Research Center came as a huge surprise. Its most shocking revelation was that, between 2016 and 2020, there was no significant decline in the share of white Americans who identify as evangelical Christians. Instead, the report found the opposite: During Donald Trump’s presidency, the number of white Americans who started identifying as evangelical actually grew.

Conservative Christians celebrated the news. For years, stories have appeared in media outlets about how many of the more theologically moderate denominations like Episcopalians and the United Church of Christ have suffered staggering losses in membership. The fact that denominations that allowed women pastors were declining while evangelical churches that took more conservative positions on views of gender and sexuality were holding their own was evidence for evangelicals that conservative religion has staying power. Because these moderate traditions were so much like the culture around them, the story went, it was easy for their members to fall away from church attendance. Evangelicals prided themselves on their distinctiveness from mainstream society, which insulated them from forces like secularization.

And,

What is drawing more people to embrace the evangelical label on surveys is more likely that evangelicalism has been bound to the Republican Party. Instead of theological affinity for Jesus Christ, millions of Americans are being drawn to the evangelical label because of its association with the G.O.P.

This is happening in two different ways. The first is that many Americans who have begun to embrace the evangelical identity are people who hardly ever attend religious services. For instance, in 2008, just 16 percent of all self-identified evangelicals reported their church attendance as never or seldom. But in 2020, that number jumped to 27 percent. In 2008, about a third of evangelicals who never attended church said they were politically conservative. By 2019, that had risen to about 50 percent.

In the past Evangelicals have tended to take the stories in the Bible as stated fact, for example, that God made world in six days. In other words, they believe in magic.

Republicans tend to believe Trump’s lies that when Biden won the 2020 election, it was stolen. In other words, they believe in magic. It’s no wonder that Evangelical has become synonymous with Republican. They both believe in magic.

They believed Trump when he said that only he could fix what was wrong with America. He didn’t fix anything, but, in fact, made us much worse off with his ridiculous, stupid response to the COVID-19 pandemic. He said the pandemic would just go away — like magic.

When we see a great magician, such as David Copperfied, we expect to be fooled, we are delighted to see an amazing trick such as sawing Jennifer Lopez into six separate sections or making the Statue of Liberty disappear and wonder “how did he do that?” We know it wasn’t magic, that Jennifer Lopez is not in six pieces and that the Statue of Liberty is still there, but we are amazed at Copperfield’s brilliant ingenuity. He doesn’t even call himself a magician; he calls himself an illusionist. Even Copperfield doesn’t believe in magic. He knows his tricks are illusions.

But Republicans and Evangelists, out of desperation, believe in magic. That someone, maybe Harry Potter, will wave a wand and bring back their white supremacy, will bring back their slaves and will reincarnate Ronald Regan to be president again. They don’t believe in science, evolution, equality or reality — too painful.

Filed Under: Magic, Uncategorized Tagged With: , ,

Ganging Up On Facebook

October 26, 2021 By

The news media are ganging up on Facebook. Why?

There are two underlying reasons: (1) Because they now can, based on AI and database management software and cooperative news consortiums that can take advantage of this software to analyze millions of emails and documents. (2) Because Zuckerberg is on the autism spectrum and has no concept of empathy.

Several years ago news organizations around the world created the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) to investigate a global tax avoidance scheme based on 11.5 million leaked documents (2.6 terabytes of data). A single news organization such as The New York Times or the Wall Street Journal would probably take at least a year to analyze this much data, even with sophisticated software. However, a global network of 280 journalists in over 100 media organizations spanning more than 100 countries, including the United States, Australia, France, Spain, Hungary, Serbia, Belgium, and Ireland was able to scope out the leaked data and publish investigative articles that were labeled the Panama Papers.

The Panama Papers, when they were published in 2016 by such newspapers in the U.S. as the Washington Post, not only created a sensation but also resulted in the prosecution of Jan Marsalek, who is still a person of interest to a number of European governments due to his revealed links with Russian intelligence and international financial fraudsters David and Josh Baazov. Also, Iceland’s Prime Minister resigned as a result of revelations about offshore accounts detailed in The Panama Papers.

This October the ICIJ struck again with the Pandora Papers. A leak of 11.9 million documents to the ICIJ exposed the secret offshore accounts of 35 world leaders, including current and former presidents, prime ministers, and heads of state as well as more than 100 billionaires, celebrities, and business leaders.

Also, this October, Frances Haugen, a former Facebook product manager who shared company documents, led a meticulous media rollout of Facebook internal emails that demonstrated that Facebook executives and, of course, Mark Zuckerberg, knew that their products (Facebook and Instagram) were toxic and harming people worldwide. Led by the Wall Street Journal in a series of articles titled The Facebook Files, Haugen’s whistleblowing certified what we knew all along — that Facebook is dishonest, hypocritical, dangerous, and, most of all, greedy.

Why, many people might ask, does Mark Zuckerberg, who is worth $116.2 billion dollars, put revenue growth above the well-being of Facebook’s over 3 billion users? Isn’t he rich enough?

He doesn’t seem to think so. He’s on the autism spectrum (what until the DSM Fifth Edition was published in 2013 was known as Asperger’s syndrome) and has no sense of empathy. He can’t read emotions in others or empathize with them.

One of the symptoms of those on the high-functioning autism spectrum is that they often have impaired social skills. They are sometimes unable to form friendships, especially with their peers, and may find it difficult to act in a socially appropriate manner. Many instead befriend animals, and they find it especially challenging to have conversations with people they don’t know (i.e. U.S. Senators).

In a recent Sway podcast titled “Is Mark Zuckerberg a Man Without Principles?”, host Kara Swisher interviewed her long-time mentor, Walt Mossberg, the former technology columnist for the Wall Street Journal. In the podcast Swisher asked Mossberg about Zuckerberg and Facebook:

“I think the company is fundamentally unethical.” And, drawing on his experience covering controversial leaders, including Steve Jobs and Bill Gates (as he calls them, “the old guard”), Mossberg says the Facebook C.E.O. is still an aberration: “In my encounters with Mark Zuckerberg, I’ve never been able to discover any principles.”

Mossberg talks about several interesting encounters with both Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. He indicates that even though he had disagreements with both entrepreneurs as they tried to get favorable coverage in his influential column on technology and that even though they were highly competitive, they both had a conscience, both had principles — a red line that they wouldn’t cross.

Mossberg says that he thinks of the Big Five tech companies( Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Facebook), that Facebook is the most poorly managed. He tells a story about when Zuckerberg visited him in his Washington, DC office. Walt says he talked to Zuckerberg about privacy, but that it was like “ships passing in the night.” Mossberg kept talking about privacy and Zuckerberg had no idea what he was talking about.

Zuckerberg, as Facebook’s CEO and majority shareholder of FB’s voting stock, has complete control of the company, its policies, and its practices. Therefore, if he doesn’t want to change, if he wants the company to continue to be unprincipled and greedy, nothing can stop him short of massive government regulation, which is probably coming in some form or another.

However, what can be done until the government acts? Public opinion. Public opinion and approbation can damage the company’s reputation enough to, perhaps, get Zuckerberg’s attention, especially if FB’s stock continues its decline.

So, yes, the news media is ganging up on Facebook, and good for them. Keep it up.

Filed Under: Facebook, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , ,

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

October 13, 2021 By

This past week we’ve seen the good, the bad and the ugly in the media.

The Good

Tom Jones, Senior Editor of The Poynter Report, writes:

Malika Andrews, host of ESPN’s new NBA show “NBA Today,” is wasting little time exerting her voice to weigh on controversial basketball topics. Hosting the “NBA Countdown” pregame show before a preseason game this week, Andrews had a strong take about Brooklyn Nets star Kyrie Irving, who has not gotten the COVID-19 vaccine.

Andrews said some players are saying it’s an “individual choice,” but Andrews continued by saying, “I understand in some ways taking that approach or maybe that’s just what you say facing forward, but that is the antithesis of what a pandemic is. You do not have the privilege of just looking at yourself. You have to look at the people next to you because that’s how we got to this being the most deadly pandemic that has killed over 700,000 people in the United States. That’s not all on Kyrie, but it’s on all of us to do our small part and his small part is in that locker room.”

That’s good stuff from Andrews: smart, to the point and passionate. ESPN is going to be happy with its decision to give Andrews an increased role in its NBA coverage.

Malika Andrews is the first Black female to host “The NBA Countdown,” so good for ESPN for continuing to increase diversity and good for Andrews for intelligently calling out the selfish Kyrie Irving.

The Bad

This past week was the 25th Anniversary of Fox News. Washington Post columnist Max Boot wrote on October 12:

Last week, Fox “News” Channel celebrated 25 years since its launch. More than 700,000 victims of covid-19 were not available for comment.

Oh, I’m not suggesting that Fox is responsible for all, or even most, of the covid deaths. That would be the kind of cheap shot you would expect to be aimed at the “libs” by the “fair and balanced” network. What I am suggesting, however, is that the covid death toll is higher than it would have been if Fox did not exist.

This is, after all, the most watched basic cable network in America. In September, it averaged 2.49 million viewers a night in prime time, and its impact is magnified by social media (such as Facebook), where its clips often go viral. What Fox says matters. So what has Fox been saying about the worst pandemic in a century?

From the start, Fox hosts dismissed “coronavirus hysteria,” compared the pandemic to the seasonal flu, and opposed lockdowns and social distancing. “I’m not afraid of the coronavirus, and no one else should be that afraid either,” Jesse Watters said on March 3, 2020. On March 9, Sean Hannity said: “This scaring the living hell out of people — and I see it, again, as like, ‘Oh, let’s bludgeon Trump with this new hoax.’” On April 8, Tucker Carlson announced that the “short-term crisis . . . may have passed,” and “it hasn’t been the disaster that we feared.”

Fox News prime-time hosts continue their murderous hypocrisy by lying to their viewers about the effectiveness of vaccination while getting vaccinated themselves and complying with the Fox stringent vaccination policy. Carlson, Hannity and Ingraham should watch Malika Andrews on ESPN.

The Ugly

John Gruden. Gruden “stepped aside” as coach of the NFL Las Vegas Raiders, according to the Washigton Post “amid a burgeoning controversy over racist, homophobic and misogynistic language that he used in emails over a span of approximately seven years before he agreed to return to the NFL in 2018 as the Raiders’ coach.”

The NY Times reported:

Gruden’s departure came after a New York Times report that N.F.L. officials, as part of a separate workplace misconduct investigation that did not directly involve him, found that Gruden had casually and frequently unleashed misogynistic and homophobic language over several years to denigrate people around the game and to mock some of the league’s momentous changes.

He denounced the emergence of women as referees, the drafting of a gay player and the tolerance of players protesting during the playing of the national anthem, according to emails reviewed by The Times.

Tom Jones of The Poynter Report wrote:

During the “Sunday Night Football” telecast on NBC, analyst Tony Dungy said, “What Jon Gruden did in that (racist) email — definitely insensitive, definitely inappropriate, definitely immature — I thought he attacked the character of a man. But he apologized for it. He said it wasn’t racially motivated. I have to believe him. I think this was an incident that was 10 years ago. He apologized. I think we need to accept that apology and move on.”

Interestingly, Gruden replaced Dungy as head coach of the Tampa Bay Bucs in 2002 and immediately won a Super Bowl. After additional emails came to light on Monday in the Times story, many who had accepted Gruden’s initial apology, such as Dungy, were widely criticized. That led Dungy to use his Twitter feed to clarify his comments on “Sunday Night Football.”

Dungy tweeted, “On @SNFonNBC I commented on an email sent by Jon Gruden. I did not defend it. I said ‘inappropriate, immature, attack on a man’s character. Wrong!’ I did not attribute it all to racism and said given a single incident 10 yrs ago we should accept his apology and move on.”

Dungy continued, “Now more emails have come. More inappropriate, immature, wrongful attacks on the character of people from all walks of life. I don’t defend those either and given the apparent pattern of behavior the Raiders did the appropriate thing in terminating Jon Gruden.”

Dungy then concluded with, “That being said, if Jon Gruden shows TRUE remorse — and more importantly changes his mindset and actions — I would forgive him. As Christians that’s what the Bible commands us to do because that’s what God does for us. I know that’s not popular but it’s biblical.”

Dungy then posted a quote (Matthew 6:14-16) from the Bible: “If you forgive those who sin against you, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins.”

Many of Dungy’s Twitter followers responded to Dungy’s tweets, and Dungy engaged with several to share his beliefs.

Meanwhile, Sports Illustrated’s Jimmy Traina — who covers sports media and hosts a sports media podcast — wrote, “It does seem like Tony’s standard M.O. for any and all controversies is ‘let’s forgive.’ Well, that’s a cop-out. You can forgive, but you can also call for consequences. Every incident should be judged on its own. Sometimes a person deserves a slap on the wrist. Sometimes they deserve 24 hours of getting crap on social media. Sometimes they deserve to be fired. The blanket take on every single issue can’t be, ‘Let’s forgive and move on.’ Tony Dungy should do better and so should NBC’s studio show.”

Not surprisingly, the usual conservative middle-aged white guys — radio host Clay Travis, podcaster Matt Walsh, Donald Trump Jr., radio host Jesse Kelly and Newsmax’s Greg Kelly — took to Twitter to complain about a fellow white guy losing his job for saying a bunch of awful stuff that can’t possibly be excused or defended. Kelly called it “cancel culture (expletive)” and said Gruden was “totally screwed over,” while the others used the tired whataboutism arguments. It was all about what you would expect.

I think you can forgive someone as a person, as an individual, but not as someone who has authority over, influence over or leads others. The job of an NFL coach is not only to create offensive and defensive strategies but also to create a culture, communicate team values and motivate coaches and players, over half of whom are Black.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

How To Solve the Facebook Problem

October 7, 2021 By

There seem to be more solutions to the Facebook Problem than Facebook has problems. I posted a simplistic solution last week, which was for everyone over 40 to cancel their Facebook and Instagram accounts. Silly and impractical.

Many columnists, such as media critic Margaret Sullivan of the Washington Post, want the government to take action. Sullivan, in an October 6, column titled “Facebook is harming our society. Here’s how to reign it in,” writes:

A problem that threatens the underpinnings of our civil society calls for a radical solution: A new federal agency focused on the digital economy.

The idea comes from none other than a former Federal Communications Commission chairman, Tom Wheeler, who maintains that neither his agency nor the Federal Trade Commission are nimble or tech-savvy enough to protect consumers in this volatile and evolving industry.

“You need an agency that doesn’t say ‘here are the rigid rules,’ when the rules become obsolete almost immediately,” Wheeler, who headed the FCC from 2013 to 2017, told me Monday.

Too much of the digital world operates according to Mark Zuckerberg’s famous motto: “Move fast and break things.” That’s a perfect expression of what Wheeler called “consequence-free behavior.”

I am uncomfortable with a government solution because, even though I am generally in favor of government regulation to reign in greedy business behavior, regulating Facebook means, essentially, defining free speech, which I worry about the government doing.

Kara Swisher of the NY Times in her October 5, column titled “Brazen Is the Order of the Day at Facebook” interviewed Alex Stamos, the director of the Stanford Internet Observatory and a former head of security at Facebook. Stamos had the following solution:

I think Zuckerberg is going to need to step down as C.E.O. if these problems are going to be solved. Having a company led by the founder has a lot of benefits, but one of the big problems is that it makes it close to impossible to significantly change the corporate culture. It’s not just Zuckerberg; the top ranks of Facebook are full of people who have been there for a dozen years. They were part of making key decisions and supporting key cultural touchstones that might have been appropriate when Facebook was a scrappy upstart but that must be abandoned as a global juggernaut. It is really hard for individuals to recognize when it is time to change their minds, and I think it would be better if the people setting the goals for the company were changed for this new era of the company, starting with Zuckerberg.

I like this solution. Facebook’s Board of Directors could fire Zuckerberg and Sandberg. There are nine members of the board:

  1. Zuckerberg
  2. Sandberg
  3. Peggy Alford – Formerly Pay Pal
  4. Marc Andreesen – Co-founder Netscape, investor
  5. Andrew Houston – CEO Dropbox
  6. Nany Killefer – Formerly McKinsey
  7. Robert Kimmitt – Lawyer
  8. Peter Theil – Formerly Pay Pal, FB investor
  9. Tracey Travis – Formerly CFO Estee Lauder

I don’t know the Facebook bylaws, but if a majority of the board can fire the CEO and COO, they should do so.

By the Board of Directors taking action to solve the problem, it would be a situation of a business policing itself and, thus, avoiding government regulation.

I’m also in favor of peaceful protests. I’d love to see a protest crowd appear outside Facebook’s headquarters with signs saying FIRE ZUCKERBERG AND SANDBERG. Such a protest might not have an immediate effect, but it might get the board thinking in the right direction.

Filed Under: Facebook Tagged With: , ,

The Facebook Problem

September 22, 2021 By

In media news, there has been a lot of discussion about the Wall Street Journal’s series of articles about Facebook’s duplicity, titled “The Facebook Files.” The in-depth series is worth a read because the normally business-friendly WSJ exposes Facebook’s dishonesty, harmfulness to society and greed.

The WSJ is doing what good journalism is supposed to do — hold the powerful accountable. The WSJ pointed out the problem, but what is the solution?

In a September 9, Media Curmudgeon post titled “The New New Journalism,” I wrote about solutions journalism as advocated and taught by the Solutions Journalism Network. Solutions journalism takes a positive approach and produces news articles that show how institutions and communities have solved problems. Good idea.

But what do you do about the Facebook problem? It’s a unique problem because Facebook is so huge (3 billion active users worldwide), so profitable (2020 revenue = $70.697 billion, income = $29, 146 billion), has so many businesses worldwide that depend on it (10 million advertisers) and has so many stockholders (over 80% of Facebook’s shares are owned by mutual funds, many of them various government retirement funds).

One solution, as advocated by Shira Ovide, a NY Times technology columnist, in her September 21, column titled “Shrink Facebook To Save the World” is for Facebook to get out of some countries:

But maybe we should all ask ourselves radical questions about the horrors of Facebook: Is a better Facebook a realistic option, or is the solution a smaller Facebook? And what if no one can or should operate a hugely influential, lightning-fast communication mechanism for billions of people in nearly every country?

There’s a deep irony in my suggestion that a less-global Facebook might be better. The power of people to use the network to express themselves, collaborate and challenge authority is more profound in places where institutions are weak or corrupt and where citizens haven’t had a voice. It’s also in those places where Facebook has done the most harm, and where the company and the world have paid the least attention.

And who is going to force Facebook, a private company, to downsize in Myanmar, or the Philippines or anywhere else? The U.S. government via regulations? The government sued Facebook in June, and a judge threw out the FTC and 48 state attorneys generals’ case saying that the FTC hadn’t proved any anti-trust violations.

Some critics of Facebook have suggested that government make Facebook a utility, a common carrier, and thus, completely regulated by the government, like AT&T was until 1984 when a government anti-trust case broke AT&T up into the seven baby bells.

So what good did that do? In 1984 no one, especially the government, could have predicted Steve Jobs inventing the iPhone and, therefore, AT&T is back bigger than ever, although not dominant.

During WW II when Britain was being bombed unmercifully by the Nazis, out of necessity the government nationalized the hospitals, and they are sill owned by the government today and are an integral part of the national health care system.

But imagine the outcry if the U.S. government nationalized Facebook. Socialism! It would be a political disaster, not to mention an economic disaster. Who cares if Mark Zuckerberg or Peter Thiel lose a billion dollars? But we do care if pension funds lose money.

So what’s to be done to reduce Facebook and Instagram’s power? Cancel your accounts.

Never go to Facebook or Instagram again — or Snapchat or Tik Tok. Deleting your accounts may be relatively easy if you’re my age (89), but getting people under 40 to kick their addiction to social media is hard. For people under 30, it’s virtually impossible.

It won’t work for parents to reduce screen time to, say, two or three hours a week because social media is more addictive than heroin. However, if everyone over 40 deletes their social media accounts, think how much time they would have to protest, protest against major advertisers who advertise in social media, protest against the Texas anti-abortion law, protest against the use of plastic, protest in favor of vaccinations and wearing masks.

Read Cal Newport’s book Digital Minimalism, delete your social media accounts and write that poetry, novel, screenplay or play you’ve always dreamed of writing.

I am.

Filed Under: Facebook, Uncategorized Tagged With: , ,

Covering Lies

September 16, 2021 By

In his September 15, “Press Watch” newsletter, Dan Froomkin writes:

The discourse about political journalism is once again afire with debate over whether the now-ubiquitous Republican allegations of election rigging and election fraud should be called “lies” or not in news stories.

Of course they should. It’s ridiculous that we’re even talking about it.

The distinction between a “false” or “baseless” statement and a lie is that a lie is uttered or spread knowingly, intentionally, and to serve a purpose. These lies undeniably qualify.

Froomkin also writes:

But simply calling out a lie isn’t enough. Yes, it’s better than using a euphemism. But it’s still a disservice to the public if you don’t explain its purpose — if you don’t explain the motive.

And in the case of the Republican lies about elections, the motive is crystal clear: They are trying to subvert democracy. That’s not hyperbole. They are literally preparing to manipulate and, if necessary, disregard the voting process if they don’t win.

Calling blatantly fraudulent allegations about elections “baseless claims” or even “lies” is not nearly enough. They are calculated, democracy-killing lies. And that needs to be made very clear in every story about them — or journalists are not really telling their viewers and readers what they need to know.

Another thing to keep in mind: The best lies are often part of a compelling, if fictional, narrative. To effectively expose and rebut those lies, journalists need to tell the full, true story, which includes who is spreading the lie and what they are hoping that will achieve.

Most of our major newsrooms finally found the fortitude to call Trump’s assertion that he won the presidential election in 2020 the “Big Lie.” But they’ve backslid since then, describing littler lies claiming election rigging and fraud – most recently from Republicans in California — as “false claims” or “baseless allegations”.

Froomkin makes his point clear — call a lie a lie. However, even though words matter, and identifying lies for what they are is not enough. The more important issue is: should the lies about election fraud be covered at all?

It strikes me that publishing stories about election-fraud lies is a form of bothsidism. Bothsidism was most prevalent in climate change coverage in which a story would cover glaciers melting and then, in a ridiculous attempt at “balance,” would include a statement by a wingnut climate change denier. Climate change is not a controversial issue. We don’t need to know about the non-scientific, stupid opinions of deniers.

We also don’t need to know the stupid opinions of election fraud promoters. The press (legitimate news media) shouldn’t give these lies any oxygen. Cut them off. Don’t cover them.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

New New Journalism

September 9, 2021 By

In the late 1960s and 1970s New Journalism was defined as journalism that used literary techniques such as a protagonist’s internal dialogue and was characterized by subjective reporting in which journalists inserted themselves into the story.

New Journalism was codified in a 1973 collection of articles published under the title of The New Journalism, edited by Tom Wolfe, and that included several of his articles as well as articles by Truman Capote, Hunter Thompson, Norman Mailer, Joan Didion and Gay Talese, among others.

The then New Journalism has faded out with the deaths of most of the self-absorbed writers and has been supplanted by two fresh forms of New New Journalism: the journalism of care and solution journalism.

The journalism of care is brilliantly described by Joe Mathewson in his recently published book, Ethical Journalism: Adopting the Ethics of Care.  Mathewson writes that “American society and democracy have long been beset by three fundamental threats to the nation’s future: climate change, racial inequity and economic disparity.”  (I agree with these three threats and their rank order.)  The author then asks if conventional journalism ethics are enough to cover the multiple challenges and calamities America faces today:

Though coverage of the year’s tumult could be carried out quite professionally in conformity with the prevailing century-old ethics of journalism reflective of moral philosophy – honestly, truthfully, factually, fairly, sensitively, transparently – that simply does not measure up to the needs of our twenty-first-century society.  Ethical journalism may be under attack and mistrusted by much of our divided population, but it is still the principal provider of verifiable facts – as opposed to unsupported emotion or malicious propaganda – to voting-age Americans.  If substantial societal enhancement is to occur as a result of these historic moments, it will be led by authoritative, factual, ethical news media.

Mathewson then urges the news media to embrace the ethics of care, which he defines as:

“The ethics of care declares a moral standard based on human empathy, calling for an active response to the needs of others, rather than on cool, detached reason.”  He then writes that: “The ethics of care takes no issue with journalism’s worthy standards of truth, facts, honesty, fairness, sensitivity and transparency.  It simply asks more of the human species,” and that: “Still the major conduit of truth to the American public, journalism must not only point the way, but in fact lead the way, to a better, more equitable and more secure future.”

Furthermore, “Ethical journalism has the potential influence, indeed the power to persuade the public that vigorous government action is mandatory to alleviate these systematic threats, and that an engaged (or perhaps enraged) pubic opinion will finally persuade America’s leaders that they must act decisively or face removal.”

Does Mathewson’s ethics of care (the journalism of care) seem like advocacy journalism?  Yes, in a sense, because it is advocating for caring, empathy and compassion, or how the three threats — climate change, racial inequity and economic disparity – affect individuals and families (not numbing numbers), especially those in the bottom, less fortunate quintile (bottom 20%).

The other form of the New New Journalism is solutions journalism, which is described in the September 3, “Your Undivided Attention Podcast” titled “The Power of Solutions Journalism.”  The show notes describe solutions journalism:

What is the goal of our digital information environment?  Is it simply to inform us, or also to empower us to act?  The Solutions Journalism Network (SJN) understands that simply reporting on social problems rarely leads to change.  What they’ve discovered is that rigorously reporting on responses to social problems is more likely to give activists and concerned citizens the hope and information they need to take effective action.  For this reason, SJN trains journalists to report on “solutions angles.”  M​​ore broadly, the organization seeks to rebalance the news, so that people are exposed to stories that help them understand the challenges we face as well as potential ways to respond.  In this episode, Tina Rosenberg, co-founder of SJN, and Hélène Biandudi Hofer, former manager of SJN’s Complicating the Narratives initiative, walk us through the origin of solutions journalism, how to practice it, and what impact it has had.  Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin reflect on how humane technology, much like solutions journalism, should also be designed to create an empowering relationship with reality — enabling us to shift from learned helplessness to what we might call learned hopefulness.

Does solution journalism sound like advocacy journalism?  Yes, in a sense, because it is advocating for solutions to problems by reporting what other cities, states and governments have done to solve specific problems such as gang violence rather than just passively reporting on a problem. 

With so many problems and calamities filling the pages of newspapers and the content of linear TV newscasts, readers and viewers tend to perceive mere reporting on crimes, crises and catastrophes as negative and depressing and so too often avoid them.  On the other hand, news stories about solutions are perceived as positive and hopeful, and so are more likely to be read and engaged with.

I love the New New Journalism.  As citizens and consumers of news, we don’t need the entertainment, outrage and lies of Fox News, we need journalism of care and compassion, and we need solutions, solutions that are good for our communities, not ideologies that are good for our individual narcissism.

Filed Under: New Journalism Tagged With: , ,

Numbing Numbers

August 31, 2021 By

In my blog last week about a career in sales, I wrote, “It’s in our DNA to want to help people.  Helping people gives our lives purpose, meaning and a sense of satisfaction.”

Yes, we want to help people, but media coverage of all of the concurrent disasters — leaving Afganastan, Covid-19 Delta variant deaths increasing, hurricane Ida, fires in the western U.S., vaccination and mask-wearing denial — is not helping us.

The editors in the news media who make decisions on what news to cover and how to cover it have an impossible dilemma: Which disaster to give front-page, lead-TV-news story most prominence and whether to give overall statistics and numbers or focus on humanizing the story by focusing on a single victim.

Editors know about the identifiable victim effect which indicates that if you want people to get involved emotionally and to give money, it is best to focus on one person such as showing a photo of a forlorn child rather than quoting statistics about a million people needing help. The child is a person, a million people is a just non-personal number. Or as Mother Teresa said, “Never worry about numbers. Help one person at a time and always start with the person nearest you.”

Nevertheless, editors have news to cover: how many people died in the suicide bombing at the Kabul airport, how many people have been evacuated, how many people left behind in Kabul, by state what percent of people have been vaccinated, have been hospitalized, how many have died or how many acres have been ravaged by fires. All are non-relatable numbers, but they need to be reported.

But I can’t remember a time in our history (I was born in 1932) when there have been so many disasters happening concurrently. Too many disasters, and, thus, way too many numbers. All the disasters and numbers have numbed me. If the numbers have numbed me, what have they done to journalists? They have to report on the numbing numbers and not get involved emotionally in their stories. It must be really hard.

In the spring and summer of 2020, at the height of the pandemic crisis in New York City, residents our block on East 95th Street came out on our stoops to bang on pots and pans and applaud for essential workers — doctors, nurses, hospital workers, delivery people.

I’d like to find a way to do something to applaud the essential journalists who are hanging in there and covering the multiple disasters for us. Not Fox News, of course. They are making things worse.

Any ideas on how we can applaud these harried newspeople?

Filed Under: Covid-19, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , ,

A Career In Sales

August 26, 2021 By

This past Tuesday I gave a presentation to the first class of the Skillz Academy about what I thought were the benefits of a career in sales, based on my philosophy of selling as detailed in my textbook, Media Selling, 5th Edition.

The Skillz Academy was founded by two Black friends of mine, who asked me to write the initial curriculum, based in Media Selling, for an eight-week course that would teach underutilized people of color to sell in the tech industry. The first cohort started the Louisiana state-certified course last week. Below are my remarks:

What do you think is the difference between a job and a career?

You take a job to make money in the short term regardless of the opportunity for learning and growth.

A career is a job for the long term with good learning and growth opportunities … with a good chance for advancement and promotions.

A career in technology sales is interesting and satisfying for a couple of reasons. 

  1. Tech sales is interesting because you are dealing with two very challenging elements: Technology and people.
  1. Technology is interesting because it is continually changing.  There’s always something new to learn.  And, by the way, all companies, all organizations are now technology organizations because their productivity, survival and growth are dependent on technology.   What this means is that there are virtually unlimited opportunities for a career in tech sales, especially for people of color because tech companies are making a major effort to diversify.
  2. People are even more complicated than technology.  Therefore, understanding people – having emotional intelligence – and being able to connect with people is not only a critically important sales skill, but also, there is nothing more interesting than dealing with and figuring out people.  In tech sales the soft skill of emotional intelligence is vital because the engineers who write the software and create algorithms are typically are not great with people, and they are usually not terrific communicators.  Engineers need salespeople with emotional intelligence who are able to connect with prospective customers and can communicate effectively in a customer’s language about a product’s benefits.
  • Tech sales is satisfying because connecting with people is in our DNA.  We need to connect with, to cooperate with and to help other people.  We want to socialize, to talk to others.  And that’s what sales is: connecting with people, cooperating with them and helping them to meet challenges and solve problems. 
    • Because you get to meet and talk to a diverse group of people in sales, it’s not boring – you’re not just looking at a computer screen all day.
    • Also, a career in sales has become more attractive since the pandemic hit.  Dead-end, boring, low-paying jobs have become much less attractive and more dangerous.  Interesting jobs with growth and a promising future have become much more attractive.

Sales has always been a job with high-growth potential.  Many FORTUNE 500 CEOs have come up through sales and marketing because they understood the market and they understood customers.

One of the main reasons people in sales jobs move up is because their performance is measurable.  Salespeople have a batting average, and good performance is noticeable and gets people promoted.

Another thing about a career in sales is that it has changed dramatically with the advent of the internet.  Before the internet, sales was mostly about persuading people, even tricking them, into buying a product often whether they needed it or not.  In that pre-internet era salespeople typically had an image of being pushy.  The stereotype was the checked-sports-coat used-car huckster who used manipulative tricks and exaggerated unmercifully.  Pre-internet salespeople had an advantage.  They had much more information about their products, about the market and about competitive prices than consumers did.

The internet changed everything.  After the introduction of the internet, consumers could get as much, if not more, information about a product as a salesperson had.  Consumers could research their purchases, compare prices and could read product reviews before buying.

Because consumers have so much product information, salespeople today can’t over-exaggerate or lie about a product.  Therefore, the number-one characteristic that post-internet salespeople must have is honesty.   They have to be honest and straightforward in presenting facts. 

And, as more and more products have new, technology-dependent features, post-internet selling is more about educating than about persuading.

Also, with technology-dependent products and services, selling is more about helping customers deal with challenges and solve problems than about pushing to close a deal.

Selling today is about honesty, educating and helping.

When you were young – 4, 5, 6 – what did you want to be when you grew up?  A nurse, a doctor, a teacher, a fireman, a coach?

These are all professions that help people.  It’s in our DNA to want to help people.  Helping people gives our lives purpose, meaning and a sense of satisfaction.

I started my career selling media – television advertising.  I loved it.  It was fun.  I got satisfaction from helping media buyers achieve their goals and from educating clients on the benefits of television.  

I then went into media sales management which I loved even more because I felt that sales management was basically about helping and educating salespeople, not motivating them.  I learned that you can’t motivate people — they are naturally motivated (or not).  They come with curiosity, grit and determination (or not), and you can’t give people those qualities.  The role of sales management is to create a culture and systems that unleash people’s natural motivation and determination to succeed and to educate them how to be successful.

Sales management is also about helping salespeople manage their careers – growing and getting promoted.

I learned how to hire people who were smarter than I was and who could replace me so I could get promoted.

And I did get promoted.  I was a vice president of CBS and NBC.  At NBC I was the general manager – the CEO in a sense – of radio stations NBC owned stations in Chicago and New York.  I loved those jobs because it was about informing and entertaining people, which was both satisfying and fun.

Then I went into education – being a university professor in my 50s, 60s and 70s– which I found very satisfying and fulfilling because I was educating young people and helping them plan and start their careers.

Today, you’re probably not thinking about what you’re going to be doing when you’re 65 or 70, but I’d like for you to take a moment now and think about what you’d like to be doing when you’re that age.

When I was 70, I was teaching graduate courses – educating and helping young people – and I had never been happier.

I think you’ll be happy, too, with a career in sales in which you will educate and help people …  and have fun doing so.  And, you’ll also make enough money so you can retire comfortably and be proud of how you made your retirement money. 

Who knows, you might even wind up teaching at the Skillz Academy because you’ve learned over the years to be a good educator and helper.

Filed Under: Skillz Academy Tagged With: , ,

Replacing Trebek With a We Decision

August 17, 2021 By

Sony Pictures Entertainment chose Alex Trebeck’s replacement on the television syndicated show “Jeopardy!” the right way.

It was not easy to replace the popular Trebeck, who hosted “Jeopardy!” for 37 years until he died of pancreatic cancer in November, 2020, at age 80.  According to an ABC 13 news release, ‘Trebek had served as the host of the game show since its debut in daytime syndication in 1984.”  And, “With more than 8,200 episodes under his belt, he holds the Guinness World Record for Most Game Show Episodes Hosted by the Same Presenter.”  Also, during his years hosting “Jeopardy!,” Trebeck won seven Daytime Emmys and received a lifetime achievement Emmy award in 2011.

According to a New York Times August 14, article by Michael M. Greybaum and Nicole Sperling, Ken Jennings, the winningest “Jeopardy!” contestant ever, with a record 74 consecutive games, had been Mr. Trebek’s preferred successor by many fans of the show. 

Greybaum and Sperling write:

After a cattle call of guest hosts, including Anderson Cooper, Robin Roberts, Aaron Rodgers, LeVar Burton and even Dr. Mehmet Oz, the announcement of the winner sent fans into a tailspin. The new weekday host would be Mike Richards, the show’s obscure executive producer and the man initially charged with finding Mr. Trebek’s replacement.

The choice of Mike Richards caused consternation among many “Jeopardy!” fans because they assumed that Ken Jennings was the obvious choice, and many other fans favored celebrities such as Anderson Cooper or LeVar Burton.  However, Sony Picture Entertainment made the final decision with the right process.  Here’s how the New York Times article described that process:

Sony said that while Mr. Richards initially led the hunt for Mr. Trebek’s replacement, he moved aside after he emerged as a candidate.

But as executive producer, Mr. Richards retained a key role in selecting which appearances by each prospective host would be screened for focus groups, whose reactions weighed heavily in Sony’s decision-making, according to three people familiar with the show’s internal deliberations.  The other supervising “Jeopardy!” producers were excluded from that process, the people said.

Asked about Mr. Richards’s role, Sony referred to a memo from its TV chairman, Ravi Ahuja, who told staff that after the company began considering Mr. Richards as a potential host, “he was not part of” the selection process.  The ultimate decision was made by Tony Vinciquerra, the chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment.

According to the Times article, Ken Jennings, the all-time “Jeopardy” champ, who is now a   consulting producer for the show, said: “Mike was the only person up there with any game show hosting chops, and it showed.”

The Times article went on to report:

Some fans argue that a relatively bland, little-known host was always a better outcome than a celebrity. “The game is the star, and the contestants are the stars,” said John Podhoretz, the editor of Commentary magazine and a 1987 quarterfinalist in the “Jeopardy!” Tournament of Champions.  “The host should be a secondary figure.”

For his part, Mr. Jennings agreed.  “What was great about Alex was we didn’t know anything about him: He came into our homes every night and he hosted “Jeopardy,’” Mr. Jennings said.  “Today, it’s very hard to find a broadcaster whose priors and opinions you know nothing about.”

The game was the star, not the host.  That’s a we decision, not a me decision.  The show, the team, the community comes first, not the individual.

Try to imagine what America, what the world would be like if politicians made we decisions instead of me decisions – did what was best for their constituents, their communities, and not what was best for them.  Can you imagine Donald Trump or Florida governor Ron DeSantis making a we decision?  Of course not.

We must hold our political leaders to the same decision-making process as Sony Pictures Entertainment used in choosing Mike Richards to replace Alex Trebeck: make a we decision, not a me decision.

Filed Under: "Jeopardy!", Jeopardy Tagged With: , ,

Response to “Women in News”

August 9, 2021 By

Guest blogger Paul Talbot responds to the August 4, “Women In News” blog:

You made some solid points in your blog “Women in News,” but there may be more to the picture than you describe.

Editorial positions boil down to ownership.

Coverage decisions boil down to news judgment.

Editors exercise this judgment as art while algorithms lean on science.  

So, rather than male vs. female, we might consider editor vs. algorithm.

This leaves us to wonder if the time-honored “nose for news” instinct, a legitimate art laced with alchemy, may be sensitized somewhat differently for women.

Perhaps this depends on the story.

One would think the preeminent story of our times, climate change, would be evaluated and covered much the same by men and women.

My hunch is that sizing up the merits of which stories to cover, and how they should be covered, the angle and the slant, are driven less by gender and more by outlooks, philosophies and inclinations.

And let’s not forget that women don’t corner the market on empathy.

Male columnists have proven themselves quite adept at empathy and emotion, from O’Henry to Breslin and Royko.  

Sure, Noonan and Dowd rule the roost these days.  But the male columnist capable of bringing a tear to your eye or bringing your blood to a boil is hardly a rarity.

So, this cracks open another question.

What exactly is news management?

In so many ways, the coverage of news simply can’t be managed.  

News is quicksilver.  It races along down random roads with unknown destinations.

Sometimes a story erupts and sometimes it slowly boils.  

Whatever the case, news coverage often tends to be more of a reactive than a proactive exercise.

At best, the strategic planks of news management embrace anticipation and preparation for the unknown.

Are women better at designing and guiding this process than men?

Who knows?

The uncertainties of news may tilt the scales towards women, who seem to be more comfortable with ambiguity.

But it may be helpful to consider all this in terms of the specific story.

How well the story is understood, its implications, its truths, the context in which it is placed, the tenacity of the reporter, the encouragement and support of the editor, resources made available, the ability to find the right source, to ask the right question, and the skills to polish an untidy collection of raw materials into something cogent and compelling.

May the best person take the helm.

Or may the best male-female combo take the helm such as Katharine Graham and Ben Bradlee.

Media Curmudgeon responds:

In the “Women In News” blog I wrote:

What will it mean in the future that more and more women and women of color are heading news organizations?  Will the news coverage and agendas change?  If Kamala Harris is the Democratic presidential nominee in 2024 or 2028, will editorial endorsements change?

In terms of news coverage, I think news coverage, especially local news coverage, will change.  More coverage of issues such as the child tax credit, evictions and the affordable housing crisis will increase in news organizations headed by women, and we’re likely to see less horse-race political coverage.

You made the point that: “My hunch is that sizing up the merits of which stories to cover, and how they should be covered, the angle and the slant, are driven less by gender and more by outlooks, philosophies and inclinations.” I have no major disagreement with this statement with the exception of more coverage being given by female editors to the issues mentioned above.

However, I believe that the main reason that more and more women are being named head of news operations is because women are generally better managers of people than men are.

In my view the biggest challenge in newsrooms is not how to cover the news, but how manage increasingly young, diverse, tech-savvy, Twitter-addicted newsrooms.

For example, had a woman been editor-in-chief of the NY Times when the Tom Coton opinion piece, “Send In the Troops,” was pubished June 3, 2020, would she have been able to broker peace between NY Times younger staffers who felt threatened by the Cotton piece and Editorial Page Editor James Bennet, who was fired on June 7?

Of course, we’ll never know this counterfactual, but it’s certainly conceivable that a woman might have been able to avoid the cancel-culture outcome of Bennet’s firing.

Had there been a female publisher or editor-in-chief at the NY Time in June 2020, would there have been an Intelligence Squared podcast debate on July 30, “Has the New York Times Lost Its Way?”

Filed Under: Women in news Tagged With: ,

Women In News

August 4, 2021 By

On Tuesday, August 3, Daisy Veerasingham, Associated Press (AP) executive vice president and chief operating officer, was named AP’s president and CEO.   Veerasingham joins other females and other women of color to head major national news organizations. 

It’s about time.

Of 11 major national news organizations (ABC News, CBS News, Fox News, NBC News, MSNBC, CNN, AP, Reuters, the NY Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal), half are headed by women: AP, CBS News (co-president), Fox News, MSNBC, AP, Reuters and the Washington Post.  Of the six women, two, Rashida Jones of MSNBC and Daisy Veerasingham are a woman of color.

Six of the major national news organizations are headed by men: ABC News, CBS News (co-president), NBC News, CNN, the NY Times and the Wall Street Journal.  Of the six men, one of them, Dean Baquet of the NY Times, is Black.

Two large metropolitan daily newspapers have recently hired Black women as Editor-in-Chief,  Hearst’s Houston Chronicle (Maria Douglas Reeve) and A. H. Belo’s Dallas Morning News (Katrina Hardy).

I looked at the dominant newspapers in 11 cities (Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Phoenix, Philadelphia, San Antonio, San Diego, Dallas, San Jose, San Francisco and Boston) and found that men headed nine and women headed two.

What will it mean in the future that more and more women and women of color are heading news organizations?  Will the news coverage and agendas change?  If Kamala Harris is the Democratic presidential nominee in 2024 or 2028, will editorial endorsements change?

In terms of news coverage, I think news coverage, especially local news coverage, will change.  More coverage of issues such as the child tax credit, evictions and the affordable housing crisis will increase in news organizations headed by women, and we’re likely to see less horse-race political coverage.

For example, Jon Allsop writes in the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) that:

Writing for The Hill, Daniel Schneider and Peter Tufano, academics at Harvard and Oxford universities, respectively, assessed the recent conversation around the implementation of the child tax credit.  “Politicians, policy analysts, commentators, pundits and journalists have reported widely on the structure of the program—and their opinions of it,” Schneider and Tufano argue, but the voices of parents themselves have been less audible, a problem the academics set out to resolve by conducting a national survey.  The debate around extending the credit, they write, must be informed by both evidence parents’ voices.

I think women editors might be more empathetic to “parents’ voices” than to “the structure of the program.”

Also, Jon Allsop writes in the CJR about evictions:

In November, CJR’s Savannah Jacobson spoke with Matthew Desmond, a sociologist and founder of Princeton’s Eviction Lab, about Evicted, his book on the eviction crisis, and the media’s wider coverage of the issue. “I think where we could be better is really to tell the story about who owns our cities—the real business dynamics on the ground,” Desmond told Jacobson.  “If you ask me, What’s the best data that explains eviction, then I could explain, Race matters, if you live with kids that increases your odds, gender matters.  But are people evicting themselves?”

Women editors could well be more empathetic to people being evicted and provide information on what to do about it.

The question of what will happen if Kamala Harris runs for president is more complicated.  There are three issues involved: 1) news coverage, 2) opinion and 3) editorial endorsements.

I don’t think news coverage will change much.  ABC News, CBS News, CNN, NBC News, AP and Reuters play it pretty straight (that’s my view, but right-wingers will disagree).  They do news, not opinion, and they don’t endorse candidates.

We know what Fox News and MSNBC will do.   They are virtually all opinion.  Fox News will do what the Murdochs want and be a propaganda outlet for Republican candidates.  MSNBC will be a propaganda outlet for Democratic candidates.

The idea of the Murdochs hiring a Black or a woman editor for the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) is an absurd longshot; nevertheless, news coverage will still be pretty straight and unbiased.  The opinion section and editorial endorsements will stay the same – right-wing.

The NY Times and the Washington Post also have opinion sections and endorse candidates.  Their liberal positions will not change.  Both papers will run an occasional conservative opinion piece to give a weak impression of balance, but these papers’ readers know where the editors’ hearts and minds are.

In terms of editorial endorsements, the Times and the Post will endorse liberal, Democratic candidates as they have in the past.  What many people forget is that editorials are very specifically the voice of management, which, in the case of the Times, means the Sulzberger family.

For example, even though the Times has an editorial board of 13 editors (six women), their votes can be overridden by the Sulzbergers.  For example, I heard from a reliable source that for the 2008 New York state Democratic presidential primary the editorial board voted to endorse Obama, but A. G Sulzberger, Sr., then publisher, overruled the editorial board because he thought Clinton would be better for Israel.  I do not know if this story is true or not, but it is certainly possible – the opinion of the owners is what counts.

From everything that I read, the owner of the Washington Post, Jeff Bezos, leaves editorial decisions up to the Post’s editorial board and does not get involved, which is as it should be.

Be that as it may, you can bet your last dollar that the Times and the Post will endorse the Democratic candidate for president.

But, do newspaper editorial endorsements have any effect on national elections?  No.  No effect.  On local elections?  Yes.  The Times’ endorsement of Katherine Garcia in the recent Democratic mayoral primary vaulted Garcia into an extremely close second place (49.5 percent of the final vote as tabulated in a rank-order ballot).

So, I for one, hope this trend of women heading newsrooms continues and that news coverage of issues close to the hearts and pocketbooks of the underserved and underinformed 90 percent of the population get highlighted and covered. 

It’s about time.

Filed Under: Women, Women in news Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Murdoch to Fox News

July 27, 2021 By

Top Secret

To: Suzanne Scott, CEO Fox News

From: Rupert Murdoch

Subject: Vaccination

This note is to remind you that the sole mission, the only purpose of Fox News is to maximize shareholder value, which means maximizing revenue.

As you well know, maximizing our advertising revenue means getting the highest ratings possible, which we do by entertaining, outraging and reinforcing the biases of our audience. 

You’ve done a great job of hiring beautiful women and handsome men who are good at entertaining and outraging people.  However, with the new Delta variation of the virus, by some of our hosts advising people not to get vaccinated, we are killing off our viewers.

Let me remind you that over 70 percent of our viewers are over 65, the most vulnerable to get infected and die.  In states with low vaccination rates (where a large percentage of our audience lives) more than 99 percent of COVID-19 deaths over the past six months were among unvaccinated people.  We’re losing viewers!

Create more PSAs about getting vaccinated and run them more often.

It’s OK for our entertainers to support that idiot Trump, but it’s not OK for them to tell people that ”it’s their choice” to get vaccinated.  If our audience doesn’t get vaccinated, the worst possible thing imaginable might happen: Our audience might decline and we could lose money.

Filed Under: Fox News Tagged With: , , , ,
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