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The Media Are Killing Us

July 21, 2021 By

The first allusion to media and death that I remember was Neil Postman’s 1985 book Amusing Ourselves To Death. Postman’s thesis was that:

TV is turning all public life (education, religion, politics, journalism) into entertainment; how the image is undermining other forms of communication, particularly the written word; and how our bottomless appetite for TV will make content so abundantly available, context be damned, that we’ll be overwhelmed by “information glut” until what is truly meaningful is lost and we no longer care what we’ve lost as long as we’re being amused.

Postman’s idea was that TV was killing our culture. On Friday, July 16, when President Joe Biden was asked by an NBC reporter what his message was to social media platforms, particularly Facebook, Biden replied, “They’re killing people,” then added, “The only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated.”

Even though Biden backed off a little a few days later after Facebook complained and laid out all the things they were doing to promote vaccination, the President was essentially right. In fact, he should have included Fox News in his condemnation.

In an article titled “Facebook, Fox, and what ‘killing people’ means in a pandemic” in the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR), Jon Allsop wrote:

Biden’s intervention—along with rising cases and plummeting vaccination rates—have reignited urgent media conversations about vaccine hesitancy, whose fault it is, and to what extent. Facebook has been central to this conversation, with observers debating the proper balance between the good messaging it has instigated and the bad messaging it has allowed on its platform. Right-wing media outlets—and, given its huge reach, Fox News, in particular—have also been central, with some commentators arguing that they deserve a greater share of the blame for sowing mistrust of the vaccines and Biden’s efforts to distribute them. (“Who’s winning the war between Biden and Facebook?” a headline in Wired asked. “Fox News.”) On Sunday, CNN’s Dana Bash asked Murthy [Dr. Vivek Murthy, the surgeon general] whether Fox is also “killing people”; Murthy replied that the general cost of misinformation “can be measured in lives lost,” but declined to be more specific. Oliver Darcy, a CNN media reporter, called this a “dodge” that reflected poorly on the administration’s priorities: “misinformation on Fox is distributed intentionally, while Facebook is at least putting some effort to combatting it.” 

With the increase in COVID infections and deaths due to the Delta variant, there really is a pandemic among the unvaccinated. The unvaccinated are killing not only themselves but others as well. It seems they would rather die than admit they were wrong about believing in science and getting vaccinated.

Some entertainers on Fox News seem to be developing a little conscience and adjusting their moral compass slightly. Jon Allsop in CJR reports:

Many media observers have this week noticed an apparent shift in Fox’s coverage of COVID vaccines. On Monday, the network ran on-screen banners advertising official vaccine resources, and Sean Hannity urged his viewers to take the pandemic seriously; on Tuesday, Steve Doocy, of Fox & Friends, said that the vaccine “will save your life.” These efforts have met, in more liberal quarters, with relief, and even some praise. It’s not clear, however, that they really represent any sea change. Hannity and Doocy have both endorsed vaccines before; in February, the latter appeared, alongside several other Fox hosts, in a vaccine PSA. And, more pertinently, hosts who have consistently cast doubt on the vaccines have continued to do so: following Hannity on Monday, for instance, Laura Ingraham accused Democrats of trying to cancel “inconvenient opinions regarding their Covid response,” and brought on a guest who called the idea that there is a “pandemic of the unvaccinated” a “lie.” Some of this week’s Fox-has-changed commentary reminded me of the post-election period, when supposed instances of hosts turning on Trump belied a more sordid reality. With vaccines, as with Trump’s election lies, low expectations can dilute our standards of accountability.

So, some entertainers on Fox News seem to be accountable, but not all of them. Facebook? No. Facebook is still defensive and will not take down vaccination disinformation. If some people would rather die than believe in science, Facebook would rather make more money than be accountable by removing vaccination lies that are killing people.

In 1985 Neil Postman was right: in the media, people are amusing themselves to death, and some of the media could care less. Money before morality.

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

What Is the Highest Rated TV Program?

July 13, 2021 By

Quick, before you read further, guess what the highest-rated television (broadcast and cable) program for the week of June 28 was – the program that had the most total viewers.

Did you guess “60 Minutes,” or “The Bachelorette,” or “Tucker Carlson,” or “The NBA Playoffs,” or “Young Sheldon” or “America’s Got Talent”?

Did you make a guess based on your own TV viewing habits?  TV viewing is mostly based on habit and confirmation bias. Also, what you watch is what you assume most people watch.  I call it the Polo Assumption.

When I was with CBS in the late 1960s, there was a story, probably apocryphal, about a CBS Network salesman who called on Harvey Firestone, the head of Firestone Tires in his office in Akron, OH.  The CBS salesman said, “Mr. Firestone, your great brand, your high-quality tires should advertise on CBS’s highest-quality program, ‘Face the Nation.’”

Firestone asked when the program aired.  The CBS salesman replied, “3:00 pm Sunday afternoon.”  Firestone’s immediate response was, “That’s crazy!  Nobody’s watching TV at 3:00 o’clock Sunday afternoon.  EVERYBODY is playing polo!”

Everyone was not playing polo the week of June 28-July 4.  The most-watched TV program that week was “ABC World News Tonight” with David Muir that had 7,611,000 total viewers and 1,311,000 viewers in the advertiser-preferred 25-54 demographic (83% not 25-54). 

“ABC World News Tonight” had more viewers that week than the number-one prime time broadcast network program, NBC’s “America’s Got Talent” on Tuesday night that had 7,083,000 total viewers and the number-one cable TV program, the “NBA Playoffs” that had 5,857,000 total viewers.

The highest-rated cable TV program the week of June 28 that was not an NBA playoff game was “Hannity” on Fox News with 3,537,000 total viewers.  Thus, David Muir on the average evening had more than twice (115 percent) the viewers that Hannity did.

The week of June 28, “NBC, Nightly News” with Lester Holt averaged 6,653,00 total viewers and 1,181,000 adults 25-54 (83% not 25-54), making it the third-most-watched show on TV, after “ABC Worlde News Tonight” and “America’s Got Talent.”

“CBS Evening News” with Norah O’Donnell averaged 4,867,000 total viewers, and 852,000 adults 25-54 (83% not 25-54) for the week of June 28, which made it the most-watched broadcast on the CBS network each day that week.  The “CBS Evening News” average viewers for the week beat “60 Minutes,” which had 4,660,000 total viewers on Sunday, July 4.

Why are the broadcast TV networks’ evening news programs (6:30-7:00 pm Eastern Daylight Time) the most popular TV programs?  Is it because the news programs are so good, is it because entertainment programs are so bad (raise your hand if you have watched “America’s Got Talent” or “Young Sheldon” in the last year) or is it because of streaming: Netflix, Disney +, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video and other streaming services?

There are not good up-to-date, daily news options on the streaming services, but their commercial-free (except for Hulu) entertainment content has gotten so good that broadcast and cable entertainment (not sports) programs are a boring anachronism to many viewers.

One of the dumbest responses of the broadcast and cable networks to the threat of streaming services has been to increase their commercial loads in order to make their unrealistic revenue budgets, which, of course, drives even more people to commercial-free streaming.

This week it was reported that Apple was bidding to stream NFL games.  The Ad Week Network reported:

Apple has expressed interest in the streaming rights for a package of National Football League games the NFL is now auctioning, said people familiar with the situation, a possible sign the tech giant is looking to beef up the audience for its Apple TV+ streaming service.

The streaming services have decimated broadcast and cable entertainment content.  If Apple, Amazon or other streaming services pick off live sports, especially the NFL, from the TV networks, they are toast.  All they will have left to attract large (and older and older) audiences will be their news programs

Walter Cronkite would be pleased.

Filed Under: ABC World News Tonight Tagged With: ,

Politics As Theater

July 6, 2021 By

Alden Global Capital, the hedge fund that bought the Chicago Tribune Company this past May, named Chris Jones editorial page editor on July 1.  Jones has been the Tribune’s theater critic for two decades.

When asked about his new gig, according to Media Post’s Publishers Daily, Jones said, “I’m still the theater critic, which is important to me and the paper, and I will review the major shows as I have for the past 20 years.”

Jones’s promotion was part of Alden’s downsizing of the Tribune, a strategy Alden, which is now the second-largest newspaper owner in the U.S., has used in buying several other newspapers.  In March 2018, Margaret Sullivan, the Washington Post media columnist called Alden “one of the most ruthless of the corporate strip-miners seemingly intent on destroying local journalism.”  And Denver Post staffers referred to Alden as “vulture capitalists” after multiple layoffs in 2019.

So, was Chris Jones, promoted because no one else was left to take over as editor of the editorial page, or was it a shrewd move?

I think promoting Jones was a good idea because it was recognition that politics is theater.

Last week the Pew Center released its annual State of the Media Report which indicated that in 2020 newspaper subscription revenue passed advertising revenue for the first time as the number-one source of income for newspapers.  Therefore, editorials will have to appeal primarily to subscribers, who are the same people who go to the theatre: old people who are college graduates.

So, what might a future Tribune editorial/review of a politician’s speech read like?

In New York Times’ film critic, A.O. Scott’s 2017 book, Better Living Through Criticism, he writes that it is the job of the critic “to disagree, to refuse to look at anything simply as what it is, to insist on subjecting it to intellectual scrutiny.”

Scott then writes:

Anti-intellectualism is virtually our civic religion.  “Critical thinking” may be a ubiquitous educational slogan – a vaguely defined skill we hope our children pick up on the way to adulthood – but the rewards for not using our intelligence are immediate and abundant.

As consumers of culture, we are lulled into passivity or, at best, prodded toward a state of pseudo-semi-self-awareness, encouraged toward either a defensive group identity of fanhood or shallow, half-ironic eclecticism.  Meanwhile, as citizens of the political commonwealth, we are conscripted into a polarized climate of ideological belligerence in which bluster too often substitutes for argument.

What would subjecting a political speech to anti-bluster intellectual scrutiny look like?

First, an editorial/review might identify a speech as a comedy or a tragedy.   For example, Trump, the most obvious example of politics as theater, delivered speeches as tragedy – crime, rape, and death in America that only he could fix (and enrich himself).  Biden, on the other hand, tends to deliver speeches as comedy – optimism and happiness ahead.

Second, an editorial/review might identify the overall theme of a political speech – what is the basic message such as fear, optimism, collaboration or insurrection that the actors try to communicate.

Third, an editorial/review might examine the script that lays out the arguments to support the theme.  Was the script well written, did it follow a logical structure and was it persuasive?

Next, an editorial/review might look at the setting.  Did the setting appropriately enhance the theme?  Was it like George Bush’s appearance in flight suit on the deck of an aircraft carrier to announce victory in the Iraq war or was it like Donald Trump’s appearance, holding a bible upside down in front of a defaced Episcopal church after police brutally dispersed protesters in Lafayette Park?

Next, an editorial/review might comment on the direction, the choreography and the casting.  Were the actors’ movements properly motivated, driven by the script? 

In the past year, the Democratic stage direction has been excellent.  The Democratic convention was superb television – virtually flawless, with the exception of letting Tom Hanks almost freeze.  And Biden’s inauguration was expertly cast (with the exception of Garth Brooks singing “Amazing Grace”) with Amanda Gorman reading her inspiring poem, “The Hill We Climb,” and the coup de grace of Lady Gaga singing “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

Finally, an editorial/review might assess the actors.  Did they play their parts convincingly?  Was Donald Trump presidential?  Was George Bush or Barack Obama authentic, presidential?  How about Joe Biden?

As an actor, Trump didn’t follow the script; he made it up as he rambled. He did not play the role of President of the United States.  He played Donald Trump as his fans wanted him to be.  The emotions of fear, anger and outrage are easy to incite, especially among white, uneducated voters, which Trump did cynically and ruthlessly.

Biden seems to be playing his part as written – a decent, nice guy who happens to be president.  He seems authentic, but he doesn’t elicit strong emotions like Trump did.

I look forward to seeing how the Tribune editorializes about the theater of politics.

I’m also glad that Alden Global Capital didn’t name a sportswriter as editor of the editorial page because nothing would have changed.  Political coverage in the past has been horserace coverage – who’s ahead and who’s behind – and in the last two elections, the horserace information was based on unacceptably inaccurate polling. 

It’s much more realistic to cover politics as theater rather than as a sport, especially as a horserace.

Filed Under: Chicago Tribune Tagged With: , ,

Tucker Carlson

June 29, 2021 By

In Jonathan Rauch’s just published, excellent book, The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defence of Truth, the author writes: “Digital media have turned out to be better attuned to outrage and disinformation than to conversation and knowledge.” The same thing could be said about all media.

The right is currently outraged about schools teaching critical race theory. The left is currently outraged about the disinformation promulgated by the right. And no one on the right does outrage and disinformation better than Tucker Carlson on Fox News. On the left, the number-one outrager on cable news is Rachel Maddow on MSNBC.

Carlson has the highest ratings on cable news with approximately three million viewers. Wednesday, June 23, seemed like a typical cable news prime-time night. Carlson on Fox News (8:00 pm) had 3,064,000 total viewers, 494,000 25-54 viewers (83% not 25-54). Maddow (9:00 pm) on MSNBC was number three behind Hannity (9:00 pm) on Fox News. She had 2,289,000 total viewers, 318,000 25-54 viewers (86% not 25-54).

Why is Carlson number-one? He’s not only the top outrager and disinformationer, he’s also a liar and a hypocrite.

David Frum wrote in the Atlantic on June 21, that Carlson lied about protesters attacking his home when he said on his show, “Someone started throwing himself against the front door and actually cracked the front door.” Subsequent investigations determined there was no crack in his front door. Frum writes:

Carlson’s own lawyers have argued in court that he regularly speaks in ways that are “loose, figurative, or hyperbolic.” Carlson’s descriptions of events—including outright accusations of criminal conduct by named individuals “would not have been taken by reasonable listeners as factual pronouncements but simply as instances in which [people like Carlson] expressed their views over the air in the crude and hyperbolic manner that has, over the years, become their verbal stock in trade.”

In other words, he lies.

The New York Times media columnist, Ben Smith, wrote a column titled “Tucker Carlson Calls Journalists ‘Animals.’ He’s Also Their Best Source” in which Smith claims that Carlson is hypocritical because he recently said on his show that the media at large are “cringing animals who are not worthy of respect,” yet has also been a consistent source for mainstream media reporters, including some New York Times reporters, about conversations with Trump when he was president. Smith writes that Carlson “spends his time when he’s not denouncing the liberal media trading gossip with them” and asks of Carlson viewers “How can the guy who tells you every night that the media is lying be texting with the enemy?” In other words, Smith makes the case the Carlson is a hypocrite.

So if Carlson is a liar and a hypocrite who dishes out disinformation, why would anyone watch his show (it’s a show, not a news program)?

Confirmation bias, of course, but there is another reason that is detailed by Jonathan Rauch in The Constitution of Knowledge: group status.

Rauch refers to psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s position that “people care a great deal more about appearance and reputation than about reality.” Human beings are social animals who feel safe and secure in groups, in their tribes. Rauch writes that our group identity is primary. We want acceptance and status in our group more than we want reality or the truth. The tendency is for groups, and thus for individuals in that group, to connect emotionally with a charismatic leader and then to rationalize backward from our emotions rather than reason forward from policy views.

Therefore, a person can be a nice, caring person and generally a good community member, yet believe in conspiracy theories, support Trump and watch and believe Tucker Carlson because of their group identity and need for status in that group.

For liberals, it is difficult to change group identity. It takes a long time and needs the support of the media to debunk disinformation and calm down outrage.

But help may be on the way — the media is changing. A recent analysis from Axios titled “Boring news cycle deals blow to partisan media” shows that “in the months since former President Donald Trump left office, media companies’ readership numbers are plunging — and publishers that rely on partisan, ideological warfare have taken an especially big hit.”

The Axios chart linked to above shows the following declines of selected media publications, August 2020-January 2021 (before) and February 2021-May 2021 (after):

  • Far Right (e.g. NewsMax) – 43.8%
  • Far Left (e.g Mother Jones) – 27.3%
  • Right Leaning (e.g. Fox News) – 26.9%
  • Mainstream (e.g. US Today) – 18.3%
  • Left Leaning (e.g. Vox) – 16.7%

So, the Trump slump affects all media, but affects the far-right media the most and the left-leaning media the least. If these trends continue, perhaps agendas will change. Perhaps the groups that listen to and believe far-right and right-leaning media will shrink in size and, thus, be less influential. Perhaps Tucker Carlson will fade in importance and left-leaning media such as the Atlantic and The New York Times will stop writing about him and, thus, giving him exposure and publicity. Maybe he’ll just fade away.

Let’s hope.

Filed Under: Tucker Carlson Tagged With: ,

Back to Horseshoes and Grenades

June 22, 2021 By

I called my good friend Bill Lederer to ask him what effect Google’s and Apple’s decisions earlier this year to ban third-party cookies and device IDs on their Chrome and Safari/IOS browsers would have on digital advertising. My hypothesis was that context — content and environment — were more important now.

Bill is Co-Founder and CEO of iSOCRATES, a global marketing and advertising technology and services company that, among other things, executes digital ad campaigns for major advertisers and monetizes ad inventory for major publishers.

Before I give you Bill’s answer and the implications of that answer, here’s a little background.

In 2007, Real Media made the first computer-to-computer digital ad placement (other than Google or Facebook), that at the time was referred to as real-time bidding (RTB). Over the succeeding years, RTB grew exponentially and came to be called programmatic trading. By 2020, digital advertising accounted for 66 percent of total U.S. advertising investment, or $356 billion, and just over 90 percent of all digital advertising, or $320 billion, was placed programmatically.

When you go to a website or open an app on your laptop or cell phone, the ad spaces on that page are instantaneously put up for sale on an ad exchange (the biggest exchange by far is owned by Google), an advertiser bids to serve an ad to you (the biggest ad serving platform by far is owned by Google) and if the advertiser wins the auction, an ad is served to you. This auction and related ad serving happens in about 200 milliseconds (the blink of an eye), as the page is loading, so you are unaware of what’s happening.

The key to programmatic’s explosion is that an ad is served “to you.” Because of cookies and device IDs, when the ad space on a website or mobile app you just opened was put up for auction on an exchange, advertisers knew exactly who you were, where you were and all about your browsing history. It was precise targeting; what Bill Lederer calls a laser-guided missile.

With Chrome and Safari/IOS eliminating third-party access to cookies and device IDs unless the consumer opts-in to personal tracking(which is highly unlikely without incentives), except on Google, Facebook and Amazon, this precise one-to-one audience targeting disappears. Now when advertisers bid on an ad impression, they have to evaluate the context — the content and environment — of the page on which an ad will appear and make some assumptions about the type of people who would consume that content. In other words, the content and the context the audience is consuming becomes a proxy by which a marketer must now infer the identity of the underlying audiences. For example, older people watch CBS’s “60 Minutes,” therefore Pfizer is more likely to find its audience there.

As Bill Lederer explained, “Advertisers must return to pre-internet, imprecise assumptions about context and audience. Advertisers will be returning to horseshoes and grenades, in which just getting close to the intended target has to be good enough.  For performance marketers, this will not be unlike returning to the Dark Ages after living in the Renaissance.”

What are the practical implications of this move to context from precision, privacy-busting targeting?

First, you will get less relevant digital ads. You’ll be asking “why did I get that ad?” Less relevant digital ads will probably result in people paying even less attention to ads, which, in turn, will mean advertisers will have a lower return on ad investment (ROI) and, thus, will have to invest more in digital advertising or switch to a more targeted digital medium such as Google, Facebook or Amazon or more targeted television such as connected TV (CTV).

Second, as Bill Lederer posits, “New currencies such as small monetary payments, cashback or redeemable points will be competing to incentivize audiences to opt-in to tracking, permissioned data-sharing and for attention itself.”

Third, creative execution will become more important in advertising, sort of a return to the days of Don Draper and “Mad Men” and to The Big Idea that connects to people emotionally because when you’re throwing horseshoes or grenades, getting closer to the target is how you win. 

Filed Under: Programmatic, Programmatic Tagged With: , , , , ,

Agenda Setting

June 15, 2021 By

In 1922 influential newspaper columnist and intellectual Walter Lippman in his book Public Opinion hypothesized that the media constructs our view of the world by creating “pictures in our heads.”  Fifty years later mass communication researchers Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw studied media content and public opinion during the 1968 presidential election and verified that Lippman was correct.  They called the phenomenon agenda setting.

McCombs and Shaw’s article in Public Opinion Quarterly in 1972 was titled “The Agenda Setting Function of the Mass Media,” and is considered by mass communication and media researchers and academics the most important theory in the study of mass communication. 

According to an article by Renita Coleman, Maxwell McCombs, Donald Shaw in The Handbook of Journalistic Studies (2009):

Agenda setting is the process of the mass media presenting certain issues an ideas frequently prominently with the result that large segments of the public come to perceive those issues as than others.  Simply put, the more coverage an issue receives, the more important it is to people.

In other words, agenda-setting research suggested that the media tells us what to think about, not necessarily what to think.  That was before the internet – in the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s – when the mass media consisted of radio, television, newspapers and magazines. 

Google was founded in 1998, Facebook was founded in 2004, Twitter in 2006 and Google bought YouTube also in 2006.  In 2007 Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone.  After 2007 the definition of the mass media changed.  It was now the fragmented media, and many people started getting their news from social media and from content that was not created or edited by trained journalists who were aware of agenda-setting theory and their responsibility to disseminate information about important issues.

As people began abandoning mass media for social media, mass media audiences declined.  In order to lure back audience, radio and especially television and cable news became more celebrity and entertainment oriented.  Ratings were the goal for newsrooms, not necessarily truth-telling.

Thus, the agenda became fragmented, confused, and in order to boost ratings television producers began booking Donald Trump.  The new agenda was unwittingly set.

Post Trump, the media seems to have learned its lesson.  Facebook and Twitter have banned Trump.  You rarely see Trump’s name or picture in The New York Times or Washington Post, or Trump being mentioned on TV news, except for Fox News.

As reported in Ad Week’s TV Newser newsletter on June 11, “NBC News President Noah Oppenheim Discusses Company’s Streaming Endeavors and Combating Disinformation.”

So, the new agenda seems to be to “combat disinformation,” which I think is a good thing.  The rules of journalism have changed, particularly about agenda setting, and new rules have yet to be clearly defined.  As NBC News president Oppenheim said:

“How do we persuade people who have already kind of wandered into the fever swamp of conspiracy theories and falsehoods?” This is a quandary that I think all of us are going to be grappling with for a long time to come.  I don’t know what the solution, what the fix is for those who have already kind of fallen prey to that, but I think it’s something we all have to work hard on.”

Responsible news media must work hard to set a new agenda and put pictures of the real world in people’s heads.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With:

Who’s the Customer?

June 9, 2021 By

On June 4, an article by Elahe Izadi titled “The new journalism — and the PR firms behind it” appeared in the Washington Post.  The article detailed that the Checks and Balances Project website and blog:

 Looks like a traditional if scrappy news site — an ‘investigative watchdog blog,’ as it bills itself, filled with serious stories scrutinizing corporate activities and government officials.  It employs an editor who used to work at USA Today.  For more than a decade, its investigations of powerful interests have been picked up by local and national news outlets.

However, on further investigation, Izadi found that:

Yet a closer look suggests the site is not always the independent crusader it appears to be.  When it investigated the hotel industry, it was after it had received a grant from Airbnb.  A high-profile investigation into Arizona utility regulators came after Checks and Balances received money from a solar power company, the company disclosed in 2015.

Now Checks and Balances is investigating a massive hospital system in Virginia named Sentara, publishing regular stories and asking patients and employees to send tips that might reveal how the nonprofit hospital “piled up $6 billion in liquid assets,” among other issues.

These stories started appearing the same month that a medical school in a complex dispute with Sentara hired a public relations firm that happens to share a founder and financial ties with Checks and Balances.

Scott Peterson, the executive director of Checks and Balances, said that its funding sources do not influence the course of its investigations.  In the case of Sentara, he said the site’s two-person staff chose to cover a powerful institution that has largely been overlooked by mainstream media.  And the PR firm and medical school said the payments between them did not fund the website’s investigations into the hospital chain.

But the relationship was not divulged to readers, nor publicly acknowledged until The Washington Post inquired about it — an arrangement that unnerves transparency advocates who have been keeping tabs on a proliferation of unconventional news sites and watchdog outfits that may be blurring the lines between PR and journalism.

What is “the relationship” that readers should know about?

Let’s pause for some definitions.  A customer is someone who buys a product.  A consumer is someone who uses a product.  For radio, television, newspapers and news websites and blogs, the consumer is the reader or viewer.  Pretty straightforward.  Who the customer is is a lot more complicated.   

For radio, broadcast television and printed newspapers and magazines, the traditional customers have been advertisers.  When media customers are advertisers, the customer is almost always right.  In other words, when advertisers are the primary customer, media tend to tailor their content to fit advertiser’s needs.

Cable news channels such as Fox News, MSNBC and CNN have two customers – a dual revenue stream – consisting of cable systems such as Comcast and Spectrum that pay the news networks a monthly fee per subscriber per month.  The more popular the cable network, the higher the monthly fees the systems pay the network.  So, cable networks have two customers that want the same thing –high ratings.  The cable systems want high ratings because, even though they pay a higher monthly per-sub fee eventually when the contracts are renegotiated, in the short run they can charge more for local advertising they sell in networks’ local breaks.

Fox News has another customer, who I will discuss later in this post.

But who is the customer for Checks and Balances?  I went to the website and there is no advertising.  Therefore, the customer pretty much has to be, as the Washington Post story suggests, PR money.

OK.  What is the difference between PR and propaganda?  The definition of propaganda is: “information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.”  Sounds like PR to me.  The goal of both PR and propaganda is not to communicate the truth or the facts, but to sell a point of view.

So, who is the customer for the opinion column by Michael Goodwin in the June 5, New York Post?  The headline of Goodwin’s column reads: “A battle over the future of news,” and supports the decision by the Board of Trustees of the University of North Carolina to withdraw an offer of tenure to Nikole Hannah-Jones, the creator of The New York Times’ Pulitzer-Prize-winning series “The 1619 Project.”

Goodwin over-dramatically writes:  “…the outcome will signal whether traditional standards of journalism can survive the onslaught of racialized advocacy the Times embraces.”  He goes on to claim:

The clash is especially noteworthy because of the two main antagonists.  Both are UNC graduates, but their views of journalism could not be more different.

On one side is Nikole Hannah-Jones, the flame-throwing creator of the …’1619 Project.’  She won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for an extended essay, but some of her claims were debunked by historians and her push for rewriting American history is cited as a reason why she should not get tenure.

Her chief critic is Walter E. Hussman Jr., the publisher of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and CEO of a family firm that owns newspapers, magazines and TV stations in the South and Midwest.  As an evangelist for impartial, fair journalism, he is the polar opposite of Hannah-Jones and says he wishes the Times “would get back to what it once was.”

Most important to the case at hand, Hussman has pledged $25 million to UNC, and its journalism school now bears his name.  In an interview, he told me he selected the school for his gift two years ago after it agreed to adopt a code of core values based on impartiality he publishes in his 11 newspapers every day.

We see, once again that money talks to the Board of Trustees.  The Hussman Journalism School had awarded Hannah-Jones tenure, which the Board withdrew after vocal criticism from conservatives, and, now we find out, from Hussman himself.

Goodwin is obviously taking a strong right-wing conservative position in his New York Post column.  Who is his customer?

If you look at the Post’s website, there aren’t a lot of ads, but there is a ton of salacious clickbait.  As of several years ago the Post, which is owned by the Rupert-Murdoch-controlled NewsCorp., reportedly lost over $50 million dollars a year.  Therefore, there aren’t enough advertisers to be influential customers.  Murdoch is the customer.

Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan are also the primary customers for Fox News because they control the hiring and firing of the Fox News entertainers. Sean Hannity. who reportedly makes $25million a year knows who his customer is and that his customer is always right (pun intended).

I guess the point I am making is that when you consume news content, consider who the customer is.  If the customers have values and ideas that are compatible with yours, then with confirmation bias, read/view ahead.  However, give some thought to the positions taken by the media to please their customers.

I subscribe to digital version of The New York Times.  I realize that the Times’ revenue comes primarily from subscriptions.  Therefore, the Times’ main customers are subscribers, not advertisers.  I have to remember when I read the Times to ask myself, “do I have the same values as the majority of Times subscribers?”

My answer is usually affirmative, but lately, I find that my values are a little more moderate than where the Times seems to be.  I think maybe the Times sees their customers to be their younger employees, not their much older subscribers.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , ,

Replacing Rush

June 3, 2021 By

Democrats, liberals and progressives can breathe a little easier because in the last couple of weeks the radio companies that distributed “The Rush Limbaugh Show” have announced a diverse group of replacements. 

Having a diverse group of hosts to replace Rush means that conservative talk radio will be fragmented and have many voices rather than one master bloviator.

By far the largest distributor of conservative talk radio is the Premiere Network, owned by the number-one radio company in revenue and number of stations (880), iHeart Media.  AXIOS MEDIA reports that Premiere Network announced last week “that the late Rush Limbaugh’s radio show will be taken over by sports journalist Clay Travis and radio host and political commentator Buck Sexton.”

Travis, 42, had a college football show on Fox Sports, and before that a similar show on a local Nashville radio station.  In 2010, The Nashville Scene named Travis “Best Sports Radio Host We Love To Hate.”   According to Wikipedia:

Travis has attracted harsh criticism for disputing government backed information about the COVID-19 pandemic.  Travis has repeatedly downplayed the severity of the disease, calling it “overrated,” claiming that it is less severe than the seasonal flu that fewer than several hundred would die of the disease in the US, that victims of the disease probably have been “killed a month or two earlier” than they would have been otherwise and inaccurately stated that the mortality rate for those under 80 and without pre-existing conditions is “virtually zero”.  He suggested that some advocates for mitigation measures to slow the spread were “rooting for the virus to triumph.”

From the Wall Street Journal on May 27:

Mr. Sexton, 39, is a radio host and political commentator who has served as an officer with the Central Intelligence Agency and a New York Police Department counterterrorism expert.  His three-hour weekday evening talk show, “The Buck Sexton Show”—formerly “America Now”—is syndicated to over 180 stations by Premiere, and he has served as a guest host for Mr. Limbaugh’s show.  Mr. Sexton is a regular on Fox News as a national security analyst and was previously national security editor for The Blaze.

Mr. Sexton pointed to their different backgrounds and younger ages as a boon for the show.

“The most dominant talk radio hosts have been from one generation; Clay and I represent the next phase.  We’re going to bring the perspective of two guys who see a country they’re deeply worried about, and a massive audience that needs people who will speak for them,” he said.

The name of the program will be “The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show.”  Note it’s a “show.”  In other words entertainment.

The second-largest radio company in terms of the number of stations it owns, Cumulus Media, announced that its network, Westwood One, would carry conservative radio host and popular podcaster Dan Bongino (47) to fill Rush’s time slot (12:00-3:00 pm) on its stations in markets including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. 

Bongino is a far-right political commentator, radio show host, and author.  He served as a New York City policeman from 1995 to 1999, and as a Secret Service agent from 1999 to 2011.  He ran for Congress unsuccessfully as a Republican in 2012, 2014 and 2016.  The program is called “The Don Bongino Show.”

The third-largest radio company in terms of number of stations, but second to iHeart in revenue, Audacy (formerly Entercom, which bought the CBS Radio stations in 2017), made the most interesting decision to replace Rush.  Audacy named a woman, Dana Loesch, to take over the Rush time slot.  She will be the first woman conservative talk show host on a major, nationwide hook-up.

Dana Loesch (42) is a former spokesperson for the National Rifle Association (NRA) and a former writer and editor for Breitbart News.  She currently hosts “The Dana Show,” which is produced by the conservative radio network Radio America.  In a March press release, Radio America announced:

Today, award-winning, nationally syndicated radio talk show host Dana Loesch signed a new multi-year deal with Radio America as she continues to dominate talk radio during the 12-3 p.m. ET hours, a time slot she has successfully occupied with The Dana Show since 2014.  Dana’s radio program is currently broadcast on nearly 200 stations (and growing) and her audience is currently in the top 10 of syndicated programs nationwide, according to TALKERS Magazine.  As the most listened to female talk show host in the country, she has attracted a large and loyal following in syndication, expanding the news/talk audience to include more men and women in their 30s and 40s, something the aging format desperately needs. 

I think the key to Audcy’s decision to distribute “The Dana Show” in its markets is based to a large degree as expressed in the last sentence in the quote above – trying to appeal to younger demos and to women.

Even though Dana Loesch is the most popular female conservative radio talk show host.  She is not the only one.  More and more women are joining the conservative radio and podcast ecosystem.  AXIOS MEDIA reports:

A growing number of the digital disrupters in conservative audio are women.

“The Liz Wheeler Show,” hosted by former OANN host Liz Wheeler, and The Daily Wire’s podcast “Candace,” hosted by Candace Owens, both list in Apple’s top 100 political podcast chart.  Laura Ingraham, a longtime leader in conservative talk radio, shifted into podcasting a few years ago.

“I don’t know if ‘historic’ is the word I would use, but it’s true that the sisterhood of talk radio broadcasting is a small club,” says Loesch.

“I don’t attribute this to outdated attitudes about women in this sphere, but rather the simple reality of vocal tonality in this specific medium.  Men’s voices hit the lower registers better, so I’m grateful to be an alto.”

The AXIOS MEDIA newsletter quoted above also reported that there is a trend in local radio for talk shows to be more entertaining and appeal to a younger audience that includes more women. 

The concept that the way to make conservative talk radio (or any podcast or radio or TV program) more popular, especially with women, is to be entertaining is not news.

Rush Limbaugh was popular because we was an entertainer, not an expert in politics or government.  People who listened to Rush tell me he had a great sense of humor and was funny (to them).

Radio talk shows, local television station news broadcasts and cable news networks are entertainment.  The more visual, gossipy and outrageous, the more entertaining.

So being entertaining is not new, and the conservative talk shows that are most entertaining and fun and gossipy and celebrity oriented will succeed.

To me the more interesting concept is that more and more podcasts and talk radio is being delivered by women.  Is this because women are more informal, chatty, gossipy, soothing, less strident or are easier to listen to?  In terms of being informal, note that Dana Loesch’s show doesn’t use her last name, but Dan Bongino and Clay Travis and Buck Sexton’s shows use their full names.

In a survey done for the podcasting industry and reported in AdExchanger.com: “Selecting the right voice actors sets the tone.  For example, Nielsen research agrees with our own independent NYT Custom Study on our podcast users, which found that listeners are four times more likely to prefer a female voice.”

So be it.  Go Dana.

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Amazon Buys MGM

May 27, 2021 By

You know you’re getting old when you read that Amazon is buying MGM, and the first two MGM movies that come to mind are 1939’s “Gone With the Wind” and “The Wizard of Oz.”

These two cinema classics are not owned by MGM, but by WarnerMedia, which on May 17 merged with Discovery.

All of this is confusing to an old man like me, who remembers seeing “The Wizard of Oz” in a movie theater in Battle Creek, Michigan, in 1939 when I was seven years old.

And I vividly remember seeing my favorite movie of all time, the stupendous “Singing in the Rain,” at the Golden Nugget theater in Hannover, New Hampshire, in 1951.

When Amazon bought MGM, it didn’t buy the rights to “Gone With the Wind,” “The Wizard of Oz” or “Singing in the Rain,” which is probably why it paid only $8.5 billion.  The value of AT&T’s WarnerMedia merger with Discovery was valued at $43 billion.  Of course.  Discovery got the MGM library, which, according to a May 26, story in IndieWire:

In 1986, Ted Turner made a series of deals that resulted in Turner Broadcasting taking ownership of all prior MGM films.  Not unlike Amazon, he wanted the films for programming his growing cable empire and the library became one of the pillars that built Turner Classic Movies.  Today, WarnerMedia owns both TCM and Turner’s MGM library.  Many titles, including “The Wizard of Oz,” are available to stream on HBO Max.

So why did Amazon buy MGM?  In announcing the deal, according to Media Post on May 27, Jeff Bezos said:

 “The only way to get above-average returns is to take risks, and many won’t pay off,” he said.  “Our whole history as a company is about taking risks, many of which have failed and many of which will fail, but we’ll continue to take big risks.”

Asked about this week’s announcement of its intention to acquire MGM for $8.45 billion, Bezos said: “MGM has a vast, deep catalog of much-beloved intellectual property, and with the talented people at MGM and Amazon studios, we can reimagine and develop that IP [intellectual property] for the 21st century.  It’s going to be a lot of fun and people who love stories are going to be the big beneficiaries.”

Bezos’s key phrase was, “it’s going to be a lot of fun…”  Guess who’s going to have fun?

Author Brad Stone in his book Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire, writes:

And off the top of his head, displaying his characteristic ability to shift disciplines multiple times a day, then reduce complex issues down to their most essential essence, he started to reel off the ingredients of epic storytelling:

A heroic protagonist who experiences growth and change

A compelling antagonist

Wish fulfillment (e.g., the protagonist has hidden abilities, such as superpowers or magic)

Moral choices

Diverse worldbuilding (different geographic landscapes)

Urgency to watch next episode (cliffhangers)

Civilizational high stakes (a global threat to humanity like an alien invasion—or a devastating pandemic)

Humor

Betrayal

Positive emotions (love, joy, hope)

Negative emotions (loss, sorrow)

Violence

Like so many rich men have (remember Martin Davis and Paramount), Jeff Bezos wants to make movies.  He’s given a lot of thought to what makes a good movie, so we’ll see if he’s as good at making movies as he has been at making himself and Amazon shareholders rich.

I’m guessing that he’ll succeed at making movies.  Take a close look at his list above on the ingredients of epic storytelling.  Except for the cliffhangers ingredient, doesn’t it seem like he’s describing “The Wizard of Oz?”

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More On Tenure

May 26, 2021 By

The lead story in the New York Times on Sunday, May 22, was titled “Long Slide Looms for World Population, With Sweeping Ramifications.” The first paragraph read:

All over the world, countries are confronting population stagnation and a fertility bust, a dizzying reversal unmatched in recorded history that will make first-birthday parties a rarer sight than funerals, and empty homes a common eyesore.

Further into the story was this paragraph referring to South Korea:

Universities below the elite level, especially outside Seoul, find it increasingly hard to fill their ranks — the number of 18-year-olds in South Korea has fallen from about 900,000 in 1992 to 500,000 today. To attract students, some schools have offered scholarships and even iPhones.

And several paragraphs later: “Many countries are beginning to accept the need to adapt, not just resist. South Korea is pushing for universities to merge.”

In my most recent blog entry on May 21, titled “Tenure Kerfuffle,” I ended it by indicating that in the post-internet era the concept of tenure was outrageous. The Times story provides another reason why tenure is going to have to go away.

According to the Times story: “South Korea’s fertility rate dropped to a record low of 0.92 in 2019 — less than one child per woman, the lowest rate in the developed world.”

So, let’s assume that the United States is not going to have a 44.44 percent drop in 18-year-olds in ten years like South Korea did, but it might have, say, a 25 percent drop.

If I were president of a non-Ivy League, non-elite (top 30) university, I’d start planning now for how my university was going to deal with, a potential 25 percent drop in the 18-year-old population and therefore a potential 25 percent drop in enrollment. What areas of expenses would I look at to reduce in order to adjust to a potential drop of at least 25 percent in tuition revenue?

After looking at cutting administrative and other non-teaching expenses, eventually, I’d look at teaching expenses, and I’d have to ask myself, “In these times of declining population, do I want to obligate my university to a life-long contract to a 35-year-old teacher who I can’t fire unless he /she/they molests children or murders someone?”

There are many reasons for colleges and universities to reexamine tenure. The drop in the U.S. and the worldwide birth rate is just another pressure point, especially for universities that enroll a high percentage of international students, such as the University of Rocester and The New School (where I recently retired from teaching) which both have over 30 percent international students, who tend to pay higher tuition than U.S. students.

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Tenure Kerfuffle

May 21, 2021 By

The well-respected University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Hussman School of Journalism hired Nikole Hannah-Jones, a New York Times journalist, as a tenured professor, but then reneged on the deal.

Hannah-Jones was the driving force behind the Times’ series “The 1619 Project,” which examined the history of slavery and its impact on America.  It won a Pulitzer Prize.

Susan King, dean of the Hussman School of Journalism said Hannah-Jones was supposed to join the school as a tenured professor,  “But now it appears that her role as Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism will not be tenured, at least for now.  Instead, her position will be a fixed-term Professor of the Practice with the option of being eligible for tenure within five years.”

King also said that she was told that the UNC-CH Board of Trustees was hesitant to give tenure to “someone outside of academia.”  King further commented that she was disappointed in the decision and worried about how this might affect the school.

Apparently, as a routine matter, the appointment went to a committee at the university’s Board of Trustees that approves tenure decisions.  Several non-academic practicing journalists had been previously approved by the committee for tenure, so the denial of Hannah-Jones was suspect of being racist.

Several conservative publications objected to Hannah-Jones being given tenure.  For example, as Tom Jones writes in the “Poynter Report:” the conservative National Review had this headline: “University of North Carolina Disgraces Itself with Latest Faculty Hire.”  It used the word “propaganda” to describe the “1619 Project.”  The Carolina Partnership for Reform wrote, “This lady is an activist reporter — not a teacher.”

Journalists and academics around the country have trashed the decision as clearly racist and influenced by the conservative (white supremacist) media.  Another win by the extremist right.

One of the things that this tenure kerfuffle brings to mind is the whole concept of tenure.  Tenure is outmoded and inhibits innovation.  Tenure is just like seniority in unions; it rewards doggedness, not performance. 

With the advent of the internet, rapidly changing technology and advancing science the courses that are taught in colleges and universities are constantly changing and being updated.  What does a university do with a tenured professor of philosophy who teaches a course on Ludwig Wittgenstein that has an average of 11 students (or less) in a class? 

Denying Hannah-Jones tenure is outrageous.  So is the concept of tenure.

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Sorry, Amazon

May 16, 2021 By

Sorry, Amazon. I was 100% wrong in my last blog about censoring Amy Klobuchar’s book Antitrust.

Today, Sunday, May 16, Antitrust is available on Amazon. I bought it.

My good friend Jesse Kornbluth pointed out my error in screaming “censorship,” and I have to thank him for that because I don’t want to fall into the easy trap of being a conspiracy theorist.

What Jesse explained to me is that it isn’t Amazon that is making editorial decisions and not putting books up for sale, but that it is usually the publishers who delay getting all the proper information to Amazon on a timely basis.

I remember last summer when my textbook, Media Selling, 5th Edition, was published by Wiley Blackwell. I was notified by the publisher that the book was officially published in July. I remember going to Amazon that day to see if it was posted. The notification was that it would be available in September, which when I read it, disappointed me.

I often accuse people of playing the blame game, and now, with chagrin, I find myself playing it — unfairly, of course, as the blame game usually is.

I apologize, Amazon, for accusing you of censorship. I should have realized that all of the decisions about listing hundreds of thousands of books each year is fully automated. Decisions are made by AI, not human editors.

However, AI isn’t any fun. The blame game and crazy conspiracy theories are much more fun, especially when they confirm our biases.

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Amazon Censorship

May 15, 2021 By

Today, May 15, 2021, I went through my routine of selectively reading the Saturday New York Times. As I usually do, I looked at the Best Sellers list in the Book Review section, and I was pleased to see that one of my favorite books I have read in the last year, Malcolm Gladwell’s The Bomber Mafia, was #2 on the non-fiction list.

I also checked out the Editor’s Choices, as I usually do, and noticed that Amy Klobuchar’s ANTITRUST: Taking on Monopoly Power From the Gilded Age to the Digital Age was one of the nine book listed. I had meant to buy the book when it was published in late April, so I opened my Amazon account, clicked on books in the drop-down menu and typed in “antitrust amy klobuchar.”

The results: five summaries and reviews of Antitrust, but no original book. One result was titled A Fascinating Review of Antitrust By Amy Klobuchar: A Staggeringly Detailed History of Current Fights Against Monopolies in America. Kindle price: $4. You can guess from the title and the price that this was probably not a rigourous support of the book.

Why would Amazon not sell the original book? There can only be one answer: censorship. Amazon obviously didn’t like a well-researched book about antitrust (the New York Times review of Antitrust noted that there were 200 pages of footnotes).

Not only does not selling Antitrust reek of censorship, being unethical and stifling freedom of expression but it also seems just petty. Amazon should be better than that.

One of Amazon’s 14 core operating principles is “customer obsession,” and is probably the principle most people are familiar with. What message is Amazon sending to its customers by not selling a book by a respected United States Senator? Does Amazon think its book customers are not smart enough to realize Antitrust is being censored, ignored?

In Brad Stone’s new book about Jeff Bezos and Amazon, Amazon Unbound, Stone quotes Bezos as saying that it has been mistakes that have, to a large part, driven Amazon’s success. Even though this idea smells a lot like false humility, not selling Klobuchar’s Antitrust is one mistake that is not going to lead to success among Amazon’s discerning book buyers.

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Media Curmudgeon Hiatus

April 15, 2021 By

My last Media Curmudgeon post was on January 17, of this year, just before I came down with COVID-19 on January 29.

I was hospitalized for five weeks beginning January 31, came home to recuperate on March 3, and have had a slow but steady recovery.

I intend to start writing Media Curmudgeon again later this summer; however, in July Google is discontinuing Feedburner, the service I use to manage subscriptions.

Therefore, if you’d like to receive via email Media Curmudgeon when I start posting again, please send me an email. Write something like, “count me in,” and I will set up a new subscription service and include your email address.

Thanks.

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“News of the World”

January 17, 2021 By

Last night Julia and I paid $19.99 on Amazon Primes to watch Tom Hanks in the movie “News of the World” that NBC-owned Universal originally opened in theaters across the country. We enjoyed the movie, especially the performances of Mr. Everyman, Tom Hanks, and the newcomer, young Helena Zengel. Watching it triggered some thinking about the half-title of this blog, “media.”

In ” News of the World” Hanks deftly plays a character named Captain Jefferson Kidd, who in 1870 travels the Texas Hill Country reading stories from newspapers to a largely illiterate crowd for a contribution of 10 cents — i.e. a subscription revenue model.

The movie opens with a scene in which Captain Kidd reads a story about a coal mine disaster, which intrigues his audience. In a later session in another, a larger town, Kidd reads a story about the recently passed and controversial (in Texas) 13th Amendment abolishing slavery.

In reflecting on the movie I realized that whether intended or not, “News of the World” was a metaphor for the dilemma the media faces currently. Hanks’ Captain Jefferson Kidd is an 1870 media — a channel distributing news, a message (content ) to a receiver (an audience). Classic communication theory.

As an aggregator and distributor of content to an audience, Kidd must figure out a way to monetize (not an 1870 word) his efforts. The revenue model he chooses is a subscription model — pay upfront whether you listen to or, more importantly, whether you agree with the message or not. The model works well when he reads stories about disasters because, as 1980s research on TV news content showed, people like to hear about disasters somewhere else so they feel better (“Things may be bad here, but not as bad as there.”)

Captain Kidd learns the danger of the subscription model when he reads about the 13th Amendment. The last scene in the movie (spoiler alert) shows Kidd reading an entertaining story about a man who was buried alive, but comes back to life, and gives a raucous, rousing, revealing last line. He has learned that the news of the world has to be entertaining.

In 1870 the advertising revenue model had not been invented yet. But is the advertising model a better than subscriptions for monetizing news distribution? In the1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s I thought so. I thought that by depending on advertising that the media was able to keep free of government interference and go down the Walter Cronkite middle. Keep the news balanced, and most of all entertaining. Advertisers wanted to avoid controversial content. They wanted a bland content environment so their ads could stand out.

The pressure that Hanks’ Captain Kidd faced from subscribers to hear only stories that amused them has been carried forward in the media today, regardless whether the pressure comes from subscribers or advertisers. Probably the pressure to increase advertising revenue is greater because the rewards are higher. Advertising revenues scale higher because the ceiling can be higher.

In the 1960s through the 1980s, the primary goal of many media outlets was to serve their communities first, and make a profit second. Especially family owned newspapers and network-owned TV and radio stations tended to follow this community-first, “we” model.

It all changed when the FCC trashed the Fairness Doctrine and conservative talk-show hosts and Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News decided on a profit-first, individualist, “me” revenue model. Then this me-first, profit-first, give-me-what_I-want approach model was accelerated by social media — Facebook, Twitter and Google’s YouTube. Truth and decency be damned, full speed ahead with lies and misinformation, led by the criminal-in-chief, because that’s what made the most money.

Facebook, Twitter and YouTube finally did the decent thing and shut down Trump’s dangerous, sedition mongering, but not until a mob of crazies had stormed the Capitol. The riot at the Capitol was the fault of social media and, of course, the insane criminal in the White House.

I heard a report on WNYC that said a poll of Americans had revealed that a majority of those surveyed thought the riot at the Capitol was caused by, number-one social media and, number-two, by Trump.

I’ve spent my adult life selling advertising in the media, getting a master’s degree in media, teaching about the media and writing five editions of a textbook about selling advertising in the media. After hearing about the poll reported on WNYC, I thought of a joke my father used to tell.

We lived in Chicago in the early 1930s, and my father had a friend who was a reporter for the Chicago Tribune. Apparently, the reporter had written a story my father liked, and my father said to the reporter, “That was a great story, I’m sure your mother is very proud of you.” The reporter replied, “Never tell my mother I work for the Chicago Tribune! She’s very liberal and thinks I play piano in a whorehouse.”

I’ve never been ashamed before about devoting my life to the media and to selling advertising, but I’ve changed my mind. Don’t tell anyone I’m in the media, tell them I play piano in a whorehouse.

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