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What Is the Future of the Republican Party?

July 12, 2020 By

By the middle of July, most reliable polls and the betting markets are predicting the defeat of Donald Trump in the upcoming election, and some pundits are speculating what effect a Trump defeat would have on the Republican party. 

Frank Bruni in The New York Times in his Sunday, July 12, column interviewed George Conway, a Never Trumper and one of the founders of the Lincoln Project, an organization that has created some “minute-long masterpieces of derision” anti-Trump commercials, such as “Mourning in America.”

Bruni wrote that Conway told him that, “I personally think that the Republican brand is probably destroyed.  It’s destroyed by it having become essentially a personality cult.” This comment reminded me of an article in the July/August edition of The Atlantic by Anne Applebaum titled “History Will Judge the Complicit.”

Applebaum writes that history will judge those who collaborated with Trump the same way it judged those who collaborated with Hitler in Word War II.  In the article the author writes:

It takes time to persuade people to abandon their existing value systems.  The process usually begins slowly, with small changes.  Social scientists who have studied the erosion of values and the growth of corruption inside companies have found, for example, that “people are more likely to accept the unethical behavior of others if the behavior develops gradually (along a slippery slope) rather than occurring abruptly,” according to a 2009 article in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. This happens, in part, because most people have a built-in vision of themselves as moral and honest, and that self-image is resistant to change.  Once certain behaviors become “normal,” then people stop seeing them as wrong.

In reading the above, think of Facebook. Now, think of Republicans in the House and Senate and how they viewed themselves  beginning in January, 2017. Applebaum writes:

The built-in vision of themselves as American patriots, or as competent administrators, or as loyal party members, also created a cognitive distortion that blinded many Republicans and Trump-administration officials to the precise nature of the president’s alternative value system.  After all, the early incidents were so trivial.  They overlooked the lie about the inauguration [crowds]because it was silly.  They ignored Trump’s appointment of the wealthiest Cabinet in history, and his decision to stuff his administration with former lobbyists, because that’s business as usual.  They made excuses for Ivanka Trump’s use of a private email account, and for Jared Kushner’s conflicts of interest, because that’s just family stuff.

Applebaum goes on to write that:

Nevertheless, 20 months into the Trump administration, senators and other serious-minded Republicans in public life who should have known better began to tell themselves stories that sound very much like those in Miłosz’s The Captive Mind.  Some of these stories overlap with one another; some of them are just thin cloaks to cover self-interest.  But all of them are familiar justifications of collaboration, recognizable from the past.  Here are the most popular.

  • We can use this moment to achieve great things.
  • We can protect the country from the president.
  • I, personally, will benefit.
  • I must remain close to power.
  • LOL nothing matters.  Cynicism, nihilism, relativism, amorality, irony, sarcasm, boredom, amusement—these are all reasons to collaborate,
  • My side might be flawed, but the political opposition is much worse.
  • I am afraid to speak out.

When you read the above reasons for collaboration, think of Lindsay Graham and Mitt Romney.  Both entered the Senate with records of being decent men.  Graham had been a close friend and ally of John McCain, and Romney had been a good governor of Massachusetts who introduced probably the best state health care system.  What of the above reasons caused Graham to collaborate, and why did Romney not collaborate?  What will history say about these two senators?  Will those who inherit the leadership of the Republican party be those who collaborated and enabled Trump like Graham, Tucker Carlson or Senator Tom Cotton or those who were Never Trumpers like Mitt Romney?

Applebaum ends her Atlantic article with this paragraph:

I leave anyone who has the bad luck to be in public life at this moment with a final thought from Władysław Bartoszewski, who was a member of the wartime Polish underground, a prisoner of both the Nazis and the Stalinists, and then, finally, the foreign minister in two Polish democratic governments.  Late in his life—he lived to be 93—he summed up the philosophy that had guided him through all of these tumultuous political changes.  It was not idealism that drove him, or big ideas, he said.  It was this: Warto być przyzwoitym—“Just try to be decent.”  Whether you were decent—that’s what will be remembered.

In my last blog about the controversies and ad boycott surrounding Facebook’s hands-off policies concerning hate-speech and promotion of violence by Trump, I wrote that the biggest loser in Facebook’s policies was decency.  I ended the blog post with, “Hello hate speech.  Goodbye decency.”

Will the future of the Republican party be driven by hate speech or decency?

Filed Under: Republicans Tagged With: , ,

The Sound and Fury Surrounding Facebook

July 8, 2020 By

A week ago last Friday, I began writing a blog post about the pressure on Facebook from politicians, employees, advertisers and some users to change their algorithms to do a better job of limiting hate speech, racist language and violence-inducing posts.  I stopped writing because I said to myself, “Self, you’d better wait and see how the story develops and if more advertisers join the boycott and if the boycott forces Mark Zuckerberg to change his hands-off policy of not factchecking Trump or other politicians or censoring hate speech, racist language or violence-inducing posts.”

The New York Times, in both news and opinion, the Washington Post, and publications and online newsletters such as Media Post, Digital News, The Information, Stratechery and POLITICO among many others have reported on the Facebook censorship and boycott issues.  I have followed the controversy and tried to keep up in order to make sense of it.  And over the 4th of July weekend, I finally realized, to quote Macbeth, “It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

So, who’s the idiot?

Not Mark Zuckerberg, whose stock in Facebook on Tuesday, July 7, made him worth $85.4 billion, which put him #3 on the list of wealthiest Americans, behind Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates, just ahead of Warren Buffet.

Zuckerberg has resisted changing Facebook’s no-censorship policy using a freedom-of-speech argument, and has said that Facebook does not want to be arbiters of the truth.  He has made some cosmetic changes after being pressured by #StopHateforProfit, a group formed by the Anti-Defamation League, the NAACP, Sleeping Giants, Color of Change, Free Press and Common Sense.  The #StopHatyeForProfit group asked corporations to suspend their advertising on Facebook (and its Instagram subsidiary) for the month of July, and about 500 large national advertisers have announced they have pulled their advertising for July.

Zuckerberg’s response has been, “they’ll be back,” which is probably correct, although it was announced on Tuesday, June 7, that Zuckerberg and Facebook COO, Sheryl Sandberg, would hold a virtual meeting with major advertisers to hear their concerns.

What is all this sound and fury about?

For the last half of this past spring semester, I taught my two graduate courses on Zoom.  All of my 38 students were isolated at home in America or India or Brazil or Russia.  In order to keep my students occupied and engaged in learning, when The New School semester ended, I offered a free, no-credit, six-week course, not associated with The New School, to my current and several former students. 

I had 21 students sign up for the course titled Competitive Strategies and Game Theory.  The required text was Brandenburger and Nalebuff’s classic book, Co-opetition.  Chapter 7: Tactics discusses the use of tactics in competitive strategy.  The authors write that the goal of tactics in the game of business is to change perceptions – perceptions of competitors, customers, suppliers and complementors.  The idea is that you don’t have to change your business model, change your overall business strategy or change your pricing, you just have to change perceptions.

In the Facebook boycott controversy, the #StopHateForProfit pressure group is trying to change the public’s perception of Facebook.  National advertisers such as Unilever, Coca-Cola, Verizon and Starbucks are pulling their adverting for July, and are trying to make themselves look good by making statements, according to The New York Times, such as, “Facebook has not done enough to address” hate speech and disinformation (Denny’s).  Or “Facebook’s failure to stop the spread of misinformation and hate speech on its platform” and saying that “this inaction fuels racism and violence and also has the potential to threaten our democracy and the integrity of our elections.” (Levi Strauss & Company).  Or “At Pfizer, our Equity Value is core to who we are as a company, and all forms of hate speech go against that value.” 

Zuckerberg’s reaction?

BBC News reported that Zuckerberg’s response to the boycott was, “My guess is that all these advertisers will be back on the platform soon enough.”  He added, “We’re not going to change our policies or approach on anything because of a threat to a small percent of our revenue.”  The comments were made to Facebook staff at a private meeting.  Zuckerberg’s tactic was to create the perception among employees and investors that Facebook is just fine, and not affected by the boycott, which is undoubtedly the case.

Investors must agree with Zuckerberg, because since he made that statement on July 1, Facebook’s stock has risen from $237.55 to $240.86 on July 7.

So, does the sound and fury of all of these dueling perception-fixing tactics really signify nothing?  And if so, who is the idiot?  It’s not Zuckerberg or Facebook.  The situation is a win-win for Facebook, #StopHateForProfit, large national advertisers and investors.  Facebook looks good to free-speech advocates and doesn’t take down hate speech or violence inducing posts.  #StopHateForProfit looks good because they can claim they led an advertising boycott movement.  Large national advertisers get to sound oh, so self-righteous and goodie two shoes in addition to saving money. Investors make money as the stock go up.  None of them are idiots; they are all winners.

So, who is the idiot?  I think it is the news media that dutifully report on all of the perception-distorting tactics without context and as though the sound and fury signified reality.  The news media rarely covers the biggest loser in these perception wars.

The biggest loser is decency.  Facebook users will continue to be engaged by dopamine-producing posts that contain lies, hate speech, racist slurs and that encourage violence, and national advertisers’ ads will appear next to this trash.  The advertisers can shout their highfaluting values, but they want to sell toilet paper and cell phone data plans to everyone, no matter their political leanings, so they will be back.

Hello hate speech.  Goodbye decency.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , , ,

I Watched “Casablanca” and Was Shocked, Shocked.

June 13, 2020 By

When HBO Max deputed on May 27, I subscribed immediately, primarily because several of my favorite old movies such as “Casablanca” and “Gone With Wind” were being offered. I hadn’t seen either movie in over 20 years, and I thought I that while being stuck in my house in New York I would be able to catch up.

Old people like me (I’m 88) tend to get nostalgic in their dotage and go back to their favorite music, especially music they danced to in their junior and senior proms, and return to movies they loved in those same years. In that halcyon time I listened to Frankie Laine, Billy Eckstine and my favorite, Louis Armstrong. I had dozens of Louie’s songs on 78″ wax records.

My favorite movie in those years was “Casablanca,” which I first saw when I was 10 years old. And in my in teenage years I loved it because it was so romantic — ” A kiss is still a kiss…” I fell madly in love with Ingrid Bergman — she replaced Kathryn Grayson as my ideal woman, and, of course, I was Rick Blain — a mysterious man who women found irresistible.

In 1994 I had been at the University of Missouri for six years, so I had earned a sabbatical — a semester off with full pay. I spent my sabbatical doing research on how to write a screenplay and wrote a script that was a sequel about Rick in 1968 operating a disco in Paris and running into Ilsa and Victor and their two children. I wrote it because I wanted to know what happened to Rick and Ilsa and what kind of lives they led without each other.

In May of 1999 when I was working for AOL, my boss, Myer Berlow’s, wife set me up on a blind date with a woman, Julia Bradford, who had recently been divorced. Myer’s wife, Deborah, told me that Julia was a school teacher who lived on the Upper East Side and was much younger than I was. Deborah also told me that Julia was concerned about our age difference but was willing to go out with me because it was “good dating experience.” On our first date, I took her to Palm Too where my cartoon was still on the wall from when I had been General Manager of WNBC-AM in 1977-79. Naturally, I wanted to try to impress Julia with my tattered, faded fame.

I immediately liked Julia, and we had a far-ranging, lively conversation as we got to know each other better. At one point in the conversation, I asked Julia when her birthday was. “January 22, 1949,” she unhesitatingly told me. Trying to calculate the age difference, I wrote my birthday down — February 23, 1932. I’ve never been good at math, but I managed to scribble a subtraction — 17 years. I was desperate to think of something that would minimize the age difference because I really liked this intelligent, honest woman. I stared at the dates, and suddenly the perfect argument came to me. “Do you realize that we are exactly the same age apart as Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman were in “Casablanca.”

Bingo! I overcame the age objection. On our fourth date we watched “Casablanca” together, and on our fifth date I asked Julia to marry me. We got married the following January. Guess where we went on our honeymoon? Paris, of course. We’ve had a marvellous marriage for 21 years, and I probably have my knowledge of “Casablanca” at least partially to thank for it.

Therefore, on May 27, when I subscribed to HBO Max, I watched “Casablanca” for the umpteenth time. But here’s what I saw in 2020.

The protagonist, Rick Blaine, was a cafe and casino owner who, when Major Strasser asks him his nationality, replies “drunkard.” Rick runs a crooked gambling casino where he and his croupier can fix the winning numbers on the roulette wheel. Rick also uses his crooked casino to let a totally (self-identified) corrupt official, Captain Renault, win at roulette and also bribes Renault with free drinks. Furthermore, Rick has a checkered past. Near the beginning of the film, when Renault says, “I’ve often speculated on why you don’t return to America. Did you abscond with the church funds? Did you run off with the Senator’s wife? I’d like to think you killed a man. It’s the romantic in me.” Rick replies, “It’s a combination of all three.” So maybe Rick’s a murderer?

In the classic ending of the film, Rick says, “Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.” A friendship with a corrupt police chief, who in Harvey Weinstein style, uses his power to demand (and get) sexual favors from women. In today’s #MeToo environment making Captain Renault’s behavior acceptable is anathema.

Rick shows he a “romanticist” by letting a young husband win enough money to bribe Renault by dishonestly fixing two spins of the roulette wheel so the husband’s bride doesn’t have to sleep with Renault to get exit visas. In a previous scene the bride has come to Rick to get his advice about sleeping with Renault, Rick’s callous response is, “Go back to Bavaria,” which is like having the same attitude as Hollywood executives had in enabling Harvey Weinstein — don’t get involved. That scene would not be included in a film today.

The movie’s depiction of Sam is a 1942 stereotype of a grinning, happy-to-be subservient, musically talented black supplicant who calls Rick “Mister Richard.” After Sam plays “As Time Goes By,” and he says to Rick, “We’ll get drunk, we’ll go fishin’,” it just reinforces negative stereotypes of black men in 1942 — lazy drunks. Also, when Rick sells Rick’s Cafe to Signore Ferrari (Sidney Greenstreet), they negotiate Sam’s compensation, and even though Rick gets a good deal for Sam, there’s no getting around the fact that they are buying and selling a black man who has no agency.

And, mentioning agency, what about Ilsa? Today, what do we think about a woman who says, “I don’t know what’s right any longer. You’ll have to think for both of us, for all of us.” Because of the Production Code (the Breen Office) in effect in 1942, the scene in which Ilsa, who can’t resist her overpowering feelings, goes to Rick’s office to get the Letters of Transit. The scene is purposely ambiguous as to whether or not Ilsa sleeps with Rick. I think the clear implication is that she does. If so, what do we think about Rick ratting her out to Victor in the final, iconic airport scene in which Rick says to Victor, Ilsa’s husband, “You said you knew about me and Ilsa.” Victor says, “yes.” Rick says, ” But you didn’t know she was at my place last night when you were. She came there for the Letters of Transit. Isn’t that true, Ilsa?” Ilsa replies, “Yes.” Rick continues, “She tried everything to get them and nothing worked. She did her best to convince me that she was still in love with me. But that was all over long ago. For your sake she pretended it wasn’t, and I let her pretend. Victor says, “I understand.” What are the chances today of a boyfriend ratting out a wife’s unfaithfulness to a husband and the husband saying, “I understand.”

In the current climate of #MeToo and Black Lives Matter, “Casablanca” could not be made today. No studio would accept the script.

Watching the movie 78 years after it was made, my sensitivities and identity have changed radically, and I see “Casablanca” in a new perspective and evaluate it differently. Does this mean that: 1) HBO Max should take down “Casablanca” like it did “Gone With the Wind” and 2) with all of its flaws should we still love a movie and its war-time message of the inherent altruism (“we” versus “me”) of the human spirit and the nobility of sacrifice in wartime?

No to #1 and yes to #2. With all of its flaws, we need the gooey romanticism of “As Time Goes By,” and we absolutely need to know that “We’ll always have Paris.”

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Journalism Is Accountable, Too

June 9, 2020 By

Last Friday, June 5, I was having a lunchtime Zoom meeting with two friends who graduated from the University of Missouri School of Journalism — Mike Wheeler, former president of FNN and CNBC and Byron (“Barney”) Calame, former deputy managing editor of the Wall Street Journal and second public editor of The New York Times. In our conversation I asked Barney what he thought of The Times publishing a commentary article by Arkansas senator Tom Cotton titled “Send In the Troops” that advocated deploying the military to quell protests.

Barney said that he didn’t think that The Times should have published it and that the editor of the editorial page, James Bennett, probably should face some consequences. On Sunday, June 7, The Time’s publisher announced that Bennett had resigned. I sent Barney an email congratulating him on making a good call. Barney replied with what I thought was a very insightful and proper question: “Should A.G. get a rookie pass?”

“A.G.” is A.G. Sulzberger, who was appointed publisher of The New York Times in January, 2018, when he was 37 years old. Sulzberger ably led The Times in a digital transformation, but the brouhaha over publishing the Cotton commentary was the first major journalistic crisis he faced. Sulzberger initially backed Bennett’s decision to publish the Cotton letter as being consistent with The Times’s tradition of publishing opinions on both sides of controversial issues, but Sulzberger reconsidered his decision when he learned that Bennet had not read the Cotton commentary amd that 1,000 staff had signed a letter criticizing publishing Cotton’s piece.

Here is what I emailed Barney Calame in answer to his question about Sulzberger’s ultimate decision:

I think the question about A.G. getting a rookie pass is very interesting.
From what I have read, here’s what I think might have happened: 1) I’ll bet A.G.’s initial instinct was probably the right one from a management perspective, which is for top management to back up, support the decisions of their managers; not to second guess them. 2) A.G. probably bought Bennet’s initial logic about running the Cotton piece because of the history of the Times running opinions on both sides of an issue. 3) A.G. didn’t at first know, I’m guessing, that Bennett hadn’t read Cotton’s piece, and when he found out probably began questioning both the process and Bennet’s effectiveness. 4) When I first heard that Bennett had “resigned,” I suspected there might be more than just publishing the Cotton letter going on.  

Then I read The Times media columnist, Ben Smith’s, June 7, column titled “Inside the Revolts Erupting in America’s Big Newsrooms” in which he writes: “When the highly regarded Sunday Business editor, Nick Summers, said in a Google Hangout meeting last Thursday that he wouldn’t work for Mr. Bennet, he drew agreement from colleagues in a chat window.” When 1,000 Times staff signed  letter protesting publishing the Cotton letter, I suspect that A.G. realized Bennett didn’t have the support of the staff and had to go.

In my management classes I often refer to a Stanford Business School research study in which the school conducted in-depth interviews with the class of 1968, then interviewed the 5 % most successful graduates in 1978 and in 1988. The study was looking for qualities that made the 5% so successful.  What they found out was that there were only two things that correlated with success: 1) All of the 5% most successful graduates were in the lower half of the class in grades and 2) they were all popular.  In other words, success had more to do with emotional intelligence (EQ) than IQ. 

Perhaps Bennett was not popular, that he had low EQ. Maybe he was better at managing up than managing down and across. Maybe he was more interested in his own career than in helping those who worked for him manage their careers. We will probably never know the real story, but I do know that those who follow The Times’ reporters and columnists on Twitter were aware that two columnists Bennett had hired were considered hard to work with and were unpopular. Therefore, we have to ask the question, if Bennett and his hiring decisions had been popular, if Nick Summers had said that he would walk through a brick wall to work for Bennett, would Bennett still be at The Times?

I posed this question to a journalist friend who is familiar with the inner workings and politics at The Times, and the answer was, “no.” My friend said that no one gets a pass in these turbulent times. The editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer resigned because under his watch a column was titled “Buildings Matter, Too.”

After George Floyd’s murder, the police and journalists no longer get a pass. They will be held accountable, and that’s a good thing because Black Lives Do Matter.

Filed Under: Black Lives Matter Tagged With: , ,

No Punishment

June 8, 2020 By

On the front page of The New York Times, on Sunday, June 7, this headline appeared: “Fierce Protectors of Police Impede Efforts at Reform.” The story detailed how “Unions Using Their Outsized Power Resist Checks on Officers’ Behavior.” This is a problem I am familar with.

When I became V.P. and General Manager of NBC-owned WMAQ-AM and WJOI-FM in 1974, the stations were co-located with WMAQ-TV in the Merchandise Mart. I had come to Chicago from Pittsburgh where I had been the General Manager of WWSW-AM and WPEZ-FM. At those stations we had two engineers — a chief engineer and a transmitter engineer. When NBC Radio President Jack Thayer hired me to run WMAQ,and WJOI, one of the first things he told me as that the stations had 35 engineers. “What! Why in the world does the station have 35 engineers when we need only two or three?”, I asked in outrage.

Jack Thayer calmly explained to me that the reason the radio stations had so many engineers was because of the NABET union contract. Highly profitable WMAQ-TV also had NABET engineers, so the union leveraged its power to featrerbed jobs and get seniority and tenure at the radio stations in return for not striking. The 35 jobs in radio cost NBC about $1.5 million a year. The television station probably made twice that in profit in a month, so a two- or three-month NABET strike would cost NBC $6 to $9 million in profits. Therefore, NBC had decided to make the radio stations, in essence, a loss leader.

What the union wanted was to create and preserve jobs and reward seniority (not performance), which the engineers loved. Therefore, they were loyal to the union, not to WMAQ or to NBC. As Jack Thayer said, “They think they work for the union.”

I consider myself a progressive on most social and economic issues. Therefore, as a liberal and a Democrat I favor the concept of collective bargaining and the right of workers to unionize and to negotiate for higher wages, good health benefits and safe working conditions. However, I do not support featherbedding, job tenure, inflexible work rules or rewarding seniority. I believe that unions and management need to work together, to cooperate, to find ways to train workers to be more productive and businesses more profitable so companies can afford to pay higher wages and pay for better health benefits. Also, companies need flexibility and, most important, the ability to reward workers based on their performance, to be able to hold them accountable, and not base compensation solely on seniority.

Just like at WMAQ, where engineers thought they worked for NABET, in too many police departments, police think they work for their unions and that they owe their loyalty to union bosses, not to a city or to a mayor. Too many police departments seem to believe their goal is to maintain “law and order” and to achieve that goal their method is to punish those they determine are breaking the rules. Police Departments should be called Punishment Departments.

Psychologists, good managers and good parents have known for decades that punishment does not work. It doesn’t change behavior, it represses behavior temporarily and creates resentment and anger. Kids and grownups who are punished say to themselves, “I won’t get caught doing that again,” and continue the behavior out of sight of authority figures.

If you want to change people’s behavior, instead of punishing bad behavior, reward good behavior. When people are reward for good behavior, they say to themselves, “I can’t wait to do that again and get another reward.”

Many forward-thinking companies such as Amazon-owned Audible, have changed the name of their Customer Service Department to Customer Success Department. These companies know that the best way to increase their profits is to make their customers feel successful.

Maybe cities should change the name of their Police Departments. People don’t like being policed, or surveilled or have their privacy or other rights such as lawful, peaceful assembly violated. Instead of Police Departments, maybe cities should have Community Success Departments whose goals are community viability and peacefulness and their merthods are to reward people for good behavior. We’ve recently seen police taking a knee with protesters and being rewarded with a “thank you” or a handshake from protesters. This is a community success gesture.

Law-and-order conservatives and a “law-and-order” president will continue to mistakenly believe that punishment and domination works and will continue using punishment as a method to achieve their goals. However, as is becoming more clear every day, communities and voters will reward politicians who give us respect and empathy, not those who try to punish and dominate us.

Filed Under: Police Tagged With: ,

Liberal or Conservative Press?

May 29, 2020 By

A friend sent me an article from the Wall Street Journal by former CBS President Van Gordon Sauter titled “The ‘Liberal Leaning’ Media Has Passed Its Tipping Point” with a sub-head that read: “A return to balance would be commercially unviable. The best solution may be an honest embrace of bias.”

My friend tends to be on the conservative side politically and probably thought I might agree with Sauter that the press should be honest about its bias. Or perhaps he was suggesting that I admit the obvious liberal, progressive bias of MediaCurmudgeon, which of course I’m delighted to do.

Here is what Sauter wrote:

About 35 years ago I was sitting at lunch next to Jeane Kirkpatrick, a onetime Democrat who became a foreign-policy adviser to President Reagan and later U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. She was lamenting what she called the “liberal leaning” media. As the president of CBS News, I assured her it was only a “liberal tilt” and could be corrected.

“You don’t understand,“ she scolded. “It’s too late.”

Kirkpatrick was prophetic. The highly influential daily newspapers in New York, Washington, Los Angeles and Boston are now decidedly liberal. On the home screen, the three broadcast network divisions still have their liberal tilt. Two of the three leading cable news sources are unrelentingly liberal in their fear and loathing of President Trump.

News organizations that claim to be neutral have long been creeping leftward, and their loathing of Mr. Trump has accelerated the pace. The news media is catching up with the liberalism of the professoriate, the entertainment industry, upscale magazines and the literary world. Recent arrivals are the late-night TV hosts who have broken the boundaries of what was considered acceptable political humor for networks.

To many journalists, objectivity, balance and fairness—once the gold standard of reporting—are not mandatory in a divided political era and in a country they believe to be severely flawed. That assumption folds neatly into their assessment of the president. To the journalists, including more than a few Republicans, he is a blatant vulgarian, an incessant prevaricator, and a dangerous leader who should be ousted next January, if not sooner. Much of journalism has become the clarion voice of the “resistance,” dedicated to ousting the president, even though he was legally elected and, according to the polls, enjoys the support of about 44% of likely 2020 voters.

This poses significant problems not only for Mr. Trump but for the media’s own standing. If Mr. Trump prevails in November, what’s the next act, if any, for journalists and the resistance? They will likely find Mr. Trump more dangerous and offensive in a second term than in the first.

More important, how will a large segment of the public ever put stock in journalism it considers hostile to the country’s best interests? Unfortunately, dominant media organizations have bonded with another large segment of the public—one that embraces its new approach. Pulling back from anti-Trump activism could prove commercially harmful.

On the other hand, how would the media respond to a Joe Biden victory (beyond exhilaration)? Will Mr. Biden be subjected to the rigor and skepticism imposed on Mr. Trump? Will he get a pass because he is a liberal and “not Trump”? The media’s protective coverage of the sexual-assault allegation against Mr. Biden is perhaps a clear and concerning preview to how his presidency would be covered.

The media seems uninterested in these issues of bias. But wouldn’t a softening of its editorial orientation bring new readers or viewers? Probably not. The growth of new customers would be more than offset by the defection of outraged members of the current audience. The news media seems very comfortable with its product and ability to sell it.

There’s probably no way to seal the gap between the media and a large segment of the public. The media likes what it is doing. Admires it. Celebrates it. There is no personal, professional or financial reason to change. If anything, the gap will expand. Ultimately, the media finds the “deplorables” deplorable.

Dan Abrams, ABC’s chief legal-affairs anchor and founder of the website Mediaite, has a novel but valuable idea for the media—candor. Speaking to the matter at February’s Rancho Mirage Writers Festival, Mr. Abrams said “I think the first thing that would help . . . is to admit . . . that the people in the media are left of center.”

It would be delightful if a publisher, an editor, a reporter, would just say: Yes, I am left of center! I’m proud of it. I think our reporting is accurate. It best serves the public. And the credibility of the media. So there!

Publications open about their bias might feel freer to focus on the specifics: story selection, presentation, facts, fairness, balance. Not devoid of subtlety for sure, but manageable.

Journalism affects social cohesion. Convinced of its role and its legitimacy, however, the media doesn’t seem to much care. And the other side can certainly enjoy throwing rotten tomatoes at distant targets.

But America won’t reunite until far more people can look at a news story in print or on the screen and, of all things, believe it.

So, it seems that Sauter is of the opinion that journalists, especially those who report for “newspapers in New York, Washington, Los Angeles and Boston” should declare themselves to be: 1) liberal or 2) conservative.

I would suggest that journalists should declare themselves to be: 1) holding President Trump and all public officials accountable for their actions, words and tweets or 2) genuflecting to a malicious narcissist, white-supremacist racist and compulsive liar. Those are the two choices. You can keep your “liberal” or “conservative.”

Filed Under: The Liberal Press Tagged With: , ,

What If Women Were in Charge?

May 25, 2020 By

When I was listening to The New York Times podcast “The Argument” that was critical of New York mayor Bill De Blasio’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, I asked myself, “I wonder if the decisions would have been different if a woman had been in charge?”

I had supported Christine Quinn to replace Michael Bloomberg as mayor of New York, but she lost to De Blasio. I had supported Zephyr Teachout when she ran against New York governor Andrew Cuomo in 2014 and lost. I had supported Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election. At the beginning of the current Democratic presidential nomination process I supported Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren, much to the horror of my conservative friends. I supported all of these women because I have long felt that old, white men have screwed up our cities, states, countries and the world long enough and that we needed women in charge in order to build a more compassionate, empathetic and equal world.

Therefore, I created several spreadsheets to see if countries, U.S. states and cities were safer during the pandemic with women in charge. The metric I used to assess safety were COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 people because this is a much better metric than total COVID-19 deaths, which of course depend on population.

In the United States, the average number of deaths per 100,000 people as of May 22 in the 50 states was 22.5. The average number of deaths in the nine states with female governors was 18.3, or 24 percent better. Therefore, my initial reaction was that my hypothesis that we’re safer with women in charge was correct.

However, I realized that correlation does not mean causation, and that there was also a strong correlation between low deaths per 100,000 and a state’s population — the lower a state’s population, generally the lower the COVID-19 deaths per 100.000. Therefore, it’s probably OK to say that’s it’s safer to live in a state with a small population and with a female governor. In other words, it’s safer to live anywhere in the U.S.A. other than in New York City, the world’s most dangerous city where the deaths-per-100,000 (193.71) are so awful that they skew averages and make America look worse than other countries. You can check out my spreadsheets in the Publications section of my website.

I looked at the top 25 American cities to see if having a female mayor made cities safer. I saw the same pattern as in states. The average deaths per 100,000 people in the top 25 cities as of May 22 was 77.4, and the average deaths per 100,000 people in the six cities with female mayors was 44.3, or a big 75 percent advantage. But, again as in states, the six cities with female mayors were not New York and were in smaller cities, with one exception, Chicago.

In six Asian countries — China, India, Indonesia, Japan and Taiwan — the average deaths per 100,000 people was a mere .38, which means that these Asian countries did an infinitely better job of managing COVID-19 than America did. We may not be certain that the numbers from China or India are real, but they are generally in line with numbers of the other Asian countries. Of the six Asian countries I looked at, the only one that had a female head of state was Taiwan, the smallest of the six by far. Taiwan had only seven deaths, or an incredibly low 0.03 deaths per 100,000.

In 21 counties in Western Europe, the average deaths per 100,000 people was 22.35. In the eight countries with female heads of state, the average deaths per 100,000 was a comparatively miniscule 4.16. This low 4.16 average included Belgium which has a female head of state and which led Western Europe in deaths per 100,000 with 83.25. I could find no clues as why Belgium was such an outlier, but what it means is that the Belgium numbers bring up the others, which, in turn, shows what a great job the other female heads of state did, especially Angela Merkel of Germany, Western Europe’s largest country with just 9.96 deaths per 100,000.

Scandinavian countries provide another example of places being safer with women in charge. Of the four Scandinavia countries, three — Denmark, Norway and Finland — have female heads of state. The average deaths per 100,000 for the four countries as of May 22 was 14.9. The average of the three headed by women was 4.95, a whopping 300 percent advantage.

Of course I have to admit that the three Scandinavian countries with women in charge are half as big as Sweden, the one with man in charge. So, consistent with U.S. states and cities, and the six Asian countries, women tend to be in charge of smaller places. Therefore, it probably makes sense to say that it’s safer to live where there are fewer people and where a woman is in charge.

The other thing I realized in doing this analysis is that the media I am most familiar with — The New York Times, the Washington Post, the podcasts I listen to and the “PBS NewHour” — focus on trashing Trump’s historic incompetence and complete lack of empathy in managing the COVID-19 pandemic. They also seem to focus on praising male governors such as New York’s media center darling, Andrew Cuomo, California’s Gavin Newsom, Ohio’s Mike DeWine, and Washington’s Jay Islee, but ignore the story of women who are doing a fabulous job of keeping us safe: London Breed, Mayor of San Francisco; Jenny Durkan, Mayor of Seattle; Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany; Zuzana Caputova, President of Slovakia; and Katerina Sakellaropoulou, President of Greece.

As usual, the media are controlled mostly by white men, thus women don’t seem to get the credit they deserve. We’ll never know the counterfactual, or what would have happened when the COVID-19 virus hit if Hillary Clinton had been president, or Zephyr Teachout had been governor of New York or Christine Quinn had been mayor of New York City. However, we do know this: it couldn’t have possibly been any worse.

Let’s put more women in charge. We’ll get more compassion, more empathy and more equality.

Filed Under: Covid-19 Tagged With: , ,

The Moral Dilemma in Advertising

May 16, 2020 By

A couple of older friends of mine were a little worried that some of the ads they were seeing on TV and hearing on the radio seemed a little dicey. They thought many of the ads might not have passed muster with the Standards and Practices police at most networks and station groups before the Covid-19 pandemic forced many advertisers to cut back their advertising investment.

Many of these ads are targeted to the most vulnerable population, to older people who are living in fear of getting infected and, thus, might perhaps be willing to take risks to avoid getting ill or losing some or all of their retirement income.

Also, many of these ads appear in news programming on TV and cable networks and on news/talk radio stations because the television and radio news and talk programs’ audiences are very heavily skewed 65+, an audience that might be more likely to fall for memory-enhancement pills, reverse home mortgages, payday loans, home title claim scams, weight-loss pills, big legal settlements and so forth.

So, here’s the dilemma: 1) Have government regulations that forbids certain types of advertising (i.e. cigarettes) or limits false or suspicious claims or 2) no government regulations and leave decisions on ad content to networks, stations and publishers.

The case for government regulation is probably made by liberals with a “we” approach and who are concerned with the general welfare of the entire population, especially vulnerable older and immune-compromised people. The pro-regulation people are not necessarily naive. They realize that limiting advertising revenue will mean that many independent news-oriented radio stations and publishers (newspapers and websites such as BuzzFeed) might lay off journalists or even shut down. To avoid shutdowns, the government is going to have to spend trillions of dollars more in stimulus money. Nevertheless, the “we,” the greater societal good, choice is the best, most moral one for these people.

The case for letting networks, stations and publishers have freedom to choose which ads to accept is probably made by conservatives with a “me” approach and one concerned about the viability and survival of businesses and the people they employ. The anti-regulation people are not naive either. They realize that by accepting advertising in order to stay afloat that some ads will hawk products that are not necessarily good for people, but they have faith that consumers, even older consumers are smart enough not to fall for false advertising. They also do not want the government to spend trillions more dollars in stimulus money because it puts an unreasonably high debt burden on future generations. They probably believe that it is morally unacceptable to “pick winners and losers” and to limit freedom of speech and of consumer choice plus put our grandchildren in hock.

This is an example of a real dilemma in which there is no clear correct choice. Both sides have a strong argument both rationally and emotionally. Does that mean that this is a unsolvable problem?

Yes.

There are some dilemmas that are not solvable. These dilemmas tear people, families, tribes and political parties apart and polarize them.

So, how do you decide which side to be on, the pro-regulation or the anti-regulation side? I think you probably make your decision based not on politics (Democrat or Republican), not on idealism (liberal or conservative) but on identity, as brilliantly articulated by Ezra Klein in his best-selling book, Why We’re Polarized.

Do I want to identify with my neighbors on a block of townhouses on New York’s Upper East Side, where we joyously gather at 7:00 PM on our stoops every evening to bang pots to celebrate essential workers or with my 85+ friends from St. Albans who I chat with on a conference call every Friday?

It’s a puzzlement. For me and for America.

Filed Under: Pandemic Tagged With: , , ,

Request a Prayer

May 7, 2020 By

“Just How Bad Is the Ad Revenue Decline” was the May 7, 2020, headline of a RADIO INK story that began:

Research just released by Media Monitors details exactly how ugly it’s been over the past six weeks.  Between April 13 and April 19, Department Store spending on radio is down 98%, Casinos and Hotels are off 89% and Telecom declined 78%.

On our daily Coronavirus update, radio CEOs have been reporting revenue drops anywhere between 40% and 70%.  As a result, many radio employees have either been let go, furloughed or had their pay cut.

Local radio stations that are not owned by a large group owner such as iHeart, Entercom, Cumulus, Cox or Beasley are like locally owned newspapers – they are dying off in droves because advertisers are pulling their ads.  The RADIO INK story continues:

Some broadcasters have received money from the government’s Payroll Protection Program to help keep employees working.  The NAB has been working Senators and Congressman to make sure any additional government funding gets in the hands of radio station owners as they continue to serve their communities and raise money needed for local food banks and other organizations during this crisis.

If the NAB can’t convince Congress to save these advertising-strapped stations, they might have to resort to prayer, and they can request a prayer from Relevant Radio. 

I had never heard of Relevant Radio until John Kosinski responded via email to one of my blog posts that mentioned the beginning of “Eyewitness News.”  John had been involved in “Eyewitness News” and had worked with its creator, Al Primo, and John filled me on some of the local TV news format’s history.

John’s email made him seem like an interesting person, so I called him.  During the conversation, I asked him what he was doing, and he indicated that he was a host on Relevant Radio.  “Relevant what?”, I asked cluelessly.  I’d been in the media 75 years and radio for 12 in the late 1960s and early-to-mid 1970s, and I had never heard about a radio group named Relevant, so I asked John if I could call him back and learn more. 

In our second call John told me that Relevant Radio is a group of 170 radio stations (101 owned and 65 affiliates) that follows the teachings of the Catholic Church and that reaches a cumulative audience of 220,000,000 (yes, that’s 220 million).  The group has stations in all of the top-10 markets (WNSW-AM in Newark/New York, KHJ-AM in Los Angeles and WKBM-AM in Chicago) and in 23 of the top-25 markets.  The Executive Director of the group is a Catholic Priest, Father Francis Hoffman, who oversees the talk-radio programming that includes “The Inner Life,” “Go Ask Your Father,” “Father Simon Says,” “Family Rosary Across America” and “Daily Mass.”

Relevant Radio has a highly functional, well-designed website that features the tagline “Bringing Christ to the world through the media” and that has a list of stations, programming schedules, a listen function and a page on which anyone can request a prayer.  John told me that the current focus of the programming was to fight the coronavirus pandemic with “facts and faith versus fear,” which seemed like a pretty good idea to me.

John told me that Relevant Radio’s audience was, generally, 55 percent women and people aged 35-60, and that the ratings had increased substantially as the coronavirus pandemic spread across the country, as have donations.  Relevant Radio is healthy as many people turn to prayer to help them cope with the pandemic and a president who gives them no guidance and little hope.

Another thing I learned from John was that president’s favorite talk show host, the bloviator-in-chief, Rush Limbaugh’s ratings have declined substantially in the last couple of years.  With an audience decline from a high of 26 million to a current audience of 8 million, the nasty Rush has a lot less influence than he and Trump tout.

I’m an Episcopalian, but am not currently a church-going person.  However, after I learned about Relevant Radio, I’m considering requesting a prayer for all of the brown and black older people (probably Democrats) who Rush Limbaugh and Trump don’t seem too concerned about.

Also, requesting a prayer might be the only option left for small-market radio stations not owned by large groups.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Blue Birds

April 27, 2020 By

Following is a post from guest blogger Bill Grimes.

April 16, 1966: Three months into my first job out of college, my boss called me into his office.  I was selling advertising space in a low circulation trade magazine.

“Take a seat, William,” he said.  “You know what a blue bird is?

He wasn’t a guy with much sense of humor.  Nor did he seem like a bird watcher. 

I said, “No, I don’t think so other than a bird, Mister Baker.”

“I’ve told you, have I not, to call me Bob.”

I nodded nervously, trying to think what I’d done wrong.

“And, no, I’m not talking about a bird.”

I sat at attention waiting the hear what a bluebird is in business lingo.  Bob wasn’t known to converse in matters not related to sales quotas and performance.

“You’re lucky.   got a blue bird today.”

Lucky.  Sounded good.

“A blue bird is what we call it when a dormant, near- forgotten one-time customer calls in a sales order.  Completely unexpected.  Out of the blue.  No sales contact in ages.”

He paused, piercing my eyes, seeking the level of my sentience. “Today a bluebird flew in over the phone. The company’s location happens to be in your territory, William.  So you got a bluebird.  A commisionable bluebird.” 

I got the drift.  It was better than blue skies.  “Thank you, Bob.”

“Very fortunate for you, William.  Now go out and make a sale to one of the many companies in your territory who are not doing business with us.

April 16, 2020: Every day the same routine. Sleep.  Eat.  Read.  Write.   Walk.  Sleep.

Like all Americans, and much of the world, I’m a prisoner of social distancing.  My community in lock-down.  In times of national stress new words and terms enter the patois.  Like social distancing, Covid-19, flatten the curve, asymptomatic, and hand hygiene.

The thing about this is it isn’t much of a change for me.  I live alone in a small cottage.  Kids grown and gone.  Friends out of touch or dead.  No wife or boss to grumble in my ear.  What has changed is the bars and restaurants are closed.

It was noon and 87 degrees when I set out upon my walk.  I had developed two different routes, each about two miles, to insure moderately different topography. Today I decided on the one which took me to the town post office where I stopped to pick up my mail.  The recent sign on the open door read: Only Five People Admitted At One Time. There was only one other person in the space where the individual mini mailboxes were located.  She was wearing the popular C-19 mask.  I was mask-less and did not reciprocate the strained glare in her eyes.  I was pleased not see her mouth and nose.

I felt hunger coming on and had a new idea.  If I could hold up for about another half mile, I would reach the food market in the next town.  It was there I could have my favorite sandwich: sliced turkey, usually off the bone, on mixed grain bread with lettuce, tomatoes and plenty of Dijon mustard, and grab a Diet Coke.

A twenty-minute walk along Kent Street and I was there.

Mission accomplished.  Every employee masked-up and two-thirds of the few customers too.

Outside the market adjacent to the sparsely populated parking lot is a sitting area with fifteen metal mesh tables and chairs for customers to sit and enjoy their sandwiches and snacks.  It was also a good spot to watch the now occasional traffic on Kent Street that consists mostly of tradesmen trucks, a few automobiles, and threesomes and foursomes of bicyclists gliding by. Because of the beautiful blue sky and the emergence of a gentle breeze, I looked forward to having my lunch there.

Not today.  Not in this reign of Corvid-19.  On each table was a polyethylene sign, about the size of the menus at Mel’s Diner. No Sitting Until Further Notice.  No need to tell why.

And so, sack in hand with lunch and drink I began walking in the same direction I had come.  About thirty yards ahead I noticed something I hadn’t seen before.  A few feet off the sidewalk partially hidden by bushes was an unoccupied limestone settee with room for two.

Most pleased with my good fortune, I sat down and began enjoying lunch.  As good as the sandwich was, the bread was a little thicker than I’d remembered and the crusts a little larger and chewier. I began removing small pieces and tossing them side arm across the sidewalk to a three feet wide island of grass separating the sidewalk from the street on which stood a tall thin deciduous tree with a few leafless limbs along its bottom.  I was able to land at least a dozen thumbnail sized pieces of bread between ten and fifteen feet from where I sat. 

I was hoping a bird might find a nice meal.  Any bird except the large, loud, overfed ravens who seemed, like pigeons in the city, to be everywhere here bullying their smaller feathered creatures. 

My thoughts turned to the unfinished story I was writing and the bottle of Pinot Grigio I’d have with the baked salmon tonight.  The pandemic had honed my mostly neglected cooking competence. 

In a moment of no pedestrian or vehicular traffic I heard a rustling sound above me and looked up to see a blue bird perched on a branch of the tree looking down at me or his meal. 

I didn’t move nor remove my eyes from the bird.  I thought was a Blue Jay and not a Blue Bird because it was larger, more sleek than plump. 

After a long moment it fluttered down from the branch and skipped over to a a piece of bread, actually a hunk of crust, a piece farthest from me.  The bird seemed to take a good look before snatching it in its beak and flying up to the same branch where it took a bite and then placing the other half on the branch.

He repeated this activity, moving each time to grasp the bread nearer me.  Finally, it was no more than five or six feet away, pausing to examine me more closely.  I had a good look at its plumage, its cobalt blue feathers with a spot of gray on its back, the skinny, pronged cows of its feet near its tail, its near purple beak, and its BB sized slate eyes.  I sat as still as I could fascinated by the beautiful bird as it bent down and grabbed the last bit of crust, devouring it this time. 

In an instant it was gone, flying into an opening in the tree line, soaring into the blue yonder.

As I sat there wanting to capture the moment, a picture a picture came to my mind.

How long had it been since I thought about feeding birds?

Was my semi-consciousness to do so today driven by thoughts of my mortality?  Was my sense of humanity in an early stage of long-time dystopia?  Had I forgotten that we share this planet with animals and plants?  We primates who are one chromosome away from a chimpanzee.  That they, too, have a life, and were we helping them as we help ourselves through this pandemic?  Through this life which ends sooner or later in death for all living things?

Today, at this moment, I consciously felt connected with this bird.  What a world it would be if we could learn birds’ language, their tweets, and they understood a modicum of ours.

In this time when human activity is quelled, when we homo sapiens with our large brains don’t know what tomorrow will bring, here was the Blue Jay, a fellow living animal, one who never exploited nor took Nature for granted, siding up to me and enjoying a meal I had fixed for it.

I was happy.

The presence of the Blue Jay was a blue bird. 

Kind of like what Bob Baker described more than fifty years ago.

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

Trump Talk Radio

April 17, 2020 By

On April 15, Elaina Plott wrote an article in The New York Times titled “Trump Wanted a Radio Show, but He Didn’t Want to Compete With Limbaugh.”  The article detailed how in early March Trump wanted to do a talk show in which he would take calls and answer questions about the coronavirus pandemic.  However, the show never materialized, in part because Trump didn’t want to compete with his ardent supporter, Rush Limbaugh.

But just for a few chuckles, let’s assume the counterfactual and that the president went ahead with his plan for doing Trump Talk Radio.  Here’s how it might go:

CALLER #1: “Thank you for taking my call.  Can you hear me?”

TRUMP: “Yes, yes.  My hearing is perfect.  Perfect.  I have the best ears in the world.  Much better ears than that awful Obama, whose ears are too big.  Doesn’t he look terrible on TV?”

CALLER #2: “I live in Queens, the hardest hit area in the country, where 60 percent of the inhabitants are people of color.  Can you explain why such a high percent of coronavirus deaths are people of color?”

TRUMP: “Of course I can explain that.  I’m a genius – a stable genius.  People of color are dying in such high numbers because they’re Democrats.  The Democrats had a witch hunt and impeached me and then they hyped up this Chinese virus stuff just to try to make me look bad, so Democrats deserve to die.  Let’s take another call.”

CALLER #3: “A Washington Post story indicated that you wanted to open up the country and get people back to work because you’re in the hotel business and want people to start traveling and booking hotel rooms again.”

TRUMP: “Oh, come on, be nice!  The Washington Post is FAKE NEWS!  It’s owned by that shiny-headed moron, Jeff Bezos.  Amazon doesn’t pay the Post Office enough and is responsible for the Post Office’s $13 billion deficit.  It’s not my fault.  Also, I’m not involved in my business.  Donald junior and Eric are running my business.  They’re doing a beautiful job.  Next caller.”

CALLER #4: “Isn’t it true that your business has a $300-million-dollar payment due soon to Deutsche Bank and that your business can’t make the payment unless your hotels and golf clubs have revenue coming in?”

TRUMP: “How did you get in, dummy.  Be nice.  Ask nice questions about the flu bug.  The fact is that Deutsche Bank didn’t lend me any money, and even if they did, they wouldn’t want me to pay it back.  Those people are beautiful.  They are perfect friends.  They know how I operate.”

CALLER #4: “But didn’t you just say you are not involved in your business?”

TRUMP: “I’m not involved in my business!  My sons run it.  They are really smart, like I am.  They know what I would do.”

CALLER #4: “How do they know?”

TRUMP: “They ask me, stupid.  Next caller.”

CALLER #5: “What do you think of your daughter Ivanka and Jared Kushner going up to your Bedminster golf club for Passover weekend in spite of travel restrictions?”

TRUMP: “You’re a terrible caller! Be nice!  The travel ban doesn’t apply to my family.  There are no rules for me and my family because I am the president, and I make the rules.  When the Senate exonerated me, they gave me permission to do whatever I want.”

CALLER #5: “But what about the Constitution?”

TRUMP: “A tiny technicality.  I let Bill Barr interpret the Constitution.  That’s his job?  My job is to lead this country in the war against this flu bug and to get the country back to work and spending money as soon as possible.”

CALLER #5: “But you just gave the state governors the go-ahead to make the calls as to when to go back to work.”

TRUMP: “Yes, exactly.  Let’s get back to work because that’s what Fox News wants us to do.  Sean Hannity knows best.  Next caller.”

CALLER #6: “Thanks for taking my call.  I had to call to thank you, Mr. President.  You’re doing a bang-up job.”

TRUMP: “Yes, I am.  Thanks for calling, Steve.”

Filed Under: Donald Trump Tagged With: ,

The WSJ Doesn’t Know the Meaning of “the Establishment.”

April 14, 2020 By

Following is a post from guest blogger, John Parikhal:

About 3 weeks ago, a friend sent me a WSJ article about “the establishment” and it got under my skin because of the slippery way that word is being used these days. The article ended with these two paragraphs:

Attacks on the establishment aren’t always rational or fair.  They can be one-sided and fail to do justice to the accomplishments the U.S. has made in the recent past.  Populism on both the left and the right always attracts its share of snake-oil salesmen, and America’s current antiestablishment surge is no exception.  But the U.S. establishment won’t prosper again until it comes to grip with a central political fact: Populism rises when establishment leadership fails.  If conventional U.S. political leaders had been properly doing their jobs, Donald Trump would still be hosting a television show.

Unless the president’s opponents take the full measure of this public discontent, they will be continually surprised by his resilience against media attacks.  And until the establishment undertakes a searching and honest inventory of the tangled legacy of American foreign and domestic policy since the end of the Cold War, expect populism to remain a potent part of the political scene.

In response to my friend, I sent the following:

The WSJ article dances brilliantly around the truths of populism while cleverly inserting the Murdoch and rich Republican messaging.

They miss a central point one that was predicted in Neil Postman’s book Amusing Ourselves to Death decades ago.  TV started the destruction of rational discourse.

Here’s the deal, from my point of view… 

Because our neural systems have been reprogrammed by TV, we don’t know that the “new reality” isn’t “true.”  George Orwell’s 1984 is a prescient foretelling of this: “He loved Big Brother.”

Adding to this is the way that extremely precise political polling entered the picture in the late 70s.  Using research, geo-targeting, and fear-based, highly polarizing narratives on TV, it worked to get politicians elected.  The best-known case was pollster Richard Wirthlin’s seminal work in getting Reagan elected.  The Republicans never forgot how well this worked.  And, politicians around the world have used the same tools ever since.

Now, along comes the Internet and the explosion of narratives – with no agreed upon context anymore.  In the Middle Ages (and even today in much of the world, including America), the church gave context and meaning to events.  Then, after hundreds of years, “reason” and “science” gave context and meaning to events.  Then, under “mass media” conditions, radio and TV (as well as newspapers) gave meaning and context. 

Now that we are de-massified, the Internet provides thousands of alternate ways to context the world – many of them exclusionary, tribal, and base.  We can choose our narrative for meaning and context.  Here are just a few – vaccines are a plot, conspiracies are the basis of every event, the government is always against us (even though we vote for it!), etc.

The result is that we no longer strive to be “better” people and we don’t care about getting along with each other.  We delight in the fact that we don’t have to grow, that we can wallow in our limitations, that we don’t have to care about others.  That’s why all the winner and loser TV shows dominate.  There’s no cooperation, just a sick survivalism.  When you add the celebration of stupidity and excess – the Kardashians come to mind – we’re heading fast to the bottom.  We seek out others like us, rather than trying to learn from and discuss with those unlike us.

The horse is out of the barn.

Now, here’s where WSJ plays its slippery game.  They speak about the “establishment” without defining it properly.  They never mention that there is always an “establishment”, that today it is a corrupt cabal that is mostly dominated by Republicans.  They say that the “establishment” created a poor health care system – when it was Republicans who successfully derailed Clinton’s attempt to get it reformed and blocked Obama’s attempts as soon as they could, then began gutting it (rather than improving it) as soon as Trump got into power.  It was Republicans, not “the establishment.”

The people could have cried out for health care but their churches told them to vote Republican (abortion was such a brilliant tool to create a stir), Fox News created “enemies” out of centrists, running a 24/7 misinformation campaign, and all of the technology I mentioned above allowed them to rewire their world view to work against their self- interests.

I could do a more precise job of analyzing the way they present “facts,” but why bother.

I know you’ve read Thinking, Fast and Slow, but most people haven’t.   If they had, they’d see how our brains fool us so brilliantly to do things against our best interests.  And, people simply don’t want to believe this, which is proof of how effectively it works.

So, without science, without logic, without discussion – rather than name calling – we’re in trouble.  We’ll fall for whatever “sounds right.”  Evangelicals and other religious groups have been gutting courses on Critical Thinking in our schools for decades, and, now we’re doing it to ourselves.  People go to college to study “business;” they no longer go to learn how to think more rigorously.  

America is now number 28 – at the bottom of the list – among 28 developed countries when it comes to “belief in science.”

No wonder the previously #1 country in the world is such a mess when it comes to the novel coronavirus. 

Just figured it was important to get the role of TV, the internet, radio, etc. properly focused in all this.  Because each of these mediums has changed our brains, the content follows.

McLuhan was right, “the medium is the message.”

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , ,

The Dilemma of Government-Funded News and Information

April 12, 2020 By

In my April 6 blog I advocated for not saving the paper part of the newspaper industry and suggested that the News Project might be a viable solution that would help entrepreneurs and smaller, non-chain owned news sites survive.

The News Project can help news and information sites create an online presence, manage content and generate revenue from advertising, subscriptions, events and ecommerce, for example.  However, the setup costs ($25,000) and minimum monthly fees ($5,000) might be too much for many small local news organizations.  Furthermore, if more than a small percentage (more than 10 percent, say) of a site’s total revenue comes from advertising, that tends to corrupt the editorial decision-making process.  If a substantial percentage of a site’s revenue comes from advertising, editors will tend to favor stories that entertain, titillate and outrage rather than publish news and information that audiences need to know.

Therefore, it is time to rethink the advertising-supported business model of small local news organizations.  Large, national news organizations such as The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, Fox News and MSNBC have large audiences and can, thus, charge high enough rates for advertising to make a partially ad-supported business model work.  Also, the Times, the Post, the Journal, CNN, Fox News and MSNBC have millions of dollars in subscription revenue.  Smaller local news organizations cannot charge enough for advertising or subscriptions to support themselves, especially in the current quarantined households environment.  Also, who knows how far into the future the coronavirus shutdown of local retailers will last, and these local retailers are the advertising lifeblood of local news organizations.

Government is, therefore, the funder of last resort that can keep small local news organizations alive.  But what government: City, state or Federal?  City or state governments are too close to news sites for comfort.  Can mayors, governors and state legislators be trusted to keep a neutral, hands-off policy when a local site exposes incompetence or corruption?  As Mike Royko wrote years ago, the relationship between a journalist and a politician is like the relationship between a barking dog and a chicken thief.  That would change if the chicken thief was the dog’s owner who fed the dog.

The Federal government is further separated from local news organizations than city and state governments are, and, therefore is a better choice to fund local news.  The funding should not be part of the coronavirus stimulus money, but needs to be structured the way that the government partially funds PBS and NPR through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), a non-profit organization created in 1967 by the Public Broadcasting Act passed by Congress.  The CPB’s charter requires that the stations it funds operate with a “strict adherence to objectivity and balance in all programs or series of programs of a controversial nature.”

But this CPB model brings to the forefront a dilemma: Should government funding go to profit-oriented businesses whose primary focus is on increasing shareholder value rather than on serving the public interest in an objective, balanced manner?  PBS and NPR stations are educational, non-profit stations, should local new organizations become non-profit entities in order to accept Federal government funding?  The Salt Lake City Tribune adopted a non-profit corporate structure in November, 2019, so there is precedent for this switch to a non-profit business model.  A non-profit business model must be approved by the IRS, but once approved to become a 501 (c) (3) public charity, supporters‘ donations are tax deductible.

Should the Federal government also support commercial local broadcast stations?  Radio Ink publisher Eric Rhodes thinks so.  In an April 10 email Rhodes wrote “A Call for an Immediate Broadcaster Protection Act” that read in part:

I’m calling on Congress, the FCC, and other federal agencies to create a “Broadcaster Protection Act” that would make sure radio stays on the air, subsidizes stations’ power bills, ensures key personnel are employed and able to broadcast, and makes sure that landlords cannot evict radio or TV stations as a result of this crisis. I’d also call on music licensing companies and ratings services to suspend, forgive, or greatly adjust required payments for 90 days.  Though I understand that these companies are facing the same dilemma as others; they need to pay their employees, their artists, and their field reps, they too have skin in radio’s game.  Every station that goes dark is one billing client lost.

I stand firmly with the NAB, which is also urging Congress to step in, asking for immediate relief to keep local broadcasters on the air and warning that “Without relief, the local journalism and essential public services that broadcasters provide will begin to disappear.” 

Among the NAB’s proposals: modifications to the “Corona-3” Small Business Administration Paycheck Protection Program and “Distressed Sector” Lending Program to expand broadcasters’ eligibility and access; appropriating and directing federal advertising dollars to specific programs where community outreach is needed for spending on local media, including media serving minority communities; and designating a portion of the stimulus funds provided to businesses for advertising on local media.

Radio and TV are essential services during time of need, and lawmakers need to make special arrangements to keep them healthy.

The time to join forces and appeal to Congress to help local broadcasters is NOW, before stations begin to go dark, some — perhaps many — never to return.

After the 2008 Federal government bailout of banks and insurance companies that were too big to fail, some of those banks and insurance companies used their bailout bounties to pay executive huge bonuses and some used it to buy back stock.  These bonuses and buybacks caused public outrage, as well they should have.  So, will Congress and the public now approve of long-term funding for for-profit local news and information organizations (news sites and radio stations)?  Would Congress and the public want the government to fund the number-one radio conglomerate, iHeart Media, after its CEO, Bob Pittman, cut his yearly compensation to $1?  Would they want to fund number-two radio conglomerate, Entercom, after its CEO, David Field, cut his yearly salary to $850,000?

In my view, local news organizations that accept Federal funding that accounts for more than 33 percent of its total operating revenue should become non-profit corporations.  Furthermore, all news and information organizations that accept any Federal funding should limit their CEOs and top C-level executives to making a maximum yearly compensation of 150 times as much as that of the average yearly compensation of all employees.

The details of the above formula are not as important as the concepts: 1) That the Federal government should partially fund sustainable local non-profit news and information organizations and 2) have an effective oversight structure that limits stock buybacks and executive compensation to any news organizations, non-profit or for-profit, that it funds.

I’d love to learn about any other ideas you or anybody has about saving local news organizations to help keep our electorate informed and, thus, our democracy free.

Filed Under: Journalism, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , ,

Should We Save Newspapers?

April 6, 2020 By

The headline of The New York Times’s media critic, Ben Smith’s, March 29 column was: “Bail Out Journalists.  Let Newspaper Chains Die.”  In the column he writes:

The time is now to make a painful but necessary shift: Abandon most for-profit local newspapers, whose business model no longer works, and move as fast as possible to a national network of nimble new online newsrooms.  That way, we can rescue the only thing worth saving about America’s gutted, largely mismanaged local newspaper companies — the journalists.

Smith goes on to write:

The news business, like every business, is looking for all the help it can get in this crisis.  Analysts believe that the new federal aid package will help for a time and that the industry has a strong case to make.  State governments have deemed journalism an essential service to spread public health information.  Reporters employed by everyone from the worthiest nonprofit group to the most cynical hedge fund-owned chain are risking their lives to get their readers solid facts on the pandemic, and are holding the government accountable for its failures.  Virtually every news outlet reports that readership is at an all-time high.  We all need to know, urgently, about where and how the coronavirus is affecting our cities and towns and neighborhoods.

But the advertising business that has sustained the local newspapers — the car dealers, retailers and movie theaters that for generations filled their pages with ads — has gone from slow decline to free fall.

So the leaders trying to get the local news industry through this economic shock need to confront reality.  The revenue from print advertising and aging print subscribers was already going away.  When this crisis is over, it is unlikely to come back.  Some local weeklies recently shut down for good.

Smith, of course, is writing for The New York Times, a newspaper that has managed to be profitable by developing many new revenue streams, including the country’s most popular podcast, ”The Daily,” events, ecommerce and the biggest revenue producer, subscriptions.  I’m sure Smith does not include his newspaper in the category of “for-profit local newspapers” that should be abandoned.

But, is Smith right?  Should we let local newspapers die?  My answer is “yes” for many reasons, two of which are:

First, what should be abandoned is the “paper” part of the word “newspaper.”  We desperately need the news, but we do not need to pay for buggy-whip distribution expenses such as printing presses, paper, delivery trucks and door-to-door carriers.  All those expenses should be used to pay for journalists who publish news content and analysis on the web in a mobile-friendly format.

Second, it takes time – usually six to eight hours – to print and distribute a newspaper, and by the time a paper is delivered the news is old.  In the coronavirus crisis a six- or eight-hour time lag could be fatal.  Internet-delivered news is current and, thus, more valuable.

But making such a shift to the Internet is much easier said than done.  Other than large national newspapers such as The New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal that are digitally sophisticated, most small local news organizations are digital technology challenged and do not have the skills or knowledge to get online successfully.

To the rescue: The News Project. 

The News Project, is the brainchild of Merrill Brown, who in 1996 was the founding Editor-in-Chief of MSNBC.  The News Project’s mission is: “To empower journalists, philanthropists, entrepreneurs and investors to launch high-impact news properties rapidly and operate them successfully.” The News Project is a SaaS solution that integrates best-of-breed content, audience and revenue tools that a typical news venture would assemble separately at far greater cost in time, effort and dollars.  If news  and information organizations want to survive, the News Project helps them answer five critical questions laid out by James T. Hamilton in his book All the News That’s Fit to Sell: How the Market Transforms Information into News:

  1. Who cares about information?
  2. What are they willing to pay, or others willing to pay to reach those who care about information?  
  3. Where can media outlets and advertisers reach them?  
  4. When is this profitable?  
  5. Why is it profitable?

In a recent interview with Merrill Brown on Zoom, he told me that, “Our team of journalists, technologists, designers and news business professionals provides the resources and expertise news and information entrepreneurs need to launch, sustain and scale their news venture.  The News Project provides:

  • State-of-the-art editorial tools and high-performance display templates
  • Revenue and member management for subscriptions, sponsorships, metered content, payments and programmatic advertising
  • Audience development and engagement tools for social media, Apple News, Google News, email campaigns, push notifications and mobile-optimized layouts
  • Enterprise-class managed hosting for scale, security and performance
  • Dashboard featuring customized analytics and business metrics
  • World-class news and features to supplement your original content

When we talked about the news business, I asked Brown if he thought philanthropy might be a widespread and viable solution for saving local news and mentioned the success of The Atlantic, which Larraine Powell Jobs is the majority (70 percent) owner.  Brown reminded me that the ultimate goal of philanthropists and foundations that might initially support organizations is eventually for them to be sustainable – organizations eventually have to prove that they can bring in enough revenue to sustain themselves.  In the case of news and information organizations this means finding multiple revenue streams such as subscriptions, advertising, events, podcasts, trips, ecommerce and educational opportunities.

Many local news organizations do not have the technical knowledge that enables them to develop multiple revenue streams, to say nothing of the amount of time it takes to execute even if they knew how.  Again, enter the News Project.

The nation needs accurate, truthful local news and information, and must be able to hold government officials at all levels accountable.  Also, news and information organizations need to provide information that is not just about politics but also information about the environment, health-care issues and culture and the arts.  With the aid of the News Project entrepreneurs will be able to provide news and information in these various areas of interest and do so in a sustainable way.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

The Media, Donald Trump and the Ring of Gyges

March 29, 2020 By

A public radio station in Seattle, KUOW, announced that it would no longer air White House press briefing on COVID-19 “due to a pattern of false and misleading information provided that cannot be fact checked in real time,” according to The Hill.

Should other media follow suit?

Journalism professor Jay Rosen answers the above question positively in his influential blog “Press Think.” Rosen wrote: “This means…journalism will work in a different way, as we try to prevent the President from misinforming us.”

Furthermore, on March 27, on “Press Think” Rosen suggests that the five major networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox News and CNN) collaborate in producing an independent, fact-based daily briefing on the coronavirus. The independent briefing would appear from 4:00-5:00 pm ET, have an objective moderator–someone like Steve Scully of CSPAN–and 3-4 producers. The networks could collaborate on such a project because they already do so with a network pool, which they use to cover events such as debates.

Further in his “Press Think” post, Rosen states that in order to get the networks to cooperate in an independent, pooled briefing, “…we appeal to their public service mandate.”

What public service mandate?

The only public service “mandate” that exists for the media are the licenses that the FCC gives to television and radio stations to operate “in the public good, convenience and necessity.” Television, cable and radio networks, newspapers, magazines, podcasts, Google, Facebook and Twitter are not licensed by the FCC and, therefore, are not mandated to serve the public good, convenience or necessity.

Television and radio networks’ programming has to be delivered by stations that are FCC licensed, so those networks have to follow FCC regulations because the stations require it. But cable networks, Internet-distributed content, print media and podcasts are free to distribute all the profanity, sex, and lies their audiences crave because these media are not regulated by the government. They are self-regulated, which means they can choose to do the right thing and serve the public, choose to serve their stockholders or in a few rare cases choose to serve both.

Most major media companies, especially those owned by Rupert Murdoch, choose to serve stockholders first and put profits way ahead of public service. Murdoch’s Fox Business cable network showed some uncharacteristic conscience when it cancelled Trish Regan’s prime-time program two weeks after she was benched because of a monologue in which she dismissed concerns about coronavirus and blamed reports about the pandemic as a scam fueled by Trump enemies. Regan made her remarks in front of a graphic that read,”Coronavirus Impeachment Scam.”

In The Republic Plato has a dialogue titled “The Ring of Gyges” that starts with a story about a shepherd who discovers a golden ring that when he puts it or and adjusts it a certain way, it makes him invisible. The shepherd puts on the ring, becomes invisible, goes to the king’s palace, rapes the queen, kills the king and becomes a plundering, murderous monarch. Glaucon, who tells the story in the Republic, then posits the moral dilemma: If a man were invisible and could get away with rape, murder and gaining power and never get caught or held accountable, would he do the right thing or would he be unable to resist temptation and rape, kill and usurp power. J.R.R. Tolkien brilliantly dramatized this moral dilemma in his The Lord of the Rings trilogy as Peter Jackson did in his film adaptations of Tolkien’s masterpiece.

This moral dilemma is played out today in the media and in the presidency. Do the media do the right thing and put the public’s interests above their own profits even if they are not required to by government regulations? Some media do and some don’t. For example, Fox News and Breitbart News don’t and The New York Times, Apple and Google do. The Times took down its paywall on its superb, thorough coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic and Google removed Alex Jones’s Infowars app from its Google Play store, as Apple had done earlier this year. Google removed the app after Mr. Jones posted a video disputing the need for social distancing and for some of the isolation policies aimed at curbing the virus and also for making false claims that his diet supplement and toothpaste could be used to fight the coronavirus.

And the president? Is Trump doing the right thing even if he can’t be held accountable. He put on the golden ring after the Republican-majority Senate didn’t convict him after the House impeached him, and Trump knew that he would be invisible (invincible) and didn’t have to do the right thing or do anything he didn’t want to do. He could murder and gain power with impunity. And he has

Trump’s lies and misinformation in his press briefings (longings?) are probably responsible, in part, for hundreds of deaths from COVID-19. His lying and incompetence are so destructive that many responsible media are considering not showing his briefings live and are being urged to have an alternative, truthful daily information briefing.

Why is Trump lying? Why does he want to get people back to work the Monday after Easter, which according to pandemic experts and doctors is too soon? It’s crazy.

Crazy like a greedy Fox (forgive the capital F, but it’s appropriate). Think about what Trump believes his number-one priority is. Is it being President of the United States or is it being head of the Trump real estate empire? Even though he claims to have turned over decision making to his three older children, do you really believe that he is not involved in making business decisions?

The Trump organization’s top money making property is the Trump Doral Hotel and Resort in Miami, which according to the Washington Post is in a deep decline.

At Doral, which Trump has listed in federal disclosures as his biggest money maker hotel, room rates, banquets, golf and overall revenue were all down since 2015. In two years the resort’s net income…had fallen 69 percent…for instance, the club expected to take in $85 million but took in just $75 million.”

Add to the Doral, the Mar-a-Lago Club and Resort, the Trump International Hotels in New York and Washington, D.C. and you have an overpowering motivation for Trump to want to get Americans back to traveling and booking rooms.

Therefore, should the media, especially the broadcast and cable networks, carry live Trump’s press pimpings in which the head of the Trump real estate empire exhorts people to get back to “normal?” (Nomal to Trump means booking rooms.)

You might say, “Only if Trump takes the golden ring off, does the right thing and puts the public first, not himself first.” What are the odds of that happening? And what are the odds that Fox News and the broadcast and cable networks will collaborate and air a truthful, impartial, fact-filled COVID-19 briefing?

Those things will happen the day that you find the ring of Gyges on your morning walk.

Filed Under: Ethics, Uncategorized Tagged With: , ,
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