To local "journalists": This isn't news

I was watching KCTV-5 news last evening when they put on a story they felt was important to us.

The only thing was, it was out of Utah, we found out, and it was about a mom who witnessed another mom, at a different table in the restaurant, who had her kids on "potty chairs."

And this is news how?

With some research, I found that it's also on Fox 4's website. They figured it was somehow important, also. They posted it 6 days ago, so not only is it not news, not only is it irrelevant to us here in the Kansas City, metro area, it's OLD filler, to boot.

Seriously, as I've said before, you'd think these people would be embarrassed. They should be embarrassed, professionally, especially, even if they haven't studied journalism, but especially if they have.

Wow.

I hope they don't also why they have low viewership and why we don't tune in.

Link: http://fox4kc.com/2012/09/06/mom-potty-trains-toddlers-in-middle-of-restaurant/

On the media and Perpetual War

"What is it about the military that turns normally thoughtful journalists into war pornographers?

"War lovers and war pornographers can’t offer us an objective look at a world in which more and more foreigners only run into Americans when they are wearing green and carrying weapons."

"I respect my military colleagues, at least the ones who took it all seriously enough to deserve that respect, and would not speak ill of them. Some do indeed make enormous sacrifices, including of their own lives, even if for reasons that are ambiguous at best to a majority of Americans. But in order to understand these men and women and the tasks they are set to, we need journalists who are willing to type with both hands, not just pass on their own wet dreams to a gullible public."

"Civilian control of our military is a cornerstone of our republic, and we the people need to base our decisions on something better than Sergeant Rock comic rewrites."

--Peter Van Buren, writer, author, State Department Foreign Service Officer

Link to original post:  http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/05/16

The troubles with newspapers

I suppose this has been covered before but so be it. I'll keep it brief.

The troubles with newspapers--because it's far more than one problem--are that, because they're losing more and more advertisers, they have to charge more and more for their paper, for one.

Secondly, then, we, as newspaper readers (devourers?), get less and less paper, both in quantity and quality.

To wit: two things come to mind today.

Did you see today's issue? Section A of the paper is 17 pages long. If you saw it, you may have reacted to it the way I did and evaluated it the same way, too.

Seven of those 17 pages--seven--were full page ads.

I don't know about other newspaper readers but I feel like a sucker when I get one anymore, unless there's at least one good source of information in at least one column that day. That's a fairly low standard for them to hit and usually, honestly, to me, the Star doesn't even hit that too many times.

The 2nd thing that was brought to my attention (via Tony's KC Blog and Bottomline Communications) is that there are, apparently, to be more layoffs, still, at the Star.

Yikes.

Those poor people down there.

But how about us, the readers, too?

There's just so much less content (quantity) and much less good writing (quality) in the paper, really, how can they expect us to keep taking that thing?

I want to take the paper but just can't justify it.

And I don't see how they can blame us, either.

Pretty cool, Bill

Okay, so the big news is that Bill "Bubba" Clinton went over to North Korea, had a sit-down with Kim Jong Il, took some pictures, had a conversation and got back the two journalists who had been held in that country for months, got tried and then convicted by the "Leader's" courts.

Outstanding.

All around, this seemed like the perfect thing to happen and the perfect person for the job.

An ex-President who knew the "Leader" so well, basically just sitting around not doing much and he goes over and pulls off a bit of a coup for the journalists and, really, the United States.

I have one question and three observations.

The question: According to reports, "North Korean media said Clinton had carried a message of apology from Obama and that the former president and Kim held wide-ranging talks, but White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said those claims were 'not true.'" Is this, indeed, correct? Did this administration not send any message of apology? I hope and assume this is not true and that no message of apology was sent or given.

The first observation: These events, along with President Kim's shooting of missiles toward Japan, among other things, however unsuccessfully, seem to point out that Kim really craves attention--international attention from other foreign leaders. It seems, if he gets that, then he's happy and docile. This may not be true but there seems to be something to it.

The second observation: I will be extremely surprised if now-former-President George W. Bush ("W") is ever called on--or even volunteers, on his part, for that matter--to do such a negotiation for the US during what will likely be his long retirement.

Finally, hopefully, this will lead to further disarmament talks between North Korea and the West. That would add more terrific results to what already turned out fairly well, thank goodness.

Links:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/as_nkorea_journalists_held
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_us_nkorea_analysis