Have a new op-ed piece at American Thinker

Continuing my commitment to write a new op-ed piece each week of 2025 (or aspiring to anyway), news and commentary website American Thinker - a site I can't recommend nearly enough - has just published my latest.

In 'It's Time to Cleans the White House Press Corps", arguments are laid out for why the gaggle of journalists assigned to cover the president and his affairs should be thoroughly pruned down.  Not just because too many of them have demonstrated they can't strive for impartiality either.  If for no other reason it's because "traditional" outlets like CNN and Washington Post have had their audiences wiped out over the course of recent years, while more "alternative" media has emerged as the inheritors of that mantle.

Here's a snippet:

When the Internet first came into widespread use, it was envisioned that it would bring with it the end of gatekeeping. Never more would the spread of information be controlled by a few “professional” outlets. Every individual could be his own publisher, and even become a live news broadcaster as the technology further evolved.

It has taken more than thirty years, but that time has come. Indeed, it has been with us for a while already. Now at last it is being fully engaged with. When online broadcasters like Joe Rogan command regular audiences in the tens of millions while longstanding network broadcasters struggle to maintain a hundred thousand viewers, there has been a dire sea change that cannot go unacknowledged.

Trump Administration 2.0 has a glorious opportunity before it. And that is to end the mainstream press’s influence as it has come to be known and reviled.

Mash down here for more.

Read More

Death of a Newspaper: What happened to the News & Record?

Margaret Moffett is a journalist's journalist, and I would say that even if I had not known her for quite many years now.  She has brought her enormous talent to bear wherever she has gone, whether it was at The Reidsville Review (when we first met) or at the Greensboro News & Record, where she was reporter and editor of a number of sections.  She has earned my respect many times over.

So when her essay "Below the Fold" was published a few weeks ago, about the decline of what was at one time North Carolina's third largest newspaper, I was more than intrigued.  Having watched the fall from grace of the News & Record during the past decade or so, I wanted to see what a firsthand witness to what transpired had to say about it.

To be brief: it was heartbreaking to read.

Moffett chronicles a series of horrible management decisions on top of what was already a drop in readership typical of the industry as online news grew.  In reading "Below the Fold" I got the sense that the News & Record's fate was an avoidable one, had its leadership not been so eager to grow too big, too fast.

From Moffett's article:

The News & Record used to be a great paper—maybe not every day, but on a lot of them. 

From 1965 to 2013, the newspaper’s owner was Landmark Communications in Norfolk, Virginia, whose papers included The Virginian-Pilot, Roanoke Times in southwest Virginia, and dozens of smaller ones. (It also created The Weather Channel.) 

Landmark, which sold the last of its media holdings in 2021, was in the business of making money—though it’s unclear how much, because the company was privately held. But controlling owner Frank Batten Sr. believed in local journalism, at least enough to keep editors reasonably happy with their resources. 

The News & Record was where staff received a runner-up nod for the Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the 1979 Klan/Nazi shootings, when white nationalists killed five people at a local “Death to the Klan” rally organized by the Communist Workers Party.

 It was where, in 1985, people lined up along East Market Street to buy Jerry Bledsoe’s latest installment of a series chronicling murders involving three prominent local families, which later became the book Bitter Blood.

It was where Jim Schlosser, propelled by innate curiosity and boundless enthusiasm, delighted readers for 41 years with articles about things he found interesting: an old building the history of Greensboro’s PGA golf tournament, urban foxes.

And it was where I reported and edited, to significantly less acclaim, from 1995 until 2018.

There were a lot of solid writers at the News & Record at the zenith of its glory.  It was the journal of record for that region of North Carolina, and beyond.  It was also where I first discovered the joys of writing for publication: first as letters to the editor, and then a few larger pieces.  I was always thrilled to see a new essay in print, knowing that it was being read by thousands upon thousands of people throughout central North Carolina.

Good Lord... what happened to all of that?

Now, this is just me talking.  Nobody else.  But I have some notions...

The biggest of them is this: the News & Record has gradually abandoned whatever principle it had of being objective and has instead turned full-bore liberal.   It can be seen in everything from its editorials to its array of columnists, to its choice of stories.  In doing so it insulted the intelligence of a vast swath of its readership, who did not care for politicizing its daily news.

As I just said, its selection of op-ed writers has become severely lacking.  Leonard Pitts Jr. is the worst columnist I have ever seen (doesn't this guy see anything beyond the lens of alleged racism?).  Gone are the days when George Will and his kind were considered cutting edge conservatism.  Even Rosemary Roberts (may she rest in peace), as much as I loathed her leftism... she still had some of my grudging respect.  I like to think she had some for me too.

Its letters to the editor reflect the intellectual wasteland that is the modern day News & Record.  When the public input is far more boisterous at the now-online incarnation of The Rhinoceros Times, something has gone very wrong.

Does the News & Record even have a regular sports page any more?  The late Wilt Browning was always a pleasure to read (even if he was biased toward UNC in basketball).  What happened to that?

So much else that I could share aloud, about the fall of the News & Record.  But I will say this in closing: I believe it can still become a good newspaper once again.  It will require some serious revamping however.  And more than a little humility as a publication.  That region of North Carolina deserves to have a journal of record, not just for its present potential readership but for all of those still to come.  Many a time I've driven past the main branch of the public library in Greensboro, and wondered at all of the print copy it possesses of Greensboro newspapers, large and small, that are deposited within.  A printed News & Record and all it has to say about the people it serves should have an ongoing presence within those walls.

I hope it persists.  But as I said, it's going to take some effort.  And maybe more than a little clearing of conscience.

Read More

The News & Record has banned me from leaving comments

Okay, to be fair, there has not been any formal notification of exile.  But having attempted to make comments with five different browsers and automatically being directed to a Facebook "blue screen of banishment" with each one, it's safe to say at this point that I am now persona non grata from adding to reader commentary on the News & Record website.  It was discovered two days ago and no correspondence has been returned from their staff about it so, looks like I've been dispatched to the hinterlands... or at least those where Greensboro, North Carolina's "newspaper of record" is concerned.

As for why the banning has taken place: if it was in violation of terms of service, I can't find a single example.  And I went back through the past few months, from around late spring when I began leaving comments on their published letters, editorials, and some published articles.  Not once was I rude or condescending or suggesting that any other commentator was being an idiot or imbecilic.  I strived for both respect and also intelligent conversation to move discussion forward, instead of promoting one ideology or another.  The image at the right is a screengrab of a typical exchange, involving a former News & Record editor and myself.  If anyone spots any inconformity with the rules of polite society, I would appreciate understanding how.

More likely though, it is nothing more or less than the News & Record editorial staff exercising censorship against those expressing opinion contrary to a leftist bias that grows more apparent with each passing day.  And other commenters have suggested much the same.  In the words of one:

"They also check our FB pages out. I like your thoughtful comments on N&R. I have been attacked by a few on the left but I try not to be snarky. They love to censor anyone who might be right leaning."

I have to concur. It also goes a long way in explaining why there seems to be a 10 to 1 ratio of anti-Trump letters published compared to any conveying anything positive about the man. Given that the vast majority of the News & Record's eleven-county coverage area went solid red for Donald Trump in the 2016 election, the remarkable proportion of letters condemning the man (often on the most ridiculous of grounds) is suspect.

As for what I plan to do so far as the News & Record - the newspaper that I began my writing career with by way of all those letters and occasional op-ed piece and religious articles of mine that they began publishing just before my senior year of high school began - is concerned, there is no doubt at all.  I will do nothing apart from this blog post.  I'm not even in the Greensboro area anymore, but just "peeking in" every so often to see how transpires events there.

Mostly however, it's because the News & Record as a newspaper is dying.  It's been bleeding away readers in recent years like a sliced-open artery.  Advertisers are fleeing, and the Sunday classified ads are no longer the small volumes of separate section.  A few years ago the page width of the newspaper editions was slashed drastically.  Staff has been let go.  There is talk of shuttering the once-imposing News & Record headquarters in downtown Greensboro.

None of these are indicators of a healthy and vibrant newspaper enterprise.  Not even charging money after ten free articles a month on their website is going to prop up this failing business.  Maybe outside (read as: "foreign", parse that as one may) interests might subsidize the News & Record, but the days of being supported by its own community are numbered.

This is what happens when a daily news publication pitches itself as "the journal of record" for an area - an assumption that demands total dedication to impartiality - and instead becomes a propaganda broadsheet.  In the case of the News & Record it has turned into a progressive outlet to the far left of old-school Pravda.  It is, not to put too fine a point on it, NOT an unbiased and impartial news outlet.  It can no longer be trusted and if it ever could, those days are fast receding in the rear-view mirror.

(Incidentally, when I was traveling on a meandering journey across America recently, I visited the offices of many small-town newspapers and not a one of them wasn't thriving.  Why were they so strong?  Because they committed themselves to news, and with keeping themselves above any social or political agenda.  But political agenda is all that the News & Record is motivated by now, apparently.  Being snide and condescending and sophomoric and insulting the readers only goes so far before there is blowback.)

So, why should I be upset that I've been banned from making comments on the website of such a newspaper?  The News & Record is going to be dead in a few years anyway.  All that will remain are microfiche and piled-up copies in the dusty storerooms of the Greensboro Public Library and at UNC-Greensboro.  And an empty edifice in the downtown of one of the largest cities in North Carolina.  Grim, mute relics of a newspaper that was once acclaimed, respectable, and trusted.

That, and lots of unemployed reporters and editors and managers.

Read More

Charles Kuralt's words of wisdom for journalism and social media

A quote from the great American chronicler of people, from a few years before his passing in 1997.  I guess it came to mind while musing on all the scandals erupting lately from things famous people put on Twitter years ago and are now regretting it.

Read More

End of an Era: THE RHINOCEROS TIMES is no more

When I first heard the news I didn't expect to be feeling this much heartbreak.  But I am.  Maybe 'cuz I'm understanding how much The Rhinoceros Times was an influence on my early years as a writer and for long, long after...

Just one of the many fine editions of
The Rhinoceros Times produced
between 1991 and 2013.

It was first reported this morning that The Rhinoceros Times is going out of business.  The issue on the stands right now is the final one that will be printed.

So for those not from this are who are wondering: The Rhinoceros Times (or simply The Rhino Times or just "The Rhino") found its origins in a bar called The Rhinoceros Club in downtown Greensboro, North Carolina.  From a one-sheet newsletter started by John Hammer in 1991, The Rhinoceros Times fast found an eager audience among those who hungered for an alternative to the region's "mainstream" media outlets.  By the time the presses stopped the average issue of The Rhino boasted 150 pages.  Often way more than that.

The Rhinoceros Times was a free periodical: you could pick up a copy at many restaurants, grocery stores and other places of business throughout Guilford County and the surrounding area.  My favorite place to snag a copy was at the original PieWorks location at Pisgah Church Road and Lawndale Drive.  I'd order my pizza and breadsticks and enjoy The Rhino while waiting for the food to arrive.  I fast learned not to read it while eating, as the no-holds-barred style of John Hammer and the rapier-like wit of Scott Yost could cause one to choke from laughter.  The same held true for Geoff Brooks and his zany cartoons which were always dead-on target.

It was a very, very successful weekly news magazine (or "Greensboro's Only Newspaper" as the masthead declared for many years).  During its time The Rhino attracted such writing talent as Orson Scott Card and Jerry Bledsoe.  The letters to the editor were the liveliest and most passionate that I've ever seen in a local publication.  Then there was "The Sound of the Beep": you could call The Rhino's answering machine and leave a message for printing.  Some of those were downright kooky.  I made a few of them back in my college years (yeah some of the kooky ones too...).

This morning John Hammer posted a statement about The Rhino's closing down.  The website will continue for the foreseeable future but the print edition that started it all has been shuttered.  The fault is primarily the economy, the cost of running a newspaper and competition from the Internet which has hurt everybody in the business.  I'm rather surprised that many traditional newspapers in this area are still being published.  That The Rhinoceros Times lasted as long as it did is a testament to itself as a product and the people behind it.  I sincerely hope that it will continue to have an online presence for many more years to come and that it will keep boasting its fiercely independent spirit.  The way the press has become of late, we need The Rhino and other outlets like it more than ever before.

Going on twenty-two years is a good solid run.  Regardless of what happens next, John and William Hammer and their staff have much to be proud of.  And this blogger gladly takes off his hat in salute to a newspaper which broke the ground for many to follow after.

Read More

A troubling trend in News & Record journalism

The News & Record in Greensboro - the region's largest newspaper - has a story on the front page of today's edition about last night's resolution by the Rockingham County Board of Commissioners to restore the Confederate Soldiers Monument in downtown Reidsville (see earlier post here).

For some reason or another Joe Gamm - the reporter who wrote the story - chose to include the following in his article...

"After a court approved replacing the monument, vandals spray-painted the words 'Monument is coming back' on an auto body shop run by an African American businessman who outspokenly opposed returning the statue to its original spot."

Could somebody please explain to me: What does the above reference by Mr. Gamm have anything... anything at all... to do with what happened to the Confederate monument from the time of the accident in 2011 up 'til today?

Because I can't find any legitimate reason whatsoever.

What I do see however see is a not-so-subtle attempt to inject an inflammatory issue into the matter at hand, when said issue is NOT germane to the discussion at all.

"Objective journalism"? Hardly. It's not the first time I've seen such writing employed by the News & Record lately either. Earlier this month Alamance County Sheriff Terry Johnson suffered a heart attack. The News & Record article made a teeny mention of that significant fact, choosing instead to harp on the lawsuit that Johnson is facing from the United States Department of Justice in regard to alleged racial profiling.

Nothing personal against Mr. Gamm. But I expect better out of the News & Record and every one of its writers (many of whom I have come to know and respect over the years). Unfortunately there is an appearance of considerable bias in what is otherwise a well-written story. However one such aside as this - when its sole seeming purpose is to inject overtones of racism into a matter demanding sobriety of senses - throws everything about it into question and doubt.

And that isn't meant to suggest any disparagement or diminishing the grievousness of the vandalism done to Ernie Pinnix's property. Vandalism is a severe crime regardless of the motive. It should be prosecuted because it is a crime, regardless of why the perpetrator did it. But that incident was, or at least should be, a completely separate matter from the Confederate monument.

Mr. Gamm, News & Record editors: this isn't proper journalism, and we all know it.

Again, do better.

Read More

Bias in mainstream press? WHAT bias?! (anti-gun vs. pro-life)

The apparently big story right now is about the estimated fewer than 1,000 who marched in Washington D.C. today against the Second Amendment. I understand that this has made all of the major evening new broadcasts: CBS, NBC, CNN etc.

To the very best of my understanding, there was NO such coverage at all of yesterday's March for Life, which many have calculated drew more than 500,000 to the Mall to protest abortion -the premeditated murder of unborn children - on the fortieth anniversary of Roe v. Wade.

Now, applying some logic here, you would think that a story regarding half a million people would dwarf that of an event which drew, at most, several hundred.

But I suppose when it comes to stories and their coverage from big media, some of them just don't fit the expected narrative...

Read More

See BS: Tiffany Network caught discriminating against Paul, Bachmann

If CBS or any other "major media outlet" alleges that this is a matter of time constraint, then I'm gonna have to call it that I see B.S.

Look, five years ago I was one of sixteen candidates for school board in my home county, and in the final week before the election we all took part (well, one of us declined to participate, but that's another story) in a public candidates forum. A "debate", if you will. And each of us got ample time to state our beliefs and opinions on the various issues. For the very same questions, mind ya. Many people to this day still tell me that they got a kick out of my answer about whether school boards should have the power to tax: I told the audience "Look, if I get on that board and we have that power, there are good people on that board but I'm telling you now: DON'T TRUST US!! Don't trust us with that power to tax you!" But I digress...

The point is, even with a considerable number of individual candidates for office, there is PLENTY of equal time and opportunity to be afforded them by the organization sponsoring the debate... IF that organization is determined to be fair, balanced and impartial, that is.

Didn't Howard Stern once say that the term "Tiffany Network" reminded him too much of the name of a prostitute? If so, then last night CBS was certainly caught in the act of selling out its principles. What few it had left anyway...

During yesterday evening's televised debate of the Republican candidates for President, Ron Paul was given a scant 89 seconds of airtime to answer questions and lay out his claim for the Oval Office. Fellow candidate Michelle Bachmann received similarly reduced on-air exposure. The lion's share of the questions and time for answers went to Mitt Romney, Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich.

It is now a clearly documented fact that CBS was practicing deliberate discrimination against those candidates that it believes the American citizenry would do just as well to ignore.

CBS political director John Dickerson inadvertently forwarded the Bachmann campaign an e-mail stating that Bachmann would not be given much show time because...

“Okay let’s keep it loose since she’s not going to get many questions and she’s nearly off the charts in the hopes that we can get someone else."

CBS later said that they were trying to be "realistic" since Bachmann is "polling" about 4% nationally.

And this blogger says: that don't don't hunt. A study released last month by University of Minnesota notes that Ron Paul, though polling a strong third or fourth nationally, has been given the least amount of debate time during every televised forum.

Now if this ain't intentional bias and discrimination on the part of a major television news outlet, then... what is it? How can anyone defend CBS - and indeed, most of the more corporate-run press in this country - as being an objective and impartial observer of this country and this world?

Some are probably reading this and no doubt determined to tell me "Chris, CBS is a multi-billion dollar corporation and you're just a guy with a blog: what the hell do you think you can do about it?"

True, I don't have CBS's viewing numbers.

But I can document that network's abuse of journalistic ethics. Which in my opinion, this is an example of.

And there are a lot of others out there in the ether of the Intertubes who are likewise documenting it.

Meanwhile, networks like CBS keep losing viewers, 'cuz there are a lot of folks out there who are getting sick and tired of seeing B.S. too.

Read More

Fred Reed's take on WikiLeaks

The inimitable Fred Reed - who I consider to be the Internet's greatest curmudgeon - has weighed in on the WikiLeaks issue. And as is the case more often than not, he's saying the harsh truth that too many reporters, pundits and professional policy makers would rather the rest of us not think too much about (for our "own good", 'course).

Here's some of Fred's musings on the matter...

Two ways exist of looking at Wikileaks, the site that publicizes secret military documents and videos. The first is held self-interestedly by the Pentagon and by Fox News, the voice of an angry lower-middle class without too much education. These believe that Wikileakers are traitors, haters of America, who give aid and comfort to the enemy and endanger the lives of Our Boys.

Implicit in the Foxian view is a vague idea that the leaks give away important—well, stuff. You know, maybe frequencies of something or other, or locations of ambushes or, well, things. Important things. The Taliban will use this information to kill American soldiers. The notion is vague, as are those who hold it, but emotionally potent.

The other view, held usually by people who have some experience of Washington, is that the Pentagon is worried not about the divulging of tactical secrets, but about public relations. Wikileaks doesn’t endanger soldiers, insists this way of looking at things, but the war itself, and all the juiceful contracts and promotions and so on entailed by wars.

Which is obvious if you look at what the military (the president, remember, is commander-in-chief) actually does. Remember the military’s frantic efforts to suppress the photos of torture at Abu Ghraib, photos of prisoners lying in pools of blood while grinning girl soldiers play with them? These had zero tactical importance. They did however threaten to arouse the Pentagon’s worst enemy.

The American public.

Plenty more at the above link. If you've never had the pleasure of reading a Fred Reed essay, I've been told that it's quite like the literary equivalent to drinking several shots of Jack Daniels. Not that I personally know what that is like, mind ya...

Read More

Southern Poverty Law Center, or: How NOT to respect a news outlet!

I've a number of criteria for judging whether a news agency is reputable or not. Usually it's a long-term process of determination but lately it's become much, much easier for me.

Wanna know why?

It's real simple: any news outlet that cites the Southern Poverty Law Center as a reputable source of information, gets a honkin' HUGE demerit and damn near an unforgivable one.

I first heard of ethnic warfare whore Morris Dees and the Southern Poverty Law Center fifteen years ago, in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing. Dees was pimpin' himself on most of the news channels, claiming his Southern Poverty Law Center was warning the feds way in advance about "the militias movement". 'Twas enough to make me wonder who this twit was. Since then I've discovered that he's not much more than the worst sort of perpetual pest: the kind that demands everyone see a "crisis" to justify his own pathetic self-imposed purpose. In the case of Morris Dees and the Southern Poverty Law Center this entails claiming that everyone who is against their wacko socialist agenda is automatically a racist on par with Hitler himself.

So it is that I have also come to sincerely believe that any so-called "journalist" who even remotely considers Morris Dees and the Southern Poverty Law Center to be creditable, should be fired automatically if not outright dragged out into the town square and locked up in the pillory for a well-earned mocking.

But don't take my word for it, dear readers! The Southern Poverty Law Center has just published a "hit list" of forty "patriots" that the organization has deemed to be a threat to American society. On the list are columnist Chuck Baldwin (he ranked #1, and that's his response at the link), Representative Ron Paul of Texas, Joseph Farah of WorldNetDaily, and Glenn Beck (somebody that I have never listened to and have no plans to, but to the very best of my knowledge has done nothing inordinately wrong). There are also a number of outspoken critics of the federal government, and especially of the income tax and the IRS.

Curiously, there is not one person on the list who could be considered an avowed "liberal". Every person denounced by the Southern Poverty Law Center is regarded by conventional wisdom as being a "conservative" or a "libertarian".

Darn. I wish that I could be on that list! Guess I'm not a big-league enough blogger yet.

Maybe if I pointed out that Morris Dees is a sexual pervert and child molester who was once caught exploiting his step-daughter, and that his Southern "Poverty" Law Center has by many accounts raked in more than a hundred million dollars by scaring the gullible with rumors of the Third Reich rising again, that maybe he would put me on his enemies list?

Or maybe putting it in larger font would mark me as a worthy adversary...

MORRIS DEES
OF THE SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER

IS A SEXUAL PERVERT, CHILD MOLESTER,

ETHNIC WARFARE WHORE,

PIMP OF THE PERPETUAL CRISIS,

AND MONEY-GRABBING HUCKSTER

OF THE UTMOST DEGREE!!!

Dear Lord, I hope that will do the trick.

Read More

NATIONAL POLICE GAZETTE returns and brings back tales of ribaldry most foul!

Way, waaay back in 1845 began publication of National Police Gazette. In many aspects it was the forerunner of such uniquely American journalistic institutions as The National Enquirer, Howard Stern and... maybe blogs like this one! National Police Gazette had a long and illustrious run (and quite an illustrated one as you can see from the image on the left) up until 1977.

And today it's making a comeback, courtesy of Steven Westlake and his alter-ego, "proprietor William A. Mays". Westlake has propelled National Police Gazette into the 21st century via the Internet and it is a scream of a good read! Aim here for the National Police Gazette website. And the website Ragazine has posted an in-depth interview with Westlake that provides even more history about this groundbreaking publication and its return.

Read More

Two giants of journalism have passed away

Enigmatic but always sincere and true to himself. That's how I'm always going to think of Robert Novak - called and not without reason "the last of the shoe leather newspaper reporters" - who passed away yesterday at age 78 after a heroic battle against brain cancer.

Novak embodied and epitomized everything that it's supposed to mean to be a reporter: working hard, cultivating sources, and never taking anything at face value. A lot of people are calling him a "conservative" commentator. I don't know if that could really be said about Novak. He was the kind of journalist who, better than most, separated his politics from his profession. But when he had to weigh in on the issues he did it on his own terms. As Novak once observed: "Always love your country — but never trust your government!"

And it goes without saying: Robert Novak was a damned brilliant writer.

And then today comes word that Don Hewitt has died at age 86 from pancreatic cancer.

Hewitt's place in television history would have been secured for any number of things: the first nationwide satellite news broadcast, producing and directing the presidential debate between Kennedy and Nixon, and a bunch more during his more than half a century at CBS.

But it was his idea for a new format of television journalism that Hewitt will be most remembered for. As he wrote in his autobiography "The formula is simple, and it's reduced to four words every kid in the world knows: Tell me a story. It's that easy." In 1968 60 Minutes premiered. It has been the most acclaimed, the most respected and at times the most feared television news program ever since.

Thoughts and prayers going out to the families of both men.

Read More

Southeastern Conference bans social media at sports events

"No Twitter, Facebook, YouTube or TwitPic!" That's the dictate being sent to sports fans and students of Southeastern Conference member schools if they want to attend athletic events. Under its newly adopted media policy, the SEC has informed its schools that "Ticketed fans can't produce or disseminate (or aid in producing or disseminating) any material or information about the Event, including, but not limited to, any account, description, picture, video, audio, reproduction or other information concerning the Event."

It's effectively a ban on all so-called "social media". Per the new regs, a fan could get ejected from the premises simply for using his iPhone to take a picture of himself at a Gators football game and sending it to his friends on Facebook.

So what's behind this boneheaded move? The $3 billion contact with CBS for the next 15 years, giving that network exclusive media rights to cover SEC games. In other words: if you go to an SEC event, you and your cellphone are potential competition to a multi-billion dollar broadcast television corporation equipped with the latest cutting-edge high definition technology.

This isn't entirely unheard of, but for a collegiate athletic conference to crack down on the fans themselves is certainly new (and treacherous) ground to tread. Not to mention darn near unenforceable.

Read More

I have an idea...

It came to me when I happened to catch tonight's CBS Evening News (which I don't usually watch at all).

Want to know how to economically revitalize the newspaper and television news industries, and increase enlightenment among the general public in one fell swoop?

It's very simple: ban the words "conservative" and "liberal" from usage by professional journalists.

Those words are worse than useless. They are woefully outdated terminology. The only function of "liberalism" and "conservatism" is to excuse one's own intellectual laziness.

(And truth be known, I'm seeing a lot of laziness in CBS's reporting tonight... but not really more than one would expect from CNN or Fox News either.)

That's no doubt a big reason why television and print journalism is suffering a slow and lingering death. The alternatives on the Internet - which are not confining themselves to a paradigm that was faulty well before it was obsolete - are attracting a vast audience wanting and demanding a fresh look at things replete with new ideas. Dumbed-down "debate" along the conservative/liberal lines is horridly boring... and doesn't represent reality at all.

People are getting tired of fakery and illusion. There is a dire and growing hunger for truth that we haven't known very much in living memory. And if the traditional media has any desire at all to survive, it's left with no choice but to commit to the higher standard of ideas, and abandon adherence to the lowest common denominator of cheap ideologies.

Read More

The obvious question about WGSR

In the past month or so WGSR general manager Charles Roark has broadcast footage of no less than three murder victims (before knowing if the next of kin had been notified), and at this moment is defending his "right" to trespass on property and film video of a person's house burning down without regard of what the guy's family was going through. In addition to every other amount of callous disrespect toward others that WGSR under his management has done with no editorial oversight.

So I'm compelled to ask aloud...

If the naked, beaten and dead body of Azile Roark was lying in the street, would Charles Roark be equally insistent on footage of that - the corpse of his own mother and the proprietor of Star News Corporation - be broadcast on television?

Or is there a double standard at work at WGSR?

We already know that Roark has sold out his principles to local cult leader (and WGSR's biggest client) Johnny Robertson. So let's assume that the shoe might be on the other foot someday and that would be Roark's turn to be the victim.

Dear readers, you know just as well as I do: there's not a snowball's chance in Hell that Roark would put himself in as vulnerable a position as he demands on putting just about everyone else.

And no amount of crowing about being "the biggest media" in the area can possibly make up for such a severe deficit of personal and professional ethics.

Read More

Twitter making Internet news finally come into its own right now in Iran

Twenty years ago this month, the broadcast of the crackdown on the pro-democracy protesters in Beijing by the Chinese government was widely hailed as the moment that international television news coverage like that of CNN became a serious factor at long last.

That was CNN in 1989.

In 2009 it is Twitter, of all things, that is marking the end of television's dominance of the news.

Here's the Twitter feed for most of the "tweets" about what's going down in Iran. At this hour there's a massive rally in Tehran by anti-Ahmedinejad protesters. The police have opened fire and killed at least one person. Just about everything we know about all this is coming from regular people who are sending live reports via Twitter.

Remember this well, folks. June 2009 is when people in Iran took hold of the power of "you media" and played it to the hilt. This is real revolution in more ways than one happening at this moment.

I hope this kind of exuberance spreads to more countries. Including my own :-)

EDIT 2:12 p.m. EST: I made a link to this blog post on the same Twitter feed (#iranelection) and right now, The Knight Shift is getting SLAMMED with more international visits than I have ever seen in the five-plus years of this blog's operation (along with quite a few folks from across the United States).

So a hearty hello to everyone who's finding their way here this afternoon, and here's raising up some thoughts and prayers for our friends in Iran who are taking their destiny into their own hands. May they be an inspiration for us all!

Read More

I knew he couldn't stay away forever

The greatest curmudgeon of the Internet - and probably the modern world - has returned.

Actually, Fred Reed has been back at it for over a month now from the looks of it. He announced in February that he was retiring... but nature does abhor a vacuum, right?

So Reed is at it again, and in his latest work he offers his unique insight regarding the death of the journalism industry.

Here's an excerpt...

A story once might have begun, “At midafternoon Thursday a house burned down at 112 Maples Street. Three children left unaccompanied inside escaped unhurt.” In the sensitive new journalism, the lead became, “Sally Harpooner, a single mother of three, saw a towering plume of smoke rising from her home as she returned from a community-sponsored drug-rehabilitation center. Her heart beat faster….” Before, a reporter would have said forget her heart, beat sally for being such a useless skell. Not longer. Stories began to appear about a kind old man who was giving hydrotherapy to his faithful dog Bowser who had hip displasia. The old crew had nothing against Bowser, but they didn’t think he was news.

The new crowd didn’t remember being blind drunk on ghastly Cambodia gin during the siege of Phnom Penh, running the alleys in rikshas by night and eating deep-fried pregnant crickets. They eggs made them creamy. Kipling would have understood. By day in Phnom Penh the ancient T-28s flown by the Khmer Air Force crashed because they pilots were trying to smuggle more sugar than they could take off with. The ragtag press corps—Cambodia was a sidewhoe--when not eating crickets, lay on rooftop patios with the full moon hanging above and the smell of flower trees making the air sticky-sweet and Chicom 122s whistling into the city from the marshes and taking out whole houses.

It was the last wheeze of the news game as it should be—raw, free, often eccentric. Then came embeds and newspapers run by accountants with green eyeshades. Advertising had always paid for papers, but now it became the paper’s reason for existence. The distance between a newspaper and a PR firm narrowed. Pleasantness became compulsory. The old hands hated pleasantness like poison.

One of these days, I'm gonna go through a whole bunch of Fred Reed essays the way they're prolly meant to be enjoyed: pissed-off mad and with several shots of Jack Daniels in my belly (and I'm not even a drinking man). One of these days, my friends. 'Til then, mash down here for the rest of Reed's newest article.

Read More

He can have a strong influence on the weak-minded

Found this political cartoon and couldn't resist posting it here...

Read More

60 MINUTES blasts Transportation Security "theater"

I just finished watching Lesley Stahl's story on 60 Minutes about the Transportation Security Administration: what many consider to be the most worthless government agency ever created (thanks for nothing again George W. Bush). It pretty much encapsulated everything that a lot of us have been saying about the TSA since its inception. Namely, that it is absolutely impotent when it comes to apprehending real threats before they begin. One Congressional source cited in the report said that of the tens of thousands of travelers who had been stopped for TSA "interviews", not one was found to be carrying anything that could be deemed dangerous. That didn't stop outgoing TSA Administrator Kip Hawley from demanding that "THESE PEOPLE ARE TRYING TO KILL US!" as a justification for (1) harassing 90-year old ladies in wheelchairs and (2) the cushy job that the Transportation Security Administration gives him and thousands of others who otherwise could not find employment, gainful or otherwise. To this observer, it seemed more like the TSA bunch wants us to believe that they are somehow "superior" to us, that they "know more than we do" and thus we should shut up and accept them as a big brother.

Well, let me go on the record to say this: in seven years, I have never felt impressed or intimidated, at all, with the TSA goons. I have however had much incredulous laughter at their "security theater" antics. There is a reason why a lot of people call them "Too Stupid for Arby's".

For some thoughts about how there can be serious security on the airlines, without abusing the rights and convenience of American citizens and other travelers, read my proposal for the creation of "citizen marshals". Because the TSA and just about every other do-nothing agency has demonstrated that there is no faith at all to be had in government.

Read More

"Deep Throat" Mark Felt has passed away

"The most famous anonymous source in history", W. Mark Felt - the legendary "Deep Throat" who passed along the information about the Watergate scandal to reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein that ultimately brought down President Richard Nixon - has passed away at age 95.

Felt's alter-ego was one of the greatest and most celebrated mysteries of American politics during the past fifty years. For more than three decades speculation continued to swirl about the identity of Deep Throat. It wasn't until the spring of 2005 that Felt came forward and revealed to the public that he was the informant who guided Woodward and Bernstein.

Was he a movie star or sports figure? No. But in his own way Felt was just as much a larger-than-life celebrity to those who came up in the Seventies and Eighties. Some will disagree with his motives and politics, but there is no argument that Mark Felt made a profound impact on the history of his country... and that's plenty enough reason to note his passing.

Read More