REICH COMMUNICATIONS

Strange Days

 

When I saw the news reports and then began seeing clips of the statements and news conference by Putin and Trump following their secret meeting, I was, like probably most Americans, shocked.  Our president stood there in front of the world and said he believed Putin over all of our law and intelligence agencies and committees from both our Senate and House.  He told the world that the U.S. is equally to blame for bad relations between us and Russia’s government.  He then devolved into his tired litany of people to blame – the Democrats, Hillary Clinton, President Obama.  And, as the world watched, he said the biggest threat to U.S. – Russia relations has been the “witch hunt.”

I was heartened when I saw responses from our nation’s leaders.  Even Paul Ryan said, in a statement, that “the president must appreciate that Russia is not our ally.”  A few other Republicans called out the president - albeit gently, for the most part.

Watching the network news and then CNN and MSNBC last night, I saw the dismay voiced by not only political pundits, but by international relations experts and past national security and CIA leaders.

Out of curiosity, I jumped over to FOX News to see how they were reporting this incredible story.  The first time, they were reporting on something else – a crime story, I believe.  I tried again, and I got the Laura Ingraham show.  There she was, with two or three pundits, mocking the nation’s and the world’s reaction to the president’s remarks.  She showed clips of reporters and analysts on CNN and MSNBC and one of the major networks voicing their dismay and their concerns over how this can impact us on the world stage and at home.  And then Ingraham and her guests smirked and laughed, saying this is much ado about nothing and that Trump has done a wonderful thing by sitting with an enemy and trying to be friends.  They called the concern by Democrats and others as simply overblown hysteria and more partisan politics to try to hurt the president.

No wonder we have such disconnect between left and right in this country!  Many on the right rely solely on FOX for their news – certainly Trump’s base does – and they are being fed information and comment that is simply wrong.  Talk about fake news!!

So thanks to FOX and the other far-right media like Breitbart, Sinclair TV and Limbaugh, many people will simply continue believing there’s some “deep state” that’s trying to undermine the president and that he is doing amazing things on the world front as he, in reality, harms relations with our friends and allies and ignores what may have been the most significant attack on our nation since 9/11 – an attack that didn’t kill people but instead is part of an ongoing attempt to kill the basic principles and core beliefs of this great nation.

The president is not making America great again.  It’s always been great.  Rather, he’s working to chip away at that greatness because it doesn’t align with his vision of America as a place that favors the wealthy over the poor and a place where people from certain countries (like Norway) are more welcome than those who come from nations where the predominant skin color is black or brown. 

We can only hope that, despite the hate-filled rhetoric spewing from the likes of FOX and Limbaugh, more of our elected officials, on both sides of the aisle, come to their senses and forcefully speak out and – better yet – initiate some action to censure the president for what he’s done.  Former CIA chief John Brennan, who Trump just moments ago called “a very bad guy,” is right when he called Trump’s actions yesterday “nothing short of treasonous.”

Finally...

Bad Policy...Terrible PR

 

 

A bad policy regarding families seeking asylum from violence in Central America is being made even worse by the horrendous public relations efforts from the White House and from the president himself.

I can try to understand the thinking on both on sides of the issue. Those who have come here via legal means and are now citizens or legal aliens can feel frustrated that others now try to come in illegally to take their jobs by accepting lower pay.

But let's add a few kernels of accuracy... many of those trying to come here by are seeking asylum from horrendous and life-threatening conditions at home. And this great country has traditionally offered refuge for people fleeing violence or starvation. That's how many of our own grandparents and great-grandparents got here from elsewhere. Lady Liberty awaited them in the harbor, offering a light of peace and hope.

There's no statue to welcome refugees along our southern border, but rather the reputation of America as a land of immigrants, long welcomed to help us grow and be better.

The Administration's new get-tough policy has not worked. The number of people trying to come in from the south has actually increased noticeably since the policy was put into place in April.

The image of families being separated is not a good one for people around the world to see, where we have for centuries been the place that welcomed the "tired and the poor."

Worse yet is the image being played worldwide that we are now a nation torn apart, with our president turning it into a partisan fight by falsely placing the blame on the Democrats. Despite what he and Fox News say, this is 100% a White House policy and not, as he says, "the Dems' law."

Placing the blame, falsely, on Democrats is a cowardly and divisive PR strategy. It also avoids coming up with a humane solution. Using poor and helpless parents and children as leverage in a quest for billions for a needless wall is disgusting and flies in the face of principles that have made America great.  Instead of sitting down with both parties to come to a fast and fair solution, the president simply places blame where it doesn't belong and further divides us, even as families are ripped apart.

This is the sort of thing the U.S. has condemned other nations for doing, yet the president's response to a UN statement criticizing it is simply to threaten to withdraw from that UN committee.

Once again, the president is drastically harming our hard-earned reputation as a land of decent and compassionate people, as a beacon of right for other nations to look to as a model.

It's not too late, though. Fast and compassionate and non-partisan action can alleviate the immediate human crisis and put us back on a path on which we belong as a trusted and fair leading partner among the world's nations.

Sinclair Broadcasting... Pushing the Idea of "Fake News"

 

About a month ago, I wrote about some things happening on the "fake news" front.   One was that Sinclair Broadcasting, the largest owner of local TV stations in the U.S., was planning to have its local news anchors read scripted editorials implying that much of the mainstream news media are not truthful in their reporting.  Sounds a lot like what we hear from the White House and its occupant, as well as from the conservative movement's mouthpieces -- Breitbart, Rush Limbaugh and, of course, FOX News.

It finally happened the other day ... dozens and dozens of local anchors at Sinclair's 193 stations read the same message, fomenting distrust in our news media.  

It made the news -- at least the media that report real news. It's also gone viral as someone put together a video that shows anchors from stations around the country voicing exactly the same thing.  I'm not sure if FOX did anything on it.

From what I've read in trade journals, many local news anchors were upset, but most read the pieces because their livelihoods -- and their families --  depend on them.  A few refused to do it, and I haven't heard if there have yet been any repercussions.

I'll repeat what I wrote about this a few weeks ago...

 

 

Even though these pieces are being labeled as “opinion,” it is still extremely harmful to our democracy and to the public interest to have on-air reporters and anchors demeaning other media and promoting the idea of them being fake news.

It’s unfortunate and it’s dangerous, since it further pushes the concept of our news media doing fake news, ironically from one of the media companies that has been most guilty of disseminating fake and biased news.

My advice… check to see which station in your market is owned by Sinclair and be forewarned.

Wayne Friedman, who covers TV for MediaPost, has an interesting take on it.  Worth reading what he has to say.

More on Fake News

 

Over the past several days, I’ve seen several stories relating in some way to how to deal with fake news.

A few days ago in the New York Times, tech writer Farhad Manjoo wrote about a two-month experiment -- getting news the old-fashioned way by reading about it the daily newspapers and not looking at online news or social media. The headline neatly sums up the outcome… “Opting for Yesterday’s News Today: Deep, Informed, Accurate and Inky.”

Getting his news mostly through daily newspapers via their print editions enabled him to get information more fully developed and reported, with fewer inaccuracies and errors. In other words, slower but the truthful, or at least more truthful. He also got insight and context that fast-breaking news coverage can't always provide. And by avoiding posts about news on social media, he says he missed out on the slanted and sometimes intentionally misleading representation of information that we’ve all fallen victim to online.

It’s a good read and it does make me wish we could go back to the way it used to be. I know we can’t – that genie’s been let out of the bottle. But it seems that we as a nation might be better off if we could go back.

...

About two weeks ago on C-SPAN I caught the last few minutes of a conference from London about fake news. There was talk of an effort in the U.K. to create grades of truthfulness or accuracy for digital media so users might have a better idea if what they are seeing is truthful or biased. I thought, what a great idea! I wish there was something like that to assess U.S. media.

So I was pleasantly surprised to see a story in The Wall Street Journal a few days ago. It was bylined by a former WSJ publisher L. Gordon Crovitz, and it said that he and journalist Steven Brill -- best-known as founder and publisher of American Lawyer – have started a company called NewsGuard that will rate news organizations and sites based on their accuracy, bias and other things that might impact their accuracy, including ownership and affiliations. Rather than relying on algorithms, NewsGuard will have real people monitoring news and what passes for news, rating media green, yellow or red depending on their truthfulness and transparency.

They plan to rate some 7,500 news brands that account for about 98 percent of traditional and online news in the U.S. It’s a much-needed thing that will help most of us see what’s real and what’s fake.

Of course, it won’t stop those who prefer to believe fake news because it lines up with their own viewpoint. But it should help the vast majority of us who do want accuracy and truthfulness in the news we consume.

...

And finally, as we speak of fake news, there’s something that Sinclair Broadcasting, one of the largest owners of TV stations nationwide with nearly 200 stations, is starting to do. Sinclair’s owners are conservative and have been inserting into local newscasts brief “must-run” segments reporting on national political news, but with a strong conservative slant that is not always a truthful slant. They also insist that their owned stations run “terrorism updates” that repeat and spread the latest conspiracy theories. The pieces carry no identification as “editorial” or “opinion pieces,” but are presented as hard and unbiased news stories.

And now, according to the latest reports in the trade media, Sinclair plans to have its local news anchors -- people who are known and trusted in their local markets -- read pieces echoing the complaints we hear from the White House, some Republican politicians and from conservative media like FOX that the “traditional media” like the networks and major daily papers are reporting fake news.

Even though these pieces are being labeled as “opinion,” it is still extremely harmful to our democracy and to the public interest to have on-air reporters and anchors demeaning other media and promoting the idea of them being fake news. According to a CNN report, many Sinclair TV stations news anchors aren’t happy about this, calling this forced move “manipulative.”

It’s unfortunate and it’s dangerous, since it further pushes the concept of our news media doing fake news, ironically from one of the media companies that has been most guilty of disseminating fake and biased news.

My advice… check to see which station in your market is owned by Sinclair and be forewarned.

There's still more work to do ...

 

Our friends at The National Safety Council just released their unofficial estimate of traffic fatalities for 2017, and it is down by less than 1% -- 227 lower than 2016 - for a total of 40,100.  

That's more than 109 people killed every day on our roads and highways!

Any decrease is good, especially after the increases of 8 and 9 percent in 2015 and 2016.  But it is still a lot more than 2015's total of 32,485, which had been the lowest number since 1949.

We still have more work to do.

More fake news...this time on infrastructure spending

 

Once again, we are getting fake news from the White House, this time regarding one of the president's big campaign promises -- spending to fix our nation's infrastructure.

On the campaign trail, he complained about crumbling bridges, roads and rails, and our power and water systems.

The official White House proposal revolves around a $1.5 trillion infrastructure spending bill.  But as is typical from this Administration, what they say doesn't line up with reality.  In reality, it is more like a $300 billion plan...way short of what the president is touting.  Here’s why…

In the past, government spending on infrastructure generally worked on an 80/20 ratio... the Feds putting up to 80 percent for projects, with states and/or local governments putting up the remaining 20 percent. 

The new proposed spending reverses that ratio, making it, in many experts' opinions, unrealistic.  The White House says we should look to private funding and other sources of revenue like tolls and taxes...more taxes by that will impact the middle classes, now that we are swimming in money from our huge temporary tax cuts. (Sarcasm here, in case you missed it.)

Even some industry and manufacturing groups, as reported in respected trade publications like Industry Week and Route 50, are skeptical of the president's proposal.  As to be expected, some industry officials are being a bit cagey in their quotes so they don’t incur nasty tweets from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

I find it curious that the White House continues to push for full funding of a southern border wall for $31 billion that, supposedly, Mexico was going to pay for.  Why can’t we use the same 20/80 ratio the president proposes and see how quickly that project gets done?  Hey, here’s an idea for the funding the wall… sell ad space on it.  Trump himself might buy some to plaster his name all over it.

It seems this infrastructure plan is yet another broken campaign promise accompanied by the usual falsehoods and misdirection we’re getting used to seeing from the White House. 

Hope.... A Year Later

Below is a post I put up two days after the presidential election a year ago. 

As you'll see, I was worried but I also had hope that the new president would behave in a more civil and dignified manner than he had during the campaign - a manner befitting the office he was about to inherit.  I had hope that he would work to unite us.  And I expressed hope that he wouldn't shame the United States in the eyes of the world.

So far, I've been wrong on all counts.  And I see no reason to hope he will change his behavior. 

I continue to hope, however, that people with integrity in Congress will provide a much-needed check to offset some of his craziness.  Perhaps the results of Tuesday's election will embolden some Republicans to begin to speak out.  And we have to prepare for the 2018 elections, when voters can hopefully restore some sense of decency and integrity to the House and Senate and, eventually, to the White House.

I hope.

.....

 

November 10, 2016

The election certainly did not turn out the way I had hoped and, honestly, I am still trying to get myself out from under the strange haze that's enveloped me since late Tuesday night.

 

But the sun rose as usual this morning. 

I woke up and l'm still breathing.

 

I was heartened to see that Hillary won the popular vote, which just points up the idea that the Electoral College system, which was initially designed to preserve power for the less populous southern states where slave-power fueled the agrarian system, needs to be changed.  But that's a battle for another time.

 

For now, I have to have faith in our system.  As much as I can't stand him on a personal and business level, Trump will be the president, hopefully for all of us, as he pledged yesterday.  I have to hope that much of his nasty and hateful rhetoric was an act in order to gain attention.  I have to hope that his advisors and Congress, including the many decent Republicans, will calm him and make him behave in a manner that won't shame us in the eyes of the world. 

 

Hopefully he will reach out and try to hear those he demeaned in his campaign rants.  Of course, we cannot forget what he has said and done over the years, and we will need to remain vigilant that he doesn't try to repeat some of that terrible behavior while in office.  Hopefully Congress and the court system, if necessary, will act as a check...hopefully.

 

I will probably find it difficult over these next few months to watch the news on TV without the remote in my hand, ready to flip the channel so I don't have to hear his voice.  I will rely on newspaper reporting, and if I see a headline that scares or disgusts me, I can avoid or delay reading that story.  I certainly won't be watching the inauguration in January.

 

I know...it's burying my head in the sand, but that's how I feel I must cope for now. 

 

And, above all, I will continue to hope that good triumphs over evil and that love ...and decency...trumps hate.

That is how I expect to get through these next few months and the coming four years.

 

Dealing with Fake News

 

Unless you've been hibernating or even if your only source of information this past year has been FOX or Breitbart, you've been hearing a lot about fake news.

The White House uses the term for anything even remotely critical of the administration and its policies, including news reports and analysis based on facts.  The president often uses the fake news phrase when referring to his differing version of things we’ve seen with our own eyes or heard with our own ears, as trivial as the size of the inauguration crowd or as important as who the” good people” were at the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville.

We now know fake news had an impact on the 2016 election, possibly to the point of swaying it toward the Republican candidate.

So how do we, as a nation, deal with take news and what can the media do?

We've seen major media do more fact-checking and correction wrong statements right there in the context of the news stories.  We've seen some media outlets emphasize "truth" in their promotional ads and even on their mastheads, such as the Washington Post's new tagline "Democracy dies in darkness" and CNN's new ad campaign "This is an apple."

We've seen some schools and non-profit groups developing programs to help educate young people on how to consume news critically and to distinguish between real and fake news.  And Google announced last week a partnership with the Poynter Institute to expand the International Fact-Checking Institute, which promotes best journalistic practices for online content.

And here's more... Publisher Steven Brill, known for founding the magazine American Lawyer, Court TV and in 2006 the Yale journalism Initiative, has just announced a new effort to combat fake news.

He is calling it News Guard and it will be an independent fact checker.  Brill plans to start with a core of 40 – 60 journalists who will research statements and issues in the news to verify their accuracy or correct them as necessary.  He plans to charge a fee to news organizations for the service.

Hopefully, this and other efforts will help make the public more aware of what can be fake news, while offering an easy and trustworthy way to check the accuracy of what is reported.  This is needed, on so many levels and for many reasons, especially in these times when we have a White House that is leaning toward authoritarianism.

Opinion: Where is the leadership?

 

One of the most important roles an American president traditionally plays is that of healer-in-chief.  In the past, presidents consoled, offered words of sorrow and hope, and generally united us as we, as one nation, mourned and tried to make sense of senseless acts. 

A little more than 16 years ago, our president, who had won office with the most narrow of margins, united us as a nation, as we mourned and tried to process the unthinkable acts of terrorism in New York, Washington and a field in Pennsylvania.  He put politics aside in an attempt to bring us together as one country.

Our current president has once again failed in that role.  He responded inappropriately to the killing in Charlottesville and he did a half-assed job after the Las Vegas shooting.  His response to the natural disaster in Puerto Rico was a national embarrassment.

Now, after what is being called the biggest act of terrorism on U.S. soil since 9/11, the president has turned it into a political play.  His tweets placing blame on Sen. Schumer and the "diversity lottery" are not only misplaced and highly inappropriate, but they are factually incorrect.

Sen. Schumer's response to the crazy tweets was spot on.  "Mr. President, where is your leadership," he said.  It's a question more than a majority of Americans -- at least three million more and growing with every day and with every nasty tweet -- are asking.

Where is the leadership? 

Not in the White House these days, that's for sure.