Entire newscast devoted to Cronkite’s death; would he have done it that way?

Somehow I think the late Walter Cronkite would have been embarrassed and even a little sad that his old CBS Evening News show had come to this – devoting its whole half-hour broadcast Friday night to the reporting of his death (well, he might feel sad that he was the one who died, but I meant sad for what his former newscast has come to). Apparently as far as Katie Couric’s version or the modern CBS management’s version of the evening news is that’s the way it is today. The network news has become irrelevant as a reliable source for a re-cap of all the day’s news. Michael Jackson got the same exclusive treatment.

That’s a far cry from when Mr. Cronkite, who died Friday at the age of 92, was at the helm as the anchorman of the CBS Evening News and was known as “the most trusted man in America”.

Of course both he and Jackson were celebrities and as such merited coverage upon their death, but a serious news broadcast does not devote its entire length to an obituary of one of its own or of a pop star.

And I think it’s kind of my job or interest to comment on current events and bring up inconsequential things, so on the subject of Mr. Cronkite’s trustworthiness, kind of like your favorite uncle, that’s where I learned the word “avuncular” (uncle like). I was reading a story about Walter Cronkite years ago, maybe sometime in the early 90s, and the writer used that word to describe America’s most famous news anchor. Sometime later and while I was working for a newspaper I did a story on an assistant principal at a high school who all the kids seemed to like and look up to and I used the word avuncular to describe him. Got a lot of comments on that. “Avuncular” people would say with a slight smile, as if maybe I was throwing fancy words around. No, it just seemed to fit at the time.

While I certainly watched Mr. Cronkite a lot through the years, my earliest memories of concentrating on the nightly network news are of watching NBC’s Huntley-Brinkley Report with Chet Huntley and David Brinkley, one in Washington and one in New York. I understand they were in the solid lead in ratings among the three networks when Mr. Cronkite became anchor in 1962.

But what I admired about Mr. Cronkite was that he was an old newspaper and wire service reporter. He was to me a real newsman, who happened to get into broadcasting and was quite good at it.

He was not ugly, but of course he’d never make it starting up in the business today up against the pretty boys and pretty girls.

And that makes me think of some of the long-gone TV news correspondent pioneers. I can recall some rather good correspondents, one man who seemed to have bad teeth or braces or something and some women who were rather plain or dowdy, but you didn’t expect them to look good, they were just reporting the news – remember when it was the news that was featured.

Nowadays it often seems more of a beauty contest and there is a lot of interviewing each other and endless professional pundits. Although, interestingly enough, I think the idea of a bunch of professional news people and mouthpieces sitting around giving their opinions may have gotten its start with the coverage of political conventions, in which Mr. Cronkite took part.

To some extent, broadcast news has moved beyond the tunnel vision of the one camera and the correspondent interpreting for you what is happening with a broader picture and more sources (I think I am correct in that). And when you add the interesting but somewhat confusing and unreliable element of so-called citizen journalism, things have moved way, way beyond the Cronkite era.

But there is something to be missed from that era when the avuncular Mr. Cronkite removed those thick-rimmed glasses and announced the death of President Kennedy, choking back tears. Uncle Walter was telling us something terrible had happened.

And when he admittedly broke away from his usual mode of being super objective and not taking sides when reporting the news and told his audience that the Vietnam War was hopeless, President Lyndon Johnson is said to have commented that he knew he had lost the war or the public’s support of it at that point.

Objectivity in journalism is the ideal, but sometimes you just have to tell the truth and tell them “that’s the way it is”.

ADD 1:

I turned on the TV Saturday night and it was as if they were re-running Katie Couric’s Friday night broadcast — it was all about Walter Cronkite’s death again. I turned to ABC and the news had been pre-empted for a sports event, and then I turned to NBC and it was leading off with Walter Cronkite’s death — so I knew he was still dead. With all due respect, I hope they have found a new story tonight (Sunday night).

RIP Uncle Walter……

ADD 2:

Watched CBS News Sunday night and they did have other news, along with Cronkite’s continuing death.

Show bizz is killing serious news and politics

I’m a news and political junkie and as such I make this observation after reading about how Sarah Palin is trying to use her brief moment in the national political spotlight to cash in, even without gaining higher or holding lower political office. And then I read how her would-have-been son in-law Levi Johnston is saying critical things about her  nd is hoping to maybe get into acting or get a book deal – Palin herself has a book planned.

And now Johnston is quoting his would be mother in-law as saying she might rather cash in on all of the commercial offers she has received and forget the political office part of it. But of course he could be saying this because he has his own agenda, being attached to this Palin saga and hoping to cash in himself.

(As far as books, the two would certainly need help — from what I’ve heard of them, one is barely if at all able to utter a thought, and the other rambles on but seldom utters a complete thought.)

So I make this observation, being a news and political junkie:

Show biz has ruined news and politics.

Organizations that pass themselves off as dedicated to news operate like they are putting on a constantly-running variety show. People running or claiming to run for public office have found that there can be more money in promoting one’s self than actually seeking an office or fulfilling the duties of that office. And even the news people spend a lot of time interviewing each other and plugging their own books.

I wish all these people would leave news and politics and try their hands in the show biz world directly and that in some other universe there would be real news and real political discussion.

With all the problems the nation faces, from the disastrous economy to being threatened by North Korea and terrorists from the Middle East, and nuclear proliferation, it is galling that these phony pundits grab so much attention.

And the cable and internet news outlets discredited their credentials as serious news entities by spending and continuing to spend so much time on Michael Jackson – he’s dead already!. He was an entertainer, an artist, and a troubled person, and he apparently had one heck of a lot of fans. But that’s entertainment. What about the real news that affects everyone’s life and the future of the world?

I do this blog in a kind of fantasy world as if anyone really cared. But it seems to me there must be a lot of others living in some parallel universe who cannot or do not want to come to grips with real public issues but can obsess on Michael Jackson or Sarah Palin (although I think the latter is losing her allure, while the former, although dead, continues to bring in money).

Newspapers are dying, in part because many were serious. Meanwhile, TV news, cable and network, have completely sold out to commercialism, and the internet is full of gossip passing itself off as news, and is not really a separate entity for real news in that it still for the most part depends upon the traditional news sources, you know, the ones that are going out of business because they may be too serious.

If “local” news gathering can be outsourced to India and U.S. taxpayers must fund GM to produce cars in China — just what is OUR function???

I just read on the Editor and Publisher site that the Hartford Advocate newspaper (out of Connecticut), along with two other alternative newspapers connected with it, in what was first proposed as a joke and then became serious, has published at least one edition in which all or virtually all of its local news was done by outsourced writers – from INDIA!

On my first read of this item I did not get whether this was a one-time thing or a new way of doing things. This is not the first time something like this has been done. And in the case of the Advocate, it seems some of these writers are quite highly qualified, having written for the Guardian (out of England), the BBC, and the Times of India. Interestingly, the Advocate personnel said the whole thing was “not cheap”.  But at least one other U.S. newspaper tried (still is?) outsourcing local news because they could get the job done for a lot less money (really kind of like just accepting the news release written by city hall instead of doing your own reporting – but really the story for the local newspaper is not so much about what happened at the council meeting, but what led up to it and what is the result and so on – good reporting is not transcription). My own local newspaper is starting to use more submitted articles. Back in the old days, local newspapers often used so-called “stringers” who worked on a kind of low piece rate (or maybe for free for their own vanity – kind of like I’m doing here). Back to the oursourced writers from India. Of course they do all of this by phone, calling to the U.S. for interviews from the Indian subcontinent. It’s bad enough they’ve taken over medicine (at least where I live), but our local news reporting too!?

Reading this on top of learning by way of the web and some on cable news that General Motors plans to use taxpayer bailout dollars to make cars in China (and even import some of them back into the U.S.) leaves me to ask the question: just what is OUR function on this planet?

(Maybe we’re all supposed to join the Army. Then again, that could be outsourced — like the French Foreign Legion — not a bad idea.)

Going back and reading the E&P item again I saw that the Advocate is a weekly and the whole thing was done as a kind of spoof to prove a point (or not). They (the paper) explain it themselves and if I can get this link correct you can get that explanation at: http://www.hartfordadvocate.com/article.cfm?aid=13171

And if that didn’t work, just Google Hartford Advocate.

They also mentioned that they got the idea from news some time ago that a newspaper in Pasadena, Ca. decided to outsource some local coverage by doing such things as linking up their Indian correspondents via webcam to local city council meetings. Having attended far too many council meetings when I was a reporter (I actually liked them at first), I’d say that’s one job I’d almost not mind giving up.

Seriously. Besides all the obvious logistical, practical, ethical, even cost, considerations associated with outsourcing news coverage, doesn’t one have to ask at what point do we lose our personal identity?

Obama vs. Cheney: as much as they differ they are remarkably the same…

I was struck by the fact that although former Vice President Dick Cheney and current President Barack Obama differ widely in their view of the past eight years and the war on terror, they agree on at least one thing, and maybe more.

President Obama said today that the wars we are fighting will not conveniently end with the signing of a peace treaty, that they are open ended (actually I think he said something like they might go on for as much as ten years – but really that means it’s open ended). And the idea that the wars would be open ended was widely proclaimed by George W. Bush and Cheney.

Cheney is sticking to the line that torture of 9/11-related suspects was necessary – although he insists on using the euphemism of “enhanced interrogation techniques”.  And he holds up the fact that we have not suffered any more attacks on our soil as justification. He seems to plead that only if the president were to release more classified material on info we supposedly received by way of torture, he and the Bush administration would be vindicated in their “harsh” techniques. Personally, I doubt any of the material would prove anything one way or the other. But it seems a strange argument to make in that Cheney and his ilk always argue that secrets must be kept. Of course he says that since the fact that we used torture has been released, the other side of the story should be too. And maybe it should – don’t really know.

The big divide seems to be that Cheney believes that a presidential administration does not and should not follow the law when doing what it deems necessary to keep the American people safe. President Obama thinks otherwise. He seems to think we actually weaken our nation when we give up our principles.

Cheney today lashed out at the New York Times for doing stories that he claimed gave away state secrets to the enemy. I’m not sure what secrets he was referring to, but I see the ongoing problem or conflict of the press being the watchdog on government and the real concern in doing so that legitimately classified national security info might be leaked out.

Back during the Nixon presidency the New York Times and I believe the Washington Post published the so-called Pentagon Papers. The Nixon administration unsuccessfully tried to prevent the publications, arguing that national security was being jeopardized. But my recollection was that what came out of those documents was not info the enemy (in Vietnam) did not know, but the fact that our own government was lying to the public about various facts concerning the war, most notably asserting that we were winning when all indications were to the contrary.

And President Obama said today that although he supported transparency in government he would continue to protect legitimate state secrets but would not seek to withhold information for purely political reasons or just to avoid embarrassment of public officials. And that to me seems a better attitude than Cheney’s trust us, we know what we are doing.

Cheney may feel some comfort in the fact that President Obama has had to make some compromises in his campaign assertions concerning national defense, such as deciding not to release more torture photos and re-instating military tribunals, and even, according to Cheney, holding on to the power to use “enhanced interrogation techniques” or torture if need be (on that last one, I think Cheney is correct. I have not completely followed it).

I only heard part of President Obama’s speech (maybe most of it, not sure) and heard all of Cheney’s.

I noticed that Obama took quite a few digs at the Bush/Cheney record over the past eight years, but he also said that he does not favor continuing to rehash the whole thing (even though he was just doing it) and going for prosecutions.

Cheney for his part sounded kind of bitter, but he did give a strident defense of the Bush/Cheney tactics. He seems to continue to conflate Iraq with 9/11 (and somehow no matter what the facts are, I think it forever will be) and he seemed to casually throw out the weapons of mass destruction assertion even though at last word as far as I know, they never existed.

And it occurs to me that even though I think going into Iraq was a wrong move, I could easily make a case for why we should have gone in. But my case would not be based on any false connection between Iraq and 9/11, but more on the fact that Iraq under Saddam Hussein was violating the no fly zone and weapons inspection agreements and was funding terrorism against Israel. I’m not sure I would agree with my own arguments there, but it would have been a more valid set of reasons than the ever-changing ones we have been given over the years.

Strangely enough in all the rancor between opposing factions on the so-called war on terror, I don’t see much going on now that differs from what Bush/Cheney would have done or a President McCain.

We continue to be in Iraq and we press on (perhaps now a little more vigorously) in Afghanistan.

President Obama has come out in his public statements solidly against interrogation techniques such as waterboarding. That is a difference. But if he has nonetheless retained the power to order it (something I need to check out), then there may not be so much of a difference after all.

I’m sure if I examined transcripts of both speeches given today I would come up with even more things to blog about, but those were the things that jumped out at me from my live view.

UPDATE:

Contrary to what some in my household think, I do not spend all my time on this blog or even researching for it, so I do not yet have an answer to the question of what exactly Cheney was referring to when he said the president has retained the right to use enhanced interrogation (torture) techniques. It kind of rang true, but I was not sure. I did read a Feb. 2, 2009-dated piece on the web from Times Online that said Obama issued an executive order to the effect that the CIA could continue to use rendition, which is shipping detainees to nations where anything goes. I’ll keep working on this as I get time. Any help would be appreciated.

ADD 1:

Still keeping my eyes and ears open. I just heard Chris Matthews on his Hardball show (MSNBC) ask top presidential advisor David Axelrod, in reference to Cheney’s assertion, whether Obama retained the torture option. He asked Axelrod the question directly two times and two times did not receive a direct answer. The only thing Axelrod said that came close to an answer was:

“The president is going to do whatever he needs to do to keep this country safe” (that was part of his response the second time he was asked). 

I know there is a better and more direct answer somewhere. I just have not found it.

No shortage of opinions, but not so much straight news…

In all the talk over the demise of newspapers and the future of journalism it occurs to me that what we are being left with is far too much opinion-laced news and not nearly enough straight news reporting. I’m referring primarily to what is presented on the web and on cable TV.

Of course what I do on this blog space is 99 percent opinion, and I happen to thrive on opinions. While the proverbial American male is supposed to go right for the sports page, the first thing I check out in any newspaper is the opinion page. Or if I’m at a doctor’s office I will always pass up the sports or hunting magazines for a news magazine (although I don’t care for the news magazines as much as I used to).

But opinions need to be based on good and reliable information to have any validity.

I confess, even though I spent many years as a newspaper reporter, most of my own take on national and world news came from television news. Part of that is because I spent most of my days and often evenings working on local news (often covering boring meetings: school boards, city councils, and such). The small newspapers I worked on carried only a relatively small portion of what was called wire news. We of course at the small town level did not have our own news bureaus to cover national and world news, not even a capitol bureau for the state.

As a youth I religiously read the weekly Time Magazine and as an adult have read other news magazines on a fairly regular basis. And I often have read national and world news in the Sunday metropolitan newspapers, if not the ones through the week.

But when I did read newspaper stories in the past I recall that they appeared to be fairly balanced with no apparent slant (and I’m not saying newspapers still don’t operate that way for the most part). It can be argued all day and night whether reporters (or their editors) slant news stories or whether it is even possible to write a news story without personal bias creeping in. But with my experience as a newspaper reporter and as a newspaper reader, I think that in the past and even today, newspapers as a whole have presented news in a balanced fashion. I’m talking about in my lifetime. Sure back in the free-wheeling days of yellow journalism (say the 1890s) we know there were political agendas and just plain sensationalism to sell newspapers. And some of the original newspapers in this country were actually pamphlets with the publisher’s opinions. And today there are tabloid-style newspapers that are sensationalist gossip rags.

(When I was taking journalism classes in junior college in the early 1970s, one of my fellow students claimed he knew someone who worked on a certain metro newspaper owned by a notorious right wing publishing company and that the editors always substituted the word “riot”  for demonstration. Maybe just a kind of journalism urban myth. I don’t know.)

But I was taught that there was news and then there was opinion. The news ran in the regular news columns and the opinion pieces ran on the editorial or opinion pages. Then there was a kind of crossbred thing between news and opinion called a “news analysis” but it would be labeled as such, although it might appear anywhere in the paper, but the reader would know what he or she was reading.

A lot of the first TV news correspondents and news readers were former newspapermen. I’ll bet they discovered rather quickly what I did in my own small time approach.

After working several years as a newspaper reporter I served a short stint as a radio news reporter for a small local station. The news director hired me knowing that I had no broadcast experience. He had no print experience – but he was a voracious newspaper and news magazine reader, I will note.

Anyway, before the first time he had me do an on-the-hour five-minute newscast, I had asked him how to prepare it. He told me to just write my news stories the way I always did. I had gathered info and written several local stories. He engineered the broadcast (worked the control board) and gave me the cue. I barely got through my first story and the time was over.

So, writing for broadcast takes abbreviation. In fact, he told me all you did in the typical radio story was tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them, and then conclude by telling them what you just told them. In reality, most of our stories were headlines. To our credit (or his credit) we also did several expanded stories (a much longer length) throughout the day.

But the point is, all this news people hear on television and radio is primarily encapsulated reports that are more summary than news. And in that summary, opinion usually takes the place of balanced quotes and info from various sources. We have to trust that the correspondent and others involved based their reports and conclusions on objective facts.

And now on the web objective reporting is often more like stacking the deck with your own set of facts or version of the truth. I even have read at least one Arianna Huffington piece where she has stated that she thinks there has been too much so-called “objective” reporting that has kept the writers from simply telling it like it is because they’re hamstrung by having to look objective by placing ridiculous assertions in their stories as evidence of being, shall we say, “fair and balanced”.

Most of the cable news now is opinion and sometimes news and opinion mixed together where the lines between discussion on the issues and dissemination of factual information are blurred.

(Advertising or political oriented folks often use the euphemism “information” for what is really promotion and propaganda. “We have to ‘educate’ the public on this issue, they will often say. And sadly, my own hometown chain-owned newspaper is so desperate for advertising that it runs full page ads disguised as news stories with near microscopic disclaimers.)

For my part, I love opinion, but I wish there was more detailed straight news reporting readily available upon which to base it.

P.s.

I’m priced out of the market to get the metro papers and, besides, they’re getting skimpier all the time. My local newspaper keeps getting smaller and smaller and yet they raise the subscription price.

Swine flu (H1N1, Mexico flu?) numbers reporting misleading…

I’m confused. Not a new state for me. But just how many people have died in Mexico from the swine flu?

For a couple of days or more the figure reported on the web, in newspapers, and on the television has been around 150.

Yesterday (Friday) I heard some know nothings tell a racially-tinged joke about President Obama (so that gave me a clue as to their credibility) and also proclaim that there had only been 10 deaths in Mexico and that the whole thing was some type of diversion President Obama was orchestrating to distract from his political agenda. So I just dismissed what they said.

Then I pick up my morning newspaper and read in the middle of the latest swine flu update (I’m talking way into the depths of the jumped from page one to the middle of the paper story) that there have been 16 (not 150, although the story did not even acknowledge that higher figure having been reported) confirmed swine flu deaths in Mexico.

As a former journalist I am nervous about statistics. They almost always get reporters into trouble. One has to be careful about reporting numbers when they deal with breaking and/ or ongoing news stories, because first of all you are not sure as to the accuracy and second of all by the time anyone reads what you write the numbers have changed one way or the other from updated information. But if you were to wait until everyone was absolutely sure you would be writing ancient history. Broadcast news people just spit out the numbers and seldom go backwards to correct what they might have said before and few listeners are going to try to get the video tape to prove their errors (or the errors of the statistics — I once tried to get info from a local TV station and they offered to sell me a copy of their video tape).

So anyway, I checked out Wikipedia today, my instant source for so much info (is it reliable? I don’t really know) and it said 16 deaths from swine flu have been confirmed in Mexico. That seems a lot less than 150.

I suppose the problem is the difference between reported (who’s doing the reporting?), suspected, and confirmed.

And then there is the name “swine flu”. So far, as I understand it, no pigs have been detected with this swine flu even though it has been suspected it originated in swine and in Mexico. I even read that pig farmers, besides being angry and fearful of the bad publicity this all has given their product, pork, are also concerned that humans could infect their animals with swine flu.

And there has been an effort to change the name of the disease from swine flu to 2009 H1N1 or Influenza A (H1N1), but so far many of the accounts I am reading still call it swine flu (to avoid confusion, I suppose).

Earlier in the week I read a post by an obviously right wing, evangelical, concerned about Mexicans sneaking across the border (and I don’t discount the problem of illegal immigration) group that proposed to call swine flu the “Mexican flu” or the “killer Mexican flu”. And then yesterday I saw a headline in a German newspaper that called it the “Mexikogrippe”, most German papers are calling it the “Schweinegrippe” (and by the way, “grippe” is what folks here in the good old USA used to call the flu years ago. And I was taught in Spanish class that “la gripe” means the flu. And I read today that in Israel they are calling the swine flu the Mexican flu.

So anyway this whole thing is confusing what with the changing statistics and the name thing. The news today of course is that it may be petering out. We all hope so.

———–

UPDATE: I don’t know if I should even do this since I just now read it hours after posting the above and don’t know if it will hold true, but I just read on the CNN website that a farmer in Alberta, Canada is suspected of giving his pigs swine flu. He reportedly had recently returned from a trip to Mexico. More erroneous info — I wonder.

—————–

P.s.

And as most of you know, flu is short for influenza. And my problem is that when I type flu it often comes out flue, like on the pipe coming out of your roof.

World’s newspapers share top story: the swine flu…

Newspapers all over the world shared a top story in their Monday editions, the swine flu. I understand that there is concern that a lot of misinformation is going around via new electronic gossipy devices such as Twitter, and I have nothing authoritative to add to the serious subject of the swine flu. But I was perusing a site I have on my favorites by the Newseum that displays front pages all over the U.S. and all over the world. Most of the papers carried the swine flu as the lead story and others had it prominently displayed. The Japan Times (English edition) headline said: Swine Flu in Mexico Sparks Global Panic. I thought that was a little over the top, perhaps (above that newspaper’s masthead is the slogan: All the news without fear or favor).

From Minnesota, however, the Duluth News headline read: Flu Threat Real, but Don’t Panic. The Buffalo News ran the story below the fold with a headline that read: Nations Gird to Avoid Flu Pandemic.

Most of the newspapers had photos of people in Mexico City wearing face masks. A newspaper in Germany ran a photo of Mexican soldiers armed with automatic weapons and wearing face masks with a headline that said: Soldiers Looking for Sick (that seemed ominous).

One in Vienna had a photo of a violin player in an orchestra wearing a face mask, but I don’t know if the photo was in Vienna or Mexico. But a violin player photo from the city famous for violins seemed appropriate to me.

My German is not good, but I do know some Spanish. The headline in Reforma out of Mexico City, the heart of the Swine flu crisis, read: Federal District Lives in Suspense. An accompanying photo showed a religious procession with people wearing masks carrying a replica of Jesus on the cross.

And I hope I am not spreading misinformation, but it seemed the headline below the main story said something to the effect that “they knew since April 2.”  I do know that I heard a story on the CBS Evening News that said workers on commercial hog farms in Mexico (some owned by U.S. companies) had reported getting sick for some time.

By the time most people read this blog it will be Tuesday, and I don’t know what the updated assessment will be, but I know I am going to avoid crowds and keep using that hand sanitizer.

P.s.

You can see the front pages of newspapers all over the world by Googling newseum front pages. (Newspapers are not dead yet!)

If there’s no photos then it didn’t happen at the Red Bluff Round-Up…

I’m not at all against rodeos. But I am against the Red Bluff Round-Up.

It’s kind of a silly personal grudge and until now I’ve kept it to myself.

But I was reminded of my silly silent and personal grudge when this year the Redding, Ca. newspaper, the Record-Searchlight, notified its readers that it would break from long-standing tradition and not cover the event.

What happened is last year there was an incident at the rodeo in which a bull got loose and into the stands. A few people were roughed up I think, although I am not at all sure anyone was hurt seriously.

The reason I say that is because thanks to the rodeo officials and the Tehama County Sheriff’s Department there was a news blackout on the incident. I think it was reported that they even tried to confiscate the film in the Record-Searchlight’s photographer’s camera. At least they prevented him from getting all the photos he wanted of the obviously newsworthy incident.

And it should be pointed out that all this occurred on public property, the Tehama County Fair Grounds.

The only thing I can figure is that the rodeo people were afraid they might get sued and thought that if they could control the information to include photos that might help in their defense. Of course anyone who may have suffered injuries would know that they had suffered injuries – but that is the way some people think (also potential plaintiffs would not have photo evidence – there were at least several hundred witnesses I would presume, though, to include ambulance personnel) .

It seems strange that when airliners go down we often hear details and names within a short time, but maybe not if they come down in Tehama County.

But I’m getting off the theme here. My grudge:

In my memory, the Redding newspaper did not cover the event many years ago when I worked for the Red Bluff newspaper. But I did. That is I was assigned to make photos, and I did some publicity stories as well (local newspapers do that).

The Round-Up folks were just as unfriendly then too. And we didn’t even have any exciting bull-in-the-stands incidents.

The local newspaper I worked for, the Red Bluff Daily News, put out a special Round-Up edition. The staff did special stories on the Round-Up (and of course the advertising folks did their best to sell ads from local businesses catering to the Round-Up fans and contestants who came from all over the nation).

I recall doing a story about an old cowboy – way too old – who decided to give one last try on a bucking horse for old time’s sake (his ride did not last long – poor old guy).

We did all kinds of pre and during and after publicity for that event.

And how did the Round-Up folks treat me? They barred me from getting in the ring to take photos (although they let another professional rodeo photographer in), and they chased me away from outside the fence where I was taking photos. In short they were no help at all. One year they even almost denied me entry. Of course I could have paid and got in that way (although they still would have hampered my photo taking). But anyway, when I showed the gate guard my California Highway Patrol press pass, he mistakenly thought I was with the Highway Patrol and let me in.

(I paid for my family’s admission, and I think even my own, when we all attended.)

So, I kind of knew how the Redding newspaper felt about their treatment by the Round-Up.

This year the Round-Up has placed special restrictions on cameras, although its website proclaims that you can take photos from the grandstands for non-commercial use.

A Record-Searchlight statement by its editor said the Round-Up has placed special restrictions on the press as well and that in the event something like the loose bull incident were to happen they would corral all media and tell them what they could cover or not cover.

So if a flying saucer full of Martians landed in the arena during the rodeo I suppose the Round-Up officials would have a say on how and if the news media should cover it.

(In the interests of full disclosure, I will tell you that in a previous draft — maybe read by one person – of this post I said basically no cameras would be allowed this year, but like I said the rodeo’s website does proclaim that they are allowed in the grandstands for non-commercial use.)

As far as I know, the Red Bluff Daily News is covering the rodeo (which, by the way, concludes today), but its editor did via an editorial mention express concerns about the seemingly arbitrary and heavy-handed rodeo news coverage restrictions.

The Red Bluff Round-Up started out like most rodeos, I think, as an informal affair in conjunction with the real-life cattle round-ups in cattle country. Local cowboys competed with one another to show off their skills. Over the years the event became a formal affair and today is I guess one of the big ones of the professional rodeo circuit.

So it seems success has spoiled or at least changed the character of what was once a once down-home event.

Like I said at the top, I have nothing against rodeo. But I admit I am not much of a rodeo fan in general. Maybe partly because what was my once hometown rodeo left a bad taste in my mouth.

It is a silly personal grudge. But I felt better when the bigger paper to the north (although not so big anymore) locked horns with the Round-Up folks.

P.s.

Another gripe: My wife and I bought tickets to the Red Bluff Round-Up several years ago and attended but it seemed that they gave more consideration to the TV crews from ESPN or whatever it was than the spectators who paid admission. Everything was positioned and timed for television and not the audience in attendance.

In reference to war: we need to see the truth and we need to feel the pain…

The news today that the news media will now be able to show images (photos and videos) of flagged-draped coffins coming back from the war zones reminds me that the collective we have tried to hide from the fact that war has its terrible cost in human lives (the dead as well as whom they leave behind) and in monetary terms.

No, I have not tried to hide it and maybe you personally have not, but our government and the public in general has put it out of mind, and I think that is disgraceful and reprehensible.

Collectively we as a nation are quite willing to let someone else do our dirty and dangerous work and the most we can do is put bumper stickers on cars saying “I support the troops”.

But do we support them by having policies that limit the need for them to go to war in the first place? Do we support them by giving them all the equipment they need to fight a modern war? Do we support them when they are gravely injured (not always, see all the news stories about wounded soldiers getting billed for treatment)? Do we support them by sacrificing here at home until it’s over over there? Actually with the recession (and isn’t it really a depression?) many have been forced to sacrifice, and ironically much of it is due to the costs of the war.

No, for the last eight years the nation as a whole has not sacrificed (until now) and has gone on its merry way of spending and borrowing and spending and borrowing (both government and private), while many simply ignore the wars and others give token tribute with bumper stickers.

Meanwhile, the poor and those who perhaps by family tradition or their own volition (the rhyme unintentional) who have made the military their career do the dirty work and their loved ones, along with them, handle the sacrifices.

And this is all directly related to the silliness of not allowing the news media to show images of flag-draped coffins. If we don’t see it, it’s not happening and we don’t have to worry our pretty little heads.

It’s not that we should be required to watch videos of flag-draped coffins or that they must be shown every day in the newspaper (what newspapers?) and on the internet, but it is helpful to be reminded of what is really going on from time to time. And it should be the journalist’s call on what to publish, not the government’s and not that of those who would hide or soft sell the hardships in order to push their own agendas of conquest or politics or oil deals or whatever.

And even though we are in a terrible economic crisis, isn’t it about time we started paying for t he war up-front instead of financing it through China?

We should be selling the heck out of war bonds to American investors (individual citizens) on a patriotic basis and our government should levy a special “war tax”. In that way we could know and feel the real cost and make our own decisions on whether to support continued war on a more informed basis than non-thinking jingoism. I use that last word a lot – you know slogans and fake patriotism or claims of patriotism used to push one’s agenda and squelch opposition (patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel).

We have seen by recent natural disasters that we need our National Guard troops here at home and we face security threats on our southern border and all over the world, so if we need more troops we need to re-insate the military draft. We need to feel the pain. No pain, no gain.

There. I’ve said it.

Local editor says paper newspaper to survive as only a “boutique” offering…

In answer to one of my periodic rant e-mails, the editor of my local newspaper informs me that indeed the internet is the future for newspapers and that the quaint paper newspaper I prefer is a relic that will only survive as a “boutique” offering for old-timers such as me. Sheesh! I’m only 59.

Even though I am sitting at my computer writing this blog, I do not care to read my newspaper in that fashion. Of course my local newspaper is offering less news all the time, even on the local level. So I do get one heck of a lot of my regional and national and world news off the web.

And I did try to check out what they are calling the e-replica type editions some newspapers are doing (essentially a replica of the conventional newspaper on your screen, rather than a standard web page). But they seemed to want me to subscribe first. And even though one promised to give me a peek, either my computer would not navigate it correctly or they were not giving me the full picture in their sample.

But from what I did see of the Washington Post e-replica, it looked promising.

Still, I want some way around having to read it on my PC. I know there are electronic readers of various types, but they would at the least be too expensive, I’m sure, at this time.

If the newspaper industry can develop some type of readily accessible light weight reader board (and I know there are ones, but not in wide availability) then even though I would still miss the old paper newspaper, I think the problem would essentially be resolved (or is it solved?).

I really need something to read. I mean I got up early yesterday and read my local newspaper, what there was of it, and what I cared to read, in less than five minutes. Then I switched on the TV and watched Bloomberg business news and heard the new CEO of GM go on for 45 mintues or an hour and say very little, except they will probably go bankrupt after wasting taxpayer money (well that is not how he said it, but that was the message I got out of it).

Now I would rather read a summary and/or interpretation of his remarks in which I would get just as much in less time and probably more providing the writer was versed in the subject at hand (as professional journalists should be). And depending on the nightly news means I get basically the headline or whatever sound bite they choose — not the full story I need to be as informed as I want to be, and I have to commit the time to be watching at a certain moment, not grab my paper and read it when and where I want.

And reading is important. The act forces you to think about what you’re taking in, at least somewhat. It also helps one retain what language skill he or she has and hopefully if you read good quality stuff (okay not so much this) you might actually improve your vocabulary.

I was searching for a word the other day and it would not come to me. Then much later I settled down to read a book and, lo and behold, there it was.

I do like the idea that in electronic newspapers information can be constantly updated.

And still it is hard for me to accept that paper newspapers — the look, the feel, the convenience, not to mention the historical/cultural aspect of hot off the press may soon be gone.