by Ben L. Kaufman
10.31.2012
Posted In: 2012 Election, Media, Media Criticism, Ethics, Voting, Barack Obama, Mitt Romney at 10:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Curmudgeon Notes 10.31.2012
Media musings from Cincinnati and beyond
• After weeks of dreary campaign coverage and
soul-destroying political ads, here’s a day brightener. Jian Ghomeshi’s
long-format interview radio show, Q, scored a rare interview with J. K. Rowling. She was in New York promoting her first adult-audience book, The Casual Vacancy.
Among other things, Ghomeshi asked why she courts news media criticism by giving so few interviews. “Well, I just don’t think I have that much to say.” And why do the news media make so much of her reluctance? “That’s because the media is very interested in the media,” she said.
I laughed so hard I had to sit down in our northern Ontario cabin. Q is a morning program and evening repeat on Canada’s CBC Radio. Q is heard here at 9 p.m. weekdays on WVXU.
• Further proof that life as we know it revolves around Cincinnati: the Oct. 29 New Yorker’s essay on the fraud of voting fraud begins with Hamilton County. We’re the perfect example of GOP supporters trying to intimidate voters. A key point made by reporter Jane Mayer’s sources: photo IDs might deter someone impersonating a genuine voter but you don’t corrupt an election that way. You need massive — if subtle — manipulation of the vote count.
• So, is anyone confident your vote will be counted accurately? We don’t get a receipt showing how our votes were tallied. Any retailer can give us a receipt showing what we’ve paid by charge or debit card. So where are the reporters asking Boards of Elections why it can’t give us a receipt and editorials demanding this accountability? Receipts won’t prevent corrupt officials, employees or hackers from going into voting-counting computers after we vote, but it might deter some.
• Hamilton County Board of Elections assures the Enquirer that its voting machines are secure. No computer-based anything is secure. Computers are more or less vulnerable to external hacking and surreptitious insider reprogramming. Worrying about GOP ties to voting machine companies doesn’t make me a conspiracy crank. It matters because of Romney’s links to the current equipment provider. In 2004, the then-provider of our voting machines was “committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president (Bush) next year.” That was Walden W. O'Dell’s promise. He was chief executive of Canton-based Diebold Inc., which made voting machines Ohio used in 2004. W carried Ohio that year.
• GOP efforts to restrict voting is second only to the Republican commitment to ending a woman’s access to abortion. It’s not new. In all of this year’s reporting about Republican voter suppression — photo IDs, phony “official” mailings misdirecting voters of color, etc. — didn’t find references to William Rehnquist before he was Chief Justice of the U.S.
Google is rich with Rehnquist’s dark history as a GOP operative. This came from a files.nyu.edu post about John Dean’s book, The Rehnquist Choice. The folks at New York University said “Dean was a member of Nixon's cabinet, was Nixon's counsel in the Watergate affair and played a prominent role in selecting Rehnquist as a Supreme Court nominee. He writes that Rehnquist was part of roving ‘squads’ of Republican lawyers who went from precinct to precinct, confronting and harassing black and Latino voters.” Here’s what Dean wrote on pages 272-273 of The Rehnquist Choice:
“Collectively, these witnesses described 'squads,' or teams, that moved quickly from precinct to precinct to disqualify voters, confronting black and Hispanic voters standing in line at the polls by asking them questions about their qualifications, or holding up a small card with a passage from the U.S. Constitution and demanding that the voter read it aloud; also photographing people standing in line to vote."
"All told, the Democrats produced fourteen people who swore they had witnessed Rehnquist challenging voters. In rebuttal, the Republicans produced eight witnesses who claimed they had not seen or heard of Rehnquist challenging voters — but none of them could testify that they were actually with Rehnquist during any entire election day, nor did their testimony cover all the elections involved in the charges . . . The evidence is clear and convincing that Rehnquist was not truthful about his activities in challenging voters."
• Most Americans tell pollsters they rely on TV for their news. Next Tuesday, these viewers will take their rich opinions and impoverished facts into the voting booth. This recalls Mr. Whig, the fictional alter ego of a great Enquirer editorial page editor, Thom Gephardt, who frequently muttered, “I fear for the Republic.”
• Much as I have followed campaign coverage, I have little or no idea of what Obama and Romney will do to create jobs, ease immigration problems, provide and pay medical professionals to care for millions to be covered by Obamacare, wean us from deadly coal, cope with problems associated with fracking for oil and natural gas, make the wind blow and sun shine, reduce or slow global warming, bring Palestinians and Israelis closer to a peaceful two-state resolution, deal with the Taliban when it returns to power, etc. Despite what I hear from any liberals/progressives, Obama hasn’t disappointed me; I wrote nothing on that blank slate in 2008. It sufficed that he wasn’t McCain. In his way, Romney increasingly recalls Nixon in 1972 with his “secret plan” to end the Vietnam war. He had no plan. That was the secret. Deja vu all over again.
• Mark Curnutte’s Sunday Enquirer post-mortem on the lethal street culture of revenge among some young black Cincinnatians is as current as perps who became victims soon after he interviewed them and Amanda Davidson took their photos.
• CNN.com “unpublishes” reporter Elizabeth Landau’s story linking women’s hormones to political choices. CNN says the story wasn’t edited adequately. The study by a Texas academic concludes that ovulation makes women feel sexier. Ovulating single women are likelier to vote for Obama (liberal) and ovulating married women or women in other committed relationships are likelier to vote for Romney (conservative.) I wonder if CNN pulled the story because some subjects are beyond inquiry, like women’s abilities for math and science or racial/ethnic differences in various pursuits. Then there is the whole fantasy about “unpublishing” an online post. You can get to the original story — replaced by an editor’s note on CNN.com — at poynter.com or dailykos.com.
• The Seattle Times seeks to restore readers’ trust after it published free ads for the Republican candidate for governor and for supporters of a state gay marriage referendum. The ads make the paper part of each group’s propaganda machine. There is no other way to say it. Good luck to reporters who have to cover those campaigns. Maybe someone should create the “Almost Darwin Awards” for news media bent on self-destruction. You don’t know Darwin Awards? Look it up. The awards are as funny as Seattle Times’ claims to virtue are cringe-worthy.
After the paper’s ethical pratfall and a newsroom rebellion, the Seattle Times turned its fact-checkers loose on those free partisan ads and gave the ads a rating of “half true.” (T)wo ads that were checked contained two true claims, one mostly true, one half true and two that were false, the paper and Poynter.com said.
• Newsroom rebellions rarely go public like that by Seattle Times journalists (above). Years ago, then-owners of the Minneapolis Tribune and Star supported relocation of the Viking/Twins stadium from the ‘burbs to downtown. Here’s what the New York Times said in its obit of the publisher, John Cowles Jr.:
“Opponents, including staff members at The Minneapolis Tribune, thought it was a clear conflict of interest for the owner of a newspaper to take a public position on an important local issue it was covering . . . (S)taff members placed an ad in their own paper disassociating themselves from the company’s involvement.”
• Fifty years ago, we almost had a nuclear war over missiles in Cuba and en route on Soviet freighters. Regardless of where U.S. ships turned back the freighters, it was the real thing, no Gulf of Tonkin or Weapons of Mass Destruction fraud. I was at UPI in London and the Brits were very, very frightened; in a nuclear war, both sides’ missiles could be overhead and Soviets would attack Britain’s RAF and Royal Navy nuclear strike forces. I went to the U.S. Embassy in Grosvenor Square. The crowd was hostile. Least threatening were those carrying or wearing what is now known as the “peace symbol.” Then it was the much more potent and timely totem of Britain’s Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
• Half a century later, that British CND symbol is a meaningless design for feathered earrings and leather-thong necklaces. But turn the symbol upside down so that the “wings” tilt up. You have the Brits’ Vulcan “V-bomber.” It was the heart of their Cold War airborne nuclear deterrent during the Cuban Missile Crisis and Vulcan bases would have been targets in any nuclear exchange.
• Only a coverup is juicier than the original scandal, especially in broadcasting. BBC is tearing itself apart over the sex scandal. Arrests have begun: Convicted pedophile and BBC TV entertainer Gary Glitter is the first. Hundreds claim a leading children’s program presenter and colleagues molested hundreds of girls at BBC studios, children's hospitals and other locations. The focus of the probe, Jimmy Savile, is dead. His victims — including women at BBC — offer explicit tales of his harassment and abuse. BBC execs are accusing each other of lying or misleading parliament; Scotland Yard is beginning to ask why police didn’t act sooner on repeated reports and complaints about Savile and other abusers at BBC.
• AP says New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. last week reiterated his support for the Times’ new CEO, Mark Thompson. Thompson, who was BBC’s director general until last month, has been under scrutiny over the BBC’s decision to cancel its major investigative program about Savile sexually abusing youngsters. AP says Sulzberger told Times staff that he was satisfied that Thompson had no role in canceling the explosive program. As with all scandals and coverups, we will learn what BBC and Scotland Yard knew and when they knew it. Lovely.
Among other things, Ghomeshi asked why she courts news media criticism by giving so few interviews. “Well, I just don’t think I have that much to say.” And why do the news media make so much of her reluctance? “That’s because the media is very interested in the media,” she said.
I laughed so hard I had to sit down in our northern Ontario cabin. Q is a morning program and evening repeat on Canada’s CBC Radio. Q is heard here at 9 p.m. weekdays on WVXU.
• Further proof that life as we know it revolves around Cincinnati: the Oct. 29 New Yorker’s essay on the fraud of voting fraud begins with Hamilton County. We’re the perfect example of GOP supporters trying to intimidate voters. A key point made by reporter Jane Mayer’s sources: photo IDs might deter someone impersonating a genuine voter but you don’t corrupt an election that way. You need massive — if subtle — manipulation of the vote count.
• So, is anyone confident your vote will be counted accurately? We don’t get a receipt showing how our votes were tallied. Any retailer can give us a receipt showing what we’ve paid by charge or debit card. So where are the reporters asking Boards of Elections why it can’t give us a receipt and editorials demanding this accountability? Receipts won’t prevent corrupt officials, employees or hackers from going into voting-counting computers after we vote, but it might deter some.
• Hamilton County Board of Elections assures the Enquirer that its voting machines are secure. No computer-based anything is secure. Computers are more or less vulnerable to external hacking and surreptitious insider reprogramming. Worrying about GOP ties to voting machine companies doesn’t make me a conspiracy crank. It matters because of Romney’s links to the current equipment provider. In 2004, the then-provider of our voting machines was “committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president (Bush) next year.” That was Walden W. O'Dell’s promise. He was chief executive of Canton-based Diebold Inc., which made voting machines Ohio used in 2004. W carried Ohio that year.
• GOP efforts to restrict voting is second only to the Republican commitment to ending a woman’s access to abortion. It’s not new. In all of this year’s reporting about Republican voter suppression — photo IDs, phony “official” mailings misdirecting voters of color, etc. — didn’t find references to William Rehnquist before he was Chief Justice of the U.S.
Google is rich with Rehnquist’s dark history as a GOP operative. This came from a files.nyu.edu post about John Dean’s book, The Rehnquist Choice. The folks at New York University said “Dean was a member of Nixon's cabinet, was Nixon's counsel in the Watergate affair and played a prominent role in selecting Rehnquist as a Supreme Court nominee. He writes that Rehnquist was part of roving ‘squads’ of Republican lawyers who went from precinct to precinct, confronting and harassing black and Latino voters.” Here’s what Dean wrote on pages 272-273 of The Rehnquist Choice:
“Collectively, these witnesses described 'squads,' or teams, that moved quickly from precinct to precinct to disqualify voters, confronting black and Hispanic voters standing in line at the polls by asking them questions about their qualifications, or holding up a small card with a passage from the U.S. Constitution and demanding that the voter read it aloud; also photographing people standing in line to vote."
"All told, the Democrats produced fourteen people who swore they had witnessed Rehnquist challenging voters. In rebuttal, the Republicans produced eight witnesses who claimed they had not seen or heard of Rehnquist challenging voters — but none of them could testify that they were actually with Rehnquist during any entire election day, nor did their testimony cover all the elections involved in the charges . . . The evidence is clear and convincing that Rehnquist was not truthful about his activities in challenging voters."
• Most Americans tell pollsters they rely on TV for their news. Next Tuesday, these viewers will take their rich opinions and impoverished facts into the voting booth. This recalls Mr. Whig, the fictional alter ego of a great Enquirer editorial page editor, Thom Gephardt, who frequently muttered, “I fear for the Republic.”
• Much as I have followed campaign coverage, I have little or no idea of what Obama and Romney will do to create jobs, ease immigration problems, provide and pay medical professionals to care for millions to be covered by Obamacare, wean us from deadly coal, cope with problems associated with fracking for oil and natural gas, make the wind blow and sun shine, reduce or slow global warming, bring Palestinians and Israelis closer to a peaceful two-state resolution, deal with the Taliban when it returns to power, etc. Despite what I hear from any liberals/progressives, Obama hasn’t disappointed me; I wrote nothing on that blank slate in 2008. It sufficed that he wasn’t McCain. In his way, Romney increasingly recalls Nixon in 1972 with his “secret plan” to end the Vietnam war. He had no plan. That was the secret. Deja vu all over again.
• Mark Curnutte’s Sunday Enquirer post-mortem on the lethal street culture of revenge among some young black Cincinnatians is as current as perps who became victims soon after he interviewed them and Amanda Davidson took their photos.
• CNN.com “unpublishes” reporter Elizabeth Landau’s story linking women’s hormones to political choices. CNN says the story wasn’t edited adequately. The study by a Texas academic concludes that ovulation makes women feel sexier. Ovulating single women are likelier to vote for Obama (liberal) and ovulating married women or women in other committed relationships are likelier to vote for Romney (conservative.) I wonder if CNN pulled the story because some subjects are beyond inquiry, like women’s abilities for math and science or racial/ethnic differences in various pursuits. Then there is the whole fantasy about “unpublishing” an online post. You can get to the original story — replaced by an editor’s note on CNN.com — at poynter.com or dailykos.com.
• The Seattle Times seeks to restore readers’ trust after it published free ads for the Republican candidate for governor and for supporters of a state gay marriage referendum. The ads make the paper part of each group’s propaganda machine. There is no other way to say it. Good luck to reporters who have to cover those campaigns. Maybe someone should create the “Almost Darwin Awards” for news media bent on self-destruction. You don’t know Darwin Awards? Look it up. The awards are as funny as Seattle Times’ claims to virtue are cringe-worthy.
After the paper’s ethical pratfall and a newsroom rebellion, the Seattle Times turned its fact-checkers loose on those free partisan ads and gave the ads a rating of “half true.” (T)wo ads that were checked contained two true claims, one mostly true, one half true and two that were false, the paper and Poynter.com said.
• Newsroom rebellions rarely go public like that by Seattle Times journalists (above). Years ago, then-owners of the Minneapolis Tribune and Star supported relocation of the Viking/Twins stadium from the ‘burbs to downtown. Here’s what the New York Times said in its obit of the publisher, John Cowles Jr.:
“Opponents, including staff members at The Minneapolis Tribune, thought it was a clear conflict of interest for the owner of a newspaper to take a public position on an important local issue it was covering . . . (S)taff members placed an ad in their own paper disassociating themselves from the company’s involvement.”
• Fifty years ago, we almost had a nuclear war over missiles in Cuba and en route on Soviet freighters. Regardless of where U.S. ships turned back the freighters, it was the real thing, no Gulf of Tonkin or Weapons of Mass Destruction fraud. I was at UPI in London and the Brits were very, very frightened; in a nuclear war, both sides’ missiles could be overhead and Soviets would attack Britain’s RAF and Royal Navy nuclear strike forces. I went to the U.S. Embassy in Grosvenor Square. The crowd was hostile. Least threatening were those carrying or wearing what is now known as the “peace symbol.” Then it was the much more potent and timely totem of Britain’s Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
• Half a century later, that British CND symbol is a meaningless design for feathered earrings and leather-thong necklaces. But turn the symbol upside down so that the “wings” tilt up. You have the Brits’ Vulcan “V-bomber.” It was the heart of their Cold War airborne nuclear deterrent during the Cuban Missile Crisis and Vulcan bases would have been targets in any nuclear exchange.
• Only a coverup is juicier than the original scandal, especially in broadcasting. BBC is tearing itself apart over the sex scandal. Arrests have begun: Convicted pedophile and BBC TV entertainer Gary Glitter is the first. Hundreds claim a leading children’s program presenter and colleagues molested hundreds of girls at BBC studios, children's hospitals and other locations. The focus of the probe, Jimmy Savile, is dead. His victims — including women at BBC — offer explicit tales of his harassment and abuse. BBC execs are accusing each other of lying or misleading parliament; Scotland Yard is beginning to ask why police didn’t act sooner on repeated reports and complaints about Savile and other abusers at BBC.
• AP says New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. last week reiterated his support for the Times’ new CEO, Mark Thompson. Thompson, who was BBC’s director general until last month, has been under scrutiny over the BBC’s decision to cancel its major investigative program about Savile sexually abusing youngsters. AP says Sulzberger told Times staff that he was satisfied that Thompson had no role in canceling the explosive program. As with all scandals and coverups, we will learn what BBC and Scotland Yard knew and when they knew it. Lovely.
by German Lopez
10.22.2012
Posted In: 2012 Election, News, War , Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, Parks, Education at 08:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Morning News and Stuff
In-person early voting is underway in Ohio. Find your nearest polling booth here.
The final presidential debate is tonight. It will cover
foreign policy. The debate will likely focus on the recent attack on
the U.S. embassy in Benghazi, Libya and Iran’s nuclear program. Whatever happens, political
scientists say debates typically have little-to-no electoral impact. In
aggregate polling, Obama is up 2.2 points in Ohio and Romney is up 0.3 points nationally. Ohio is considered a must-win for Romney, and it could play the role of 2000's Florida. The debate begins at 9 p.m. It will be streamed live on YouTube and C-SPAN.
CityBeat will host a debate party tonight at MOTR
Pub in Over-the-Rhine from 7:30-10:30 p.m. Come watch the debate and live
tweet. Councilman Chris Seelbach will make an appearance. If you can’t
show up, at least tweet if you watch the debate with the hashtag
#cbdebate. Check out the event’s Facebook page for more information.
If Gov. John Kasich gets his way, 60 percent of bachelor’s
degrees will be completable in three years by 2014. The move intends to
raise graduation rates and save money for students. Currently, very few
students graduate in three years. Only 1 percent of Miami University
students and 2 percent of University of Cincinnati students graduate
that quickly.
Ohio’s Third Grade Reading Guarantee, a new education
policy approved by Kasich that requires all students to be proficient in
reading in third grade before they can move onto fourth grade, could
cause 40 percent of students to be held back in some schools.
The policy is meant to encourage better progress and higher reading standards, but some studies
have found retention has negative effects on children.
The Urban League of Greater Cincinnati announced a merger and expansion into Dayton. The organization will now be called the Urban League of Southwest Ohio.
Greater Cincinnati home sales ticked up in September, but there was some slowdown.
The end of the Scripps trust that funded the Cincinnati-based E.W. Scripps Company could lead to the end of a few newspapers. But Ohio will not be affected; the company no longer owns newspapers in the state.
Plant identification has never been easier at Cincinnati parks.
University of Cincinnati researchers are using a $2.7 million grant to see if there’s a difference between generic versus brand drugs for transplant patients. The study could potentially save money and lives.
Tired of traditional bridges? Meet the trampoline bridge.
by Andy Brownfield
09.26.2012
Posted In: 2012 Election, Barack Obama, Budget, Democrats, Economy, Government, Governor, Media, News, President Obama, Republicans, Spending, Sports, State Legislature, Transportation, Washington at 08:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Morning News And Stuff
Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan was in
Cincinnati on Monday where he compared the Obama administration to the
replacement NFL referees whose bungled call cost Ryan’s home-state Green
Bay Packers a win. Ryan joined GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney in
Dayton where the two attacked Obama’s economic record and characterized
the president as someone who believes government should tell people how
to live. Both Obama and Romney plan to campaign around Ohio on
Wednesday.
Meanwhile unemployment in Cincinnati dropped to 7.5 percent in August, down from 8.2 percent in July. Unemployment in Hamilton County dropped to 6.8 percent in August, down from 7.3 percent. The Greater Cincinnati’s jobless rate for the month was 6.7 percent, putting it below that of the state (7.2 percent) and the nation (8.1 percent).
Speaking of numbers, a new poll released today shows Obama leading Romney in Ohio – the third such poll in the last four days. The Quinnipiac University/CBS News/New York Times Swing State Poll shows Obama leading Romney 53 to 43 percent in Ohio, and by similar large margins in the battlegrounds of Florida and Pennsylvania.
The typically media-shy Republican Ohio Treasurer and Senate candidate Josh Mandel proposed three new rules for members of the U.S. Congress in a rare Tuesday news conference. He said he wants members of Congress to lose their pensions if they became lobbyists, be limited to 12 years in the House and Senate and not be paid if they failed to pass a budget. Mandel says his opponent, sitting Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, broke his promise to voters that he would only serve 12 years in Congress. Mandel himself promised to fill his entire term as state treasurer, but would leave halfway through if he wins the Senate race.
The governors of Ohio and Kentucky continue to move toward jointly supporting a financing study for a replacement of the functionally-obsolete Brent Spence Bridge, and both governors favor a bridge toll to fund construction. The Kentucky Legislature would have to approve a measure to allow tolling on the bridge.
Forty percent of Hamilton County’s septic systems are failing, and homeowners and utilities are arguing over who should foot the $242 million bill. The Enquirer has an analysis of the ongoing battle.
The Associated Press reports that Andy Williams, Emmy-winning TV host and “Moon River” crooner, has died.
The Enquirer is still doing all it can to keep the Lacheys relevant instead of letting them die off like all bad 90s trends like Furby and Hammer pants. The paper blogged that Lachey finished in the bottom three in the first week of the new Dancing with the Stars: All Stars.
Speaking of those replacement NFL refs, apparently some of them were fired by the Lingerie Football League for incompetence. Yes, there are totally unrelated pictures of women playing football.
by German Lopez
11.01.2012
Posted In: 2012 Election, News, COAST, CPS, Barack Obama, Voting, Mitt Romney at 09:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Morning News and Stuff
In-person early voting is underway in Ohio. Find your nearest polling booth here.
If there’s a Democrat-led war on coal in Ohio, it’s not showing in
the numbers. PolitiFact checked Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown’s claim that coal
jobs and production have gone up in the state since five years ago, and it turns out he’s right. Brown’s remark was in response to Republican challenger Josh Mandel’s claim that Democrats are leading a war on coal. Brown and Mandel are fighting for Ohio's U.S. Senate seat, which CityBeat covered in-depth here. Currently, Brown leads by 5.5 points in aggregate polling.
The presidential campaigns are turning it up in Ohio. Ann Romney was in Greater Cincinnati yesterday to campaign for her husband, echoing past visits from Michelle Obama. President Barack Obama will be in Cincinnati Sunday. Mitt Romney will hold a big rally in West Chester on Friday. Ohio could be the state to decide whether Romney or Obama is the next president. Due to Ohio’s importance, lawyers from around the county will be keeping a close eye on the state. With six days of voting left, aggregate polling shows Obama up 2.3 points in Ohio and the race tied nationally. FiveThirtyEight, The New York Times’ forecasting model, says Obama has a 79.9 percent chance of winning Ohio and a 79 percent chance of winning the election.
The Coalition Opposed to Additional Spending and Taxes (COAST) is suing Cincinnati Public Schools (CPS) for allegedly using city resources to campaign for Issue 42,
which will renew a CPS levy from 2008. In the emails, school officials
discuss voter registration drives, signing up to support the levy and
contributing to the levy campaign. But in a few emails, Jens Sutmoller, campaign coordinator for Issue 42, asks for personal emails to properly respond. COAST has endorsed a “No” vote on Issue 42. CityBeat covered Issue 42 and the problems facing CPS here. CityBeat also endorsed a “Yes” vote on Issue 42 here.
Dropping enrollment in urban district schools, including CPS, has caused some schools to revise building programs downward, saving the state money. In CPS in particular, the school’s project has dropped down to 50 buildings from 66 partly in response to a decline in about 10,000 students since 2002 to about 32,687 enrolled students today. The shift apparently has less to do with students moving to the suburbs and more to do with the greater availability of charter and private schools.
The Port of Greater Cincinnati Development Authority’s CEO Laura Brunner laid out the Port Authority’s strategic plan yesterday. The Port Authority seeks to fight poverty, attract residents and increase jobs by expanding inland port operations, developing land, stabilizing targeted communities, upgrading its public financing plan and transparently communicating progress, according to Brunner.
A small fraction of absentee ballots might have been rejected due to a state data glitch. The glitch caused Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted to deliver 33,000 updated registration records to local elections issues. Tim Burke, chairman of the county Democratic Party and county Board of Elections, expressed mixed feelings about the error: “Obviously, you hate like hell to have the secretary of state’s office, which had promised to have a very efficient election, popping something like that on us seven days out. … Having said that, I’m glad at least once they recognized that these names are out there they moved to get them to us so that we can do our best to ensure that these folks are not disenfranchised because of some administrative glitch.”
In related news, Husted got the emergency stay he asked for on a recent voting ruling. Husted said he was happy with the decision in a statement: “With six days to go before Election Day, I am pleased that the Court has granted a stay in this case so that I can give the 88 county boards of elections the clear direction they need on the rules for processing provisional ballots.”
There are a few teachers campaigning for office in Ohio, and NPR says the campaigns could give Democrats and Obama a boost. The surge of teachers is largely attributed to Senate Bill 5, which tried to limit collective bargaining among public employees. The teachers figure the only way to prevent another Senate Bill 5 is by holding office.
There are also Ohio Board of Education candidates on this year’s ballot. StateImpact Ohio has a look into some of those candidates here.
A survey
found small firms are doing very little to prepare for Obamacare. Most
don’t know what the national health care plan will even do for them.
About 70 percent were unsure or incorrectly believed Obamacare will make
them pay a tax.
Ever want to play Tetris with a pumpkin? Well, apparently someone has.
by German Lopez
10.15.2012
Posted In: 2012 Election, Environment, Economy, News, Barack Obama, Mitt Romney at 09:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Morning News and Stuff
In-person early voting is underway in Ohio. Find your nearest polling booth here.
The first of three debates for Ohio’s U.S. Senate seat is
today. Incumbent Democrat Sherrod Brown and Republican challenger Josh
Mandel will meet for the first time to prove who has the better vision
for the state. Democrats have repeatedly criticized Mandel for
dishonesty and dodging questions. Republicans have criticized Brown for
supporting President Barack Obama’s policies, including the auto bailout
and Obamacare. A more substantive analysis of the candidates’
differences can be found here. In aggregate polling, Brown currently
leads by five points. The debate will be at 12:30 p.m. on C-SPAN.
Paul Ryan, the Republican candidate for vice president, will be in Cincinnati today. Ryan’s event will take place at Lunken Airport at noon. Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential candidate, was in Lebanon Saturday. With the second presidential debate between President Barack Obama and Romney tomorrow, both campaigns are turning up the events in Ohio, a state that is widely considered a must-win for both candidates. According to aggregate polling, Obama still holds Ohio by 2.2 points despite a nationwide post-debate bounce in the polls for Romney.
Bicyclists rejoiced Saturday as McMillan Street was converted back into a two-way street. William Howard Taft Road will undergo a similar transition Oct. 20. The conversion of both roads came thanks to the approval of Vice Mayor Roxanne Qualls, who pushed the motion in order to revitalize the business sector in the neighborhood.
The rest of Ohio’s school report card data will be released Wednesday. The report card data grades schools to see how school districts are doing in a variety of categories. The release for the data was initially delayed due to an ongoing investigation by the state auditor that’s looking into accusations of attendance reporting fraud at some school districts. Previously, the state auditor released preliminary findings criticizing some school districts and the Ohio Department of Education for some findings regarding attendance fraud.
A new report found Cincinnati still has a lot of work to do. The city ranked No. 10 out of 12 similar cities. Cincinnati excelled in job creation and housing opportunities, but it did poorly in categories regarding migration and age.
Bob Taft, former Republican governor of Ohio, is going green. The Ohio Environmental Council is rewarding Taft for standing up for the environment during his gubernatorial term.
Ohio’s stricter laws for exotic animals convinced one pet owner to move her two tigers to Indiana.
Some guy broke the sound barrier with his body yesterday.
by German Lopez
10.30.2012
Posted In: News, Barack Obama, COAST, Democrats, President Obama, Social Justice at 08:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Morning News and Stuff
In-person early voting is underway in Ohio. Find your nearest polling booth here.
Hurricane Sandy slammed the East Coast last night. At least 16 people are believed to have died from the storm, and as many as 7.5 million were left without power. Areas of New York and New Jersey also faced major flooding. It took until 4:30 a.m. for Sandy to go from hurricane to tropical storm.
The Anna Louise Inn will be in court at 9 a.m. today arguing in front of the First District Court of Appeals, which could overturn a May ruling and allow the Inn to move forward with its renovation. CityBeat will have online coverage for the hearing later today.
Hamilton County’s probation department is facing sexual harassment charges. The charges are coming from a county worker who said her promotion was denied due to her actions “for opposing discrimination and encouraging others to exercise their right to be free from acts of discrimination.”
The Coalition Opposed to Additional Spending and Taxes filed a lawsuit Friday in an attempt to reverse the August reworking of the Blue Ash airport deal. For COAST, the lawsuit is mostly to stall or stop the financing for the $110 million Cincinnati streetcar.
City Council will vote next week to decide whether the city should borrow $37 million to fund development projects and a portion of the Homeless to Homes program. But Homeless to Homes is generating some concern due to its requirement to move three shelters.
Three Cincinnati charity groups are coming together to help veterans with disabling injuries. The organizations will pool available resources to hopefully find jobs for veterans.
Mitt Romney is running a new ad against President Barack Obama in Ohio that says Chrysler is moving Jeep production to China. The ad, which Chrysler says is false, warranted a snarky response from the car company: “Despite clear and accurate reporting, the take has given birth to a number of stories making readers believe that Chrysler plans to shift all Jeep production to China from North America, and therefore idle assembly lines and U.S. workforce. It is a leap that would be difficult even for professional circus acrobats.” The Obama team also responded with its own ad. It is somewhat understandable Romney would be getting a bit desperate at this point in the race. Ohio is widely considered the most important swing state, but aggregate polling has Romney down 1.9 points in the state. Romney is up 0.9 points nationally.
State Republicans are refusing to pull an ad that accuses William O’Neill, Democratic candidate for the Ohio Supreme Court, of expressing “sympathy for rapists.” This is despite the fact that Justice Robert Cupp, O’Neill’s Republican opponent, has distanced himself from the ad. At this point, even the most nonpartisan, objectives watchers have to wonder why the Republican Party can’t keep rape out of its messaging. In comments aired first on Aug. 19, U.S. Senate candidate Todd Akin of Missouri said on pregnancy after rape, “If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” On Oct. 23, Richard Mourdock, the Senate candidate for Indiana, said, “I struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize that life is that gift from God. And, I think, even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.”
Ohio is getting closer to the health exchange deadline with no plan in sight. Obamacare asks states to take up health exchanges that act as competitive markets for different health insurance plans. States are allowed to either accept, let the federal government run the exchanges or take a hybrid approach. As part of the health exchanges, the federal government will also sponsor a heavily regulated nonprofit plan that sounds fairly similar to the public option liberals originally wanted in Obamacare.
Meanwhile, Ohio and other states still haven’t decided whether they will be expanding their Medicaid programs. In the past, state officials have cited costs as a big hurdle, but one study from Arkansas found Medicaid expansions actually saved money by reducing the amount of uncompensated care. Some states that expanded Medicaid also found health improvements afterward.
An inspector at the Ohio Department of Education (ODE) was caught not doing her job. The inspector was supposed to do 128 site visits for in-person safety inspections, but she apparently never showed up to some of the schools and filed fraudulent reports.
Peter Cremer North America could add 50 jobs in Cincinnati over three years in an expansion.
A San Francisco firm bought a major stake in Cincinnati Bell.
by German Lopez
02.13.2013
125 days ago
Posted In: Economy, Education, Barack Obama, News, Development, Government at 10:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Morning News and Stuff
Obama gives State of the Union, archdiocese defends LGBT firing, Qualls against HUD sale
President Barack Obama gave his State of the Union speech yesterday. During the speech, Obama outlined fairly liberal proposals for the economy, climate change, gun control and immigration. He also suggested raising the minimum wage to $9 and attaching it to rising cost of living standards. The Washington Post analyzed the proposals here. To watch a bunch of old people clap too much while the president outlines policy proposals that will likely never pass a gridlocked Congress, click here.
The Archdiocese of Cincinnati is standing firm in its firing of Purcell Marian High School administrator Mike Moroski. The termination came after Moroski publicly stated his support for same-sex marriage on his blog — a position that contradicts the Catholic Church’s teachings. CityBeat covered Moroski’s case in this week’s news story, and gay marriage was covered more broadly in a previous in-depth story.
Vice Mayor Roxanne Qualls wants to stop
the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) from selling
768 housing units in Walnut Hills, Avondale and Millvale. Qualls says
the sale is “eerily similar” to a sale dating back to 2007, which
resulted in dropping property values and blighted buildings. She argues local buyers should get a chance to take up the properties before HUD makes the sale to a New York company.
State Treasurer Josh Mandel is up to his old tricks again. In a letter to Ohio legislators Monday, Mandel, a Republican, opposed the Medicaid expansion,
claiming, “There is no free money.” But for the state, the Medicaid
expansion is essentially free money. The federal government will cover
all the costs of the expansion for the first three years, then phase down to paying 90 percent of the costs by 2020 — essentially, free
money. Gov.
John Kasich, another Republican, has backed the Medicaid expansion, claiming it makes
financial sense in the long term. In 2012, Mandel lost the race for Ohio’s Senate seat after he ran
a notoriously dishonest campaign against U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown.
Financing details for the Brent Spence Bridge are due in March. The details will provide much-wanted information for local residents cautious about the new tolling scheme, which will help pay for the bridge’s reconstruction.
Cincinnati officials and residents celebrated the work completed near the Horseshoe Casino at an event yesterday. Mayor Mark Mallory highlighted the infrastructure improvements made to accommodate the casino, calling the work a successful collaboration between city government, the casino and residents.
The Ohio Resource Center has a new website for K-12 digital content. The website, ilearnOhio, is supposed to provide parents and students with the tools needed for online distance learning.
Toby Keith’s I Love This Bar & Grill is being sued for not paying rent. The restaurant claims it’s financially viable, but it’s holding the rent in escrow after its landlord allegedly violated the leasing agreement. The establishment was one of the first to open at The Banks.
A public Ohio school district is fighting a lawsuit in order to keep its portrait of Jesus. The school district claims the portrait is owned by a student club and is “private speech,” but opponents argue the portrait violates separation of church and state.
Update on the Alamo situation at Tower Place Mall: Only one tenant remains.
The unofficial spokesman of Heart Attack Grill, the infamous Las Vegas restaurant, died of a heart attack.
Americans expect a human mission to Mars in the next 20 years, but that’s probably because they don’t know how little funding NASA gets.
An asteroid will barely miss Earth on Feb. 15. If it were to hit, it would generate the explosive equivalent of 2,500 kilotons of TNT. In comparison, the nuclear bomb that hit Hiroshima during World War 2 generated a measly equivalent of 17 kilotons of TNT.
by German Lopez
09.27.2012
Posted In: 2012 Election, LGBT Issues, Mitt Romney, News, Barack Obama, Streetcar, Education at 09:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Morning News and Stuff
In an ad accusing Josh Mandel, a Republican, of lying, Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown’s campaign team may have lied, according to PolitiFact. The U.S. senatorial campaign for Ohio’s senate seat has been filled with dishonesty, but it usually comes from Mandel. The dishonesty seems to be hurting Mandel more than Brown; Mandel is currently down 7.5 points in aggregate polling numbers.
Mandel is being taken to court by liberal blog Plunderbund. The blog claims Mandel has made it extra difficult to get public records.Preliminary data for Ohio schools was released yesterday. Some data is still being held back while an investigation into fraudulent reporting from some schools is finished, but the data gives some insight into how schools performed during the 2011-2012 school year. The data can be found here. From a local angle, the data shows Cincinnati Public Schools (CPS) did not meet “adequate yearly progress,” a federal standard that measures progress in student subgroups, such as minority groups; but CPS did meet standards for “value-added growth,” which measures the expected progress in state testing for all students between the third and eighth grades.
City Council approved the $29 million financing plan for the streetcar yesterday. The plan will use $15 million from the Blue Ash airport deal to move utility lines and pipes. The city claims the $15 million, which was originally promised to neighborhood projects, will be reimbursed by Duke Energy once the city settles a conflict with the energy company. Duke and the city are currently arguing over who has to pay to move the utility lines and pipes.
An Ohio state representative is asking the federal government to monitor the election more closely. Rep. Alicia Reece, a Cincinnati Democrat, is asking U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to send monitors to the state to ensure no funny business goes on in voting booths on Nov. 6. The request is partly in response to a recent court ruling that forces Ohio to count provisional ballots if the ballots were brought around by poll worker errors.
Ohio’s ability to stop political lies was upheld yesterday. The Coalition Opposed to Additional Spending and Taxes (COAST) tried to put an end to the government power, which COAST claimed was censorship, by taking it to court, but a U.S. judge upheld the ability. The judge, who is a former chairman of the Hamilton County Republican Party, said COAST did not properly display that its speech was held down by the law. Considering some of COAST’s tweets, the judge is probably right.
E.W. Scripps Co. will host a job fair in Cincinnati Oct. 10 to fill 100 digital jobs.
The Ohio Supreme Court upheld the rights of lesbian ex-couples to set visitation times. The court said non-parents are allowed to participate in visitations during child custody proceedings.
Ohio might expand Medicaid, but not to the extent asked for by Obamacare. That’s what the state’s Medicaid director said yesterday, anyway. A previous study found Medicaid expansions improved and might have saved lives in other states, and other studies have found Medicaid expansions may save the state money by cutting uncompensated costs.
Pundits really dug into Mitt Romney the past few days over his poor poll numbers in Ohio. The Business Courier asked if Romney has already lost Ohio. Politico said Romney’s biggest hurdle to the White House is Ohio. The New Republic ran an article with six theories as to what led to Romney’s losses in the state. The Cleveland Plain Dealer pointed out both presidential candidates were stumping at a pivotal time in northern Ohio yesterday. Aggregate polling paints a consistently bad picture for Romney in Ohio; he is currently down four points.
But Romney probably isn’t helping matters. In an Ohio
rally Tuesday, he admitted President Barack Obama didn’t raise taxes in his
first term.
Gov. John Kasich signed a series of bills shoring up Ohio’s public pension system yesterday. The laws will cut benefits and raise eligibility requirements, but state officials insist the new laws will mostly affect future retirees.
NASA wants samples from Mars, and it has a plan. The new plan may require a robot-to-human hand-off in space.
by German Lopez
10.23.2012
Posted In: 2012 Election, News, Education, Health care, Barack Obama, Mitt Romney at 09:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Morning News and Stuff
In-person early voting is underway in Ohio. Find your nearest polling booth here.
The final presidential debate between President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney was last night. The general consensus from media pundits is Obama won by a substantial margin. But political scientists say debates typically have negligible electoral impact. In aggregate polling, Obama is up in Ohio by 1.9 points and Romney is up nationally by 0.6 points. Ohio is looking like a must-win state for both campaigns, so Obama’s advantage there is a very bad sign for Romney. FiveThirtyEight, The New York Times’ election forecast blog, has an explanation of how and why the current electoral landscape favors Obama.
In a follow-up to the debate, Romney will be visiting Greater Cincinnati Thursday.
A new motion by City Councilwoman Laure Quinlivan could encourage more people and businesses to make use of the city’s LEED program. The program uses special tax exemptions to encourage buildings to be cleaner and greener.
Cincinnati’s City Planning Commission approved Plan Cincinnati Friday. With the approval, the plan’s only hurdle is City Council. If passed, the plan will reform city policies to put a new emphasis on the city’s urban core. That means a cleaner, greener city with more transportation options, ranging from walking and biking to the streetcar and rail. CityBeat wrote about Plan Cincinnati here. The full plan can be found here.
Three Republicans in the state legislature, including Cincinnati’s Sen. Bill Seitz and Rep. Louis Tehrar, introduced a bill that would require health insurance providers to cover autism. Critics say the move could cost small businesses too much during an economic downturn, but supporters say it’s necessary to Ohio’s mental health coverage requirement, which was passed in 2007. Seitz says the bill could also save money by bringing down special education costs.
In a sign of Ohio's education funding problems, one report found two of three Ohio school levies are asking for
additional funding. But Cincinnati Public Schools’ (CPS) levy will only
not ask for extra funding or higher taxes; instead, it asks for funding
and taxes to remain the same. CityBeat covered Issue 42, the CPS levy, in-depth here.
A new report found Ohio students graduate with more debt than most of the nation. The report named the state a “high debt state” with an average of $28,683 in student loans — above the national average of $26,600.
Despite what a recent conflict between Commissioner Greg
Hartmann and Mayor Mark Mallory implies, Cincinnati and Hamilton County
are working together. The city and county are cooperating on the Banks
project, funding the Port Authority and operating the Metropolitan Sewer
District.
Cincinnati is working harder to enforce a chronic nuisance
disorder. A property is classified as a chronic nuisance when it
surpasses a certain amount of crimes and violations. The law is meant to
hold property owners accountable for what happens in their buildings.
There are more signs that Ohio’s fracking boom may not be
sustainable. Natural gas producers are not seeing the profits they
expected from the boom. For many, the boom is quickly turning into a
bust. Still, natural gas prices have massively dropped, and an analysis
at The Washington Post suggests natural gas could play an important role in reducing carbon emissions. CityBeat wrote in-depth about the fracking boom in Ohio and the faulty regulations on the industry here.
The Ohio Board of Regents is using a grant to award 1,300 associate degrees to transfer students over two years.
Fourteen recreational trails in Ohio will get $1.6 million in federal funding, according to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. However, none of the trails are in Hamilton County.
The key to humanity: cooked food.
by Ben L. Kaufman
02.19.2013
118 days ago
Posted In: Barack Obama, Budget, President Obama, News, Media Criticism, Media, Ethics, Religion at 05:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Curmudgeon Notes 2.20.2013
Media musings from Cincinnati and beyond
• Giovanna Chirri, the veteran Vaticanista who understood
the pope’s Latin, broke the news that he’d just announced his
resignation. She works for the Italian news agency, ANSA. Her skill
recalled Ernest Sackler at Rome’s UPI bureau when I was a
photojournalist stringer during John XXIII’s papacy. Ernest truly
understood Vatican Latin well enough to turn it into flowing English;
colleagues spoke of him with awe.
• I’m grateful to the Enquirer for running a story on Sen. Rand Paul’s response to the State of the Union Message. It wasn’t on NPR or any other network that I could find. His Washington office did not respond to my question of whether the Kentucky Republican offered his remarks to any broadcasters/cable networks.
• Tens of millions of Americans will become eligible for subsidized medical care under Obama’s Affordable Care Act. Who’s going to treat them? I haven’t seen that in the news. And while reporters are working out that story, ask how the required additional primary care physicians will pay off college and medical school debts on the salaries that will be paid to their specialties.
• And once journalists dig into the supply of physicians to handle Medicaid expansion, I hope they’ll ask who’s going to staff quality preschool education for every American child. Obama can be aspirational, but we’re not talking about minimum wage diaper changers. Early learning centers require trained pre-school educators. And while they’re at it, reporters should ask where these new early childhood educators will train and who’s going pick up the tab. After all, they’ll never repay college loans on day care wages.
• Maybe I missed it in the admiring coverage of our government killing American Islamists abroad with drone rocket attacks: What prevents Obama from killing Americans in this country with drone strikes? None of the news stories or commentaries I’ve read or heard addressed that point.
There would be no shortage of targets. Wouldn’t the sheriff have loved a drone-launched missile to kill Christopher Dorner, the rogue ex-LAPD cop? That might have spared the deputy whom Dorner killed during the flaming finale in the San Bernardino mountains. And what prevents our increasingly militarized police from using their own armed drones?
Imagine what authorities could have done with armed drones during earlier, infamous encounters:
A missile fired at armed members of the American Indian Movement at Wounded Knee, S.D., could have avenged inept, vain and foolish George Armstrong Custer and FBI agents killed in the 1973 siege.
No feds would have died if a drone-launched missile incinerated Randy Weaver’s family with during its deadly 1992 confrontation with feds at Ruby Ridge, Idaho.
David Koresh and the Branch Davidian religious sect were incinerated by the feds’ 1993 armored assault in Texas. That would have been a perfect photo op for a domestic drone attack.
• Sometimes, “national security” is the rationale for requested or commanded self-censorship, even when secrets aren’t secret.
For instance, British editors held stories about Prince Harry until he returned the first time from Afghanistan. However, an Australian women’s magazine reported he was in combat. The non-secret was a secret because no one paid attention.
More recently, the new U.S. drone base in Saudi Arabia was supposed to be a secret. Obama officials asked major news media to hold the story and they agreed. National security, you know.
But it wasn’t a secret. Washington Post blogger Erik Wemple said Fox News already had reported U.S. plans to build the facility in Sept. 2011. Three months before that, the Times of London reported construction of the Saudi drone base.
When the New York Times broke the agreement and reported the Saudi drone base, everyone jumped on the story. Now, the Times, the Post and AP are trying to explain why they kept the non-secret from us.
• Gone are the days when senior Israeli government officials could call in top editors and broadcasters and tell them what they could not report. Last week, a tsunami of technology overwhelmed official Israeli efforts to censor the story of Prisoner X. Israeli journalists were not to report his existence or mention the censorship order. National security, you know. However, an Australian network named an Aussie as Prisoner X and said he reportedly committed suicide three years ago in an Israeli prison. Social media and the online world took it from there: "Aussie recruited by Israeli spy agency dies in Israeli prison." Israel dropped efforts to censor the Prisoner X story and is issuing official statements about the case.
• San Bernardino’s sheriff asked journalists to quit tweeting from the final gunfight with former LAPD cop Christopher Dorner. Bizarre. If authorities feared Dorner would gain tactical information, they misread his situation: Dorner was surrounded in a mountain cabin, tear gas was being lobbed in and men outside were trying to shoot him. He probably was too busy to read tweets. Moreover, only one reporter was close enough to tweet anything remotely useful to anyone. Most reporters initially or finally ignored the sheriff.
The tweet issue first arose during the 2008 Muslim terrorist attack on Mumbai when invaded the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel. Some authorities reportedly feared accomplices outside were reading news media tweets and forwarding tactical information about police and army movements to gunmen inside. I don’t remember if anyone asked reporters to quit tweeting.
• A new poll says Fox hit an alltime low for the four years Public Policy Polling has tracked trust/distrust among TV networks: 41 percent trust Fox, 46 percent do not. The poll didn’t find anything for other networks to brag about. Only PBS had more “trust” than “distrust” among viewers: 52 percent trust, 29 percent don’t trust. The poll questioned 800 voters by telephone from Jan. 31 to Feb. 3.
• Garry Wills’ new book, Why Priests, sets out to debunk Catholicism’s dearest dogmas and doctrines concerning priests, bishops and the papacy. NPR’s Diane Rehm gave him an hour last week to say why Catholic ordained clergy are an unnecessary accretion. Then she asked an outgunned parish priest from the Washington, D.C. area for a rebuttal. If she really wanted a lively, informed argument, there is no shortage of priest-scholars who could have matched Wills’ credentials and talents as an historian. It was unfair and cringe-worthy.
• It’s touchy when an unpleasantry is brought up in an obit: a long forgiven conviction, a “love child,” whatever. More often, predictably awkward moments are omitted in the spirit of de mortuis nil nisi bonum. Here’s HuffingtonPost on a full-blown omission in the recent obit on former New York mayor and mensch Ed Koch:
“The New York Times revised its Friday obituary . . . after several observers noticed that it lacked any mention of his controversial record on AIDS. The paper's obituary, written by longtime staffer Robert D. MacFadden, weighed in at 5,500 words. Yet, in the first version of the piece, AIDS was mentioned exactly once, in a passing reference to ‘the scandals and the scourges of crack cocaine, homelessness and AIDS.’ The Times also prepared a 22-minute video on Koch's life that did not mention AIDS. This struck many as odd; after all, Koch presided over the earliest years of AIDS, and spent many years being targeted by gay activists who thought he was not doing nearly enough to stop the spread of the disease. Legendary writer and activist Larry Kramer called Koch ‘a murderer of his own people’ because the mayor was widely known as a closeted gay man.”
• New York’s Ed Koch admired Wall Street Journal reporter Danny Pearl’s recorded last words before Muslim terrorists beheaded him. Koch had Pearl’s affirmation of faith engraved on his own tombstone in Manhattan’s Trinity Church graveyard: “My father is Jewish, my mother is Jewish, I am Jewish.”
• A former student reporter rarely rates an obit in the national media, but Annette Buchanan wasn’t ordinary. In the mid-1960s, she refused a court order to name sources for her story about student marijuana use on the University of Oregon campus. Her story ran in the Oregon Daily Emerald, the campus paper. No shield law protected her promise of confidentiality. The Emerald said she was fined the maximum $300 and the state supreme court affirmed her contempt of court conviction. That led to the creation of Oregon’s shield law for journalists. She died recently.
• An unresolved First Amendment issue is whether bloggers can be protected by state shield laws that allow journalists to keep sources secret. The latest case is from New Jersey. Poynter.com said blogger Tina Renna refused to identify government officials whom she said misused county generators after Hurricane Sandy. Union County prosecutors demanded the 16 names, saying Renna wasn’t a journalist protected by New Jersey’s shield law because she’s been involved in politics, her blog is biased and she’s often critical of county government.
The Newark Star-Ledger took her side. It said shield law protection “shouldn’t hinge on whether someone is a professional, nonpartisan or even reliable journalist. It’s a functional test: Does Renna gather information that’s in the public interest and publish it? Yes.” Renna “can be a little wild, she’s not the same as a professional reporter and she drives local officials crazy. But part of democracy is putting up with Tina Renna.” A court will probe whether Renna is a journalist as defined by the state shield law; that is, whether bloggers can be included by analogy under protected electronic news media.
• Few ledes — introductory sentences in news stories — are as lame as those saying the subject “doesn’t look” like some stereotype. For years, it usually referred to a woman in an unconventional (read men’s) occupation or pastime. “She didn’t look like a steelworker . . . “ or, “You wouldn’t think a tiny blonde bagged a deadly wild boar with a huge .44 magnum revolver.” Male subjects aren’t immune, as in this lede from a recent Washington Post story: “Farmer Hugh Bowman hardly looks the part of a revolutionary who stands in the way of promising new biotech discoveries and threatens Monsanto’s pursuit of new products . . . ”
What do revolutionaries look like? Lenin was pictured in suit and tie. Gandhi wore a white, draped sari or dhoti, Mandela and fellow ANC rebels often wore suits and ties. Young 1960s American and French student rebels never wore suits and ties and needed haircuts. Today’s young North African activists dress the same for class or a demonstration.
“Doesn’t look like” wouldn’t even fit an androgynous male model in the annual Victoria’s Secret fashion show. He’d be there because he looks like a classic, young, leggy “angel.”
• Have you noticed how hurricanes, floods, blizzards and tornadoes are morphing from evidence of climate change into photo ops? News media see them as so common that little reporting is required beyond images and stories of hardship: shoppers hoarding sliced white bread, downed trees and shattered homes, marooned airline passengers and days without power. Maybe there’s the throwaway quote from some climatologist about change affecting weather, but for the most part, that’s it. I’m betting this deliberate ignorance is a Republican Party plot to show that increasingly frequent, dangerous weather reflects the Intelligent Design that gave us dino-riding cavemen a few thousand years ago.
• The Enquirer devoted Page 1 to a dramatic OMG! graphic and story suggesting Cincinnati was terrible because it had no black candidate for mayor. An accompanying list of movers and shakers had few blacks. The presentation suggested the all-white mayoral contest meant amiss in a city where whites are the largest minority. However, whites and blacks told reporters that leadership rather than color was foremost among attributes they sought in a mayor. Moreover, with so many African Americans in visible leadership roles in the city, having a black mayor succeed a black mayor was less of an issue than the paper suggested.
