Grumpy Editor

DOES SEN. CRUZ’S TRIP TO MEXICO SHELVE FUTURE PLANS TO RUN FOR PRESIDENT?

With Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) undoutedly considering running for president again, did his trip to Mexico last week dampen that outlook, asks Grumpy Editor.

As USAToday notes:  "Cruz's ambitions could be complicated after flying to Mexico as his home state of Texas was weathering the aftermath of a deadly winter storm that left millions without power and running water in freezing temperatures.”

 "Natural disasters have a way of upending politicians careers,” declares Republican strategist Alex Conant, who points to examples including President George Bush during Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

"For politicians, the first rule of any natural disaster is to show up and Cruz broke that rule.”

Meanwhile, NBC’s Saturday Night Live joins the national roast of Mexico-visiting Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, with Aidy Bryant playing Cruz, saying he's sorry for abandoning his state as millions tried to survive without heat, power and water.

 

IN CASE YOUR FAVORITE NEWS OUTLETS MISSED THESE…

TEXANS GET HUGE ELECTRIC BILLS.   Temperatures last week that overwhelmed Texas’s power grid, triggering rolling blackouts and power outages also bring catastrophic electric bills.  Some Texans are hit with power bills totaling as much as $17,000 for only a few days of electricity.

BIG CROCODILE UNDERGOES SURGERY.  A 350-pound, 10.5-foot-long crocodile undergoes successful surgery at the St. Augustine Alligator Farm Zoological Park in Florida to remove a shoe it swallowed that fell off a tourist’s foot.  

NEWSPAPER ACQUISITION IN WORKS.  New York hedge fund Alden Global Capital, largest shareholder in Tribune Publishing Co., reaches a deal to acquire the rest of the newspaper operation that includes the New York Daily News and Chicago Tribune.

BUFFET ADDS STAKES IN VERIZON, CHEVRON.  Billionaire Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway investment firm adds stakes in Verizon Communications Inc. and Chevron Corp. to its portfolio. 

WATCH OUT FOR LONG DRIVES.  Drivers who spend more than 20 minutes in their cars are at risk of exposure to formaldehyde and benzene, according to a study from the University of California, Riverside. Drivers may be inhaling those dangerous, cancer-causing carcinogens.

PETA FROWNS ON MARINES GULPING SNAKE BLOOD.  PETA, the animal rights group, petitions the Pentagon to end the practice of Marines and soldiers decapitating snakes and consuming their blood during survival training at the annual Cobra Gold exercise in Thailand.

FCC shelves controversial plan to snoop on newsrooms

Most broadcast/print media --- finally hearing alarm bells last week --- were slow to recognize a long-in-the-works Federal Communications Commission proposal that would dispatch “researchers” to monitor newsrooms even though the snooping plan surfaced nine months ago but gained major attention after a Feb. 10 warning by Ajit Pai, Republican commissioner with the FCC, who penned a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece, observes Grumpy Editor.

Pai, a lawyer, noted the plan posed great danger to the First Amendment and could be used in “pressuring media organizations into covering certain stories.”  Following Pai’s revealing op-ed, many journalists and radio/TV talk show hosts termed the plan an attempt by the White House to rein in the media.  Also shedding light on the dangers of newsroom monitoring was the American Center for Law and Justice.

After a barrage of broadcast and print criticism, federal officials on Friday released a one-page statement that the “Multi-Market Study of Critical Information Needs,” or CIN, has been suspended.  The study had been set to begin this year in Columbia, S.C.  (However, media in that city said the monitoring plan was news to them.) 

The CIN initiative included surveying media markets to determine how different demographics get news.  It also called for interviews with media owners and editorial staffers on how their newsrooms operate. 

Similar to discussions in an editorial meeting, the FCC planned to quiz editors and reporters on how they determine stories to cover and how they should be presented, along with asking reporters about rejected stories deemed important and reasons for the rejections. 

Among suggested questions: "What is the news philosophy of the station?" and "How much does community input influence news coverage decisions?"

Veteran journalists regarded this as an initial interrogation step in an attempt to control and intimidate the media. 

Ten months ago, unknown to most media, a 78-page “Research Design for the Multi-Market Study of Critical Information Needs” was prepared for the FCC by Social Solutions International, Inc., Silver Spring, Md., which describes itself as “a research and evaluation firm dedicated to the creation of social and health solutions to improve the welfare of underserved populations worldwide.”

Richard Zaragosa, whose Washington law firm represents the National Alliance of State Broadcasters Associations, cautioned that the suspension does not mean the FCC will not proceed later with the snooping plan. 

“Our reading … suggests that they have postponed the survey until it can be reworked, not that they canceled it entirely and permanently,” he pointed out.

 

In case you missed these…

WHITE HOUSE PRESS CAMERAS SHELVED AGAIN.  White House photographers were grumbling again on Friday when locked out from President Obama’s meeting with the Dalai Lama.  Only a handout photo was provided after the “closed press” event.  Some news outlets, including USA Today have nixed using handout photos. 

KERRY LOOKS SKYWARD.  Secretary of State John Kerry turned “climatologist” and raised eyebrows with a speech in Jakarta, Indonesia, declaring climate change is perhaps the worlds’s most fearsome weapon of mass destruction. 

AVOID CRIME, STAY AWAY FROM HOT SUN.  Equally strange were amazing, crystal ball precise forecasts the Los Angeles Times gleaned from a study published in the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management that high temperatures are likely to produce more crime.  Between 2010 and 2099, it pinpointed “climate change can be expected to cause an additional 22,000 murders, 180,000 cases of rape, 1.2 million aggravated assaults, 2.3 million simple assaults, 260,000 robberies, 1.3 million burglaries, 2.2 million cases of larceny and 580,000 cases of vehicle theft.”  (Of course, not many of us will be around in 85 years to check on the study's accuracy at the end of the century.  Hopefully, The Times has put a note in its future file --- for 2099 --- for a follow-up.  Also, the crime/high temperature factor portends it being rather dangerous to visit or live in places such as Palm Springs, Phoenix and Las Vegas during simmering periods.)  

FILM AT 11?  CBS in Miami reported media organizations, including Associated Press and CNN, petitioned a Miami/Dade court for access to videos that reportedly show singer-songwriter-actor-musician Justin Bieber "during the time he was asked to provide a urine sample to Miami Beach Police as part of his DUI arrest” last month.

NSA daily phone data collection ebbs but still in millions

Dual weekend stories on the National Security Agency’s collection of daily phone data on Americans falling off to between 20 percent and 30 percent of all U.S. calls didn’t get much attention probably because it sounded like a dwindling total, notes Grumpy Editor. 

But with at least 3 BILLION phone calls being made daily, that comes out to at least 600 million (figuring information gathered on 20 percent, based on a NSA surveillance operations story in the Wall Street Journal) or about 900 million (when calculating 30 percent of call data as indicated in a Washington Post story). 

Both newspapers report the latest tally shows a steep drop-off since 2006 when the government extracted nearly all of U.S. calling records. 

Observing that the government “can and does spy on its citizens” including emails and phone calls, former Gov. Mike Huckabee on his Fox News Channel program on Saturday/Sunday --- following a week of travels around the country, meeting thousands --- finds “something is troubling to people no matter where they live.” 

He points out, “A lot of Americans are genuinely concerned about their country and many express outright fear of their own government.” 

Huckabee reminds, “We, the people, should not be afraid of our government.  The government needs to be afraid of us.”

 

In case you missed these… 

LACK OF MAINSTREAM MEDIA CURIOSITY CITED.  Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer, on Fox News’ “Special Report” on Wednesday, denounced the "incredible lack of curiosity of the mainstream media" regarding the Obama administration's IRS scandal, noted Kyle Drennen, a Media Research Center news analyst.  “Had this been a Republican abusing the IRS, you can be sure the mainstream media would have been all over it,” added Krauthammer. 

BONUSES SET FOR IRS EMPLOYEES.  New IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, citing the need to boost employee morale, said he will disburse millions of dollars in bonuses to employees at the agency.  Bonuses are needed, he claimed, to retain and attract good employees in a time of cutbacks.

OOPS!  FOOTAGE FROM THE WRONG COUNTRY.  A television spot from President Obama’s political action group urges Congress to raise the minimum wage in the U.S.  But it seems that opening frames, via stock footage, shows a blonde female aboard a commuter train  --- in England, observed London’s Daily Mail.

GANNETT SHUTTERS LAST OF TUCSON CITIZEN.  Gannett Co. Inc., which acquired the Tucson (Ariz.) Citizen in 1976 and halted the printed version in 2009, ended current news at the website last week.  However, 200,000 articles, dating from 1993, will continue to be searchable.

IT’S JUST OVER THE HILL, ONLY 365 MILES AWAY.   On the Los Angeles Times website, the “Daily Dish” --- featuring “the inside scoop on food in L.A.” --- promotes a story on "4 great beers to try as San Francisco Beer week begins." 

TV ANCHOR NOTES MUCH SNOOPING.  Alix Kendall, who anchors the morning news on Fox’s KMSP, Minneapolis-St. Paul, claimed her license information was accessed more than 3,800 times during a 10-year period through the Minnesota Department of Public Safety's Driver and Vehicle Services database.  She has filed a lawsuit accusing public employees of abusing their access to driver's license information through the state database.

MAGAZINE CIRCULATION DIPS.  Total average U.S. circulation for 386 magazines slipped 1.7 percent to 284.9 million in the second half last year, reported the Alliance for Audited Media, which added paid magazine subscriptions were down 1.2 percent and newsstand sales were off about 11 percent.

THE OTHER USC, ON THE EAST COAST, PLANS UPDATED JOURNALISM BUILDING.  University of South Carolina is sprucing up a building in Columbia to house its College of Mass Communications and Information Studies.  It’ll be ready in fall, 2015, for about 1,500 USC undergraduate and graduate students pursuing degrees in journalism, advertising, public relations, visual communications and mass communications studies.

CARVILLE READIES FOR FOX CAMERAS.  Veteran Democrat strategist James Carville, formerly with CNN, is joining Fox News as a contributor.  The former Bill Clinton adviser, currently a political science professor at Tulane University, will provide political commentary.

Unnoticed by most media, which usually thrives on anniversaries:  Feb. 6 marked the birthday in 1911 of Ronald Reagan, 40^th U.S. president, in office from 1967 to 1975 and earlier California governor.

Britain's Guardian leads U.S. media in snooping coverage; Koch eyes newspapers, cites need to 'focus on real news'

London-based The Guardian newspaper left U.S. print/broadcast news media with red faces when it broke stories on Fort Meade, Maryland-based National Security Agency collecting information on millions of Americans through various sources, notes Grumpy Editor. 

Soon followed by the Washington Post on the NSA activity, it ranks as the top story of the week --- with additional information popping up daily. 

Edward Snowden reveals he is the whistleblower behind the leaks. 

The Guardian describes Snowden as a 29-year-old former technical assistant for the CIA and employee of defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, adding he has been working at NSA for the last four years as an employee of various outside contractors, including Booz. 

Now in Hong Kong, Snowden says:  “I do not expect to see home again.”

Behind The Guardian coverage is Glenn Greenwald, a columnist focusing on civil liberties and U.S. national security issues.  A former constitutional lawyer, Greenwald writes for The Guardian version designed for the U.S.  The Guardian maintains a U.S. editorial office (which it calls a branch) in New York City. 

Greenwald also was in Hong Kong yesterday. 

Breaking the NSA snooping story via London underscores what happens with a decline in U.S. investigative reporters as layoffs mount in print and broadcast media. 

For an aerial view of NSA’s data center --- showing a half dozen buildings at the vast facility in Bluffdale, Utah --- go here.  

 

Koch Industries mulls newspaper addition 

The Wall Street Journal reports billionaire Charles Koch confirms his company, Wichita, Kan.-based Koch Industries Inc., is looking into the possibility of acquiring newspapers, but insists he is seeking  a profitable business, rather than a venue to advance his politics.

"There is a need for focus on real news, not news with an agenda or not news that is really editorializing," he tells the WSJ.

Koch also points out the editorial page of any newspaper his company acquires “would be a marketplace of ideas where all sorts of approaches to public-policy issues are vetted and contrasted, and there could be ongoing debate.” 

Recent reports mention that Koch and his brother David have indicated an interest in Chicago-based Tribune Co. newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times and Baltimore Sun. 

Getting into the newspaper field would be a new avenue for the Koch brothers.  Their Koch Industries operations include oil refining, energy pipelines and production of chemicals, fibers and fertilizer.

 

In case you missed these… 

Time Warner Inc. is investing about $50 million in China Media Capital, a Chinese investment fund, targeting TV and film content operations…In connection with the June 6 anniversary of the D-Day invasion in France in 1944, some stories reminded readers that World War II veterans are dying at a rate of more than 600 a day, meaning future tales of combat in Europe and the Pacific are more likely to come from a book or a Website than from the veterans themselves…Only a very slim one percent of likely voters give Congress an excellent rating, with 64 percent giving the body poor marks while five percent rate performance as good and 26 percent fair, tallies a Rasmussen Reports survey…Down with “breaking news.”   That’s what Louisville Fox TV affiliate WDRB trumpets.  “It’s an advertising trick, a gimmick that isn’t based on anything,” declares a voice in a spot the station has been running. “Breaking news’ is seldom actually breaking and, quite often, isn’t even news.”

 

Cheers to The Wall Street Journal with a humorous play on words with a front-page headline Saturday:  San Francisco Giants Fans Find Diamonds Are a Gull’s Best Friend.  The article points out how hungry seagulls “clean up” fans’ food remains after baseball games.