Can You Spare a C-Note for a Poor Journalist Down on His Luck

When journalists lose their jobs, it does not always happen in ones and twos. Sometimes people are informed by the dozens.

One irony of this new age is that even as the world has more access to information than ever before, the people best equipped to cast aside the nonsense are being jettisoned in favor of sub-par content from unknown or unqualified sources.

In the world of the Internet, there is no system in place to sort the facts from the fantasy. Consumers accept what they choose and too often allow a contributor to declare opposing views as invalid.

This is not an age of reason. Let us hope that it becomes something more meaningful than garbage in and garbage out.

Truth has value and compiling it is neither cheap nor free.

Forty-seven very talented people lost their jobs, Oct. 8. This time it was an all news station in Houston, Texas. Just weeks ago it was dozens of editors, journalists and production specialists at Gannett's flagship outlet, USA Today.

A couple of months earlier, it was Bloomberg News.

What is a viable business model for news and information? What is the break even? Like print, radio is struggling to figure that out.

These are very tough time for talent.

At some point, the public will begin to ask questions.  Among them, who wants me to believe this and why is this true. 

There have always been differences between entertainment, advertising and news.  We are losing that and marketing messages are influencing what we think and accept as facts.

There is a danger there. When you throw all information into the same bucket, the result is propaganda. In an age of unlimited access, who decides what matters, and who pays them for that?

Pragmatism? Pshaw!

Nancy Brinker built a movement to save lives and honor the memory of her sister. Her idea was simple, "helping women beat the risks of breast cancer is a good." People bought into it and raised tens of millions of dollars.

Somewhere along the line, Nancy Brinker allowed idealogues to divide, and possibly doom her organization. If only for a few days, she turned her back on the poor.

Pragmatism embraces practical solutions without consequences. If you pack a board with people who believe certain things, then they can change the rules, take a vote and end alliances that were crucial to maintaining broad appeal.

In picking funding for Planned Parenthood, or an end run to eliminate it, a faction of the Komen Foundation selected a powerless target. The poor women, very young to premenopausal, who go to clinics offering services at no - to low costs.


Brinker and others did not realize that these women have a reservior of goodwill out here that would not sit silently by as donated dollars were used for exclusive purposes. The money did not come from any one group of people who believe certain ways, it came from lots of people willing to do something for women's health.

The Komen Foundation allowed its intentions and its brand to become  pawns in a political power play. We now live in a time when people, charities and institutions may find themselves offered up for pragmatic reasons. That means that those who would abandon all reason and compromise in favor of any single goal
will roll the dice, consequences be damned.

In this case, they were willing to let poor women, those who lack insurance and generally seek out the only preventive screening and other services within a busline, languish in uncertainty about their health or get sick and die.

There was no talk of alternative care and no true notice that vital breast screening provided at Planned Parenthood would no longer be part of a very fragile safety net.

Pragmatism puts no stake in consequences. It is built on concepts or statements repeated by rote without regard to any waivering thought.

Declare it right, label it just, and disavow anything that falls outside that narrow view. This time it was women and breast screening, last time it was "the poor" and food stamps, or faceless immigrants and a backlash against a 21st century Bracero program.

Pragmatism could lead to protective covenants, discretionary work rules and worse. These are dangerous times, and we should be very concerned about the poor.

 If you are outside the narrow view of pragmatic thought, perhaps you should also be concerned about the rest of us too.

Consider the Foundations of Your Beliefs

I believe most people are predisposed to be good, social and caring. I don't think it is a naive point of view, because I understand that if people are led to believe that certain outlooks are acceptable, they will adopt that point of view.

When you teach a child, you repeat what you want them to learn again and again, and over time, they repeat it to you. Then you reinforce the image or action with words that best represent the concept and the meaning is imprinted.

This is what has been going on since Nov. 4, 2008. "If we never refer to 'him' as President Obama, he will never really be president."

There are people in this country who have dealt with the last election as though it were a bad dream. They want to believe that since Jan. 20, 2009, there has been no one in the White House and no one running the United States.

This is the fiction that has made it so easy for people named Wilson, Sensenbrenner and Brewer to get headlines over the past few years. Their actions have left lasting impressions, constantly reinforced by angry pundits, writers and in conversations held beyond the earshot or those warranting language that was "politically correct."

One thing Ihave learned in more than 40 years of being in the news business: Headlines make Page One and last forever.  Apologies are buried somewhere beyond page three and never receive the same attention.

I also know that for decades, no one confronting  a sitting president at any event ever got within fingerpointing distance of the leader of the Free World. These types of sad activities will forever change the nature of the U.S. Presidency.

By talking about the physique of the First Lady or suggesting for a moment that Brewer “felt a little bit threatened, if you will, in the attitude that he had,” is to play up to the basest stereotypes of the past.

This is likely to be significant as we head into the election cycle of 2012. Already, Newt Gringrich has been admonished for rattling the sensibilities of our Cubano cousins. I have said in recent days that the basest natures of "Willie Horton racism" will play out in the months ahead.

What I can tell you is that many people have been desensitized to racism and classism since 2008. They have been conditioned to believe that finger pointing, blaming and labeling is natural, normal and acceptable. Perhaps reminding them of what they are willing to accept as truth, could jar them back to reality.

Anger, distrust and resentment have become so ingrained that they are considered, normal and natural.Even as their parents came around to the inequity of those concepts as they existed in the past, perhaps they need to be reminded of the unfairness of it all. Should we have to fight the battles of the last generation again, simply because we are silent?

Inside, if the people accepting all of this believe in Jesus, and the fundamental truth that God created all men equal, can they really believe that anything like this could ever be acts of Christian kindness?

Perhaps there is more than the souls of political parties hanging here in the balance.

2011: 24 Words and Out

I had a lot of fun with the challenge to sum up the news of the year in 24 words. It gave me a chance to be back on Houston Radio. I also heard from a lot of folks whose talents have raised the bar for me over the years and I am thankful.

This is the verse below, and the audio from my Houston radio appearance is now on YouTube.

One percent served, recession curved
Capitol shaken, Bin Laden taken
Ghadafi’s reign ended, DADT rescinded
Wildfires burned, Iraq troops returned
Kardashian’s fling, Arab spring