Friday Media Rant: We Don't Trust The Media

Do you trust the mass media to report the news fully, accurately, and fairly? Odds are you don’t. A record-high majority of Americans have little or no trust in the media, according to a Gallup poll released Wednesday afternoon.

Last year, a record 56% of Americans said they don’t trust mass media; this year, it’s up another percentage point to 57%. On the other side of the question, the 43% of Americans who said they have a great deal or a fair amount of trust in the mass media ties a record low.

Here’s a scary note for news managers: the public’s trust in media is now even lower than its trust in the executive and judicial branches of government. And a separate Gallup poll found little confidence in newspapers, too.

Not quite half of those polled said the media are too liberal; about a third say the balance is just about right; and about 15% think the media are too conservative. But no matter how you scramble the egg, more than half – 63% - say there’s bias one way or the other.

And, no real surprise here, the more education and income you have, the less likely you are to trust the mass media.

In the four decades that I worked in broadcast news management, I seldom found overt bias in the work of those I supervised. To be fair, though, most of them were younger people, who tend to be more liberal, and were trained to be careful to attempt to “balance” their stories. I do recall one strident episode back in the mid-90’s, when I left my office to check on things in the newsroom, and overheard a couple young reporters talking about how they were going to write and run certain stories to air during the Rush Limbaugh show “just to piss off all the right-wing freaks”.

I suggested they might do better in their career if they left the news department and applied with the programming department to host a talk show, so they could “balance” Rush with their brilliant insights, and mentioned that it might be important to their future to remember the bright line between “news” and “talk”, a distinction lost on far too many listeners these days.

Wednesday-Morning-Quarterbacking (On Thursday)

Suffice it to say he was preaching to the converted. The President’s trip to Madison and his speech had few surprises and not much new information. He was back on the stump, trying to get the college kids to vote next month, and he was energized.

The biggest surprise, perhaps, was Russ Feingold actually showing up at the event. He’d said he couldn’t be there because of some vote in the Senate, but around 3 o’clock Tuesday afternoon he tweeted that he was headed west and would be at the event. Russ is in trouble, and he needs every single one of those college kids there to vote for him.

There was a minor surprise when the Presidential motorcade made a quick stop at LaFollette High, and he joked with the jocks on the athletic field for a while.

It’s no secret that this was a purely political stop. The national TV networks gave it passing mention or none, on Wednesday. The President gave a stump speech very similar to the one he gave at the Kohl Center when he was here during the campaign.

Just as George Bush was always a hit when he spoke to soldiers or sailors at military installations, Obama can rock the house in front of a throng of college kids. College kids at one of the most liberal institutions in the most liberal city in the state. College kids who don’t give two hoots in hell about health insurance; college kids who don’t own property and pay real estate taxes; college kids who haven’t yet arrived in the “real” workaday world when you get your first paycheck and see what a bite taxes really do take out of your earnings, especially in Wisconsin.

The wind of change is somewhere between a stiff breeze and a full-on storm in the Badger state. Every one of those young folks at the rally Tuesday are going to have to vote…and they’re going to have to take a few like-minded friends with them to the polls in November.

I have a feeling not even the bluest of the blue counties in Wisconsin is going to hold back the wind in November, though.

Nancy Pelosi Is Everywhere

Let’s see now, I’ve forgotten….which one of the candidates in Wisconsin in the fall election is Nancy Pelosi? I think I’ve seen TV ads in Madison that Ron Kind is Nancy Pelosi. And I can’t recall – is Tom Barrett also Nancy Pelosi?

It’s so hard to keep all this straight.

Ron Kind isn’t running in Madison; this is Tammy Baldwin’s Congressional territory. (And I’m sure Tammy is also Nancy Pelosi.) The TV ad is designed to reach voters in the northern and western parts of the Madison TV market, where Ron Kind, a Democrat from LaCrosse, is up for re-election in the 3rd district. The TV ad makes it clear that he’s Nancy Pelosi and he’s wrong and bad. I don’t know who’s running against Ron Kind; the ad never even mentions a name. But I know that Ron is Nancy.

The ad in question is being run by some “60-plus” coalition or group or PAC or whatever. It has a number of angry senior citizens (and one woman in particular who is a VERY angry lady, to the point of being Halloween-scary) telling us that Ron and Nancy are thick as thieves and they’re going to take away our Medicare by cutting it to death.

Or something of the sort.

Every election cycle, the ads get dumber, nastier, and more annoying in their attempt, at the cost of anything resembling the truth, to be so scared by the opposing candidate that we can’t possibly vote for them. And every election cycle, nothing is done to change this. Once in a while the politicians talk about it, but nothing is ever done.

Why don’t they just do an ad that says Ron Kind is Hitler, and that he and Nancy Pelosi are trying to impose Obama’s European Socialist Agenda on us to take away our guns and make drugs legal and encourage more “abortion on demand” (is there another kind of abortion?).

By the way, the person running against Ron Kind is a fellow named Dan Kapanke. He’s a Marine Corps veteran and has been in our state legislature for two terms. He seems like a nice enough fellow and he even owns the LaCrosse Loggers Northwoods League Baseball team. Marine; small businessman; ties to organized baseball. Sounds like the all-American combination to me.

You’d think they’d mention that in the ad that says his opponent is Pelosi.

Personal Rail

I want my own train. But I’m not an unreasonable person; I’m willing to make a few compromises to hold the expense level down to ridiculous, not quite as high as absurd. All I hear about from the candidates for governor is train-talk; all I hear about on talk radio around here is train-talk, and when is there going to be an honest referendum on whether or not the people of Dane County really want “regional” or “local” train transit.

Barrett wants the train; he says it will bring jobs. 55 is the number I hear most often. Walker doesn’t want the train, and is apparently willing to ship the federal millions off to Florida, so that we’re not on the hook for countless millions in support and maintenance and subsidies once the medium-speed train (58 mph is not “high” speed, as many of its proponents call it) is built and running.

So, to hell with all the talk show callers and the politicians. I want my own train.

I’m not crazy, so I don’t need to have it stop right at my front door. I’d be willing to drive a couple miles from my south-suburban home to, say, HiWay MM at HiWay 14, where there’s already a nice set of railroad tracks, and then take my personal train downtown, or out to the west side, or to the Kohl Center, or wherever. I’d like my personal train to take me up to Hortonville so I can visit mom, and it could drop me off a few blocks from mom’s house, where the train tracks cross Nash Street, and I’d hoof it a few hundred feet to her lakefront home.

I’d also like my wife to have the advantages of a personal train, which could take her to her office on Science Drive, and home after work; and take her down to Chicago so she can visit with her family and not have to deal with the miserable Chicago traffic and reduce the balance on our I-Pass account.

When I’m using the train, I’d like to have personal food and beverage service from young ladies with names like Greta or Ingrid. And, to be fair, when my wife is using our personal train, I think she should have food and beverage service from muscular young men with names like Amadeo or Benedetto.

You think I’m crazy? Maybe so, but no more so than the people who believe we need trains more than we need better roads and bus service, and who are willing to raid the state’s transportation fund to pay for their choo-choos.

The Big "Debate"

Anybody who’s ever been on a high school or collegiate debate team (and I’ve been on both) knows that what Tom Barrett and Scott Walker are doing on TV isn’t really debating. It’s more like a joint appearance with some questions from a trio of newsies.

My wife and I watched a bit of the “debate” Friday night – enough for me to know that if Scott Walker becomes our next governor, it won’t be because of his speaking skills. He doesn’t think quickly on his feet and if you were scoring along at home, he didn’t win many points. The State Journal called Friday night’s event “feisty”, and I won’t quibble with that description.

There was some pretty good back-and-forth, most of it initiated by Barrett, who really did try to engage Walker, but the format the Broadcasters’ Foundation uses doesn’t really lend itself to verbal volleying by the candidates. The format sometimes used by the League of Women Voters is a bit more conducive to generating some real give-and-take between the candidates in the Presidential “debates.”

Walker tried pretty hard to tie Barrett to Jim Doyle, whose approval rating is abysmal, and Barrett used the tried-and-true “Scott, Jim Doyle isn’t running in this election” tactic. The discussion about that stupid slow-speed (58 mph) train between Milwaukee and Madison did nothing to further illuminate the issue.

The wind of change is blowing pretty strong this political season, and while I don’t think either of the two is an outstanding candidate, I wouldn’t be surprised at a Walker victory in November. People are pretty fed up with the way things are now.

If Walker wins, it won’t be because he was the better “debater.”

Regulators Who Don't Regulate Anything

This Ken Kratz incident, the horny Calumet County D-A who thinks it’s OK to engage in sexting and soliciting a sexual relationship with women who are the victims of domestic abuse, just stinks to high heaven. What’s worse is, the “regulators” who are supposed to “regulate” out-of-control lawyers looked the other way; the Attorney General looked the other way; and our state’s highest court delegated dealing with rogue attorneys to a toothless and useless new committee some time ago.

Every practicing lawyer in the state pays a dues assessment every year to fund the “Office of Lawyer Regulation”, an outfit so useless and low-profile that even our governor – who is himself a former Wisconsin Attorney General - in a national TV interview with that Snuffaluffagus fellow on ABC the other day called it the “Office of Lawyer Responsibility.” Ooops.

Seems to me this OLR outfit isn’t doing much regulating, if they say it’s in poor taste to sex-text a victim of domestic abuse, but certainly nothing for anybody to get their pants in a bunch about. On top of that, our present A-G, John Byron Van Hollen, knew about this rotten Kratz stuff for nearly a year and did nothing about it, until the Associated Press uncovered the scandal a few days ago. And every day seems to bring a shocking new revelation in the Kratz mess.

From the top to the bottom, it just seems like nobody’s regulating anything any more. You’ve got the auditors who looked the other way while Ken Lay and his pals sank Enron; you’ve got the FDA regulators who allowed huge egg farms in Iowa to operate on the very margins of recklessness and sell tainted eggs; the people who supposedly regulate the auto industry are a bunch of former auto industry execs; the Federal regulators who are supposed to keep an eye on the big drillers like BP are a bunch of sops who accept expensive presents and perks from the oil barons; and the granddaddies of them all, the supposed regulators of the banking and financial industry, have shown themselves to be just about the most stupid and incompetent bastards on earth.

You wonder why people don’t trust the government? You need look no farther than little ol’ Calumet County, Wisconsin.

Snow Job

Now let me see if I’ve got this right: Madison is going to borrow a ton of money to build a station for the choo-choo, unless Walker gets elected and somehow does the seemingly impossible and derails the train; Madison has money to spend developing a “Central Park” idea that’s been in the works for years; Madison will borrow three million bucks to buy the failed Union Corners development land at East Wash and Milwaukee Street, and hold the land until the “right” developer comes along with the “right” project to make the finicky neighbors happy; but Madison does not have 18 thousand bucks to shovel out the bus stops in the coming winter.

Say what?

A new fiat being considered by the august body (which I used to call the “Silly Council” on my editorial broadcasts in the past) would re-define “sidewalk” in Madison to include the concrete pads that serve as bus stops, and a path at least five feet wide from the existing sidewalk to the bus stop pad AND a five-foot path from the bus stop to the nearest lane of travel. This is to insure access to the bus by persons with disabilities.

In other words, the city council is trying to foist a duty that any right-thinking Madisonian would call a “basic city service” onto the property owners, to save the kingly sum of 18 thousand bucks.

What’s wrong with this picture?

What’s wrong is, this is another example of how the city’s priorities can be royally screwed up. Millions for fru-fru but not eighteen grand to perform a fundamental service? Oh, and did I forget to mention that project to build a new municipal library downtown?

Every one of these major projects I’ve mentioned…..the train station, the Central Park concept, the Union Corners bailout, the new main city library, can be debated on their merits by reasonable people with divergent points of view. But trying to save 18 grand by having property owners shovel out the bus stops?

First of all, this idea is simply wrong and bad, and will likely cause a chuckle or two from other cities in the nation’s snow belt. Second, what set of priorities – and don’t split hairs about “capital” and “operating” budgets – puts a park or a developer bailout ahead of insuring that persons with handicaps can access mass transit in the winter? Third, even if this absurd proposal actually makes it onto the books as a new ordinance, do the council members actually think the property owners are going to DO this?

Isthmus blogger Dave Blaska suggests that at the very least, if this thing becomes law, the city should deduct $500 from the property tax bill of property owners adjacent to the bus stops, as compensation for their troubles.

I suggest that the proposed ordinance’s sponsor, 11th District Alder Chris Schmidt, quietly withdraw the dumb proposal and kill it before it even gets a first hearing.

This is nonsense.