Christmas Again Wins the Annual War

by Walter Brasch

      The mythical War on Christmas is over and once again Christmas won.

      The war was created out of fairy dust, and then neatly wrapped up and delivered to religious right-wing extremists by pretend-generals Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and a cast of dozens who have seized the public airways.

 One of the battalion commanders is Rep. Doug Lamborn, a Republican from Colorado. He introduced a resolution, which 35 other Republicans co-signed, that defends the holiday. That resolution calls for the House of Representatives to recognize “the importance of the symbols and traditions of Christmas,” to “strongly [disapprove] of attempts to ban references to Christmas; [and] expresses support for the use of these symbols and traditions by those who celebrate Christmas.”

      There are only two major problems with that bill.

      First, it’s hard not to find Christmas. The annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade ends with a Santa Claus float to signal the beginning of Christmas season, even though Christmas sales begin about Halloween. Businesses make their greatest profits between Thanksgiving and Christmas by turning everything red and green. Homes and businesses throughout the country have Christmas lights, wreaths, and decorated Christmas trees. Several Christmas trees are even in the White House. Unlimited Christmas music fills the air and on radio. The media are overloaded by Christmas advertising and news. Every major TV network has a plethora of re-run Christmas shows, from the animated “A Charlie Brown Christmas” and “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” to four-star films “Miracle on 34th Street,” “White Christmas,” and It’s a Wonderful Life.”

      There is no war. But the ignorant extremists believe if someone says “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas,” that is an attack on Christmas. A few million Americans, led by the jingoistic “take-no-prisoners” right-wing media, defend the holiday by shouting, “Merry Christmas” at everyone from a homeless veteran to strangers at airports to store clerks to business executives; it’s a battle cry that rivals the Rebel Call of the 1860s. Jesus would first be appalled, and then laugh himself into tears at the hate shown by these sanctimonious self-indulgent holier-than-thou misguided souls.

      Second, the First Amendment guarantees Americans not only the right to worship whoever and whatever they wish, whether it’s Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, atheism, or deism, the prevalent religion of many of the most notable Founding Fathers. Because of the First Amendment, you see hundreds of thousands of churches conducting services without government intervention. The First Amendment also guarantees the separation of church and state and prohibits the establishment of a state religion. That’s why you don’t see manger scenes in front of court houses and hear Christmas prayers at city council meetings. But you do see city workers putting festive lights and decorations on street lamps.

      Nevertheless, in ignorance of what the Constitution dictates, the extreme evangelical right-wing, which doesn’t seem to respect any religion other than their own, load their canons of deceit every December to attack the ACLU for leading the War on Christmas. But, the ACLU—and numerous other national organizations—not only protect the First Amendment’s dictate against the establishment of a national religion, they also vigorously defend, often in court, the right of all citizens, including the extremists, not only to worship their own religions but also to proclaim “Merry Christmas” to whomever they wish.

      The resolution that Rep. Lamborn introduced is itself unconstitutional. Rep. Lamborn—who took a mandatory law course while an undergraduate journalism major—and then many more in law school—should have known his proposed resolution is an infringement upon what the Founding Fathers wanted and believed. But, he is just playing to his audience—and not the Constitution.

      His resolution, introduced two weeks ago, is buried in the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. But, it will probably resurface 11 months from now. The conservative media and their followers regift this nonsense every December.

      [Dr. Brasch, a Jew and an ACLU chapter officer who specializes in defending and protecting the First Amendment, celebrates all holidays, including Christmas, and respects all religions as well as those individuals who choose not to believe in any religion. He is the author of 20 books; the most recent one is Fracking Pennsylvania.]

Today’s Media: Often Pandering to Bias and Ignorance

by Walter Brasch

      The Texas board of education didn’t find anything wrong with a world geography textbook that said slaves from Africa were workers, but that immigrants from northern Europe were indentured servants.

      This is the same school board that five years ago demanded that textbooks emphasize that slavery was only a side issue to the cause of the civil war, and that Republican achievements be emphasized in political science and civics textbooks.

      For good measure, the officials also wanted a “fair and balanced” look at evolution versus intelligent design or creationism, and that global warming is only a theory, overlooking substantial and significant scientific evidence.

      Because Texas adopts textbooks for the entire state, and there is minimal local choice, publishers tend to publish what Texas wants. The geography book had a 100,000 sale in Texas alone. However, McGraw-Hill, under a firestorm of protest from educators and parents, is modifying the text—African slaves will no longer be “workers” but slaves in the next printing.

      Publishers in America, trying to reap the widest possible financial benefit by not offending anyone, especially school boards, often force authors to overlook significant historical and social trends. For more than a century, books which targeted buyers in the North consistently overlooked or minimized Southern views about the Civil War; other books, which targeted a Southern readership, discussed the War of Northern Aggression or the War Between the States.

      Almost all media overlooked significant issues about slavery, the genocide against Native Americans, the real reasons for the Mexican-American War, the seizure of personal property and subsequent incarceration of Japanese-American citizens during World War II, the reasons why the United States went to war in Vietnam, the first Gulf War and, more recent, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

      Textbook publishers, choosing profits over truth, often glossed over, or completely ignored until years or decades later, the major social movements, including the civil rights, anti-war and peace movements of the 1960s and the emerging environmental movement of the 1970s. It was the underground and alternative press that presented the truth that the establishment press under-reported or refused to acknowledge, timidly accepting the “official sources.”

      Textbook publishers aren’t the only problem. The news media have ignored or downplayed mass protests against the wars, whether Vietnam or Iraq. They have ignored or downplayed mass protests against fracking. And, during this election year, all media have decided which candidates should get the most news coverage. There are several excellent Republican presidential candidates, but the media like the pompous and boisterous Donald Trump; he gives a good show. On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton gets the most coverage of the three major candidates. Analysis of network air time by the Tyndall Reports shows that ABC-TV’s “World News Tonight” during the past year gave Donald Trump 81 minutes of air; it gave Sen. Bernie Sanders less than a minute, although Sanders is drawing even larger crowds than Trump. It’s no different with CBS and NBC television coverage. Total broadcast network time for Trump, according to Tyndall’s data, is 234 minutes; for Sanders, it’s about 10 minutes. The problem, of course, is editorializing by omission.

      At one time, the media led the nation in unveiling social injustice and other major problems. Although they had their defects and biases, the nation’s media understood they were the system that helped assure a free and unencumbered forum for debate about major issues. More important, they also understood that their role wasn’t to perpetuate fraud and lies, but to seek out and present the truth. Seemingly in conflict—present all views vs. present the facts and the truth—the media also understood that newsprint and airtime should not be wasted upon being a megaphone for ignorance.

      Now, their role is to follow, while pandering to the entertainment value of social and political issues and giving cursory glances at the news value. It’s not what the Founding Fathers believed and, certainly, not what they wanted. But it is, in the 21st century, the media’s vain attempt to restore profits.

      [Dr. Brasch has been a journalist more than four decades, reporting and editing on newspapers, magazines, and television. He is also professor emeritus of mass communications from Bloomsburg University.]

Blustery Donald Trump vs. The Quiet Christian

by Rosemary and Walter Brasch

      Before a cheering and whooping crowd in Mount Pleasant, S.C., Donald Trump, spewing the blustery rhetoric of a demagogue, declared that the United States should ban all Muslims from entering the country.

      He claimed to have Muslim friends who supported his position. He claimed that Muslims want “to change your religion.” He claimed that a poll, one created by an anti-Muslim extremist, showed that one-fourth of American Muslims believe violence against Americans is justified.

      With absolutely no proof to support his accusations, and significant evidence to dispute it, for more than six years he and those who follow his hate have claimed President Obama was born in a foreign country and is a Muslim. Apparently, Trump is incapable of reading and understanding the Constitution, especially the part that says there shall be no religious tests for the office of the presidency.

      The blue-eyed, dyed-blonde-haired Aryan, who professes to be a Christian, also wants to create a wall along the country’s southern border to keep out illegal immigrants. He has yet to explain where the money will come from to build the wall and to protect it, and refuses to acknowledge that such a wall is impractical, and the Obama administration has already added money and agents for border protection. He wants to deport every one of the 11 million undocumented workers already in the United States, most of whom work in low-paying jobs, are trying to assimilate into the American melting pot culture, and have never had even a parking ticket. But, the billionaire bigot can’t provide specifics how to deport them.

      His speech on an aircraft carrier museum was one day after President Obama, trying to reassure the people of the nation’s commitment against domestic terrorism after the San Bernardino murders, asked the nation to remember “Muslim Americans are our friends and our neighbors, our co-workers, our sports heroes—and, yes, they are our men and women in uniform who are willing to die in defense of our country.”

      Trump’s demand to block Muslims from entering the U.S. was rejected by the other Republican presidential candidates, all of whom had pledged to support him if he was the party’s nominee. His beliefs were also rejected by all of the Democratic candidates, and by sensible people throughout the world. However, about two-thirds of all persons who are likely to vote in the Republican primaries also believe in a ban on immigration of Muslims, according to the latest Bloomberg Politics Poll. Fear merges with religious bigotry and white supremacy to give Trump a significant advantage.

      Trump’s demand for a ban on Muslims, if ever carried through, is unconstitutional. And, yet, he is the leading Republican presidential contender. He appeals to the segment of America that believes its own problems are caused by others and who are ruled by fear not reason. In a paranoid belief that the government is their enemy, and using one part of the Constitution to justify their gun mentality while denying much of the rest of it, they have loaded their houses and cars with guns, preparing to defend their fears against a Muslim invasion or an attack by the 101st Airborne Division. The right wing extremists and Trump’s probable voters have willingly allowed themselves to be encrusted by whatever hateful rhetoric is blown past them.

      In every one of his speeches, Trump gets ovations for his rhetoric, and for his condemnation of the mass media, while using the media to get his message to the people of the extreme right wing.

      On the same day that Donald Trump was blustering and flinging lies and half-truths, the mass media reported that Jimmy Carter was now cancer-free.

      Carter is the antithesis of Trump. He is quiet, humble, and works to serve humanity not himself.

      He graduated in the top 10 percent of his class at the Naval Academy, one of the most rigorous colleges in the country, and became a lieutenant in the nuclear submarine service. The man in charge of the nuclear Navy was Adm. Hyman Rickover, one of the most brilliant and demanding officers the military ever had, and one who inspired and set the example for the young officer.

      But, Jimmy Carter didn’t stay in the Navy, even with a future that would probably have put at least one star on his collar. After his father died, he left the Navy to help his family run a peanut farm in rural Georgia, and was successful as a state legislator and governor.

      On his second day in office as president, he pardoned all draft evaders of the Vietnam War. Drawing upon his own experience and culture, he created the departments of Energy and Education. But his greatest role was to try to reduce conflict around the world. His leadership led to the SALT II nuclear arms reduction treaty and to the Camp David Accords, which brought together Egyptian president Anwar Sadat and Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin. Sadat and Begin shared the Nobel Peace Prize; Carter would receive one in 2002 for his continued work of quiet diplomacy.

      The foundation of the Carter Center is to help humanity. Carter or one of his volunteers or staff have monitored elections throughout the world, assisted in developing agriculture, and reducing or eradicating disease.

      Jimmy Carter, who once lived in public housing, is an excellent carpenter, who is active in Habitat for Humanity, where he helps build homes for the impoverished, working out of the glare of the media spotlight.

      Unlike the leading presidential candidates who feel some kind of a need to publicly boast they are Christians and to “outChristian” one another while saying very unChrist-like statements, Jimmy Carter quietly goes about living his faith. For 35 years, he has taught Sunday School, relishing the role of a volunteer teacher.

      He is the author of 23 books, most of them focused upon improving humanity throughout the world, several that explore human rights and religion.        

      Donald Trump can bluster all he wants. He can distort the truth, rant and rally his minions to standing ovations. But, he will never be as effective, or as important, as the 91-year-old man from Plains, Ga., who quietly goes about a life dedicated to helping others.

      [Rosemary Brasch is a retired secretary, Red Cross family services disaster specialist, and university instructor of labor studies. Walter Brasch is an award-winning journalist, former newspaper and magazine reporter and editor, and professor emeritus of mass communications. He is also the author of 20 books; the latest one is Fracking Pennsylvania: Flirting With Disaster.]

Downsizing the News Staff; Downsizing Quality and Credibility

by Walter Brasch

(Part 2 of 2)

           

      For more than a decade, advertising, circulation, and news quality in both print and electronic media have been in a downward spiral. That spiral has twin intertwining roots.

      The first root is the rise of social media. The complacent and stodgy print media were slow to catch onto the concept and rise of social media and its influence upon a generation that conducts its life by a fusion of smart phones to ears. When owners figured out they needed to have a digital presence, they first gave away content in a desperate bid to keep readers, and then began to charge for it to those who didn’t have subscriptions.
      Like their TV cousins—CNN, FoxNews, and MSNBC—newspapers became 24/7 operations, with reporters now expected not only to find the stories, do the research, report, and write stories for one edition a day, but also to rewrite and update their stories for the newspaper’s website. It wasn’t long until editors had print reporters take small portable cameras and their cell phones into the field to also transmit visual stories to the newspaper’s copy desk. The result is a diminished quality as reporters now have more work to do in a time frame that keeps increasing, but are working with the same salaries and benefits.

      The second root is the Great Recession, which began about December 2007 during the last year of the Bush–Cheney administration when the bubble manipulated by financial institutions, with minimal governmental oversight, finally burst. The recession ended about June 2009, six months into the Obama administration.

      For years, media owners had been wallowing in 10–30 percent annual profits, near the top of all industries, didn’t put their income into improving their properties and their news operations, but took the money and increased shareholder returns, thus keeping their own jobs.

      With the Great Recession, business cut back on advertising. This led to fewer news pages and then to narrower page sizes as publishers began to cut expenses. The Great Recession also led to readers with less disposable income cancelling their subscriptions. The business model for newspapers is that higher circulation means higher rates for advertising; conversely, lower circulation means publishers charge less per column inch for advertising, leading to less profit. In most newspapers, advertising accounts for about 70–80 percent of revenue.

      When profits continued to shrink, owners and their financial staff and analysts, few of whom ever had to chase a story, cut back staff, froze salaries and benefits.

      Cutting back staff means that whoever is left not only has to transmit video from the field and rewrite stories for the paper’s website, they are now forced to increase their own productivity to cover stories that the laid-off reporters once covered, and not cover certain stories that should have been covered. Over time, this has led to a decrease in the quality of both reporting and writing, and a decrease in investigative and in-depth reporting, which takes both time and resources.

      At one time, newspapers had proofreaders, whose job was to make sure news stories had no spelling and grammar errors. But, to increase profits, publishers eliminated proofreaders, giving their work to the copy desk. Copyeditors check reporters’ stories for accuracy, often asking reporters to fill holes in their stories or to verify certain facts. Copyeditors also tighten stories, moving sentences and paragraphs to improve readability, flow, and to assure that the most important information isn’t buried somewhere in the middle of the story. Copyeditors also delete unnecessary verbiage and news source quotes that don’t add anything to the story. They write the headlines, format reporters’ copy and place it onto the page. Copyeditors, along with city editors and managing editors, also decide what stories should get larger headlines and what pages they should go onto to give readers a roadmap of importance.

      As publishers began laying off copyeditors, the finesse of the copydesk has been replaced by “Shovel Editing”—take a shovel and throw what you have onto the page.

      With fewer staff, owners decided that filling what is left of the diminishing news hole, caused by less advertising, is more economical if they use syndicated material—perhaps a feature from several states away now dumped onto a local page but with no local angle, packaged entertainment news that spills the salacious news about some celebrity’s forthcoming divorce, or more press releases, which are barely edited or verified because copyeditors are already overworked. Some newspapers have filled their pages with bloated stories about misdemeanors, largely handed to them by police departments and by larger photos of car crashes and check-passing ceremonies that take up space that once would have been used for news stories.

      As newspapers began their descent, circulation decreased—partially because other online sources became more prevalent, largely because newspaper content had become soft. Many local newspapers, under the direction of editors willing to stand up for journalistic credibility, have maintained an excellent news operation. But overall, during the past decade, Americans turned to a comedy cable channel, tuned in Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert for 44 minutes of truth four times a week, and tuned out ink on newsprint.

      The economy has rebounded; unemployment is down to 5 percent. The average wage for a newly-minted liberal arts graduate is about $41,000, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers. For a new reporter, it’s about $10,000–$15,000 a year lower, according to a study from the University of Georgia. More important, some of the better graduates of journalism programs are planning for careers in PR, advertising, and other non-news fields.

      Profits should be rising for newspaper groups. But, owners still give no or just minimal raises to their editorial staff, and they haven’t replaced the jobs lost during the past decade.

      The soul of a newspaper is its newsroom, something many owners say but never believe. While downsizing the news rooms, owners’ actions have caused a further downsizing in media credibility and have directly led to a downward spiral in the viability of both print and broadcast media.

      The solution to stopping the decline is to restore jobs to the newsroom, hire the best reporter–writers and editors, ones who have a broad knowledge of culture and society, pay them decent wages, give them better benefits, give them time to develop, report, and then write in-depth stories. While doing this, owners need to disregard financial experts who throw useless verbiage and skewed statistics that focus solely upon the “bottom line” and how to “maximize profits. They need to stop hiring $500 an hour media consultants, more adept at massaging statistics than in reporting social issues, who claim readers want shorter news stories, shorter columns, flashy graphics, and prefer crime and entertainment stories.

      When a solid news product re-emerges, the readers will return. When the circulation increases, so will the advertisers and the revenue.

     [In a four-decade career in journalism, Dr. Brasch has been a newspaper and magazine reporter and editor, multi-media writer-producer, television writer, and professor of mass communications. He is the author of 20 books, most of which fuse history and contemporary social issues; his most recent book is Fracking Pennsylvania. He is also the recipient of more than 200 journalism awards for excellence, including multiple awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, National Society of Newspaper Columnists, National Federation of Press Women, Press Club of Southern California, AP, and the Pennsylvania Press Club.]

Downsizing the News Staff; Downsizing Quality and Credibility

by Walter Brasch

(Part 1 of 2)

      On Monday, Nov. 2, every National Geographic staffer was told to report to the magazine’s Washington, D.C., headquarters the next day to await a phone call or e-mail from Human Resources.

      Ever since Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox corporation bought the magazine in September, there were rumors the new owner would maximize profits by terminating employees. Those predictions came through when Management fired 180 people, and told dozens of others they were being offered “voluntary buy-outs.” The corporation also announced it was eliminating health coverage for future retirees and was freezing all pensions. Management told the public there would be no loss of quality, but it’s hard to believe those claims when the same management sliced photo editors, designers, writers, and several fact-checkers from the payroll.

      The same day Murdoch terminated 9 percent of his staff, the owners of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News fired 46 journalists, leaving only one copyeditor at the Daily News. A month earlier, the Los Angeles Times cut about 10 percent of its news room staff. The Chicago Sun-Times fired all its 28 photographers, including one who won the Pulitzer Prize, and is relying upon lower-paid freelancers and wire services.

      The New Orleans Times-Picayune, which won a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of Hurricane Katrina, plans to cut one-fifth of its news staff. Beginning in 2012, executive management in Cleveland reduced the newspaper from a daily to three times a week and fired staffers at that time. The Times–Picayune isn’t the only newspaper to have downsized its newsroom and reduced frequency. Among metro dailies that are now printed only three or four days a week are the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News, the Seattle-Post-Intelligencer, the Cleveland Plain-Dealer, the Syracuse Advance-Standard, and the Harrisburg Patriot-News. The Times-Picayune, Plain-Dealer, Advance-Standard, and the Patriot-News, all owned by Newhouse Newspapers, slashed their newsroom staff before reducing the frequency. Executive management had claimed there would be no loss of quality; Management was wrong.

      During the past three decades, the number of daily newspapers declined from 1,730 in 1981 to 1,331 last year, with almost 100 newspapers ceasing publication just in the past three years.

      During the past decade, newspaper owners, seeking to squeeze every dollar of profit they could, terminated about 22,000 employees, almost a 40 percent cut from the peak of 55,000 in 2006. Last year, management cut 3,800 positions, according to the American Society of News Editors. Although some of those laid off were marginally productive and skilled, most were experienced journalists who set standards for distinguished reporting and writing.

      The remaining field reporters are now required not only to find the story, report it, and then write it, they now have to film it, using either a small hand-held camera or their cell phone, write it for the print edition, and then rewrite it for the web edition, updating the story for the web as often as necessary. Because of the need to fill the newspaper columns and web bandspace, while increasing the workload because of layoffs, in-depth and investigative journalism, which requires not just resources but time, has become nearly non-existent.

      The major news magazines, including TIME and Newsweek, have sliced their news staffs. However, the trend to downsize to maintain or increase profits hasn’t been as severe in the magazine industry compared to the newspaper industry. The reason is that most of the nation’s 20,000 magazines already have few full-time editorial staff employees; freelance writers produce most of the stories.

      The layoffs aren’t confined to the print media. Almost all cable networks, from the Golf Channel to MTV, TV Land, Nickelodeon, Turner Broadcasting, and Disney’s ESPN have cut or are planning to cut staff. Turner cut 1,500 jobs; ESPN announced last month it cut more than 300 employees, most of them producers and editors.

      The major over-the-air network media have been reducing the number of reporters, writers, and producers since the early 1990s. Broadcast radio eliminated about 19 percent of its employee positions, down to 91,000 at the end of 2014 from 112,000 in 2002. “Rip-and-read” journalism—a DJ or other staffer taking news from a wire service and merely reading it—continued to replace local reporters reporting local stories. Even DJs have been eliminated in most stations, with technicians pushing buttons to bring in automated syndicated programs that have breaks for local commercials.

      Disney’s ABC-TV chopped 400 positions, about 25 percent of its news division in 2010. CBS and NBC news divisions have also cut staff and coverage. On local TV stations, the downsizing is apparent with fewer stories of significance being aired, and with the declining quality of both reporting and writing. As is the case with radio, technology has reduced the need for technicians—as well as producers and editors. On some stories, a lone reporter is now forced to set up the camera, check audio and light levels, and interview the news source.

      The social media have also begun downsizing, with Twitter laying off more than 300 of its 4,000 person workforce in October.

      Owners blame the economy for their decisions to downsize. They blame loss of advertising. They blame the rise of digital media. They blame changing reading and viewing habits of the younger generation with a me-first egocentric attitude and a smart phone fused to their ear. They blame the lower ratings and declining income on the fragmentation of TV viewership because of the rise of hundreds of cable networks. They blame everyone and everything for their decisions. But, they seldom blame the real reason for the decline in circulation and ratings—their own incompetence.

      (Next week: Causes and Solutions)

[In a four-decade career in journalism, Dr. Brasch has been a newspaper and magazine reporter and editor, multi-media writer-producer, advertising copywriter, and professor of mass communications. He is the author of 20 books, most of which fuse history and contemporary social issues; his most recent book is Fracking Pennsylvania. He is also the recipient of more than 200 journalism awards for excellence, including multiple awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, National Society of Newspaper Columnists, National Federation of Press Women, Press Club of Southern California, AP, and the Pennsylvania Press Club.]