Posts Tagged newspaper
Overlooking the Obvious with Brent Larkin
Posted by Roldo Bartimole in Economic Development, Media on February 21, 2010
February 21, 2010… How pathetic can you get? Brent Larkin, Sunday, uses quotes from four City Council members to tell us that Cleveland is in serious, serious trouble.
And as a center piece of the argument he uses the city’s $350 million mistake on the lake – Browns Stadium – to highlight somehow Cleveland’s problems.
As Mike Polensek points out it has no roof. Does he think with a roof it would be filled with activity? The city now has the right to use the stadium it pays for NINE times a year. Do you see it being used? No way.
Cleveland – with Brent Larkin, who actually wanted to be PD sports editor – and The Plain Dealer, paid close attention to sports in the last two decades. To the neglect of so much. Even now the sports pages are the largest section of the paper. And typically with fewer ads than other sections.
Dumbing down the dumb is tradition at the newspaper. It excels at it.
Anything the sports moguls wanted they got and get. Didn’t mean anything that some of what they got came from the Cleveland schools. Didn’t mean anything that other needs were pushed aside.
What was important to our leaders for decades was that the entertainment via sports, rock and roll and other venues got what they wanted. They got the money. We paid the price.
We still pay.
Brent has been the go-to guy in politics and civic life at the PD. He favored every one of these moves. Without reservation. With no discrimination as to value. Expressing no reservations with how it was done. No restraint on cost. Just do it!
Now he shouldn’t complain about results, or get others to do it for him.
Cleveland is what it is not because of the form of government – a city mayor and city legislative body.
These people don’t make the big decisions. They simply ratify what the business, corporate and foundation communities want.
Rarely does the public get involved. Usually the people are simply frozen out. But sometimes a tax is just too much for them. As with County Commissioner Vince Campanella’s desire to build a domed stadium with a property tax. That was the 1980s agenda. It got clobbered near two to one by voters. That ruined Campanella, a Republican, and his desire to be governor. But the game wasn’t over for the corporate leadership. Oh, no.
The usual suckers – voters – weren’t buying a property tax. That didn’t stop the Cleveland business establishment. Find another tax they’ll swallow. It took years – with Cleveland Tomorrow shifting its sights from the Cleveland economy to building sports facilities – to bring forth Gateway. Whoop-de-do.
A sales tax on booze and cigarettes. Hell, the little people pay that. Better than a property tax in the end.
We saved our sports teams. We lost our city.
Was that a great deal or what? Suburbanites get to drive into Cleveland, park at a tax subsidized garage, walk into a tax subsidized sports stadium or arena. But don’t get to drink the water.
Changing the form of government is meaningless unless you change the character of our civic and corporate culture.
And no one is even talking about doing that.
Republicans Lie and News Media Spread It
Posted by Roldo Bartimole in Media, Politicians on February 4, 2010
February 4, 2010… The Audacity of No.
The Republican Party has put the country into serious financial jeopardy. Now they blame others.
Two Republican wars, two Republican tax cuts mostly to the wealth and a Republican prescription drug benefiting drug companies – and NONE paid for by the party that now sees disaster in deficits.
What gall.
Of course, one of the leaders of the dire need to deal with the deficit is our own Sen. George Voinovich. His image burnished by The Plain Dealer and Steve Koff recently as so, so concerned about our profligate spending.
In a paean of praise, Koff recently credited Voinovich, who ends his career this year, with going out by working to “force Washington to deal with the national debt that could doom the nation’s shaky finances…”
Where have Voinovich and Koff been for eight years?
The problem we all are in now has to do with the news media, the mainstream media’s biases. It’s utter failure to be honest about the predicament we are in and who caused it.
They are treating the dire problems the nation faces dishonestly.
The treatment of President Barack Obama and the Democrats in reporting the situation the nation now finds itself lacks the proper context that could make truthful. So it is a lie.
The news media’s failure is very similar to the way the news media treated Sen. Joe McCarthy by “reporting” his lies. Reporting and waiting for others to define his ravings. The major newspapers failed miserably by reporting lies as “news” in their supposed objective manner. He said it, didn’t he? That’s what we are reporting. That’s news judgment?
It wasn’t until after vast human damage was done that a few people spoke out or were allowed to counter his ravings. It took a major media figure as Edward R. Murrow to strike the blow to reveal the truth of Sen. McCarthy. We couldn’t expect that of a Tom Brokaw. Courage may be his subject but it isn’t his talent.
Now I read the newspapers, including the New York Times, for some honesty. But I don’t find it.
This is the reason 49 Republicans are a “majority” in the U. S. Senate. They have 49 Senators and a sad-sack news media. Unwilling to present the truth in full frontal view. Too timid for unvarnished truth.
Republicans are making a mockery of governing by simply saying “No” to everything of any importance. It’s a strategy right out of Rove. It should be headline stuff.
The message is clear. The aim is even clearer. They want to destroy the Obama administration. Stop it before it starts. No matter the cost to the nation. No matter the cost to ordinary people. Those suffering the most.
There’s an old ditty I like to tell in these instances:
Why will people never say the things all people know?
Why must truth be smiled upon as if it were not so?
Ask your daily newspaper and national TV news.