A few items worth discussing:
- Black Lives Matter protest causes road closures, police activity — I didn’t even realize it was going on until this morning. You? And what do you think? Think these things accomplish anything? I’m in one of my jaded-about-demonstrations moods. Probably a separate post.
- Theresa May Poised to Be Britain’s Next Prime Minister — And she doesn’t want the UK out of the EU any more than I do, or Cameron did. But it doesn’t look like we’re going to get what we want. My question is, will we ever get what we need?
- In bashing Trump, Ginsburg may have just crossed an important line — Wow. That was not cool, was it?
- Pope appoints ex-Fox News correspondent as Vatican spokesman — Whoa! This is so wrong! Nobody in the Vatican even told me there was an opening. If the fix is gonna be in, why not just hire Father Guido? That would actually be kind of cool…
Fr. Guido Sarducci
Related Posts
I don’t generally do open threads, but I feel the urge to remark on a major blast from the past. I went, as usual, to my neighborhood coffee house down the street this evening and settled in with the NYT on my iPad. I checked the obits–and learned that Sydney Schanberg had died. You’ll recall that in 1975 Schanberg was the NYT’s man in Phnom Penh when the Khmer Rouge captured the city. He refused to evacuate along with the other foreigners, and when the Khmer Rouge decided to empty the city and send everyone to the countryside, he was forced to go as well, along with his assistant and friend Dith Pran. Contact was lost with him for several weeks, until he finally turned up at the Thai border, and a few days later the Times published his first dispatch.
As it happened, I was living in Columbia at the time researching my dissertation, but I was on a brief trip to New Haven to see to some administrative matters and check in with my mentor, staying with friends off campus. That morning I was walking into campus, when I encountered a friend who excitedly told me that Schanberg’s first dispatch was in that day’s NYT–I’m not sure I can recall a news story so eagerly awaited. I grabbed the first copy I could find, and worked my way through it. It was enormous–a double-column lead on the front page, spilling over to a full page inside (The NYT has reproduced the whole thing in the online version of the obituary). It was also the single most breathtaking news story I’ve ever read, written in a white-hot flow of passion. The only thing comparable in my eyes was some of the post 9/11 coverage in the NYT. Schanberg, of course, subsequently wrote a book about his experiences, focusing on the ordeal of his friend Dith–a book that was made into the movie *The Killing Fields.* Never has a piece of journalism moved me so profoundly. If that had been the only thing Schanberg ever did (and he had a distinguished career), that alone would have made his passing worth noting.
Interesting how quickly city officials and local politicians were to (rightly) condemn and dismiss (questionably) the fire chief for two tweets about the BLM protesters blocking the streets while apparently not having the time to address the corruption in the Penny Tax spending or the misdeeds of the Recreation Commission head. I’m sure that’s on their todo list.
Small acts of bad behavior are easier to deal with apparently. Couldn’t be any other reason, right?
Doing,
You and I both know they are protecting people because they are black. That isn’t going to be discussed most places. In Columbia and Richland, that seems to be the case.
Remember when the city manger rushed down to meet the police when the local NAACP head was causing a disturbance?
Now the Captain should have been let go. I understand his frustration at people blocking interstates and not being arrested. That is a public safety issue. But you and I know in Columbia that is going to be treated differently.
Once again, I am proud to not live in Columbia or Richland County.
Question for the commentariat:
Does the fired fire chief have a first amendment claim against the city for firing him due to his speech? Why or why not?
I doubt it but I am no expert.
A teacher at my wife’s school was called before the administration last year for posting a picture of himself in a bar holding up a drink despite the fact that he had never “friended” any of his students or parents of his students. Yes- really.
The ironic thing is – we were looking just last week at the facebook account of a “higher up” at her school and there were quite a few much more questionable posts on this person’s account than a simple picture at a bar.
But as is almost always the case- there are different rules for different people.
Public schools are the bastions of political correctness. I learned a lot about the drinking/smoking habits of my high school teachers when I returned to the same school as a basketball coach in my early 20’s. In fact, I had my first Rolling Rock with my former science teacher who (after he had several more) started singing/slurring his interpretation of the words to “Louie, Louie” to the group of teachers to much applause one late Friday night. It was good to see the teachers acting normal.
Same here.
I was stunned, while in high school, to see our assistant band director smoking at band camp. He’d never do that around school. At band camp, he didn’t care I guess.
I’ve told this before but when I worked for the state, we had a conference we had to attend one year at the beach. Our department leaders gave us a big long talk about how we had to be on our best behavior at the conference and we had to attend all the sessions, etc… I worked with some good folks and I didn’t sense any of them as folks that were going to cause any trouble at a conference.
At the conference, we noticed that while our co-workers were attending every session, none of our “leaders” were seemingly able to make the sessions. The following week the word was out that most of our “leaders” didn’t bother to show up for any of the sessions. One was bar hopping the entire time. A few others had engaged in a 24 hour poker tournament and spent their days sleeping.
Again- different rules for different people.
What happens at band camp… stays at band camp.
Bryan,
I’m guessing there is some language in an employment contract that discusses proper use of social media or conduct unbecoming a city employee that will cover it.
Bryan, I don’t know. I took mass communications law decades before Al Gore invented this thing…
I’m gonna take a wild guess and say “no.” Because of the “shouting ‘fire’ in a crowded theater” thing. But more to the point would be, to what extent is anyone required to employ a person who says things like this?
There’s an argument to be made either way, I know. I just think he loses.
Take the internet out of it. Say the captain is in a meeting of captains, with the fire chief, and stands up and says, “I’ve gotta run because I need to drive out to the interstate and run over some protesters.”
Or say he goes to the site of the protest and announces into a bullhorn, “Y’all need to disperse or I’m gonna run over you.”
(Mind you, neither case rises to the level of telling the WORLD via Facebook.)
He has a constitutional right to SAY that. But does the fire department have an obligation to EMPLOY a guy who chooses to use his right to free speech that way?
Seems to me that’s the relevant question.
Ginsburg’s anti-Trump opinion was her desparate attempt to negate Comey’s accurate listing of Hillary’s trust issues. After all, “reckless disregard for national security information”, especially for someone who never served in our military, seems a crucial disqualifier for Commander in Chief.
Ginsburg apparently also assesses Hillary’s habit of lying as very serious. Knowing that her seat will soon expire, Ginsburg reacted with classless desperation and waning regard for her station. Brava, Justice Gonsburg!
I have noticed that when Thomas or Alito lets out a personal opinion, it’s beneath the dignity of the court to the main-steam media types.
When Justice Ginsburg does it, it’s “her duty to be honest to her values” or some other spin.
Funny how that works.
Really? Where do you see that? What I see is expressions of how inappropriate it was…
Barry, my observations of main-steam media’s slights ans slants of Justices Scalia’s and Thomas’s personal opinions have usually been exactly as you have noted.
We should not expect biased misrepresentations of unpopular opinions to improve soon, however. Political correctness has become the most convenient refuge for the mentally limited and the mentally lazy. As a popular, easily-adopted habit, political correctness confers unwarranted smugness as well as it makes those who cannot/ will not debate immune from public scorn.
Ummm… fellas… how did I bring this to your attention? In the context of saying how inappropriate this is.
And the only news story I had read about it was under the headline, “In bashing Donald Trump, some say Ruth Bader Ginsburg just crossed a very important line.” That was from The Washington Post, which to my knowledge is no outlier.
Where is all this “bias” you guys are seeing. You watching TV or something? I have no idea what goes on there…
Here’s another one for you…
“Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has crossed way, way over the line”
Mind you, I’m not hunting for these. I’m just running across them while looking for other stuff…
Of course, that’s an OPINION piece, which is why the headline doesn’t include the “some say” attribution you see in the other headline…
BTW_
just this morning my 15 year old son showed me several Black Lives Matter protest youtube videos captured by private citizens of marches through large city streets with the same chant “We want dead cops” – this was after the Dallas shooting
Of course you aren’t going to see those videos covered in the main stream media. They have a narrative to protect.
Sorry Brad, I couldn’t possibly have a lower opinion of the journalism profession and media in general than I do. It would be impossible for me to think any lower of them as a group.
I won’t specially state that opinion because I try to avoid harsh and vulgar language.
“specifically”
CNN’s Justice writer found her response “classic”
(despite the fact that many say they can’t recall any justice saying such about a candidate in the last 30 + years.)
http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/12/politics/justice-ruth-bader-ginsburg-donald-trump-faker/index.html
And then, of course, there was this editorial in The Post today, “Justice Ginsburg’s inappropriate comments on Donald Trump“…
It’s like you and I live in alternative media universes…
If you want to be appalled, read this report by Ron Aiken, formerly of The Nerve, of a secret recording of Richland County Recreation Commission director James Brown berating his employees in January. If the fire chief was fired for two tweets, how does this guy still have a job?
http://quorumcolumbia.org/2016/07/12/secret-recording/
One “highlight”:
At the meeting Brown said he had named Tara Dickerson his chief of staff to avoid dealing with employees who don’t like him.
“Since it’s so difficult and it seem like every time you hear my voice I’m always doing something wrong, I’m always mistreating you, I’m nasty, I’m a bully, you’ll be going directly to Ms. Dickerson,” Brown said. “I have an old saying, and I want you to listen to it real careful. I have made some changes in my life. Please leave your name and number. If I don’t call you back, you are one of the changes. So understand what I just said. If you call me and I don’t call you back, you are one of the changes in my life in 2016.
“Don’t call me back. Don’t come drop by to see me. Nobody. I don’t want to see you. To all my division heads, if you got some information need to come out of your department to go to another department, you will take it. You will now remain in your office, in your area. That’s where you’ll remain.
“And Miss Dickerson, when you catch them out of their area, write them up or I’m gonna write you up. Y’all don’t want to be treated like adults. You want to be treated like kids, I’m gonna treat you like kids.”
An employee in the audience that day described the atmosphere.
“Unprofessional,” said a woman who also wished not to be identified because she still works at the commission. “It was demeaning, just pure bullying.
And, once again, why isn’t The State following through on reporting this? Is it solely because Ron Aiken is doing all the hard work and they don’t want to give him credit? Or is it just that they are afraid of the response from the black community?
Sigh….
No, Doug. They simply haven’t freed up someone to chase this, just as they haven’t freed up someone to chase lots of other stories.
There is a finite number of people in the newsroom, and there’s a more or less infinite number of stories out there.
Rant and rave and holler because you think they’re making the wrong choices — everyone else does. (If it’s any consolation to you, I wish they’d find a way to chase this, too. But if I got upset every time the newsroom doesn’t make the same decisions I would, I’d have died of apoplexy long ago.)
But you don’t have to invent weird conspiracy theories for why they haven’t chosen this particular story to devote special attention to. They just haven’t.
I sort of wish that the newsroom could come up with the money to hire you as an editor for a few months. Then you’d see. A universe of stories to chase out there, and practically nothing to chase them with.
You’d also learn that each of those stories in the paper that you think are stupid and a waste of resources that should be spent on investigations have their own extremely fierce constituencies.
You wonder whether “they are afraid of the response from the black community.” I’ll tell you somebody editors are afraid of: band parents.
If you fail to cover some event involving a battle of the bands or some such, or fail to give it what they consider to be proper play (and you’ll ALWAYS fail in that regard, if you have an ounce of news judgment), they come down on you like a ton of bricks. You think you’ll NEVER get them off the phone.
I’ve always suspected that, based on some of their remarks, that this is all an inferiority complex of a sort. Their little darlings aren’t athletes, so they compare the coverage given to football (something that, inexplicable, hordes of people want to read about) to the coverage given to the bands — and of course, the band coverage always come up short.
But ultimately, it’s not about fear of complaints. It’s about the fact that a general-circulation newspaper has an obligation to cover ALL aspects of the community, pretty much everything of interest to anyone that goes on. Which is impossible, but you spread yourself thin and do it as well as you can.
Ron Aiken doesn’t have that problem…
I would love to be editor for a week. I’d at least TRY to do something to change the downward spiral that newspapers have been facing rather than keep whistling past the graveyard.
My changes:
1. Editorials start on the front page and are continued on the expanded editorial page. Cindi Ross-Scoppe should have a byline on the front page every other day.
2. Every reporter writes SOMETHING every day whether it is for online or hardcopy
3. Every reporter has a Twitter account and a Youtube channel and uses them regularly (i.e. daily tweets and weekly Youtube commentary, interviews)
4. Put the names and photos of politicians in every story, especially online where there are no limitations on space. For people like the Richland County Rec Commission head, his photo should be on page 1 and be there every day until somebody does something.
5. Redesign the whole website. Way too much scrolling required.
So you’re planning on being THE editor over the whole paper (and editor of a locally-owned paper so you don’t have corporate running your website — which is the situation with The State).
I was going to start you out as an assigning editor — a guy struggling to cover everything in the book with the resources he’s been given.
THAT’S where you learn how tough it is…
Here’s a novel idea – why don’t the assignment editors post some of the possible stories they might cover and then get feedback from readers on what’s most important to THEM? That could at least be used as a data point in the decision making process. The tools for connecting with readers are much more readily available today.
Imagine an editor who tweets out: “What should we cover? Richland County Rec Commission or 10 Screen Theater Planned for Bull Street” (an actual latest news story on the website)…
You’d be shocked at the results.
Editors these days have all those analytics on what people are actually reading. And THAT’S why you see all the Gamecocks football and, yes, 10-screen theaters…
A responsible editor doesn’t let himself be guided entirely by reader feedback. If he did, there’d be no substance in the paper at all.
If you’re an editor worthy of the trust placed in you by the 1st Amendment, you give readers what they need as citizens, in addition to what they want…
I was fortunate in that for most of my career, I got to do the “what readers need” stuff — as governmental affairs editor and later as editorial page editor.
I really didn’t have to deal much with the band boosters and such after those years I spent as news editor in Tennessee in the early 80s…
Brad
It seems that the issue with the recreation commission is very important- at least compared to great stores like “best Ice cream in Columbia”
or the 159th article about the confederate flag.
They had time to pore over thousands of letters related to the flag coming down. Six people working on a meaningless task.
Let’s go through the options:
1. They are aware of the story and have decided it is not newsworthy. If so, what stories might be of higher priority? I thought John Monk was on this?
2. They are aware of the story and the latest scoop from Ron Aiken and will start digging for their own version of the same story. If so, how long might that take? Days? Weeks?
I agree that I am not familiar with the newspaper business. But as a logical person, I start wondering how many hours it would take to write a story that references Ron Aiken’s story? Even if you didn’t do any additional reporting, wouldn’t it be worthwhile to publish a summary and a link? Or to call Aiken? Is that more than a two hour exercise?
Correct
I believe they had 4-6 reporters working on looking through those emails.
hmm…..
Yep.
A lot of editors are way, way more interested than I am in commemorating news that happened a year, 10 years, or whatever ago.
I would have covered the s_t out of the flag when it was still up, and pretty much let it go once it was down. But that’s me. Not everybody sees things the way I do…
Now, all of that said — those emails came from an FOI request, didn’t they? When editors go to the trouble (and sometimes expense) of an FOI request, they usually go the extra mile in making sure that they make the most of the information when it comes in. Which makes perfect sense.
As for me, as a reader — I didn’t read the stories about the emails. There is no way I would have found anything that I haven’t seen a thousand times over in all the emails, letters, phone calls and blog comments I’ve received over the years on that subject…
“If the fire chief was fired for two tweets, how does this guy still have a job?”
That’s a very easy question to answer. He works for the legislative delegation, which means he works for nobody. NO ONE can call him in and say, “You’re fired.” The fire captain had bosses who could hold him accountable.
Every member of the legislative delegation who appointed him should be forced to address this NOW and not hide behind the excuse of waiting for the investigation to be completed.
There’s probably a high probability that he gets moved to another position like Lillian McBride was allowed to do.
At least as a government cynic, I can accept this as the norm, It would not be allowed in the private sector… certainly not allowed to go on for six months.
Well, Leon Howard and Darrell “part time pastor” Jackson don’t care. They are going to defend the indefensible every single time.
Are you going to add Ron Aiken’s new blog to your Links section now that he is no longer with The Nerve?
http://quorumcolumbia.org/
I’ll add that to my list of updates.
My blogroll is sadly out of date. People come and go so quickly in the blogosphere!
“According to new polling from Quinnipiac University, Trump is leading Clinton in the swing states of Florida (42-39 percent) and Pennsylvania (43-41) and tied with her in Ohio (41-41 percent).
Of interest? Trump fares even better in all three states when third party candidates Gary Johnson (Libertarian party) and Jill Stein (Green party) are added to the ballot – leading Clinton by a 41-36 margin in Florida, a 40-34 percent margin in Pennsylvania and a 37-36 percent margin in Ohio.
By comparison, in 2012 U.S. president Barack Obama edged “Republican” Mitt Romney by less than one percent in Florida – but he won Ohio by three percent and Pennsylvania by 5.5 percent.”
I am already tasting one of those 30 beers Bryan is going to buy me in November. 🙂