“Preserve your independence of all demagogues and place-hunters and never submit to their dictation; write boldly and tell the truth fearlessly; criticize whatever is wrong, and denounced whatever is rotten in the administration of your local and state affairs, no matter how much it may offend the guilty or wound the would-be leaders of your party…

Make an earnest and conscientious journal; establish its reputation for truth and reliability, frankness and independence.

Never willfully deceive the people, or trifle with their confidence. Show that your journal is devoted to the advocacy and promotion of their temporal interests and moral welfare.” –Joseph Medill
May 1869, Chicago Tribune, from a speech given in Indianapolis to editors and publishers

Once again, Trumpsorship failed epically. James Talerico, the candidate CBS cravenly bounced off of Colbert while bending the knee, won the Democratic U.S. Senate primary in Texas.

Maybe it was all those extra eyeballs. Normally, Colbert draws 2.3 million viewers; his interview with Talerico, at 9 million views, was just short of quadruple the normal number of viewers. Jimmy Kimmel, fired at Trump’s behest, had 6 million viewers on the night he returned, compared to his regular 1.4 million, again roughly quadruple. That will show them.

Given what happened, there is only one possible explanation. Followers are publicly certain he is playing five-dimensional chess¹, when he is not doing the widely respected weave; just ask the late, great Hannibal Lecter.

It does not take Sherlock Holmes to connect the dots. Trump wanted to increase the viewership of Colbert and Kimmel, and give Talerico a subtle  endorsement.

He was no doubt aided by Bari Weiss, editor-in-chief of CBS News, a Trump lickspittle who personally teaches the mandatory in-service course “Pre-Obeying His Royal Highness.”

Every CBS employee (even the janitors) must attend the course on pain of dismissal. The first slide is “Anticipate the master’s every desire and fulfill it before he asks, without any need for him or his FCC lapdog to specifically request it. When they don’t say jump, guess how high.” In honor of the President, the class lasts 1 hour and 47 minutes (longer if there is applause from the right side of the room).

Footnotes

1. 1. Beyond the comprehension of us mere littlebrains ↩︎

Is that a smaller picture of me on the right facing the camera as I do a review for the Computer Chronicles? Yes.

Humor O’ The Week

Pearly Gates

It is journalistic malpractice to run a line chart in which the Y axis does not start at zero. A Washington Post newsletter ran this graphic, which did start the Y axis at zero, illustrating an item headlined The Federal Reserve Cut Interest Rates Again.
Kudos to the person/people/AI that created this graphic. Next thing you know, all historic references to dollar amounts will be inflation-adjusted. What a world that would be! (Of course the Post may have started the Y axis at zero because the rate was once zero, but I choose to believe they simply have high graphic standards.

Yes, there are, basically no more print newspapers, no more roaring presses. But in the 1952 movie Deadline USA, Humphry Bogart makes a phone call that every journalism leader in the country should make to the president tonight.

Performing a speech written by William Bowers, Bogart [managing editor Ed Hutcheson] is on the phone in the pressroom talking to mobster Tomas Rienzi.

“It’s not just me anymore. You’d have to stop every newspaper in the country and you’re not big enough for that job. People like you have tried it before. With bullets, prison, censorship. But as long as even one newspaper will print the truth, you’re finished.

That’s the press, baby, the press, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Nothing.”

I would take out a lifetime subscription to any outlet that showed me a real (not LLM/notAI) video of that call. It’s time for the truth, baby.

The whole speech is worth reading.

For long stretches of his half-century journalism career my mentor Edwin Diamond was a freelancer. He told me to do what he did: slice the baloney. If you do a lot of research on a subject, he said, use it for the assignment, and then be creative and use the same research to create several more stories that were sufficiently different to avoid detection. Slice the baloney of research until it’s so thin you can read through it.

It might seem like he was getting away with something, but it worked for him and it worked for me. The most I ever got out of one story was three re-sales, but that was two more than most freelancers get, and for much less work.

And Edwin, in his years as media critic of New York Magazine did the ultimate. He created book length collections of his columns, which means he made money from them twice without having the change anything at all.

FIRST THIS BULLETIN: The “president” has begun using our tax dollars to create several political pages on Whitehouse.gov. First Amendment Doomsday Clock ticking inexorably towards Midnight as the Supremes and the spineless congress continue to hold their seats, which keeps their hands busy.

We return you now to our regularly scheduled program, already in progress.

I did quit Fox News by cutting the cable. For us, now, nothing but Internet. Local TV news costs too much and is worse than the newspaper. CBS from Paramount+, but dropped it because of Colbert. ABC from Hulu; dropped it after Kimmel, came back when he was reinstated. NBC from Peacock. The day they fire Seth Myers is the day I cut off my sub. I refuse to put $3 into Fox News’ pocket every month, whether I watch or not. Carriage fees, as they are known, are the major source of income for that toxic outlet.

If Fox can raise the fee to $3 per subscriber, it would be earning more than $1.8 billion. Hell no, not from me.

I learned years ago, from an Irish friend at CMP, that only the ignorant call it Londonderry; the town is Derry. I have been schooled again about the Irish Tangle.

My friend Kevin Sullivan, on the recent meme Crime Shows Distributed by the BBC and Set in the Following Locales: I understand that brevity is the soul of wit, but still took some umbrage with the inclusion of the Republic of Ireland in the map showing “British” <anything>.  In a broad sense, “British” could historically mean “once part of the British Empire.” though that seems to be a stretch in applying it to modern pop culture.  Unfortunately, “Crime Shows Distributed by the BBC and Set in the Following Locales” doesn’t pass muster as being concise, precise, or witty. I suspect only someone with an Irish heritage would notice or care.

Note: He did conclude “no harm/no foul.”

My response:

PSACOT, like the BBC, tries to inform educate and entertain. Or for that matter, RTE, the Irish public broadcaster, tries to challenge, educate and entertain. I would have thought RTE would have included “disparage all things British, in an unfair and imbalanced way.” I meant the BBC crime shows to entertain not inform. I have other Irish readers; I am sure their umbrage is in the mail.

This is why Steven Vaughan-Nichols subscribes to Acorn TV and BritBox. Me too