Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/775581
GregStevens,Publisher Chip Thompson, Editor EDITORIALBOARD How to have your say: Letters must be signed and provide the writer's home street address and home phone number. Anonymous letters, open letters to others, pen names and petition-style letters will not be allowed. Letters should be typed and no more than two double-spaced pages or 500words. When several letters address the same issue, a cross section will be published. Email: editor@ redbluffdailynews.com Fax: 530-527-9251 Mail to: Daily News 728Main St., Red Bluff, CA 96080 Facebook: Leave comments at FACEBOOK.COM/ RBDAILYNEWS Twitter: Follow and send tweets to @REDBLUFFNEWS Whenisthepressnolongerthewatchdog America's founders intended to keep govern- ment accountable? When it reports and pub- lishes unverified smears. America'sfoundersbelieved that a free press was of such significance they granted it constitutional protection. Thomas Jeffer- son said, "Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a gov- ernment with- out newspa- pers, or news- papers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter." The press was an integral ingredient to a free nation which Jefferson believed could be an unbiased watchdog to keep the govern- ment honest. What happens, though, when the watchdog cannot be trusted? On January 10, notably ex- cited CNN journalists deliv- ered "breaking news" that clas- sified documents presented to the current and incoming presidents included allega- tions that Russians had com- promising information about Donald Trump. Not long af- ter, BuzzFeed apparently heard CNN's dog whistle and pub- lished a 35-page dossier, which was really nothing more than a compilation of uncorrobo- rated hogwash, obviously cre- ated to delegitimize Trump's presidency. The following day, NBC News reported a senior U.S. intelligence official disputed CNN's claims. The official said Trump was not briefed on the dossier and claims "no inves- tigations found any conclusive or direct link between Trump and the Russian government." Later, Trump tweeted that Na- tional Intelligence director James Clapper "called me yes- terday to denounce the false and fictitious report that was illegally circulated." Calling it a dossier is about as big of a stretch as BuzzFeed editor Ben Smith's justification for publishing it. "Publishing this document was not an easy or simple call, and people of good will may disagree with our choice," Smith wrote. "But publishing this dossier reflects how we see the job of reporters in 2017." BuzzFeed's irresponsible de- cision gave Americans one more reason to distrust the press and made it harder for the press at large to hold the new administration account- able. WikiLeaks was ruthlessly at- tacked for publishing corrobo- rated, authenticated informa- tion about Hillary Clinton, but it is somehow okay for CNN to hold the door of innuendo open and for BuzzFeed to run through and publish uncorrob- orated rumors about Trump. WikiLeaks laid bare the truth about what regular Americans already suspected. It exposed a sinister collusion between the press, CNN spe- cifically, and the Clinton cam- paign. Leaked emails revealed former CNN contributor Donna Brazile leaked debate questions to help Clinton. The emails also exposed that the Democratic National Commit- tee colluded with CNN about what kind of interview ques- tions Wolf Blitzer should ask Donald Trump. Twenty years after his orig- inal comments about the press, an obviously much wiser Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1807 to newspaper editor John Norvell: "To your request of my opinion of the manner in which a newspaper should be conducted, so as to be most useful, I should answer, 'by re- straining it to true facts and sound principles only.' Yet I fear such a paper would find few subscribers. It is a melan- choly truth, that a suppression of the press could not more completely deprive the nation of its benefits, than is done by its abandoned prostitution to falsehood. Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself be- comes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle." Apparently, some things never change. SusanStamperBrownSusan lives in Alaska and writes about culture, politics and current events. She is a regular contributor to Townhall, The Christian Post, Right Wing News and GOPUSA. Contact her by Facebook or at writestamper@gmail.com. Susan Stamper Brown When the press loses credibility Cartoonist's take Whether you still pre- fer to hold a printed newspa- per in your hands or have be- come comfort- able reading news on a screen, you should hope that the essential jour- nalism remains the same. Increasingly, however, edi- tors are conclud- ing that new delivery systems require significant changes in content. Few have put it in more jarring terms than the Boston Globe's editor, Brian McGrory, in a memo to his staff earlier this month as he outlined the goal of being "relentlessly inter- esting, every hour of the day." He went on to issue a somber directive that "we need to jetti- son any sense of being the pa- per of record. If something feels obligatory to write, it's an obli- gation for someone to read." McGrory is describing a fu- ture bleaker than anything hav- ing to do with deciding whether to continue printing on paper. Folks want what interests them, so we'll serve it up 24/7. We'll abandon our obligation to de- cide what's important. And we will no longer serve as New England's paper of record— a mission that has become too lofty for the low-brow Digital Age. Remember, this is the news- paper that has been a beacon in the Northeast since 1872. In the last half-century it has won 26 Pulitzer Prizes, includ- ing one in 2003 for reporting by its Spotlight unit concerning sexual abuse of children at the hands of priests in the Catholic church. A film about the Globe's remarkable journalism, "Spot- light," won the Oscar for Best Picture last year. It's nice, though hardly reas- suring, that McGrory tries to temper his directives with re- minders such as, "We always need to hold true to our jour- nalistic values, because with- out them, we lose our credibil- ity." But farther down the page he describes the Globe's new Ex- press Desk that "kicks to life before dawn" to, among other things, "find the wryest stories trending on social media." At The New York Times, a new internal report outlines a digital future that includes fewer copy editors and more re- porters who are "visually" ori- ented. The executive editor, Dean Baquet, maintains, "The broader landscape is increas- ingly a visual one—think of Snapchat, Instagram, YouTube— and we know that our mobile audience wants Times journal- ism to incorporate visuals even more fully into our work." For those of us who look to The Times to set the course for journalistic excellence, it is stunning to encounter ref- erences to social media's most vacuous, albeit popular, sites as a models for anything. Forc- ing more visuals into news cov- erage is what turned "your late local news" on television into a hodgepodge of police chases and anything else that could be shot from a helicopter. Baquet and McGrory seem to teaching Marshall McLu- han 101. His reminder that "the medium is the message" is evi- denced in journalism's new cir- cular path. New media give recipients new power, which was McLu- han's central point, and that power reflects the medium be- ing used. If the Internet is faster, consumers demand infor- mation more quickly. If devices, by their nature, limit concentra- tion, consumers covet brevity. If social media are sassier, con- sumers seek more sass. Publish- ers respond to what consumers say they want by giving them more of it, which in turn makes consumers eager for even more. In his farewell speech in Chi- cago, President Obama noted that too many people have re- treated into "bubbles" that in- clude their social media feeds. They surround themselves, the president said, with "peo- ple who look like us and share the same political outlook and never challenge our assump- tions." President Obama was speak- ing primarily of politics, but his words of caution apply equally to journalists like the Globe's Brian McGrory as they seek out "the wryest stories trending on social media." Sometimes the news just isn't "relentlessly in- teresting." Sometimes a publica- tion has a responsibility to serve as "the paper of record." Some- times stories must, indeed, be written out of a sense of "obli- gation." The vast capacity of digital media should allow journalists to do longer pieces, rather than surrendering to shortening at- tention spans. There should be room for a wider range of sto- ries and ideas, not a shrink- ing platform with content de- termined by surveys and suc- cess measured by clicks. Yes, the bills must be paid and the bot- tom line respected. The ques- tion is how best to do it. Anyone who has ever worked in a newsroom is familiar with the most basic debate among journalists: Should we give the public what it wants to know, or what it ought to know? The best prescription has always been a combination of both. Editors at all papers, large and small, must decide if they are going to join readers inside the bubble, or use all of the new tools at their command to guide them out. Peter Funt can be reached at www.CandidCamera.com. Peter Funt Shaping news coverage in the digital age Not a good column start for this auspicious inauguration day. My trusty computer just dumped 1,000 words on this subject. Not that you will be miss- ing words of wis- dom that will help you through the day. Whereas you might have laughed at a joke or two, but otherwise the dumped text would have merely touched on the sincere wish that the inauguration comes off without a hitch. It has been predicted that hundreds of thousands of pro- testers will do their thing, but it is unlikely their demonstra- tions will influence the out- come. Donald J. Trump is now the leader of the free world. He is untested in this regard and hopefully will have the best of advice on how to handle do- mestic and international in- cidents that will not lead to confrontation or worse. I had planned to lead off with what I thought was a fa- miliar biblical quote, "This too shall pass" but was sur- prised to find it does not ap- pear in any translation of the Bible that is available in mod- ern times. There are several possible origins of the phrase. Some attribute it to King Sol- omon, however it ain't there so forget it. However, here is a recap of the long piece I had prepared for today: I sincerely hope that no incident befalls President Trump during his term in of- fice. This country has sur- vived assassinations in 1963 and our form of government continued unabated. Although we are treated nightly to re- ports of firearms being dis- charged into crowds without let up, we don't need the emo- tionally disturbed seeking their 15 minutes of fame in this regard. ••• I will conclude this abbre- viated I Say with the joke. I just don't have the energy to pontificate further. We will get enough of that in the days to come from the Presi- dent elect. ••• The dead cow lecture First-year students at the Purdue School of Veterinary Medicine were attending their first anatomy class with a real dead cow. They all gathered around the surgery table with the body covered with a white sheet. The professor started the class by telling them, "In vet- erinary medicine it is neces- sary to have two important qualities as a doctor. The first is that you not be disgusted by anything involving an ani- mal's body. "For an example, the pro- fessor pulled back the sheet, stuck his finger in the butt of the cow, withdrew it, and stuck his finger in his mouth. "Go ahead and do the same thing," he told his students. The students freaked out, hesitated for several minutes, but eventually took turns sticking a finger in the butt of the dead cow and, sucked on it, followed by assorted gag- ging, retching and spitting, etc. When everyone had fin- ished wiping their faces, the professor looked at them and said, "The second most impor- tant quality is observation. I stuck in my middle finger and sucked on my index finger. Now learn to pay attention. "Life is tough but it's even tougher if you're stupid." Robert Minch is a lifelong resident of Red Bluff, former columnist for the Corning Daily Observer and Meat Industry magazine and author of the "The Knocking Pen." He can be reached at rminchandmurray@hotmail. com. I Say At a loss for words on eve of inauguration Susan Stamper Brown Peter Funt Robert Minch OPINION » redbluffdailynews.com Friday, January 20, 2017 » MORE AT FACEBOOK.COM/RBDAILYNEWS AND TWITTER.COM/REDBLUFFNEWS A4