Here's a story I spotted on line with all sort of implications:
It seems that the cheerleaders at Lakeview-Fort Oglethorpe High School, of all people, have opened up a fascinating Constitutional situation. For the past six years, they have been preparing the paper banners that the football teams runs through, just like practically every other high school team does before a game. In fact, they seem to spend part of their summers getting them ready.
Here's the catch: The banners contain Bible quotations.
The Chattanooga paper has this story on the controversy.
Be sure to read some of the comments at the bottom of the story. It's caused quite a debate in the community. I particularly liked the line of thought that went something like, "If you don't like it, stay home."
The legal analysts in the audience can bring up all sorts of discussion points here. But two came to mind for me immediately, one of which was also raised by Sports by Brooks, without taking sides here:
1. What if the cheerleaders put up Muslim quotations?
2. What would happen if a football player went out of his way to avoid running through the banner?
Ah, freedom of speech. Full of trapdoors.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Friday, September 25, 2009
Unbiased viewpoints
It's fun to troll around the Yahoo! Answers section of the Internet. Readers post questions, hoping for answers from, well, somewhere. As you'd expect, there are a lot of kids who are hoping someone else will write their term papers for them.
The sports section is pretty boring as these things go; the questions rarely get deeper than "Is Alex Rodriguez the best player in baseball right now?" or "Will the Red Sox defeat the evil Yankees tonight?" (The answer to that last question, of course, is "I hope so.") More interesting, though, are the sections devoted to News and Events, which includes journalism, and Politics and Government. It's a way to find out what the latest oddest theory is -- that's where I first heard about the theory that somehow Barack Obama was born in Kenya.
While some people like to merely rant on Yahoo! Answers, and others are busy campaigning to get Glenn Beck a Presidential Medal of Freedom, the subject of media bias comes up a lot. A lot of questions along the lines of "Where can I get an unbiased source of news?" pop up. Speaking as someone who has been in the business for 30-plus years, I can at least have opinions on the subject of bias in the news media. Here are a few of them:
There is far less room for bias in the news that people think.
Look at the newspaper on a typical day, and a vast majority of the stories are pretty straight-forward. Legislature passes bill. Robbery takes place on south side of town. Traffic patterns changed by construction. Whatever. Not much room to slant stuff there, as it's just a matter of reporting the facts. Every reporter brings a personal set of biases into his or her writing, but they rarely apply.
A majority of reporters tilt slightly to the liberal side of the political fence.
I think there's two reasons for this. The journalism business seems to attract people who have a "I want to change the world" philosophy, and they lean left. Plus, the news business likes to see things happen -- there's a bias toward events taking place -- and liberals take a more pro-active approach on matters than conservatives. Therefore, liberal approaches are better for business in that sense.
Those are moderated a bit by a couple of other factors. Ownership of media outlets usually is pretty conservative, as it can't afford to offend potential advertisers. The lower you go on the chain, the more likely that such interference can be a problem.
And anyone who thinks reporters sit around in large groups waiting for the next call for the Kremlin hasn't been in a newsroom. There are plenty of Republicans in the media. In fact, they are sometimes the loudest people in the room because they think they are greatly outnumbered and believe they have to shout at times.
Readers and viewers sometimes can't be bothered to tell the difference between viewers and commentators.
Some people probably lump the major network news broadcasts in with the cable news shows at night. There's a world of difference between them. Keith Olbermann and Sean Hannity show up with a definite viewpoint when they do an evening show. While ABC, CBS and NBC aren't perfectly unbiased at the dinner hour, because that's impossible, they come much, much closer to that goal. Heck, Charles Gibson isn't even registered to vote, because he says he doesn't want to think about such decisions while he's in his current job.
Meanwhile, the audience shouldn't prejudge an entire news-gathering operation on one part of it. The Wall Street Journal's editorial page may not be particularly readable most of the time, and the only columnist who is even usually interesting is Peggy Noonan, but the rest of the paper is filled with good reporters who write interesting and important stories.
Along those lines ...
Don't trust commentators who think they are always correct.
The older I get, the more I realize that the world gets less black and white than I realized the day before. You'd never know it by watching some shows. Hannity, Olbermann, Beck, Rachel Maddow, Bill O'Reilly ... all sometimes wrong but never in doubt. Depending on your political persuasion, you no doubt find some of them smug and others brilliant. But there's always another side to any discussion.
Just saying you are fair and balanced doesn't mean you act like it.
I think the first time media bias came up as an issue was when Spiro Agnew spoke out about it 40 years or so ago. (Now there's a guy I want to identify with.) Since then, conservatives have been pounding that issue like a drum, and the idea has taken hold with some of the faithful.
The brilliance of the concept of Fox News, economically speaking, was to change the model of the newscast to cater to that audience. Fox has grabbed a good-sized share of the relatively small cable news market that way, making lots of money in the process. Fox even draws some liberals on to appear on its shows at night, as the audience is large enough to be an attraction even if the reception is liable to be on the rude side. MSNBC at night has trouble finding someone to the right of John Dean.
It is funny, though, to hear reactions to Fox's approach. I've had conservatives say that they watch Fox because it's the only news source they trust. The liberal viewpoint was well summarized by Glenn Locke, who said that if Fox can claim to be fair and balanced, he can claim to be tall and thin.
Which shows, I guess, that one man's bias is another man's truth.
The sports section is pretty boring as these things go; the questions rarely get deeper than "Is Alex Rodriguez the best player in baseball right now?" or "Will the Red Sox defeat the evil Yankees tonight?" (The answer to that last question, of course, is "I hope so.") More interesting, though, are the sections devoted to News and Events, which includes journalism, and Politics and Government. It's a way to find out what the latest oddest theory is -- that's where I first heard about the theory that somehow Barack Obama was born in Kenya.
While some people like to merely rant on Yahoo! Answers, and others are busy campaigning to get Glenn Beck a Presidential Medal of Freedom, the subject of media bias comes up a lot. A lot of questions along the lines of "Where can I get an unbiased source of news?" pop up. Speaking as someone who has been in the business for 30-plus years, I can at least have opinions on the subject of bias in the news media. Here are a few of them:
There is far less room for bias in the news that people think.
Look at the newspaper on a typical day, and a vast majority of the stories are pretty straight-forward. Legislature passes bill. Robbery takes place on south side of town. Traffic patterns changed by construction. Whatever. Not much room to slant stuff there, as it's just a matter of reporting the facts. Every reporter brings a personal set of biases into his or her writing, but they rarely apply.
A majority of reporters tilt slightly to the liberal side of the political fence.
I think there's two reasons for this. The journalism business seems to attract people who have a "I want to change the world" philosophy, and they lean left. Plus, the news business likes to see things happen -- there's a bias toward events taking place -- and liberals take a more pro-active approach on matters than conservatives. Therefore, liberal approaches are better for business in that sense.
Those are moderated a bit by a couple of other factors. Ownership of media outlets usually is pretty conservative, as it can't afford to offend potential advertisers. The lower you go on the chain, the more likely that such interference can be a problem.
And anyone who thinks reporters sit around in large groups waiting for the next call for the Kremlin hasn't been in a newsroom. There are plenty of Republicans in the media. In fact, they are sometimes the loudest people in the room because they think they are greatly outnumbered and believe they have to shout at times.
Readers and viewers sometimes can't be bothered to tell the difference between viewers and commentators.
Some people probably lump the major network news broadcasts in with the cable news shows at night. There's a world of difference between them. Keith Olbermann and Sean Hannity show up with a definite viewpoint when they do an evening show. While ABC, CBS and NBC aren't perfectly unbiased at the dinner hour, because that's impossible, they come much, much closer to that goal. Heck, Charles Gibson isn't even registered to vote, because he says he doesn't want to think about such decisions while he's in his current job.
Meanwhile, the audience shouldn't prejudge an entire news-gathering operation on one part of it. The Wall Street Journal's editorial page may not be particularly readable most of the time, and the only columnist who is even usually interesting is Peggy Noonan, but the rest of the paper is filled with good reporters who write interesting and important stories.
Along those lines ...
Don't trust commentators who think they are always correct.
The older I get, the more I realize that the world gets less black and white than I realized the day before. You'd never know it by watching some shows. Hannity, Olbermann, Beck, Rachel Maddow, Bill O'Reilly ... all sometimes wrong but never in doubt. Depending on your political persuasion, you no doubt find some of them smug and others brilliant. But there's always another side to any discussion.
Just saying you are fair and balanced doesn't mean you act like it.
I think the first time media bias came up as an issue was when Spiro Agnew spoke out about it 40 years or so ago. (Now there's a guy I want to identify with.) Since then, conservatives have been pounding that issue like a drum, and the idea has taken hold with some of the faithful.
The brilliance of the concept of Fox News, economically speaking, was to change the model of the newscast to cater to that audience. Fox has grabbed a good-sized share of the relatively small cable news market that way, making lots of money in the process. Fox even draws some liberals on to appear on its shows at night, as the audience is large enough to be an attraction even if the reception is liable to be on the rude side. MSNBC at night has trouble finding someone to the right of John Dean.
It is funny, though, to hear reactions to Fox's approach. I've had conservatives say that they watch Fox because it's the only news source they trust. The liberal viewpoint was well summarized by Glenn Locke, who said that if Fox can claim to be fair and balanced, he can claim to be tall and thin.
Which shows, I guess, that one man's bias is another man's truth.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Happy birthday
What sort of fan would I be if I didn't include this 60th birthday tribute to the Boss?
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Wicked Radio in Clarence
Did you know there was once a radio station in Clarence, New York?
Actually, you had to live on Wenner Road in the early 1970's to know about it. Let's go back 38 years or so ...
I moved to Clarence in 1970, and soon became friends with Jeff Hodge from down the street. Jeff was involved in amateur radio as a hobby and got me involved in listening to distant radio stations, which I've written about here in the past.
At some point, Jeff was showing me around his basement and he showed me the remains of a wood board about the size of a piece of looseleaf paper. It had some sort of transistor board on it, with a couple of input jacks. (Somewhere, Jeff is saying, "No, no, no, it wasn't like that at all.)
Jeff told me that the unit actually could be used for broadcasts on the FM band -- legally. The light bulb went on, and we decided to make it a joint project one summer.
This was a fine example of division of labor. Jeff was the chief engineer, so he put the transmitter together at his house. My bedroom was the broadcast studio, with the antenna wire coming in from my roof into a window. Since my house was had more records than his did, I won that argument and became programming director.
Jeff did his magic -- no wonder he went into engineering at Syracuse -- and got the transmitter working. I believe we exceeded the legal antenna length by a few dozen feet. Then again, it's not like we were in any danger of competing with anyone else's signal. We had a golf course to the north and an open field to the south, so reception was limited to a few houses to the east and west.
After considerable thought by 16-year-old's standards, we came up with WYQD. If you use your imagination, you can turn the call letters into Wicked, as in Wicked Radio. We even checked to make sure that no other station in the United States had used those call letters, as if that was necessary. Our frequency started at 92.1 or so, but -- since the frequency could be altered by a mere bump to a screw on the transmitter -- it changed relatively frequently.
I believe Jeff came up with the trademark of the station. We signed off each time with the song, "The Little Old Lady (from Pasadena)" by Jan and Dean. That sort of set a tone for the station. I can't say the music selection was exactly diverse.
Once we actually proved we could get on the air and clown around on the air a bit, the summer project ran out of steam. Its greatest use came when I'd plug in a record to the transmitter, put on a radio with headphones and mow the lawn with my favorite tunes playing in the background. Think of it as a much more complicated iPod, with far worse fidelity. And then supposedly (I have no memory of this, but someone else did), someone on the air said a nasty word, and the local version of the FCC (Jeff's father) came down and closed down the operation. One of our guest DJ's, no doubt.
One memory seemed to stick with people, though. At some point in the summer, I took over the role as marketing director of the station. That consisted of seeing an ad in some magazine that said, "Put your own message on a sweatshirt for only $7," or something like that. Opportunity clearly was knocking, even if I was the only one that thought sweatshirts were a great idea in July. I canvassed our audience, the other kids on the street, and took orders for sweatshirts and t-shirts. They all read "I listen to WYQD, Wicked Radio in Clarence, 92 on the dial."
No, I don't have the shirt. I would guess that at that price it became unraveled in about an hour and a half. But the memory remains. When I got back in touch with a couple of members of the neighborhood gang through Facebook over the last few months, they both mentioned the station and the shirt right off.
WYQD lives!
Actually, you had to live on Wenner Road in the early 1970's to know about it. Let's go back 38 years or so ...
I moved to Clarence in 1970, and soon became friends with Jeff Hodge from down the street. Jeff was involved in amateur radio as a hobby and got me involved in listening to distant radio stations, which I've written about here in the past.
At some point, Jeff was showing me around his basement and he showed me the remains of a wood board about the size of a piece of looseleaf paper. It had some sort of transistor board on it, with a couple of input jacks. (Somewhere, Jeff is saying, "No, no, no, it wasn't like that at all.)
Jeff told me that the unit actually could be used for broadcasts on the FM band -- legally. The light bulb went on, and we decided to make it a joint project one summer.
This was a fine example of division of labor. Jeff was the chief engineer, so he put the transmitter together at his house. My bedroom was the broadcast studio, with the antenna wire coming in from my roof into a window. Since my house was had more records than his did, I won that argument and became programming director.
Jeff did his magic -- no wonder he went into engineering at Syracuse -- and got the transmitter working. I believe we exceeded the legal antenna length by a few dozen feet. Then again, it's not like we were in any danger of competing with anyone else's signal. We had a golf course to the north and an open field to the south, so reception was limited to a few houses to the east and west.
After considerable thought by 16-year-old's standards, we came up with WYQD. If you use your imagination, you can turn the call letters into Wicked, as in Wicked Radio. We even checked to make sure that no other station in the United States had used those call letters, as if that was necessary. Our frequency started at 92.1 or so, but -- since the frequency could be altered by a mere bump to a screw on the transmitter -- it changed relatively frequently.
I believe Jeff came up with the trademark of the station. We signed off each time with the song, "The Little Old Lady (from Pasadena)" by Jan and Dean. That sort of set a tone for the station. I can't say the music selection was exactly diverse.
Once we actually proved we could get on the air and clown around on the air a bit, the summer project ran out of steam. Its greatest use came when I'd plug in a record to the transmitter, put on a radio with headphones and mow the lawn with my favorite tunes playing in the background. Think of it as a much more complicated iPod, with far worse fidelity. And then supposedly (I have no memory of this, but someone else did), someone on the air said a nasty word, and the local version of the FCC (Jeff's father) came down and closed down the operation. One of our guest DJ's, no doubt.
One memory seemed to stick with people, though. At some point in the summer, I took over the role as marketing director of the station. That consisted of seeing an ad in some magazine that said, "Put your own message on a sweatshirt for only $7," or something like that. Opportunity clearly was knocking, even if I was the only one that thought sweatshirts were a great idea in July. I canvassed our audience, the other kids on the street, and took orders for sweatshirts and t-shirts. They all read "I listen to WYQD, Wicked Radio in Clarence, 92 on the dial."
No, I don't have the shirt. I would guess that at that price it became unraveled in about an hour and a half. But the memory remains. When I got back in touch with a couple of members of the neighborhood gang through Facebook over the last few months, they both mentioned the station and the shirt right off.
WYQD lives!
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Hmmm...
Indiana University has started a new site called the National Sports Journalism Center. You can read it by clicking here.
Anything that has a Dave Kindred column involved is off to a good start, and it's interesting that blogs are included. This may be worth a regular look in the near future to see its direction.
Anything that has a Dave Kindred column involved is off to a good start, and it's interesting that blogs are included. This may be worth a regular look in the near future to see its direction.
Two Guys
There was a reference on Mary Kunz Goldman's Facebook page the other day to the Two Guys store on Sheridan and Niagara Falls Blvd. in Amherst. I sprung to attention. That store was part of my youth ... twice. And it also connected to one of my favorite broadcasting stories. But we'll get to that in a moment.
Two Guys was one of the original discount stores. It was originally called Two Guys from Harrison (as in Harrison, New Jersey); you can read the whole story, which is sort of charming, by clicking here. When we lived in New Jersey when I was 5 to 10 years old, Two Guys was a regular stop on our shopping hit list.
In hindsight, it was a great store for an 8-year-old. It had all sorts of stuff, it was a little messy, and most of it was pretty cheap. Kind of looked like my room, with fewer baseball cards. I bought my first music 45 there, which was "Do You Want to Know a Secret?" by the Beatles. You'd think there would be a plaque on the site, at the intersection of Routes 46 and 23 in Northern New Jersey, marking the historical location. On the other hand, I think Interstate 80 was built right through the electronics section of the site of the store, so perhaps it's good no one bothered.
We moved to Elmira, where there was no Two Guys but an Elmira Discount -- complete with ads featuring a voiceover by "Danny Discount," the store's owner. My sister went to high school with his daughter; she was called, sure enough, "Holly Discount." But when we moved to Buffalo in 1970, there was Two Guys. It was still gloriously cluttered, and still the place to buy cheap record albums.
Two Guys had expanded to several states, but I would guess that the march of national stores such as Kmart and eventually Walmart doomed it. By 1981 or so, stores were closing ... including the one in Amherst. Which brings me to a story told to me by the late Bob Koop of Channel 4, which dates to that time.
Koop was doing a news broadcast one night, and the end of one segment featured a story on the death of actress Natalie Wood, I believe it was. There was a somber shot at the report's conclusion of flowers thrown on top of the ocean. When the story ended, Koop said nothing as the picture faded to black with the required amount of solemnity. The first commercial in the break was a loud one: "TWO GUYS SAYS GOODBYE FOREVER!!" Once Koop stopped laughing, he said to those on the set, "Doesn't anyone check the commercial log?"
Jacquie Walker of Ch. 4 says that story is still told around the newsroom with great relish.
Be notified of new posts via Twitter @WDX2BB.
Two Guys was one of the original discount stores. It was originally called Two Guys from Harrison (as in Harrison, New Jersey); you can read the whole story, which is sort of charming, by clicking here. When we lived in New Jersey when I was 5 to 10 years old, Two Guys was a regular stop on our shopping hit list.
In hindsight, it was a great store for an 8-year-old. It had all sorts of stuff, it was a little messy, and most of it was pretty cheap. Kind of looked like my room, with fewer baseball cards. I bought my first music 45 there, which was "Do You Want to Know a Secret?" by the Beatles. You'd think there would be a plaque on the site, at the intersection of Routes 46 and 23 in Northern New Jersey, marking the historical location. On the other hand, I think Interstate 80 was built right through the electronics section of the site of the store, so perhaps it's good no one bothered.
We moved to Elmira, where there was no Two Guys but an Elmira Discount -- complete with ads featuring a voiceover by "Danny Discount," the store's owner. My sister went to high school with his daughter; she was called, sure enough, "Holly Discount." But when we moved to Buffalo in 1970, there was Two Guys. It was still gloriously cluttered, and still the place to buy cheap record albums.
Two Guys had expanded to several states, but I would guess that the march of national stores such as Kmart and eventually Walmart doomed it. By 1981 or so, stores were closing ... including the one in Amherst. Which brings me to a story told to me by the late Bob Koop of Channel 4, which dates to that time.
Koop was doing a news broadcast one night, and the end of one segment featured a story on the death of actress Natalie Wood, I believe it was. There was a somber shot at the report's conclusion of flowers thrown on top of the ocean. When the story ended, Koop said nothing as the picture faded to black with the required amount of solemnity. The first commercial in the break was a loud one: "TWO GUYS SAYS GOODBYE FOREVER!!" Once Koop stopped laughing, he said to those on the set, "Doesn't anyone check the commercial log?"
Jacquie Walker of Ch. 4 says that story is still told around the newsroom with great relish.
Be notified of new posts via Twitter @WDX2BB.
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