When he finds himself on the defensive, President Donald Trump's go-to tactic is to lash out at the press. On Thursday, Trump once again went on Twitter to unleash his latest assault. "Why isn't the Senate Intel Committee looking into the Fake News Networks in OUR country to see why so much of our news in just made up-FAKE!" he posted. In Trump's world the press should provide a continuous stream of praise for his presidency.
Trump is not ignorant about the Founding Father's original intent when they codified a free press in the Constitution. He simply wishes to ignore it in order to manipulate public opinion on his own behalf. Trump is obsessed with how he is perceived, and his regular Twitter storms, directed at the press and other critics, reveal an excessively narcissistic and thin-skinned man.
Trump's latest Twitter tirade followed new developments in the many government investigations into Russian interference with last November's election, and whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians. On Wednesday, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr said, "The Russian intelligence service is determined - clever - and I recommend that every campaign and every election official take this very seriously." As to whether anyone in the Trump campaign colluded, Burr said, "The issue of collusion is still open." Along with the Senate committee, a House committee and a special counsel, headed by Robert Mueller, are also investigating Russian interference.
Trump is frustrated with these investigations and has sought to end them, including firing former FBI Director James Comey. That action and his other attempts to derail the probes have led to allegations that the president obstructed justice. Major news organizations, including The New York Times and The Washington Post, have aggressively reported on the Russian investigations, many times breaking new ground while drawing the ire of the president. Burr responded to Trump's tweet Thursday, saying he would hold the news organizations accountable, "If, in fact, we find news organizations have not covered it factually, I think you will see that in our report."
White House news leaks and fierce infighting have also spilled into the press. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson reportedly called the president a "moron" during a Pentagon meeting this summer, according to NBC News. It is no secret that Tillerson and Trump have been at odds on staffing and policy issues for months, but it was noteworthy that, rather than denying he made the remark, the secretary told reporters Wednesday, "I'm not going to deal with petty stuff like that." Trump tweeted, "The @NBCNews story has been totally refuted by Sec. Tillerson and @VP Pence. It is #FakeNews. They should issue an apology to AMERICA!" NBC News stands by their report. Republican Senator Bob Corker added to the controversy Wednesday when he told reporters, "I think Secretary Tillerson, Secretary (Jim) Mattis and Chief of Staff (John) Kelly are those people that help separate our country from chaos."
The Trump administration response in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria's devastation of Puerto Rico received sharp criticism, especially from the Mayor of San Juan, its capital and largest city. While a majority of island's 3.4 million residents struggled with no power, water and food shortages, enormous destruction, Trump inexplicably blamed the problems on the mayor's poor leadership.
When Trump visited Puerto Rico earlier this week he was more focused on the island's financial woes than comforting, telling local government officials, "you threw our budget a little out of whack, but that's fine." He then compared Hurricane Maria with Katrina, suggesting the hurricane that hit New Orleans more than a decade ago was worse. Later, while visiting a relief shelter, the president tossed rolls of paper towels to residents, which humiliated many Puerto Ricans who watched. His visit was widely criticized in the press, which led Trump to tweet, "Wow, so many Fake News stories today. No matter what I do of say, they will not write or speak the truth. The Fake News Media is out of control!"
In August the president lashed out at the press following its coverage of remarks he had made following the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, several days earlier, which resulted in the death of one protester. In those remarks, the president blamed "both sides" instead of singling out Nazis and white nationalist groups for the violence. At a subsequent campaign rally in Phoenix, the president called the news media "sick people." He added, "It's time to expose the crooked media deceptions and to challenge the media for their role in fomenting divisions and yes, by the way, they are trying to take our history away our history and our heritage."
Could it be that more Americans are growing tired of the president's penchant to distort, twist and misstate the truth? According to a just released Reuters/Ipsos poll of more that 14,000 respondents, confidence in the news media is increasing. Nearly half of those surveyed have at least some confidence in the press, and increase of nearly 10 percent over the past year. Meanwhile, Trump's average approval rating is below 40 percent, according to Real Clear Politics.
President Trump is a deeply flawed man whose beleaguered presidency has been filled with scandal, missteps and controversy. Trump's extreme selfishness makes it impossible for him to be empathetic, self-reflective, mindful and truthful. At her news briefing Thursday, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders justified the president's press attacks, saying, "we should call on all media to a higher standard."
No, Sarah, we should demand that President Trump apply the highest standards to his presidency.
Showing posts with label The Washington Post. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Washington Post. Show all posts
Thursday, October 5, 2017
Tuesday, August 6, 2013
Bezos and The Washington Post
For journalists throughout America, The Washington Post is the second greatest monument in the nation's capital. Its legacy of independence, public service, political and investigative reporting stands as a powerful beacon and inspiration for all who enter the craft.
The Graham family has had editorial leadership and control of the venerable newspaper for 80 years. A commitment to aggressive, responsible and fair reporting has been a constant throughout their ownership. The paper's code of ethics states, "We fully recognize that the power we have inherited as the dominant morning newspaper in the capital of the free world carries with it special responsibilities: to listen to the voiceless, to avoid any and all acts of arrogance, to face the public politely and candidly."
Legendary journalists have plied their trade under the paper's banner. They include, Ben Bradlee, David Broder, Art Buchwald, Meg Greenfield, Mary McGrory, Shirley Povich, George Will, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward. The paper has received 47 Pulitzer Prizes, including eight Pulitzer Prizes in 2008, the second largest number given to a newspaper in one year.
Perhaps the most significant time in the paper's history was the Watergate era, when the investigative reporting of Woodward and Bernstein, the tenacious editorial guidance of editor Ben Bradlee, and the unflinching leadership of Katherine Graham, the newspaper's publisher, combined to bring President Richard Nixon down. "Deep Throat", who was Woodward and Bernstein's primary source, became a household name. Their work was the inspiration for the movie All The President's Men.
Katherine Graham was a remarkable figure in American publishing. She expressed great anxiety when she officially took over as publisher of The Washington Post in 1979; after all, few women had run a newspaper. Yet she won the admiration and respect of Washington's power brokers, and the loyalty of her own staff. It was a family. Ms. Graham also served as chairman of the board from 1973 to 1991. And her son, Donald Graham, continued the paper's traditions after he replaced his mother as publisher in 1979, and as chief executive officer and chairman in the early 90's.
So it is no wonder that news of the sale of The Washington Post came as a shock to reporters and editors at the paper. But the company had been struggling for years with financial challenges brought on by declining subscriptions and increased competition. Yet, the fact that the new owner, billionaire Jeff Bezos, who founded Amazon, bought the paper offered many staffers a sign of hope.
Bezos is a brilliant Internet entrepreneur who revolutionized the book publishing industry. At Amazon, he has continually emphasized what he calls his six core values: customer obsession, ownership, bias for action, frugality, high hiring bar and innovation. It is unclear how some of these values will be applied to the Post, but Bezos would not make a $250 million purchase of a financially challenged company unless he had a plan.
In a letter to the newspaper's employees, Bezos said, "The values of The Post do not need changing. The paper’s duty will remain to its readers and not to the private interests of its owners. We will continue to follow the truth wherever it leads, and we’ll work hard not to make mistakes." But he did admit that, over time, there will be changes. “The Internet is transforming almost every element of the news business: shortening news cycles, eroding long-reliable revenue sources, and enabling new kinds of competition, some of which bear little or no news-gathering costs,” he wrote.
Innovation and tradition are often opposing forces. The paper is at an important crossroads. Should The Washington Post's legacy of investigative journalism, outstanding writing and reporting, and service to the public become the victim of "frugality" and "customer obsessions", the paper will precipitously decline. On the other hand, should Bezos make this legacy his top priority, and preserve The Washington Post's editorial independence while expanding its readership on all platforms, all of America will benefit.
The Graham family has had editorial leadership and control of the venerable newspaper for 80 years. A commitment to aggressive, responsible and fair reporting has been a constant throughout their ownership. The paper's code of ethics states, "We fully recognize that the power we have inherited as the dominant morning newspaper in the capital of the free world carries with it special responsibilities: to listen to the voiceless, to avoid any and all acts of arrogance, to face the public politely and candidly."
Legendary journalists have plied their trade under the paper's banner. They include, Ben Bradlee, David Broder, Art Buchwald, Meg Greenfield, Mary McGrory, Shirley Povich, George Will, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward. The paper has received 47 Pulitzer Prizes, including eight Pulitzer Prizes in 2008, the second largest number given to a newspaper in one year.
Perhaps the most significant time in the paper's history was the Watergate era, when the investigative reporting of Woodward and Bernstein, the tenacious editorial guidance of editor Ben Bradlee, and the unflinching leadership of Katherine Graham, the newspaper's publisher, combined to bring President Richard Nixon down. "Deep Throat", who was Woodward and Bernstein's primary source, became a household name. Their work was the inspiration for the movie All The President's Men.
Katherine Graham was a remarkable figure in American publishing. She expressed great anxiety when she officially took over as publisher of The Washington Post in 1979; after all, few women had run a newspaper. Yet she won the admiration and respect of Washington's power brokers, and the loyalty of her own staff. It was a family. Ms. Graham also served as chairman of the board from 1973 to 1991. And her son, Donald Graham, continued the paper's traditions after he replaced his mother as publisher in 1979, and as chief executive officer and chairman in the early 90's.
So it is no wonder that news of the sale of The Washington Post came as a shock to reporters and editors at the paper. But the company had been struggling for years with financial challenges brought on by declining subscriptions and increased competition. Yet, the fact that the new owner, billionaire Jeff Bezos, who founded Amazon, bought the paper offered many staffers a sign of hope.
Bezos is a brilliant Internet entrepreneur who revolutionized the book publishing industry. At Amazon, he has continually emphasized what he calls his six core values: customer obsession, ownership, bias for action, frugality, high hiring bar and innovation. It is unclear how some of these values will be applied to the Post, but Bezos would not make a $250 million purchase of a financially challenged company unless he had a plan.
In a letter to the newspaper's employees, Bezos said, "The values of The Post do not need changing. The paper’s duty will remain to its readers and not to the private interests of its owners. We will continue to follow the truth wherever it leads, and we’ll work hard not to make mistakes." But he did admit that, over time, there will be changes. “The Internet is transforming almost every element of the news business: shortening news cycles, eroding long-reliable revenue sources, and enabling new kinds of competition, some of which bear little or no news-gathering costs,” he wrote.
Innovation and tradition are often opposing forces. The paper is at an important crossroads. Should The Washington Post's legacy of investigative journalism, outstanding writing and reporting, and service to the public become the victim of "frugality" and "customer obsessions", the paper will precipitously decline. On the other hand, should Bezos make this legacy his top priority, and preserve The Washington Post's editorial independence while expanding its readership on all platforms, all of America will benefit.
Tuesday, June 11, 2013
NSA Surveillance
The revelations that the U.S. Government has been collecting phone and Internet data has reopened a debate about the balance between privacy and security, at a time when America is becoming an increasing target of terrorists.
Last week, President Barack Obama defended the government's surveillance program, “You can’t have 100 percent security and also have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience." He continued, “We’re going to have to make some choices as a society. On balance we have established a process and a procedure that the American people should be comfortable about.”
The Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution guards American citizens against unreasonable searches and seizures, unless authorities get a judge to approve a warrant based on probable cause. But does this extend to the mass collection of phone numbers and the duration of telephone calls?
Senators Mark Udall and Ron Wyden, members of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, have called for more public disclosure about how the telephone surveillance program is run. "Now that the fact of bulk collection has been declassified, we believe that more information about the scale of the collection, and specifically whether it involves the records of 'millions of Americans' should be declassified as well," Wyden and Udall said in a statement issued Friday. "The American people must be given the opportunity to evaluate the facts about this program and its broad scope for themselves, so that this debate can begin in earnest."
Does the Fourth Amendment extend to Internet metadata, which is data about data? Metadata can be structural, data about the design of a webpage, or descriptive, data about the content and links. IBM estimates that 90% of the data in the world today was created in the past two years. Each day, according to IBM, 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are created, including from social media, email, digital pictures and video uploads, cell phone GPS signals, and blogs. We live in the Big Data era.
Gen. Michael Hayden, a former director of the National Security Agency (NSA), told NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday that the programs are lawful and justified in the war on terrorism. He stressed that the Internet surveillance program, known as PRISM, is "about Internet data, not telephony, and it's all about foreigners." He further explained, "So, if I've got a bad person in Waziristan, talking to a bad person in Yemen, via a chat room that is hosted by an American Internet service provider, the only thing American about that conversation is the fact that it's happening on a server on the West Coast of the United States."
Revelations that the NSA collects data on phone conversations are not new. USA Today reported its existence in 2006, saying, "This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews."
A recent Washington Post-Pew Research poll found that 62% of Americans sampled favored investigating threats even if it intrudes on privacy, while 34% responded that the government should not intrude even if it limits the ability to investigate threats. But this presumes that the government has all the right procedures in place to limit the scope of its investigations to threats of terrorism. In other words, Americans must trust the government to do the right thing.
In his remarks last week, President Obama said he welcomed the debate, noting, “If people don’t trust the executive branch, and also congress and the judicial branch, then we’re going to have some problems here." But this is a complicated issue, and there are plenty of examples in history when the government has exceeded its authority. The government should disclose to the American people the procedures and safeguards built into these programs against unreasonable intrusions into their constitutional rights of privacy.
Last week, President Barack Obama defended the government's surveillance program, “You can’t have 100 percent security and also have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience." He continued, “We’re going to have to make some choices as a society. On balance we have established a process and a procedure that the American people should be comfortable about.”
The Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution guards American citizens against unreasonable searches and seizures, unless authorities get a judge to approve a warrant based on probable cause. But does this extend to the mass collection of phone numbers and the duration of telephone calls?
Senators Mark Udall and Ron Wyden, members of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, have called for more public disclosure about how the telephone surveillance program is run. "Now that the fact of bulk collection has been declassified, we believe that more information about the scale of the collection, and specifically whether it involves the records of 'millions of Americans' should be declassified as well," Wyden and Udall said in a statement issued Friday. "The American people must be given the opportunity to evaluate the facts about this program and its broad scope for themselves, so that this debate can begin in earnest."
Does the Fourth Amendment extend to Internet metadata, which is data about data? Metadata can be structural, data about the design of a webpage, or descriptive, data about the content and links. IBM estimates that 90% of the data in the world today was created in the past two years. Each day, according to IBM, 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are created, including from social media, email, digital pictures and video uploads, cell phone GPS signals, and blogs. We live in the Big Data era.
Gen. Michael Hayden, a former director of the National Security Agency (NSA), told NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday that the programs are lawful and justified in the war on terrorism. He stressed that the Internet surveillance program, known as PRISM, is "about Internet data, not telephony, and it's all about foreigners." He further explained, "So, if I've got a bad person in Waziristan, talking to a bad person in Yemen, via a chat room that is hosted by an American Internet service provider, the only thing American about that conversation is the fact that it's happening on a server on the West Coast of the United States."
Revelations that the NSA collects data on phone conversations are not new. USA Today reported its existence in 2006, saying, "This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews."
A recent Washington Post-Pew Research poll found that 62% of Americans sampled favored investigating threats even if it intrudes on privacy, while 34% responded that the government should not intrude even if it limits the ability to investigate threats. But this presumes that the government has all the right procedures in place to limit the scope of its investigations to threats of terrorism. In other words, Americans must trust the government to do the right thing.
In his remarks last week, President Obama said he welcomed the debate, noting, “If people don’t trust the executive branch, and also congress and the judicial branch, then we’re going to have some problems here." But this is a complicated issue, and there are plenty of examples in history when the government has exceeded its authority. The government should disclose to the American people the procedures and safeguards built into these programs against unreasonable intrusions into their constitutional rights of privacy.
Sunday, January 27, 2013
Immigration Reform Now
Immigration is one of the great stories of
America's history. It is immortalized in the words penned by Emma
Lazarus, and engraved on a bronze plaque that hangs on an inner wall of the
Statue of Liberty, "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled
masses yearning to breathe free."
The United States is a nation built on the blood and sweat of immigrants; it is a great melting pot of cultures that together have strengthened the country, and have broadened its horizons. America, the land of opportunity, of immense freedom, and of a generous people, has attracted millions of people from all over the world. Nonetheless, immigration has been politicized for decades, and reasonable reforms have eluded Washington.
The United States is a nation built on the blood and sweat of immigrants; it is a great melting pot of cultures that together have strengthened the country, and have broadened its horizons. America, the land of opportunity, of immense freedom, and of a generous people, has attracted millions of people from all over the world. Nonetheless, immigration has been politicized for decades, and reasonable reforms have eluded Washington.
But now is the time to do something meaningful.
President Barack Obama will announce an effort to overhaul immigration
Tuesday in Las Vegas, Nevada, a critical state where he carried the Latino vote
this past November. Leading Republicans, like Florida Senator Marco
Rubio, are also leading reform efforts within that party, which have become a
priority because Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney received less
than 30% of the Latino vote.
Appearing on ABC's This Week Sunday, Senator
Bob Menendez (D-N.J) said it is time for action. “First, Americans support it in poll after poll.
Secondly, Latino voters expect it. Thirdly Democrats want it. And fourth
Republicans need it,” he said. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) echoed
that sentiment, “There’s a new appreciation on
both sides of the aisle including, maybe more importantly on the Republican
side of the aisle, that we have to enact comprehensive immigration reform.”
There are more that 50 million Latinos in the
United States, and they are the fastest growing demographic in the country.
Every month, 50,000 Latinos reach the voting age. But they also make up
the largest portion of the 11 million illegals living in America's shadows.
And many Americans, especially Republicans, remain opposed to laws that
would make it easier for illegal immigrants to stay in the country or
obtain legal status.
According to the Washington Post, a
bipartisan group of senators is nearing agreement that will normalize the
status of illegals, allowing those with no criminal record to obtain work
permits, and they will call for tighter border controls and verification procedures.
Senator Bob Corker (R-TN) told Fox News, “We’re at
the talking points stage...we need to get to the legislation.” So the
devil is in the details.
While there are huge Latino populations in
California, Texas, New York and Florida, Latinos live in every state.
Latinos are successful small business owners; they work in homes and on
assembly lines. Illegal or not, they contribute to daily life in America.
Because of the recession, illegal immigration has slowed to a trickle.
Nonetheless, Pew Research projects that Latinos will make up nearly 30%
of the U.S. population in 2050.
Now is the time for immigration reform. Let history be the guide for politicians in Washington because immigration has always enriched the fabric of America. Think of the Statue of Liberty, in New York Harbor, and the words displayed on the bronze plaque, "From her beacon-hand glows a world-wide welcome."
Now is the time for immigration reform. Let history be the guide for politicians in Washington because immigration has always enriched the fabric of America. Think of the Statue of Liberty, in New York Harbor, and the words displayed on the bronze plaque, "From her beacon-hand glows a world-wide welcome."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)