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DaTimes and revisionist history

Posted: August 27, 2019 by chrisharper in Uncategorized

Having failed to take down Donald Trump with the Mueller investigation, the American media have turned to race as a way to discredit the president.

DaTimes launched the first assault with its project about slavery and race.

In case you missed it, DaTimes has determined that the nation started in 1619, the title of its nearly 100-page missive on race in DaMagazine, when slaves were shipped to Virginia.

It’s worth noting one significant error with this revisionist history: Slaves actually arrived on the continent 100 years earlier in Florida, which was controlled by Spain. But that fact undermines the narrative that DaTimes and others are pushing.

But I digress. DaTimes links slavery to rush hour traffic, mass incarceration, an “inequitable” healthcare system, and American overconsumption of sugar. “[N]early everything that has made America exceptional grew out of slavery,” DaTimes argues.

But there’s more. The Smithsonian will examine the slave trade, beginning in the 15th century. In partnership with the Pulitzer Center, DaTimes has offered lesson plans, guides, and activities to help teachers bring this material into their classrooms.

Others have decided to toe the line. DaPost offers an advice column from a college professor: “Dear fellow white people here’s what to do when you’re called racist,” on how to cope with such attacks.

USA Today chimed in about “America’s original sin.” AOC called the electoral college a “scam” because it gives too much power to white people in flyover country.

The creators of the 1619 project and its followers argued that they are interested in a dialogue about race, but it’s a diatribe. At a meeting with reporters and editors at DaTimes, executive editor Dean Baquet faced outrage from the staffers who wanted the organization to call Trump a racist.

According to a recording of the meeting obtained by Slate, the question of how to address presidential “racism” was something the paper would need to do. “How do we cover America, that’s become so divided by Donald Trump?” asked Baquet, who is black. “How do we grapple with all the stuff you all are talking about? How do we write about race in a thoughtful way, something we haven’t done in a large way in a long time?”

The emphasis on race comes at a time when Trump’s support from minority voters has never been better. A recent Zogby poll found that a quarter of blacks and half of all Latinos support the president.

Had DaTimes and others been serious about a dialogue about race, there have been many opportunities, particularly during the Obama years. Hanging such a discussion on events from 400 years ago seems rather dubious.

Why not just admit that race is the media’s current argument against Trump for the 2020 election? That would at least be honest.

The failing media

Posted: August 6, 2019 by chrisharper in Uncategorized

The U.S. media are literally failing.

The Pew Research Center recently released its annual report on the media, and it’s not a pretty picture.

I realize that there are a lot of statistics here, but I think it’s important to see how bad the situation really is.

The estimated total U.S. daily newspaper circulation (print and digital combined) in 2018 was 28.6 million for weekday and 30.8 million for Sunday, down 8% and 9%, respectively, from the previous year. Weekday print circulation decreased 12%, and Sunday print circulation decreased 13%.

The average audience for morning news programs from ABC, CBS, and NBC declined over the past year, down 4% in 2018, to about 3.2 million from 3.3 million.

The average audience for the evening newscasts for ABC, CBS, and NBC remained relatively stable in 2018, with 5.3 million viewers tuning in on average, compared with 5.2 million in 2017,

In 2018, viewership for network local affiliate news stations (ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC) declined in key time slots – morning (6 a.m. to 9 a.m.), evening (4 p.m. to 7 p.m.) and late-night (11 p.m. to 2 a.m.).

Viewership increased for the three major cable news channels (CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC) in 2018. The average combined audience (defined as the average number of TVs tuned to a program throughout a time period) for the prime news time slot (8 p.m. to 11 p.m.) of these three networks increased 8%, to about 1.25 million. The average audience for the daytime news time slot (6 a.m. to 6 p.m.) increased by 5%.

The report does not break out the three networks, which would show an increase for Fox, a decrease for CNN, and the status quo for MSNBC, which has declined significantly so far this year.

Digital news outlets included in this analysis are those whose primary domain – the outlet’s flagship website – averaged at least 10 million unique visitors per month from October to December of each year analyzed. There were 37 such outlets in 2018.

Problems also exist in the digital-only sites. BuzzFeed News laid off a hundred people in 2017. Despite taking in tens of millions of dollars in advertising revenue in 2018, The Huffington Post failed to turn a profit.

News organizations can no longer blame the internet for their problems. That excuse has been around for more than a decade.

Numerous suggestions have been made to turn around this decline, including plans to turn news organizations into not-for-profit operations. That has helped some outlets. The problem is that replacing advertisers with foundations with a lot of money also creates a different type of dependence—one that usually has a left-leaning agenda.

I think the problem is that consumers no longer find the product useful or worth the money. News organizations need to rethink the notion of if it bleeds, it leads, providing more useful coverage rather than the sensational. That’s my nickel.

An American and Chinese Hero

Posted: June 11, 2018 by chrisharper in Uncategorized
Tags: ,

Claire Chennault, someone whom few people in the United States know but should,  may be the most beloved American in China.

During World War II, Chennault headed a secret operation in Kunming called the First American Volunteer Group, better known as the Flying Tigers.

By December 1941, Kunming, a vital capital of a southwest China province that borders what is now Myanmar, Laos, and Vietnam, had suffered attacks by Japanese bombers for almost three years. The punishing raids were part of an assault on China that the Roosevelt administration interpreted as a threat to American interests in the region.

The president, bound by the 1939 Neutrality Act, responded with a covert operation. Months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor pulled the United States into war, a group of almost 100 pilots recruited from the U.S. Army Air Corps, Navy, and Marines resigned from their services and volunteered to defend China against Japan.

Chennault, a retired U.S. Army Air Corps pilot who had become an adviser to the Chinese air force, dispatched two squadrons to Kunming, which became the group’s permanent base. When the American Volunteer Group landed, the city was still smoldering. Japanese bombers had hit Kunming that morning, and about 400 Chinese had been killed.

For the next seven months, the Flying Tigers destroyed almost 300 Japanese attacking airplanes in what was considered a miracle in China and still remembered today.

Time hailed the American pilots as “Flying Tigers.” The nickname stemmed from the flying tiger emblem that Walt Disney Studios had created for the volunteer airmen two months earlier, and it is how they have been known ever since.

In his memoir Way of a Fighter, Chennault wrote: “Japanese airmen never again tried to bomb Kunming while the AVG defended it. For many months afterwards, they sniffed about the edges of the warning net, but never ventured near Kunming.”

During a recent trip to the city, my friend Jay and I journeyed to the Flying Tigers Museum, which took a taxi ride, a bus ride, and an adventure with a gypsy cab.

There we met the curator of the museum, a 70-something woman, Mrs. Jungbo, who expressed her gratitude to us as Americans for what Chennault and his airmen accomplished so many years ago.

She opened the doors of the various rooms that housed historical documents and photographs. She insisted that we take two books about the air group and wouldn’t take a contribution.

Then she escorted us back to our hotel, which was more than an hour away and paid the gypsy taxi for the trip.

All of this because she and her family remembered the heroic deeds of Americans so long ago.

At a time when many countries don’t recall how much the United States did for them, it was a good feeling to know that some people in Kunming still remember.

Healthcare in China

Posted: June 5, 2018 by chrisharper in Uncategorized
Tags: , ,

Getting to see a doctor in China isn’t easy.

After I had a persistent cough, however, I had to see a physician.

Almost everyone goes to a hospital to see a doctor. That’s the way the system works.

What is interesting is how the healthcare system forces Chinese to do something they abhor: standing in lines in an orderly manner.

The Chinese are good at a lot of things but waiting in a line is not one of them. But everyone seems to accept the burden, with few people trying to skirt the queue.

After getting a number and an hour of waiting, I saw a young physician who analyzed my problems and ordered several tests, including blood work and an EKG.

Unfortunately, the hospital closes for more than two hours for lunch, and you have to wait until 2:30 p.m. to take the tests.

The EKG took a few minutes, and the results were returned immediately.

The blood tests were a different matter. They took about two hours to get the results.

After you get the results, you stand in line for another number to see another doctor.

The physician diagnosed my problem as an upper-respiratory infection and provided me with a prescription for a variety of antibiotics and cough medicine.

Unfortunately, you have to stand in another line to pay for the drugs. In fact, almost everyone has to pay up front for any procedures.

The total cost for the various procedures was about $70, which by U.S. standards is excellent. For many Chinese, however, insurance covers only about 70 percent of the total cost, and residents have to wait for reimbursement, which can be a significant hardship for many.

Although I got good care, I had two beefs. First, I couldn’t see a specific physician. Everyone sees who’s up next. Second, it took six hours from entering the hospital for me to get the medicine I needed. That’s about the same as in the United States, but I don’t have to spend all that time in the physician’s office waiting for the tests and the prescriptions in the United States.

Note: It would have been impossible to navigate the Chinese healthcare system without a translator. The same probably would be true if someone from China entered a hospital in the United States.

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