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The Messy House of Mouse

Posted: January 30, 2024 by chrisharper in Uncategorized
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By Christopher Harper

After 15 years at ABC News, I left the company after Disney took control. 

The House of Mouse’s heavy-handed influence over ABC became clear to me when I was prevented from using footage of Disney World when I was doing a story about a crime committed there.

As a result, I’m happy to see that Disney is a mess!

–CEO Bob Iger had to return from retirement in 2022 after his handpicked successor had mismanaged the company. Now, Iger must find a new successor.

–Various questionable investments, such as the acquisition of Fox Entertainment and losses from streaming services, have affected the bottom line.

–Iger faces a major proxy battle because Disney’s shares are trading at their lowest point in a decade.

“Iger is a little over a year into his second stint as CEO, and his return to the House of Mouse isn’t going as planned. The decline of Disney’s long-lucrative TV business is quickening, and the supposed solution, streaming, has left Disney with billions of dollars in losses,” The Wall Street Journal reported recently. “Iger returned for his second stint as CEO to a changed media business and impatient shareholders. He is under pressure to ensure Disney’s streaming business reaches profitability in the final quarter of its current fiscal year, after racking up more than $11 billion in losses in its first four years.”

 Major Disney stockholder Nelson Peltz is waging a massive proxy fight against Disney for mismanagement and non-accountability. Peltz has help from former Marvel Entertainment chairman Isaac Perlmutter, who played a crucial role in Disney’s rise as a superhero movie producer.

Disney also has been taking a decidedly leftist turn in its approach. In 2022, a group of employees circulated an open letter. 

“The Walt Disney Company has come to be an increasingly uncomfortable place to work for those of us whose political and religious views are not explicitly progressive,” the employees wrote. “We watch quietly as our beliefs come under attack from our own employer, and we frequently see those who share our opinions condemned as villains by our own leadership.”

The employees noted Disney’s “Reimagine Tomorrow” campaign to promote “underrepresented voices.” They said that “the tomorrow being reimagined doesn’t seem to have much room for religious or political conservatives within the company. Left-leaning cast members can promote their agenda and organize on company time using company resources. They call their fellow employees’ bigots’ and pressure TWDC to use corporate influence to further their left-wing legislative goals.”

Even though I receive a monthly pension from Disney, I don’t have a dog in the hunt. But it appears someone has to hold Iger and his compatriots accountable for their actions. 

Musings from a longtime journalist

Posted: January 22, 2024 by chrisharper in Uncategorized
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By Christopher Harper

It’s been 50 years since I started my first full-time job as a reporter at the Associated Press in Chicago.

As I’ve written earlier, it’s sad how far the AP has tilted toward the left, erasing its history as a dependable and accurate institution that provides news and information worldwide. See https://wordpress.com/post/datechguyblog.blog/38878

But the underlying problems in journalism go far deeper than the mess at the AP. More than 1,600 journalists responded to the annual survey from Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Public Communications, and the results are damning.

Only 3.4% of those U.S. journalists polled claim to be Republicans, with another 36.4% saying they’re Democrats. That’s more than 10 times more Democrats than Republicans. Or at least the ones who will admit they are on the left. 

More than half (51.7%) call themselves “independents” and another 8.5% “other.” Journalists have been getting these survey questions for over 50 years and have grown savvier. Many carefully list themselves in those “other” categories to avoid being called biased.

At the time I started in journalism, 25% of U.S. journalists said they were Republican. In 50 years, journalism has essentially purged any political opposition in its ranks. Amazingly, only 12.7% think “perceived bias and opinion journalism” is a problem.

I’m pleased to see all the financial and political problems the media are having because it’s possible media operations will realize they must change. I may be too optimistic. 

As the prospects for news publishers waned in the past decade, billionaires swooped in to buy some of the country’s most fabled brands. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, bought The Washington Post in 2013 for about $250 million. Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, a biotechnology and start-up billionaire, purchased The Los Angeles Times in 2018 for $500 million. Marc Benioff, the founder of the software giant Salesforce, and his wife bought Time magazine for $190 million in 2018.

All three publications are losing money at record rates, amassing millions of dollars in debt and facing massive layoffs. 

The media analysts blame the losses on the changing environment for news organizations. But the real reason for the declining readership and revenues is that there’s little worth seeing in these left-leaning outlets. 

I wince when people ask me what work I did because journalists have few friends except the elite class. Almost everyone else hates us!

Rather than ignore the problems, it may be time for those who want to save journalism to dig deeper into the disconnect between news organizations and those they’re supposed to serve. 

Crusading for cursive writing

Posted: January 16, 2024 by chrisharper in Uncategorized
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By Christopher Harper

Pennsylvania—like 28 other states—does not require students to write in cursive lettering.

Fortunately, at least one Pennsylvania politician is mounting a campaign to force students to learn how to write in cursive.

State Rep. Joe Adams, a Republican representing an area near Scranton, thinks it should be mandated and has proposed legislation to do so.

A former school superintendent, Adams said he believes it is important enough to find time to teach it, and he said so do experts in education, neurology, and psychology who offer up brain science and historical reasons to support the idea. He also gave some practical reasons.

“You can’t open a bank account without signing your name. You can’t buy a property or get a credit card without having to be able to sign your name,” Adams said. He added that a person’s signature can be a unique identifier that could be one thing artificial intelligence cannot reproduce.
“All those things pointed me to saying, this makes great sense,” Adams said.

Pennsylvania’s Education Secretary Khalid Mumin doesn’t consider cursive instruction to be vital.

“Secretary Mumin encourages schools to determine the best paths for their students to learn to communicate effectively in writing and achieve success, regardless of the mode of writing used to get there,” Education Department spokesman Taj Magruder Adams told PennLive.com.

Cumberland Valley, located in southern Pennsylvania near the Maryland border, decided to reintroduce cursive writing into the curriculum.

Robyn Euker, Cumberland Valley’s director of curriculum, instruction, and assessment, said the district chose to require cursive instruction after noticing an increasing number of students with poor handwriting in the upper grades.

When the district was looking to adopt a new literacy curriculum, she said, it decided to buy the cursive writing supplement to address the handwriting concern.

Two years later, Euker said the feedback she had received was positive.

“I think it’s a little bit of a creative outlet for students,” she said.
Euker also said it seems beneficial for students with reading and writing issues. Writing in cursive has fewer starts and stops than in print. Words appear as one block instead of a series of separate letters, which can help students with dyslexia.

Given the benefits, including allowing students to read handwritten cards from older relatives, Euker said, “I wouldn’t be surprised if we see more states require it.”

After all, it’s not an instruction that needs to be taught repeatedly. Once students learn it, the neuropathways allow them to associate a manuscript letter with how it looks in cursive and understand what is written, said Lynn Baynum, chair of Shippensburg University’s Teacher Education Department.

“When we first began teaching cursive a hundred years ago, we didn’t understand it was a pattern of associations we were doing to create a literate society,” Baynum said. “It’s also why keyboarding is important to teach, too, because we don’t want students slowing down their ability to communicate because they have to find a letter on the keyboard.”

Teaching cursive is a no-brainer to me.

COVID:  Déjà vu all over again

Posted: January 9, 2024 by chrisharper in Uncategorized

By Christopher Harper

As the 2024 election campaign begins in earnest this month, I am troubled that the rustlings of another COVID coup may be starting.

Just up the road from my home in Muncy, the vast University of Pittsburgh Medical Center recently required that masks be worn in all of its facilities throughout the state. UPMC employs 92,000 people and operates 40 hospitals with more than 8,000 licensed beds and 800 clinical locations, including outpatient sites and doctors’ offices.

At the same time, the media have picked up their reporting on COVID-19 and other winter diseases, leaving me with the uneasy feeling that various forces will turn the 2024 election by mail into a reality.

Remember all the changes in election laws in 2020 to make voting easier by mail, including extended voting periods and ballot collections by friends and family?

Most of those “democratic” laws remain in effect, making it much easier for Democrats to win. In 2020, 43% of all voters did so by mail versus 23% in 2016.

The laws also allowed for what has become known as “ballot harvesting,” or allowing someone other than the actual voter to submit ballots.
As America First notes in an analysis of current election laws, “Ballot harvesting is a ripe opportunity for individuals and organizations to cheat in elections. Allowing ballot harvesting is a mistake. States should prioritize transparency and accountability by banning the practice.”
Here are a few of the alarming facts uncovered in the America First analysis:
· Nine states allow a family member to submit a ballot instead of a voter, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
· Thirty-one states allow the voter to choose someone to submit the ballot in his or her place, although some states have set limits on who can collect the ballots or how many they are allowed to collect.
· Thirteen states say nothing about ballot collection, which allows unfettered ballot harvesting.

It’s essential to remove the changes made in 2020 to reestablish the integrity of elections.

At the state level, America First suggests that people support policies that:
· Eliminate drop boxes for mail-in ballots.
· Prohibit a person from returning more than two mail-in ballots and limit who can return a ballot to a familial relationship.
· Eliminate mass mailing of unsolicited mail-in ballots.
· Require an affidavit for mail-in ballot applications that affirms the voter cannot vote on Election Day and affirms eligibility under defined state law.
· Require a witness signature for mail-in ballots.
· Reform the mail-in ballot process by requiring the matching driver’s license number or last four digits of a social security number on absentee applications and inside the envelope of a returned ballot.

Implementing these measures is crucial to prevent another COVID coup, particularly as organizations and the media start taking control of the message.

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