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Many people are feeling sad and guilty right now because they cannot afford to buy all of the presents their children would like to see under the tree.
Before they do something stupid, they should imagine how much more difficult next year’s holiday season would be if they had no car and perhaps no job, either.
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The Federal Communications Commission could consider a change as early as next month in a rule that now prevents the owner of a television broadcast station from owning a newspaper in the same city or town, according to the Washington Post.
The issue is getting a lot of attention because Rupert Murdoch, owner of Fox News Channel, is reportedly interested in buying the company that owns the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski says the proposed rules change would not allow that merger to occur. He said he also would preserve a rule that forbids ownership of more than one of the top four TV stations in a particular market.
Advocates of the change say that the old rules don’t work well in the rapidly-changing media market in which consumers get their news from computers, iPads, smart phones and who knows what else in the future. They also argue that struggling media companies need the ability to pool resources in order to survive.
Opponents say media conglomerates will squeeze out local news, eliminate competition and reduce diversity.
What do you think?
By Roger Wilson
It amuses me whenever I hear anyone complain about all the money that was wasted this year on political advertising, as though it was all sucked into a black hole, never to be seen again.
Even the editorial writers at The Roanoke Times weighed in on this issue in a Nov. 28 editorial, “Better ways to spend $27 million.” (Nationally, more than $500 million was spent on advertising for the presidential race.) My friends, this money was not wasted. It wasn’t flushed down a toilet. Every single penny of it was pumped into a very worthwhile cause — stimulating the economy during tough economic times. Consider these four points:
First, there were all those people whose livelihoods depended at least in part on these advertising dollars.
Think of the people who wrote, recorded, edited and put together the ads, the printers who churned out endless mailings, the postal workers who had to sort and deliver them — on and on the list goes. (The Times editorial did include three sentences that referred to some of these folks.)
Wilson lives in Roanoke.
By John Guiniven
Post-election analyses have included the quadrennial hand-wringing over the influence of political talk-show hosts. A word to the worrywarts: Fuhgettaboutit!
Guiniven retired this year from James Madison University, where he taught corporate communication and public issues management. He spent more than 30 years in corporate and political public relations.
Television stations in the Roanoke-Lynchburg market took in $27 million from political ads this year. Let that sink in for a minute — $27 million.
We do not begrudge our media brethren in broadcast their windfall. Advertising pays the bills. Cameras, remote trucks and satellite uplinks are not free.
Continue reading this editorial.
(Note: This editorial has been corrected. View the original for details.)
Lines at the polls and handicapped voters can vote early in today’s letters to the editor.
I have two questions for Forest Jones, author of the commentary that portrayed Fox News as the evil media empire (“Jonesing on Fox News,” Nov. 17).
First, was it really necessary to throw his 85-year-old father under the bus because he likes Fox News?
Whatever happened to the Fifth Commandment — “Honor your father and your mother”? I guess that’s irrelevant in today’s progressive world.
Second, given that Fox News is partisan (aren’t they all?), is it still not possible that the provision of different viewpoints is a valuable service?
A good example is the Benghazi attack of Sept. 11: Fox News was very busy covering that attack, whereas most of the rest of the media were busy covering the president’s posterior.
Could it be that we just elected a president who was able to mislead voters on an important foreign policy issue, mainly because most of the media ignored the story?
Perhaps bias at Fox News is not the only media problem we have.
BOB STAUFFER
ROANOKE
By Forest Jones
I called my dad on Veterans Day to check in. My dad served in the Navy and the Army in both World War II and the Korean War. He can rarely be seen without a ball cap that celebrates his service and his pride in our military. He said he had enjoyed a parade and even was interviewed by a local news team. It made the 6 o’clock news! Nice. Good to hear his strength to participate in community life is rocking at age 85.
Jones is an information systems consultant living in Roanoke.
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Drone strikes and cyberattacks are changing the nature of combat. Americans know it’s happening, but that’s about it. The Obama administration has embraced tactics that began under George W. Bush and kept most of its activities secret, preventing a public discussion about the legal and moral issues raised.
An article in the latest edition of the Nieman Reports, a 60-year-0ld publication on issues confronting journalists, accuses Obama of making up the rules as he goes along and punishing anyone who publicly questions national security policies.
There is little to none of the judicial and legislative oversight Obama had promised, so the executive branch’s most controversial methods of violence and control remain solely in the hands of the president—possibly about to be passed along to a leader with less restraint.
More than a decade after it started, we still have no clue how much the government is listening in on us or reading our e-mail, despite the obvious Fourth Amendment issues.
And the government’s response to this unprecedented secrecy is a war on leaks.
When leaks have occurred, as they did this summer, members of Congress have responded by demanding criminal investigations into those who revealed the information rather than holding hearings on the covert activities that came to light. The Obama administration has filed espionage charges against six officials for leaking information to journalists, more than all previous presidents combined. They include Thomas Drake, who blew the whistle on mismanagement at the National Security Agency. Six felony charges against him were reduced to one misdemeanor, but five other individuals still face punishment, including Bradley Manning, the U.S. Army private accused of leaking documents to Wikileaks.
The Nieman Reports article calls for major media organizations to boost coverage of national security and even to hire reporters assigned to a “secrecy beat.” Those journalistts should be asking questions like should the use of drones require a declaration or war or at least an authorization of the use of force.
This is an issue getting very little attention in the presidential campaign, and there’s no sign that Romney would change course. Let’s hope Bob Schieffer isn’t afraid to ask about it in the final debate on foreign policy issues.
A store clerk in New Hampshire says she was fired because she wouldn’t let a customer buy cigarettes with a debit card for government assistance. Del. Riley Ingram in Virginia promptly files a bill to bar Temporary Assistance to Needy Families recipients from using their benefits for alcohol, tobacco, gambling or strippers.
How can the sound of an employee getting chopped in New England be heard in the Old Dominion? Via Fox News.
