News Thoughts

“When seeking revenge, dig two graves - one for yourself.” - Douglas Horton

Anger is, in my view, a useful emotion. Tends to make people act to improve things. Of course, it can also prompt dangerous stupidity, and there is much of that here in Texas and the land of the notionally-free. Sometimes feels like everyone in America is encircled by gun crazies, the greedy and power hungry, lying politicians, serial exaggerators, and corruption that knows no bounds.

And that’s with just a quick glance in one direction.

The chatter and damage surrounding Chris Licht and CNN refuses to abate. Robert Reich, a former U.S. Labor Secretary, is suggesting he doesn’t see how the cable news outlet can recover. In his Substack newsletter, he describes Warner Bros. Discovery’s John Malone, and David Zaslav as the “power behind throne,” which is a significant condemnation for a journalism operation. Malone, a multi-billionaire, is the biggest shareholder in Warner Bros. Discovery and a major investor in Fox News. He also gave Trump $250,000 in the last presidential campaign. According to Reich, Malone told Licht’s boss, David Zaslav, that Fox did “actual journalism” and CNN was more about a liberal perspective. He wanted the network to move more to the center, which isn’t exactly the Fox model.

There’s not a shortage of reasons to be angry about a billionaire dictating coverage of the news, or having even a minor amount of influence over editorial decisions. Malone isn’t in the building, but his pal Zaslav is Licht’s boss, and undoubtedly made it clear there needed to be changes at CNN. Unfortunately, he trusted Licht to make the decisions, a guy who had no real experience as a reporter and ran a network comedy show, and was the producer for Morning Joe on MSNBC, which, I guess, is also a comedy show. His work seems to have revolved around booking guests with controversial perspectives and profiles big enough that audiences would be drawn to their appearances.

Licht has, as one of his critics has said, “lost the room,” and I see no method he might use to regain the support of the journalists at CNN, especially after he criticized their coverage of Covid. I’m certain there were long hours and weeks of extra slogging to cover a pandemic, and making one of your first moves to criticize that hard work and then move on to firing key people, you are putting your foot in the toilet first weeks on the job. Licht’s tenure will be brief, though he will get a lovely parting gift of a golden parachute of some kind, and more employees left behind in his wake will begin to lose their jobs because ad revenue went into the dumpster with the ratings and some roles will no longer be affordable.

Another journalism story to crank up my angst is the attitude of the Gannett newspaper chain. The company, which owns 200 papers around the country, merged with Gatehouse Media in 2019. Immediately, the CEO Mike Reed began ordering the shutdown of newsrooms and a reduction of costs, which meant firing people, and constraining wages. The plan hasn’t worked and Gannett stock has fallen 60 percent since the ink dried on the big merger. In the deal, Gannett took ownership of the Austin American-Statesman, a paper that has struggled to keep reporters and editors employed because of wages that make it almost impossible to live in one of America’s most expensive cities.

Statesman staffers joined the 24 and 48 hour walkouts yesterday to demand a salary cut for CEO Reed, and wage hikes along with better benefits for workers. The News Guild, which organized the strike nationally, says the base salary for starting reporters at the Austin paper is around $40,000 annually, and they are seeking to make it $60,000. The lower figure qualifies for affordable housing assistance in Austin. Given the cost of living in the Texas capitol city, it seems unlikely anyone but a single person living an austere lifestyle is going to be able to manage the pay scales of the Statesman. CEO Reed, it should be noted, earns $3.7 million, a cut of about 50 percent since the two companies came together. When you hear someone wondering what has happened to the media, just share those figures. Reporting is a difficult and stressful job that can be extremely rewarding, just not, apparently financially, in most cases.

But as long as we are getting mad about stuff, let’s talk about Ron DeSantis, the GOP presidential candidate hoping to make himself more disgusting than Donald Trump, which is quite an ambitious goal. The Florida governor has decided to once again resume flying migrants to northern states using taxpayer money with his latest escapade a delivery of a sixteen asylum seekers to Sacramento, California’s capitol city. They were left abandoned outside a Catholic church. The state’s governor, called DeSantis a “sad, pathetic man” after Florida confirmed it had paid for the two private jets. Gavin Newsom said the immigrants from South America might have been deceived into getting on the aircraft, and, if that is the case, DeSantis might be subject to kidnapping charges under California law.

The section of code Newsom quoted on Twitter that he believes is applicable to the case reads, “Every person who, being out of this state, abducts or takes by force or fraud any person contrary to the law of the place where that act is committed, and brings, sends, or conveys that person within the limits of this state, and is afterwards found with the limits thereof, is guilty of kidnapping.”

Trump 2.0 doesn’t care, though.

But maybe he should. Those planes were probably still in the air when the Bexar County sheriff in San Antonio filed charges against DeSantis and Florida for the 49 immigrants the governor flew to Martha’s Vineyard last year. Javier Salazar said he has asked the local DA to prosecute a criminal case of “unlawful restraint,” which is both a misdemeanor and a felony. Salazar said the immigrants were “lured under false pretenses,” which included housing and jobs.

My hope is that both the San Antonio case and the California crimes are adjudicated. I am not a believer in breaking the law, but two lawbreakers, the immigrant and the politician, do not resolve the matter, nor in any way move us closer to some kind of policy that manages issues on the border. We only find ourselves with a far right wing governor using desperate human beings as political tools to ridicule the policies of more liberal states and institutions. No one would ever suggest Ron DeSantis is overflowing with the milk of human kindness, but these people weren’t even in his state and he rounded them up and put them on planes from Texas. They are likely hungry and desperate for a place to live, worried about family, disoriented and without money, and all Ron DeSantis can think of to do is use them to make political points and fire up the troubled souls who think he can be president.

I had intended to write briefly here also about our attorney general, the state’s top lawman who seems able to get away with breaking the law, but maybe I’ll save that for this weekend. I am more angered now by the rank cowardice of the PGA and its merger with the Saudi-backed LIV Golf. This must be the most successful case of sports washing ever implemented. The term, if you are unfamiliar, is when sports are used to mitigate bad acts, and in the case of the Saudis, even horrible behavior and crimes.

There is almost zero doubt that the Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and the dismemberment of his body. Khashoggi was working for the Washington Post at the time he was strangled to death at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. His body was dismembered and disposed of, but the prince denied any involvement. An investigation by the media and the CIA concluded bin Salman had ordered the killing and had been destroying evidence. The U.S. sanctioned 17 Saudis for the murder but not Salman because Trump intervened.

The House of Saud has money to pay golfers, though, so the PGA gets into business with the murderous government with a long record of human rights violations. Just read a few brief passages from Amnesty International’s 2022 report on Saudi Arabia’s abuses of people convicted of minor crimes like social protest and public association:

“The Specialized Criminal Court (SCC) convicted and sentenced at least 15 individuals, both citizens and foreign nationals, to between 15 and 45 years in prison after grossly unfair trials for their peaceful expression or association, including peaceful online speech on Twitter. The SCC sentenced at least two women’s rights activists to unprecedentedly lengthy prison sentences.

“On 9 August, at an appeal hearing, the SCC sentenced Salma al-Shehab, a PhD student and activist, to 34 years in prison to be followed by a 34-year travel ban for her writing and peaceful Twitter activity in support of women’s rights in Saudi Arabia. The prosecution demanded a harsher punishment after she was initially sentenced to six years in prison. The harsher sentence was based on the discretion of the judge to punish her for ‘disrupting public order and destabilizing the security and stability of the state’ through publishing tweets.

“In the single largest mass execution in recent decades, 81 men – citizens and foreign nationals – were executed on 12 March. According to the Ministry of Interior, those executed were convicted of a range of offenses, including terrorism-related crimes, murder, armed robbery and arms smuggling. Some of those executed were also convicted of “disrupting the social fabric and national cohesion” and “participating in and inciting sit-ins and protests”, which describe acts that are protected by the rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association. Of those executed, 41 were from Saudi Arabia’s Shi’a minority.

“In November, the authorities executed 20 people for drug-related crimes, the first such executions since the Saudi Human Rights Commission announced a moratorium on the use of the death penalty for drug-related crimes in January 2021.”

Those 81 executions were pubic beheadings.

Yeah, but golf!!! LIV Golf and the PGA, once sworn enemies, are now in love and making nice with each other after the PGA had banned LIV players from its tournaments. The Saudi investment fund probably just kept dangling bigger numbers in front of PGA commissioners. When the announcement was made, PGA players were a tad pissed that they had not been informed, much less consulted. Better be careful about expressing dissatisfaction, though, now that you have Saudi money men running around the course listening to conversations.

Maybe LIV golf and the PGA will combine tournaments with public renderings of Saudi-style justice. Can’t you hear Jim Nance now?

“The Masters at Augusta and public beheadings. A tradition unlike any other.”