"American servicemen and women gather in front of "Rainbow Corner" Red Cross club in Paris to celebrate the unconditional surrender of the Japanese." August 15, 1945 (Wiki Commons)
A bit before noon on Friday, the heavens opened and hail started coming down in the Bay Area. The children went wild with excitement. May it be a harbinger of wetter weather for parched California, where weather experts have been fearing this could be another drought year, which would lead to more destructive wildfires.
Meanwhile, nothing would please me more than if this Facebook page became a forum for airing important new information and ideas for how to improve our society. It would be even better if those ideas were contributed by people other than me.
In that spirit, thanks to Jack Brodbeck for drawing attention to the questionable practice by U.S. military officials who play Fox News on televisions in installations worldwide. Given Fox's track record of giving credence to Trump's lies and disinformation, this is a dangerous practice.
It appears that CNN and MSNBC also get some air time, but Fox reportedly gets the most.
By misleading our troops, which could in turn lead them to develop an affinity for conspiracy theories instead of news, this definitely qualifies as a national security issue.
But in the spirit of fairness, I also have to question whether the other two cable networks deserve that kind of airtime either. MSNBC's heavily left-leaning presentation of the news disqualifies it as an objective source of information.
When it comes to CNN, I've long hoped it would be closer to my ideal of a neutral news provider, but in recent years the blatant bias of certain of its anchors has badly reduced its credibility.
Even then, it is the best of the three. As for the traditional non-cable networks, ABC, CBS and NBC carry too much non-news programming to be helpful.
All of this raises the issue of what military officials *should* do about providing TV options to our armed forces personnel around the world. That leads me directly back to the argument I made yesterday, that licensing mass media appears to be the U.S. government's best tool for precluding blatant propaganda from masquerading as news.
Nobody, certainly no journalist, wants Big Brother to be censoring the content we produce. But when the powerful amplification of biases stirs up forces that would overturn the rule of law and the democratic transfer of power, something has to be done.
So where does that leave us on the main issue: How can the cable news networks obtain government approval for their TV content on military installations? I have a suggestion here for the heads of Fox, CNN, MSNBC and any others who wish to play.
Develop pure news shows without commentary. Just the facts. Try it, it's not so bad. Public broadcasting has been doing it for many years.
Alternatively, another option would be for the government to provide much more funding for PBS, which is able to afford very little television news content compared to the commercial outfits.
On the other hand, as important as TV is for older people, most young soldiers probably access Internet sites for their news, where the algorithm-driven disinformation problem is even worse than on the cable networks. That is another problem that will require attention going forward.
***
There was a major news development yesterday that might easily be overlooked in the U.S. and that is the agreement by Google to pay French news sites that send them traffic, as reported by ArsTechnica.
This won't result in much income at first, but as the public gets educated on how Google make money at the expense of local news organizations, perhaps that will change.
Equally importantly, the French model should spread rapidly to the rest of Europe and we desperately need a similar arrangement here in the U.S.
(Note: no more numerical palindromes for now, I promise, even though today's date is one, and yesterday's and tomorrow's.)
***
The news:
* Google agrees to pay French news sites to send them traffic (ArsTechnica)
* For Prosecutors, Trump’s Clemency Decisions Were a ‘Kick in the Teeth’ -- Commutations in high-profile Medicare fraud cases have elicited anger among those who spent years pursuing complex prosecutions. (NYT)
* NEW POLL: Hawley, Cruz see approval ratings plummet in wake of Capitol riot. (The Hill)
* President Biden signed a string of executive orders and presidential directives on Thursday, rolling out a “full-scale, wartime” coronavirus strategy, including requiring masks on some planes, trains and buses. (Reuters)
* Biden to increase federal food benefits among executive actions aimed at stabilizing U.S. economy (WashPo)
* Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.), who has repeatedly flouted the magnetometers that were installed near the House chamber after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, set off the metal detectors while trying to enter on Thursday. When an officer with a metal detector wand scanned him, a firearm was detected on Harris’s side, concealed by his suit coat. [HuffPost]
* The First Capitol Riot Arrests Were Easy. The Next Ones Will Be Tougher. -- An initial wave of arrests was based on news accounts and social media. Proving a conspiracy could be much more challenging. (NYT)
* New Brazil coronavirus variant found in nearly half of Amazon city cases (Reuters)
* Trump is returning to a family business ravaged by pandemic shutdowns and restrictions, with revenue plunging over 40% at his Doral golf property, his Washington hotel and both his Scottish resorts. Trump’s financial disclosure released as he left office this week was just the latest bad news for his financial empire after banks, real estate brokerages and golf organizations announced they were cutting ties with his company, further battered by the ex-president's divisive misconduct. [AP]
* U.S. Home Sales Reach Highest Level in 14 Years (WSJ)
* U.S. Military Moves To Try 3 Guantanamo Suspects Linked To Indonesia Bombings (NPR)
* How a 'Hamilton' song helped Amanda Gorman overcome a speech impediment --You wouldn't know it from her commanding delivery at the inauguration, but up until a few years ago, National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman struggled to overcome speech impediment. For much of her life, including when she was still an undergraduate at Harvard, Gorman had trouble pronouncing the letter "R." To practice saying the letter, she'd listen on repeat to one song she said was "packed with 'R's'" -- "Aaron Burr, Sir" from Lin-Manuel Miranda's historical opus, "Hamilton."(CNN)
* Slim majority of Americans want Senate to convict Trump (Reuters/Ipsos)
***
You that build the big guns
You that build the death planes
You that build all the bombs
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks
But build to destroy
You play with my world
You put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther
Like Judas of old
You lie and deceive
A world war can be won
But I see through your eyes
And I see through your brain
Like I see through the water
For the others to fire
While the death count gets higher
You hide in your mansion
While the young peoples' blood
And is buried in the mud
Fear to bring children
Into the world
For threatenin' my baby
You ain't worth the blood
That runs in your veins
To talk out of turn?
You might say that I'm young
You might say I'm unlearned
Though I'm younger than you
That even Jesus would never
Forgive what you do
Is your money that good?
Will it buy you forgiveness?
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul
And your death will come soon
I'll follow your casket
On a pale afternoon
I'll watch while you're lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I'll stand over your grave
'Til I'm sure that you're dead
-- Bob Dylan
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