Voice For Liberty

Category: Wichita news media

  • Wichita Eagle Editorial Blog not recommended

    In June, 2005, the editors of The Wichita Eagle started a blog, the Wichita Eagle Editorial blog, or WE Blog.

    The way this blog works it that one of the Eagle editors starts a topic, and then the public can add comments.

    A small group of the posters who make these comments seem to know each others’ reputations well, and postings from this group account for nearly all the content of the blog. They have had, by my count, two social gatherings. From posts filed by the attendees, they seemed like enjoyable affairs. I was surprised to read these pleasant accounts, as on the blog, people are usually quite mean and nasty.

    It usually doesn’t take very long before the posts on many topics disintegrate into name-calling, sometimes using the foulest language imaginable, language that The Eagle won’t print in the newspaper. In fact, even the editors won’t use this language themselves on the blog, although from time to time they may use these words in sanitized form.

    Often when someone who has a history of posting — and therefore a reputation — posts an opinion or makes an argument, someone will point that the poster is a Democrat or a Republican, or is liberal or conservative, and therefore the opinion or argument is to be discounted. This is a common form of argument. Or someone will point out that the poster said something stupid in the past, so this is stupid, too.

    Often posters use terms of art such as “BushBots,” “BushCo,” “Repukes,” and “Wingnuts” when referring to others. Conservative posters have similar terms they use, too. These terms are used as insults or to advance an argument or opinion.

    Commonly, when someone presses a point a follow-up post makes the demand “show me a link.” Dutifully the original poster finds a link that supports their argument, and almost always it will be derided as coming from a source that is not valid or trustworthy because it is liberal, conservative, or has some other defect in the eyes of the poster. Sometimes entire articles are posted, almost certainly in violation of the copyright.

    It is my sense that many of the topics started by the editors are calculated to allow those with left-leaning sensibilities the opportunity to launch attacks on conservatives and right-leaning posters. It does seem to me that the majority of the regulars on the blog are near the left of the political spectrum.

    The left, too, seems to get the best of the conservatives much of the time. But that’s not surprising. Government, at all levels, is too big and powerful and tries to do too many things. As government overreaches, it inevitably makes mistakes, and therefore is an easy target for criticism. If the left wins political power over the next few years, it too will be on the defensive for all the misguided things that it tries to do.

    When a person posts to the blog, they enter a name — real or otherwise — and an email address, again real or not. There is no security of any type, and it is therefore possible for one person to make a post using the identity of some other poster. There is no way for readers of the blog to detect that this has happened, except from an analysis of the content of the message. A few posters claim this happens regularly to them.

    This lack of accountability as to the origin of the post is a problem. One’s identity is not safe, as others can post in your name. Other discussion forum systems often require some form of registration, tracing an identity back to an email address, usually, and then requiring login with a password before posting. With this, readers can be sure that something posted under a name did, in fact, come from that person.

    The discussions also die prematurely in some cases. Not that the topics disappear, but after a few weeks they move to an archive section, where they can still be read and posted to, but it seems like few topics survive this archiving. So some discussions that have merit in continuation stop.

    There is also the problem that the only issues that are discussed are ones that the editors decide to start a topic on, although topics can drift to any subject, and there are “open threads” that are started occasionally. Most discussion forum systems, though, have threaded topics and allow users to start topics on their own. Threaded topics would allow new threads of discussion to be split off as the flow of discussion changes. These systems also allow replies to be associated with a specific post, so that readers can easily read a reply in the context of the post that inspired it. That isn’t present with the current system the Wichita Eagle Editorial Blog uses.

    A curious fact is that The Eagle has discussion boards that have many of the features that make discussion forums work better. These boards are not as popular as the blog, and seem to have their own small group of regular posters.

    I do not recommend spending time reading the Wichita Eagle Editorial Blog. The mean-spirited nastiness of the bulk of the posts far outweighs the few redeeming things you might learn. The group of regular posters is so partisan, the discourse so bitter and shrill, so full of cruel sarcasm, that readers are likely to come away angry and disillusioned. In fact, a topic started today by Phillip Brownlee titled “Hard to shake faith of the faithful” points out how a person’s perspective colors their judgment of events, and how each party believes they are right, no matter what the facts and evidence show. There’s lots of evidence of this type of behavior on this blog. Still, I must confess that sometimes, like when passing a car wreck, I can’t resist taking a peek.

    My preference is to reduce the power of government to the point that there is little that government does that is important enough to argue over.

  • Public Access, or lack there of

    Dear Bob’s Blog, I recently moved to wichita from chicago… a while b4 i decided to move I had completed my Comcast public access certification. Comcast is basicaly the equivalence to Cox here. Un / Fortunately I was unable to put it to any good use while in Chicago due to some circumstances…. however I was searchin around the web and came across your blog entry on the lack of public acess for the public here in wichita. I wondered if you had any luck with your letter and/or knew any sources of information on the subject. I would be willing to put forth some effort in helping our voice be heard…

  • Randy Scholfield and less government

    In an editorial in the September 18, 2005 Wichita Eagle, Randy Scholfield wrote “Less government is a laudable goal.”

    The dictionary defines laudable as “Deserving commendation; praiseworthy” or “Deserving honor, respect, or admiration.” Mr. Scholfield’s past writings don’t treat the goal of less government this way. In fact, it doesn’t seem there is a single government program that Mr. Scholfield doesn’t like and praise.

    On September 13, 2004, he advocated more funding for early childhood education, writing “… the state Legislature needs to do the right thing for the state’s children and future, and invest in early childhood education.”

    He seems to automatically believe that schools need more money.

    He believes in government subsidies. In an editorial in The Wichita Eagle published on April 19, 2005, he wrote: “Wichita should stick to its subsidies. They’re fostering competition, not stifling it, and paying off big-time for the community by lowering airfares and boosting economic development.”

    He has consistently supported the government building the downtown Wichita arena.

    He advocates more government spending on arts (August 9, 2005 “Culture requires community support”).

    He supports more funding for Exploration Place.

    Mr. Scholfield, is there any government program you have opposed, any example that would lend credibility to your claim that less government is a laudable goal?

  • Senator Kay O’Connor

    Kansas Senator Kay O’Connor, Republican from Olathe, has been in the news recently.

    It has been reported that Sen. O’Connor opposes the right of women to vote. In the June 12, 2005 Wichita Eagle a letter writer repeated this assertion. On June 2, 2005, the Eagle printed an Associated Press piece by John Hanna that detailed the remarks. On June 3, 2005, the Eagle editorialized about this, opposing Sen. O’Connor.

    The facts, though, are different. Sen. O’Connor denies making the remarks. The Kansas City Star, the newspaper that first reported the story, would not print her letter telling her side. Neither would that newspaper print the letters of witnesses to Sen. O’Connor’s remarks, witnesses who say she did not say what she is reported to have said.

    I have met Sen. O’Connor. I admire her for her work on school choice in Kansas. She also voted against the bill allowing Sedgwick County to raise the sales tax for the downtown arena. I can understand, then, the Wichita Eagle not liking Sen. O’Connor and editorializing against her candidacy for Secretary of State, as Sen. O’Connor is a conservative, and the Eagle’s editorial board seems quite liberal and in favor of big government. I would ask the editorial writers, though, to investigate these alleged remarks before citing them again. The Eagle is a newspaper, after all, and it should do some reporting of its own.

    Following is a piece that details the Sen. O’Connor matter, and tells us more about the news media in Kansas.

    OUR NEWS MEDIA’S INACCURATE STORIES
    By Karl Peterjohn, October 26, 2001

    Hey, have you heard the one about the female state senator from Kansas who opposes woman’s right to vote? It’s a story that was first printed in the Kansas City Star and made it into the national press and eventually even into Jay Leno’s monologue.

    The star’s story claims conservative state senator Kay O’Connor, R-Olathe said this after she had finished attending a September 19 League of Women Voters forum in Johnson County. O’Connor who did not speak at this forum was talking privately to a couple of members of the league, Dolores Furtado and Janis McMillen as well as state representative Mary Cook, R-Shawnee.

    Kansas City Star reporter Finn Bullers attended this meeting and belatedly claimed in a September 28 article that O’Connor told these ladies that she opposed the right of women to vote. O’Connor vehemently denies this assertion. What is newsworthy is not the borking of a social conservative in the pages of the liberal Kansas City Star.

    After all this looks like standard policy based on the treatment that another conservative, former Kansas state school board member Linda Holloway also received from the K.C. Star. What was newsworthy was the fact that O’Connor’s written response to this assertion did not make it into even the letters section of the K.C. Star’s editorial page. It appears that O’Connor’s statement would be too politically incorrect for the K.C. Star to let O’Connor say, “This whole affair is simply ridiculous. I have always supported the right of women to vote, and have literally encouraged women to exercise that right.” O’Connor went on to say, “…I am hurt and upset by the manner in which my views have been distorted.”

    Even more outrageous was the fact that another elected official, Rep. Cook, who witnessed the exchange, was unable to have her letter to the editor appear in print as of late October. She wrote the K.C. Star saying, “I was standing next to Kay O’Connor (who) was having her private conversation with Dolores Furtado and Janis McMillen, League of Women Voter members. I can say with confidence that Kay never said that she did not support the 19th Amendment or the women’s right to vote.”

    Trashing state senator O’Connor fits right in with the treatment Judge Robert Bork received during his confirmation hearings in the late 1980’s. Bork’s nomination was scuttled by a tidal wave of inaccurate allegations from left wing and liberal critics that had nothing to do with his qualifications to serve on the federal court. Hence the phrase: “borking.”

    Conservative men are just as big a target for the political left in the Kansas Press as women. Editorial writer Dick Snider in early October used a second hand, anonymous source who claimed that his information came from another anonymous “…party potentate…” who allegedly got it from a person attending a meeting at U.S. Senator Sam Brownback’s house. Brownback supposedly had offered state treasurer Tim Shallenburger a federal position as a consolation prize if he was unsuccessful in running for Kansas governor next year according to columnist Snider. This appalling inaccuracy then appeared in Mr. Snider’s Topeka Capital-Journal column. This assertion could have easily been debunked if Mr. Snider he had bothered to talk to any of the roughly 20 folks who were actually at this meeting. Mr. Snider apparently couldn’t be bothered or most conservatives are unwilling to talk with him. Mr. Snider did issue a semi-retraction October 12 after Senator Brownback’s office called Mr. Snider complaining about this lie, so this case is not quite as outrageous as the KC Star’s distortions.

    I can speak first hand as a similar victim of an inaccurate Kansas City Star article written by the lying Mike Hendricks. These are not isolated cases. If you need more examples, folks should contact former K.C. Star editorialist John Altevogt, who has many more examples about his former newspaper.

    Journalists should know that corrections should be made when mistakes appear in print. It is sad to see some Kansas journalists following down the footpath blazed by the fictional writing in the national press. These abuses have occurred in major papers from the Washington Post to the Boston Globe and led to reporters and columnist’s eventual firing and disgrace. In the Washington Post’s case a Pulitzer Prize was actually awarded and then retracted. In Kansas the borking takes place and the so called “journalists” just keep on writing.

    Credibility is a vital tool for both elected officials and the news media. The fact that major news organizations like the KC Star are either too arrogant or too defensive to even print letters to the editor by elected officials who have been maligned by it are appalling. This is especially true when contrasted with the misbehaviors of politically correct politicians, like President Clinton, who had his Lewinsky scandal story killed initially on the mainstream press’ news desk. If it had not been for the internet and cyber-journalist Matt Drudge, the Monica Lewinsky perjury and obstruction of justice scandal would never have appeared in public. This is not, “all the news that’s fit to print,” but “all the news that fits.”

  • Revolving Door Between Press and Government Turns Again

    Mr. Van Williams, Wichita Eagle city hall reporter for the past three years, will become Wichita’s public information coordinator.

    I believe there needs to be a tension between the press and the government officials it covers. The press needs to hold officials accountable. It needs to dig deep to uncover facts officials don’t voluntarily concede. It needs to ask them tough questions. It needs to make them angry from time to time.

    Would the City of Wichita hire someone who had been doing that?

  • Book review: Knightfall

    Knightfall: Knight Ridder and How the Erosion of Newspaper Journalism Is Putting Democracy At Risk

    Davis Merritt
    Amacom Books, 2005

    The theme of this book, written by a former editor of The Wichita Eagle is that over the past few decades, the business of making newspapers has changed from a business unlike any other to a business just like all others, and we are not well served by this change.

    I think the most important quote from the book is this:

    With a handful of exceptions, American newspapers are being eroded, their traditional values subverted, their journalistic resources stripped away, their dedication to public service and local communities hallowed out, leaving a thin shell of public relations gimmicks that pretend to be public service and entertainment that pretends to be news.

    Newspapers are important. They provide the common set of information that we, as a democracy, can use to work through the issues that face us. Although most people now get news from television and Internet sources, the basis for much of this news content is newspapers.

    How is newspaper journalism different from journalism that happens to be in a newspaper? The answer is that newspaper journalism is “not shaped by a limiting technology,” such as a television broadcast; it values completeness over immediacy, it is lengthier and deeper than other sources of journalism, its goal is relevance rather than entertainment, and opinion and analysis is presented separately from news.

    What has changed?

    External changes have worked against newspapers. The baby boomer generation has not read newspapers with the same frequency as their parents. The fact that most newspapers are now publicly owned means that Wall Street pushes for ever-increasing profits. Newspapers, Mr. Merritt says, are a long-term investment and don’t fare well in today’s short-term investment climate. Technology changes, including the Internet, have been difficult for newspapers to adapt to.

    Internal changes have occurred, too. The “creeping corporatism” of the national chains such as Knight Ridder has distanced newspapers from their local communities. The rise of Management By Objective (MBO) in the newsroom has caused editors to make journalistically unwise decisions. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the wall that has separated the journalism side from the business side of the newspaper business has all but crumbled.

    Is there a solution on the horizon that will bring back the great tradition of newspaper journalism across America? Mr. Merritt presents several possible solutions, but I have the sense that he doesn’t place much hope that any will succeed in the near future.

    I recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand newspapers and their important role in our country.

    Reading this book has helped me understand why our local newspaper is the way it is, which is to say I understand why it so poorly serves our community. It also reinforces my belief that I should spend less time watching television news and spend more time reading the important newspapers of our country: The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and The Christian Science Monitor. All these newspapers place their content on the Internet through their web sites. The Wall Street Journal costs $6.95 monthly, but the other newspapers are free to read, although you may have to register.

    Links to material about this book: Publisher’s page with excerpt, excerpt at Poynter, excerpt at Authorviews.com.

  • Another letter to the editor

    Last time I wrote a letter to the Wichita Eagle for publication, I said that I learned my lesson, which was that I needed to be brief. I didn’t learn this lesson well.

    This Sunday The Eagle printed a letter I submitted, and a large section in the middle was omitted. This omitted material was the entire basis of my argument. As before, here is what I submitted, and what The Eagle printed.

    What I submittedWhat was printed
    When supporting the subsidy to AirTran, Fair Fares supporters grossly — I would say even speciously — overstate the importance of the airport to our local economy.When supporting the subsidy to AirTran, Fair Fares supporters grossly — I would say even speciously — overstate the importance of Wichita Mid-Continent Airport to our local economy.
    As an example, Mr. Troy Carlson, then Chairman of Fair Fares, wrote a letter that was published on September 16, 2004 in the Wichita Eagle. In that letter he claimed $2.4 billion economic benefit from the Fair Fares program ($4.8 billion for the entire state). I was curious about how these figures were derived. I learned that the basis for them is a study by the Center for Economic Development and Business Research at Wichita State University that estimates the economic impact of the airport at $1.6 billion annually. In this study, the salaries of 12,134 employees of Cessna and Bombardier, because these companies use the airport’s facilities, are counted as economic impact dollars that the airport is responsible for generating. Fair Fares supporters perform extrapolations starting with that figure to arrive at the $2.4 and $4.8 billion figures.As an example, Troy Carlson, then chairman of Fair Fares, wrote a letter that was published in The Eagle last September. In that letter, he claimed $2.4 billion in economic benefit from the Fair Fares program ($4.8 billion for the entire state). I was curious about how these figures were derived. I learned that the basis for them is a study by the Center for Economic Development and Business Research at Wichita State University that estimates the economic impact of the airport at $1.6 billion annually. In this study, the salaries of 12,134 employees of Cessna Aircraft Co. and Bombardier Aerospace, because these companies use the airport’s facilities, are counted as economic impact dollars that the airport is responsible for generating. Fair Fares supporters perform extrapolations starting with that figure to arrive at the $2.4 billion and $4.8 billion figures.
    To me, this accounting doesn’t make sense on several levels. For one thing, if we count the economic impact of the income of these employees as belonging to the airport, what then do we say about the economic impact of Cessna and Bombardier? We would have to count it as very little, because the impact of their employees’ earnings has been assigned to the airport.

    Or suppose that Cessna tires of being on the west side of town, so it moves east and starts using Jabara Airport. Would Cessna’s economic impact on Sedgwick County be any different? I think it wouldn’t. But its impact on the Wichita airport would now be zero. Similar reasoning would apply if Cessna built its own runway.

    Or it may be that someday Cessna or Bombardier will ask a local government for some type of economic subsidy, and they will use these same economic impact dollars in their justification. But these dollars will have already been attributed to the airport.

    It is a convenient circumstance that these two manufacturers happen to be located near the airport. To credit the airport with the economic impact of these companies — as though the airport was involved in the actual manufacture of airplanes instead of providing an incidental (but important) service — is to grossly overstate the airport’s role and its economic importance.To credit the airport with the economic impact of these companies is to grossly overstate the airport’s role and its economic importance.
    The best reason for opposing the AirTran subsidy is that it distorts the market process through which individuals and businesses decide how to most productively allocate resources and capital. The second best reason to oppose it is the implausibility of the economic impact figures.

    An article I wrote titled Stretching Figures Strains Credibility provides more information, including a link to the Center for Economic Development and Business Research study.

    		The best reason for opposing the AirTran subsidy is that it distorts the market process. The second-best reason to oppose it is the implausibility of the economic impact figures.

  • Wichita Eagle Says “AirTran Subsidies Foster Competition”

    In an editorial in The Wichita Eagle published on April 19, 2005, Randy Scholfield writes: “Wichita should stick to its subsidies. They’re fostering competition, not stifling it, and paying off big-time for the community by lowering airfares and boosting economic development.”

    Competition, if it is to be meaningful, needs to be fair. It is not fair when one participant has a huge head start in the form of a government subsidy. The Eagle recognizes this when it suits their purpose. When endorsing Sam Brownback for reelection, this newspaper said “He includes in the former his stepped-up fight against the European subsidies of Airbus that have put Boeing and its workers in Wichita at competitive disadvantage.”

    Competition occurs when independent decision-makers, looking at the array of choices available to them, freely make their own decisions. With the AirTran subsidy, we have the City of Wichita (and now apparently Sedgwick County), by using their power to tax, making a decision for us in favor of AirTran. This is not competition.

    Mr. Scholfield, the one subsidy I might support is one that would provide an alternative to the Wichita Eagle! Would you consider that to foster competition in the market for daily newspapers in Wichita?

  • Why is the Wichita news media not interested?

    This is a version of a letter that I have been sending to (mostly) Wichita-area newspapers, television stations, and radio stations. Some have expressed some interest and have even assigned reporters to look into this, but so far no stories have appeared.

    February 11, 2005

    Sherry Chisenhall
    The Wichita Eagle

    Dear Ms. Chishenhall,

    I am writing to express my concern over the lack of reporting on some important issues regarding the downtown Wichita arena tax.

    My research has uncovered several findings, which I summarize here:

    1. The WSU Center for Economic Development and Business Research study does not include depreciation costs, even though Government Accounting Standards Board Statement 34 requires governments to depreciate their assets. Incredibly, the CEDBR at WSU was not aware of this requirement when they prepared the study that was used to promote the proposed arena. They admitted this when I called it to their attention.

    2. The WSU study did not allow for the substitution effect. This is the term used to describe what research has found: that much of the new economic activity such as bars and restaurants that might appear around a downtown arena would be bars and restaurants that have moved from other parts of the city. There is little or no new economic activity, just movement of existing activity. Mr. Ed Wolverton, President of the Wichita Downtown Development Corporation, admitted this oversight in a television news story.

    3. Arena proponents cite economic benefit as a reason why the community as a whole should pay for the construction and operation of the arena. I have found no research that supports the claim of economic benefit. There is, however, ample research to the contrary. For example, in a paper titled “Professional Sports Facilities, Franchises and Urban Economic Development” (UMBC Economics Department Working Paper 03-103) by Dennis Coates and Brad R. Humphreys of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County we find this quote:

    “Siegfried and Zimbalist (2000) recently surveyed the growing literature on retrospective studies of the economic impact of sports facilities and franchises on local economies. The literature published in peer-reviewed academic journals differs strikingly from the predictions in ‘economic impact studies.’ No retrospective econometric study found any evidence of positive economic impact from professional sports facilities or franchises on urban economies.”

    I created a handout I made for the legislators that provides more information. A link to it is here:

    http://wichitaliberty.org/files/Sedgwick_County_Legislative_Delegation_2005-02-05.pdf

    There has been much recent news about the financial performance of publicly-owned institutions. Often government leaders proclaim their ignorance about what the facts of the matter were, and then your newspaper has to editorialize about government leaders not doing due diligence before committing to projects. Mr. Brownlee wrote such an editorial just this week.

    Here we have a final opportunity to examine the issues involving the wisdom of a taxpayer-built arena before it is too late. I am not asking that you believe what I have said just on my say-so. I believe, however, that the people of our town would appreciate someone with the skill and experience of your reporters performing an investigation to see if they reach the same conclusions I have.