Tag: Wichita news media

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.”

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.

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.

In the November 7, 2004 Wichita Eagle, columnist Mark McCormick again confuses the proper role of government and individual.

He starts by talking about the spirit of the people in Wichita, how they will help you push your car, how they will hold open the door for you, etc. He refers to this as “neighborliness.” He labels Karl Peterjohn, Executive Director of the Kansas Taxpayers Network, as not belonging to this group, because of his opposition to tax increases.

Because Peterjohn opposed the arena and a school bond issue a few years ago, McCormick thinks he also opposed the wheel and fire. This type of ridicule does not advance Mr. McCormick’s argument.

I would ask Mr. McCormick if it is neighborly to vote for something that if passed, would require that your neighbor pay to subsidize your pleasure. That’s what the downtown arena tax does. It requires everyone to pay for something that benefits only a few.

The things that Mr. McCormick labels as being neighborly are things we do because we want to. Many people want to give of themselves to make things better for others. When we do that, either by holding open a door for someone or by giving substantially of our time and money, we are directly engaged in the noble act of charity. The givers of charity directly receive the benefits of having donated, and because it is our own resources we are giving, we make sure that our effort is not wasted.

When the government, however, taxes us and gives the money to those it does not belong to, it is not an act of charity. It is not neighborly, as we don’t even know those who received the benefit. The givers do not receive the benefit of having donated, because the taxes were taken from them by force.

The arguments Mr. McCormick makes, much like in his column from earlier in the week, refer to someone being “creative” and “taking a risk” and how Wichita might become “place where dreams and ideas usually die.”

How is it being “creative” for Sedgwick County to tax its citizens and build the same type of arena that all the other cities — the cities we are supposed to compete with — have already built?

How is it “taking a risk” for government officials to tax citizens to build an arena? If the arena fails to generate revenue sufficient to cover its costs, will the politicians be responsible? Of course they won’t. They will simply ask the citizens for more taxes, as is happening right now with Wichita’s Old Town special tax district.

Furthermore, I contend that the more government there is, the less “dreams and ideas” there will be, whether they live or die. For example, downtown arena supporters claim that the arena will attract bars and restaurants to its vicinity. What, then, should entrepreneurs do right now, if they are interested in opening bars or restaurants? Should they wait several years to see if the arena is built, and if it does in fact attract customers? Or should they build elsewhere, and then hope that the arena doesn’t detract too much from its business? This is not the type of climate that encourages individual risk-taking.

The same week that this column appeared Walter E. Williams wrote in a column titled “Why We’re a Divided Nation” these words: “The prime feature of political decision-making is that it’s a zero-sum game. One person or group’s gain is of necessity another person or group’s loss. As such, political allocation of resources is conflict enhancing while market allocation is conflict reducing. The greater the number of decisions made in the political arena, the greater is the potential for conflict.”

When we say “yes” to the things Mr. McCormick advocates, we rely on politicians and government to make our decisions, thereby increasing conflict. We should say “no” more often to government and let individuals and free markets make more decisions. We will have less conflict.

Writing in the November 3, 2004 Wichita Eagle, columnist Mark McCormick labels the vote in favor of a taxpayer-funded, government-owned arena a “rebirth of city’s pioneering spirit.” In this column, Mr. McCormick mentions our famous entrepreneurs and aerospace industry pioneers. Although he explicitly denies comparing the building of a downtown arena to the genius of Beech and Cessna, this article claims that the downtown arena will somehow lead to a rebirth of Wichita.

What I think Mr. McCormick has overlooked is that the people who in the past made Wichita great were people working as individuals, not as governments. Now, when we look to get something done, we look first to the government, and we seem to think that’s a good thing. The entrepreneurs and risk-takers of the past were investing their own money, their own sweat and toil. Our government leaders invest none of this.

The effect of the downtown arena vote is that instead of trusting the individual, or on organizations that individuals freely enter in to, we invest our hope and future in politicians and government bureaucrats. Instead of letting free competitive markets work, we rely on increasing government interference in the market. Is this the pioneering spirit that made Wichita great that Mr. McCormick refers to?