Monday, June 19, 2023

News bits: Local newspapers under stress; Effects of loss of local newspapers; Climate change education

A NYT article discusses local government officials punishing local newspapers for printing unflattering content about how local government works or fails to work. This exemplifies the inherent conflict between powerful special interests including governments, big businesses and religious organizations on one side, and the usually far less powerful newspapers and the public interest on the other. The two sides are often or usually at odds. The big guys seem to usually get most or all of what they want. The NYT writes
Two of the most powerful women in the village of Delhi in central New York sat face to face in a brick building on Main Street for what would become a fight over the First Amendment.

It was the fall of 2019. Tina Molé, the top elected official in Delaware County, was demanding that Kim Shepard, the publisher of The Reporter, the local newspaper, “do something” about what Ms. Molé saw as the paper’s unfair coverage of the county government.

Ms. Shepard stood her ground. Not long after, Ms. Molé struck where it would hurt The Reporter the most: its finances. The county stripped the newspaper of a lucrative contract to print public notices, subsequently informing The Reporter that the decision was partly based on “the manner in which your paper reports county business.”

The move cost The Reporter about $13,000 a year in revenue — a significant blow to a newspaper with barely 4,000 subscribers.  
In recent years, newspapers in Colorado, North Carolina, New Jersey and California, as well as New York, have been stripped of their contracts for public notices after publishing articles critical of their local governments. Some states, like Florida, are going even further, revoking the requirement that such notices have to appear in newspapers.  
The trend is the latest example of how public officials and wealthy individuals are waging war on news organizations that cover them aggressively.
In Germaine's ideal world, local governments would not be able to attack newspapers like this. Doing so injures the public interest. Attacks like this are inherently anti-democratic, pro-authoritarian and pro-corruption. 

Q: Does it injure the public interest and is inherently anti-democratic, pro-authoritarian and/or pro-corruption for local governments to financially attack local newspapers?
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________

Social science research: There has been a lot of research directed to finding and quantifying effects of the loss of local newspapers in the areas they serve and the people they inform. A June 2022 article by Northwestern University comments on the effects of local newspaper loss:
The United States continues to lose newspapers at a rate of two per week, further dividing the nation into wealthier, faster growing communities with access to local news, and struggling areas without.

Between the pre-pandemic months of late 2019 and the end of May 2022, more than 360 newspapers closed, the report by Medill’s Local News Initiative found. Since 2005, the country has lost more than one-fourth of its newspapers and is on track to lose a third by 2025.

Most of the communities that have lost newspapers do not get a print or digital replacement, leaving 70 million residents — or a fifth of the country’s population — either living in an area with no local news organizations, or one at risk, with only one local news outlet and very limited access to critical news and information that can inform their everyday decisions and sustain grassroots democracy. About 7 percent of the nation’s counties, or 211, now have no local newspaper.

“This is a crisis for our democracy and our society, said Penelope Muse Abernathy, visiting professor at Medill and the principal author of the report. “Invariably, the economically struggling, traditionally underserved communities that need local journalism the most are the very places where it is most difficult to sustain print or digital news organizations.”

Recent research shows that, in communities without a strong print or digital news organization, voter participation declines and corruption increases, Abernathy said, contributing to the spread of misinformation, political polarization and reduced trust in media.
This growing dearth of local news outlets is leading researchers to call the places that have lost papers “news deserts,” and academic studies are finding a correlation between less local news and decreased civic participation in those places.

The Pew Research Center has been watching these trends. It recently reported that in 2018, the last year for which cumulative data were available, overall newspaper circulation in the U.S. shrank 8 percent and industry revenues dropped 13 percent—continuing a spiral that began in the mid-2000s. The center also calculated that between 2004 and 2018, newspaper newsroom employment dropped by almost half— 47 percent.
Qs: Does it injure the public interest and is inherently anti-democratic, pro-authoritarian and/or pro-corruption for local governments to financially attack local newspapers?

Should state or federal governments prop up professional local newspapers, or should they be left to the impulses of capitalism and free markets running wild and butt naked (unregulated)?
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________

Climate change education in public schools, or lack thereof: A NYT opinion piece discusses the situation:
This is the message, too, of the new middle-grade edition of Douglas W. Tallamy’s “Nature’s Best Hope,” a best-selling approach to conservation that begins at home. “Over the years, human beings have shown that we’re very good at destroying habitats. Now we have to show that we’re smart enough and thoughtful enough and caring enough to restore what we have ruined,” Mr. Tallamy tells young readers. “I believe we can do it, if you help.”

This is all crucial information for children who live in a country where only one state — New Jersey — includes the study of climate change at all grade levels, and where the science standards for middle-school students in more than 40 states include only a single reference to climate change. In hurricane-plagued Florida, middle-school science standards make no reference to climate change at all. 
Maybe it seems a little excessive for someone to bring home an armload of environmental books meant for her neighbors’ children to read, but to me it felt like an exercise in hope.

As I read those books, it dawned on me that picture-book authors and illustrators are laying the groundwork for a better climate future by tapping into children’s inborn compassion, curiosity and sense of justice. These books explain how important it is for everyone to help, kids included, and they give the adults no place to hide. If a child can care so much, shouldn’t we care, too?
Q: Is it reasonable to think that the reason that climate change science isn't taught much or at all in most public schools is due mostly, say ~90%, to these two influences: 
1. The pro-pollution business community (oil, gas, coal and chemical companies) and its massive, well-funded, decades-long anti-climate change propaganda war and the irrational public distrust of science it has intentionally fomented; and
2. Authoritarian radical right anti-government, brass knuckles corrupted capitalist politicians armed with their rigid authoritarian, pro-business, no-compromise ideology? 

Or, is public judgment,** ignorance and/or apathy also a major factor(s)?[1] 

** What if the public's judgment is significantly clouded by the anti-climate change propaganda war the pro-pollution business community continues to fight to this day. 


Footnote: 
6 Climate change is a lower priority for Americans than other national issues. 

While a majority of Americans view climate change as a major threat, it is a lower priority than issues such as strengthening the economy and reducing health care costs.

Overall, 37% of Americans say addressing climate change should be a top priority for the president and Congress in 2023, and another 34% say it’s an important but lower priority. This ranks climate change 17th out of 21 national issues included in a Center survey from January.

As with views of the threat that climate change poses, there’s a striking contrast between how Republicans and Democrats prioritize the issue. For Democrats, it falls in the top half of priority issues, and 59% call it a top priority. By comparison, among Republicans, it ranks second to last, and just 13% describe it as a top priority.

___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________

Merrick Garland intentionally tried to protect DJT from culpability for his 1/6 coup attempt: The WaPo writes:
In the DOJ’s investigation of Jan. 6, key Justice officials also quashed an early plan for a task force focused on people in Trump’s orbit

A Washington Post investigation found that more than a year would pass before prosecutors and FBI agents jointly embarked on a formal probe of actions directed from the White House to try to steal the election. Even then, the FBI stopped short of identifying the former president as a focus of that investigation.

A wariness about appearing partisan, institutional caution, and clashes over how much evidence was sufficient to investigate the actions of Trump and those around him all contributed to the slow pace. Garland and the deputy attorney general, Lisa Monaco, charted a cautious course aimed at restoring public trust in the department while some prosecutors below them chafed, feeling top officials were shying away from looking at evidence of potential crimes by Trump and those close to him, The Post found.
Instead of restoring trust in the DoJ, this leads me to have even less trust in it. What other elite criminals and their crimes has the DoJ quashed?

This is more evidence that we have a two-tiered system of law enforcement and justice. The rich and powerful tend to get more leniency, benefits of doubt, and flat out free passes for most of their crimes, including serious ones. 

We have all heard the howls of self-righteous moral outrage from radical right Republican Party elites and their propaganda Leviathan, e.g., Faux Lies. Most Republicans in congress publicly claim that the DoJ is partisan, "weaponized" and corrupted for indicting DJT. This is more evidence that the howls of outrage are just insulting, cynical lies. The weaponization isn't against criminals and traitors like DJT. It is weaponized against non-elites and it protects criminals and traitors like DJT.

No comments:

Post a Comment