Category Archives: Media

Blaming Grandpa

Posted on by
1

We live in a time when we have “friends” throughout the world but we don’t know our next door neighbor. 

 We wave at our neighbors but we don’t talk to them very much and certainly not about anything significant. But we’ll text people in other cities. We’ll link in with them or we’ll book our faces with them or we send them an Instagram.  Some still twitter to share things with people we’ve never met.  But we just wave at our neighbors—-and what was their name again?

My grandfather didn’t invent the internet but he might have set in motion the sorry state of affairs outlined by Media writer Eric Burns almost thirty years ago when he wrote, “Every improvement in the technology of communications during the last century has led to greater isolation among people. It is a remarkable paradox, as if every improvement in the technology of hygiene had led to greater illness, every improvement in the technology of transportation had led to greater distance.” 

 If you need proof, put your cell phone away when you’re walking along a busy street and watch the crowd and see how many people are walking while they’re talking on the phone or texting or checking emails, never looking at the people around them, not even talking with friends or associates walking with them.   

“It began with Rural Free Delivery that brought the mail to the person,” wrote Burns.  

One of my grandfathers was a rural mail carrier in Mitchell County, Kansas in the 1920s and 1930s, delivering mail to people such as my other grandfather, a farmer. 

“Before RFD, the person had to come to the mail, which was deposited for him at a centralized place.  Usually the place was a general store; usually the person was a farmer who would kill two birds with one stone, picking up his mail at the same time he shopped for groceries and supplies,” wrote Burns, who noted the farmer also would “socialize, visit with the other farmers and their families who were at the general store for the same reason.  And this was one of the few chances such people had to pass time with their neighbors; their farms were many miles apart and their days too busy with chores to allow for casual dropping in.  It was a lonely life. Ironically, the inefficiency of the postal system made it less so.”

But, he says, when people like my one grandfather started delivering the mail to farmers like my other grandfather, the farmers had more time to farm and the general store as a social institution died.  He cites one of this writer’s favorite historians, Daniel Boorstin, who wrote, “From every farmer’s doorstep there now ran a highway to the world. But at the price of dissolving the old face-to-face communities.”  

Then along came radio to make things worse.  It brought entertainment and information into the home.  It wasn’t necessary to go to town for those things.  And it killed the Chautauqua movement and eliminated more face-to-face interaction.

The telephone system had improved to the point where—as NYU Professor Neil Postman put it–
“a strange world of acoustic space in which disembodied voices exchange information intimately and in specially developed personas” developed.  The telephone did not require face-to-face communication.  Then television. Then home video. Then computers.  And e-mail.  Burns quoted Henry David Thoreau: “Lot! Men have become the tools of their tools.”

The progression suggested by Burns in 1988 was continued in 2012 by Dr. James Emery White, the former President of the Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Massachusetts and senior pastor of the Mecklenburg Community Church in Charlotte, North Carolina.  He wrote of “hyper-connectivity” in his blog, saying analysts are split on this “bane of the so-called millennials, the generation born from 1981-2000.” 

 “Some feel it will make millennials ‘nimble analysts and decision makers.’ Others feel it will mean an inability to retain information, a tendency to be easily distracted, and a lack of ‘deep thinking capabilities’ and ‘face-to-face social skills.’”  White leaned toward the latter and cites a UCLA study in 2007 that showed “the internet is weakening our comprehension and transforming us into shallow thinkers.” 

He, too, quotes Boorstin: “The greatest menace to progress is not ignorance, but the illusion of knowledge,” which leads him to compare the words “hyper” and “hypo.”   HYPER means “above,” or “over,” he says.  HYPO means “below” or “under.” 

He concludes, “So while it is an age of hyper-connectivity, perhaps we should also acknowledge the inevitable result.  Hypo-intellectualism.”  

Other analysts can cite other reasons for our contradicting lifestyles that isolate us from those next door to us but bring us influences from far away.  This observer, for instance, thinks the window screen, not the rural mail carrier, is a major factor in this social, and therefore political, decline in thought.   And the contradicting effects of the debilitating involvement in Vietnam and the glorious success of the Apollo space program changed out national outlook to inward thinking.  But screened windows, a war, and a space program are discussions for another time. 

Why go through this pondering?

Because something has to explain why this nation is in the political mess it is in, particularly at our state and our national levels. Self-absorption is one thing.  But self-absorption about our self-absorption can only make the situation worse because studying our navels only drives us further inward and farther away from the general store and the Chautauqua.  

Even this entry is an example.  We could be having this discussion around a table at the general store if such a thing existed. Or in more contemporary times, the coffee shop (free Wi-fi available).  But instead, we are connecting hyperly.  

I think that today, when I see my neighbor, I will cross the street and talk to him, not wave. 

Donnie and the press

Posted on by
1

(An Elton John tune has been going through your observer’s mind for the last few days)

Donald Trump doesn’t like reporters. “You know my opinion of the press—very low,” he said at a recent press conference. “The media is among the most dishonest groups of people I’ve ever met,” he has said. “Seventy-five percent is absolutely dishonest, absolute scum, scum,” he has proclaimed.

“The media frankly is made up of people—in many cases, not in all cases—who are not good people,” he said. “I think the political press is among the most dishonest people that I’ve ever known…I find the political press to be unbelievably dishonest.”

Just to set the tone of this entry early, let it be known that this observer is proud to have been “scum” for more than a half-century. It is, believe it or not, a strange badge of honor given by people such as Donald Trump to carry the label of not being “good people.”

One might be tempted to respond, “That’s true. Of course, do not forget that people are known for the company that they keep. And guess who we’ve been keeping company with.”   But that would be snarky and unprofessional and will be left unsaid.

Trump’s attitude means we are doing our jobs. And people like Donald Trump don’t believe we should do our jobs, which is questioning the honesty and credibility of people such as Donald Trump.

Trump seems to think his characterizations of the press will (a) make his followers love him even more without reservation and (b) intimidate the press.   We don’t know if any of his most loyal adherents will ever be bothered by the things they are learning from those of us whom Trump despises but we do know that efforts to intimidate the press don’t work. Good reporters don’t back off, especially when people such as Trump have no responses to their questions beyond name-calling.

Trump has threatened to change libel laws if he’s elected President so he can sue reporters more easily. He regularly ignores the fact that he is not running for dictator, but is running for an office that is only one-third of government and that he cannot by himself determine what the law is.

One thing journalists know above all else about libel law is that truth is an absolute defense. That standard is terribly unwelcome to people such as Donald Trump who seem to think truth should be defined as whatever falls from their lips.

What triggered the newest broadside was solid reporting by David Farenthold of the Washington Post. You recall Trump bragged in January at an event he held when he skipped an Iowa Caucus debate that he had raised six million dollars for veterans’ groups in one hour, including one-million dollars he personally donated.

He lied.

He and his campaign have now admitted, in fact, that the total amount raised in the last five months is not six million dollars but 5.6, even with the million dollars Trump finally did contribute—late last month.

The Post did a lot of spade work to discover only half of that amount had been distributed to veterans’ groups by early May. And Trump had NOT contributed one-million dollars in January. He wrote a check May 24th, the day more distributions were made—after Farenthold started asking questions that Trump’s people either refused to answer or tried to squirm out of answering. Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks retorted, “If the media spent half as much time highlighting the work of these groups and how our veterans have been so mistreated, rather than trying to disparage Mr. Trump’s generosity for a totally unsolicited gesture for which he had no obligation, we would all be better for it.”

The response is a cheap and completely unoriginal one that is not uncommon when reporters start pressing candidates for the truth. Attack the questioner for asking the question. Ms. Hicks conveniently ignores the reams of stories that have been written about mistreatment of veterans, whether by the VA or even in Arlington National Cemetery, and more reams of stories written every year about the work of local and national veterans’ organizations. Mr. Trump’s “generosity” was not expressed in January, when he said it was, but was only expressed (for lack of a better word) in May after Farenthold started asking questions and others started picking up the story. An “unsolicited gesture for which he had no obligation” is a curious phrase, certainly. Was it an “unsolicited gesture” or was it a well-staged event to take the spotlight away from a debate he dodged with his opponents? Is there no obligation when one says in January that he has contributed one-million dollars—but he hadn’t?

There is every indication that questions about Trump’s character (and Hillary Clinton’s character as well) will only intensify, not because the press has a vendetta against them (some undoubtedly do, as some undoubtedly are apologists) but because the stakes are high and the spotlight must be harsh.

So let’s be clear. To Donald Trump, fair press coverage is any coverage that lets him spout, unchallenged, anything that he says as gospel.   Those who don’t believe that is the role of the press are “scum.”

Forty years ago, when the Arab oil embargo drove up energy prices and inflation was leading to home loan rates of almost twenty percent, Joe Teasdale won the Missouri governorship by promising to lower utility rates and fire the Public Service Commission, which sets the rates for state-regulated utilities. He knew it was economically impossible to lower utility rates and legally impossible to fire the members of the PSC. But it was a populist message that resonated just enough for him to get into office. He referred to those of us in the Capitol press corps who had questioned him repeatedly on the issue as “jaded.”

At his first press conference after his election, he found himself facing several Capitol reporters wearing pins reading “Jaded J. C. Reporter.” It was a pin reporters were proud to wear and some of those reporters, now long gone from the Capitol, still have those pins.

Perhaps it’s time the reporters covering the Trump campaign started wearing pins with the word “scum” on them.   It would be an honor to have one.

And it would be a message to the man on the stage that name-calling will not stop fact-checking, and will not give a free pass to demagoguery.

Tearing up the Senate

Posted on by
1

Work crews have started tearing seats out of the place where visitors to the state Senate have watched floor activities since 1919 so the Senate can get those pesky reporters farther away from being able to see and hear what is going on. Or not.

20160525_135451

Seats installed during the restoration of the chamber in 2001 were stacked along a fourth floor hallway wall when we dropped by the other day.  We haven’t heard what will be done with them although it seems the most sensible thing would be to store them somewhere safe so they could be put back in place when a less-vindictive mood runs the place.  We won’t rehash what that’s all about here.  We’ve flailed at that subject in earlier entries that you can find in the archives.

We have preserved a historic moment in this process—the last time (for now, we hope) that members of the Capitol press corps were allowed to sit at what has been the press table since the earliest days of the building.

senate press table2

That’s Bob Watson of the Jefferson City News Tribune, the senior Senate reporter, in the blue suit on the right.  Summer Ballentine of the Associated Press is on the other side of the table, in the orange jacket.   Most of the others are Senate staff members except for the fellow next to Summer.

That’s Senate President Pro Tem Ron Richard, who decided earlier this year that people such as Bob and Summer are so undeserving to cover the Senate from that table anymore that the Senate will spend $12,000 for each of the ten positions around the table to move them and their colleagues to the gallery on the other side of the chamber.

Senator Richard lectured his colleagues during the session about honoring Senate traditions and rules.

One of the Senate rules is that Senators will not sit at the press table when the Senate is in session.  We think it was in session when this picture was taken.  Majority Floor Leader Mike Kehoe was in the Chair.

Will the Senate behave any better or any worse now that the scourge of the Press is removed from its sight?   Will the reporting of the actions of the Senate be better or worse because reporters now will occupy space where spectators have been able to sit for 97 years?

senate press table3

The first test will come during the September veto session.  It would be good, however, for the Senate to remember that the Press might now be out of sight—-but it shouldn’t be out of mind.

 

 

Capitol credits

Posted on by
Reply

If politicians weren’t so self-contradictory, political reporters would have no fun at all.  Saying one thing and doing another, saying different things in different places, taking positions that seem opposite from similar positions provide fodder for those in the press or in the citizenry at large who hope for stability in the political system, particularly stability based on the highest ideals of service to all of the people.  That’s an awfully high bar and probably an unrealistic one but without expecting the highest levels of commitment and service, the alternative can too easily become  the lowest level of results.

The leader of the Missouri Senate, Senator Ron Richard, loves the Capitol.  Even before he became Speaker of the House in 2009, Richard was aware of the building’s deteriorating condition and was looking for a way to restore and maintain the state’s greatest symbol.  We talked during his time as Speaker of his hopes to establish an endowment program, an idea that was worthy but not likely to attract the kind of money that, instead, flows too easily to those who want to hold office in that building.

But what a wonderful thing that would be!   Imagine the endowment that could be established if, say, Rex Sinquefield and the Humphreys family—two entities that throw millions of dollars at candidates every election cycle—would make the same kind of commitment to the Capitol in just one off-year.  It’s not fair to single them out so imagine the endowment that could be created if all of the other special interests and individuals who underwrite campaigns wrote comparable checks to the Capitol endowment fund just once.

But that’s one of the contradictions of our political system.  Restoring and maintaining the building where policy is enacted is always going to be much less important than influencing the people who enact the policies and maintaining that influence.   What value is there in making sure the state’s most powerful symbol of democracy crumbles when money can be better invested in making sure democracy itself, as an institution for the benefit of all, crumbles in the face of protection for the few?

Senator Richard thinks he finally has found a lever that can move his idea for restoring and preserving the State Capitol.  A tax credit program.

About fifty million dollars is being spent fixing some horrible leaks under the south front Capitol stairs.  The water running into basement spaces is causing numerous problems for those who work or store things there.   The money is provided by a bond issue and is therefore limited and has to be paid back out of the general tax collections.  Richard’s plan would provide some ongoing funding without lowering the amount available to pay for state operations.

Richard proposes changes to the present Historic Preservation Tax Credit program that’s important in communities throughout the state.  Some of Richard’s conservative legislative colleagues have a low opinion of them regardless of the value they have to their home towns.  He suggests reducing the historic tax credits by ten million dollars and shifting twenty million dollars into a special fund that could be grown to restore, repair, and maintain the Capitol.

It’s kind of complicated but some of the proceeds from the program would be spent to solicit donations into the Capitol endowment fund.  He thinks his plan would encourage people and trusts and foundations to contribute to the fund, which also would support ongoing needs of the Executive Mansion, the Transportation Department building—which the legislature wants to take over as a Capitol office annex—and, maybe, the Supreme Court Building.

A Senate committee has held a hearing on Richard’s proposal to give it a first public airing.  Richard knows the idea won’t go anywhere this year but he’s gotten it on the table and hopes it can be passed next year.  Some fine-tuning is likely because it seems to raise some concerns in the local historic preservation movement.

But it’s a good start for a proposal to preserve a symbol of the best that Missouri can be.

It’s interesting that Senator Richard wants to raise millions of dollars to preserve and protect the Capitol at the same time he is insisting the Senate spend thousands and thousands of dollars to tear up one of the architectural treasures of the building—the Senate visitors’ gallery—so he can kick the press off of the floor of the Senate where they have sat at a table since the building was brand new, all because of a complaint that grows more petty with the passage of time.

Contradictions.  Reporters love them.  In this case, though, it appears that those who live by the contradiction will suffer by one of them.   Too bad the money earmarked for the effort against legislative reporters couldn’t be invested, instead, in Richard’s more praiseworthy effort to preserve and protect the building—including preserving the Senate visitor’s gallery.

Notes from a quiet street—IV

Posted on by
Reply

A fourth in a series of 2016 observations on the passing scene from one who has time now to observe the passing scene without going full bloggal.)

——

George, who lives down this quiet street, down the hill and around the corner, says he has been inspired by the legislature to open his own fast-food business.  He thinks he’ll call it “Colonel George’s Missouri-Fried Turkey.”  He’s a little presumptuous about calling himself “Colonel,” because he flunked out of auctioneer school before he earned the title but he figures nobody will care once his marketing department (his wife) goes into full operations.

George was talking about the choices his customers will have.

“May I have a couple of legs, some breast meat, and a wing?”

“Ma’am, we only sell the entire turkey.  But our prices for the entire bird are less than you’d pay at the grocery store deli counter for those two legs, some breast meat, and a wing.”

“Really!!   Well, I guess I’ll have the whole turkey then.”

“Excellent.  How would you like it, over easy, sunny side up, or over hard?”

“I don’t understand….”

“Well, ma’am, it’s simple.  The Missouri legislature has been talking about changing the constitution so that fertilized eggs are considered to be the whole thing.  So we use only the finest, Missouri-made fertilized turkey eggs because once they’re fertilized, they would have full turkeyhood. So you get both legs, all of the breast meat, both wings, even the neck and all the giblets for one low price.  And if you want to take some, or even all of it, home, you won’t take up all of your space in the freezer or the refrigerator.”

George thinks his restaurant will be a big hit.  He’s trying to talk us into investing in the project with him but we’ve told him we want to think about it.  Our banker and the AARP have told us that as people living on fixed incomes we need to be careful how we invest our meager savings.  So we’re being real careful about this.

George is even talking about expanding his business once the MFT concept takes off and hundreds of franchise restaurants are opened.  He’s thinking about going into the barbecue business.  Once Beauregard and Bossy have their barnyard frolic, George figures he can start serving almost-instant barbecued veal, something you don’t find in your usual barbecue joints.  And he probably won’t charge much more than he charges for the turkey—just enough to cover the cost of the recovery of the animal because cows don’t lay eggs; you have to go get them, which is a little more labor intensive and long rubber gloves will add additional expense.

He’s also considering the same thing with barbecued pork.  For an extra fifty cents he’ll even give you an apple because it won’t fit into the mouth of the pig

George has been asking about space at the big outlet mall at the Lake of the Ozarks. He figures he could make a lot of money by selling his turkey, beef, and pork at near-retail so the customers think they’re getting a bargain while he doesn’t have to sell his products at wholesale rates as he will have to do with his franchisees.

He’s a little puzzled about how his business plan would work with fish because fish eggs can command pretty good prices on their own, probably better than he could charge for serving one sunny side up, over easy, or over hard.  But George is a thinker. He might figure something out.

George thinks the idea of bestowing “hood” on fertilized eggs holds great promise not only for him but for the entire state because it becomes, in his mind at least, an economic development measure that will create new jobs and generate more taxes that legislators then can cut and make themselves look good to voters.  To show his support for the concept, he has joined the Chamber of Commerce.

—-

Ran into somebody the other day who recalled the saying, “Authority makes some people grow—others just swell.” She didn’t recall who originally said it and it appears nobody really knows but a lot of people have repeated it. Various sources cite various people. One says the saying had been around in Washington for at least a hundred years.

She remembered that this has been a time in past legislative sessions where various organizations started thinking about rating the lawmakers. Many years ago, one periodical put together a list of “white hats” and “black hats.”   The St. Louis Globe-Democrat used to issue a list of outstanding legislators.

Her suggestion: Somebody who has been immersed in the Capitol Climate assemble a list of those who have grown and those who have just swelled this year. Who has grown as a leader? Who has just gotten puffed up with their self-importance? Who has taken stands that show leadership?   Who is on the list of mere panderers?

—-

The comments reminded us that many years ago in the irreverent years of our reportorial youth, some of us in the House Press Gallery would bestow unofficial awards to those we had been watching in the chamber below us. We don’t remember all of the awards but there was the Cockroach Award that went to the lawmaker who had to get up and chew on other people’s bills every chance they got. Cockroaches, you see, like to eat paper. Another award was the “Furniture Award,” to the legislator who seemed to be about as useful as his desk. Never said anything. Almost never sponsored a bill. Just sat there. On the last day of the session one year your observer asked Representative Winne Weber, one of the great characters of her generation in the Hosue, if she would ask this representative for his opinion on a bill. Any bill. He might have been the only member of the entire 163-member of the House whose voice we had not recorded that year—because he never said anything. So late in the evening (we still adjourned at midnight then) she asked the speaker if she could inquire of the “Gentleman from (wherever he was from),” and the Speaker called his name.   The Furniture Representative didn’t even know he was being summoned for inquiry until his colleagues rousted him from his intense preoccupation with his pipe (they still allowed smoking in the chamber then). He looked up, looked around, wasn’t sure what to do, did not appear to know he needed to go to the closest microphone so he could answer a question.   Winnie by then was laughing so hard that she asked the speaker to withdraw her request and the Speaker told the Furniture Representative he was no longer needed. He sat back down at his desk, appearing to be completely unsure what had just happened, and went back to the comfort of his pipe.

I think we retired the “Furniture Award” after that. He served about twenty years in the House and retired undefeated in that award category.

Correction

Posted on by
Reply

Your correspondent was awakened far too early this morning with the thought that he had made a grievous error in criticizing the leader of the Missouri Senate in yesterday’s entry for his effort to kick former colleagues in the press corps out of the historic press table on the Senate floor.  

We regret that error.

In these pre-dawn hours, as we type this, we realize there are TEN chairs at the press table, not eight as we said.  That lowers the cost of the move from the $16,000 per chair that we mentioned yesterday to only $12,700 per chair.  

And it follows that we would commend the Senate leaders for delaying the move to avoid overtime costs that would have made the price for each chair $17,100 instead of the $20,000 that we mentioned. 

And in all honesty, our mention of the Pentagon’s $700 toilet seat in the 1980s also was an unfair comparison.  We checked with the Federal Reserve System and the Fed calculates $700 in 1980 is equivalent to $2010.44 today, so the toilet seat-to-press corps chair cost is not as excessive as we portrayed yesterday. 

But our early-morning conscience, which forced the publication of this correction, wonders what kind of new chairs our former colleagues will get for $12,700.  For that price, one might expect a leather upholstered recliner with cupholders, a warming system, and maybe a therapeutic massage feature.   

We apologize to the Senate leadership for our miscalculation. 

  

 

Needed words and $16,000 chairs

Posted on by
Reply

(This post is rated “R” because of language)

Senate Leader Ron Richard gave his colleagues a dressing-down last week.  He has had his fill of fellow senators ignoring rules of common courtesy and respect for one another and for the position of Senator.  

It’s about time somebody said what he said.   

The Senate has written rules on decorum. But the UNwritten rules are as important, maybe more important, because they’re the kind of rules of common courtesy and respectful language that our parents tried to drum into us.   Good manners are not laughing matters. 

We’re not going to get into a discussion of rudeness and crudeness in campaigns.  That’s not what Richard was talking about and that’s not what we’re going to talk about here. 

Not long after Jefferson City became the state capital in 1826, a newly-elected member of the House of Representatives went to the Governor’s House—that’s what it was called then at a time when the first government building in Jefferson City housed the legislature and a two-room apartment for the governor—and went to the second floor to present his credentials.  Sorry, he was told, this is the Senate.  You should be downstairs in the House.  The new state rep supposedly observed that he had passed through the House on his way upstairs and thought it was a grog shop, what we today would call a rather raucous bar.  

The Senate likes to maintain the idea that the House is a noisy, unruly joint while the Senate is the place of dignity and cool reflection on potential law.  In recent years, we have observed, too many Senators seem to think the Senate is little more than a smaller House. 

Some former House members have sometimes addressed the Senate’s presiding officer as “Mr. Speaker” two years after becoming Senators, and in debate have sometimes referred to each other as “gentleman,” or “lady,” which are House terms.  Everybody in the Senate is a Senator and the presiding officer is “Mr. President,” or “Madame President.”  Slovenly discipline is such a small thing as this used to not happen.

There are Senate rules about where members can walk, which aisles they can use to get to their seats—and above all, they are not to walk between two debating Senators.  But it has happened all too often, and the reaction has too often been treated as some kind of a joke.

It has been considered extremely rude for one senator to ask another senator on the floor why a vote was cast the way it was.  Not so much anymore.  Senators are free to give their opinions on legislation during debate but they are not accountable to one another for their final votes on a bill.  They should be accountable to their constituents, and ultimately are, although being accountable to donors and influence-peddlers in the halls can’t be overlooked.

And language.  Your chronicler of events remembers the day a Senator slipped and referred to being “pissed off,” and was so embarrassed by his comment that he started to apologize even before the gavel came down to admonish him.  That seems such an innocent time.  A few days before Richard spoke on a point of personal privilege, one senator had referred to an issue as “bullshit.”  Richard told the senate that profanity has no place in the chamber and will not be tolerated hereafter. 

He can’t do anything about “the f-word” aimed at the governor by at least one senator some time ago on Twitter.   So we’ll say it: Senators are senators even when not in the chamber and such language demeans that body.  There are, as Senator Richard indicated, some things that can be said in the privacy of one’s office that should not be said in a public forum because it lowers the esteem of the chamber.  And twitter is about as public a forum as there is today.

And just plain common courtesy.  It has not been uncommon (but not real common, either) for a senator to interrupt debate to speak on a point of personal privilege about an unrelated issue.  It’s another example of the discourtesy that has crept into the chamber in recent years. Richard set an proper example by waiting until debate had been finished on an issue and the vote had been taken before he asked to make his personal remarks. 

So Senator Richard has served notice there will be penalties for people who use bad language, who violate rules of courtesy by asking why someone voted as they did, and who deliver personally-critical comments about a colleague, or use barnyard language.  We listened to his remarks archived by the Secretary of State and didn’t hear him mention walking between debating senators or violating other movement rules, or other courtesies that used to maintain collegiality outside the capitol.  But his desire to regain lost decorum in a chamber where decorum has only become a word in too many ways for too many years is a good thing.  Now we’ll see if he can make it stick. 

Although Richard did not say what the penalties would be for violations there have been, frankly, times when about half of the members of the chamber could have been banished to the visitors’ galleries.   Their violations of decorum have been much worse and far more frequent than anything any reporter at the press table has done.  But Richard has sentenced the press corps to the gallery.    

Probably because he can.   Whether he can inflict any meaningful or equally onerous punishment on his fellow Senators is something we’ll wait to see.   And we’ll be watching our former colleagues in the press corps to hear if Richard’s fellow Senators are capable of shaping up because of his lecture.  

——————-

Just as we were about to post these comments, we learned that the Senate leaders had decided to delay punting the press corps off the Senate floor into the visitors’ gallery until after the session.  That leads us to a slight diversion in this conversation but we’ll get back to Senator Richard and his PPP eventually because it ties in to this story, too.

Some of us are old enough to remember when the Project on Government Oversight reported during the Reagan administration that the Pentagon had paid $435 for a hammer, $600 for a toilet seat, and $7,000 for a coffee pot.  The story about the delay in kicking the reporters off the Senate floor is the story of eight $16,000 seats.  

The Associated Press reported the delay is a money issue.  The move already was going to cost the senate $127,000 to renovate the gallery and move all of the necessary wiring to the new facilities in part of the gallery that has been reserved for visitors since 1919.  But doing it this month would have cost an extra $44,000, raising the total cost of moving eight reporters from the table to the gallery to more than twenty-thousand dollars per press table seat.   

Twenty-thousand dollars per seat.  The Senate already was going to spend about $16,000 per seat before the overtime issue was raised.  And that, apparently, is enough.   

We’re kind of moving away from the original topic here, but we just can’t help it.  One Senator two years ago got his nose out of joint because he said something to another senator within earshot of the press table and one reporter summarized the conversation in a tweet and another reporter re-tweeted that tweet.  It is useful to question whether the tweeting was proper but if the senate is concerned about such things it has only itself to blame—and this will start to move us back to Richard’s point of personal privilege.

The unwritten rules of the Senate have said for generations that the press table is off-limits to senators and that interviews are not allowed to be done in the chamber while the senate is in session.  But time after time through the years, senators have strolled over to the press table, sat down on the couch behind some of the reporters and have engaged members of the press in conversations while debate continued on the floor, often making on-the-record comments about an issue or responding to questions from those at the press table.  I recall one day when a senator who couldn’t get to his seat because he would have had to go between two debating senators sat at one of the press table chairs—until I reminded him that he wasn’t allowed to sit there.  Members of the senate created that climate.  And now senators are bound and determined to spend at least $127,000 so they won’t be tempted to do what many of them have done so often in the past in violation of the chamber’s rules.  

It might be good to note that the Virginia Senate Majority leader, Tommy Norment, announced in late January that he would allow reporters back on the floor of the Virginia Senate.  They had been banned from the Virginia Senate floor a few weeks earlier.  We don’t know why but Norment seems to have decided his ban was not a good thing.  We don’t know if cost of alternate space was a factor in Virginia but it sure is an issue in Missouri.  

Sixteen-thousand dollars per press table seat. A senate that voted to cut benefits to people without jobs is willing to spend $16,000 on new chairs for eight people.  Think about that.   

Too bad Senator Richard didn’t make his comments two years ago about respecting the unwritten rules as well as the written rules of decorum and courtesy in the chamber.  Maybe the tweeting wouldn’t have happened if a certain conversation was taken off the floor, as Richard said some conversations should be.  He was dead-center right in saying what he said last week that senators should behave more like senators in word and deed.   It’s easy for this scribe to say so now that this scribe is no longer scribing at the senate press table. 

But this scribe is not ever going to think the senate spending $16,000 dollars per seat to move reporters out of eight chairs so senators are not led into the continued temptation to violate the chamber’s own rules is a sensible expenditure of taxpayer money.   After all, that’s $16,000 per seat that could better be left in taxpayers’ pockets because, as the legislature keeps telling us, taxpayers know how to spend their money better than government does.

Oh, well—-the press corps at least still will have a ringside seat through the end of the session to see if Richards’ necessary words turn out to mean anything to members of the senate.  One can only hope.    

The 18-pound ball

Posted on by
Reply

Another person said it to your correspondent the other day and it’s been said often enough that it merits a response.

“Do you think the Senate waited until you were gone before kicking the reporters off the Senate floor?”

While the question is flattering, it’s discomfiting. I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t kind of nice to hear but the answer I’ve given is not “yes,” and here’s why.  First, don’t forget that Virginia Young of the Post-Dispatch also has retired and she would be no happier about the situation than I am if she were still there.  Second, Senate leader Ron Richard is a bowling alley owner—and sometimes he seems to use an 18-pound ball when a 14-pounder would do.

Senator Richard, the first person ever to serve as Speaker of the House and President pro Tem of the Senate, shares a deep passion for the Missouri Capitol with your correspondent.  We’ve often talked about the need to restore it and preserve it.  He is also an important supporter of the State Historical Society, which is important (and that’s an understatement) to more Missourians than realize it including this author.   But to suggest that he waited until I was gone and/or Virginia was gone before kicking our press corps colleagues into a side gallery is probably a misconception.

But it is the wrong thing to do and if the Missourinet seat at the press table was still my home, I think there might have been some frank discussions.

This entry is more “inside baseball” stuff than usual.  But it might give readers a little more insight into a small part of the way the legislature and the press corps work or should work.

As I understand it, this situation grew out of a time when Senator Brian Nieves took off on one of his tantrums that was a personal attack on another office-holder—not a Senator—that went on and on and that Nieves appeared to feel was particularly clever.   Senator Richards’ predecessor, Tom Dempsey, heard it in his office and quickly went to the chamber where he told Senator Eric Schmitt, who was presiding at the time, that he should have called Nieves to order.  One of the reporters at the press table put something on Twitter about the Dempsey-Schmitt discussion and another member of the press corps picked up the message and re-tweeted it.

Now, understand that your observer thought well of Dempsey and found him a thoughtful leader of the chamber.  He recognized that his position was one that represented all senators, not just those of his party, and he often served as a mediator in touchy situations.

I had forgotten until colleague Phill Brooks reminded me recently that Dempsey talked to the two of us about his concern that the Twitter message violated an unwritten Senate protocol that certain conversations in certain places are private.  He wondered what to do about the matter and I don’t think Phill and I gave him much of an answer, certainly not a satisfactory one.  We did say that we weren’t aware of the situation and would not have tweeted about it if we had been. I don’t even remember if Dempsey mentioned the name of the reporter involved.

It’s been almost two years since this incident and I think it’s been mishandled from the start on both sides.   The result is an unfortunate escalation that need not have happened.   It is probably too late, unfortunately, to roll back the situation, but here’s the way things should have been handled—at least from this perspective.

First, Twitter and the emphasis on immediate communication (which is not necessarily reporting—a distinction that can be discussed later, I suppose) is a pit waiting for people to fall into and we hear stories about that almost every day, don’t we?

As a reporter who had, and still has, a lot of distrust of the idea that any system that capitalizes on the human tendency to blurt out whatever is on the mind is good, I would not have communicated the Dempsey-Schmitt discussion because there was a time to explain the incident’s significance when more than 140 characters are involved.  Dempsey was always approachable by the press corps, I think, and the incident was not so earth-shaking that public distribution of its occurrence could not wait until Dempsey could be asked about it.  He probably would have tried to sidestep it because it was an internal issue and because of the idea that senators should speak courteously of one another, at least on the record.   But he should have been asked about it instead of becoming the subject of instant communication.  Even if he had not wanted to talk about it, he would have been alerted that the incident was a story.

What Phill and I should have told him (and maybe we did, I don’t remember) was that it would be appropriate for him to express his concerns directly to the reporter and discuss between the two of them what Dempsey saw as the problem and how that sort of thing could have been handled differently. I don’t think he would have talked the reporter out of doing the story, but the discussion would have been good for both.

There have been opportunities since then for the Senate leader to raise the issue with reporters—the Senate majority information person has been good about getting the press together with the leaders every Monday afternoon, at least, and often more frequently as needed.  Understanding the relationship between the press and senators has never been something discussed before the start of legislative sessions.  It would have been useful and might be useful in the future when legislative leaders hold pre-session news conferences, not a matter of instruction but a matter of understanding operations of both sides.

But throwing an 18-pound ball (banishment to the gallery) instead of a 14-pound ball (discussing the relationship between press and legislator) is the wrong way to go.   The result is that the Senate is spending a bunch of taxpayers’ money it doesn’t need to spend, the press corps is antagonized, and an opportunity for a good working relationship has been lost.

And that, for whatever it is worth, is how the situation should have been handled.

Before departing, let it be noted that this is being written by someone who has not been part of the press corps for about fourteen months and is relying on information about the triggering incident and the resulting effects from others.  We’ll be glad to correct misimpressions about the circumstances if we have misunderstood them. But what this entry indicates, if it indicates anything, is that impressions made in the moment and lingering resentment that festers through time can produce unfortunate results that don’t really help anything.

Sometimes the brute force of an 18-pound ball is less useful than the better technique that goes with one weighing only 14.

Is this next?

Posted on by
Reply

Too bad Representative Mike Pitts serves in the South Carolina legislature—because he’s the Missouri Senate’s kind of guy.

Pitts has introduced a bill he calls the “South Carolina Responsible Journalism Registry Law.”  Missouri Senate leader Ron Richard might want to take a look at it.  Richard, you know, has decided the Senate just cannot have reporters at the press table on the Senate floor because one of them had the temerity to tweet something the former Senate leader thought he was saying privately to another senator (within hearing distance of the press table) and instead of the former leader talking to the sin-filled former press table occupant, he complained to Richard who, now that he is in charge of the joint, has decided EVERYBODY who covers the Senate is too leprous to be that close to senators.  He’s establishing a special colony in one of the side galleries. The Senate has voted 24-6 to support the establishment of the colony and the Senate Ministry of Information is trying to restrict access to senators even from there.

Representative Pitts has a bill in a South Carolina House committee that would “establish requirements for persons before working as a journalist for a media outlet and for media outlets before hiring a journalist…to establish fines and criminal penalties for violation…”

He demands that anyone “seeking to register” has to provide a criminal record background check, a document from the journalist’s employer attesting to the person’s journalistic competence, and pay a registration fee.  In return, the person can cover the news for two years.  But the South Carolina Secretary of State can revoke the registration if, among other things, that person is later fond “not competent to be a journalist.”

Who, in Pitts’ view, is not competent to be a journalist?  Anybody who has been found by a court to have committed libel, slander, or invasion of privacy, someone convicted of a felony if the felony was committed “to collect, write, or distribute news or other current information for a media outlet.”  Of course, people like Pitts are the ones who write definitions of “felony.”

Here’s a good one: A person is not competent, in Pitts’ view, if that journalist “has demonstrated a reckless disregard of the basic codes and canons of professional journalism associations, including a disregard of truth, accuracy, objectivity, impartiality, fairness, and public accountability, as applicable to the acquisition of newsworthy information and its subsequent dissemination to the public.”  Someone like Pitts, I guess, would make that determination.

What happens if someone works as a journalist without being licensed by the state?

First offense is a $25 fine.  Second offense is a $50 fine and maybe fifteen days in jail, too.  A third offense is a $500 fine and perhaps thirty days in jail.  And if the employer doesn’t ditch the creep, the employer can be fined.

BUT, if this were law in Missouri, that person could still sit at the press table in the Senate, at least until March 29 when the leper colony is supposed to be open.

Rep. Pitts has told the Charleston Post and Courier that he’s not a “press hater.”  He’s just upset that the press doesn’t respect Second Amendment rights and “has no qualms about demonizing firearms.”   And he asks, “Do journalists, by definition, really adhere to a code of ethics?”

The answer is, generally, yes.  And, generally, it is adherence to professional standards that makes politicians uncomfortable, especially when money is tied to their political positions.  And Pitts was the target of a Post and Courier investigation on that subject when it reported that Pitts, a hunter, took trips to Alaska and three other western states to “hobknob at summits with ‘sportsmen legislators.’”  On one trip, he used campaign money to pay for gas in his rental car.  Pitts is a member of the South Carolina House Ethics Committee.

The newspaper quotes the head of the South Carolina Press Association, Bill Rogers, who points out that “The Constitution doesn’t say anything about responsible journalism, it says free journalism.”

Pitts, by the way, also once tried to have the state ban the use of United States currency and replace it with gold and silver coins minted in the state because he objected to the way Congress spends money and the way the federal government prints it.

Yep, he’d fit right in here.

 

Ignore this memo

Posted on by
Reply

This is the first time that I wish I was still part of the Capitol press corps.

The Missouri Senate, once a collegial bunch that had a Senate press officer and then a Senate information office, now has a Senate information office that presumably works for all members of the Senate AND it has separate “communications directors” for the Republicans and the Democrats.

The Communications Director for the Senate Majority Caucus put out a memo to the press corps the day before the legislative session began that “many senators” do not want to be interviewed about what they have just said or done right after the senate adjourns for the day.  Reporters are now being told to contact the communications directors for the R’s or the D’s and tell them who they want to interview “so we can alert the senator beforehand.”  The Senator can then decide whether to do the interview on the senate floor after adjournment or in a couple of other places.  “Please do not try to catch them on the floor without letting someone know first,” says the memo.

This person is a nice person with whom we got along nicely in our days at the senate press table.

But letting a senator know ahead of time a reporter wants to interview them?  When they’re right in front of us?  Working through a senate bureaucracy to interview someone who has had no reluctance to do or say something in front of everybody in the room, often just minutes earlier?

I’m standing right there, a respectful few feet away while they gather their papers or have a few comments with a colleague.  Who needs some partisan functionary to tell them a reporter wants to ask a question?  “Many senators” feel that way?  How many?  Who?  We’ve had senators tells us, “Let’s go to my office,” and we’ve gone.

Oooooooh, I wish I could be there just so I could walk up to some senator right after adjournment and ask a question, as has been the practice. Let someone know first?  Forget that.  They were there. I was there. You just did something or said something in a public forum and you’re accountable.  What are you up to?

The press corps has had its fill of managed access from the Nixon administration.  Now it’s spreading to the senate.

Sorry, senators.  Accountability shouldn’t have to wait. You’re a grownup and you don’t need somebody running interference for you and give you an easy opportunity to tell the partisan roadblock, “I don’t want to talk about what I’ve just done or said.”  And the roadblock goes back to the waiting reporter and says, “Sorry.”

Fertilizer!!!

The leader of the senate has nursed a grudge for months and months because a member of the press sitting at the press table on the Senate floor heard a couple of senators discussing something about a bill and tweeted it.  So he has decided the press should be booted out of the press table on the senate floor and exiled to a side gallery one floor above.  When that issue was put before the senate for approval, senators were told that the senate staff needed to use the table—a further tribute to the lost ability of senators to write their own amendments, perhaps. The senate leader admitted his real motivation later.

Significantly, the press is being thrown out of the senate because, as we understand it, one reporter broke an unwritten senate rule by reporting something a couple of senators believed they were talking about in confidence.  But the Senate is doing nothing to keep members from getting text messages on their cell phones from lobbyists in the halls who often tell them how to answer questions or what their positions should be during discussions of bills.   Reporters are not welcome physically in the senate chamber.  But the virtual presence of special interests gets a pass.

Pettiness.

The session is beginning with pettiness and fertilizer in the state senate.

“It should be another exciting year,” says the memo to the press about not talking to senators.   It sure would be if this reporter was still at the senate press table.