Voice For Liberty

Tag: Journalism

  • Kansas and Wichita quick takes: Friday December 10, 2010

    This Week in Kansas. On This Week in Kansas guests Rebecca Zepick of State of the State KS, Joe Aistrup of Kansas State University, and myself discuss Kansas House of Representatives leadership, Governor-elect Brownback’s appointments, and voter ID. Tim Brown is the host. This Week in Kansas airs on KAKE TV channel 10, Sunday morning at 9:00 am.

    Cato scholar to speak on economic freedom. Today’s meeting (December 10) of the Wichita Pachyderm Club features noted Cato Institute scholar, Principal Attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation, and author Timothy Sandefur. He will discuss his recent book The Right to Earn a Living: Economic Freedom and the Law. A description of the book at Amazon.com reads: “America’s founders thought the right to earn a living was so basic and obvious that it didn’t need to be mentioned in the Bill of Rights. Yet today that right is burdened by a wide array of government rules and regulations that play favorites, rewrite contracts, encourage frivolous lawsuits, seize private property, and manipulate economic choices to achieve outcomes that bureaucrats favor. The Right to Earn a Living charts the history of this fundamental human right, from the constitutional system that was designed to protect it by limiting government’s powers, to the Civil War Amendments that expanded protection to all Americans, regardless of race. It then focuses on the Progressive-era judges who began to erode those protections, and concludes with today’s controversies over abusive occupational licensing laws, freedom of speech in advertising, regulatory takings, and much more.” … Of the book, Dick Armey said: “Government today puts so many burdens and restrictions on entrepreneurs and business owners that we’re squandering our most precious resource: the entrepreneurial spirit and drive of our people. Sandefur’s book explains how this problem began, and what steps we can take to ensure that we all enjoy the freedom to pursue the American Dream.” … The public is welcome and encouraged to attend Wichita Pachyderm meetings. For more information click on Wichita Pachyderm Club.

    Tea party regional blogs compiled. Phillip Donovan has compiled a list of top tea party-related blogs by region, and Voice for Liberty in Wichita is on the list. Of my blog, Donovan wrote “Bob Weeks has been blogging the perspective of free markets, personal liberty, and limited government since 2004, long before the ‘tea party movement’ was born.”

    Tax rates still a secret. Rhonda Holman’s Wichita Eagle editorial asks the central question about signage requirements warning customers of Community Improvement Districts that they will be paying higher sales tax: “But if transparency about CIDs is bad for business, how can CIDs be good for citizens and the community?”

    Federal spending oversight. In the U.S. House of Representatives, the actual spending of money happens in the Appropriations Committee, and this committee is a large source of the problems we have with federal spending. The Wall Street Journal column Oversight for the Spenders explains why: “The Members who join the Appropriations subcommittee on, say, agriculture do so precisely because they are advocates of farm spending. They have no interest in subjecting their own programs to greater public scrutiny.” What is the outlook going forward for this committee? Incoming Speaker John Boehner appointed Kentucky’s Hal Rogers as chair. The Journal column says his “spending record rivals that of any free-wheeling Democrat.” A bright spot: reformer Jeff Flake of Arizona is appointed to the committee, but his request to run an investigations subcommittee was not granted. The Journal is not impressed, concluding “Mr. Boehner’s selection of Mr. Rogers is a major disappointment and makes his promises to control spending suspect. If he really wants to change the spending culture, he should unleash Mr. Flake.”

    Slow death for high-speed rail. From Randal O’Toole: “New transportation technologies are successful when they are faster, more convenient, and less expensive than the technologies they replace. High-speed rail is slower than flying, less convenient than driving, and at least five times more expensive than either one. It is only feasible with heavy taxpayer subsidies and even then it will only serve a tiny portion of the nation’s population.”

    Does the New York Times have a double standard? John LaPlante in LaPlante: NY Times leaky double-standard: “Many newspapers in America reprint articles from the New York Times on a regular basis. So their editorial slant is of importance beyond the (direct) readership of the Gray Lady. Compare and contrast how the Times treated two recent leaks: ‘The documents appear to have been acquired illegally and contain all manner of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye, so they won’t be posted here. — New York Times, on the Climategate emails, Nov. 20, 2009. … ‘The articles published today and in coming days are based on thousands of United States embassy cables, the daily reports from the field intended for the eyes of senior policy makers in Washington. … The Times believes that the documents serve an important public interest, illuminating the goals, successes, compromises and frustrations of American diplomacy in a way that other accounts cannot match.. — New York Times, on the WikiLeaks documents, Nov. 29, 2010.” I’ll let you make the call.

    Wichita Eagle Opinion Line. “The party of the wealthy triumphs again. Congratulations, Republican voters. By extending the handout to the wealthy, you just increased the national debt.” I would say to this writer that action to prevent an increase in income tax from occurring is not a handout. The only way that extending the present tax rates qualifies as a handout is if you believe that the income people earn belongs first to government. This is entirely backwards and violates self-ownership. Further, the national debt — actually the deficit — has two moving parts: the government’s income, and its spending. We choose as a nation to spend more than the government takes in. That is the cause of the deficit.

  • Kansas and Wichita quick takes: Tuesday December 7, 2010

    Political pretense vs. market performance. What is the difference between markets and politics or government? “There is a large gap between the performance of markets and the public’s approval of markets. Despite the clear superiority of free markets over other economic arrangements at protecting liberty, promoting social cooperation and creating general prosperity, they have always been subject to pervasive doubts and, often, outright hostility. Of course, many people are also skeptical about government. Yet when problems arise that can even remotely be blamed on markets, the strong tendency is to ‘correct’ the ‘market failures’ by substituting more government control for market incentives.” The article is The Political Economy of Morality: Political Pretense vs. Market Performance by Dwight R. Lee. Lee explains the difference between “magnanimous morality” (helping people) and “mundane morality” (obeying the generally accepted rules or norms of conduct). Markets operate under mundane morality, which is not as emotionally appealing as as magnanimous morality. But it’s important, as it is markets — not government — that have provided economic progress. There’s much more to appreciate in this article, which ends this way: “The rhetoric dominating the public statements of politicians and their special-interest supplicants is successful at convincing people that magnanimous morality requires substituting political action for market incentives, even though the former generates outcomes that are less efficient and moral than does the latter. The reality is that political behavior is as motivated by self-interest as market behavior is. … As long as there are people who cannot resist the appeal of morality on the cheap, the political process will continue to serve up cheap morality. And the result will continue to be neither moral nor cheap.”

    Begging for Billionaires. The documentary film Begging for Billionaires will be shown in Wichita next week. The film’s synopsis is this: “In 2005, a divided U.S. Supreme Court gave city governments the authority to take private homes and businesses by eminent domain and transfer ownership to private developers for the purpose of building things like shopping centers, corporate office towers and professional sports arenas. According to the court, the community economic development benefits of such private projects qualified them as being for ‘public use’ under the 5th Amendment’s ‘takings clause.’ The Court’s ruling immediately sparked public outrage and was broadly criticized as a gross misinterpretation of the constitution. Through a mix of guerrilla journalism, expert interviews, and the stories of victims; Begging For Billionaires reveals the fallout of the Kelo case, exposing how city governments brazenly seize property after property from the powerless and give it to the powerful for the pettiest of non-essential ‘economic development’ projects, many of which are subsidized with taxpayer money. Meanwhile, poor and disadvantaged families are forced from their homes. Everyday citizens watch helplessly as their family histories are bulldozed to smithereens. In some cases, homeowners scramble to save their life’s possessions as demolition crews pulverize the walls around them, and Centuries-old neighborhoods are wiped from existence despite rich histories and beautifully maintained homes. Begging for Billionaires begs the question: are we losing sight of the balance between individual property rights and those of the community?” The movie, sponsored by Americans for Prosperity, will be shown on Monday, December 13 from 7:00 pm to 8:30 pm at the Lionel D. Alford Library located at 3447 S. Meridian in Wichita. The library is just north of the I-235 exit on Meridian. For more information on this event contact John Todd at john@johntodd.net or 316-312-7335, or Susan Estes, AFP Field Director at sestes@afphq.org or 316-681-4415.

    O’Toole on urban planning. As Wichita considers approving a plan for the revitalization of downtown Wichita, we should consider the wisdom of Randal O’Toole: “Urban planners want to shape our cities. And they want our cities to shape you. That’s the conclusion of Cato Institute Senior Fellow Randal O’Toole. He argues that the rationales for most urban planning collapses upon examination.” O’Toole visited Wichita earlier this year. Click here to view a short video of him speaking on urban planning.

    Kansas House of Representatives leaders elected. “House Speaker Mike O’Neal, R-Hutchinson and Rep. Arlen Siegfreid, R-Olathe, will hold pivotal leadership positions in the Kansas House after voting Monday among GOP members who re-elected O’Neal to the chamber’s top job and selected Siegfreid as the new House majority leader.” More from Tim Carpenter in the Topeka Capital-Journal.

    School lessons learned. Joel Klein, Chancellor of New York City public schools, writing in the Wall Street Journal: “Over the past eight years, I’ve been privileged to serve as chancellor of the New York City Department of Education, the nation’s largest school district. Working with a mayor who courageously took responsibility for our schools, our department has made significant changes and progress. Along the way, I’ve learned some important lessons about what works in public education, what doesn’t, and what (and who) are the biggest obstacles to the transformative changes we still need. … Traditional proposals for improving education — more money, better curriculum, smaller classes, etc. — aren’t going to get the job done. … Bureaucrats, unions and politicians had their way, and they blamed poor results on students and their families. … The people with the loudest and best-funded voices are committed to maintaining a status quo that protects their needs even if it doesn’t work for children. … As I leave the best job I’ve ever had, I know that more progress is possible despite the inevitable resistance to change. To prevail, the public and, most importantly, parents must insist on a single standard: Every school has to be one to which we’d send our own kids. We are not remotely close to that today. We know how to fix public education. The question is whether we have the political will to do it.” This is more evidence of how far behind the rest of the states is Kansas.

  • The changing face of journalism

    As newspapers and other forms of traditional news media experience economic difficulty, a gap has been created that needs to be filled. One of the solutions is the rise of non-profit organizations that have stepped in to provide the watchdog service that investigative journalism provides. Jason Stverak, author of the piece below, is president of the Franklin Center for Government & Public Integrity, which funds investigative journalism in a growing number of states, including Kansas at Kansas Watchdog. This piece also appeared in National Review Online.

    Corruption and scandal are not simply bred in D.C. — crooked politicians have to start somewhere. Gone unnoticed, scandal-plagued local politicians sometimes escalate to Congress or other federal positions.

    The cure for a dishonest politician is an investigative reporter willing to allocate the time to expose the truth. However, the decline of resources at newspapers around the nation has increased the vacuum in state-based coverage. As such, newspapers around the country are curbing reporters’ ability to spend the time or money to investigate a story in addition to the daily beat they write. This growing hole in investigative journalism is now being filled by non-profit organizations that have the capacity to spend time becoming immersed in a story.

    The formula for success for the non-profits is to hire straight-shooting professionals and provide them the opportunity and training to reemerge as the beat reporters from yesteryear. With local focuses, specific targets, a commitment to using highly trained and professional journalists, and a strategic approach to using and distributing resources, online non-profits are the future of journalism.

    Just recently, a series of state-based watchdog groups have demonstrated that online news websites can churn out substantive investigative pieces. Jim Scarantino, the New Mexico Watchdog at the Rio Grande Foundation, found that New Mexico’s lieutenant governor was utilizing tax dollars to buy Christmas cards for her political committee. Joe Jordan, a dedicated state-based reporter at NebraskaWatchdog.org, uncovered that their state’s educators were using taxpayer-funded credit cards to purchase a first-class plane tickets to China for $11,000. And it was a Watchdog in Ohio that publicized a candidate’s attempt to pay for votes among college students.

    Kathy Hoekstra, a watchdog from Michigan, found herself investigating a union day-care scandal when her organization, the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, sued Michigan’s Department of Human Services. The lawsuit stemmed from the two home day-care owners receiving a notification that they were members of a union, and that dues would be taken out of the subsidy checks they receive on behalf of low-income parents who qualify for aid. The lawsuit alleged that these home day-care owners are businesses, not government employees, and therefore it is illegal to siphon union dues from government-subsidy checks. Weeks of investigating the details of this case paid off when Kathy’s article was welcomed with open arms in all the major news outlets in Michigan, exposing this story to millions of readers.

    Although many of the state-based watchdogs are local in focus, on several occasions, one watchdog’s local discovery has led to a major news story. This past November, Jim Scarantino was doing research on Recovery.gov when he noticed that a few of the congressional districts that received stimulus funding in New Mexico did not exist. The story he wrote about that obvious error prompted a watchdog in another state to look into his own state’s information. As more and more watchdogs looked into their own state’s data on recovery.gov, more congressional districts proved to be fabricated. What came to be known as the “Phantom Congressional District Scandal” lead to the discovery of more than 440 phantom congressional districts nationwide and hearings on Capitol Hill. The Colbert Report even refashioned its popular “Better Known as a District” into a new segment, “Know Your Made-Up District.”

    Non-profit journalism organizations are changing the conversation in politics, the media, and for news consumers around the nation. Benjamin Franklin, a printer by trade, once said that “a newspaper in every home” was the “principle support of … morality” in civic life. The decline of American newspapers might sadden Mr. Franklin, but the pursuit of greatness in journalism by online non-profits would without a doubt bring him pride.

    Franklin Center for Government & Public Integrity promotes social welfare and civil betterment by undertaking programs that promote journalism and the education of the public about corruption, incompetence, fraud, or taxpayer abuse by elected officials at all levels of government. Founded in January of 2009, The Franklin Center is a nonpartisan organization that believes that new technology can advance the cause of transparency in government. The Franklin Center aims to educate, to advise and to train individuals and organizations from all backgrounds to become thorough, unbiased and responsible reporters well versed in new media techniques and journalistic integrity. For more information on the Franklin Center please visit www.FranklinCenterHQ.org.

  • KSN news director meets with critics

    Can You Hear Us Now? Wichita October 17, 2009KSN News Director Jason Kravarik

    On Saturday October 17, 2009, about 50 Wichitans met in front of Wichita’s KSN Television studio to express their concerns about the state of news media. The event was part of a national protest named “Can you hear us now?” Locally, the South Central Kansas 9.12 Group promoted the event.

    Jason Kravarik, KSN News Director addressed the group. The crowd was contentious at first, but after emotions cooled a bit, a more constructive dialog emerged.

    Kravarik stressed that KSN is a local news organization. It is affiliated with NBC News, but KSN employees are not employees of NBC. The focus of KSN is local news, not national. When national news stories appear on KSN, they’re furnished by NBC.

    Someone in the crowd asked: “Why don’t you correct the national news?”

    Kravarik replied that KSN covers national news as it affects Wichita. KSN can’t send reporters to Washington.

    The crowd was critical of KSN’s news coverage of the Wichita tea parties. It’s possible that KSN may have broadcast a mistake when counting the number of attendees in its coverage of one of the tea parties. But by and large, KSN has covered the Wichita tea parties. As Kravarik mentioned, this website (WichitaLiberty.org) holds several references to KSN’s coverage. (See Wichita tax day tea party preview on KSN news and Wichita Tea Party News Coverage on KSN Television for examples.)

    Can You Hear Us Now? Wichita October 17, 2009

    He also told the group that KSN provides no opinion or commentary, just coverage of local new stories.

    One complaint from the audience was that KSN doesn’t provide advance notice of events like tea parties. Kravarik recommended that groups contact the station to make sure that reporters know of the event, and make contact well in advance of the date of the event — not just the day before.

    (If I had been in Kravarik’s position, I might have said that local television news stations shouldn’t serve as advertising services for anyone.)

    There was also mention of cable television news networks. Kravarik told the audience that based on the ratings success of Fox News with shows like The O’Reilly Factor, MSNBC decided to counter with their own opinion-based shows like Keith Olbermann’s.

    One speaker requested time for local exploration of national issues and how they will affect us locally in Wichita and the surrounding area.

    Kravarik also mentioned that when local people do things with national impact, that’s something his station is interested in. But reporters need to be notified of such things.

    One audience member said “The print media is useless, because people might see it, but it doesn’t register. You guys put stuff on the actual news on the television. People look at that television and take it as gospel, as bad as it is.”

    Kravarik also mentioned that as events such as tea parties are repeated, they become less newsworthy: “By the time there’s a hundred of these, will they get as much coverage as day two, three, and four?”

    He urged the group to get specific with its issues. Are there local people who are being negatively affected by a policy? Then it moves from the abstract to the concrete. It then becomes a new story idea.

    In response to a question about the economics of news, Kravarik mentioned that his station is struggling, as are all stations, due to loss of advertising revenue.

    Analysis

    While the protesters complained that the issues they’re concerned about are not being covered, somehow the members of the group are informed about them. So the news must be getting out somehow. I believe this points to the diversity of news sources available today, largely due to the Internet.

    Some of the protesters were complaining to the wrong person. One person complained about the reporting of the count of protesters at the September 12 protest event in Washington. Regardless of the merits of the complaint, Kravarik’s news station didn’t cover that event.

    The plea for attention is understandable. But if KSN gives more attention to issues and events that are important to the protesters, we would expect other interest groups to insist on increased coverage of their issues.

    The criticism of print media by one person is mistaken, I believe. One of the important differences between print journalism and television journalism is breadth and depth of coverage. Print media — Internet too — has the space to cover issues in depth. The daily television news broadcast doesn’t.

    Some people asked why doesn’t local news media explain issues like the “Fair Tax” or the Federal Reserve system. This is more like educational programming, which network television has rarely embraced, as it doesn’t produce ratings. Public television is more likely to provide this type of programming. An important advance in just the past year or two is the rise of Internet video services like YouTube, which contains many educational videos.

    There’s also the issue of “What is the truth?” While I am largely sympathetic with the political views of the protesters at this event, there are other groups that are just as firmly convinced that their version of the world is the truth.

    Perception, too, plays a large role in opinion of news coverage. The Wall Street Journal has a reputation as a bastion of conservatism. But a UCLA study in 2005 found that “the newspaper’s news pages are liberal, even more liberal than The New York Times.”

    As an example of how truth and perception can vary from person to person, I would be happy to make any readers a DVD of the video I captured of this event, on the condition that they write their own news coverage or commentary. (Or maybe create video or audio coverage and commentary.) I’ll then post it here.

  • Leonard Pitts vs. Fox News

    A guest commentary.

    I was reading Leonard Pitts’ editorial attack on Fox News while I was watching a news report about the fed’s Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) October 5 while eating breakfast. Pitts’ assault on Fox News made me reach for my flipper and check the two high rated broadcast news programs in the morning on NBC and ABC. I can’t remember which I turned to first but the broadcast news was reporting more details about the tawdry breakup of the Gosselin marriage (John & Kate plus eight) as this family dissolves. I then flipped to the other channel which had a report about the salacious peeping Tom arrest in the Andrews hotel videotape arrest. Tiring of tabloid trash from the coastal elite media I turned back to Fox News.

    While Fox News will also slip down to tabloid celebrity journalism on occasion there is a real effort to cover real news. That is quite a contrast from the elite, coastal news media that has been publishing fraudulent stories for years. I remember the disgrace that fell upon the Washington Post concerning the Janet Cooke reporting that turned out to be pure fiction years ago.

    The New York Times topped this years later with the Jayson Blair fiction that was published in the paper that the times itself called “… fabricated statements,” in this “reporting.” The New York Times has repeated this disgraceful journalism since then by using omission, distortion, falsification, and emphasis to distort the truth in Bob Kohn’s book “Journalistic Fraud.” Kohn’s 2003 book could be updated with a big slab of new material since that time listing additional disgraceful misbehaviors. In last year’s presidential election the times ran a story alleging improper ties between John McCain and a female beltway lobbyist. This story lacked a source and should have never been published.

    All of these abuses were topped in 2004 when Dan Rather tried to change the outcome of the presidential election by reporting a fraudulent story about George W. Bush’s National Guard service during the Vietnam War. This journalistic disgrace destroyed Rather’s career with the final blow occurring with the dismissal of his pathetic lawsuit just a few days ago.

    If Mr. Pitts was really interested in media bias he would check out Bernie Goldberg’s numerous books about CBS, Dan Rather, and the disgraceful story told in A Slobbering Love Affair: The True (And Pathetic) Story of the Torrid Romance Between Barack Obama and the Mainstream Media, a book about the appalling news media coverage of the 2008 presidential campaign. The elite coastal news media’s behavior since Obama’s inauguration has been almost as sycophantic in its coverage as Pravda was in Moscow during Soviet times.

    These were the “news” organization that Mr. Pitts finds credible. Mr. Pitts attacks Fox News commentators and alleges that their mistakes are more egregious than the disgraceful misbehaviors listed above. Recently I heard Glenn Beck, who seems to be the main target for Mr. Pitts’ editorial ire, state a correction at the beginning of his broadcast. This is a huge contrast with Dan Rather who is unrepentant.

    Mr. Pitts was unable to issue a single example of any error from Fox News’ broadcasts in his rant. Let me state that Fox News has made errors. I have heard them acknowledge and correct these mistakes on the air. Mr. Pitts ignored this fact.

    Now a left winger like Mr. Pitts will oppose Mr. Beck, Bill O’Reilly, and Sean Hannity’s politics. Mr. Pitts is upset about their expose of the left wing ballot stuffing group ACORN. That is fine. That is his opinion. Unfortunately, Mr. Pitts will not extend the same First Amendment privilege to folks who disagree with him. Beck, Hannity, and O’Reilly are all opinion commentators who are not engaged in reporting news. Like Mr. Pitts they do engage in commentary on the news. However, the effort by Mr. Pitts to denigrate and through their alleged mistakes according to Mr. Pitts, this column implies we need to muzzle the only network that provides both sides in U.S. television news coverage. This is an insult to the First Amendment and to the disgraceful journalistic malfeasance generated by the elite news media in this country.

    Sadly, since Mr. Pitts attack on Fox News in the Wichita Eagle, it now appears that a Wichita Presbyterian Church will be bringing Mr. Pitts in to speak here. The KNSS radio ads for his speech make him sound like some kind of conservative. Mr. Pitts fraudulent attack will now be combined with a fraudulent misrepresentation in these ads. With this kind of record, will Mr. Pitts end up in a prime media posting in NY or in Washington next?

    Editor’s note: The program announcement for Pitts’ appearance in Wichita gives this information about him: “For Pitts, the gospel is about personal salvation and seeing the end of social injustices around us, including racism and economic disparity. Using John 13:1-17 where Jesus washes the disciples’ feet as his model, Pitts speaks about not “doing church” but “being church.” He will talk for about 45 minutes at the Town Hall event, followed by a conversation with Eastminster’s senior pastor, the Rev. Dr. Steven M. Marsh, incorporating written questions from the audience.”

  • John Stossel urges reliance on freedom, not government, in Wichita

    John Stossel in Wichita, October 12, 2009John Stossel at Wichita State University

    Speaking at Wichita State University on Monday, former ABC News journalist John Stossel told a large crowd that free markets and limited government, not more government, are the best way to increase our wealth and prosperity.

    Speaking about his beliefs early in his career as a journalist, Stossel said, “By and large it’s [capitalism] cruel and unfair. We need government and lawyers to protect us from capitalists.”

    Eventually, he said, he began to realize the harm in excessive government regulation. Bureaucrats who propose licensing auto repair shops don’t do much to protect consumers. Instead, the cost of regulation and licensing makes auto repair a little more expensive — leading, perhaps to shops in poor neighborhoods going underground to escape regulation.

    So could trial lawyers do a better job of protecting the consumer? They have the ability to make bad guys pay. But Stossel said the best deterrent is the free market and competition. “Word gets out,” he said, and if you cheat your customers, they won’t come back. There’s also fraud laws.

    Stossel said that it’s easy for reporters to cover the victim who wins a large reward in a lawsuit. The unintended consequences, however, are harder to see. But they’re everywhere. He cited the reduction in the number of vaccine companies due to lawsuits, asking are we safer with five vaccine companies researching vaccines rather than 20? No, he said, we are less safe.

    Competition through free markets, he said, protects us all by itself without government intervention. There are exceptions — Bernie Madoff, for example — but the fact that these exceptions receive so much media attention is evidence of how well markets work.

    The way to get rich in America, Stossel said, is to serve consumers well, citing the example of Bill Gates.

    Stossel said that critics of free markets say that they don’t work for complicated things such as schools and health care. Don’t we need wise elites in Topeka and Washington to make decisions for us, he asked?

    The answer is no. Not everyone needs to be an expert. It’s sufficient for there to be a few “car buffs” — using the example of selecting an automobile — for free markets to work.

    We need some government, he said, to provide rule of law, to protect our property and person. But government needs to be limited. He showed graphs that illustrated the rapid growth of government spending since the presidency of Lyndon Johnson.

    “I’d say they were spending like drunken sailors, but that insults drunken sailors, who spend their own money.”

    He cited his own experience with his beach house, where government provides low-cost flood insurance. His beach house — right on the ocean, built on sand — was damaged. But the government insurance replaced it.

    The problem, he said, is that this insurance was not priced properly. Government ignored the price signals sent by the private market, which set high prices for this insurance, based on the risk they judged the properties faced. The below-market prices set by government have lead to a program that is billions in the read.

    Stossel said that in every newsroom he’s been in, and at all the elite universities he’s visited, people hate business. It’s intuitive, he said, to think of business as a zero-sum game. “If somebody makes a profit off me, I must be losing something.”

    But business is voluntary. Government is force. Business doesn’t happen unless both parties think they win, leading to the “double thank you” moment at the time of the transaction.

    Business is not like a pie, where if someone takes a big slice, there’s less for others. Business, he said, creates more pies. Entrepreneurship makes us all richer, but that’s not intuitive, he said.

    He also talked about his experience reporting on the risks we face in the world. He found that news media focused its reporting on sensational events such as airplane crashes that are actually quite rare. Flying takes an average of one day off each person’s life, statistically speaking.

    But driving takes an average of 182 days off of life. And because of the “hysterical coverage” of plane crashes, people are scared into driving instead of flying. Stossel termed this “statistical murder.”

    (Later, in response to a question, Stossel said that this type of reporting was difficult to get on the air. Two producers quit, saying this reporting was not journalism, but “conservative dogma.”)

    The most important danger to life, however, is poverty, taking over 3,000 days (about nine years) off a person’s life. “Wealthier is healthier,” he said. Regulation that prevents capital from flowing to its best use makes us poorer, he said, and fewer people get hired. Perhaps the headline should be “New OSHA rule saves four, kills ten,” he said.

    Our lack of perspective has made America fear innovation, Stossel said. He referred to Europe’s precautionary principle, which really means “don’t do anything for the first time.” He illustrated a mythical new product — a new fuel, domestically produced, but explosive, invisible, and poisonous, and would kill 200 people each year. And, he wants to pump it into your home. Would we allow that today? This product, of course, is natural gas.

    The innovation that we now fear has made our lives richer. Free people pursuing their own self-interest make America richer, and that saves lives.

    Questions in written form from the audience included one asking Stossel who in Washington he considers to be a leader in free market philosophy. He mentioned Ron Paul as a politician, and the Cato Institute as a leader in explaining the benefits of free markets.

    About the myths and lies of health care reform: Stossel said that President Obama is right, the current system is unsustainable, as it “promises everybody everything free.” The proposed reforms are likely to make the current situation worse. He mentioned that the rate of increase in spending on recreation is the same as the increase in spending on health care. No one complains about spending on recreation, though, because they’re spending their own money. It’s when government spends our money that problems arise. Also, other countries freeload off the innovation that happens in America, and they don’t bear that cost.

    At ABC News, Stossel said they rejected his stories about health care in favor of Michael Jackson stories. He believes this will improve at his new home at Fox Business Network.

    One of his favorite stories was “Stupid in America,” which took a look at public schools. American students do fine in fourth grade, Stossel said, but as time goes on, our students lag behind students in other countries. “The longer they are in our public school system, the worse they do.” The problem, he said, is that our public school system is a government monopoly. An important factor in the success of schools in other countries is that the money is attached to the student, not the school, as it is in America.

    In an interview session before his talk, I asked Stossel about the events of the past year: Is this evidence of the failure of free markets and capitalism? Referring to the rise in the Dow Jones average from 800 to over 9000 since 1982, he said that’s pretty good. “Perfect is not one of the choices,” and there will be booms and busts, he said. Plus, this bust was mostly a government bust, with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac contributing.

    I asked about regulation, and Stossel said that regulation increased greatly during the Bush administration. Republicans say they want to cut spending and rules, but they don’t do it, he said.

    About health care in Canada, Stossel said that Canadians like their system and think ours is horrible. But media reporting has exaggerated the defects of the American system, and most of the people surveyed in Canada aren’t sick. Also, Canada reduces their cost by freeloading off American innovation.

    At Fox Business Network, Stossel said he will have a show once a week “talking about the economic liberty that made American prosperous.” He also said that “I’m angry that smug people are claiming that central planning from government will make our lives better, despite the evidence in our face that it’s failed again and again.” He plans to confront these people.

    I asked if we in America are starting to look more to a European style of security, rather than relying on freedom. Stossel said yes, quoting Thomas Jefferson as “It is the natural progress of things for government to gain, and liberty to yield.” But it is a false sense of security to rely on government. Real security and what has made America prosperous is the innovation that comes from capitalism.

    Addional coverage from Kansas Watchdog is at John Stossel’s 20/20 Vision of Journalism and Free Markets.

  • In Wichita, protest of ABC’s Obama coverage

    Here’s a message from a local patriot and activist. She is rightly concerned about ABC News — the national organization, not the local affiliate — and its upcoming coverage of the Obama administration:

    Protest in Wichita in front of ABC affiliate KAKE news TV at 1500 N. West St., Wichita this Wednesday, June 24th starting at 4 p.m. until 6:30 p.m. Please join us! We are protesting how ABC is propagandizing the American public and deceiving them.

    What is she concerned about? The editorial ABC Self-Nationalizes For Obama supplies some background:

    Media Bias: As much of the U.S. private sector, including health care providers, resists government takeovers, what a sorry sight to see ABC News leap forward to make itself a propaganda arm of the government. … This Wednesday, on every show from “Good Morning America” (kicking things off with an interview with the president) to “World News Tonight” (broadcast from the Blue Room) to a prime-time special called “Prescription for America” (and emanating from the East Room), the network will puff the Obama administration’s trillion-dollar plan to nationalize U.S. health care. …

    This isn’t your grandfather’s propaganda. Forget public service announcements. Just as some newspaper ads trick themselves up to look like news stories to enhance their credibility, making a partisan program indistinguishable from the nightly “news” is a propaganda tool in the same vein. … Under the cover of news, ABC can present the president’s side of the health reform issue as “factual” and leave out the real costs and concerns about government control and rationing of health care. …

    The best proof that the public is getting propaganda is that ABC is refusing to take ads from critics who are offering to pay for them. Among those turned away: the Republican National Committee and a group called Conservatives for Patients’ Rights. …

    It all amounts to a sad corruption of American journalism. Once upon a time, people would go into journalism to expose the seamy underbelly of American politics. Today, ABC News, in its abject submission to the Obama administration on health care, has decided to become the seamy underbelly.

    For more information about the event, contact Larry Halloran at LarryHalloran@aol.com. Click to get a Google map to the location.

  • Journalism’s obituary, in advance

    Referring to an article on the Drudge Report, a local Wichita blogger writes “According to this report on June 24th 2009 the ‘Free Press’ died without a whimper. It rushed head long into suicide.”

    The entire post is Journalism died 24 June, 2009.

  • Former Wichita Eagle editor addresses journalism, democracy

    On Friday, former Wichita Eagle editor W. Davis “Buzz” Merritt Jr. spoke to members and guests of the Wichita Pachyderm Club.

    He retired as editor of the Eagle in 1999. He is the author of the book Knightfall: Knight Ridder and How the Erosion of Newspaper Journalism Is Putting Democracy at Risk.

    Merritt said there are two things to think about today. One is that journalism must somehow survive if democracy is to survive. The two are interdependent. One can’t exist without the other.

    The second is that democracy can’t survive on opinions alone. “The plasma of democracy is shared information,” he said. People need a way to discuss the implications of that shared information, forming the mechanism of democracy.

    Merritt sees a notion, becoming more reinforced, that opinions are more important that information. Everyone has an opinion, but not everyone has good information. With everyone having a megaphone, there’s no check on irresponsibility.

    We’re entitled to free speech, but we’re not entitled to our own facts, he said. Journalism has been the provider of this shared information that makes democracy possible.

    Changes in the information environment have been wonderful, he said. “The problem is the rutabaga man can vote.” He may be interested only in rutabagas, and that’s all he searches for on his computer, but there’s information and facts he needs to know in order to participate in democracy.

    It’s clear that newspapers are in trouble, Merritt says. We don’t necessarily need newspapers, but we need the type of journalism that newspapers have traditionally provided. A concern is that the infrastructure that supports journalism will go away before the transfer is made to online delivery of journalism.

    How did newspapers get in such trouble? The key event is the shift from family ownership to institutional ownership of newspapers. The search for ever-increasing profits by the new owners lead to cost-cutting measures that have snowballed. (If you read “Knightfall” you’ll learn that one of the things the Wichita Eagle did to cut costs was to stop delivery to western Kansas.)

    If journalism like that which newspapers provide goes away, democracy is in terrible trouble. “No shared information, no place to discuss the implications of that information, no place for politics, government, and public life to work.” Replacing this with under-informed opinion is a cause for concern for our democracy.

    A questioner asked why doesn’t the press aggressively report about ACORN? Merritt replied “How do you know about ACORN?” The point is that newspapers have reported on ACORN.

    Another question asked how much ideology has contributed to the problems of newspapers, the premise being that newspapers are out of touch with their readers. Merritt replied that newspapers do have an ideology — on their editorial pages. That’s where a newspaper expresses its opinion. There may be surveys that show that journalists identify more with liberal than conservative thought, but Merritt doesn’t believe that to be that case, in his experience. People who want to see things change are often attracted to journalism as a career.

    In a response to a question, Merritt recommended contacting the newspaper with specific examples of bias, if readers sense it in the news reporting.

    A question that I asked is whether the declining resources of the Wichita Eagle might create the danger that local government officials feel they can act under less scrutiny, or is this already happening? Merritt replied that this has been going on for some time. “The watchdog job of journalism is incredibly important and is terribly threatened.” When all resources go to cover what must be covered — police, accidents, etc. — there isn’t anything left over to cover what should be covered. There are many important stories that aren’t being covered because the “boots aren’t on the street anymore,” he said.

    In response to another question, Merritt said that the “contradictions are too enormous” for government to use public money to support journalism. There may be conflicts of interest, too, in foundation ownership of newspapers. These may have to be tolerated in order to preserve journalism.