Showing posts with label journalism ethics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label journalism ethics. Show all posts

Monday, April 18, 2016

South Florida Journalism in 2016: The ever-expanding gulf between what the South Florida press corps offers up and the quality, local-centric news coverage the South Florida public craves, has never been as large as now; Margaret Sullivan gives as good as she gets in her final NY Times Public Editor column that hits out against elite/institutional bias

South Florida Journalism in 2016: The ever-expanding gulf between what the South Florida press corps offers up and the quality, local-centric news coverage the South Florida public craves, has never been as large as now; Margaret Sullivan gives as good as she gets in her final NY Times Public Editor column that hits out against elite/institutional bias
Revised April 21, 2016 at 3:15 p.m.

As most of you longtime readers of Hallandale Beach Blog know well by now -but which you newer readers don't, especially those of you who have only discovered me the past two years via my tweets @hbbtruth- I started this blog in 2007, largely out of a fit of frustration and anger at the self-evident failure and lack of individual/collective effort I saw on a daily basis by the South Florida news media. Specifically, its collective failure to evolve from what it once was -home to nationally-respected who were in some cases some of the best and most-dogged investigative news sleuths in the country.
It's why so many of them eventually wound up at the then-three national U.S. TV networks and the fledgling CNN when that cablenet debuted.

My complaint, summed-up, was that the South Florida's press corps' failed to build upon this track record, and failed to expand its level of news coverage of public policy and local government in ways that readers/viewers clearly wanted to see and rather expected.

Though I was born in San Antonio, Texas a few years before, my family arrived in Miami from Memphis when I was seven years old in the Summer of 1968, the day after Miami Dolphins #1 Draft pick Larry Csonka of Syracuse signed with the Dolphins.
As everyone who knows me then or now can tell you, I have been a devout news, sports and public affairs junkie ever since then.
But the difference between then and now is that when I was growing-up in South Florida in the '70's, there was an All-News AM radio station, WINZ AM 940 that was a CBS News affiliate and provided lots of news reportes to new York, especially those covering weather, immigration and the Sapce Shuttle.

That has NOT been the case in several decades, nor has there been even one attempt by anyone to lay the groundwork for a Local News Cable channel of the sort that has existed in many media markets throughout thsi country, including some smaller than South Florida's.

Why has COMCAST, long the dominant cable provider in South Florida, utterly failed to deliver on that potential? Well, you know who never asks?
The South Florida news media themselves, including the Miami Herald and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.
If you want to waste an hour, try going thru their newspaper archives and try to find a single story about the subject in the past 20 years.
That's the sort of media area South Florida is.

That's made worse because with my crazy accurate memory, I've been able to recall  at the drop of a hat the names of individual reporters and anchors at local TV/radio stations and reporters and editors at the Miami Herald and the late Miami News -that I spent so much time at as a High School student- and the individual beats their reporters covered and owned .
And the important news stories they broke or gave much-needed historical context to when it really mattered to residents of South Florida, NOT after-the-fact months later in some investigative piece clearly designed to win journalism awards, NOT keep South Florida properly informed.

I still have an institutional memory of what those people were able to do with much less in the way of resources and technology than the current crew of South Florida journalists have and take for granted, for whatever reasons.
That doesn't just rankle, it makes me cringe, because so much of what I regularly consume from local South Florida media isn't just parochial but even shallower than the above ground swimming pools that once seemed to dominate South Florida and North Miami Beach in the 1970's.

And that means that getting to the heart of some of the endemic and unique problems of South Florida, much less their possible solutions, are one day farther away than they need to be for our community's long-term sake.

Over the past nine years that I have been writing this blog, a recurring theme here has been the cleavage between what the South Florida news media believes is perfectly acceptable in terms of effort and end product for news consumers, and what the public wants and expects from them. 

A graph where X never meets Y.

Over the years, the insufficient level of individual and collective effort expended by the South Florida press corps and the dominant English-language news outlets has only gnawed away at me and other well-informed observers I know and trust, as we are continually see both individual reporter bias, institutional lack of historical knowledge and lack of torpedo every well-intentioned effort to make local South Florida residents better informed about their community and the state that is now the third-largest in the country.

We see the growing gap between what the public expects from print/TV reporters and columnists and TV Assignment Editors and News Directors, in the form of interesting and compelling ways to cover local news, and what is actually presented to us as readers and viewers, as the very seeds for our area's growing technology and information gap.
A growing class and income chasm that won't be made smaller by simply pretending that it doesn't exist.

These same national trends are regularly and correctly decried in Washington as harmful to the nation's future and economic vitality when presented calmly as facts by politicians of varying political persuasions and august public interest groups with demonstrated track records for being non-partisan, but somehow, closer to home, these same problems are largely ignored when they are pointed out by people like myself and other public observers in South Florida who want this community to be MUCH BETTER than it is,.
Even when we use self-evident facts and the news media's own track record as our opening and closing arguments.

It's not exactly a secret that compared to the rest of the country, South Florida's relative youth historically -the City of Miami not being founded until 1897- and large and ever-growing population of Northeastern and Midwestern transplants whose history and allegiances remain elsewhere years after they've moved here, has always worked against the long-term interests of South Florida institutions, civic groups and foundations, even ones who profess laudable societal goals and do try to show some spirit and verve.

But this also means these groups are NOT front-of-mind and front-and-center when it comes to focusing the community's attention on problems the way similar groups are elsewhere in the country.
It's not an excuse, merely a reflection of history and common knowledge, borne of experience living in and growing-up in South Florida.
But at some point, these same groups current unwillingness to point out the problems at hand and suggesting tangible solutions, has to be called out, and I will be doing just that in a future post with some energy and enthusiasm that I know will surprise and anger many with its ferocity and focus.

So be it!

My blog has never been interested in carrying the water for South Florida's elites or well-off.
#disrupt

But as it concerns today's theme of journalistic lack of effort in South Florida, it's hard to shake the notion that many of these civic groups ansd foundations, so dependent upon the South Florida news media for positive attention and charity dollars when they can get it, seem to spend an inordinate amount of time and energy denying self-evident problem in large part  because of whose oxen may well need to be gored. (Or is it a case of being afraid to bite the hand that feeds them?) 
The South Florida news media's.

To me and many of the people I regularly speak with and confide in here in South Florida and throughout the Sunshine State -even many reporters, editors, columnists and TV anchors whose names are known instantly to many of you- the gulf in South Florida between what is possible in local journalism because of advances in technology that make it easier than ever to report accurately and in real-time, has, unfortunately, never seemed so large as at it does at present.

This is made all the worse by what takes place everyday with the two largest South Florida-based daily newspapers, McClatchy's Miami Herald and the Tribune Company's South Florida Sun-Sentinel, both of whom are and have been going in the wrong direction from readers desires for far too many years.


Since the majority of my focus on this blog, despite my 1,001 other interests and passions, has always been what is happening in South Florida -for good or for bad and why- I write to day to share some much-needed wisdom from a trusted source I have long depended upon, even while never mentioning her previously: Margaret Sullivan, the departing New York Times Public Editor.
At the end of her term as the the Reader's Ombudsman, just as was true throughout when she never hesitated to challenge long-established Times icons and the Times' often counter-intuitive ways of thinking about the larger public interest, Margaret Sullivan gives as good as she gets.

As I have remarked here many times in the past with fact-filled blog post and copies of letters to the Miami Herald's management, the Herald never replaced their Ombudsman, Edward Schumacher-Matos, after he left for NPR. And they consciously ignored many of the common sense suggestions he made about journalists.

That includes his April 25, 2010 column, Reporter-columnists tread fine line with readers' trust about the need for journalists to publicly come out to readers as one one thing or the other, i.e. not being both reporter AND columnist, because of the damage that such dual roles can cause to perceived bias and credibility with readers.

The Herald ignored that advice when it came to dealing with both Beth Reinhard and later, Marc CaputoIf you want a copy of that column, just write me and ask for a copy.
It's not been available at the Herald's website for many years.

To see how indifferent the Herald's management was to reader perceptions of bias or unfairness, take a poke at my blog post from May 21 of 2012 titled, 
"What's going on at the Miami Herald? More than a year after the last one fled, the Herald still lacks an Ombudsman -and shows no sign of getting one- to represent readers deep concerns about bias, misrepresentation and flackery on behalf of South Florida's powerful & privileged at the Herald. And that's just one of many unresolved problems there..." 

See also, among many others to choose from:

11/12/10 - A day in the life of McClatchy's Miami Herald, as viewed by a reader who's largely given up on them fixing their problems, or surviving long-term
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2010/11/day-in-life-of-mcclatchys-miami-herald.html

12/21/11- 
For another consistently lousy year of journalism at the Miami Herald, esp. covering Broward County, more lumps of coal in the Christmas stocking of One Herald Plaza -Part 1

8/13/13 - Former Miami Herald Ombudsman Edward Schumacher-Matos -whose position at the Herald remains unfilled 27 months later by McClatchy execs- as NPR's Ombudsman, lays the wood into NPR's Laura Sullivan & Amy Walters for a 2011 investigation re foster care in South Dakota, which officials there took umbrage with, and for good reason it seems. “My finding is that the series was deeply flawed and should not have been aired as it was”

I hasten to add that this was also during the McClatchy era when the Herald ran a multi-weeks old story about Donald Trump in the "Breaking News" section of the Herald's Broward homepage on Monday December 19th, 2011 at 11:21 p.m.
And there it stayed for days...
Really. :-(

Margaret Sullivan's final column from last Friday is a column of pure gold, for it has much that the South Florida press corps could and SHOULD learn from in the way of perceived reporter/editorial/institutional bias, attention to accuracy and willingness to publicly admit mistakes.

I highly commend it to you and ask you to consider sharing it with others you know in South Florida and throughout the Sunshine State who think as I (we) do -that South Florida and the rest of the state would be much better off with a fully-engaged and curious press corps year-round, not the one we have had for years that habitually takes a Summer slumber or vacation come mid-June, never to be seen again until after Labor Day, no matter how important the story.

New study by "the American Press Institute - almost no one trusts the media. The report found that just six percent of Americans have a great amount of confidence in the press.  To put that into perspective, the API ‘s study showed that Americans trust only Congress less than the media. Other organizations that the public has more confidence in than journalists: banks, organized religion, the Supreme Court, and the military.  The number one reason people mistrust the media is that they found reports one-sided or biased. Following closely behind was that readers found something factually inaccurate. Interestingly, respondents to the API report said that how a media outlet responds to inaccurate reports is extremely important.  “Several focus group participants said they do not expect news sources to be perfect and how a source reacts to errors can actually build trust,” stated the report. “Several people said that owning up to mistakes and drawing attention to errors or mistakes can show consumers that a source is accountable and dedicated to getting it right in the long term.” 
On the heels of this not-at-all surprising survey comes this great rear-view column from Sullivan, soon-to-be the Washington Post's new media columnist.




New York Times
The Public Editor's Journal - Margaret Sullivan  
Five Things I Won’t Miss at The Times — and Seven I Will  By Margaret Sullivan 
April 15, 2016 10:00 am 
April 15, 2016 10:00 am
While preparing to leave the public editor’s office and move to Washington, I’ve been getting together in recent weeks with some people I’ve met while living in New York. One was Ben Smith, the editor in chief of BuzzFeed, who asked me over lunch what columns I planned to do before I left. I tossed it back to him, asking what he would like to read, and he suggested I take up “what I love and what I hate about The New York Times.”
This guy’s definitely got a future as an editor! I decided to tweak his idea, with a nod to Nora Ephron’s list from her book, “I Remember Nothing: And Other Reflections.” (Of all the people I wish I had been able to meet in New York, she tops the list.)
Read the rest of her great post at:
http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/04/15/five-things-i-wont-miss-at-the-times-and-seven-i-will/?module=BlogPost-Title&version=Blog%20Main&contentCollection=Opinion&action=Click&pgtype=Blogs&region=Body&_r=1

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Former Miami Herald Ombudsman Edward Schumacher-Matos -whose position at the Herald remains unfilled 27 months later by McClatchy execs- as NPR's Ombudsman, lays the wood into NPR's Laura Sullivan & Amy Walters for a 2011 investigation re foster care in South Dakota, which officials there took umbrage with, and for good reason it seems. “My finding is that the series was deeply flawed and should not have been aired as it was”







Poynter.org
NPR stands by story its ombudsman criticized
by Andrew Beaujon
Published Aug. 12, 2013 5:29 pm
Updated Aug. 12, 2013 5:34 pm
There are six chapters of NPR Ombudsman Edward Schumacher-Matos’ epic examination of Laura Sullivan and Amy Walters’ October 2011 investigation about foster care in South Dakota.
The series won awards but was also criticized by the state’s governor and head of its Department of Social Services. “Many South Dakota residents also have written me in disapproval of it,” Schumacher-Matos writes. “My finding is that the series was deeply flawed and should not have been aired as it was.” 
Read the rest at:












Edward Schumacher-Matos split his Ombudsman position at the Miami Herald in May of 2011 after he'd been WITHOUT either a blog or a weekly print or online column, but rather saddled with a peculiar once-in-a-while, sometimes every 3-4 months column thing, for NPR in Washington, D.C. 

Schumacher-Matos' position at the Herald remains unfilled 27 months later by McClatchy execs, who seem to place no value on readers and their questions of fairness or bias having a seat at the table.
There's nobody to represent readers' deep and justified concerns about examples of bias, misrepresentation and flackery in the paper on behalf of South Florida's powerful and privileged, who have high-powered attorneys and PR consultants to ensure they are seen only in the most positive light.

But then that's just one of many unresolved customer problems there these days that cause it to lose readers every week.
It's fair to say that a lot of people in South Florida took ESM and his position for granted, including lots of local bloggers and politicians, and the Herald certainly did him no favors by NOT giving him much of a perch to speak out from.

But something, even infrequent, is better than nada, and right now, with that reader level of confidence among serious readers of the Herald as low as it's ever been, it's worth a minute to consider what message they are sending when they refuse to name anyone to that position.

His infrequent columns at least tried to keep Herald reporters and editors on the level and be square with readers, but since he left, anything goes -and does.

While I've written about this troubling subject many times on this blog, and have written Herald management and editors about their failure to fill the position, even posting those emails to them here for you to see for yourselves, it's clear they have a different point-of-view.
It is what it is.

To see how indifferent they are to reader perceptions of bias or unfairness, take a poke at my blog post from May of 2012 titled, "What's going on at the Miami Herald? More than a year after the last one fled, the Herald still lacks an Ombudsman -and shows no sign of getting one- to represent readers deep concerns about bias, misrepresentation and flackery on behalf of South Florida's powerful & privileged at the Herald. And that's just one of many unresolved problems there..." 

Friday, June 21, 2013

Now starting #newsblackout Day 5 at Miami Herald re Ryan Lizza's New Yorker column & Marco Rubio; Tampa Bay Times gave up Tues., Orlando Sentinel on Wednesday; Miami, often still barely part of America, and almost completely journalism-free this Summer.

musha hadeen YouTube Channel: Syndicated radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh discussed the fact that the old cliché about U.S. Big Business always supporting the Republican party is no longer true, and explains why that has changed. "At the root of this is money." Exactly. 
Now, instead of publicly fighting government encroachment and red-tape, Big Business supports and even depends upon Big Government programs -and the cheap loans that they can receive via crony capitalism. It's for this reason and many others -including cheap labor in places like Florida- that Big Business is now so intent on pressuring the GOP to pass the pro-amnesty Schumer-Rubio immigration bill, S.744, or else risk getting no campaign contributions in the future. This has led been led by many large and powerful GOP donors who have become conditioned to getting their way because of their money -and the GOP consultant class that are always hip to act morally superior and act as go-betweens for the folks with big checkbooks! Now both groups are acting like they are the ones who are casting the votes, not Congress, not unlike lots of schlocky films of the '70's involving political intrigue, mindless conspiracies and a basic premise that business people owned elected officials. 
Rush Limbaugh mentions GE, the Koch Brothers and Sheldon Adelson by name as examples of this elite class who are pushing hard for amnesty for all 11 million illegal aliens in the U.S., regardless of what it actually does to the country and whether it actually solves any problems. That's OUR problem, not theirs!
Uploaded June 17, 2013. http://youtu.be/_jzVx8QTGJU

Whether you're a conservative, moderate or liberal, this far-ranging discussion is by far the most-accurate thing that has been broadcast on U.S. radio so far this year, and yet I'm sure it was quite upsetting to many of his listeners across the country who weren't quite prepared to believe it when Rush said it. 
Yes, it looks like many of his millions of listeners will have to let go of their old ways of thinking and quickly adapt  their political calculations and accept that the political world hasn't just changed, but changed dramatically as a result of what is being attempted by the GOP Establishment.
Time to push those old clichés out the door and see the world for what it truly is -full of opportunistic, know-it-alls who in some cases are Republican-leaning business people -and their hired hands- who want pols to sell their principles in exchange for their campaign checks, leaving you to have to watch from the sidelines. 

As most of you who have been paying attention know, the Once Upon a Time decent-but-never-great Miami Herald has really fallen down the journalism rabbit hole the past 15 years, due largely to some consistently poor management, a lack of commitment to quality local reporting and an abject refusal to evolve with the times and give customers the sort of compelling original content they want about the area they live in.

The sad reality for me is that they cover Cuba about as much if not more than they cover Broward County where I live, less than 14 miles north of where the Heat played the Spurs Thursday night in downtown Miami. 

As I've stated here on the blog before, Broward County is largely terra incognita to the Herald, especially now at their new HQ in the make-believe city of Doral, the city of warehouses and persistent street flooding that strands citizens and commerce even worse than in Hallandale Beach.

That has been even more the case as the paper has cut back on frontline reporting personnel, and in my opinion, keeping more of the problems instead of trading them out for fresh eyes that can see what's right in front of them.

Real Clear Politics
Top 10 Newspapers in Trouble
#4 Miami Herald
05.22.12, 08:54 AM CDT

I mention this because the Herald's longstanding pro-amnesty bias, obvious for quite some time, regardless of the facts or the circumstance, has allowed their other biases on behalf of Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio, that is, ONCE THEY GOT ELECTED to Tallahassee and D.C., to again cloud their news judgment and any claim to news objectivity.

In case you forgot, I commend to you, 
The Atlantic Wire
Miami Herald Is Better at Marco Rubio Damage Control Than Rubio
By John Hudson

Here's what I posted early Thursday morning
http://www.hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2013/06/republican-votes-for-gang-of-eight.html
Republican votes for the Gang of Eight immigration bill continue to fall away even 
as the Miami Herald continued their news blackout for a third day regarding Ryan
Lizza's New Yorker column and the truth about S.744, and the bad news for Marco
Rubio and the newspaper continues apace, as the truth about both continues to seep
out over the Internet

It's the perfect book-end to Wednesday.

Yes, lots of genuine frustration that an important public policy issue that directly affects this area of the country more than any 95% of the U.S., negatively in my opinion, is being completely ignored -on purpose

Not surprisingly, this being South Florida, and the Summer, it's not like the four English-language TV stations are doing anything to fill the news vacuum.
They've done nothing about it and are, in fact, resorting to their usual summer habits: -either sleepwalking or taking a siesta for the whole summer.

But don't worry, they'll wake-up and pretend they're serious reporters again around Labor Day, esp. if it looks like a hurricane may pass thru South Florida.
Yes, then they are all Edward R. Murrow speaking gravely into their microphone.

In fact, Thursday night, even given the unique circumstances of the NBA Finals, during 90 minutes of ABC's Miami affiliate, WPLG's newcast from 5-6:30, other than the 4 breaks for weather updates, the only non-Miami Heat story was the George Zimmerman trial.
That's the whole list.

(I even watched it again on my DVR before writing this just to make sure I wasn't hallucinating.)

Miami, often still barely part of America, and almost completely journalism-free this Summer.

Wednesday, June 19, 2013

News blackout at Miami Herald re Marco Rubio & Rubio's Folly is no accident! STILL nothing new about immigration @MarcoRubio. Ryan Lizza's great New Yorker piece on immigration reform and the roles of Marco Rubio, #gangofeight and their staffs, continues to be part of news blackout at Herald and their second-rate politics blog; Tampa Bay Times and their Buzz politics blog finally gave up on their blackout re Lizza story on Tuesday afternoon; What happened to the wall between editorial and content? Where is it at the Herald? But then they never replaced their Ombudsman over 2 years ago -and let Marc Caputo do articles & columns; #rubiosfolly


These screen captures are from shortly after Midnight this morning and they paint quite a picture of how truly low bad journalism has gotten in South Florida in the year 2013.
This is what an intentional news blackout looks like when the management and the editors of an American newspaper doesn't want its readers to know about a certain bit of news that reflects poorly on one their central editorial tenets.
In this case, reflects poorly on their pro-amnesty for illegal immigrants position and the role of Florida senator Marco Rubio, whom I voted for in 2010.


News blackout at Miami Herald re Marco Rubio & Rubio's Folly is no accident! Still nothing new about immigration @MarcoRubio. Ryan Lizza's great New Yorker piece on immigration reform and the roles of Marco Rubio, #gangofeight and their staffs, continues to be part of news blackout at Herald and their second-rate politics blog; Tampa Bay Times and their Buzz politics blog finally gave up on their blackout re Lizza story on Tuesday afternoon; I thought there were was supposed to be a wall between editorial and content? What happened to the wall between editorial and content? Where is it at the Herald? But then they never replaced their Ombudsman over 2 years ago -and let Marc Caputo do articles & columns; #rubiosfolly
























@Miamiherald, @NakedPoliticsFL, @rickhirsch, @MarcCaputo scared silly about the prospect of having to report fairly about Rubio and Co.'s terrible PR problem -the truth actually came out! 

Their whole attempt to go without honestly telling both sides of the immigration reform story has been exposed. How can they possibly spin the words of Ryan Lizza and dozens of other people who were witnesses to what happened? 

So far the Herald's management has done that by completely ignoring it and treating the story like a non-story.

But even as the Herald's management and editors dawdle and put their heads in the sand, influential people in the country are taking names and lighting sticks of long-fused dynamite.
And boom goes the dynamite!









Yes, nothing about Ryan Lizza, his penetrating New Yorker piece, Marco Rubio's chameleon-like maneuvers on matters of principle and the uncouth comments of Rubio aide Alex Conant tossing poor Floridians under the bus.

But then that's the sort of condescending and patronizing view of too many Miami Cubans towards poor Blacks and Whites that we've seen over the past forty years. 
Nothing particularly new there.

Of course after the Mariel boatlift, as we all recall, these were the same people who were forever telling us that their nephew -who was then in the M-D jail- was a political dissident back in Cuba, which is why they were in jail over there.
Sure, not because they were a criminal or a rapist or...
Always with the Cuban exceptionalism, which does NOT naturally flow to others in their minds, especially native-born Blacks.














That's especially true for poor African-American in Miami of whom there are plenty who don't speak Spanish, but the Miami news media, just like the woman who supports the immigration bill who represents those constituents in Miami, Rep. Frederica Wilson, FL-24, who is completely ignoring that angle and is no doubt despertaely hoping no reporters ask her any hard questions, just like always.
Not that they ever do.
Most Miami-area reporters are lapdogs, not watchdogs.

Dear South Florida press corps:
Do you believe the poor African-Americans in Rep. Frederica Wilson's congressional district are going to love the new immigration bill? I don't.Thanks for completely ignoring that issue like so many others you have ignored since I returned to the area from D.C. over nine years ago.
Obvious issues involving public policy that would be raised publicly in other media markets but which is beyond the ken of the local Miami press corps.
Hmm-m... maybe that attitude of yours is part of why Blacks in Miami feel so alienated.
YOU completely ignore them unless something bad happens in their neighborhood or you have some cheesy story about a community park to show how much you -cough- "care." They're just props, not real people. 
Too bad they don't speak Spanish, eh Alex?

But that non-story from two weeks ago about David Beckham being interested in having an MLS team in Miami -something that literally nobody was ever interested in, even me, a huge soccer fan- well, they were all over his appearance at a Heat-Pacers playoff game, where their coverage like all Miami press corps coverage of him being in town -the hysterical 14-year old girl.
It sure wasn't journalism and the fact that so much of it was from female reporters, esp. on TV, only made it more cringeworthy.











In case you forgot or never knew, within the recent past, it was not unusual for the Herald's constipated political blog to go 2-3 days without anything, until they started posting Tampa Bay Times Buzz posts there to fill up the space.

It's the same reason they'd shove little nothings about education there as well rather than running them on an Education blog they've never started.
I wanted you to see the evidence for yourself.

A propos of the Tampa Bay Times Buzz politics blog, they finally broke their many days of silence this afternoon on the Ryan Lizza story. 

Tampa Bay Times
Buzz politics blog
Rubio distances self from unnamed aide's perceived slam on American workers
By Alex Leary, Times Washington Bureau Chief
Tuesday, June 18, 2013 1:28pm

It was so obvious what was going on, and people besides myself were asking questions publicly about whether they were ignoring the news just like Herald, whose editorial p.o.v. is stridently pro-amnesty.
Never is heard a discouraging word.

Not even about Rubio himself:

The Atlantic Wire
Miami Herald Is Better at Marco Rubio Damage Control Than Rubio
By John Hudson

But eventually, they'll have to reconcile their obvious attempt to hide news from readers that deal with such an important issue, especially one where they have such a strong public point-of-view for amnesty, which has been their policy for years.

Alfonso Chardy has churned out dozens and dozens of biased and one-sided pieces on immigration, year-after-year, as has been detailed on this blog with great specificity.
Always very sympathetic to the illegal immigrant no matter how contrived thei story.

And almost all of the so-called "news articles" seemed like they were written and edited by Cheryl Little, the woman who arranged the dog-and-pony shows for Miami-area print and TV reporters to meet the brainy Illegal teens.

Those carefully-arranged meetings where the parents who deliberately snuck in illegally or deliberately over-stayed their tourist visas 15-20 years ago are never asked reasonable questions by reporters about why they intentionally broke the law and refused for years to show up for Customs or ICE or DOJ meetings? 
And be asked why they never learned even a modicum of English in over 15 years?

Those inconvenient facts and useful context that never appeared because it was likely a condition of the interviews as set-up by Little.

Yes, Alfonso Chardy as corporate publicist not reporter, the Herald as PR agency whose job is to sell the merits of no border fences, no meaningful security measures, only unlimited cheap workers to be exploited by Florida businesses, esp. its powerful agribusiness industry.

I have a manilla folder somewhere full of those articles as well as the one-sided Guest Op-Eds that were supposed to be contrary to the Herald's Editorial Board's pro-amnesty, look-the-other-way point-of-view, but which, amazingly, always seemed to agree with them.
What sort of crazy, free community newspaper "journalism" is that?

If there was such a thing as an anti-Pulitzer Prize, in my opinion, the Miami Herald would be the leader of the pack among the second-tier newspapers in this country after their management's conscious decision over the past week to completely ignore important news that was already starting to come out at the end of the week.
This, even while the Herald was busy trying to lionize one of the pro-amnesty folks last Thursday in some particularly amazing logrolling by one the McClatchy's D.C. drones
"Miami’s Leon Fresco: The immigration mover and shaker you don’t know"(Pictured sitting with Schumer to show he's important! LOL!)
http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/06/13/3450219/miamis-leon-fresco-the-immigration.html





As for the Naked Politics blog run by The Miami Herald: "The raw truth about power and ambition in Florida.'
No, not really.

More like the late-arriving smug Conventional Wisdom that passes for intelligence in Miami but which has been off their game for many years, and which has a pro-amnesty bias so obvious that even liberals don't bother to pretend that it isn't obvious.
Look for yourself and see how right I have been about the blackout!
https://twitter.com/NakedPoliticsFL








-----
And a follow-up to what I wrote here a few days...


@marcorubio -No activity there since June 7th and nothing about immigration in over a month; Hmm-m.. who's really tweeting for Marco? Hallandale Beach Blog plays detective -and gets results!
Hmm-m... interesting. 
Out of curiosity, lasts Thursday night, June 13th, during halftime of Game 4 between the Heat and the Spurs, I checked @marcorubio.
It turns out that Florida's junior senator and member of the pro-amnesty Gang of Eight behind S.744, the amnesty first immigration bill, hasn't tweeted ANYTHING about immigration in well over a month. No tell-tale sign of his flip-flopping!
But tons of tweets about the Heat!

I checked again this morning after the Heat won Game 6 against the Spurs.
No change -nothing about immigration, #gangofeight, S.744

@marcorubio -No activity there since June 7th and nothing about immigration in over a month; Hmm-m.. who's really tweeting for Marco Rubio these days?