What is Entertainment-NEWS Good For?
For boomers like this writer, NEWS was something boring that our parents watched after dinner before entertainment programs on black & white televisions. Today the legacy NEWS is entertainment and little more.
[1] Confessions of an Alaskan Boomer, DONN LISTON June 14, 2023
Later, as a cub reporter at the Anchorage Daily News during the mid-1970s I learned that the PRESS is the Fourth Estate; established under the US Constitution to be independent of any government institutions including the Executive, Legislative or Courts except in the case of wrongdoing. This was and remains an important responsibility of the PRESS–requiring a sober review of what the government is doing, who is doing it, and why what is being done by government may or may not be in the public interest.
After all, rights of the PRESS come from the same constitution that established Executive, Legislative and Courts as institutions.
Where did the Idea of a Fourth Estate Come From?
Having fought a war against the most powerful nation in the world in the late 1700s and won, founding fathers of the United States of America did not trust government and envisioned a FREE PRESS to serve as one check on government abuse by informing the citizenry without constraint. Of course this assumed schools teaching literacy, math, how government works, and why every citizen has a responsibility to be informed, vote, and participate in making government accountable.
Government public education quit doing that a long time ago.
As an aspiring career NEWS reporter I also learned from University of Alaska classes in journalism that honest reporting by honest reporters means different viewpoints; the goal is to inform voters having different persuasions–who may then elect honorable public officials who serve the people who elected them–over diabolical influence of Special Interests.
For instance: Parents with kids in public schools are not Special Interests, the unions who control their teachers are Special Interests. When school board members are elected with major Public Sector Union contributions and campaign assistance, those elected officials must serve their Special Interest master over parents who have expectations of their schools, or even the majority of voters who elected them. Union Collective Bargaining Agreements negotiated between the union and management, then brought before school board members elected with union support, represent deceptive negotiating from both sides of the table by the Special Interest unions.
This also politicizes our schools as fountains of propaganda alien to rational and caring parents’ likely desires for influences on their children outside of the family.
I personally know this as an Employee of the largest teacher union, NEA-Alaska, in Juneau Nine Years. This writer was part of the campaign promoting the lie that more money is required for quality education. I lived and breathed that lie before becoming a certified teacher myself and seeing first-hand what a joke our money pit Education Factory schools have become.
Further, Dear Readers, you will not see any reporting of the deleterious effect of Special Interest influence from traditional Alaska Media sources; Special Interests buy advertising while readers buy only subscriptions, at best.
How NEWS Became Primarily Entertainment
This shift from an information-based non-governmental PRESS to a vehicle for entertainment and propaganda has been visible to anyone interested in good government. The non-profit Corporation for Public Broadcasting is government PRESS. I remember when it started, and I have seen its impact upon Alaskans who receive biased entertainment programming presented as unbiased NEWS.
For background: After the calamity of the Lyndon Johnson presidency, Democrats needed to change the public narrative from the unnecessary 60,000 American soldiers killed in Vietnam and false hopes of liberal policies like the War on Poverty, to Nixon’s likely complicity in a two-bit burglary of the Democrat’s Campaign headquarters in the Watergate Office Complex during an election in which Nixon was swept into office in a landslide. From this time forward every NEWS cycle by traditional alphabet news sources and the New York Times trended Liberal, using every imaginable local, state or national occurrence as an opportunity to crowd the brains of Americans with entertainment over TRUTH. The loud-mouth Liberal establishment scoffed at Nixon’s appeal to the Silent Majority with the result that people of conservative inclinations ignored them and went about their lives. During this era Earth Day called for saving the planet while killing inconvenient babies was alright because the US Supreme Court decision in Row v. Wade said some murder was alright under the Constitution.
[2]Richard Nixon’s Silent Majority speech
We were fighting Communism there so we wouldn’t have to fight it at home
Smart people have seen that the easiest way to control what people know is to be selective in what they are told. Smart people are now finding better sources of authentic NEWS on the Internet and leaving government schools when possible. This writer aspires to attract smart people of conscience.
Alaska’s NEWS Transformation to Entertainment
In Alaska the struggle between two daily Anchorage newspapers saw the switch from NEWS to entertainment when the California-based McClatchy News Chain in 1979 bought ADN to force the Anchorage Times out of business. When McClatchy sold ADN to Alice Rogof in April of 2014 for $34 million so it could be a beacon of liberal claptrap, most reporters with integrity left.
[3]Former ADN Editor Speaks About Sale
ADN did not remain profitable
Ultimately through bankruptcy Rogof sold ADN to the Fairbanks Binkleys for $1 million, and its entertainment value rose to new heights. While still a powerful force, the ADN NEWS brand has been gravely diminished with an inability to dig out of the Liberal Anchorage mudflats. Traditional media overall is becoming irrelevant, unable to promote propaganda for Special Interests any more, although some former reporters have blogs now that demonstrate they are still hacks even in retirement.
[4] Unsupervised Youth in Anchorage, this writer’s ADN Experience from newsboy to reporter.
Traditional news media throughout the state now have digital platforms and some don’t even print a newspaper for people with tactile learning styles anymore. Those bedrock NEWS platforms now must tolerate a number of independent journalists like this writer who dare to challenge the status quo reporting of Entertainment-NEWS, with stories beyond their visions for Alaska. Back in the day my colleagues at ADN tended toward the liberal perspective and that influenced me as I considered being an investigative reporter like the famous Washington Post celebrities Woodward and Bernstein who had helped hound Richard Nixon out of office to great lynch mob fanfare.
Today those two Entertainment-NEWS Dinosaurs are
pathetic.
[5]Watergate Scandal
https://www.britannica.com/event/Watergate-Scandal
Imagine what the courts and the PRESS would have done to Nixon had his son set up a business in China to sell out American interests with kickbacks to Dad for talking on command like a trained seal to people on the telephone seeking influence .
The public spectacle of Watergate was one example of the transformation of boring news into entertainment, and I watched and participated in it first-hand at a liberal Anchorage newspaper even then on the brink of bankruptcy. Publisher Kay Fanning needed a Pulitzer Prize at any cost to show The Anchorage Daily News was relevant. My former reporter colleague Howard Weaver and some others were able to gain that coveted Pulitzer Prize with a series of stories about corrupt practices of the Teamsters Union during Trans-Alaska Pipeline construction.
Oh Wow, deep investigative reporting in Alaska!
By then I had already left the paper to start my own publishing and public relations business.
Today that’s all water under the bridge. Readers are now able with the benefit of alternative independent media sources to arrive at their own conclusions on any topic. That’s why this writer documents the sources of all claims in References at the end of every story.
What Consumers Miss with Entertainment-NEWS
Recently Alaskans have learned that Retired Homer Judge Margaret Murphy has been indicted for perjury. During her time on the bench Judge Murphy likely ruled on hundreds of cases, and happened to have ruled in the State of Alaska case against David Haeg, who for more than 18 years has declared he was illegally framed by the AK Department of Fish & Game. Ultimately Haeg was able to convince a Grand Jury to hear his case and some months later Judge Murphy was indicted.
3KN-23-00416CR State of Alaska vs. Murphy, Margaret
will be livestreamed on August 18, 2023 beginning at 10
a.m.
Traditional news stations have picked up this story now and Haeg is rallying his supporters to arrive at the courthouse or call in at trial to see what happens. To be honest, justice shouldn’t be influenced by a bunch of people watching from the gallery but this is Alaska.
For this independent journalist the real story is how our bureaucratic-bound judiciary now denies direct appeal to a grand jury for the intent established in the Constitution by the founders of this state. It appears Haeg’s case has puckered them and they want to protect lying judges from discovery by Independent Grand Juries with findings not approved by the Dunleavy-appointed Attorney General—now being accused of colluding with the Alaska Supreme Court to put its oversized thumb on the scale of justice with Supreme Court Order (SCO) 1993.
[6]Court explanation of SCO 1993
We haven’t heard anything about this underhanded act in traditional media because it is complicated and not as sexy as a lying judge getting caught. But the issues being brought before the Alaska Supreme Court by private citizen Thomas Garber have far more significant implications than whether David Haeg gets his confiscated airplane back.
Garber has long challenged the AK Office of Children’s Services for practices harming Alaska families by misguided social workers with undeserved powers causing families in distress to become entangled in the legal labyrinth that is our Alaska Court System.
[7]Alaska OCS Crisis; Parents are Pursuing Accountability
Garber’s hearing was originally set for December 14, 2023. Garber asserts that SCO 1993 violates Art. 1 Sec. 8 of the Alaska Constitution and a whole bunch of statutes. He says it was illegally formed in collusion between the Executive Branch and the Court as an unlawful hinderance of the independent power of the Grand Jury and violates the Doctrine of Separation of Powers. This law was influenced by individuals who were subject to pending grand jury investigations requested by Alaska citizens, and is an abomination of the ethical responsibilities imposed upon Alaska lawyers and judges through the Rules of Professional Conduct and the Code of Judicial Conduct. Additionally, SCO 1993 represents actions taken by public officers in violation of the Oath of Office under Article XII, Section 5 of the Alaska Constitution. SCO 1993 infringes on the common law powers of the court to request a grand jury investigation that results in an indictment and more. He is asking the AK Supreme Court to stop this nonsense.
In a nutshell the Supreme Court appears to have done the bidding of the Dunleavy Administration to get more power for the Attorney General, hoping a few crazies in Kenai wouldn’t get traction in the Entertainment-PRESS before the court can hear the arguments and likely rule against Garber and Alaska’s Founding Fathers.
That’s what we can expect in Alaska now that the Oil Rush is over and we are finding out how this state really runs.
References:
[1] Confessions of an Alaskan Boomer, DONN LISTON June 14, 2023
https://donnliston907.substack.com/publish/post/171003441
[2] Richard Nixon’s Silent Majority speech
https://youtu.be/TpCWHQ30Do8
[3] Former ADN Editor Speaks About Sale
“Former Editor speaks about sale” Archived 2014-07-29 at the Wayback Machine, Alaska Mudflats, Jeanne Devon, May 27, 2014. Retrieved 20 June 2014.
[4] Unsupervised Youth in Anchorage, this writer’s ADN Experience from newsboy to reporter, DONN LISTON, September 14, 2017
https://listondonn.ph/unsupervised-youth-in-anchorage-ak-1960s/
[5] Watergate Scandal
https://www.britannica.com/event/Watergate-Scandal
[6] Court explanation of SCO 1993
[7] Alaska OCS Crisis; Parents are Pursuing Accountability
