Page 4A
East Oregonian
Saturday, April 7, 2018
KATHRYN B. BROWN
Publisher
DANIEL WATTENBURGER
Managing Editor
TIM TRAINOR
Opinion Page Editor
Founded October 16, 1875
OUR VIEW
Independent media
survives in your back yard
The website Deadspin created a
video last week, which creepily showed
dozens of Sinclair news anchors around
the country saying the same words, in
sort of a toneless monologue.
Here is part of the script, transcribed
from the Seattle-based Sinclair station:
“Hi, I’m (A) ____________, and I’m
(B) _________________…
(B) Our greatest responsibility is
to serve our Northwest communities.
We are extremely proud of the quality,
balanced journalism that KOMO News
produces.
(A) But we’re concerned about the
troubling trend of irresponsible, one
sided news stories plaguing our country.
The sharing of biased and false news
has become all too common on social
media.
(B) More alarming, some media
outlets publish these same fake stories
... stories that just aren’t true, without
checking facts first.
(A) Unfortunately, some members
of the media use their platforms to push
their own personal bias and agenda
to control ‘exactly what people think’
... This is extremely dangerous to a
democracy.”
It’s mostly anti-media malarkey,
quite en vogue these days thanks
to a president who is much more
media-obsessed and media-savvy than
his predecessors. Unsurprisingly, he
expressed his support for Sinclair’s
mission because they have expressed
their support for his.
We do think the response to the
video has been a bit overblown as the
influence of TV news is on the wane,
but the irony of 100 voices sharing
a choreographed message chiding
irresponsible media isn’t lost on us.
And it’s understandable not to want
a single large corporation to reach its
corporate tentacles into local newscasts
across the country. It’s doubly dangerous
when that group is motivated so
transparently by political bias, which
is certainly the case with Sinclair.
State-run media is a sign of autocracy,
not democracy.
At the East Oregonian, we’re proud
to be an independent, community-
centered media voice. Every word that
appears in our local pages is attributed
to a named source, and all of our local
content is written by people living right
here. Decisions about what runs and
where and how are made by people in
your communities, too, whose names
and phone numbers appear in every
edition of the paper.
There are no “must-run” dictations
from on high. We run what we think
our community needs and wants to
know. And if you have an issue with our
decisions or a dissenting opinion, our
doors are always open, and our phone
lines are too. We’re actually people,
unlike the Facebook algorithm that tells
you what you want to read and accepts
no feedback.
Of course we are also members of
the Associated Press, which allows us
access to journalists and editors the
world over. The AP provides nuts-and-
bolts reporting for every kind of outlet,
from Fox News to the New York Times.
Times are strange for media the
world over. The news cycle has been
hijacked by online pressures, fake news
and Twitter partisans of every ilk. It can
seem sometimes that the media is just
a giant, headless enterprise that barrels
forward, gobbling up time and energy.
But we hope it’s calming for readers
that their news comes from down the
street — printed in Pendleton, reported
throughout the area where the news is
happening, delivered by your postman.
It’s one less thing to worry about in an
era where truth is becoming harder to
find.
OTHER VIEWS
The art of the flail
I
YOUR VIEWS
Voters should oppose
new livestock district
Please vote no on formation of the
Salmon Point Livestock District. The
residents of Salmon Point have known
since they bought their properties that this
was open range.
We have put up our own electric fence
for the last 20 years, which is only a minor
inconvenience. One rancher runs 25-35
cows for 4-6 weeks a year on the land
adjacent to us. All of Hat Rock is fenced
and the petitioners had to include Wanaket
Game Preserve to make the minimum
acreage requirements, which will never
allow grazing.
Only a 1,100-foot stretch of land is not
fenced by residents and only one home has
been built on Salmon Point in the last 10
years.
As residents, we should have been able
to reach an agreement and built our own
fence a long time ago. Forming the district
would force the rancher to bear the brunt of
construction costs to protect our properties.
Once again, please vote no on formation of
the livestock district.
Floyd Turnbull
Hermiston
McLeod-Skinner has
background to succeed
I’ve listened to Jamie McLeod-Skinner
participate in several candidate forums
and am always impressed with her high
regard for education and how she has
used her education. Jamie has a degree
in civil engineering and a law degree.
She put her civil engineering degree and
watershed management experience to work
improving water supply and sanitation in
rural communities in Kosovo.
That work required that she
coordinate with local governments and
non-government officials to successfully
(on time and under budget) complete her
projects.
After obtaining her doctorate in
environmental and natural resource law
from the University of Oregon, she worked
for the Corps of Engineers and later the
Klamath County Circuit Court, assisting
with the Klamath Basin water rights case.
We have a candidate with experience in
water rights and watershed management.
When has there been a more qualified
candidate to serve our rural needs?
One of the many things McLeod-
Skinner will work to do as our
Congressional District 2 representative
is improve the basic infrastructure for
housing and community development in
our rural community. She has the technical
background to know what infrastructure
we need in our rural district, and the
collaborative working experience in a
political environment to get it done. I can’t
wait to vote for her in the primary on May
15 and again in November to send her to
Washington, D.C., to represent our local
interests rural Oregon.
Unsigned editorials are the opinion of the
East Oregonian editorial board. Other
columns, letters and cartoons on this page
express the opinions of the authors and
not necessarily that of the East Oregonian.
Miriam Gilmer
Adams
f you’ve been watching stock
the economies on the other side of
markets, you’re probably feeling
the imbalance. Overall, the U.S. trade
seasick. The Dow is crashing! No,
deficit is just the flip side of the fact
it’s bouncing back! Wait, it’s crashing
that America attracts more inward
again!
investment from foreigners than the
In general, trying to explain stock
amount Americans invest abroad.
fluctuations is a mug’s game. But in
Trade policy has nothing to do with
this case it’s pretty clear what’s going
it.
on. Whenever investors suspect that
Beyond this conceptual confusion,
Paul
Donald Trump will really go through Krugman there’s a raw fact few people — and,
with his threats of big tariff increases,
as far as I can tell, nobody in the
Comment
provoking retaliation abroad, stocks
Trump administration — seem to
plunge. Every time they decide it’s
appreciate: China no longer runs big
just theater, stocks recover. Markets really,
trade surpluses.
really don’t like the idea of a trade war.
This wasn’t always true. A decade ago,
So is a trade war coming? Nobody
China’s current account surplus — a broad
knows — even, or perhaps especially, Trump measure that includes trade in services and
himself. For while trade is one of Trump’s
income from investments abroad — was
two signature issues — animus toward
more than 9 percent of GDP, a very big
dark-skinned people being the other — when number. In 2017, however, its surplus was
it comes to making actual demands on other
only 1.4 percent of GDP, which isn’t much.
countries, the tweeter in chief and his aides
Meanwhile, the U.S. ran a current account
either don’t know what they want or want
deficit of 2.4 percent of GDP, a bit bigger but
things that our trading partners can’t deliver.
also much smaller than the imbalances of the
Not won’t — can’t.
mid-2000s.
As a result, incoherence rules: The
But in that case, why is “bilateral” trade
administration lashes out, then tries to calm
between the U.S. and China so unbalanced?
markets by saying that it might not carry
The answer is that it’s largely a kind of
through on its threats, then makes a new
statistical illusion. China is the Great
round of threats.
Assembler: It’s where components from
Let’s talk in particular about the will-he-
other countries, like Japan and South Korea,
or-won’t-he confrontation with China.
are put together into consumer products for
In some ways, China really is a bad actor
the U.S. market. So a lot of what we import
in the global economy. In particular, it has
from China is really produced elsewhere.
pretty much thumbed its nose at international
It’s not clear why we should demand that
rules on intellectual property rights, grabbing China stop playing that role. Indeed, it’s
foreign technology without proper payment.
not clear that China could even do much to
And to be fair, Trump officials do sometimes reduce its bilateral surplus with the U.S.:
raise the intellectual property issue as a
To do so, it would basically have to have
justification for getting tough.
a completely different economy. And this
But if getting China to pay what it owes
just isn’t going to happen unless we have a
for technology were the goal, you’d expect
full-blown trade war that shuts down much
the U.S. both to make specific demands on
of the global economy as we know it.
that front and to adopt a strategy aimed at
Now, Trump himself might be OK with
inducing China to meet those demands.
large-scale deglobalization. But as we’ve
In fact, the U.S. has given little indication
seen, his beloved stock market hates the
of what China should do about intellectual
idea, and with good reason: Businesses have
property. Meanwhile, if getting better
invested heavily on the assumption that a
protection of patent rights and so on were
closely integrated global economy is here to
stay, and a trade war would leave many of
the goal, America should be trying to build
those investments stranded.
a coalition with other advanced countries to
Oh, and a trade war would also devastate
pressure the Chinese; instead, we’ve been
much of pro-Trump rural America, since a
alienating everyone in sight.
large share of our agricultural production —
Anyway, what seems to really bother
Trump aren’t China’s genuine policy sins but including almost two-thirds of food grains
its trade surplus with the United States, which — is exported.
And that’s why things seem so
he has repeatedly said is $500 billion a year.
(It’s actually less than $340 billion, but who’s incoherent. One day Trump talks tough
on trade; then stocks fall, and his advisers
counting?) This trade surplus, he insists,
scramble to say that the trade war won’t
means that China is winning — in effect
really happen; then he worries that he’s
stealing $500 billion a year from America.
looking weak and tweets out more threats;
As many people have pointed out, this
and so on. Call it the art of the flail.
is junk economics. Except at times of
■
mass unemployment, trade deficits aren’t
Paul Krugman joined The New York
a subtraction from the economies that run
Times in 1999.
them, nor are trade surpluses an addition to
The East Oregonian welcomes original letters of 400 words or less on public issues and public policies for publication in the
newspaper and on our website. The newspaper reserves the right to withhold letters that address concerns about individual
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Send letters to managing editor Daniel Wattenburger, 211 S.E. Byers Ave. Pendleton, OR 97801 or email editor@eastoregonian.com.