A4
Opinion
Blue Mountain Eagle
Wednesday, March 15, 2017
Media and its
consumers have
room to improve
A
merican media has
never been more in the
crosshairs than today.
Like Nicolas Maduro in
Venezuela and Vladimir Putin in
Russia, U.S. President Donald
Trump has made hay while
hammering on a press that
Trump describes as “fake” and
the “enemy of the people.”
And he has found a receptive
audience. Trust in the media is at
an all-time low.
It is worth defi ning “media,”
as the vague and often pejorative
term means lots of things to
different people. Disappointingly,
to a growing number it means
cable television news.
In January, about 2.8 million
people watched Fox News
each night during primetime,
1.2 million watched CNN
and MSNBC had 1.1 million
viewers. You can bet that can’t-
take-your-eyes-off-him Donald
Trump was one reason for that
increase, and likely a reason why
those numbers will stay sky high.
At the same time, about
38 percent of Americans (120
million) claimed to read a
newspaper on a regular basis
according to a 2013 Pew
Research study, down from 54
percent in 2004.
We are a newspaper, so we
come from that journalistic
perspective. We go to meetings,
go to schools, go to businesses,
tag along, talk to people, ask
blunt and sometimes annoying
questions, read budgets, go to
wrecks, go to fi res, write down
what we see, write down what
authorities tell us, ask more
questions, then report.
We hope to do it with a mix
of entertainment, humor and
local fl avor — but information is
always at the core.
Cable news does television
remarkably well. But the
line between journalism and
entertainment is often blurred
there. Many news shows
consist of pundits propping up,
then attacking what are often
straw man arguments from an
opposition fi gure.
Talking heads are invited to
voice a side of the issue, not to
help the audience understand
the issue. It’s great television
— especially if you have a dog
in the fi ght — but often it’s not
journalism. It’s borderline debate,
it’s defi nitely entertainment, and
it’s designed to keep you hooked.
Like Doritos, it offers enough
fl avor to keep you coming back
but not enough sustenance that
you can put down your bag of
chips.
One other way you can
become “hooked” on empty
calories is by emotional
manipulation. If you watch a
segment on cable news or read
an article online and come away
from it incensed, furious and
apoplectic, it is important to step
back and ask yourself if you are
being manipulated — and to
what end.
That doesn’t mean the
best journalism doesn’t cause
intense reactions. We cover
fatal accidents and fi res and
suicides and bankruptcies that
can incense readers. But those
powerful stories are buffeted by
the daily grind of many others
that move the narrative forward,
give the reader context, include
relevant facts and help round out
the entire story. It’s not always
life-changing stuff, more often
it’s the day-to-day machinations
of the world we live in and the
government we pay for.
Perhaps you are willing to
trust your government and its
president implicitly, to take one
person’s word for what is fake
and what is true. We believe
that’s dangerous and that good
journalism is more important
when it’s under attack.
Our education system does
too. In schools across the
country, facts are paramount.
Right answers get you credit and
wrong answers get you bupkis.
Learning how to research, how to
think critically and how to reach
the correct conclusion has long
been the basis of learning.
That’s why teachers are
instructing students on how to be
good consumers of news — to
fi nd secondary sources, look for
bylines and contact information,
research a publication’s history
and range of output and how to
tell the difference between spin
and fact. They are important
reminders for all Americans now
more than ever, as information
designed to mislead is being
pushed out in high number.
You should be suspicious of
what you read, as journalists are
trained to be whether looking
at a press release, a government
document or a note from an
anonymous source. But you
should be more trusting of outlets
and journalists who show their
work, who have a long history
of revealing truths, who admit
readily to errors, who don’t play
with your emotions and favor
cold, hard (sometimes boring)
fact. Some do that better than
others, though none are perfect
all the time. But you should be
a wise consumer, not reading
outlets based on whether you
agree with their conclusions but
those who make you smarter and
more informed.
The media is going through
the wringer right now, but it will
outlive this era and — with your
help — be better than before.
Public records are your records
By Kenneth Kramer
To the Blue Mountain Eagle
This week is Sunshine Week, an
annual nationwide celebration of
access of public information.
Public records are very serious
business for newspapers because
they form the backbone of most
newspaper stories. Newspapers are
the loudest ones screaming when
legislators have the gall to attempt
limiting public records. A reporter’s
paycheck may depend on how well
he can dig up stories using public
records.
Although governments usually
give special treatment to journalists,
you, as a citizen, have just as much
right to access these records. If you
don’t know whether a record is
public or not, just ask for it. It is the
responsibility of the government to
respond with the exact statute if
they deny you. This makes it easy
for you to look up the law.
When you’re reading this news-
paper today, I bet you can fi nd at
least one piece of information a re-
porter got from a government agen-
cy.
The term FOIA (Freedom of In-
formation Act) is an acronym com-
monly used when describing the
activity of accessing records from
government agencies. But each
state has a name for their own pub-
lic records law.
“Public records” generally are
defi ned as records, regardless of
their physical form, made or re-
ceived in connection with offi cial
government business. “Regardless
Kenneth Kramer
of physical form” means that public
records come in various forms, not
just paper records. They can also
be electronic, such as email or data
stored on government computers.
They can also be photos, video or
audio.
So, the emails of your mayor, a
mugshot, video from a police dash-
cam, audio from a court hearing,
the deed on your neighbor’s prop-
erty and their water usage may all
be public records. Using your pub-
lic records law, you can check out a
health care provider. Just go to med-
ical licensing board and request dis-
cipline reports on a doctor. You can
fi nd out if a psychiatrist was ever
disciplined for sexual misconduct,
substance abuse or has a record of
overdrugging children. You can fi nd
out if a doctor has done any wrong-
side surgery or a dentist has im-
properly done an extraction which
resulted in complications.
If you request enough public re-
cords, you will see the free fl ow of
information from government agen-
cies. You get into a rhythm: You
ask, you receive, back and forth,
on and on and things are sailing
along smoothly, and then “Clunk!”
The machine stops! Some attorney,
trained to stop the fl ow and prevent
access to records or some recalci-
trant government worker or some
state statute or agency “policy”
slams the door shut! “Request De-
nied!” But don’t let that stop you!
Just Google the statute they gave
you in denying the records. Are
they right or not? If not, ask them
once again for the record and quote
the statute.
There is a wide variation in pub-
lic record laws since each state has
its own statutes.
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf
signed a bill last year allowing
criminal records to be sealed if an
ex-offender stayed out of trouble
for 10 years. New York divorce re-
cords are closed, but California’s
are open. Florida prohibited autop-
sy photos following the NASCAR
crash death of Dale Earnhardt. The
FBI won’t release a record unless
the subject of the records request
has fi lled out a form or if the subject
has died. (Plus they take forever in
responding.)
Public records are your records.
They are public. Governments are
simply the custodians of the re-
cords.
Good luck on your search of
public records!
Happy Sunshine Week!
Kenneth Kramer is a private
investigator and public records
expert. He can be reached at pi@
datasearch.pro.
L ETTERS TO THE E DITOR
Open borders
To the Editor:
So, as you are in your home do-
ing routine stuff, a strange family
walks in uninvited through your
unlocked back door and proceeds
to rummage through your belong-
ings and medicine cabinets, settles
in to your bedroom and, fi nding the
small stash of your emergency/va-
cation cash, immediately grabs on
to it as their own.
They check out your refrigerator
and pantry, and help themselves,
and they send their kids to school,
occupying the desks your own kids
used to sit in – and, since one of
the family wasn’t feeling well, they
went to the local ER and had the
medical bill sent to you. And, yeah,
since you were living on Social Se-
curity, they began grabbing your
monthly checks for their own use.
Now, exactly what part of legal
vs. illegal immigration do you not
understand?
Our country has a long histo-
ry of accepting a controlled vol-
ume of immigrants from other
lands, but that has included the
requirement that they meet qual-
ifications and pass a test to ob-
tain legal citizenship. In point of
fact, our nation has had one of the
most open doors regarding immi-
gration, compared to many.
To throw all that away and
rip the doors off our borders is
an insult to the many who have
entered our nation legally, and to
the other citizens whose medical
and retirement benefits have been
paid into by a lifetime of their la-
bor and taxes, neither of which
the illegals have themselves con-
tributed to, but have instantly
benefited from.
So, I ask again, exactly what
part of legal vs. illegal immigra-
tion do you not understand?
Gary Davidson
Canyon City
Correcting
health care
To the Editor:
We cannot afford to provide all
the health care services every per-
son may need. Politicians, insur-
ance companies and health provid-
ers ration services through copays
and deductibles, pricing and cov-
erage issues and pre-authorization
and waiting lists.
High-income groups buy Cadil-
lac plans; middle income groups
buy insurance augmented by em-
ployers and government subsidies;
and the low income and uninsured
get Medicaid. Obamacare rations
services based on need, regardless
of cost. The corrective is to base
decisions on outcomes: the per-
son’s preexisting condition, current
health status, family history and
ability to improve.
Michael F. McCarthy
Hayward, CA
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