The phone call memo between Trump and the Ukraine

One of the most overlooked factors in Donald Trump's unexpected win in 2016 was the role of the American media. The media went so far over the top in trying to hand the election to Hillary Clinton that many voters stopped trusting them, even when they were telling the truth. The recently released memo reflecting a phone call between Trump and the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, could very well feed distrust in the media.

Scapegoat in chief

I am not a fan of Donald Trump, but I am not a fan of his critics either. The media has especially been problematic. We have seen all sorts of deceptive practices including skewed selection of statistics, removal of context, opinions stated as facts, and outright lies. Not only has the media gone out of its way to fuel hatred, they are trying to pin the blame on Trump for just about everything.

Is it a loophole?

Donald Trump's 2015 taxes have been leaked. The media has been all over it. Apparently, a law that he wants to roll back forced him to pay close to 25 percent of his earnings that year. Without that law, his effective tax rate would have been around 3.5 percent.

The AP is obsolete

I consider so much of the modern world to be obsolete. That's one of the drawbacks of living an a regressive era. Among the obsolescence that can currently be observed is the Associated Press.

Racial Tensions

There have always been racial issues, but we seem to be hitting a low point during my life when it comes to race relations. Never before has the media made such a big deal about blacks dying at the hands of whites. This has been followed by protests, riots, and even murders.

East Coast Cooling

The East Coast went through a cold snap over the winter. Overall, I would say that the media is right that this was more newsworthy than the weather in the West, but it's remarkable how oblivious the media has been to our weather.

Mayan Prophecy

I don't think many people took the Mayan prophecy serious. You know the one I'm talking about. The world was supposed to end in 2012.

9/11 and Boston

The terrorist attacks of 9/11 have always been misrepresented by our corrupt media. One of the issues that arose was the impact that 9/11 had on Boston. The media made a big deal out of two flights that originated in that city.

The east coast olympics

When the Olympic Games were held in Nagano in 1998, I stopped watching American Olympic coverage. Here in the Puget Sound region, we have been provided with an option thanks to cable providers carrying CBUT, a CBC affiliate out of Vancouver. I did not return to American Olympic coverage until CBC lost the rights for the 2010 games in my home nation of Cascadia. NBC gave me a terrific reminder of why I stopped watching.

You'll die at 10 if you don't tune in at 11

As I have said, the media loves to exploit fear to trick viewers into helping their precious ratings. It's not just the over-the-top reports that they repeat over and over again such as Y2K.

Some thoughts regarding Ontake

While doing a little surfing today, I encountered an interesting news story. Ontake (or Ontakesan) in Japan erupted. At the time of the eruption, hundreds of people were on the mountain.

Anthrax Scare

Shortly after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the media found another attack to scare viewers into watching. Someone had been sending Anthrax through the mail.

Was a terrorist attack imminent?

After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the media clearly exaggerated the terrorism threat to our country. What we were being told was that terrorist groups would use the attack that took years of planning as motivation for an attack without any real planning. The media insisted that a larger attack was imminent. I never took it seriously.

Y2K

I think most people will now agree that Y2K was overblown by the media. There was a grain of truth to the concerns. A lot of computer software was not designed to properly recognize the year 2000. There are a lot of problems that could theoretically happen as a result. What the media reported was an over-the-top worst-case scenario.

How typical of the media

Which of the following is more noteworthy?

1. 5 total dead, 184 injuries, blown out windows, and no structural damage
2. At least 14 deaths (probably more), at least 200 injuries, 50-80 homes and an apartment building destroyed, 50-75 homes and a school damaged

The numbers for the second incident are a little trickier. A wider area was devastated, and I am seeing variable reports.

There’s no point in making this a guessing game. I’m sure that everyone knows that I’m comparing the Boston marathon bombing to the fertilizer plant explosion in West, Texas, and we all know that the media is obsessed with the Boston bombings.

Do you want to know something pathetic. The moment I heard about the fertilizer plant explosion, I immediately told someone what I expected to happen. Although I view the Texas explosion as a more significant event, I didn’t hesitate to say that the media would downplay it in favor of the marathon bombings.

Why was I expecting the media to provide more coverage to the less significant event? There were two primary reasons. First of all, we are comparing Boston, a large northeastern city, to a smaller city in the southern end of the central time zone. Although Texas isn’t exactly West, I always expected east coast bias to play a role.

The other reason was fear mongering. The Boston marathon bombing could be viewed as a terrorist attack, and the media can use that to talk about how we will all be blown up if we don’t assume that every bag on this planet contains a bomb. More importantly, without the media telling us what today’s risk is and how to live our lives, we are supposedly risking our lives. Sure enough, there were reports of paranoia following the Boston marathon.

Despite knowing how the media would act, I am still disgusted by the behavior. I have a local website up right now. The bombings in Boston are listed for breaking news, it’s their top story below that, 3 additional Boston stories are placed in their lead section, a local connection to the Boston Bombings is listed further down, and several of the articles are repeated in their most popular section. By comparison, the only Texas explosion article was a single article in the most popular section.

While I’m at it, I should point out that Iran was hit by its largest earthquake in 40 years. From what I have read, 35 are dead and 117 injured (mostly in neighboring Pakistan) although I am not entirely confident in those numbers. Most news sources didn’t even mention it. I’m not saying that this should be as big as Boston or West in this country, but it is still newsworthy.

On one final note, I would like to say that I feel bad for victims in Boston and West, but I want to emphasize that I really feel bad for the people of West. Not only are they going through a bigger tragedy, but the media conveniently treats them like they don’t matter. I don’t care what the media tells me. West does matter.

Least coast bias

A lot of people this year have finally started to realize that the American media is heavily biased. What many of these people still haven’t seemed to figure out is that bias isn’t just about politics.

The American media maintains a strong bias towards the least coast (east coast to those of you who don’t know any better). They give you the news that they feel impacts the east the most, and they tend to bury news that the West needs to know about. They also portray the east in a better light than the West.

Take a look at 9/11. We were hearing about all of the places that were hit hard by the terrorist attacks. New York. DC. Pennsylvania. In more recent years, Massachusetts has insisted that they were heavily impacted since two flights originated at Logan International in Boston. Noticeably absent is the fact that all flights were headed to California, three to Los Angeles. I would say that California was the second most heavily impacted state in the attack. But those two flights from Boston were more of a story than the three to Los Angeles.

Another instance was the DC sniper who gained attention one year. This was a man who spent time living all over the country. If I remember right, he spent about a year in Tacoma. He had very little to do with the state. When he was finally caught, the news portrayed his as a Tacoman.

I could also go into the horrible Olympic coverage that NBC has provided over the years. The network never takes into consideration the interests of those who live on the Best Coast. We are given a three-hour delay of a least coast feed. If there is an event occurring live in prime time for us, they will give us a taped delay at a less desirable time slot instead.

Speaking of sports, why are West coast teams who reach their finals expected to play home games at 5:00? A lot of locals are just getting off of work. That’s right. Their start times are based off of hours that the least coast crowd wants to watch, and the media doesn’t care about what’s right as much as they care about cashing in on ratings from the least coast.

While I have spent most of my life in Washington, I have spent some time in Ohio. This gave me a chance to see if the bias was visible from the east. Yup. It’s just as obvious and just as inexcusable.

The media is probably the biggest reason that I have absolutely no respect for the least coast. Responsible journalism and providing respect to the viewers is just not as important as least coast ratings. Never mind that there are a lot of people living in the West, and we contribute to their ratings (which helps them sell advertising slots). The least coast is so much better for them to exploit in order to maximize their revenue.

Improving the news

I haven't watched national news in a long time, and I'm cautious with the local news. This is because I know how the American media works. Everything is skewed to suck up to the east and induce fear so that they can maximize their ratings.

Having the news run by businesses does not work, and it never will. Government-run media suffers similar problems, but with different motives. Businesses want money, and manipulating the public can help their cause. The government wants power and to maintain control over citizens.

I recently posted about a desire to find a better, but I didn’t go into any detail about how things should be. I couldn’t resist a slight expansion.

We might actually have a few things going for us that we could use to replace our corrupt media in the next millennium or two... if we handle everything properly and evolve. In short, the Internet is our best hope right now.

What I would like to see is to open news to the people involved. We need to open channels for news contributions and allow people reasonable access to these contributions. We could develop some tools to find the information that we need.

A few sites have tried to put the news in the hands of the public. The problem with these sites is that they have too much control reliant on a single central service. This means that different sites have different content, and very few people are going to bother to visit every one of them for information.

We should develop some open standards. Different news sources (websites) could register in public databases to allow searches from external sources. News items could be attached to writers (or photographers, or any other kind of news contributors), reasoning behind contribution (familiar with the area hit by a natural disaster, voter with expertise on an issue, under-represented opinion, etc), locations of events, proximity to events, and more. Sites could develop reputations, writers could gain their own, and even individual articles could have opportunities to establish themselves as the best to read. Tags could be attached, with some being created specifically for certain topics. Some tags could be created by businesses (product releases, sponsored events, and any other stories that they want people to talk about), nonprofit organizations (fundraising, organized events, and anything that they find to be worthwhile), government (voting, law changes, etc), and the group responsible for the public database whenever an item shouldn't be controlled by anyone else (natural disasters).

Search engines could search all the major news sites and provide customized results based on interests, location, significance of local events, and just about anything else. Tags could be used by non traditional news sources such as social networking, allowing searches to incorporate suggested reading from friends and add personal updates if friends are somehow involved in a news story.

The bottom line here is that I would personally prefer to read about an incident in Washington from Washingtonians rather than from the east coast biased media. If we are willing to make a few changes, this might actually be possible.

Why I won’t be watching the 2012 Olympics

Over the years, I have been somewhat off and on regarding my interest in the Olympic games. Since I will only have access to NBC’s coverage this year, I will pass.

Let me go back to the Nagano Olympics. That was the first time that NHL players competed. That alone made them games that I had to see. I didn’t just restrict myself to hockey. The very first day, there were some skiing events scheduled. Weather conditions caused a delay.

Since CBC started coverage three hours ahead of American coverage (I believe it was CBS) on the West coast, that was the only option for me. Three hours into the Olympic Games, CBC cut away and I switched over. What did I see? A three hour delay of a delay. Events were finally starting, but CBS filled the air with absolutely nothing. It wasn’t too long before CBC resumed. It was somewhat embarrassing that Americans had nothing to show while the Canadians were giving us live coverage.

Like I said, hockey was my primary interest. CBS bragged about the schedule being suitable to give us live coverage of the sport. What they meant to say was that they were giving the east coast live coverage and they were giving us a three hour delay of an east coast feed. If a game started at 10 PM and lasted until 1ish, their “live” coverage started at 1AM. Let me ask you something. Which is better for ratings, 10 PM-1 AM or 1 AM-4 AM? CBS’s decision made no sense to me, especially since their “live” games started after I had finished watching on CBC.

Nagano was the last straw for me. CBS kept complaining that the games were a letdown resulting in lower ratings. In all honesty, those might have been my favorite Olympics to date. I think the real problem was the horrible job that CBS did covering the games. After the poor coverage and blame throwing, I decided never to return to American Olympic coverage.

Let’s move forward to Beijing. I remember CBC showing off the stairwell that was their base of operations. They also showed us NBC’s far more significant home for the games. I got my usual worthwhile coverage while numerous misguided locals kept complaining because they were stupid enough to watch NBC. I knew better and had no major problems with the coverage.

2010 brought the Olympics to my home country of Cascadia. Unfortunately, CTV outbid CBC for the 2010 and 2012 games. Since local cable providers don’t carry CTV, my only choice for supporting my region was to turn to NBC. As always, we received a three hour delay of an east coast feed despite the games taking place in the same time zone and there were even a few people staying on the Washingtonian side of the border who travelled the world for the games.

What if a local athlete such as Apolo Ohno was in a potentially history-making race during prime time? NBC would kick him out for this delay. Despite the network’s beliefs, “live from the West coast except on the West coast” does not have a ring to it. It was perfectly clear that NBC didn’t care one bit about us.

By comparison, CBC gave the West live coverage. CBC has even given our state a bit of a shout out to thank us for watching. Unlike NBC, they are willing to acknowledge that we exist. It’s remarkable how much better the Canadian media treats the Western U.S. (and Cascadian states under the influence of the U.S.) than the American media does.

It’s not just the over-the-top east coast bias that influences absolutely every single component of the American media. NBC is more about propaganda and corny human interest stories. The games take a back seat, and they care more about exploiting viewers than entertaining them. While we are supposed to blindly follow our country over cliffs, one of the biggest appeals for watching the games in recent years has been to root against propaganda. I am proud to say that I rooted hard against Michael Phelps in Beijing.

I wonder if NBC is embarrassed by the fact that a broadcast out of a stairwell in Beijing blew away what they could do with all their resources while they were in Vancouver.

Since the London games don’t have the same benefit of being in Cascadia, there is no reason for me to subject myself to NBC’s torture. I hope I’m not alone. If any Americans or Cascadians currently under American influence have consciences, please don’t reward NBC’s beliefs that how we are treated should be based off of where we live. Please avoid NBC’s coverage of the games.

Addressing the media’s problems

The American media is horrible. I have been saying it for years, but does it have to be that way?

There have traditionally been two approaches to the media. The first has been government-controlled media. This has the news skewed by the government to serve their own purposes. The second approach is to have the media run as a business. When this happens, money skews information just as much.

The solution to our problems isn’t to solidify either of these flawed approaches. We need to improve accessibility to the different markets and to get the information from those who are involved rather than those who are trying to manipulate us. Thanks to the Internet, this should be possible. You could even argue that attempts have already been made. Unfortunately, no reliable community has ever formed.

Perhaps the problem is the desire for different people to view the news from a centralized platform. This would give us one place to find everything. Instead, we need open standards that allow people to communicate between each other and for various hubs and portals to gather the information for the distribution of the information. I will go into a little more detail in the future, but the point is that we need information to come from the source rather than manipulative… I’m not going to finish that sentence.

The Hockey Media

The biggest issue that I had with ESPN when they had the rights to NHL coverage was their heavy bias towards the east. Sure, they would occasionally give us a doubleheader with a West coast game attached, but they always treated that second game as a throwaway. The only team in the two Western time zones that they gave any respect was the Colorado Avalanche. It seemed like they felt that one team (whose water drains into the Gulf of Mexico) would please the entire Western half of the country. I was insulted by that attitude.

A lot of what I saw with ESPN is common practice throughout the American media. For example, Olympic coverage on the West coast is always a three hour delay of an east coast feed (with “Live” still plastered all over everything). NBC, who has had the rights for pretty much all eternity now, does nothing to reach out to the West. When we had a local athlete chasing history in our own time zone during a desirable time, we had to wait three hours. It’s not just sports, either. Just about everything is delayed for the West, and the news tries harder to please viewers in the east.

Comcast has since taken away the television rights from ESPN. They couldn’t be much worse, could they? Unfortunately, they definitely can be. For starters, their ownership of the Flyers has been made painfully obvious by the gratuitous comments regarding that team during every game, even when the Flyers aren’t involved. Their schedules are loaded with northeastern teams, while Western teams are neglected. If the Flyers play the Rangers, that will definitely be the game televised. I am not an Avalanche fan, but I can honestly say that I miss that insulting crumb that ESPN used to give us.

It's not just Comcast, but Comcast is certainly the most influential media source for the sport. Before I continue, let me explain something that Comcast has done differently than most of the media. While the tendency is to divide the country by time zones and to give the eastern time zone the best treatment, Comcast has said, “Screw you” to the southeast (a market that I don’t normally respect) so that they can justify treating Chicago much better than they deserve. For all practical purposes, Comcast turned the NHL into the NEUSPHL (northeastern United States pseudo-hockey league).

Many people predicted that the Canucks would win the Stanley Cup, and that got them one game on the schedule in the United States. Now that they won the President’s Trophy, came out on top in the Western Conference, and came up one game short of the Stanley Cup, can you guess what Comcast is giving them? A second game. While I don’t want to force an alliance, I’m sure that many fans of teams such as the San Jose Sharks will join me in my hatred of Comcast’s blatant favoritism of the northeast.

Before the last playoffs started, I ranted about how the Canucks are treated the worst by the media because the lone West coast Canadian team is the single most difficult to market to the northeast. Eventually, the Canucks had to face a northeastern team in the Final. That team was the Boston Bruins. It was obvious that the media was going to be absolutely horrendous for that series. What’s even worse is that despite my hatred for the media’s over-the-top east coast bias, I still might have underestimated how bad things would get.

For starters, the media made a hard push to convince everybody to look for the bad in the Canucks and simply ignore anything bad coming from the Bruins. Embellishment became a big story. I’m not going to lie, the Canucks played the corniest hockey that I have ever seen from them. Due to the nature of the hockey media, the Canucks at their worst is the only exposure that most Americans have had to the team.

Getting back on topic, not all Canucks “dives” were really dives. Henrik Sedin was stretching out his leg after most of his falls to the ice. It seems obvious that an injury was making it legitimately easy to knock him over, but the media had people looking for dives. The Bruins were just as easy to knock over in the series (Tim Thomas was rewarded for the most embarrassing dive in the series), but nobody second-guessed any of their suspicious falls. It hit a low point when the desire to see dives from the Canucks convinced fans to boo Mason Raymond after Johnny Boychuk broke his back. Obviously, the fans criticizing the Canucks for diving were seeing dives that weren’t there.

Two games earlier, The Canucks’ Aaron Rome delivered a hit that resulted in a concussion to Nathan Horton. The only thing that anyone could find wrong with the hit (except for a “jump” that the replay disproved) was that it was late. The injury to Mayson Raymond occurred when Johnny Boychuk used his stick to put Raymond into a vulnerable position and then shoved him into the boards without the puck anywhere near the play. If you hadn’t seen the plays to which I’m referring, Boychuk’s hit was an unquestionably dirtier play than Rome’s. After Raymond’s injury, the media kept making Horton’s injury the story of the series, and a reason that everyone should be pulling for the Bruins. After the series was over, they reported that Rome hadn’t apologized enough (Did Boychuk even apologize to Raymond?) before they had given us a single status update on Raymond’s condition. We have since learned that an update on the condition of a Canucks player is the same thing as using an injury as an excuse for losing.

I don’t want to throw around baseless accusations, but I have to wonder about something. The media can clearly influence the fans. Since officials are also human, the media could potentially influence them as well. With the extent of the media’s bias, I don’t think that there is any question that if the officials had paid attention to the media, they would have likely been swayed in favor of the Bruins. Due to the influential nature of the media and the human nature of bias, it would be highly unethical for officials to pay attention whatsoever to the hockey media. While the media’s influence certainly would have helped explain some of the iffy decisions that were made during the series, I would hope that the officials have enough common sense to steer clear of their antics.

I’m not going to go into every detail of every mistake that the media made during that series, but I would like to point out one more. After game 5, the Canucks tried a play specifically designed to work against the opposing goalie, Tim Thomas. It worked, and the Canucks took that game. Afterwards, the media was talking to Roberto Luongo (the Canucks’ goalie) and about Thomas (for some unknown reason). Luongo said that the play in question would be an easy save for him. Taken in context, he was talking about his style rather than ability. He even made sure to say that things that are difficult for him would be easy for Thomas. The media brought just one part of the entire comment to the public. They portrayed Luongo as incredibly arrogant for calling out Thomas even though he never so much as implied that he is better than Thomas.

After the media turned as many people as they could against Luongo with their actions, they started hounding him. You could tell that he lost his composure. While Luongo had a couple of horrible games in Boston, it wasn’t the Bruins that got the best of Luongo. It was the media. While I will not blame the media for Luongo not showing enough mental toughness to brush aside the mistreatment, I can’t help but wonder how the series would have played out had the media acted in an ethical manner.