Liasson Should be Fired

Mara Liasson - Image courtesy NPR

National Public Radio (NPR) has always allowed its reporters a lot of leeway when reporting on their beats.  As a journalist I have a problem with this.  If a reporter is doing their job they should not be allowed to add their personal opinion to the piece.  Or, the rhetoric must be labelled commentary.  But NPR has allowed this many times over the years and yesterday morning, one of it's national political correspondents used the forum of Weekend Edition Sunday to attack the President and states' rights.

Mara Liasson has attacked President Donald Trump previously with no action on her employers part.  NPR, which portrays itself as balanced in national news coverage, should have by now disciplined Liasson for editorializing while she is reporting.  Yesterday under the guise of reporting on the COVID-19 pandemic, Ms. Liasson attacked Trump's policies on self quarantine in the coronavirus era.  She also used the same editorial to criticize states for not allowing the federal government to dictate policy to them.  The host of the Weekend Edition Sunday Program, Lulu Garcia-Navarro, never attempted to question Liasson on her lengthy editorial and the network never used the word commentary on Liasson's rant.

This is not the first time Ms. Liasson has been criticized for her editorializing during a so called news story.  Liasson was criticized severely in 2013 by liberals when she started working at Fox News.  At the time NPR looked into it and instead of censuring Liasson, praised her.

Were I the managing editor of NPR, Mara Liasson would no longer be working there.  Her actions are  unprofessional and unacceptable and she is an embarrassment to the rest of the network's reporters.  It's time for Ms. Liasson to go back to local radio reporting and not be permitted 
a national forum such as NPR.

Happy 100th Birthday

Photo by Ziggos Party

I have never written about my family before, but I want to use this opportunity to wish my late Dad a 100th Anniversary of the date of his birth.

Dad was born on May 5th, 1920 in southern Illinois.  He lived the first half of his life in a small rural town of about three thousand people.  But, in 1941 Uncle Sam came calling and off to war went my Dad.  He was a grunt that served in World War II and did his job as he was told.  He was discharged in 1945 after allies liberated Europe and three years later he met my mother and they got married a year later.

He and Mom had four kids including my big brother and two younger sisters.  My sisters are still doing very well, but we lost my brother to pancreatic cancer last fall.  It was an unfair fight and my brother never stood a chance when the doctors finally diagnosed him in stage IV.  He died less than a month after the diagnosis.  But, I digress.

Dad moved to St. Louis after meeting Mom and worked his life in the auto industry and in the finance industry.  Again, he was a working stiff that did his job well and didn't get a whole lot of recognition for doing it.  He didn't make a tremendous amount of money but, he took care of his family and we had meat and potatoes on the table every evening when the six of us would sit down to say grace before dinner.  By no means were we wealthy but we always had neat and clean clothes, a small home that was ours and every now and then something extra or unexpected.  (Christmas was always a wonderful time as kids and how my parents pulled off so many presents under the tree I still don't know, but it was that way every Christmas growing up)

Our last Christmas with Dad was in 1977 and then he died three months later in March of 1978 at the  young age of 57.  He had battled heart disease for a decade and it finally killed him one Friday night after he had busted his butt at work all week.

But, if he were still around he would have been 100 years old today. In looking back at the last 100 years I'm not sure what the best improvement to life was, but the Internet and personal computers has to rank right up there.  There have been so many inventions that we take them for granted and forget a whole lot of them.  Off the top of my head I just thought about the microwave oven, jet travel and the invention of the semi-conductor.  I could go on for quite some time.

But, this is about my Dad and what would have been his 100th birthday.  It's been 42 years since he left us and I still miss him.  There are still times I wish I could talk to him and tell him about my family today.  He was a good man to most people but to me he was a great man who served God, his family and his country.  RIP Dad.

More Lame COVID-19 Media Coverage

Image courtesy Hillerich & Bradsby Company - Louisville Slugger

If you follow this blog regularly, you know I'm a big baseball fan.  Not just of "The Show" but of all levels down including minor league baseball, college baseball, high school and little league baseball.  I like watching them all.  (Just don't ask me to sit through a T-ball game.  I have sit through more than my share of them and will never willingly go to another one again regardless of what little ones are playing),

Without any MLB baseball, the MLB app has decided to show "daily highlights".  How can there be daily highlights when all of the players are in a COVID-19 quarantine you ask?  The answer is there are no highlights.  MLB Network has taken to showing big league athletes playing video games on their devices and then taking highlights from that player's game against a computer.

Desperate times call for desperate measures especially when you have time and space to fill.  But, no matter how you cut this, it is lame!

Are You Thoroughly Bored?

With the exception of a trip to the grocery store and a trip to check on an elderly parent I've not been out of my house in quite some time except to go for a walk and do yard work.  And frankly I am bored.  You can't imagine how much I look forward to my daily hour long walk and to even working in the yard.  And, I detest yard work.  Outside of mowing, I hate to trim and pull weeds and all the rest of the crap that goes with yard work.

I would like to think we are on the down side of the virus but from what the local talking heads say, it will be three to four weeks before it peaks here.  And what annoys me even more is that a lot of people still aren't taking this thing seriously.  They aren't staying home.  There is a renter up the street who uses it to have a couple parties each week and God only knows where some of the lowlife guests have been.

The bottom line is until people start following the rules from the experts it's not going to go away.  So take this advice.  Stay safe and keep your butt home!

Laughable Programming during the Coronavirus

I retired from 42 years of working in the broadcast industry almost three years ago.  Over the years I heard a lot of strange things, dumb talk show hosts, announcers and bizarre programming.  But, two sister radio stations in St. Louis have played some of the strangest content you can imagine during this COVID-19 pandemic.

The station that like to call itself the "Sports Voice of America" has gotten lazy and is re-broadcasting every St. Louis Cardinal baseball game from September 2011.  The Cardinals won the World Series that year after being eleven games out of first place in August.  (For the record, all MLB games this season thus far have been cancelled and this outlet was the Cardinals' flagship station when they won the series). OK, but this radio station, KMOX, airs baseball games from September 2011 and then makes its announcers act as if they are in real time.  So, the night before last I heard the sports guy saying "the Cards are now just four back of the last wild card spot".  What the What?  Just plain dumb.  I am embarrassed for the poor sports guys that have to pretend its nine years ago.

If you think that's stupid, another St. Louis radio station decided to broadcast Christmas music for people under home quarantine.  Are you freaking kidding me?  Christmas music in March?  For example have you ever heard "The Little Drummer Boy" on St. Patrick's Day?  I have.  KEZK radio must have gotten the message from its listeners, or lack thereof, since they are back to their standard format.  Apparently, the station's attempt to make its listeners happy during a pandemic was a miserable failure.

Let's hope the remaining 45 other stations in this market don't also lose their minds.