We expect our writers to be above reproach, as infallible as the Pope, as honest as an Eagle Scout, dispensing our news and voicing their opinions devoid of outside influence. To quote Mick, "you can't always get what you want". In Kansas City that has never been more true than it is now.
A woman is reported to have been kidnapped off of the streets of Downtown, taken to the east side and raped. The Power and Light district issues a statement assuring people that "hey it didn't happen here". The woman clearly crossed some imaginary line, left the safety of the brightly lit sharks cage. She stepped over some unmarked boundary that separates the pretty people from the dregs of society. KCTV 5 parrots the P&L spokesman, stressing the phrase "outside the P&L district" throughout the entire piece. KCTV 5 features , scratch that, KCTV 5 PIMPs the P&L district weekly with 5 Fridays, which is a promotion for the P&L district. Rather than digging into the recent problems in the P&L, they just regurgitate the horse shit being slung by the PR guy. Money talks, lets not blow smoke up one anothers ass.
Mary Sanchez of the Kansas City Star educates us on the irrationality of folks being fearful of the city's "Black Nieghborhoods". "Stray-bullet homicide doesn’t validate fear of black neighborhoods". Her column unlike KCTV 5's pandering for the P&L district, isn't driven by dollar signs. Mary has loftier aspirations, visions of cotton candy defecating unicorns dance in her head, everyone living in peace and harmony, that's her schpeel. She panders to the folks who refuse to believe crime stats, the well intentioned and totally clueless politically correct whites who chose to believe that all will be good in those nieghborhoods if they just plant some tulips and sing kumbaya on the corner of 39th and prospect. The areas that Mary refers to as "The Black Neighborhoods", are the most crime ridden and dangerous in this city, period. Rather than offend her uber liberal readers, or worse yet risk the chance of being called racist, she ignores the body count, and dismisses it as white fear.
Look, I could go on all day, but I'm trying to make a point, so I'll get to it. When we were children we had lofty goals in our young minds. We wanted to be fireman, cops, ballerinas, princesses, whatever. I wanted to be a preacher, not a regular preacher, I wanted to be a Televangelist, then life in all it's ugly glory reared it's head, shit happened, a life was irrevocably changed, I abandoned those childish aspirations and became a con man of a different sort. You know the rest of the story. Late in life, I decided I wanted to write. I can't do it for a living, I've got no degree, I'm 50 , there are countless professionals out of work, so I do the next best thing. I write here. I get it wrong, I get it right, but I always tell it like I see it. Somewhere along the line, reporters and journalists in this city stopped doing that. News stations handle news that might reflect negatively upon an advertiser with kid gloves. Starry eyed clueless writers ignore the elephant in the room.
I get the bulk of my news online now. If I want to know about city government, city hall, mammy gate, I go to a blog. If I want a history lesson, I go to a blog. Want to know where to eat, go to a blog. The list goes on. I can find more truth on the Internet, than in the local media. Journalists can dismiss the Internet, they can poo poo blogs, bury their ego inflated heads in the sand, deny the truth. The truth is, local media is rapidly becoming obsolete. They run 30 or 60 minute commercials at 4, 5, 6, 9 and 10 pm nightly. They hedge, they ignore, and they deny. What they rarely do, at least consistently, is report the real news.
The good thing is, that you aren't being sponsored by a multimedia conglomerate who pays you to mouth the party line and nothing but the party line. I think that bastard W.R. Hurst was the one that really got that ball rolling. They write what they are told to write and the talking heads spew the politically correct pap to the masses. You should start a pirate radio station as well. Then you could rant in real time.
ReplyDeleteWell, I think we need you out there. I know it may sound impossible, but I bet you'd have a shot at this principally because you challenge the media. Take your urban blight tour (and awards) and this column and apply.
ReplyDeleteAnd, if they diss you, you have a new blog story to report on so it's a win win situation.
http://www.indeed.com/viewjob?jk=ff1196e8181ee653&chnl=homeright&jsa=9312&inchal=apiresults
"Mary has loftier aspirations, visions of cotton candy defecating unicorns dance in her head.." ROTFLMAO! I should not read your posts while I am suposed to be at work!
ReplyDeleteI am in agreement with JOOLS - we need another installment of "urban blight". I think JOCOSOB or Mesha voluntered to go with you next time! :)
Right on! I was just saying the same thing a week ago to an older coworker. He gave me do validation in my opinion. It's true, though. If you want to cut through the B.S. (i.e., journalists beholden to either corporate interests or ideology) you have to go to the blogs. You get more depth and honesty than any corporate newspaper or television station newscast. Plus, at least here, there's a nice peppering of creative profanity for added reading pleasure.
ReplyDeleteI suggest that Mary call a cab and go to 51st and Swope Parkway. Get out on the corner and walk down the hill and around in the neighborhood.
ReplyDeleteShe will discover what the phrase "It's like a whole 'nother country" means.
btw, wasn't W.R. Hurst the inventor of the Hurst Shifter.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurst_Performance
Spiel is how it's spelled. look it up. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/spiel
You are so right Midtown. I've gotten to the point where I cannot sit through a newscast, either national or local. It is pap served up for the sheep.
ReplyDeleteIt also annoys me to no end when they treat network promotions or Hollywood advertisements as news. What a joke to see these knuckleheads interviewing each other regarding crap they really only want to sell to you.
Instead of "Breaking News", maybe they should call it "Wind Breaking News."
The best piece you've written. Right on the money.
ReplyDeleteI voted against this POS.
Whenever the taxpayers subsidize private interests, then those private interests get very lazy and adamant. I don't care if the private interest is a lazy welfare mom or a billion dollar corporation (which corporation in the P & L had their world headquarters built with taxpayer money?)
A sense of entitlement.
MM,
ReplyDeleteYou have your hands around a great irony - the newspaper industry is collapsing not because blogs are free but because they're better - in every way.
To take an example, if a local newspaper decided to do your series on urban blight, it would have been cast as a "human interest" piece. They would have assigned a twenty something female sociology major to write it. Each entry would have told a story of some party who, owing to a dicey background and lack of social services, lives in squalid misery. In fact, the meat of the story would be the "victim's" attempt to navigate social services. In short, they would find a way to make the story as boring as possible.
When you did the pieces, you already knew, in a general way, who was living in these areas. That is, you'd met and mixed with these people over a lifetime. You shot some pictures, described what you saw, gave some background and it was ... gripping. The basic point of the pieces was, as you noted, - you're driving around these neighborhoods so we don't have to.
Ah, okay, I have it. This is what you did right and what every newspaper I've read does wrong. You gave us the story from the point of view of the reader. Newspapers (especially when describing squalor) give us the story from the point of view of the subject. I'm not saying that the point of view of the subject is completely unimportant. But if that's the only point of view given, it's like hearing a sermon. Which is always unpleasant. You're giving us more of a travelogue ("the world's most dangerous places", Kansas City edition). It's informative and entertaining. And, in any case, the people who live in the places you describe get to have their say in the comments.
If newspapers had the balls to write stories this way, they be in a hell of a lot less trouble.
You wanted to be a televangelist!!??!!
ReplyDeleteThat's the funniest damn thing I've read all week. Seriously, I about wet myself laughing, that incongruity took me by such surprise.
Ennui is right; witness the KC Star's weepy profile of the "most dangerous zip code in Missouri"
ReplyDeleteIt was a pretty good article -- interviewing lots of murderers who hail from there -- but the cant of the story was definitely too sympathetic and strangely blameless, as if the ground itself of this neighborhood was responsible for all the blood spilled upon it.
Not everyone has lot their guts, though: The KC Crime Blog is still very neutral; and the LA Times Homicide Report lists the race of every victim and suspect.