Showing posts with label Enquirer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Enquirer. Show all posts

Friday, November 09, 2018

Making the Correct Choice When Dealing With the Enquirer's Jason Williams

If you wonder how a politician should treat the Enquirer's conservative columnist Jason Williams, just refer to this sentence from his latest column:
Pureval declined Politics Extra's interview request on Thursday.
You are not going to get a fair shake with Williams unless he likes you or you fit his bias. He is biased against nearly every Democrat, namely John Cranley, so the best action is to refuse to be interviewed by him.

I would suggest coming up with colorful ways to say no.  Think of a greeting card type response, a "Sorry for you biased column" card or something similar.  Sending him a bouquet of straw might be applicable.  Avoid sending dead fish in newspaper.

Friday, February 16, 2018

More Continued Bias Against the Streetcar at the Enquirer


Screenshot from Cincinnati.com/news/ on 02/16/2018
Yep, you may think this is a broken record. Surprisingly, however, the bias at the Enquirer I am pointing out is not directly sourced from the usual anti-Streetcar and anti-OTR Resident and Enquirer Columnist Jason Williams. No, this time it falls on the editors.

Shown on the left is the graphic that was the news page of the Enqurier's website and a similar version on the Front page this morning.  The column is about SORTA.  The column is about SORTA's finances.  The column does include in the last paragraph one reference to promotions of people with Streetcar.  The headline of the column actually reads the following:
Screenshot from Enquirer column: https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/politics-extra/2018/02/15/px-what-hell-going/340915002/
Yep, that is the headline of actual column, which doesn't include the Streetcar.  That headline might have been changed if you read the link name in the graphic caption, but without internal info from the Enquirer, I can only see what I can observe.  Blaming the writer for the headline has traditionally been wrong.  So, how does a column that is mostly about SORTA and it's Buses and it's Finances and a Sales Tax wind up leading with the Streetcar in the headline?  It's a classic bait and switch advertisement.  The Enquirer (along with the Republicans) has help create a controversy over the Streetcar.  A bird can't shit on a Streetcar window and not make headline news for days. Meanwhile SORTA has serious issues with its's Bus Service.  The Bus Service is the vast majority of SORT is responsible to provide the City and Southwest Ohio region.

This isn't about the Streetcar, but the Enquirer wants readers and has created a damned controversy so it does not give a shit about truth, it wants eyeballs of suburbanites who love to hate on the city and Conservatives in the city who love to hate on anything Downtown.

Bias in journalism sucks when reporters and columnist do it, but when editors tilt things like TRUTH, one must question everything that is published.  This also plays into a FOX News type of infotainment, pretending opinion journalists, like Jason Williams, is hard news with this type of biased headline and link to the column.  For all of the chest pumping by the media for being self declared seekers of TRUTH, there is the cold reality that far too often they take dump on the TRUTH for sake of increasing readership and advertising revenue.  Journalists around the city must be so proud.....

Friday, April 07, 2017

Anyone Want to Bet on Who the Enquirer Endorses in the Mayoral Primary?

You will find out today live on Facebook because I guess print is dead.

Who wants to bet with me? I'll bet a case of beer on who I think they will pick.

Sunday, March 26, 2017

Passing the Ball to Yourself Isn't a Completion, It's More of a Recovered Fumble

The Enquirer sometimes reporter and sometimes columnist Jason Williams wrote a story this week about what would become the subject of his column PX: Yvette Simpson dropped ball on 'pale male' comment.  He created the issue by personally taking offense to the word "pale" being using against John Cranley.  Or it is possible he was fed the article by the Cranley campaign who wanted to play the reverse racism card.  Either way this was self manufactured outrage by Williams.  Then he writes the column and get's up on his soapbox and champions the fight against racism, against white people.  He even pulled in the opinion of former scandal ridden Hamilton County prosecutor Mike Allen who appears to be willing to play a newly minted white race card.

I didn't know those existed, but if any one locally would have one made for himself Mike Allen would be that guy.

Jason's sanctimonious column rings hollower with every Republican or Conservative Democrat he thinks to ask for comment on this topic.  He, and Cranley's camp, have contrived a slight that is so minor, that is so meaningless that NO ONE WOULD CARE ABOUT IT if he didn't bring it up.  Cranley wouldn't have cared about it if someone didn't bring it up to him.  If anyone other than a black woman used that phrase, Williams or Jay Kincaid or Cranley himself (who ever fed Williams the story) wouldn't have bothered to use it as a race based campaign tactic.

That's the Cranely goal here.  The Cranley camp is playing racial defense. They know they are not going to win the majority of the black vote for Mayor with two black candidates running.  That fear is exacerbated when a former Cranley ally (one very influential in the black community) defects after Cranley's actions.  What does that mean?  It means he has to win the white vote big.  The white vote, which is no more monolithic than the black vote, does have one segment that tends to think alike, the GOP vote, which is nearly all white. Cranley has to win the GOP vote, something he hurt his chancing of doing when he advocated making Cincinnati a "sanctuary city."  How better to draw in white outrage than creating race based outrage against a black candidate?  Well, there are other ways to be a legitimate candidate who pulls in votes of white people, but why would Cranley want to win legitimately when crass actions make it more likely he wins at all?

Jason Williams continues to be a poodle of the Cranley camp.  He has it out for Yvette Simpson and is willing to dump this type of bullshit column out there and hide behind the comments of Mike Allen.  I'd call it brazen if it wasn't just so biased.  It is biased on multiple levels: Pro-Cranley, race, and gender.  It is by far his worst column of this election season, but I am sure it earned him brownie-points within the Cranley camp. It won't 'earn' him a position in a Cranley administration, but it inches him that way.

As a case in journalism, this episode falls into the don't make your own news category.  Williams didn't make news in the sense that he became part of the story, but he sure did as a columnist.  His column is largely framed as him not liking how Simpson's campaign responded to HIM.  Add that to the the race based logistics I write about above and this column is a shit-storm.  He built the controversy and he attempted to bottle it.  I call that trying to catch your own pass, something you can't do in American football, unless someone else touches the ball first.  Simpson didn't touch this story and that pissed off Williams off, but didn't stop him from catching his own pass.  That is what I call a fumble recovered for a loss.  Journalism and politics need forward progress, not steps back.  This is a step back.  The worst part, he could have written about this topic and not made it such a big deal and made an actual point about the Facebook comment.  That doesn't help his cause, so fair play be damned.

Tuesday, February 28, 2017

How Does Husted Know People Are Non-Citizens?

I read through this Enquirer article reporting on an alleged 82 non-citizens voting in
Ohio. This allegation is being made by John Husted, Republican secretary of state for Ohio.

This article lacks a key critical question: How does Husted know anyone is a non-citizen? That question is not answered. The article takes his word for it. This article is credited to multiple reporters, so it is difficult to understand if anyone questioned Husted at a press conference or if this was part of a press release. No matter how the information came about, how can one publish such an allegation without providing at least a basic summary as to how Husted knows these people are non-citizens?

Is he matching names to some type of list? What list is that? Is it outdated? How can he only match names, as names are not a reliable means to identify an individual person on lists, as duplicates complicate things.

Is he using SSN? Since only non-citizens with a green card have a matchable SSN (National ID etc) number, is that how he is matching them up?

Or is Husted making assumptions?  Any objective person should question how he knows, since he is not naming anyone and according to the article he is turning the names over to law enforcement to investigate.  Does this mean he didn't do an investigation to determine this?  If his "review," as he called it, isn't good enough to prove the basic fact to law enforcement that the people named are non-citizens, then how can he honestly claim to the media these are non-citizens?

The Enquirer is too quick to allow Ohio Republicans to appear to be standing up to Trump.  By doing so hey inadvertently provide ways to make their xenophobic readers think they are right about foreigners voting.  This article as written will be the basis for racists, like Richard Jones, to push their claims that non-citizens voting is a huge problem and be the basis for their rhetoric.  Yes, the article goes out of its way, as does Husted, to point out that it is not a problem, but that will not matter to Trump supporters who want the news to 'validate' their preexisting views, not inform them about local, national, and world events to help them form their opinions. This is how effective "Fake News" is born, with a grain of truth.

UPDATE 10:30PM: The Dispatch has more and reports the following:
Husted's office used information from the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles to find people who registered illegally.
The Dispatch does not report how that information could be used to know a person is or is not a citizen. It is possible that information gained from this process could be used, but if so, why didn't Husted and each County BOE run this comparison prior to each election, so non-citizens are unable to vote?


Saturday, February 25, 2017

More Positve PXing for Cranley from Enquirer's Williams

I am sure Cranley sycophants around town find it cliche to point out pro-Cranley bias in the local media, but for Jason Williams it is becoming an unhealthy habit. Lazy journalism is a sickness that journalists can get when they are spoon fed stories. It is more damaging to reporters over columnists, but since Williams tries to be both, he's doubling down into a spiral of laziness. Two weeks in a row he has published columns that read as if they are produced, packaged, and minted in the mind of Jay Kincaid, John Cranley's campaign manager. This week his column is filled with direct quotes from Kincaid, so yes evidence of the minting is first hand.

It is funny how Jason tries to drop in some criticism in pointing out Cranley's obviously confrontational personality, but then he writes this whopper of a sentences that takes his PXing to a new low:
After all, Cranley has a track record of following through on his campaign promises and getting things done.
That's a Kincaid line or is the line of a kool-aide drinking supporter willing to sell the most pathetic campaign dogma. It is sycophant level. It is the worst kind of pol-speak that no journalist, even a columnist, would ever use. I unfortunately expect more of the same next week.

Sunday, February 19, 2017

When Will Jason Willimans Get Paid For 'PXing' John Cranley?

Jason Williams, sometime columnist and sometime reporter for the Cincinnati Enquirer, has unleashed a 'PX' on his latest political extra column. I really can't tell, if other than adding in the 'PX' bit, if this column was written by Williams or a member of Cranley campaign staff. (Maybe it's both.)

When a reporter doesn't get an email response and then extrapolates that into an hatchet job on a political opponent, that is hack journalism. Williams set up John Cranley's opponents by playing Cranely's campaign game and he did it with a gleeful tone.  It's like he enjoyed digging at Yvette Simpson while espousing the most trite political talking point know to modern man: "Where is your Plan?"

As the educated and experience political observers know, this is a red herring like few others.  "A Plan" in politics is as subjective as it comes, where the difference between having one and not having one is as meaningless as arguing if a glass is half full or half empty.  Yes, Williams see's John's glass as half full and Simpson's as half empty, but there is no substance for him to draw upon, except the hollow words from newly found Cranley sycophant Vice Mayor David Mann.  I guess the nearly meaningless title of Vice Mayor matters a lot to Mann, nearly as much as the bullshit Cranley 'Plan' does to Williams.

I really hope this blatantly biased journalism is not what the Editors are going to allow from a sometime columnist and sometime reporter for the Cincinnati Enquirer. If they get clicks, then I surmise that's all that will matter.  If I see these editors or Williams championing truth in light of the anti-press fascist behavior from Trump and his blackshirts, then I'll be sure to point out the hypocrisy.

Monday, November 21, 2016

Is the Enquirer's Jason Williams Trolling for Clicks?

Why does the Enquirer and particularly reporter Jason Williams continue to report every possible Streetcar accident like its a scandal? The incident they cite ended up not even being an accident.

The amount of time Williams puts into this can logically only be for one reason: get clicks. He knows the hate that exists for the streetcar and Downtown and he's capitalizing on that hate.  He is ginning up any and all incidents, no matter how trivial, so his click rate goes up.

Reporters now have to worry about readership levels, or the number of clicks their stories get online. Streetcar stories are low hanging fruit. There are 100 other more real newsworthy stories to write about in this city, but we get Streetcar accidents. The funniest part is that this was put in the politics section! It's like they are admitting to why they are doing it, but still do it.

This is they type of journalism that is killing discourse and politics. This misinforms the public. This is knowingly misleading the public. If fender benders mattered, there would be a rolling news-wire service dedicated to them, since they happen somewhere practically constantly. We are in another election season and the click rates matter and the political candidates reporters are rooting for are less hidden.

Tuesday, November 01, 2016

Enquirer Now Using Outsourced Reporters

In a non-surprising move, the Enquirer is using outsourced (duplicated) news reports from FOX19. Here's the latest example.  The Enquirer lists footer calling FOX19 a "media partner."  To be fair, the Enquirer is listing it as part of the by-line.  This time around that was especially helpful to news junkies like me who were confused to read Jennifer Baker's name as reporter on the Enquirer article, but the FOX19 after it does make it more noticeable.  Jennifer Baker is a former Enquirer reporter who now is a reporter for FOX19.  It was going to be surprising to see her return after another round of layoffs just occurred with Gannett.

Tuesday, July 05, 2016

Anti-Clinton Bias From the Enquirer

If you squint you might see something other than Republican Propaganda in this biased article on the Enquirer's website.  When an article has the headline "Local reaction to the FBI's investigation into Clinton's emails," but goes on to list multiple tweets from Trump as examples of those local reactions, you can see the carelessness from a mile away. It is like this reporter is trying out for a job running the website for a conservative talk radio station. Give him the job and get a real journalist instead.

Thursday, October 08, 2015

Cranley Gets the Enquirer to Edit Article

Not a big surprise, but Mayor John Cranley was able to get the Enquirer to pull and edit a story that he initially refused to provide a comment. The article makes this admission subtlety:
Cranley, who initially declined comment but reversed course after an unedited version of this story was inadvertenly (sic) posted Sunday to Cincinnati.com, said he had nothing to do with Harris’ exit or the board appointments.
The article was originally published on Saturday and was back up yesterday after his and the City Manager Black's comments and B.S. denials. It was also conveniently  after the Mayor's awkward State of City infomercial (Cranleymerical?). We don't know how the Mayor's office was able to convince Editors at the Enquirer to make this change, but it happened in a very public and embarrassing way.

Cranley is clearly LYING when he told the Enquirer he had "nothing to do with Harris’ exit or the board appointments." We know this because of who was picked for the board. To say that those were the best choices to serve on a the Historic Conservation Board is something that would ONLY be stated by the Mayor or a member of his staff. You don't get that many Cranley donors together in one place via natural selection. Due to his legal training, Cranley likely has no email trail to Black telling him what to do, but how often do the men hold meetings or phone calls? If they do it often, which I am sure they do, why else would they be doing that if it was not a means for Cranley to tell Black what he wants done on every significant issue put before Black.  We have Mayor who is knowingly overstepping his limited power as Mayor and a City Manager who is so fearful of losing his job that he does what ever the Mayor says, even though he's not his boss.  We have dysfunctional leadership at City Hall and a fractured City Council that can't get six members to consistently stand against the Mayor's over-reaching. Mann and Flynn need to step up and stop walking the fence.

Cranley is a politician and knows how to tell a lie that won't get him into legal trouble. The more Cranley acts as Mayor the more lies we get and the worse our city becomes.

Sunday, September 27, 2015

Enquirer Demonstrates Bias or Laziness?

In their article this week, discussing who may run for the GOP nomination to fill Boehner's seat, the Enquirer made the choice to outright declare the GOP to be the winners of the special election not even scheduled yet.

It is true that Boehner's district is heavily Republican. It would have been fair opinion journalism to focus on the GOP and state that Dems are unlikely to win. This article is trying to be a straight news story, but failed.  It just skiped over the Democratic party. It was as if they didn't bother to call anyone and picked the least flattering email reference they could find, 'surely' by chance.

It's not like a different Ohio newspaper hundreds of miles away didn't get a hold of Cincinnatian David Pepper, the Chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party. I wonder if anyone from the Enquirer even tried to call him or the other possible local Dem candidates.

Instead we get a poll that states "Who Will Replace John Boehner?" and below it we read the long list of Republicans. I guess the Enquirer will decide all elections this way? They won't bother to list anyone who they judge has no chance to win, unless they are a Republican, because they need to save time for articles about the sister of soon-to-be former Speaker of the House.

So, biased or just laziness.  I am thinking both.

Wednesday, December 10, 2014

Enquirer Channelling the New York Post

When ever you start out a headline with the phrase "uh-oh" like the Enquirer did with the article Uh-oh, streetcar savings account running out, then you start sounding like a tabloid. Picture the New York Post.

Cincinnati does not need bad attempts at comedy in the headline of a serious news article.

The only reason for this was to YET AGAIN garner the eyeballs from anti-streetcar readers (that means most of the GOP),  and drive up website traffic. The bias comes through once more n the Enquirer. It's what we expect from the hollow news outlet.

Tuesday, December 02, 2014

Enquirer Appears to Have No Editors Now

I don't know how a news story like this: Suspect in custody in stabbing near casino would be allowed to be published if the Enquirer still had any editors. Review the first sentence of this very short article:
A suspect is in custody after a man was fatally stabbed just a few feet from the entrance to the Horseshoe Casino on Monday night, police said.
Now read the fourth sentence:
He was stabbed in a wooded area on Gilbert Avenue beneath the Interstate 471 overpass about 10:30 p.m., Neville said.
In the third sentence Nevill was identified as Cincinnati Police Capt. Michael Neville. So where does a "few feet from the entrance to the Horseshoe Casino" come from when the man was stabbed in a wooded area on Gilbert Ave? Does this reporter think the entrance to the Horeshoe is in a wooded area under I-471? Does the reporter live in Cincinnati?

This is just horrid reporting. At best the "entrance" being referenced was the Gilbert Ave PARKING LOT entrance to the casino and that is still ACROSS THE STREET from any "wooded" area under I-471. Depending on the location of wooded area in question, saying this was near the Casino may not be 'wrong.'  It would likely be near many places, including the BOE and P&G headquarters. Seriously, the picture with the article includes a shot of P&G in it.

I realize this was written over-night, so it has fewer filters to be passed through, but this can't continue. We can not have stories that are either being reported by ignorant journalists who can't understand when the police are using hyperbole or reporters looking to increase clicks by putting false details into stories to scare the public and create more web traffic.

UPDATE: Compare the WCPO Story.

Saturday, November 08, 2014

Minor Reporting Error or Sign of Lack of Experience at the Enquirer?

It may just a be a simple mistake, but the following Enquirer article Car strikes building, semi stuck under bridge has a huge error in it.  It reports that a building in the 1200 Block of Vine Street was hit by a car and had to be propped up to keep it from collapsing.

Well I can report that after I walked the entire 1200 Block of Vine Street  at about 5:15 PM there is no evidence of a building that had been struck, let alone one on the verge of collapsing.

The reporter obviously doesn't know the OTR neighborhood because if she did, she'd know that the 1200 block is the heart of the Gateway Quarter and if any building about to collapse here would include a business and/or people's residences, thus a much bigger story.  Also, if they had ever been to that block they would know that at that time of day, everyday, cars line the street, so the crash would have more than likely hit a car, not a building.

Hopefully the article will be updated soon to reflect the correct block.

I really hope this was a simple careless error and not the sign of what we will be getting more of with the new changes to the Enquirer: fewer editors and less experienced reporters. Also an environment where staff will NOT be rewarded for knowing about the places and people they write about, but instead will be judged based on the number of hits their articles get.

Wednesday, November 05, 2014

Dear Enquirer: You Ain't Gawker

I guess it's a slow news day over at the Enquirer, it's not like there is a ton of election data to analyze or anything, so instead we a get a GIF. That's not news, but I'm sure Buzzfeed would approve.

Monday, February 24, 2014

Enquirer Creates Click-Bait Blog Post a-la Buzzfeed

I don't think this will surprise anyone but the 24 people who commented on the blog post, but the Enquirer's blogpost over the weekend with the title Is Greater Cincinnati really miserable? is click-bait bullshit. The title implies the survey in question ranked cites (or maybe metro areas). In reality it "rated" States.

One can question the lousy article's methods and we should. The article, by Time but based on a Wall Street review of a Gallop Study (convoluted mess!) lists Ohio 5th and all of the stats it lists as examples don't rank in the top 5 worst. So, subjectivity or other randomness in the study of a study isn't valued, let alone trying to compares states on such a general basis.

The Enquirer's ICYMI blog then plays the role of Buzzfeed troll, looking to get hits (more page views) and it worked. Journalistic ethics be damned, however! Trying to push the city pride buttons by fraudulently including Cincinnati as the basis for a study is worthy of scorn and mocking. Getting readers falsely ginned up about something that does not reflect how the headline sold it is shameful and cruel.  If those responsible think they have any journalistic ethics, then they are greatly mistaken.

Saturday, November 16, 2013

More Enquirer Anti-Streetcar Bias

I think the latest example of biased journalism from the Cincinnati Enquirer stems less about the paper's negative reporting on the Streetcar project overall and more about the Enquirer's bias toward its readers who it believes are mostly conservative and anti-streetcar.

Yep, that's a case of giving readers the news they want to hear, not giving them the news that is.

When journalism becomes no different than product development, then it should be treated as no different than selling an SUV or soap.

Thursday, September 12, 2013

Enquirer Twitter 'Coverage' of Primary Night Reminded Me of People Magazine

I am really not sure if I can really say People Magazine or just use US Weekly or TMZ, but it was rather disappointing at times.
I didn't now TV shows and 'Party Chatter' were things to point out from a journalistic perspective, but if your target audience is an uninformed suburban housewife, then maybe it relevant.

Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Why Did the Enquirer ID the Student Who Attempted Suicide?

The choice to name the student who attempted suicide at LaSalle High School was the wrong one to make. I am trying to rack my brain to figure out the reasons for doing it. It's not information that is really going to drive readers to find out more by reading the paper. If they want to know about the case, adding the name isn't going to drive up circulation. I can see the argument that publishing all of the information known is good, but that assumes an extreme viewpoint where privacy is deemed wrong.

The technical reason I can see the Enquirer using is the strong likelihood that the student will be charged with a crime for bringing the gun to class and firing it, if nothing else. Naming suspects or potential suspects in crimes is an acceptable journalistic practice. Joe Deters likely won't let the case go anywhere, to help the school, if nothing else, but that's the type of story that could be written in a month or so once events play out. In that story that name of the student would then be far more relevant.

In this case at this time there is no good reason to name the student, who according to the article is under 18 years old. The young man's medical condition is not known. We don't know if he will even survive, let alone in what condition. Adding his name to the public sphere doesn't serve a purpose to the community. The Enquirer made a big mistake.

UPDATE #1: The Enquirer posted a response on why they named the student.  The response is lacking in my opinion.  It appears they did it for clarity because there was allegedly false information out there.  Also they did it because the name was already known, including allegedly being given to LaSalle parents by the School. It appears to me that not a whole lot of thought went into the act of publishing the name.  The Enquirer may want to rethink their policy and practices.  Hell, most of the time they don't report when suicide attempts happen, whether successful or not.

UPDATE #2: CityBeat has also named the student in a blog post today, based on the Enquirer article.