No wonder so many people are misinformed

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I don’t mean to be a press critic, but compelling stories keep coming to my attention that I want to share.

• One in five adults regularly get their news from social media influencers, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center. Among the under-30 set, it’s more than one in three. These influencers are most frequently found on Twitter and are mostly men who are more likely to lean right than left. Perhaps most telling, only a quarter of influencers have ever worked for a news organization. 

 Opined Taylor Lorentz of UserMag:

 “Pew’s findings paint a concerning picture of the online news landscape. The widespread dominance of conservative male voices in the news content creator world tilts public discourse toward reactionary right wing narratives, which are then boosted by algorithms that reward sensationalism and outrage.”

• I wrote a while back about the owner of the Minnesota Star Tribune deciding the way to save his business is to invest in it, not cut it to the bone. Now the Atlanta Journal-Constitution is doing the same, to the tune of $150 million. Proclaims the paper’s new publisher: “I did not come here to manage decline.” That attitude would get him fired at most chain-owned daily newspapers.
• Change is coming to the cable and broadcast television business. Here’s an  analysis on the likely impact of Donald Trump’s presidency on the FCC, which regulates the industry. Expect more consolidation and less regulation, which could reduce competition in local TV markets. Meanwhile, at least one cable company is considering getting out while the going is still good, not because of Trump but changes in the industry.
• National Public Radio is dealing with hard times. Shrinking audiences. Declining revenues. Smaller staffs. Kinda sounds like newspapers. Anyone who listens to WBFO should read this story. 
• Marty Baron, the retired editor of The Washington Post and editor of The Boston Globe when it broke the story of pedophilia in the Catholic church, sounded warnings about what he said is Trump’s pending assault on the press in an interview with NPR’s Fresh Air. Baron said he expects Trump “to go after the press in every conceivable way.”

In short, the business is in upheaval.

This week’s chuckle: The Erie County Board of Elections explaining the vagueness in its personnel budget: Commissioners want to insulate themselves from outside political interference. LOL. There is no more political governmental body in Western New York than the Erie County Board of Elections. Its staff is wall-to-wall patronage hires. Hell, one of its commissioners is Jeremy Zellner, chairman of the Erie County Democratic Party. 

State Sen. Sean Ryan has announced his candidacy for mayor. Expect a similar pronouncement in the near future from Acting Mayor Chris Scanlon and former Fire Commissioner Garnell Whitfield, among others. Back in September, Geoff Kelly ran down the list of folks who were weighing candidacies at the time.

New York Focus assesses the likely impacts of a Trump presidency on education in the state: less funding, fewer free school lunches and the deportation of immigrant students. And for your viewing pleasure, here’s a video clip of Trump’s nominee for secretary of education. You can laugh before crying.

This from Robert Reich, labor secretary under Bill Clinton: “America now has 815 billionaires who currently hold a record $6.7 trillion in wealth. The bottom 50% of Americans control $3.7 trillion in wealth.”

Russia has sustained staggering losses during its nearly two-year war on Ukraine, an estimated 150,000 deaths and some 300,000 serious injuries. Writes The New York Times: “Russia has lost more soldiers in this war than any industrialized nation has in a conflict since World War II.” By contrast, 58,220 American soldiers died during the U.S.’s nearly eight-year engagement in Vietnam.

The Times also reported on an updated death count for the Civil War, based on new research of Census records. The revised count is 698,000, up from 618,000. “The Confederate states fared much worse than the Union, with a mortality rate more than twice as high,” wrote The Times.

I recently added to my collection of books on John Lennon – at least 10 – with a new release by Elliot Mintz, a media-type and close friend during Lennon’s last decade of life and confidant to Yoko Ono to this day. I breezed through We All Shine On: John, Yoko and Me in a few days. Hardly hard-hitting, as a Guardian reviewer noted, but hardly a whitewash. I found the book enjoyable and recommended it if you’re a Lennon fan. 

I dealt with Mintz in 2020 during the course of producing what I’ll call an investigative book review of a title purportedly based in part on Lennon’s diaries stolen after his murder. It was written by Geoffrey Giuliano, a Lockport author who I described as “the world’s most prolific profiler of the Beatles.”

The book didn’t pass the smell test when I read it. Too many unsubstantiated, sensational claims.

Giuliano obliged me when I challenged him to share his source documents and I spent seven hours in the attic of his house off the Erie Canal reviewing his cache. I came away believing Giuliano likely did possess the stolen diaries, or at least a good chunk of them, and I was a little blown away that I had actually read them. 

I also came to the conclusion that, as I wrote, “many of the [book’s] scandalous revelations are not substantiated. In some cases, they’re actually refuted.” 

My skepticism was further heightened by what I dug up about Giuliano. He was a sketchy character with a history of unpaid bills, run-ins with the police and a felony conviction involving one of his companies.

My story, entitled Lennon Imagined, (ignore the messed up byline) might be the most fun piece I ever worked on. I mean, it involved reading what I believed were Lennon’s private diaries, dealing with Mintz and other Beatle insiders, and producing a good piece of investigative reporting. 

It sure beats writing about Henry Wojtaszek and the OTB.

Jim Heaney