Friday Funday: Bow To The Professionals

Since today is the end of the week - a very long week from our perspective in the media - we're not diving deeply into a topic today. After a week filled with bombings, explosions, poisoned letters, shootings, unprofessional media conduct, and a penultimate example of what bootlickers our members of Congress have become, we think everyone could use a little break from heavy news.

There is some good news, though.

At a news conference Thursday afternoon, the FBI announced they have two suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings. They released the only official photos and video of the suspects, and have asked the nation - and the world, really - to help them join in the hunt for the perpetrators.

Overnight, in the early hours of Friday morning, that hunt found the two bombing suspects, with some amazing & scary consequences, including the death of one of the two bombing suspects.

The kind of action the FBI took is known these days as "crowdsourcing" - a way to ask the thousands or even millions of people that a person, group, or business is connected with to lend a hand at completing a task.

Think of it like a digital age barn raising.

It's part of how the authorities were able to catch the individual responsible for the ricin-tainted letters to members of Congress and the White House this week. It's also how some online pricing tools these days, like GasBuddy.com work.

Of course, crowd sourcing can be used to promote something positive too. Think of how Nebraska Cornhusker football fans helped seven-year-old Jack Hoffman's one great moment become an internet sensation in the last two weeks. Not only has Jack appeared as the top subject on ESPN's Sportscenter, but the young Mr. Hoffman is also getting his own Husker football trading card this year.

Crowd sourcing has also been used as a tool to promote political causes, as both the supporters and opponents to the Keystone pipeline did at a raucous hearing in Grand Island on Thursday.

We won't deny that crowdsourcing, when not managed well, can end up in results like those The New York Post generated yesterday morning. That was when the Post once again proved how incompetent they are at journalism, when they published the pictures of two young men on their front page, and implied the two men were the FBI's suspects in the Boston bombings. Turns out they weren't.

The fact is, there have been a large number of examples this week of why some tasks should be left up to the professionals, while others can be handled well by amateurs.

To all those professionals this week, in fields like media and journalism, or law enforcement and emergency management, who made America look good, and helped guide the nation through a very rough week, we send our deepest, most respectful thanks and gratitude.

Enjoy your time off this weekend, everyone.

You've earned it after this week. We have too.

Liars, Frauds, And Failure

Between the ricin letters scare, the massively muddled message about a Boston bombing suspect, and all the other media madness on Wednesday - and before the fertilizer plant explosion in Waco, Texas -  there were also two very important bills working their way through two different legislative bodies that both failed to reach the next level.

One bill failed in Washington, DC. The other failed in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Sadly, the reasons for failure in both cases weren't magic or voodoo. In fact, it might have been easier if that was why they both failed.

In Washington, the Senate voted on seven of nine pieces of gun safety legislation, before Senator Harry Reid pulled the bill off the Senate calendar for the foreseeable future. In five of the seven votes, the majority of Senators voted for gun safety legislation actions like the Manchin-Toomey background check amendment. They also were in favor of the bipartisan federal gun trafficking amendment, and the concealed carry expansion amendment. All seven votes technically ended in failure thanks to both the arcane rules of the Senate, and the decisions of the gutless Sen. Reid, who never reformed the Senate filibuster, as he'd pledged and promised to do before the 2013 Senate session. That 46 Senators can give a crushing defeat to ideas supported by 90% of America is maddening, frustrating, and ridiculous.

If it sounds like we were mad about the votes in the Senate, our anger is nothing compared to that of some of the Newtown parents, who watched this cowardly display of political selfishness and fear from the Senate gallery. Some of those affected by gun violence even yelled "Shame on you" at the Senators, before being escorted out of the gallery. President Obama was as angry as we've ever seen him, in a post-vote speech from the White House, when he condemned the Senate's actions as a "shameful day for Washington."

Back in Nebraska, common sense didn't fare any better.

After two long, heated days of debate in the Nebraska Legislature - 10 hours and 20 minutes, total - the bill to expand Medicaid services for Nebraskans as part of the Affordable Care Act was tabled and removed from the legislature's agenda. Just like in the U.S. Senate, while supporters of the Nebraska bill had a solid majority in the Unicameral, they could not override a filibuster driven by Republican Governor Dave Heineman.

The stupidity, ignorance, fear, partisanship, and lies needed to thwart fiscally and socially responsible legislation in both Lincoln and DC on Wednesday is worse than shameful. It is an indictment of our entire political system in America.

While President Obama was only speaking about the failure in DC Wednesday afternoon, his words rang true for both examples of legislative incompetence.

"I've heard some say that blocking this step would be a victory.  And my question is, a victory for who?  A victory for what?" he said. "Victory for not doing something that… the vast majority of your constituents wanted to get done? It begs the question, who are we here to represent?"

That is exactly the question we hope EVERY American asks themselves as they evaluate these craven, selfish legislators in 2014 and 2016.  We can guarantee that we'll be reminding the voters before each of those elections that legislators in both Nebraska and Washington were too beholden to the lobbyists, and too worried about their own jobs to properly represent the people who elected them.

No crystal ball will be needed to see the professional and personal losses coming for those who refused to do anything but prove their own ethical ineptitude.

The Cost Of An Unethical Media

Just as spring eventually follows winter, and water inexorably flows downhill, so too do does hatred inevitably ooze out of the extremists in the media in the days and hours after an event like what happened during the Boston Marathon on Monday.

In fact, it's part of the reason we specifically noted the positive ethical behavior of so many in the media in Tuesday's commentary - as a contrast to the commentary we were certain we'd be writing today.

The near total lack of journalistic ethics from The New York Post in covering the events in Boston - lampooned with precision on Tuesday, in the satirical newspaper The Onion - was bad enough. With its obvious paean to the theory that more blood in the streets sells more copies and tweets, the Post's inaccurate and unethical coverage of the Boston bombing continued to live down to its ever-sinking reputation.

However, even the 'barely good enough for fish wrap' New York Post couldn't steal the sensationalism spotlight from the blood-soaked rats of the radio and TV world. Within hours after the carnage in Boston, Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, and Alex Jones - three names rarely worth mentioning - were all doing their best (or worst) to spread fear about the events in Boston.

Jones followed the lead of the Fox-aligned New York Post, pushing the right-wing conspiracy theory that the Boston explosions must have been the work of Muslims. Beck was a bit more subtle, insisting "Middle Eastern" terrorists had to be behind the explosions, because “when our crazies go off [meaning Americans], they target the government."

O'Reilly grudgingly gave President Obama a compliment, by saying the President "will get to the bottom" of the disaster in Boston. Then O'Reilly blew past the broadcast version of Godwin's Law, saying this one-off incident was a well thought out military campaign, like what the Nazis did.

For all those media executives who think there's no cost to themselves as they greedily count the money they earn from supporting those like Jones, Beck, O'Reilly, Limbaugh, and the rest of the right-wing hate machine, the bursting of the fear bubble in gold prices may be just what the rest of society has needed.

Felix Salmon of Reuters pointed out Tuesday, as the facts of the market catch up to the kinds of paranoid investors that support Jones, Beck, and their ilk, the fear bubble in gold as an investment appears to be popping in world markets. This serves a sharp warning that investing in fear can be just as risky - and cost just as much - as investing in greed-fueled speculation.

Further, after the Boston explosions, both U.S. right-wing militia groups and the Taliban said they weren't behind the bombs. It's not the first time these two groups of extremists have stood together. [Sidenote - Both the militia groups and the Taliban stand with the NRA, against the background check bill coming up for a tough vote in the Senate today at 4 PM, Eastern.] Still, with both groups insisting it wasn't them, and a world of video and audio proof supporting their assertions, as Dave Weigel notes, the conspiracy theorists may have a tough time making anything more out of the events in Boston.

It's worth noting that not all the extremist rhetoric comes from the political right - though it's also key to point out that no left-leaning media organization is bankrolled or sells out the way right-wing media organizations do.

The fact is, the cost to our American society of a media environment dominated by hate speech on the radio, propaganda on TV, and lies in digital and physical print is far more than just a number in terms of dollars and cents.

It's a loss of the sense of who we are, as a nation, as Americans, and as human beings, that won't ever show up on some balance sheet somewhere. That was clear in the Constitution Project's report, that proved America engaged in torture after 9/11, under President Bush, while the media mostly watched and did nothing. It's even more clear as certain members of Congress still think ethical and constitutional behavior is optional.

Thankfully, as the positive actions of so many people - around the nation and around the world - have shown in the wake of this latest tragedy, not everyone has sold out their basic human decency for a few blood-soaked moments in the media spotlight.