The Texas Press Corps, Stepping It Up

Or what is wrong with Lone Star political reporting.

As we have discussed previously, the parallels between the national and Texas Press Corps’s are striking. The ideological outlooks are indistinguishable; so too is the shamelessness with which each gaggle is able to deliver slanted news with a straight face.

Their top down, herd mentality approaches to all things news are likewise indiscernible. One person or outlet delivers a story, and the race is on to see how many of their journalistic brethren can deliver the exact same account utterly undifferent in content, tone or style from the leader or any and everyone else.

As go all things vertical in nature, the best at what the Media does (whatever that is) rises up the (un)professional ranks to eventually ply their wares in either New York City or Washington, D.C.

Those less skilled at shucking the jive languish in the minor leagues, biding their time in myriad cities around the nation hoping for their call to the Show.

Thusly, as we have said, we have the Austin Press Corps, which consists of a bunch of Dan Rathers who are not as good at it as was Dan so they find themselves mired at AAA, waiting for their shot to sling their male bovine at the next level.

The Austin Press Corps, Awaiting the Call

A preeminent facet of every Media groupthink is the need for the primordial, someone who sets the tone and leads they way for the delivery of their brand of the pseudo-News of the Day.

Nationally, that primary is unquestionably the New York Times. They publish the stories in the morning that are the leads for the three major network news shows and CNN that evening. As the exception-that-proves-the-rule libertarian John Stossel of ABC’s 20/20 told us when we interviewed him in 2004, as an up and coming reporter he was too many times simply handed a story torn out of the Old Grey Lady and directed by his station producer to “Go do this”.

Unpursued was any additional, unilateral research to check the veracity of what the Times had wrought, or even to simply augment what was on proffer within the print story’s confines. Just, simply, “Go do this”.

The Growing Reaction to the Media Cacophany

Thusly is an echo chamber born.

In Texas, the lead of all leads, the Lone Star equivalent of Gotham’s Aged Dame, is the Quorum Report (QR). It’s Editor and Publisher, Harvey Kronberg, is exactly what one expects these days when one hears the word “journalist”.

Kronberg is a former Vietnam War protester, and thoroughly of the Age of Aquarius. In short, he passed on all three of the opportunities to campaign for Ronald Reagan that arose prior to his embarking on his scribic career; there is no question of on which side of the ideological fulcrum he stands.

QR is an exclusively online publication, so they obviously have the technological drop on their newsprint brethren when it comes to promulgating in a hurry. This rush to publish often leads to the need to subsequently rectify that which they have wrought; QR issues Corrections as if it were a Pez dispenser.

Mister Kronberg, the Democrats on Line One

Even so, Kronberg’s connections within the Austin political arena are impressive, although diminished somewhat since the Republicans took complete control of all aspects of state government in 2003. He still gets much of the goods on the goings-on, but it is always so obviously pulled through his almost exclusively Democrat network.

But he is unquestionably a fixture in the Texas political Press pantheon, and everyone involved therein must kiss the crass ring.

As with the national Elephantary contingent and their Published Enemy #1, the Lone Star Republican assemblage is less than thrilled with the coverage afforded them and their efforts by the Report.

But their hands are tied; they know that the major Texas dailies (the Dallas Morning News, the Houston Chronicle, the Austin American-Statesman, to name but three) read it and write chasers thereof, and bereft of any alternative these Elephants must attempt to play Charlie Brown ball with their version of the Media Lucy.

How does QR’s singular lead on the leads injure the Texas political process? Friday’s back-to-back headlines and the accompanying stories proffered thereby exemplify the screeds and the damage done.

Delivered via the QR email notification system were the following:

STRAYHORN – FEBRUARY SALES TAX 15 % MORE THAN LAST YEAR

DIVINING MEANING OF ENROLLMENT DROPS IN CHILDREN’S MEDICAID

Texas Precipitation

Our immediate thought, upon reading these two headlines in rapid succession, was the fairly obvious “Well, less people need welfare when the economy is doing well and better, which these sales tax numbers clearly indicate is the case.”

Good news, yes? And a fairly rudimentary take on these two possibly, and in actuality quite probably, related stories.

Obviously not for QR, however. In their analysis of the precipitous drop in the juvenile Medicaid rolls and the concurrent downtrend in Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) registration, they afford the very liberal Center for Public Policy Priorities an open rhetoric channel, so that they might again exhibit their amazing ability to find the smallest dim cumulonimbus in every enormous silver lining.

On proffer in this piece of journalistic piffle are myriad assaults on the very recent privitization of the programs’ application processes, and its alleged role in the fall in number of those living on the conscripted graces of others.

To wit:

The Center for Public Policy Priorities blamed the drop partly on a new eligibility system, which uses a private contractor to handle part of the application process.

… After the decline in CHIP numbers were published, news reports highlighted deficiencies in the new eligibility system, which caused many CHIP clients to be inadvertently dropped from the rolls.

The Old Pink Lady

Nowhere does the pseudo-journalistic endeavor come even close to mentioning the incredible economy that Texas currently enjoys, which they themselves mention in the IMMEDIATELY PRECEEDING story and that has landed Governor Rick Perry a second consecutive Governor’s Cup for most jobs created and best business atmosphere fostered in the nation by Site Selection magazine.

(In the brevity that is the sales tax story, QR allows Comptroller Carole Keeton McClellan Rylander Strayhorn, currently seeking to become Governor and thereby oust QR’s least liked public official (possibly ever) , to present the story as if she herself had single-handedly wrung the extra revenue out the state with her bare hands.

As we have said previously, she is merely the human adding machine; this is not unlike the guy tearing tickets at the movie theatre claiming credit for the amazing box office totals.

But please, Madame Comptroller or Mister Kronberg, do not let that stop you.)

That more parents have more private sector jobs, thereby lessening the need for public health assistance for their progeny, fails utterly to occur to those with pens at QR.

The underlying tonal assumptions of this article are that, one, the government was doing such an outstanding job when the task was at their hand, and if only the Republicans had left horrible enough alone, this diminishing need for welfare would have never occurred.

The other unspoken arrogation is that it is inherently BAD news when less people are relying on government to subsist, rather than on themselves to live.

The Old CHIP

But lost on them is one of the preeminent reasons given by Republicans for this shift away from public oversight, which was to address the unbelievable graft and loot that was occurring within these two programs.

The copious numbers of cases of fraud and abuse that were a constant fixture of governmental supervision were either forgotten or willfully ignored by those with the QR quills.

To remind one and all of one of the most (largely by process of elimination) prominent examples, we had in the 2004 campaign season a woman named Jamie Jones charging then state Representative and Congressional candidate Arlene Wohlgemuth with heartlessness and cruelty for revamping and reforming the wantonly wastethrift CHIP system, resulting in her being culled from the recipient list. A television spot was produced thereon, much Media attention ensued, and incumbent Chet Edwards ended up being reelected.

As we first reported at the time, and on which very few others followed suit, it turned out that Miss Jones was and is the daughter of the very wealthy founder of the First National Bank of Mexia, which has four branch offices around the state. The advertisement was then quickly (and allowed to be done so) quietly pulled from the airwaves, but still exists on the web (scroll down a bit, to “Bailey”).

Miss Jones is certainly not the fiscal likes for whom these programs were created, and was therefore properly identified as above the threshold by the new regulatory process and rightly denied renewal of her tax dollar freebies.

We Are Here For Our CHIP Payment

Her being portrayed as but another of the countless victims of Elephantary miserliness received much play in QR and the rest of the Texas Press who follow its lead. Her fraudulence, and that of countless other multiple home-owning, Escalade driving recipients garnered precious little play therefrom.

And it is here that we see how deep the cut to the Lone Star body politic this monolithic, cozy Media atmosphere is. The news QR chooses to cover, or ignore, is subsequently mimicked by every major outlet in the state, thereby clouding the dissemination of what is occurring within the halls of Big Pink.

It is very difficult for the average voter to access information beyond the boundless realms of this Press cacophony, and they are therefore left skeptical about many things about which, were they given full and accurate information, they would be far more certain.

Keep this in mind the next time the Media breathlessly reports their own latest polling data that reflects poorly on the Party that nevertheless somehow dominates the Lone Star political landscape.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Quorum Report

If the populace is incessantly told by the Press, day in and day out, that Republicans stink out loud, and these same pap purveyors then ask this captive audience what they think of Republicans, what is one to think the answer is going to be?

As is also occurring nationally, more and more the residents of the Lone Star State are becoming fed up with being told that the elected officials and ideas they support are stupid, evil and wrong, and that they are thereby and therefore stupid, evil and wrong for supporting them.

Which is why the only entity that polls lower than Republicans in these cooked numerical pseudo-analyses is the Media.

And QR leads this charge for Texas.