Stories

Let me tell you about the time I went fishing recently.  The fish I caught was so big...

Okay, so in water cooler talk about Ned's latest fishing trip we expect exaggeration.  Without a Facebook picture or other documentation we expect a story that probably over-hypes reality.  It is what it is.  However, when we watch our news networks though, we expect them to still perform at least a minimal level of journalistic activity and verify stories.  Right?  Two examples this week demonstrate that the expectation of journalists doing there job is probably giving them more credit than they deserve.

First, CNN airs what is reported to be audio of the Ferguson, Missouri shooting.

As CNN notes it did not independently verify the recording...it just ran with it.  Again.  I say again because I assume you remember when CNN "broke" the story that the Affordable Care Act had been struck down by the Supreme Court.  CNN now is trying to walk back their exclusive coverage worried their audio may be a hoax.  Woops.

At the same time news reports tell us the University of Southern California Cornerback Josh Shaw admits to lying about saving his drowning nephew from a pool in his apartment complex.  It was only a few days ago they were informing of us that his dual injured ankles was the result of jumping from his second floor flat to help his nephew.

While USC and local authorities continue to investigate, my question is what is it you were trying to do, i.e. how did you really injure your ankles?  Was this some sort of crime or pseudo crime?  Was this just teenage foolishness?  What?  Now we all want to know and since we know your first story is BS I hope the next one is better.

There seems to be a mantra in network news these days that first is better than being accurate and while I do get the idea of breaking news, shouldn't it be close to accurate and/or news worthy?  Any more you get stories coming out: BREAKING NEWS...the former Governor of Virginia may enter a plea.  This isn't news, it's speculation.  BREAKING NEWS...the White House may allow more immigrants to stay in the country.  Here too I get that some of the information we get is via intentional leaks to trial balloon ideas before the public before an actual decision can be made.  You have to check with the oracle known as polling before you can play leader.  (And I blame both Democrats and Republicans and corporate America for this.)  However, there is zero requirement to actually go along with this by journalists.

When did the media give up on their fourth estate rights?  When did they decide they were just going to give everyone a pass?   These are the things that drive me nuts when it comes to network news, but it does allow for some decent parody. 

For those of you who wonder what I might mean, here is Katie Nolan of Fox's No Filter whose weekend story is at least interesting.  (As a disclaimer I will note that Fox too missed the SCOTUS opinion on the Affordable Care Act.)  Maybe the guy in Ferguson and Josh Shaw could take come and get lessons because she is at least interesting.

Enjoy your Thursday and be careful what news you consume.  Let's just say some news is undercooked and may be hazardous to your health.

More Worthless Paper

So multiple college graduates have been complaining for the past half decade that their college degree is barely worth the paper it is printed on.  Degrees in the humanities just don't pay in the professional world the way they once did, but according to recent news reports, the University of North Carolina has really diluted the value of the paper they issue.

It seems, UNC hired tutors to run classes that did not meet, where student athletes would write a single paper to qualify for grades.  This text is from one athlete in an African American studies program:

On the evening of December Rosa Parks decided that she was going to sit in the  white people section on the bus in Montgomery, Alabama. During this time blacks had to give up there seats to whites when more whites got on the bus. Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat. Her and the bus driver began to talk and the conversation went like this. “Let me have those front seats” said the driver. She didn’t get up and told the driver that she was tired of giving her seat to white people. “I’m going to have you arrested,” said the driver. “You may do that,” Rosa Parks responded. Two white policemen came in and Rosa Parks asked them “why do you all push us around?” The police officer replied and said “I don’t know, but the law is the law and you’re under arrest.

The text illustrates the concern.  This could have been written by a sixth grader, though I would expect more of my fifth grader, yet a college football player shows that he is almost unable to use his own language.  I guess he knew how to block attacking linebackers, but it appears he can barely complete a sentence.

So, I am tempted to ask the NCAA: is this what student athletics is about?  I keep hearing that students on athletic scholarships are students first and this is why college players should not be paid - a premise I tend to agree with - but if the NCAA doesn't come down hard on UNC (and other programs playing the same academic games) they will lose me.  Quickly.

For years, I have said college athletics is either a great time for the player or at worst an internship for the pro level, but if this is the level of academics allowed to go on, no thanks.  My son wants to play baseball for a Division I school, but these type stories worry me completely.

Clean your house up and quickly or you are going to lose your house from players suits to unionize.  The NCAA can say they will take the issue to the Supreme Court, but when you have situations like this what is there to defend?

Sometime's They Don't Learn...

Sometime we just don't learn.  Usually we don't learn chasing a dollar or some other victory while compromising the foundation of our organization.

I am speaking right now of course about Penn State and their decision to hire James Franklin to be their next football coach. While they claimed to leave "no stone unturned" and conducted a "thorough" background check, it only takes a few milliseconds to find alarming allegations about his role in possibly covering up a rape while he was at Vanderbilt University.

I hate to be the one to tell you Penn State, but you all just had a sexual assault scandal of epic proportions a very few years ago and now you want to go in this direction?  Are you sure THIS is the direction you want to run in?  To hire a coach who is allegedly involved with the cover up of a rape less than a year ago?

It would seem self evident that this might be a bad choice on the direction to go, but Penn State marches on.  It apparently did not even bother them about comments he made on a local radio show about not hiring assistant coaches until looking their wives over.  This is 2014, right?

In the meantime, a petition was started by a university professor to not consider Franklin.  Obviously, it was ignored.  Perhaps it was ignored because according to one report it had gathered less than three hundred signatures, but does it really need more than one?

I know I have had bosses who remarked regularly about other employees wives and nothing was done about it.  Again and again the organization would protect them because they were a supervisor and would relocate the offended party to another shift or another location rather than fix the problem.  It would seem to be a pattern when a supervisor makes comments about one of his employees wives regularly and then has one of his employees relocated to another location because his urges would seem uncontrollable and the organizational management chooses to do nothing about it.

Similarly, what is the use in HR policies that frown upon interoffice relationships when HR does not follow through when they are complained about?  While these issues do not raise themselves to issues of rape or sexual assault, they do show an unfortunate pattern of groups repeating the same behavior and then surprised when their work environments are not as productive as they could be.  How do we expect employees - be it at our local worksites or in college football - to win championships and do great things for their company when they have these distractions going on?

It reminds me of the old saying: "you only make a mistake once, after that it is a choice."