Category: Media

Those who have read this blog over the years know that the only way to make a comment is to e-mail me. My address is on the blog or if the person is a friend or relative, they comment on my personal e-mail. That is the way I like it, for a variety of reasons. The main reason is I don’t have time to edit a bunch of profanity and racist comments, or tinker with comments to make sure they aren’t libelous.

This Boston Globe Magazine article goes into the mind of those who constantly comment on, in this case, news stories. But I would suspect a lot of comments that you get on blogs are by people such as those you will meet in what is a very good, although fairly long article. (Duh, it’s a magazine article!)

Maybe I’m just too far out of the techno generation to grasp the importance of today’s announcement by Apple, during which CEO Steve Jobs unveiled their new tablet computer. I mean, I own a laptop and use it extensively. I have a cell that can take pictures, video, respond to voice commands such as “roll over and play dead.” I have a desktop in storage. I got your digital camera. Just last week I was given an electronic device that measures my blood sugar. Also, my work computer is a tablet-style which would provide me tons of pleasure if only I could blow it to Kingdom Come with a Smith and Wesson .500 Magnum.

Surely a .50-caliber revolver promised as a “hunting handgun for any game walking” could take care of that screwed up Fujitsu tablet PC I have to use that often acts as if it is on a continual fortified wine bender.

I even started out using Apple’s Macs.

But I don’t have an iPod. Maybe that’s why I don’t get the significance of the iPad.

I do understand what the new tablet does and it’s relatively cheap price starting at $499 instead of the expected $1,000. It apparently combines the technology and operation of Apple’s iPod, computers, e-book readers and cell phones. Smart, functional, relatively inexpensive and delivered by a genius of a man who survived liver cancer after getting a transplant. It’s a hell of a story, no doubt.

What it isn’t, is the Second Coming of the Almighty. The headline on Huffington Post this afternoon took up half of my laptop screen.

Maybe my lack of enthusiasm stems from becoming computer literate only in my 30s and 40s. Or, as I said, maybe it’s because I don’t have an iPod. Some pundits remarked that they believed the iPad announcement would overshadow President Obama’s first State of the Union address this evening. Go figure that one.

Now if someone came up with a computer that was really functional it would be a different story. I’m talking an android-in-a-box. A computer that would make meals or snacks for you that were both delicious and perfectly healthy according to your dietary and taste bud needs. If it mixed your adult beverages just to your specifications. If it was a computer that could pull up the five-shot .500-magnum and do a Dirty Harry imitation in the event unwelcome intruders were in your abode. If a computer was introduced that was just completely out of this world in its functions, would heal the sick, feed the starving, stop global warming and save the whales, then yeah, 72-point headlines and perhaps an extra edition if newspapers are still around.

But the iPad, the little-bitty tablet PC that mystery and hype has even me talking about it, I just don’t understand the hub, Bub.

 Beaumont police shoot a guy outside Sears at Parkdale Mall last night. That’s kind of important to me. I shop there. Sometimes I have to do work at some of the stores there. It’s about two miles up the road from where I live. I’ve been going there since I was a long-haired kid, back to when the this wonderful, covered shopping mall first opened in 1973. I would kind of like to know what happened with the shooting.

 Here is what we know according to the three local TV stations and one daily newspaper here in Beaumont,  Texas. A 60-ish Hispanic man was allegedly acting erratically inside a store at Parkdale Mall. He was supposedly banging a shopping cart repeatedly against a wall or door. (windows?) something inside the store. Police arrived at the scene around 9 p.m. last night and found a crowd had formed and the man had — in cop-speak as relayed by the young reporter — “displayed” a knife. Twice after the man “displayed” the knife at police officers, the cops shot him and the subject of the incident was soon pronounced dead at Christus St. Elizabeth Hospital. The officer who shot the man, still yet to be identified by police, is on administrative leave.

 Now all of the above tells me a little, but the individual reports from the Web and watching the news last night left me wondering and wanting more information. I’ve worked a number of homicides during my years as a reporter and the first omission I see in these news reports were a lack of witness quotes or sound bites. I realize the incident happened just slightly before the 10 o’clock broadcast and most likely around the newspaper’s nightside deadline. But one station, Fox-affiliate KBTV4  has a 9 p.m. broadcast and its studios are in opposite sides of the mall from the Sears store. Their reports were less than illuminating.

 I try to give my local media the benefit of the doubt most of the times. I know what a difficult and mostly thankless and pitifully paying job theirs’ is. But I would guess most every reporter who covered this story, at some time, shops at the mall. They go there when they want to get “man on the street” interviews. And also something that is important to me and should be important to the local media is that a cop shot and killed someone with a knife. Was it, as cops sometime say, “a righteous” shooting?

 Also, one remark by a reporter last night appeared to give the police much more than the benefit of a doubt when she said that after being around police it is known that if they or others are threatened “they respond as they see fit.” I really take issue with that statement. First of all, it absolves the police of any wrongdoing even before the shooting review begins and probably before the body of the dead man is cold. It leaves the impression that police are always justified to shoot and kill in every situation.

 So-called “police-involved shootings” (more cop speak), are never clear cut. They are even less so when a knife is involved. I have witnessed a standoff between police and a knife-wielding individual. I also have viewed a video in court in which a man with a machete was holding police at bay in his home. In both instances, the men involved were arrested without any injury. This was in a different city and in one where I worked as a reporter.

 Forget the old saw concerning journalists collecting the “who, what, where, when, why, how.” Some of these are more important than others and some of the others can be collected when wrapping up. And forget that time is slip, slipping away, at least until it starts feeling like a bad gas pain. The 10 p.m. broadcast is upon us. The deadline might run past 10 but not much more or  it could start cutting into the newspaper’s profit. Yeah guys, I know you have deadlines. But you could have had sound bites or quotes from people who might have seen something rather than strictly basing your story on the local police spokesman. Even if they string yellow crime scene tape from the Sears store all the way to Highway 69.  It’s amazing what you can do when you are under deadline. That’s why press associations and other organizations award journalist for best deadline reporting.

 Now for the follow-ups. The editors will want follow-ups until they make the public sick watching or reading them. So how about having some real information in them? Why did the officer shoot the man outside Sears? Was he justified? Did the officer have non-lethal alternatives even though he was justified? What kind of knife did he wield? The mall has unarmed security. Did they respond? Could they do anything other than call for police help? Why was the individual who was shot allegedly acting erratic? Does his family or friends know why? What was the man like in everyday life?

 These are some of the questions that I would like to see answered. The local media in Beaumont did a very poor job, at least in my eyes, of covering the shooting of this man at one of the city’s most prominent places and during the time of the year in which it is the most thick with people. I realize there are many different factors why they may have fallen short in their coverage. Still, this one could have been a whole lot better.

 Hopefully, the follow-ups will be much improved because a lot of folks want to know what happened. I want to know.