DelGreenBlog

What's with this blog?

2007-02-25T22:31:00.000-05:00

This is the first post to this blog since October 2005. I started it and then didn't follow through with anything. Well, shall we try again?

Some have suggested that Green Delaware should have a blog instead of a website, but I think of this as a more personal and informal supplement rather than a replacement.

Beefing about WDEL....

2005-10-28T08:46:00.000-05:00

The yak yak has improved a lot on WDEL with Mascitti and Fulcher having daily gigs. But the news operation is another story.

WDEL managers have said--to me, anyway--that "all credible news sources" should receive equal attention. And they say, for example, that Green Delaware is credible in our field.

But one has only to look at the WDEL site to see where the stories are originating---the content is almost exclusively from government or commercial press releases. Yes, there are exceptions, but only enough to "prove the rule."

I began to follow this a few weeks ago when I noticed that EVERY Green Delaware Alert or release was ignored. That when I occasionally called to try to interest the newsroom in a story it was always ignored.... Yesterday a report on a refinery leak with sound only from the refinery flack.... This morning every "Delaware's Top Story" based on the views of a government official or corporation.... And on and on ...

Stenographers......we might as well be in the Soviet Union.

Why is it this way?

Three factors come to my mind:

o Evangelical Christian churches and the Dirty Solid Waste Authority, for example, are significant advertisers on WDEL. While almost no media outlet will admit it, money talks.

o Direct pressure. For example, DuPont's Dioxin Pile flack regularly calls Delaware media and complains when I'm quoted. They also complain to management about individual reporters who resist being manipulated.

o The revolving door: Many reporters either have been, or might be in the future, flacks for legislators, corporations, or government agencies. Thus, the relationships are closer than they are with "us," and people tend to take on the values of their employers.

(Of course, I'm not saying that every reporter in Delaware has fallen into these traps....)

But the only solution is to HAVE HIGH EXPECTATIONS AND COMPLAIN BACK....

Pete Booker, General Manager, pbooker@dbc1.com, 478-2700

Chris Carl, News Director, ccarl@dbc1.com, 478-8898

(If I understand the organization of WDEL correctly, Carl's boss is actually the new-fascist drum-banger Ric Jensen.)

Minner's Katrina?

2005-09-29T22:16:00.000-05:00

Bush may never fully recover from Katrina. The global spectacle of indifference and incompetence will follow him in spite of all the efforts of the right-wing smear machine to blame the mess on environmentalists, local officials, and the self-destructive tendancies of poor black people.

Likewise, Governor Ruth Ann Minner's downfall may be the prison medical scare scandal. For malice, greed, incompetence, and sheer evil, what could top it?

One can argue, of course, that Minner has little to lose regardless--she's a lame-duck governor and probably not going on to another public office. Then again, not a few political insiders predicted she'd be a one-term governor.

Regardless, she has three years to go and things seem to be getting nastier by the day.....

SECOND ARSENIC "WORKSHOP" NOT AS UGLY

2005-09-15T10:38:00.000-05:00

The atmosphere at the second "arsenic" workshop was not nearly as unpleasant as the first on in Dover on September 8th.

The real difference seemed to be the absence of Air and Waste Mgt. Division Director Jim Werner.....