Chopping Up Truth In Media Since 2009
Thanks Shakespeare, you gave the proper weight to what President Trump has done to his country.
High treason is not a joke!
Not something to be ignored because some will get tax cuts.
We sugar coat it.
Who cares if someone running for office undermines our democracy?
Who cares – as long as he secures our borders and keeps Mexicans out?
No.
Please watch:
2019 is going to be my “Year of Blogging Dangerously” – because America is in a bad place right now.
Jill Kennedy – OnMedea
This video is absolutely the reason Donald Trump used every dirty trick (including conspiring with a foreign government) to win the 2016 Election.
Those three minutes from the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Dinner is the real reason Donald Trump leveraged his relationship with Russia to bring down his opponent, is destroying Democracy as we know it and is trying to undo EVERYTHING Barack Obama accomplished as President.
That is the face of someone who will do anything to get back at another person. This man, with the temperament of a five year old, is ruining our country because of a grudge.
Sad.
Jill Kennedy – OnMedea
I’m back. Thank God.
I didn’t blog most of the past year because I was writing a book that I got actual money for (just so you know, blogs don’t really pay) and because I just didn’t have an angle. Not sure I do now but I have to get back at it. It’s a discipline and I need to retrain those muscles.
So… I’m back.
But I’m back in a time when the American media is stuck. Absolutely stuck in the mud with no mule or Ford F-150 to pull us out.
To paraphrase the great film “All The President’s Men” – We haven’t got it.
Just not enough to bring President Trump down.
Don’t get me wrong – of course there is overwhelming evidence to bring down President Trump. Just not enough that sixty percent of Americas will get behind.
We are living in a country that elected a President ONLY because he said he would keep Mexicans out. REPEAT – ONLY BECAUSE HE WOULD KEEP MEXICANS OUT.
It wasn’t about jobs. It was about tax cuts. It wasn’t about NATO or the war on terror.
It was because he said he would build a wall to keep people out of America.
Even the Pope knows this is the only reason he is President. Look at that face.
Many of these same Americans that voted for him will lose their health insurance, will not get any tax break, will not get jobs… they will just get the Mexicans out. And that STILL seems to be okay with them.
We are living in a country that tolerated their ancestors when they came in the country – but have no tolerance for anything else.
But the journalists still need to be smarter.
We all want to have THE SCOOP – THE SMOKING GUNÂ that finally brings him down – but we have to be careful.
Our challenge is – we have to be completely honest. There is no wiggle room for speculation. No wiggle room for unnamed sources.
The Trump White House is using every vague reference as leverage.
But it won’t work forever.
We must only be honest and, based on the absolute truthful facts, this President will be brought to his knees and he will resign.
Not impeached because there are no real “give me liberty or give me death” Americans on the Republican side – but he will be forced to resign because… there will be no other choice.
But right now, in a world where a candidate for congress can assault a reporter and still win, when most in the media are so horrified by this President’s lack of ability or respect for the job and only wants to get one of these overwhelmingly impeachable charges to stick… we haven’t got it.
Jill Kennedy – OnMedea
There is absolute proof that Donald Trump said he was FORÂ the Iraq War in 2002:
“Are you for invading Iraq?” Howard Stern asked him, and Trump answered, “Yeah, I guess so.”
No matter how you interpret “Yeah, I guess is so…”  – it definitely doesn’t mean “NO.”
But in the first Clinton/Trump debate September 26, 2016, (and many times before that) he categorically denied it.
He Tweeted climate change was “created” by and the Chinese in this tweet:
The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 6, 2012
But he categorically denied it.
It went on and on like that in the debate and has gone on and on like that throughout his campaign.
And he gets more and more popular.
How is that even possible?
This clip from “Lenny” starring Dustin Hoffman (directed by Bob Fosse – and one of the great movies of the 1970s) perfectly encapsulates Trump’s strategy of denying no matter the proof and his followers acceptance of the denial as fact – because they WANTÂ to believe him:
I haven’t been blogging regularly for a while as I’ve working on a book and upcoming podcast about the history of Manka Bros. Studios.
I hope starting in the next couple of weeks I can balance both projects and get back to writing about the business of media.
Jill Kennedy – OnMedea
You would think there would be some editorial oversight on a cover like this:
The red boxes were added by me. Obviously not meant to go together but still – a terrible image to go with the top headline.
Jill Kennedy – OnMedea
Even when it’s good news!
Even when it’s a “liberal” pro-Hillary-slanting site – photo editors cannot resist putting up the “crazy Hillary Clinton” photos (e.g. CNN below).
She freakin’ clinched the nomination – THE FIRST WOMAN EVER IN A MAJOR PARTY – and CNN made her look crazy.
You can imagine just what Fox News did:
I mean, for Christ’s sake, this is New York Magazine’s pic:
And another NY Magazine:
All crazy. Nothing Presidential.
Mother Jones at least had the decency not to put up a picture at all.
I admit, a good, natural, happy picture of Hillary Clinton is very hard to find.
This is the best I could do:
But, damn, that was a long time ago. She hasn’t been happy in a long time.
Jill Kennedy – OnMedea
I think Tech reporters really only care about CES because it is in Las Vegas.
If the show were held in a place like Fresno or Akron does anyone really believe reporters would trek from all over the world to see LG’s new roll-up screen?
Of course not.
Here’s the way it plays out every year in Vegas:
Nearly every major online publication (and print for that matter) send at least one reporter (and some send teams) to Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronic Show (CES) – and no one, except those reporters, actually cares what comes out of the show.
These writers start off strong with elaborate write-ups before they get to Las Vegas of “What To Expect From CES This Year!” or “The 10 Must-Sees @CES!”
– then they go to Vegas
– they do a decent write up of Day 1 and feign interest in a couple of redundant panels that reveal little
– then they party hard the first night because they have been so focused on the build up of CES that they just want to unwind
– and then they write a lackluster Day 2 report (because they are hungover)
– party some more
– and then sort of disappear until it’s time to drag themselves home.
Because it’s not about “new technology” (the gadgets are really just variations on themes from the past 10 years), it’s about “Vegas” and being able to get drunk on the company dime.
The same goes for the legions of companies that attempt to break new products and show off their brilliant innovations.
It’s a snow job – everyone is reprinting the same press release and then heading to dinners and cocktail parties to talk about the press release.
99.99% of the world’s population really don’t care to read about a $150,000 8K television, or a self-driving car or wearable tech – they might buy it once it hits the market if the products are good – but to read about it from hundreds of tech reporters and bloggers? Not so much.
But 99.99% do care about Vegas. Just write about your debauchery (like this CEO from last year – CES After Dark) and forget the gadgets.
No one cares.
Jill Kennedy – OnMedea
GO PRIVATE.
There will never – ever – be enough growth and margin improvement to satisfy Wall Street.
Maybe short-term the studios will get a bump by telling investors they are going to make 100 comic book movies over the next 5 years – but after that flattens out – there’s nothing left to grow on top of that.
And it’s all Wall Street’s fault. You can’t blame studio executives. They have to appease Wall Street or they’re out.
I mean, my company, Manka Bros. just announced a trilogy of films based on the board game CHECKERS!
Wall Street’s insistence for high margin growth in such a mature business is destroying creativity (again, note all the sequels and re-makes and re-hashes and re-dos) and in it, ruining any realist opportunity for growth.
To grow the way Wall Street would like, 21st Century Fox (for instance) would need to have an “Avatar” one year (and double the amount of TV production); two “Avatars” the next year (and double again the doubled amount of TV shows); four “Avatars” the following year – and so on and so on. And they would all have to preform as good or better than the first!
And the market is saturated already.
There are too many choices and studios don’t have the monopoly on content creation that they once did.
And the moguls long for those days.
Sorry, fellas, they are not coming back.
It won’t be cheap to go private – billions and billions – but there is plenty of private equity out there that would love an asset that consistently pumps out up to $1 billion in pure profit.
Without the need to top profits year after year, the content produced can be more experimental, and thus, much more interesting and exciting for the consumer.
It would even allow for the occasional down year when things just didn’t work out. Hollywood IS a cyclical business, after all.
Hollywood Studios are sacred treasures in this country (and around the world) and should not be allowed to just fade away because Wall Street wasn’t happy with the growth prospects.
We must do what we can to save these institutions and going private is the best way.
Jill Kennedy – OnMedea
