Page 3 - Sanger Herald 1-24-19 E-edition

By Dick Sheppard
The tightrope walkers just kept wobbling when an out of town, objective grand jury warned the wobbling tight rope walkers they never should have spent Measure S money on salary increases for all members of the police bargaining unit in the first place - even if it was a quid pro quo for bargaining unit mem- bers doing the heavy lifting to get the public safety tax renewed before the ordinance defining it was clarified.
What about the independent and objective auditor who yelled up to the wobbling tight- rope walkers a warning about the general fund pulling $2.5 million out of the enterprise/ utilities funds every year. The result of that sleight of hand trick is a loss of money for the water and disposal departments while
the tightrope walkers keep the public's focus on the general fund which appears to be bal- anced.
Nah, it would be way too much trouble to create a local Doomsday Clock or early warn- ing system that no one, the tightrope walkers or the voters who put them up there, would pay any attention to as long as potholes get fixed, toilets flush and trash is picked up.
•••
Gotta give credit where credit is due.
City hall is showing a lot of class by offer- ing utility payment deferments to those affected by the government shutdown.
"The public works department’s hardship policy is available to anyone experiencing financial adversity and in need of temporary relief to avoid discontinuing utility services," said a recent city hall press release.
A federal identification card is all that's needed for documentation.
The city's utility billings and collection division will set up a workable payment schedule to assist once the shutdown is over.
•••
The school board will have only one
applicant to interview this evening before it makes a decision about appointing the appli- cant, Richard Duran, to the board to replace Marcy Masumoto who won a spot on the county board of education in the November election - or calling for a special election
to choose Masumoto's replacement from Trustee Area 4.
After looking over Duran's qualifications, it seems to me the decision is a no brainer.
Duran, from Del Rey, appears to be very, very well qualified and the board, in my opin- ion, is lucky he is interested in serving.
He has a son and daughter at Sanger High School and he is a product of Sanger schools.
When he was a student at Sanger High he was a three sport athlete who was named 1983 Apache Athlete of the Year. He was on the student council for two years and was student body vice president in 1982-83.
After high school he went on to earn an MA in human resource management and a BA in recreation and leisure studies.
He's worked for the Kings County Superior Court since 1998, holding a series of jobs with increasing responsibilities. He's now the deputy CEO/HR officer.
Show up for the 7 p.m. meeting this eve- ning at the school district office, 1905 7th St.
if you'd like to be part of the process of pick- ing Masumoto's successor.
•••
Congratulations to ADCO Manufacturing
for being named, for the second time, a Compact Business-Education Partnership Award winner.
Compact winners are selected on the basis of their investment in students and Fresno County schools.
The Sanger company and other winners will be recognized at a luncheon on March 6,
at Tornino’s Banquet Hall in Fresno. •••
"Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future."
John F. Kennedy
Comments, complaints and suggestions may be emailed to sangerherald@gmail.com or may be made by calling 875-2511
Random thoughts Does Sanger need its own "Doomsday Clock"?
When I saw that former governor Jerry Brown was going to be one of speakers at a Doomsday Clock event today I was curi- ous enough to Google, "What the heck is a Doomsday Clock?"
I liked the explanation I found on the Forbes website:
“On Jan. 22, 2018, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announced that the Doomsday Clock had moved forward to two minutes to midnight. But what does that mean, exactly?
“The number itself, two minutes, doesn't mean anything very precise. It's not a mea- surement of how much time we all have to live, or the exact probability of an apocalypse at this very moment. A good analogy would be to think of humanity as walking on a tight- rope above a deep canyon, if the canyon rep- resents nuclear war, climate-driven catastro- phe, or some other man-made doomsday sce- nario. The Doomsday Clock, then, represents how unsteady the tightrope walker seems to be at a given moment.
“And it's a subjective measurement. There's no Doomsday Clock formula. The clock is a measure of how worried the board members of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists are about a global catastrophe, based on the general state of things, and it's their attempt to convey that concern to world leaders and the general public in the hope of prompting constructive change.
“’You're wobbling a lot!’ the Atomic Scientists shout to the tightrope walker. ‘You're about THIS close to falling!’ The
goal, of course, is for the tightrope walker to straighten up and not fall - in other words, for humanity to realize it's headed in a danger- ous direction and de-escalate a conflict, limit nuclear proliferation, or take swift and mean- ingful action on climate change.”
That was interesting, but way too subjec- tive, in my opinion, to lose any sleep over.
On the other hand, it did trigger thoughts about creating a similar clock or some kind of early warning system for the current Sanger city administration and council. Not that they would probably pay any more attention to it than they did to the most recent grand jury that came to town or to the Measure S mem- bers who shouted about seeing a lot of wob- bling going on up there on that tightrope.
James Miser, a CPA and big time math whiz and accountant, was ignored when, as a member of the Measure S Citizens Oversight Committee, he told the tightrope walkers they would run out of Measure S cash for public safety salaries and benefits – and just about everything else - if they continued on their present path of spending more money than the sales and use tax brings in.
In my OPINION
The difference between real journalism
and today's views and clicks journalism
SANGER HERALD 3A THURSDAY, JANUARY 24, 2019 EDITORIAL & OPINION
Dick Sheppard
By Fred Hall
When we cannot corroborate information we should say so.
Numbertwoisindependence: Journalists must be independent voices; we should not act, formally or informally, on behalf of spe- cial interests whether political, corporate or culture. Weshoulddeclaretooureditors—or our audience—any of our political affiliations, financial arrangements or other personal information that might constitute a conflict of interest.
Numberthreeisimpartiality: Moststo- rieshaveatleasttwosides. Whilethereis no obligation to present every side in every piece, stories should be balanced and add context. Objectivitymaynotalwaysbepos- sible and may not always be desirable (for example,inthefaceofbrutalityorinhuman- ity) but impartial reporting builds trust and confidence.
Numberfourishumanity: Journalists shoulddonoharm. Whatwepublishor broadcastmaybehurtful,butweshouldbe awareoftheimpactofourwordsandimages on the lives of others.
Numberfiveisaccountability: Asuresign of professionalism and responsible journal- ism is the ability to hold ourselves account- able. Whenwecommiterrors,wemust correctthemandourexpressionsofregret mustbesincereandnotcynical. Welisten totheconcernsofouraudience. Wemaynot change what readers write or say but we will alwaysprovideremedieswhenweareunfair.
Although it is not specifically addressed in the five preceding rules, we have a real prob- lem with media's new-found fascination with advocacy journalism.
Personally, I have a real problem with
the words being used in conjunction with eachother. Ifthepieceiswritteninadvo- cacyitbelongsontheop-edpageandifit's straightmatterreportingthenitbelongsin thepaper'snewshole. We'veseenfartoo many newspapers—some of them in the local area—which publish stories that are little more than hit pieces.
Realizing that this column was written to be informative and apolitical, I still hope that many of you will find some useful informa- tion contained with my weekly ramblings. The professional standards which I outlined willeventuallyleadtotheinternetbecoming pure entertainment because of their inexperi- enced,unprofessionalwritershavingnoidea that there are even standards which apply to our trade.
A giant step toward that end would be
for all these sites to be declared “publish- ers”insteadof“platforms.” Thatsimple movement would results in everyone com- ingundertheapplicationoflibellaws. The threat of huge financial losses would quickly stopsomeof theidiocyandtheywouldfunc- tion on a level playing field with profession- als on television and in the newspapers.
But, as always, that's only one man's opin- ion.
In addition to the Sanger Herald, Publisher Fred Hall oversees two other Mid Valley Publishing newspapers - Reedley Exponent, and Dinuba Sentinel. He can be contacted by phone at (559) 638-2244 or by email at fred@ midvalleypublishing.com.
Occasionallythesimplest
of endeavors can become
complicated far beyond
one's wildest imagination. Beingfedadailydietof
what contemporaneously
passes for journalism, I
thought I would check--of
all sources--the internet to seewhatisbeingtaughtthesedays. Yes,it's garbage.
Out of page after page of phony practi- tioners, it was really a disappointment that onlyacoupleof“platforms”evenhadan inkling of what the standards of this pro- fessionshouldbe. Asone“clicks”through the sites, a dead giveaway of a complete know-nothing would be an article by some soy-boyexpoundingonthemethodsfor drivingupthenumberofclicksonyour
site. Immediatelyonefeelsthequicksand ofignorance. Someoneshouldhavetaught him that this business isn't about sensational- ismoragendapromotion. It'saboutstraight forward, honest writing and reporting—not views or clicks!
Journalismtodayisbusycommitting suicide! That'snotjustmyopinion,youcan checkforyourself! Thatstatementisinclu- siveofmanyofthelargerjournalisticopera- tions that were—at one time—considered the goldstandardofourindustry. Aparticular bit of crap (please excuse my use of the term but nothing else fit) published by The New York Times about a week ago accused Donald Trump, in their headline, of working for the Russians.
The problem with that was there was absolutelynothingpresentedanywhereinthe storyinthewayofproof. Alltheirsourcing wasanonymous. That,alone,isanabsolute no-no!Therewasatimepeoplewouldhave been summarily fired for such reporting. Sadly, not today.
It may not be a subject over which people get wildly excited, but because it is a part
of everyone's daily life, I would beg your indulgence for a few minutes while we dis- cuss some of the elements that were once required to meet journalistic standards for reportingagenciesandorganizations. Yes, here were standards not so long ago nor far, faraway. Storieswereactuallysourced,by more than one person.
Journalistic ethics and standards comprise the principles of ethics and good practices which are specifically applicable to challeng- esforthosewhoholdthemselvesforwardas practitioners of journalism.This specific sub- setofmediaethicsknowntoandidentified by journalists as their “professional code” orthe “canonsofjournalism.” Following
are the five core principles of journalism.
We hope it will provide a larger picture for you, the reader, to help guide you through the daily dump of information that is happening in this country.
Number one would be truth and accuracy: Although a journalist cannot always guar- antee ”truth,” getting the facts right is the cardinalrule. Weshouldalwaysstrivefor accuracy, provide all the relevant facts we have and make sure they have been checked.
Fred Hall
Established 1889 • Published every Thursday 740 N Sanger, CA 93657 • (559) 875-2511
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