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This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on March 15, 2013 9:46 AM. The previous post in this blog was Portland bike share folly will be at least a year late. The next post in this blog is Phil Stanford on the tube. Many more can be found on the main index page or by looking through the archives.

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Friday, March 15, 2013

More Tribune-Metro incest

The Pamplin newspapers are losing all semblance of actual journalism. For example, they continue to flaunt proudly their unholy alliance with Portland's "unique" Metro government. Here's a curious come-on that an alert reader of ours got in his e-mail yesterday:

As an Opt In member you are invited to participate in a new way of sharing your opinion about driving and tailpipe emissions.

Community Newspapers' professional reporters are interested in talking to select Opt In members as part of their coverage of the Legislature's mandate to our region. If you are selected by Community Newspapers, your voice will be published in your local paper.

In addition, Metro will select Opt In members to participate in videotaped interviews that will be shared with elected officials and other decision makers and posted on Metro's website.

If you would like to be considered for an interview by a professional reporter or a video interview with Metro simply click on the link below.

"Community Newspapers' professional reporters" -- are those Pamplin staffers, or the Nick Christensen types who are on the Metro payroll masquerading as journalists? Either way, when newspapers "partner" with local government, they stop becoming relevant. Too bad.

Here's an excerpt from the Society of Professional Journalists' code of ethics:

Journalists should:

— Avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived.
— Remain free of associations and activities that may compromise integrity or damage credibility.
— Refuse gifts, favors, fees, free travel and special treatment, and shun secondary employment, political involvement, public office and service in community organizations if they compromise journalistic integrity.
— Disclose unavoidable conflicts.
— Be vigilant and courageous about holding those with power accountable.
— Deny favored treatment to advertisers and special interests and resist their pressure to influence news coverage.
— Be wary of sources offering information for favors or money; avoid bidding for news.

Do the Pamplin entanglements with Metro meet these standards? It's to laugh.

Comments (8)

"sharing your opinion about driving and tailpipe emissions"

The problem is that most Portlanders' opinions on driving and their actual behavior around driving are two different things.

You can get 75% of Portlanders to tell you that "people" (in the abstract) should be living in tiny boxes and taking transit everywhere, but they don't actually do that themselves and have no plans to.

In the Lake Oswego review, you have a paper that is not only a part of the Pamplin empire. It's a paper whose editor is a dark sheep (very liberal) member of the Forbes family. People familiar with that paper's operation tell of instances where the atmosphere of political correctness has been the norm for years. And Forbes has reliably endorsed every democrat and liberal cause as far back as the 1990's. Now the paper pulled down the section allowing comments to this shoddy journalism. And now are slowly promoting the old agenda and candidates, some by creating false controversy with the new Council and Mayor.

Pamplin has no ethics, so why should you expect his papers or radio stations to. Now, I'm talking about management here. There are individuals I know personally in the Pamplin organization that are very ethical, but when it comes to Pamplin and the management of his media enterprises, that's another story completely.

Bjorn Borg, a scientist and believer in man-made global warming, wrote in op-ed in the wall street journal most recently which presented the facts that all-electric cars actually cause more carbon dioxide emissions than gasoline powered vehicles. It's because their manufacture takes something like 30k pounds of carbon dioxide emissions whereas conventional cars take only 18k pounds. If you actually are able to get more than 80,000 miles on the electric vehicle battery before replacement, you then just breakeven with the conventional car. Borg advises diverting public funds, now going to subsidize charging stations and electric battery manufacturing, instead into basic research of battery technology.

For the folks who can actually count and complete the economic/financial picture, Portland is so frustrating because so much of its governance is based on incomplete information (linear like thinking) and the popular perceptions such incompleteness fulfills.
With such a prevailing mindset, it's easy for the current government regime to ask such leading questions as: how do you feel about tail-pipe emissions?

Bob, I believe you mean Bjørn Lomborg. Here's the recent article from the WSJ:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324128504578346913994914472.html

Lomborg's books are also highly recommended. The Skeptical Environmentalist is a few years old now, but still quite relevant. The newer ones are fine, too.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=ntt_athr_dp_sr_1?field-author=Bj%26%23248%3Brn%20Lomborg&search-alias=books

Portland is still reacting to the "peak oil" crisis. It's a game of control and greed, not the environment.

And the "One Million Climate Refugees" expected to show up any day now.

I received the same email. It's part of Metro's "smart communities" program, which they say was handed to them by the 2009 legislature. Their goal is to reduce tailpipe emissions 70% by 2035. Really.

Never mind that emissions are down to their lowest level since the early 1990's, nor that DEQ stations just plug into your car's computer and then hand you your tags after you fork over $100.

We need light rail into Vancouver! And more streetcars!




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