News notes

In letters to the editor, forum posts, phone calls and e-mails, everyone seems ready to throw the book at the youngsters behind bomb threats at Monroe High School and other schools.

Indeed, our own editorial board concluded as much; that opinion will be in Sunday’s Evening News.

The rationale seems to be that we need a significant deterrent. As a community, we need to make it clear that bomb threats are not a prank - they’re a serious crime.

I wonder, though, whether teen-agers pay attention to deterrents. It seems to me that young people simply don’t believe they’ll get caught - it’s in their DNA. “It won’t happen to me,” is part of the teen-ager credo.

Justice will be done. The culprits will be punished. But will it deter others in the future? I wonder.

Monroe School Board voted last night to keep the 5th and 6th grade band program.

It was a wise decision, even given the impossibly difficult task of cutting millions from the school district’s budget.

It’s been so long since I was a fifth grader, I can remember few things about it. But getting my first musical instrument - a flute - was one of the highlights.

Tom Treece, who actually has musical talent, wrote eloquently this week about the benefits of a music program in schools. I can’t claim that my involvement in a band program led to a lifetime avocation - no one would pay to listen to me play the flute.

But I can testify to the link between participating in a band program and building character, good study habits and an appreciation for that peculiar link between personal discipline and creativity.

I may not have been good, but that didn’t stop me from practicing long hours, working hard to eventually crawl up the line to first-chair flute in my little high school’s band.

My brothers and I spent most of our free time every day with balls and bats, playing whatever sport was in season. But each of us found time, after the sun went down, for our flute, saxophone and trumpet.

It’s amazing my parents survived with their hearing intact.

Monroe School Board members are going through a heart-wrenching time, choosing which classes and programs to cut. All of their decisions will be unpopular with someone.

But, personally, I’m happy they were able to save the 5th and 6th grade band program. I’d hate to think of all those fifth graders who didn’t get to experience their first flute, saxophone or trumpet.

A panel discussion Thursday night on censorship in American covered that issue and more.

The topic - censorship - was inspired by The Big Read and the book it features, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.

In Bradbury’s novel, censorship has become the order of the day. People have quit reading books, which are burned when they’re found. Firefighters no longer put out fires; their job is to burn books.

Some of the images Bradbury created in the 1953 book are frighteningly close to reality today. My favorite is the family sitting in a numbed state of melancholy in front of the living room television screen, which covers three walls of the room. We’re not there yet in the average American home - just one wall with a 60-inch screen - but it’s easy to imagine in a few years.

Thankfully, the censorship imagined by Bradbury isn’t nearly as close to reality - at least not in America. All four panel members - myself and Monroe attorney Bill Braunlich, MCCC faculty member Necole Day and Wayne State law professor Robert Sedler - gave one version or another of that story line.

Each of us found fault with the media or the government in small ways. I complained about subpoenas of reporters’ notes and the Bush administration’s secrecy; Ms. Day criticized media coverage of international issues; Mr. Braunlich lamented the depth and balance of some news coverage; and professor Sedler noted that First Amendment rights belong to all of us, not just the media.

But generally the concensus seemed to be that while you can criticize some elements of media coverage, government censorship isn’t a serious problem.  

Our First Amendment still stands firm, a bedrock that dominates the daily tug and pull between the media and government. Generally, it’s a healthy relationship that leads to the truth winning out - if not immediately, then eventually.

When the audience began asking questions, the conversation quickly turned to other subjects, from Don Imus’ racist, sexist remarks and eventual firing, to the Virginia Tech shootings, anonymous sources, sex and violence on television, race relations and conspiracy theories.

One man questioned the media’s coverage of African-American people and issues, a topic covered in her Saturday column by Evening News Editor Deborah Saul.

One of the most challenging topics for me was the Don Imus firing. I may have seemed to be arguing both sides of the issue.

On the one hand, as I mentioned in an earlier blog post, I think Mr. Imus should have been fired long ago. He’s often rude, arrogant, racist, sexist and just plain boorish. But that’s not why he was fired.

Imus in the Morning is dead because of money, not good taste. Advertisers, bullied by special interests, threatened to pull their ads. Big money carried the day, not good news judgement. CBs and MSNBC fell right in line.

That raises difficult issues. On the one hand, firing Imus was the right thing to do. On the other hand, I always lament when journalists let money dictate content. And that’s what happened.

When news of 32 people dying in a tragic shooting rampage on a college campus hit our newsroom, our reactions were much like anyone else’s.

Anger, sorrow, pity, frustration, fear - all the feelings that pour over you when you think about the senseless loss of life.

Then we start thinking about how we will report the news, how we’ll help our readers make sense of a nightmare that occurred 600 miles away, but still is close to our collective consciousness.

Many of us have children away at college. Or we at least have friends or relatives or neighbors with children on a college campus somewhere.

We may not know the victims or their families, but we can relate. We can imagine the horror of turning on the television and seeing pictures of violence on a usually quiet college campus, and realizing your children are students there.

Personally, I have two children still attending college, both hundreds of miles away. My mind went to them within seconds after the story broke.

There is no mention of the Virginia Tech shooting in today’s Evening News. The story broke just after our deadline. In tomorrow’s paper, we’ll update the news and also talk to local parents about their own children who are away at college.

We also started a discussion on the Eyes and Ears forums, to give area residents a chance to voice their views.

It’s not a local story. But it’s a story that hits close to home.

It goes without saying that Don Imus gives journalism a bad name.

Heck, he gives mankind a bad name.

Forget that he’s not really a journalist; he’s a shock jock. The problem is that too many members of the public don’t make the distinction.

It’s not just the latest episode - insulting members of the Rutgers University women’s basketball team with racial and sexist slurs. He’s been saying disgusting things for years.

Journalists like those of us at The Evening News often lament that the public perception of the media - our character, our values, our trustworthiness - is unfairly tainted by jerks like Imus who pretend to be journalists but follow none of the standards of decency, accuracy and balance that we hold close to our hearts 

Imus doesn’t have any excuses. The brand of lowest-common-denominator talk show that he pushes isn’t really related to what real journalists do.

Unfortunately, I worry that consumers of the media don’t make the same distinctions that I do.

Danielle Portteus, an Evening News reporter, posted an interested presentation on the Eyes and Ears forums.  A list of non-so-random facts about education, technology and the global economy, it certainly provides food for thought. You can also find it at the Michigan Department of Education Web site.

In my opinion, the central message is that we’re well into the new global, knowledge-based economy. With the help of their teachers and parents, our students need to be concentrating on learning the fundamentals of math, science and communication (literacy in languages and in computers) in order to be prepared for the jobs of the future.

If we’re not prepared, all those Chinese and Indian students will be. Jobs are like water. The best jobs will flow to where the best-prepared workers live. If China and India lead the world in producing mathematicians and engineers, that’s where the best jobs will go.

Google chose Ann Arbor for its advertising department because Ann Arbor has a good pool of highly educated workers. But how many other Michigan cities can say that? 

Low-skill jobs that don’t require higher education will flow to wherever the lowest paid workers live. That’s why manufacturing jobs are moving to countries with cheaper standards of living. In the future, we won’t want the manufacturing jobs - if we have them, it will mean we’re the lowest paid workers.

The problem, of course, for Michigan and the rest of the United States, is that our economy depends on those manufacturing jobs for a few more years. How can we maintain our standard of living while we transition from a manufacturing economy to the knowledge economy of the future? That’s the $64,000 question.

Maybe Charles Ballard has the answer. A professor of economics at Michigan State University, he’s speaking tomorrow at the Business and Industry Luncheon at Monroe County Community College. The topic is his latest book, “Michigan’s Economic Future.”

His book covers some of these same issues, although for the most part it focuses on the mess Michigan has created for itself in funding of government services. Mr. Ballard’s talk should be interesting, given the stalemate in Lansing over the state’s budgt crisis.

Subjects ranging from sex on television to how the internet has changed the censorship debate came up when staff  members of The Evening News gathered for a lunchtime discussion group on Fahrenheit 451 this week.

It was part of our participation in The Big Read. If you haven’t joined the fun, it’s not too late.  Here are some links to catch you up: Kickoff; Events; Next week; Deborah Saul column; Tom Treece column

I was fascinated by how wide our conversation ranged. I suppose that’s testament to how many themes that remain relevant to our lives that were explored in the Ray Bradbury novel.

One of the questions that gets discussed a lot these days - and we spent some time on it, too - is when and whether government ought to censor the media.

If you prefer family fare on television, and especially if you have children at home, monitoring the content that flows into your home can be a nearly impossible task.

Then there’s the lyrics of music these days, which make the sex and violence on television seem mundane. And it’s virtually impossible to avoid pornography on the internet, whether you’re looking for it or not.

As Tom Treece pointed out in his column (see link above), there must be a line somewhere.

As a journalist, I’ve argued against censorship of all kinds. My mantra has been, let people decide for themselves in an open marketplace of ideas. No man or woman has the right to tell another what they can read, write, say, film, photograph, etc. 

But as mass media becomes more and more pervasive, and as standards of decency fall lower and lower, I’m beginning to agree with Tom Treece - there must be a line somewhere.

I have the privilege of being involved in a panel discussion on April 19 (see events link above) on the topic of censorship. I suppose that gives me about two weeks to figure out an answer.

We received an e-mail today from a fan of professional wrestling. In effect, he called Evening News Sports Editor Ron Montri a dinosaur because he criticized WrestleMania 23 in his Sunday column.

Actually, the writer didn’t say Ron is still living in prehistoric times. But he came close. The exact phrase was: “Clearly your people need to adapt and modernize into pop culture. That article felt like it was right out of 1982.”

Anyone who knows Ron would agree: When it comes to basic values, he’s living in pre-modern times. He still holds to old-fashioned concepts like truth, honor, valor, fair play, hard work. As he said in his column: “The whole essence of sports is competing to determine a winner. The whole premise of sports is finding a way to outcoach, outwork, outsmart or outhustle an opponent.”

Like a lot of traditional sports guys, Ron is troubled by the fact that professional wrestling, while calling itself a sport, is more focused on entertainment than competition. The winners are chosen ahead of time; the action orchestrated. It doesn’t pay much attention to the values Ron cherishes. Playing fair seems to be against the rules.

But that doesn’t mean coverage of pro wrestling doesn’t belong in the newspaper. We understand how many people are crazy about the “sport.”

Wrestlemania was a Page 1 story in Friday’s Evening News. We gave our readers all the information they needed to enjoy the big event in Detroit over the weekend. And there was a story in today’s paper with the results - Donald Trump got to cut Vince McMahon’s hair.

That, clearly, is entertainment. Millions enjoyed the spectacle.

And I don’t question whether the participants are athletes. They’re big and strong and talented, whether they’re competing on the up-and-up or not.

That e-mailer, by the way, chastised us for publishing Ron’s column. “I can’t believe this ’sham’ of an article was allowed to not only be written, but published.”

If the truth be known, Ron and our other columnists often write columns that make me nervous. That’s one of the goals of columns - to express an opinion, challenge our thinking, start a conversation.

You may disagree with Ron. But one thing you can count on - his opinion is going to be heartfelt. That’s another one of those old-fashioned values he believes in.