Courtesy of the U.S. Census Bureau

Today a couple of people pointed me to the Huffington Post, which published an article about the Census Bureau worker who was arrested for trespassing in Puna recently.

I don’t know if those people realize it, but that article that the Huffington Post printed is an Associated Press (AP) article.  What that means is that every newspaper that subscribes to the AP wire has or will be publishing that article. Potentially, all minor major television news anchors have read or will be reading a version of this article on the Teleprompter.

Hawaii County has, indeed, made national news.

Here’s a summation of the story that is getting major traction: 57-year-old Russell Haas was, in Census Bureau terms, canvassing a Puna neighborhood when he came upon the fenced property of an off-duty Hawaii County police officer.  Haas, instructed to “be persistent” in his data-collecting mission, went through an unlocked gate.  Himself a former New Jersey police officer, Haas met up with the off-duty Hawaii County police officer.  The off-duty police officer was uninterested in being counted in the Census and ordered Haas off his property.  Haas tried to reason with the off-duty police officer to no avail.  The off-duty police officer told Haas to wait outside his fence, as he called for on-duty police officers to arrive.  Haas thought for sure the responding police officers would be more reasonable. They weren’t.  They arrested Haas for trespassing.  Now, the trespassing case is being tried in federal court, and federal prosecutors are acting as a defense attorneys.

Read the AP story for yourself.   Read the rest of this entry »

Credit: The Moderate Voice

“In seeking truth you have to get both sides of a story,” that’s one of the many famous quotes uttered by the “trusted man in America.” Walter Cronkite kept a nation calm through war, assassinations, presidential scandals, an impeachment, the Moon Landing, the release of American hostages during the Iranian Revolution, among other significant events in history during his 31-year career with CBS.

Columbia University Journalism Professor Todd Gitlin, who is also a sociologist, said it best:  “He belongs to a time when there were three networks, three oil companies, three brands of bread. Cronkite mastered enunciation, training himself to speak at a rate of 124 words per minute so his viewers could understand him. (On average, we speak at between 165 and 200 words per minute.) He remained steady while the message he gave was “that things are falling apart.” Truly, he was the one of those journalists that shaped the medium we know today as broadcast news. 

The buzz in print, TV, and cyberspace is that journalism has not and won’t ever be the same without him. Read the rest of this entry »

 

AP Photo

And that’s the way it is.

He informed us of the news about Civil rights, the Battle of the Bulge, the John and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. assassinations, Vietnam, the Apollo 11 moon landing, Watergate, and now we report that the “most trusted man of America” is dead at 92.

Born Walter Leland Cronkite Jr. in St. Joseph, Missouri on Nov. 4, 1916, he was a household name as the anchorman for the CBS Evening News.  He was recruited to CBS by Edward R. Murrow, starting out as an anchor for CBS affiliate WTOP-TV in Washington, D.C. Prior to that, he had been a United Press International  (UPI) correspondent covering World War II and the Nuremberg war crimes trial.  After more than 30 years with CBS, Cronkite went on to write a syndicated opinion column for Kings Feature Syndicate and contributed to the Huffington Post in 2005 and 2006.

“He was the voice of truth, the voice of reliability,” Columbia University journalism professor Todd Gitlin told The Washington Post.  ”He belongs to a time when there were three networks, three oil companies, three brands of bread.”

Cronkite died with his family in New York, having suffered from cerebrovascular disease. He reportedly will be buried in Kansas City, Mo., alongside his wife Besty, who died in 2005.