#jack blanchard

[violaviolet]

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Freedom of the press is about more than access

Matt Gertz at MMFA:

Two things are true about President Donald Trump’s relationship with the press: He takes a lot of questions from reporters, and he’s directing a wide-ranging and unnervingly effective effort to chill critical coverage by punishing news outlets and threatening journalists.  The Politico’s flagship Playbook newsletter opened on Wednesday with a beat-sweetening item lavishing Trump with praise for the former while soft-peddling the latter.  Jack Blanchard’s piece plugs Trump’s “remarkable record of public availability” in office, “especially when compared to his famously sheltered predecessor,” adding that he is “on course to being just about the most-accessible president in modern history.” 

The president’s willingness to take “questions from all-comers” is “impressive stuff” that “matters,” Blanchard explains: “Trump’s answers may sometimes be rambling, erratic — or even downright unpleasant — but every American voter can see where he’s at.”’ Let’s bracket, for the sake of argument, the quality of the information reporters are able to extract given Trump's tendency to constantly lie to them.  Even on those terms, Blanchard’s argument falters when he references, as a literal “aside,” the “lamentable attempt to ban AP.”  Trump’s attempt to ban access for reporters from the wire service that provides national reporting to local newspapers across the country would indeed seem to undermine the claim that he is a uniquely accessible figure. And even then, Blanchard is offering a wildly understated version of what happened:

Trump decided to rename the Gulf of Mexico as “the Gulf of America.”

The AP continued referring to the body of water as the Gulf of Mexico.

Trump explicitly punished the AP for this affront by barring its reporters from the White House press pool and other events.

After the AP sued, a Trump-appointed judge ruled this an unconstitutional act of government viewpoint discrimination and ordered the AP’s access restored.

The White House responded to the ruling by eliminating the press pool’s dedicated slot for wire service reporters, instead lumping them with print outlets.

The judge declined a subsequent AP challenge to the move, saying he was “inclined to agree with the government” that the new policy was “facially neutral.”

In short, rather than the “lamentable” but unsuccessful “attempt” Blanchard describes, the reality is the White House is continuing to punish a news outlet for its content. Indeed, according to Oliver Darcy of Status News, the fracas has led other news outlets to avoid naming the body of water in question out of fear that they, too, will face federal retaliation. 

[...] “Executives at major media outlets are reportedly instructing their newsrooms to temper their coverage of President Trump and his administration amid growing fears of political retribution,” Axios reported Tuesday. “President Trump may not have the political power to pass laws that hurt the press, but his threats of regulatory scrutiny and private lawsuits have proven just as damaging in silencing his critics.” The Axios story provides a rundown of how the owners of outlets including CBS News, ABC News, The Washington Post (where my wife works), and the Los Angeles Times are crumbling under pressure from Trump. The president is very open about this strategy; indeed, he has gloated to reporters about how effective it has been. The administration also poses a threat to individual journalists. 

Even though Donald Trump takes a lot of questions from reporters, he is still an enemy of the freedom of the press. The Trump Regime’s war on AP and other news outlets that don’t bow down to his demands are under attack.

[thriftstoresisyphus]

Jack Blanchard & Misty Morgan “Two Sides Of...”

[gone2soon-rip]

MISTY MORGAN (1945-Died January 1st 2021,at 72.Cancer). American country music singer,part of a duo from Florida. It was composed of guitarist/keyboardist/vocalist Jack Blanchard (born May 8, 1942) and his wife, keyboardist/vocalist Misty Morgan (May 23, 1945 – January 1, 2021). The duo recorded for several labels in the 1970s, including the charting albums Birds of a Feather and Two Sides of Jack and Misty. Between 1969 and 1976, the duo also released fourteen singles, including "Tennessee Bird Walk", a Number One country hit and No. 23 pop hit in 1970.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Blanchard_%26_Misty_Morgan

[tfc2211]

Visit Original Link

[alltimecountryhits]

Click on Seventies

[miasmas22]

More chickens! Dance of the Living Dead Chickens, by Jack Blanchard.

[oldshowbiz]

the underrated brilliance of country and western poets Jack Blanchard and Misty Morgan